1392 Ars nova poetica. La voix d’Eustache Deschamps
1392 Ars nova poetica. The voice of Eustache Deschamps

Summary/Abstract: Made "at the command of a [his] gracious and special lord and master" the Art de dictier et de faire chançons, balades, virelays and rondeaux is presented on November 25 1392 by Deschamps which makes him the first author of a poetic art in French. This treaty, unrecognized until the dawn of the twentieth century is now like the milestone of modern lyricism. By situating poetry with music in the arts of the quadrivium Deschamps speaks of it as a " natural music" whose means are musicality of "metrified words" that a poet feels, he says, in an innate way and which makes sensitive the thoughts, feelings, topics it deals with, addressed to listeners and readers who also have this sense of the natural music of poetic language whose means expression, sounds and rhythms are ordered by the poet. Although Deschamps honors the dignity and powers of seduction of his harmonious compositions of the "artificial" (artistic)music, newly defined as Ars Nova since 1320 by Philippe de Vitry and later Machaut, he presents also poetry as a "natural" music whose musicality depends from its poetic language. He thus opens a lyrical way to that which was until then dependent on Rhetoric. He thus announces long before the enthusiasms of the Pléiade the delight of the lyrical voice such as Valéry defines it five centuries later.

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