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Études & travaux
Images et paratexte

The Empty Bower and the Lone Fountain

Exploring Visual Paratextuality in Two Illuminated Guillaume de Machaut Manuscripts
Domenic Leo

Abstract

French poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut’s complete-works manuscripts are illuminated with hundreds of miniatures. Two manuscripts, made in his lifetime (c. 1300-1377), are among the most luxurious (BnF, ms. fr. 1584; BnF, ms. fr. 1586). I propose separating the iconographic programs from two dits (long, narrative poems cast in the first person) in these manuscripts to ‘analyze’ the resulting paratexts; perhaps anachronistic, but ultimately instructive in reconstructing period reception. This problematizes the role of the iconographer and his degree of responsibility in the creation of the images and/or their ‘arrangement’ within the text. Such an approach questions the concept of the supremacy of the text. Must an iconographic program only be judged by its rapport with the text? Can there be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ways in which the image is inserted into the text? Sixten Ringbom describes text-image bonds that are pertinent to understanding Machaut’s textual “Je” and the iconographer’s depiction of him. On occasion, the narrator disappears from the miniatures and the object of his gaze, unites the viewer, if only momentarily, with him – a static, visual ekphrasis. They constitute a form of ‘communication’ in and of themselves projected in a temporal stream of meaning. The concatenative sequence, hinging on discrete narratives, can be analyzed as a group. Subsequently the links can be removed, enabling an analysis of individual images. I will apply this methodology to the iconographic programs from Le dit dou vergier and La fonteinne amoureuse. The frontispiece for the Vergier depicts a large, intricately painted empty bower; the narrator is ancillary to this central image and stands off to one side. In the Fonteinne, two images of a fountain as subject matter, devoid of figures, break the narrative flow. This literally forces the viewer to focus on the subject matter rather than passively following the verbal action taking place around it. The goal of this study, then, is to reconsider the text as a means for interpreting the ‘correctness’ of the placement or content of the miniatures and to explore the inverse; c’est-à-dire, la théorisation de l’erreur.

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Dedication

for Nancy Freeman Regalado, friend and mentor

Full text

1. The Manuscripts

  • 1  I am grateful to Lawrence Earp, Jacques Boogaart, Maud Pérez-Simon, Sebastien Douchet, and the out (...)
  • 2  Lawrence Earp, “Machaut’s Role in the Production of His Works,” Journal of the American Musicologi (...)
  • 3  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586 (C); see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machau (...)
  • 4  Charles (1338, r. 1364-1380), became duke of Normandy in 1350 – after the death of his mother, Bon (...)
  • 5  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584 (A).
  • 6  Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love (La Fonteinne Amoureuse) and Two Other Love Vision Poem (...)
  • 7  See Earp, “Introductory Study”, table 2.1, “Chronological growth of the principal Machaut manuscri (...)

1When famed poet-composer Guillaume de Machaut died at the age of 77, he left behind an unparalleled material legacy for the French royal family and, eventually, le patrimoine culturel: manuscripts with his oeuvres complètes of poetry and music.1 Of the three most lavishly illuminated manuscripts made during his lifetime, two were almost certainly under his supervision.2 The first manuscript, known by the siglum C, dates to the mid- to late-1340s, and has 107 miniatures.3 It is likely to be the manuscript described in a 1363 inventory of the treasury of the dauphin Charles, duke of Normandy (the future King Charles V the Wise).4 The second manuscript, known by the siglum A, dates to the late 1370s.5 Its contents grew substantially as Machaut included the music and poetry he continued to compose up to his final work, the Prologue.6 In turn, the iconographic program increased considerably, to 154 miniatures.7

  • 8  Earp, “Introductory Study,” art. cit., p. 5, “I use the term ‘fascicle’ in the sense not of a sing (...)
  • 9  See Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, «Le Dit», in Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelal (...)
  • 10  On the codicological structure of the Machaut manuscripts, see Lawrence Earp, “Scribal Practice, M (...)
  • 11  For example, the substantial decorative treatment (relative to the rest of A) on the opening folio (...)
  • 12  On the artist, named after a Bible which Jean de Sy translated for King John II the Good in 1356, (...)
  • 13  See Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence,” op. cit., p. 249, n. 532, and Id., “The Pucellian School an (...)
  • 14  For recent work on patronage, see Lawrence Earp, “Introductory Study,” art. cit., p. 28-80; two ma (...)

2C comprises a number of fascicles,8 each with a separate dit (a long, narrative poem cast in the first person).9 Thus, they could have been arranged in any order; the present sequence is conjectural. The codicological structure of A, is, relatively speaking, more complex than that of C.10 Its contents were not necessarily intended to be bound into one manuscript.11 Circumstances surrounding the later addition of a bifolio with a portion of Machaut’s final poem remain unclear. It incorporates two large miniatures by the famous Parisian illuminator, the Master of the Bible of Jean de Sy.12 Given the nearly exclusive output of the ‘Machaut artists’ and the Jean de Sy Master for manuscripts commissioned by the royal family, I have argued that their style alone can function as a signifier of patronage.13 As with C, A was probably in the collection of Charles V, even though he might not have been the original patron.14 And although A may have been created in Reims, where Machaut lived as a cathedral canon until his death, it was, for all practical purposes, completed in Paris with the addition of a bifolio with the Jean de Sy Master’s miniatures.

2. Illumination as Paratext

  • 15  At one period of time, the person responsible for the layout of C had a difficult task: to decide (...)

3C and A have long and sometimes complex iconographic programs in the dits. I will explore two sets of miniatures in their capacity as paratexts – parts of the folio liminal to the text. I will argue that they hold a different, self-contained meaning than that which is solely found in the text or their relationship to it.15 My démarche méthodologique primarily comprises the work of Gérard Genette, Hans Robert Jauss, Paul Zumthor, and Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet.

