Guillaume de Machaut | Biography

Guillaume de Machaut was an innovative and extremely influential figure in French poetry and music, pioneering new genres and techniques while revitalizing old ones. He stands as the key transitional figure in forging the new (or "second") rhetoric in poetry, the movement to elevate and ennoble the French language as a linguistic equal to Latin, the language of the "first" rhetoric, while advancing the "new art" (ars nova) in music. His achievements extend beyond formal composition, for he subtly analyzes social mores, psychology, and philosophy as centered on the theme of love. He also interweaves poetic subjectivity and detachment, dreams and reality, to formulate a narrative persona imperceptibly fluctuating between fiction and autobiography. Machaut thus stands out as more than a mere practitioner of fourteenth-century French rhetorical theory: he is the first self-conscious creator in a manner usually associated with more modern authors and artists. Machaut attracted patronage and other...
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