Eustache Deschamps

Deschamps, Eustache (c.1340-1404). French poet. Also known as Eustache Morel, he was born in Vertus, near Épernay. His early education was provided by the poet-musician Guillaume de Machaut, perhaps his uncle. He probably studied law at Orléans. He held minor posts at the French court in the reigns of Charles V and VI, and in 1389 was nominated bailli (judge) at Senlis. For most of his life he enjoyed royal favour, and was a more-or-less official court poet, writing pieces for royal occasions or simply to amuse his patrons. Like Froissart, Deschamps provides an invaluable (often first-hand) account of many of the major historical events of the last third of the 14th c. (e.g. personal experience of the Hundred Years War, the burning of his own home town and house by the English).

Deschamps left an impressive body of works, including the first art poétique in French, L'Art de dictier (1392), some dramatic pieces (e.g. La Farce de Mestre Trubert et d'Antrongnart, the Dit des quatre Offices de l'Ostel du Roy), and long moralizing poems like Le Miroir de mariage (an unfinished misogynist marathon of some 12, 000 lines). However, the most accessible to the modern reader are probably the vast number of ballades, chants-royaux, rondeaux, and virelais—more than 1, 300—nearly all of which show considerable mastery of the intricacies of the formes fixes. In these poems Deschamps is often tediously moralizing, as he grumbles away at the state of the world, but many are fresh and quirkily original, particularly in their evocation of the trivia of everyday life. The breadth of Deschamps's experiences as courtier, diplomat, soldier (and consequently great traveller) is reflected in his poetry. He is particularly good at conveying physical experiences, cold, hunger, seasickness, toothache. His traveller's tales of fleas in beds and disgusting foreign food are particularly entertaining. Indeed, a great many of his poems are about food and drink, giving a vivid impression of the culinary habits of 14th-c. Europe.

Deschamps wrote touching poems about his own home, comic verses about the problems of bringing up children, and eulogistic poems on ‘Paris sans per’. His satirical pieces are probably his best: he is a sharp-tongued critic of mores at court. His experiences as a judge give rise to a number of amusing, if savage, pieces about criminals and marginals—Deschamps was a great hanger and flogger (one of his refrains reads ‘Prenez, pandez, et ce sera bien fet’). Many of his satirical poems are misogynistic, though his works also include a fair measure of conventional love poetry. He also wrote about a dozen Aesopian fables, with particularly vivid evocations of animals, the best-known of which is probably Le Chat et les souris, with its catchy refrain ‘Qui pendra la sonnette au chat’. His anti-English poems, referring to the old legend that Englishmen have tails and using scraps of English, are highly entertaining, and he also addressed a eulogistic poem to Chaucer.

In many ways Deschamps anticipates Villon, by whom he was eclipsed. He comes at a decisive moment in the evolution of poetry—the decline of the courtly tradition as the dominant mode. The Art de dictier represents a radical break from Deschamps's master Machaut, and marks the definitive divorce of poetry and music [see Words And Music, I]. Although Deschamps was not the inventor of the formes fixes, he was responsible for their consolidation, and vastly extended their thematic range. His influence is difficult to assess, for although his poetry is a positive compendium of the themes and forms of the late Middle Ages, encapsulating much that is typical of the often sombre mood of the 14th c. and containing many elements that lead on to the poetry of the Rhétoriqueurs, his complete works survive in only one massive manuscript, and his name is little mentioned by subsequent generations.

[Christine Scollen-Jimack]

Bibliography

• E. Hoepffner, Eustache Deschamps Leben und Werke (1904, repr. 1974)
• D. Poirion, Le Poète et le prince: l'évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d'Orléans (1965)

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Eustache Deschamps (1346–1406) was a medieval French poet, also known as Eustache Morel (Huot 1999, 699). Born at Vertus, in Champagne, he received lessons in versification from Guillaume de Machaut and later studied law at Orleans University. He then traveled through Europe as a diplomatic messenger for Charles V. His estate was pillaged by the English, in consequence of which he continuously abuses them in his many poems.

Deschamps wrote as many as 1,175 ballades, and he is sometimes credited with inventing the form. All but one of his poems are short, and they are mostly satirical, attacking the English, whom he regards as the plunderers of his country, and against the wealthy oppressors of the poor. His satires were also directed at corrupt officials and clergy but his sharp wit may have cost him his job as Bailli of Senlis. He also wrote a treatise on French verse entitled L'Art de dictier, completed on 25 November 1392 (Kendrick 1983, 7).

His one long poetic work, Le Miroir de Mariage, is a 13,000 line satirical poem on the subject of women. This work influenced Geoffrey Chaucer who used themes from the poem in his own work. Chaucer seems to be one of the few Englishmen Deschamps liked, as he composed a ballade in his honour (no. 285, probably written sometime after 1380) praising Chaucer as a great philosopher, translator, ethicist, and poet (Kendrick 1983, 3–4).

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Eustache Deschamps

• A few of his poems

References

• Boudet, Jean-Patrice, and Hélène Millet (eds.). 1997. Eustache Deschamps et son temps. Textes et Documents d'Histoire Médiévale 1. Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne.
• Huot, Sylvia. 1999. [Untitled review of Boudet and Millet 1997]. Speculum 74, no. 3 (July): 699–700.
• Kendrick, Laura. 1983. "Rhetoric and the Rise of Public Poetry: The Career of Eustache Deschamps". Studies in Philology 80, no. 1 (Winter): 1–13.

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