  • 16  Deborah L. McGrady, Controlling Readers, op. cit., p. 98. See Gérard Genette, Seuils, Paris, Le Se (...)
  • 17  Gérard Genette, “Frontières du récit”, Communications 8/1 (1996), p. 152-163.

4Deborah McGrady, elaborating on the work of literary critic Gérard Genette, writes that paratexts function “as a threshold (seuil) intended to encourage easy entry into the texts.”16 Although Genette’s structuralist approach to narratology and paratextuality mostly concerns the impact of text on text, images can also be explored within this methodological framework. Genette promotes a theory whereby the threshold between text and paratext may work in opposition to une frontière scellée, thus promoting thematic interpenetration and interaction between the two.17

  • 18  Lucille Chia, “Text and Tu in Context: Reading the Illustrated Page in Chinese Blockprinted Books” (...)

5Genette has had an impact on art historians, especially those who consider the polysemy of text-image interactions that can be generated by content, placement, and context. His approach has produced fruitful results with analyses of art from different cultures and varying periods of time. For example, Lucille Chia, in her work on Chinese blockprinted books, writes that the mise en page “can relate messages absent from or only implied by the text”.18

  • 19  As with Le Dit dou vergier in C and the Le Dit de la fonteinne amoureuse in A, to be discussed bel (...)

6In some instances, however, I believe that the image-to-text conduits in C and A are initially unnavigable. The time it takes to reflect on them changes the tempo of reading and comprehension significantly.19 They create ‘semantic friction’ – perhaps the type of passage which excited the first-time reader and continued to reward her – by initiating the possibility for a multiplicity of interpretations. Using a similar theoretical undergirding, Maria Cristina Pîrvu writes:

  • 20  Maria Cristina Pîrvu, “Quand le paratexte est texte et poésie. Analyse de cinq exemples extraits d (...)

Quand « un paratexte » devient « texte », la vitesse de sa lecture ralentit […] Ce que [notre démarche] vise à démontrer c’est que les paratextes, en tant que « seuils », vont céder l’initiative et ne sont que des espaces de fuite vers les textes qu’ils accompagnent, mais aussi des espaces à forte densité textuelle.20

  • 21  As with the frontispieces for the following dits: Jugement Behaingne (f˚ 1r, C1), Remede, (f˚ 23r, (...)
  • 22  If she were familiar with the illuminated text in one manuscript, and is viewing the iconographic (...)

7The prime locus for the iconographer to infuse Machaut’s dits with meaning is the frontispiece miniature (in C they can be up to a half-folio high and two columns wide).21 The image-to-beginning-of-dit sequence empowers the iconographer: his work has the strongest initial impact; and he can aggressively influence, sway, or instruct the first-time reader. Unfamiliar with the iconography and never having read the text, the reader is rendered vulnerable and impressionable.22 Machaut, laying out the conditions for a student’s optimal learning experience in the school of love writes:

  • 23  Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy de Behaingne, ed. cit. Abbreviations for the dits are: A (...)

Car le droit estat d’innocence
Ressamble proprement la table
Blanche, polie, qui est able
A recevoir, san nul contraire,
Ce c’on y veult paindre ou pourtraire
(Remede, v. 26-30)23

  • 24  Anne Stone, in a lecture at the International Medieval Conference, Kalamazoo, 2016, presented her (...)
  • 25  I discuss the Fonteinne in A below.
  • 26  The Remede Master’s avant-garde, naturalistic rendering of the scene is diametrically opposed to t (...)
  • 27  For the seminal work on reception theory, see Hans Robert Jauss, Pour une esthétique de la récepti (...)

8This problematizes the identification of the iconographer and his role in the creation of the images and/or their arrangement within the text.24 Surprisingly, at this transitional juncture, notably in the Remede de fortune, Dit de l’Alerion, and Dit dou Vergier in C, there appear to be no immediately apparent text-image rapports.25 The flow from the frontispiece image to the opening lines of the text may have constituted an unfamiliar semantic path for the reader; perhaps the element which enticed her to look more closely. After admiring the beauty and avant-garde style of the images (as is the case in C), the refined reader is challenged by the iconographer – “How to join image and text?”26 Literary theoreticians Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Iser were the main proponents of reader-response theory, in which the reader played an active role in creating a personal understanding of the text based on skill sets particular to the time and place of the text’s composition.27 How did the medieval reader’s skill set create a horizon of expectation for understanding and appreciating Machaut’s dits? Was she equipped to consciously alter this as was necessary to engage in the dynamic and unique content and presentation of MS C: text, image, and music?

  • 28  Bonne certainly knew Machaut from his years in service to her father, John of Luxembourg the Blind (...)
  • 29  For the dates of Machaut’s appointment as ‘secretarius’, and his likely duties, see Lawrence Earp, (...)
  • 30  Roger Bowers, “Guillaume de Machaut and His Canonry of Reims, 1338-1377”, Early Music History 23 ( (...)
  • 31  Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., documents the relationship between Machaut and King (...)
  • 32  See the edition and prose translation of the Remede, in Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy (...)
  • 33  Ibid., on its didactic quality, see p. 37, 39.

9This experience may have been entertaining for Bonne de Luxembourg, the ostensible patroness of C.28 Was the iconographic program personalized for her in specific and/or the royal family? This may hinge on Machaut’s role – or intervention – in the planning of C. Is it possible that he actively interacted with Bonne’s children? His former job as ‘secretarius’ to Bonne’s father, John of Luxembourg, ended definitively in 1346, when the king was killed in the Battle of Crécy.29 Historian Roger Bowers argues that having had such an elite position serving in the retinue of the king would have left him disappointed with a job of lesser importance at court.30 But what would have been the poet’s aspirations for remaining in Bonne’s court at Normandy with the dauphin Charles? Machaut profited greatly by establishing a relationship with the future king. Perhaps this began with Machaut participating in his education.31 Of all Machaut’s dits, the Remede in C, has the strongest didactic quality.32 It begins, “Cilz qui veult aucun art aprendre / A .xii. choses doit entendre” (v. 1-2).33

10Although Genette’s methodology heightens awareness of the role(s) of the visual paratexts, we must analyze the specifically medieval process of the creation and reception of the iconographic programs in C and A. In order to garner enough information to reconstruct the formulation of the iconographic programs, the period which predates the layout of these two manuscripts, I propose emancipating the painted, visual paratexts – the miniatures – from the written texts in order to scrutinize the relationships between one image and another.

