Guillaume de Machaut

The Tale of the Alerion

Guillaume de Machaut, the most important poet and musician of fourteenth-century France, had considerable influence on subsequent generations of writers in both France and England: among them, Charles dOrlans, Christine de Pizan, and Geoffrey Chaucer. The Dit de lalerion , one of his long narrative poems, is particularly interesting for students of Chaucer, but has remained inaccessible to contemporary readers because of the difficulties inherent in Middle French and in Machauts enigmatic use of the language. With this scholarly translation, Minnette Gaudet and Constance B. Hieatt make this interesting and long-neglected treatise on love and falconry available to students of medieval literature.

In the poem, Machaut defines the problems and pleasures of courtly love by comparing them to those of falconry, a sport that modern readers know little about. The introduction and notes to this edition provide valuable information about the art of falconry, thus clarifying aspects of the poem that might be incomprehensible today. The notes and introduction furnish explications and variant readings of obscure passages and comments on wordplay. A running summary of the contents of the poem is provided in the margins.

The editors have retained the peculiarities and playfulness of Machauts style by duplicating, in so far as possible, the poets wordplay and the intricate rhythms of his octosyllabic verse. They have therefore chosen to create a verse translation in preference to one in prose.

As the only translation of Machauts poem, this volume will be of value to all medievalists, and especially to Chaucerians.

(Toronto Medieval Texts and Translations)

MINNETTE GAUDET , Associate Professor of French, University of Western Ontario, is a specialist in Old French language and literature and has written on the Chanson de Geste and the medieval French romance.

CONSTANCE B. HIEATT , Emeritus Professor of English, University of Western Ontario, is known primarily as a specialist in Old English language and literature. She has published widely in the field of medieval literature.

The Tale of the Alerion

GUILLAUME DE MACHAUT

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY MINNETTE GAUDET AND CONSTANCE B. HIEATT

University of Toronto Press 1994

Toronto Buffalo London

utppublishing.com

Printed in the U.S.A.

Reprinted in paperback 2013

ISBN 0-8020-0531-4 (cloth)

ISBN 978-1-4426-2606-5 (paper)

Printed on acid-free paper

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Guillaume, de Machaut, ca. 1300-1377

The tale of the alerion / Guillaume de Machaut ; edited and translated by
Minnette Gaudet and Constance B. Hieatt.

(Toronto medieval texts and translations ; 10)

Translation of: Dit de lalerion.

Includes bibliographical references and index

ISBN 0-8020-0531-4 (bound). ISBN 978-1-4426-2606-5 (pbk.)

I. Grunmann-Gaudet, Minnette. II. Hieatt, Constance B., 1928-III. Title. IV. Series: Toronto medieval texts and translations ; 10

PQ1483.G5A6413 1994 841.1 C949306835

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund for its publishing activities.

Contents

Preface

In collaborating on this translation, we attempted to divide the work in a way that would maximize the strengths and interests of two contributors coming from different disciplines. MG, as the Old French specialist of the team, was responsible for translating the text into English prose and for reviewing the subsequent verse translation. She also had the work of checking the manuscripts and determining the readings to be translated in the few instances in which the base manuscript was lacking in clarity. The verse rendition and basic background research were primarily undertaken by CBH, who also drafted most of the introduction, with the exception of the sections on Machauts life and the manuscript affiliations. CBH also provided much of the editorial material. The textual notes, however, were drafted jointly. CBH had considerable input into the basic understanding of the text adopted, and MG had a comparable effect on the final form of the introduction.

We wish to offer our thanks to a number of individuals and organizations for assistance of various kinds. We are grateful to the University of Western Ontario, and particularly to Dr Thomas Lennon, dean of the Faculty of Arts, for his support and encouragement, and the help that he provided us in the form of released time and graduate research assistants. Many libraries have given us indispensable help, including UWOs Weldon Library, the Bibliothque Nationale in Paris, which holds the Machaut manuscripts MG consulted, and the libraries of Yale University, where CBH did the bulk of the background research. We also owe a great debt for encouragement and constructive criticism to a number of colleagues, not all of whom can be mentioned here, especially those who were anonymous appraisers of an earlier version of our work. To those we know helped especially Brian Mer-rilees, A. Kent Hieatt, Paul Gaudet, Brenda Hosington, William Kibler, and James Wimsatt we give express thanks.