SOURCE: Magnan, Robert. “Eustache Deschamps and the Course of Life.” In Eustache Deschamps: French Courtier-Poet, His Work and His World, ed. Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, pp. 230-44. New York: AMS Press, Inc. 1998.

In the essay below, Magnan outlines how Deschamps divides human life into different phases or periods in various poems.

The course of life, the length and structure of human existence, is a neglected and misunderstood aspect of the work of Eustache Deschamps. The purpose of this article is to consider how Deschamps divides life into distinct periods in a half dozen poems, in an attempt to determine the nature of these divisions and to assess their meaning and value for the late fourteenth century. Study of these poems should show that Deschamps based his “course of life” poems not on his own life, as certain scholars have assumed, nor on any specific source, and that his purpose...