  • 34  My use of the term ‘modulus’, refers to the method in which a component of iconography, set in a n (...)
  • 35  Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext”, art. cit., p. 261. Further consideration of this theory m (...)

11The miniatures in C and A constitute a sophisticated form of nonverbal communication – a non-text – which is characterized by polysemy. Thus the iconographer can piece together units of familiar moduli in an unexpected, unfamiliar assembly, proof of his talent.34 Separating the miniatures from the physical confines of the margins, ruling, lines of text, rubrics and bar extenders, provides the possibility to concatenate them sequentially based on their order within the separate dits. Furthermore, by excising the verbal links which bind the images to the texts, it becomes possible to evaluate this group image-to-image. Can this methodology aid in identifying the iconographer? Genette writes that the paratext may “[…] be a bearer of an authorial commentary either more or less legitimized by the author.”35 Finally, scrutinizing the image-to-image relationships serves to forefront the temporal, chronological flow of the narrative and the locations where the iconographer halts the flow, thereby creating visual ruptures, a phenomenon I will explore below.

3. Mouvance

  • 36  For an early discussion of the iconographic program in C by scholars of literature, see Guillaume (...)
  • 37  On this topic, see Julia Drobinsky, “Procédures de remaniement dans un programme iconographique po (...)
  • 38  Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, nouvelle édition: Avec une préface de Michel Zink et un (...)

12Before proceeding, it is crucial to examine the concept of the ‘supremacy of the text’ as another factor for evaluating C and A. Using the text as a primary means for interpreting or judging the ‘correctness’ of the placement or content of the miniatures is highly questionable. This constitutes an anachronistic théorisation de l’erreur. In fact, without the iconographic program, and only a minimum of paratextual apparatus – perhaps rubrics or notae – the possibility for a plurality of readings is crippled.36 Must an iconographic program only be judged by its rapport with the text? Can there be ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ ways in which the images are inserted into the text (preceding the textual action, following it, or in no way connected to it)? Paul Zumthor and Bernard Cerquiglini’s concepts of mouvance and variance apply to medieval images as well as texts.37 For example, the iconographic program of A is not related to the earlier C. This applies to the popular Roman de la Rose, where it is difficult to identify manuscripts by the same artist or atelier that replicate each other. Mouvance also applies to the number of miniatures in and the placement of the iconographic program. This event seems to foster change (personalization?). The totality of the reading experience is in flux. There are two categories: image insertion-point migration (the specific points where the image is inserted into the text); and image subject-matter and rubric migration (an image and/or rubric shared by two or more manuscripts but which occurs at different places in the text).38

  • 39  They were never meant to be seen by the reader, and normally would have been erased.
  • 40  See Domenic Leo, http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk, art. cit., ‘Table I: Scribal Notation in A’. There a (...)
  • 41  A number of Machaut manuscripts have spaces for miniatures in the text which are largely or comple (...)

13One crucial element for analyzing the roles mouvance and variance played in the planning process for A is extant in one case: scribal notation in the form of twenty hairline Roman numerals next to miniatures.39 They match – although not consistently – the number of their distribution in the dits.40 This validates the theory that the placement of the images was not haphazard: there was a list of subject matter or even a sketchbook.41 Let us now return to the seuils in C and A.

4. The Dit dou vergier and the Empty Bower in C

  • 42  On the Vergier, see: Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 206; William Calin, A Poet (...)
  • 43  On the iconography, see Julia Drobinsky, “L’Amour dans l’arbre et l’Amour au coeur ouvert: deux al (...)
  • 44  The conceit of the dew drops which wake the narrator is repeated in the later Dit de lAlerion. In (...)

14The Vergier is an allegorical love poem. It is, perhaps, one of the least known and appreciated of Machaut’s dits.42 In it, the narrator, stricken with lovesickness (v. 19), walks into a garden and then wanders down a path into an orchard. He is seeking solace and distraction. After sitting on the grass to admire the orchard, he falls asleep. In his dream, he sees the god of Love seated nearby on a pretty little tree (v. 163). Love is blindfolded. He brandishes an arrow in one hand and holds a flame (which is meant to be a lit torch) in the other.43 The god delivers a passionate speech in part of which he describes his attributes. Following this, he introduces allegories who represent good and bad qualities in lovers. When the god departs, the narrator is suddenly awakened by a shower of dew falling from the tree above him.44

15In the large frontispiece miniature for the Vergier, the narrator stands in a lovely garden with well-pruned, umbrella-shaped trees and a field speckled with red, white, yellow, and blue flowers and fern-like greens (fig. 1).

Figure 1

Vergier frontispiece with the narrator and an empty bower.

  • 45  Lawrence Earp has through-numbered the miniatures for ease of reference in his Concordance of illu (...)

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f° 93, det.45

16Given the title of the poem, one would expect to see the man in an orchard. But there is no fruit-laden tree, nor is there an image of the god of Love. Instead, there is a massive, empty bower. Compositionally, aligned along the central vertical axis, it is the central focus point; the figure is ancillary. The bower’s placement and the artist’s impressive attention to detail are remarkable. The construction of the bower comprises a bent wood frame held together with meticulously lashed joints to create a lattice. This is covered by leafy vines with five-petal red and white flowers (figs. 1, 2).

Figure 2

The empty bower in the Vergier frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f° 93, det.

