Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Music, Volume 1: The Debate Poems

Guillaume de Machaut, one of the most important cultural figures of fourteenth-century France, was a polymath—a poet, composer, and illuminator. The 13-volume Complete Poetry and Music is the only series to present Machaut’s multimodal oeuvre in its entirety, interpolating his Middle French texts (in facing translation), musical scores, and grisaille miniatures as they appear in BnF fr. 1584 with historical context and scholarly commentary. The Debate Poems brings together two dits: Le Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne (Judgment of the King of Bohemia), in which a narrator named Guillaume witnesses a lady bereft of her lover and a knight betrayed by his lady debate to determine who is most unhappy before their judge, the titular king Jean of Bohemia; and Le Jugement dou Roy de Navarre (Judgment of the King of Navarre), where the lady blames the narrator for the original debate’s outcome and they seek out the advice of the Charles, king of Navarre. Le Lay de Plour (Lay of Weeping) continues the story in lyric form.

R. Barton Palmer is both Editor and Translator for this edition.