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‘Se Triste Suis’: The Melancholy World of Eustache Deschamps
Collier, Ellen
Collier, Ellen
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Abstract
This dissertation is a study of the works of late medieval French poet, Eustache Deschamps (~1338-1405). Looking specifically at the poet’s use of affect through the lens of two emotions, tristesce (sadness) and merencolie (melancholy), this work takes the poet’s poetic treatise, L’Art de Dictier, as its point of departure. Using the poet’s notion of musique naturele (natural music), I posit that emotion is the key underlying principle of Deschamps’ theory of poetry, and that the poet’s definition of natural music is not simply the words used in a poem but is in fact the emotional tones that define them. In Chapter 1, I provide a background of the poet’s life as well as an overview of his works as well as their study up to the present. In Chapter 2, I explore the definitions of tristesce and merencolie by looking at their use in previous medieval poetic tradition by the troubadours and trouvères. Chapters 3 and 4 are analyses of Deschamps’ works looking at the poet’s use of these affects in the following instances: courtly love, allegory, funeral ballades, Fumeur poetry, loss of youth, and old age. In my analyses, I use Voyant Tools to further draw out observations made in individual poems to fit a larger picture of the poet’s complete works. In the Conclusion, I reiterate and summarize the first four chapters and write my concluding thoughts. Ultimately, this study provides an overview of Deschamps’ works through the lens of tristesce and merencolie, developing also an image of the poet’s works as a chronology of the stages of man’s life.
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Date
2023-01-01
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University of Kansas
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This item contains archived web content.
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1016367_1.pdf
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- Embargoed until 2173-05-31
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Keywords
French literature, Medieval literature, Language, Affect, Eustache Deschamps, French, Medieval, Natural Music, Poetry