  • 46  I thank Nancy Thompson, conservator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, for her thoughts o (...)

17An infrared image reveals that the artist adeptly painted the bower in layers – over a schematic sketch – with an opaque, liquid solution – ink (?) (figs. 3, 4).46

Figure 3

Infrared photograph of the Vergier frontispiece with the narrator and an empty bower.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f° 93, det.

Figure 4

Infrared photograph of the empty bower in the Vergier frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f°. 93, det.

  • 47  On turf bank benches, see Johanna Bauman, “Tradition and Transformation: The Pleasure Garden in Pi (...)

18He began with the wooden frame, then added the complex, intertwining climbing vines and, finally, the leaves and flowers. The detail work in the bower, visible via infrared lighting, is different from the more loosely drawn trees. It reveals that he went to great lengths to create a circular, raised, turf-covered bank for seating inside (figs. 2, 4). This was a challenge for the artist, who nevertheless carefully planned it with a naïve, yet effective, use of foreshortening.47

  • 48  I am grateful to Jacques Boogaart who, through private communication, points out that the void in (...)

19The artist/iconographer is visually shaping the reader’s reception of the text with the use of an empty bower. The narrator is shown standing in the orchard before meeting the god of Love. Is this already part of his dream vision? The iconographer suggests that the narrator reflects on love, formulating his own ideas, before he meets the god of Love. I imagine that the emptiness of the bower and the role he might play in using it are foremost in his thoughts.48 Should it not be occupied by lovers? Could its shaded, womb-like interior stand metonymically for a woman? The only other image of a bower in C, in the Lyon, shows a lady seated in an elaborate, grape leaf-covered bower where an old knight leads the narrator of this poem (fig. 5).

Figure 5.

Lyon: The old knight leads the narrator to a lady seated in a grape vine-covered bower.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C76, f˚ 109.

  • 49  American sociologist Robert King Merton’s influential theory of role strain is particularly helpfu (...)
  • 50  His courtly garb does not preclude him being a cleric. He is probably dressed as the other members (...)
  • 51  Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence”, op. cit., p. 117-124. See Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of (...)

20Thus, the gaze of the Vergiers narrator defines his own emotional state and aspirations. He is yearning for a lover, perhaps to use the bower for a tryst, above and beyond his appreciation of its beauty. But his position in society and the position of his body preclude the possibility for fulfilling his longing. This is a visual analog for the ‘social strain’ suffered by the persona of Machaut’s narrator in the Remede.49 Here, he is a cleric who aches for an unavailable noblewoman.50 He is observing, not moving. The balletic position of his feet and his stance, with arms crossed over his chest, bar him from participating in the central scene, rendering him a bystander, what I term the ‘iconography of exclusion’.51

21The narrators in two other frontispieces have the same pose – Jugement Behaingne and Remede – as do a handful of images within the lais (figs. 6-9).

Figure 6

Jugement Behaingne: The narrator in the frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C1, f˚ 1.

Figure 7

Remede: The narrator in the frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C10, f˚ 23.

Figure 8

Vergier: The narrator in the frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f˚ 93.

Figure 9

Vergier: Infrared image; the narrator in the frontispiece.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C62, f˚ 93.

  • 52  The pink hat the god of Love wears replaces Machaut’s textual description of a chaplet made of flo (...)
  • 53  See the discussion of the Wheel of Fortune image, f˚ 30v, and the iconography of the pink hat in D (...)

22Although these miniatures are the work of different artists, the confident rendering of the narrator’s body, especially the definition of the calf muscle, makes it clear that the man in the frontispiece image for the Remede served as the model (fig. 7). This hypothesis is substantiated by a comparison of the rendering of the pink hat worn by the narrators in other dits and the god of Love in the Vergier (fig. 10).52 In the Vergier, it is decidedly two-dimensional – a crudely rendered version of the elegantly modeled hat worn at times by the narrator, as in the frontispiece for the Jugement Behaingne on f˚ 1 , C1 (figs. 6, 10-11; and once by a young man seated atop Lady Fortune’s wheel).53 The lady of the castle wears it throughout the Remede. This strongly suggests that the Vergier miniature was painted after the Remede. An infrared image supports this theory (fig. 9). It divulges that the initial drawing used for the figure in the Vergier – a pattern copied from a single source (?) – was heavily overworked with a bold silhouette, perhaps begun by one artist and then finished by another.

Figure 10

Vergier: The God of Love.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C63, f˚ 94.

Figure 11

Vergier: The God of Love with his pink hat, torch, and arrow.

Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586, C63, f˚ 94.

23Machaut mentions neither the pink hat nor the empty bower in his text. Rather, the opening lines of the Vergier are part of the time-honored topos of the locus amoenus, which Machaut uses so often as a setting in his dits:

Quant la douce saison repaire
D’esté (qui maint amant esclaire,
Que prez et bois sont en verdor […])
Me levay par .i. matinet
Et entray en .i. jardinet […]
Tant qu’a l’entrée d’un vergier
Me fist aventure aporter.
(Vergier, v. 1-3, 9-10, 16-17)

24In the series of smaller, single-column-width miniatures which follow the large frontispiece, the artist abruptly replaced the centrally-positioned bower with an image of the god of Love as described in the text (fig. 10). He sits on a tree in the center of a field:

Et dessus le bel arbrissel
Qui estoit en mi le praiel
Se sëoit une creature
de trop mervilleuse figure.
(Vergier, v. 163-167).

25He is flanked by men on one side and women on the other who are seated on semi-circular, raised turf banks.

26The iconographer has broken the link between the thought-provoking and elegantly painted elements of the frontispiece miniature – the empty bower, the isolated narrator, and la reverdie – which operate in an interpretative mode. Instead, the following images would have stood out to the reader due to their simple, relatively speaking, rapport with the text, despite the artist’s beautiful rendering. The paratextual status of these miniatures has been compromised. From this point on in the Vergier, the image-text rapport has changed immensely from that of the frontispiece: the miniatures are literally swallowed up by the text which surrounds them.

