SOURCE: Sautman, Francesca Canadé. “Eustache Deschamps in the Forest of Folklore.” In Eustache Deschamps: French Courtier-Poet, His Work and His World, ed. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, pp. 195-207. New York: AMS Press, Inc. 1998.

In the essay which follows, Sautman explores the ways folkloric motifs and themes suffuse a number of Deschamps's poems.

Carl Lindahl's study of Chaucer and folklore felicitously reopens the question of the place occupied by folklore and folklife in great works of Western literature. A number of medieval and Renaissance authors and works have been interpreted in a variety of ways within this framework.¹

Lindahl warns of several misreadings of folklore in relation to medieval literature. One is that limiting folklore to a list of items, for instance to artistic genres, as earlier scholars tended to do, merges medieval folklore and medieval literature because the concept of authority is so compelling to medieval authors that they...