Guillaume de Machaut Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Ardis Butterfield

Critical Essay by Ardis Butterfield

SOURCE: Butterfield, Ardis. “Part V: Lyric and Narrative” and “Part VI: Envoy: The New Art.” In Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut, pp. 217-72, 273–90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

In the following excerpt, Butterfield analyzes Machaut's poetry and music, finding that both as a poet and a composer Machaut experiments with fixed forms and citation in an effort to explore the limits of his art.

It is widely acknowledged that with Guillaume de Machaut vernacular song enters a new phase. His lais, rondeaux and ballades have an elaboration and artistic seriousness that sets them apart from thirteenth-century examples. As many have remarked, Machaut's works herald a new kind of relationship between lyric and narrative, a new kind of relationship between music and poetry, and a new vision of authorship and of writing.

So many claims to novelty need some clarification from both...
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