5. The Lone Fountain in the Dit de la fonteinne amoureuse in A

  • 54  The Fountain of Love appears on: f˚ 163r/A91; f˚ 163c/A92; f˚ 163d/A93; f˚ 165v/A95; f˚ 169a/A99; (...)
  • 55  He will be sent as ransom to England the following day in exchange for his father, King John II th (...)

27Machaut composed the Fonteinne for Jean, duke of Berry in 1360-1361, on the eve of the duke’s marriage to Jeanne of Armagnac.54 The beginning of this dit takes place in the night, when the narrator overhears the duke’s complainte. It treats the impending separation from his wife-to-be. He bemoans his situation.55

28About halfway through the Fonteinne, the duke leads the narrator into a garden by the hand (v. 1291) to the Fountain of Love (fig. 12).

Figure 12

Fonteinne: The narrator and Jean de Berry in discussion before the Fountain of Love.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A91, f˚ 163r.

29Thus, the narrator and the duke, who are both in the images, as well as the medieval reader/viewer, participate in and follow the unfolding plotline. Whereas when Machaut begins to describe the fountain and its sculptural decoration in detail, the narrator and duke disappear (v. 1300-1370): two of seven miniatures, which include the fountain, show it devoid of people. In this context, even though the artist in A is clumsy, the concept is brilliant: the fountain in A becomes the subject, as with the bower in C (figs. 13-14).

Figure 13

Fonteinne: The Fountain of Love with sculptures.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A92, f˚ 163c.

Figure 14

Fonteinne: The Fountain of Love with sculptures.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A93, f˚ 163d.

  • 56  Both images are on f˚ 163v: one is in the first column, and the other in the second.
  • 57  This conceit occurs multiple times in A, most famously in the ymage of Toute Belle in Machaut’s la (...)

30In A, however, the storyline comes to a full halt – the visual response to the extended textual ekphrasis. It includes a description of the fountain, and of the mythological subject matter of its sculpted and enameled decoration. The visual disjuncture in the iconographic program makes this conceit clear: the narrator, the duke, and the viewer become unwitting companions.56 All three gaze at the lone fountain in two successive miniatures from outside the frame looking in (f˚ 163c-163d).57 The viewer may be seeing the figures’ thoughts, as if they were in the midst of appreciating, contemplating, reflecting on, and analyzing the image of the fountain.

  • 58  The Prayerbook of Bonne de Luxembourg, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Col (...)

31This inflection in viewing modes ruptures the tempo of the narrative which had been established both in the text and the iconographic program which precede it. Thus, these two miniatures become iconic, directly related to the close-ups used in devotional images, such as the wound in Christ’s side in Bonne of Luxembourg’s Prayerbook.58 Up to this point, all images in this fictive temporal dimension created and sustained in text and image by the author and the artist follow an active stream of movement; for example, they walk – they discuss – they observe. The two lone fountain images are on a single folio. They become a suspended ‘present’ during the time it takes to see them – and, perhaps, linger – and the time that elapses while reading the text on this particular folio. Only a physical action, turning the folio, can reveal the future.

32These two images of the lone fountain are stylistically unique in A. First, the artist used dashes of ink in various degrees of transparency to simulate marble. Each fountain is canted forward, in a manner that pronounces the flat top. Second, the lone fountains are the only fountains in the iconographic program which bear the sculpture which is described in detail in the text. The artist, however, uses a generic image of two people engaged in discussion on either side of a spout for the sculptures. Is it meaningful that the pairs’ stances match those of the duke and narrator in the following miniature (fig. 15)?

Figure 15

Fonteinne: Jean de Berry speaks with the narrator.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A94, f˚ 164v.

33Are these two characters meant to resonate with the mythological subject matter in the textual description of the sculptures? Here is part of Machaut’s fantastical image, made up of precious decorations – ivory and enamel – which he offers the duke and narrator, as well as the viewer, even the reader of a manuscript that has no illumination. It is:

  • 59  The word ‘esmaillie’ describes a technically difficult use of enameling that is only appropriate f (...)

[une trop bele fonteinne] […]
sus.i. grans piler d’ivoire
Estoit assisë, ou l’istoire
De Narcisus fut entaille
Et si soutiement esmaillie59
Que par may foy y m’estoit vis,
Quant je le vi, qu’il estoit vis.
(Fonteinne, v. 1301, 1307-1312)

  • 60  Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative P (...)

34Sylvia Huot writes, “In A, [the mediating characters of the duke and narrator] are not represented. Instead, the emblematic images are generated directly from the written text itself; the book itself provides the context for the image.”60 But Machaut wrote the poem, and he generated the textual material which Huot argues generated the image. He is literally the wellspring of desire. How should we rethink this scenario if Machaut were, in theory, also the iconographer? The two images of the lone fountain transform both image-text and image-image rapports. Machaut, side by side with the viewer, and along with the textual figures of the duke and narrator, stares at the fountain. Does one, or all of them, ask silently, in prayer (to the god of Love?): Can I have love? Can I drink from the fountain?

35The irony is that the visual focus is on a simplistically rendered fountain, which does not match the complex textual ekphrasis of the subject matter of its sculptural program: it is devoid of content, missing the sculptures of Narcissus and Pygmalion which are described in the text. Perhaps the iconographer sought to emphasize the interaction of the ‘living’ figures in the miniature: the narrator and the duke.

  • 61  Ibid.

36In this example, the fountain is an empty vessel with no inherent significance. Only the reader’s gaze can invest it with meaning. From this point of view, we see the novel reuse of an iconographic/textual modulus which creates a visual and textual resonance with the fountain in the myth of Narcissus, and, more specifically with the popular Roman de la Rose. From Huot’s standpoint, “The prominent role of the visual artifact is stressed.”61 But the artist’s command of perspective is poor and the generic sculptural figures are of mediocre quality, especially in relation to the fountain in Machaut’s garden, part of the appended bifolio with the Prologue painted by the Jean de Sy Master (fig. 16).

