Studies in French Poetry of the Fifteenth Century (1970)

My purpose in these studies is to example a careful reading of the too easily despised, too hastily evaluated and too frequently misunderstood poetry of the French fifteenth century. I have begun at the tum of the century with three of the more substantial writers of the first generation (Nesson, Char- tier, Taillevent), and while I have in each case read the poet's entire work I have tried to concentrate my efforts on the single poem which seemed his most substantial in terms of the number and importance of the concerns which animate it, the vigor and complexity of his response, and the expres- sive richness of the poem as a whole. I have tried in each instance to say only what seemed most relevant and essential, not with respect to any preconceived system but by allowing the categories of my treatment to arise out of a full and extended response to the work itself. When one interrogates a poem in terms of pre-established categories one is all too apt to find what one is seeking and to find only that.