Figure 16

Prologue: The fountain in Machaut’s garden.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A2, f˚ Er.

  • 62  Guillaume de Machaut, La Fonteinne amoureuse, op.cit., p. lvi-lvii; he also discusses the referenc (...)

37Thus, stripped of the textual accompaniment, the fountain has no pronounced or complex artistic role in and of itself in A. It is only the size and ‘loneliness’ which come to the forefront when compared to the preceding and following images. R. Barton Palmer gives one of the most penetrating viewpoints to consider here when he describes the lonely fountain as a “literary fountain.”62

  • 63  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545-22546 (F-G). See Lawrence Earp, Guillaume (...)

38To underscore the unique impact of the two images of the fountain in A, I turn to the posthumous F-G, a luxury, complete-works Machaut manuscript which was illuminated c. 1390.63 Here, the painter did not include the classical figures sculpted on the fountain. Instead, he focuses on this mysterious passage:

En milieu estoit atachiez
Uns serpens d’or a .xii. chiés
Qui par engiens et par conduis
Estoient ad ce faire duis
Que la fonteinne san sejour
Gettoient de nuit et de jour.
(Fonteinne, v. 1343-1348)

39The preceding images in F-G depict an elaborately constructed fountain (figs. 17-18).

Figure 17

Fonteinne: The narrator and Jean de Berry at the Fountain of Love (the narrator’s face has been badly abraded here and repainted at a later date).

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545, F76, f˚ 126v

Figure 18

Fonteinne: The narrator and Jean de Berry at the Fountain of Love.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545, F77, f˚ 127r.

40Its pinnacle is decorated with delicately rendered crotchet spouts from which water flows (could they be miniature dragon heads?); and has a fleur-de-lis finial. Empty aediculae – niches for sculptures? – hug its base just above the water (fig. 17). But the following images of it in F-G are unexpected (f˚ 127a, F77-f˚ 127b, F78). Here, the artist has arranged a group of gilded dragon heads one atop the other on either side of a columnar post (figs. 18, 19).

Figure 19

Fonteinne: The Fountain of Love, with a gilded, twelve-headed dragon.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545, F77, f˚ 127r., det.

  • 64  Nigel J. Morgan, Illuminating the End of Time: The Getty Apocalypse Manuscript, Los Angeles, The J (...)

41The image is dramatic in relation to the other miniatures in the iconographic program. For the medieval reader, it would have been an immediately recognizable iconographic reference to the multi-headed dragon in the Apocalypse (figs. 18-21).64

Figure 20

The Getty Apocalypse. The Dragon with seven heads.

Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III1, f˚ 20r., det.

Figure 21

The Getty Apocalypse. The Dragon and the Woman.

Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum, MS Ludwig III1, f˚ 20r.

42This last book in the Bible was written (as believed in the fourteenth century) by John the Evangelist, the Beloved, at the time he had been exiled to the island of Patmos. He wrote a passage describing a vision he had in which a pregnant woman is crowned with stars, brighter than the sun, and stands on a crescent moon. She is threatened by “a second sign in the sky: there was a huge red dragon with seven heads” [Revelations 12: 3]. The fountain, in this visual context, has an unusual and perhaps negative connotation; perhaps an omen of what is to come – Jean’s departure and separation from his wife-to-be. Does it reinforce the significance of an object dedicated to and promoting carnal rather than spiritual love? Water gushes from the dragons’ mouths on the fountain, adding a further link to the biblical description of the dragon, “As the woman was being saved, the dragon vomited water from his mouth, like a river” [Revelations 12:15].

43How does this change the meaning of the fountain in the context of Machaut’s Fonteinne in A? It is no coincidence that neither the narrator nor duke drink from the fountain. The duke already has love. The narrator is, perhaps, never meant to, outside of his textual fantasy world (although the narrator does consummate the act with the beloved in the Voir Dit). Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet elaborates on the position of the fountain:

  • 65  Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, ed. cit., p. 10-13, Cerquiglini-Toulet remarks on a r (...)

[La fontaine] constitue l’axe de symétrie du texte par rapport auquel se mirent les deux parties de l’oeuvre. La Fontaine amoureuse, comme texte, est bien un miroir: miroir amoureux, miroir des princes […] miroir des textes antérieurs. 65

44Her final words on the fountain are telling,

  • 66  Ibid., p. 25.

Défendue et offerte, périlleuse et amoureuse, la Fontaine […] se présente comme une mémoire ancienne et une matrice nouvelle d’écriture. Boirons-nous à cette source ou ne sommes-nous plus assoiffés?66

45A dédoublement is established visually and compositionally in the miniatures in A, where the narrator and duke sleep, dreaming, next to the Fountain of Love (figs. 22-23; f˚ 165v and 169).

Figure 22

Fonteinne: Jean de Berry sleeps in the narrator’s lap.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A95, f˚ 165v.

Figure 23

Fonteinne: The narrator sleeps in Jean de Berry’s lap.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A99, f˚ 169a (recto, column one).

  • 67  My commentary on the Fonteinne in the forthcoming Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Mu (...)
  • 68  This is a meaningful motif in relation to the imagery in the text, explored in Julia Drobinsky, “E (...)
  • 69  The narrator uses primarily Ovidian exempla to fortify the duke. See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, R (...)

46In the first, the duke sleeps in the lap (giron) of the narrator, who covers him with his cloak.67 Further on, in a mirror image, the narrator sleeps in the lap of the duke on the opposite side of the fountain.68 These separate miniatures, especially when examined apart from the text, serve as visual ‘parentheses’ for the exempla recounted in a dream by Venus.69 Following this set of miniatures, another depicts the two figures after awakening within a symmetrical composition (fig. 24).

Figure 24

The narrator and Jean de Berry sit on either side of the Fountain of Love having a discussion.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A101, f˚ 173a.

47There is no woman here to separate them or to throw the composition off balance as in their shared dream. Here, John and the narrator sit on either side of the fountain, a composition which underlines, surprisingly, their visual and thematic parities. In the following, final miniature in the Fonteinne, the narrator rides with the duke to the port, accompanying him until he is aboard the boat (fig. 19).

Figure 19

Jean on the boat, ready to set sail, grasps hands with the narrator, who is on horseback.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584, A102, f˚173b.

  • 70  Oddly enough, even though the horse’s open mouth and arched neck indicate he should be wearing a b (...)

48Once again they are shown holding hands, indicating a charged moment in the plotline. In an earlier image, John led the narrator by the hand (v. 111) to the Fountain of Love. In the last image for the Fonteinne in A, the gesture is broken as the boat sets sail for England, leaving the narrator alone on the shoreline.70

49In conclusion, these two brief explorations of visual paratextuality in the iconographic programs for the Vergier and Fonteinne in C and A present strong evidence that only a person intimately familiar with the texts could have conceived these images. It is only by excising the iconographic programs from the texts that we can elucidate this level of sophistication. I have only elaborated on one facet of Gérard Genette, Hans Robert Jauss, and Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet’s work here, and I have only chosen two motifs. However, C and A hold many possibilities for this type of interpretation that are viable and invaluable inroads to understanding the process of constructing paratextual iconographic programs – be it the empty bower in the frontispiece, which creates a visual and thematic counterpoint to the text in the Vergier, or the two iconic images of a lone fountain in the Fonteinne, which dramatically change the tempo of the narrative by bringing it to a jarring halt.

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Bibliography

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Guillaume de Machaut, The Complete Poetry & Music, 13 vols., ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, literature, and Yolanda Plumley, music, Kalamazoo, Medieval Institute of Publications, 2016-.

Guillaume de Machaut, The Complete Poetry & Music, vol. 1, The Debate Poems, ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, with art-historical and music commentaries by Domenic Leo and Uri Smilansky, Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute of Publications, 2016.

Guillaume de Machaut, The Complete Poetry & Music, vol. 3, Love Visions, ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, with art-historical commentary by Domenic Leo, Kalamazoo, Medieval Institute of Publications, forthcoming, 2017.

Guillaume de Machaut, The Complete Poetry & Music, vol. 10, The Motets, ed. and trans. Jacques Boogaart, with an art-historical commentary co-written with Domenic Leo, forthcoming, 2017.

Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, ed. and trans. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Paris, Stock, 1993.

Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love (La Fonteinne Amoureuse) and Two Other Love Vision Poems, ed. and trans., R. Barton Palmer, New York, Garland, 1993.

Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement du roy de Behaigne and Remede de Fortune, ed. and trans. James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler, Athens (GA)/London, The University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Guillaume de Machaut, Le livre dou Voir Dit (The Book of the True Poem), ed. and trans. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and R. Barton Palmer, New York, Garland, 1998.

Guillaume de Machaut, Le Livre du Voir Dit (Le Dit véridique), ed. and trans. Paul Imbs, rev. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Paris, Librairie Générale Française, 1999.

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Guillaume de Machaut, La Prise d’Alixandre (The Taking of Alexandria), ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer (New York: Routledge, 2002).

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Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Objects and Subjects of Desire, New York, Abrams, 1998.

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Lucille Chia, “Text and Tu in Context: Reading the Illustrated Page in Chinese Blockprinted Books”, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89/1 (1996), p. 152-163.

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Julia Drobinsky, “Peindre, pourtraire, escrire, le rapport entre le texte et l’image dans les manuscrits enluminés de Guillaume de Machaut (xive-xve siècles)”, thèse de doctorat préparée sous la direction de Mme le professeur Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, soutenue en 2004 à l’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.

Julia Drobinsky, “La coiffure féminine entre moyen d’identification et principe axiologique dans l’iconographie de Guillaume de Machaut”, La Chevelure dans la littérature et l’art du Moyen Âge, ed. Chantal Connochie-Bourgne, Senefiance 50 (2004), p. 111-128.

Julia Drobinsky, “La polyphonie énonciative et lyrique dans le Remede de Fortune de Guillaume de Machaut: Inscription textuelle, rubrication et illustration”, La Voix dans l’écrit, PRIS-MA, Recherches sur la littérature d’imagination au Moyen Âge, 39-40 (2004), p. 49-64.

Julia Drobinsky, “L’Amour dans l’arbre et l’Amour au cœur ouvert: Deux allégories sous influence visuelle dans les manuscrits de Guillaume de Machaut”, in L’Allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge, Formes et fonctions, Héritages, créations, mutations, ed. Christian Heck, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, p. 273-287.

Julia Drobinsky, “Machaut illustré dans le manuscript Vogüé (Ferrell, MS 1): un cycle entre brouillage et surplus de sens”, in Quand l’image relit le texte. Regards croisés sur les manuscrits médiévaux, ed. Sandrine Hériché-Pradeau and Maud Pérez-Simon, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2013, p. 299-317.

Lawrence Earp, “Scribal Practice, Manuscript Production and the Transmission of Music in Late Medieval France: The Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut”, PhD diss., Princeton University, 1983.

Lawrence Earp, “Machaut’s Role in the Production of His Works”, Journal of the American Musicological Society 42 (1989), p. 461-503.

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Lawrence Earp, “Interpreting the Deluxe Manuscript: Exigencies of Scribal Practice and Manuscript Production in Machaut”, in The Calligraphy of Medieval Music, ed. John Haines and Olivia Cullin, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, p. 223-240.

Lawrence Earp, “Introductory Study”, in The Ferrell-Vogüé Machaut Manuscript, p. 1-80.

Lawrence Earp, with Domenic Leo and Carla Shapreau, The Ferrell-Vogüé Machaut Manuscript Facsimile and Introductory Study, Oxford, Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music Facsimiles, 2014.

Stephen N. Fliegel, “The Cleveland Table Fountain and Gothic Automata,” Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 7 (2002), p. 6-49.

Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, L’Inventaire du trésor du dauphin futur Charles V, 1363: Les débuts d’un grand collectionneur, Nogent-le-Roi, Jacques Laget, 1996.

Gérard Genette, Seuils, Paris, Le Seuil, 1987.

Gérard Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext,” New Literary History 22 (Spring 1991), p. 261-272.

Gérard Genette, “Frontières du récit”, Communications 8/1 (1996), p. 152-163.

Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. Jane E. Lewen, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Marc Gil, “Jean Pucelle and the Parisian Seal-Engravers and Goldsmiths”, in Kyunghee Pyun and Anna D. Russakoff, Jean Pucelle, p. 27-52.

Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry, Ithaca Cornell University Press, 1987.

Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.

Hans Robert Jauss, “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory”, in Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents, trans. Elizabeth Benzinger, ed. Dennis Walder, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 67-75.

Hans Robert Jauss, Pour une esthétique de la réception, trans. Claude Maillard, Paris, Gallimard, 1978.

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Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Machaut’s First Single-Author Publication”, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2015, p. 247-270.

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Domenic Leo, “The Beginning is the End: Guillaume de Machaut’s Illuminated Prologue”, in Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, vol. 1, Text, Music, and Image from Machaut to Ariosto, ed. Yolanda Plumley, Giuliano Di Bacco and Stefano Jossa, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2011, p. 96-112, notes p. 233-240.

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Monique Léonard, “Dit”, in Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera and Michel Zink, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 2002, p. 421-422.

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Deborah McGrady, “Machaut and His Material Legacy”, in A Companion to Guillaume de Machaut, ed. Deborah McGrady and Jennifer Bain, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2012, p. 361-386.

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Maria Cristina Pîrvu, “Quand le paratexte est texte et poésie. Analyse de cinq exemples extraits de l’oeuvre de Michel Butor”, Loxias 20, (14 mars, 2008), http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/index.html?id=2149.

Kyunghee Pyun and Anna D. Russakoff, ed, Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting, London/Turnhout, Harvey Miller Publications, 2013.

Sixten Ringbom, “Some Pictorial Conventions for the Recounting of Thoughts and Experiences in Late Medieval Art”, in Medieval Iconography and Narrative, ed. Flemming G. Andersen, Odense: Odense University Press, 1980, p. 38-69.

Sixten Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-Up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, New York: Davaco, 1984.

William D. Wixom, “A Glimpse at the Fountains of the Middle Ages”, Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 8 (2003), p. 6-23.

Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, nouvelle édition: Avec une préface de Michel Zink et un texte inédit de Paul Zumthor, Paris, Le Seuil, 1987.

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Appendix

Appendix I: A Revised List of the Work of the Master of the Remede de Fortune71
- Mid- to late-1340s’; Remede Master, close follower, and Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V; C, Bonne of Luxembourg (original patroness?) and then in the collection of dauphin Charles.
- 1348, Two close followers of the Remede Master; New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS G52; Jacques de Cessoles, trans. Moralité sur le jeu des échecs; John II the Good’s manuscript commissioned for him by his mother, Jeanne of Bourgogne; or a copy.
- 1349-1352, A stylistically diverse group of fifteen artists, including the Remede Master, on f˚ 285v; Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 167; Bible moralisée; John II the Good.
- c. 1350, Remede Master and workshop; London, Victoria & Albert Museum, MS L. 1346-1891; Missel à l’usage de Saint-Denis.
- c.1350-1356, Remede Master; Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 148; Pontifical de Senlis of Bishop Pierre de Treigny.

Appendix II: Basse-Taille Enameling on the Fountain of Love
Basse-Taille Enameling on the Fountain of Love Machaut’s description of enamel and ivory decoration on an outdoor fountain is purely fictive, only meant to enhance its preciousness, its worthiness of being in a royal garden. Although these mediums are signifiers of luxury, they are impractical in this instance. The thin panels of intricately carved ivory, which would be nailed to the substrate, are entirely impractical. Even more so, the delicately applied enameling on gold (silver gilt) would not last given fluctuations in temperature or exposure to the elements. Above all, these mediums are, for the most part, only proper to small-scale work. The phrases describing the decoration of the Fountain of Love – soutieument esmaillie (v. 1310) – and the table where the goddesses sit (again highly impractical) – une table / qui n’estoit pas de bois d’érable / Eins estoit d’or fine esmaillie (v. 1715-1719) – refer to a novel, fashionable fourteenth-century method of enameling known as basse taille. The procedure for making this fragile, ornamental enamel begins with repoussé work, gently tapping the back of the metal sheet to create shapes on the opposite side. Next, this raised surface is delicately chased or incised. The goldsmith then applies thin layers of translucent enamel, which must be heated to adhere properly, leaving a rainbow-hued, shimmering surface. This is enhanced by light bouncing off the underlying gold, thus revealing the details. This is a highly difficult process because fluctuations in temperature can cause the colors (which expand and contract at different rates) to separate from the ground.72

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Notes

1  I am grateful to Lawrence Earp, Jacques Boogaart, Maud Pérez-Simon, Sebastien Douchet, and the outside reader who kindly commented on this work. The subject matter was, to some degree, delivered as “The Illuminated Machaut Manuscript C (Bibiothèque nationale de France, français 1586),” at a symposium, “Machaut in the Book: Representations of Authorship in Late Medieval Manuscripts,” Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, Deborah L. McGrady and Benjamin Albritton, co-principal investigators, 2011-2013. Guillaume de Machaut (c. 1300-1377). For a recent, revisionist biography of Machaut, see Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut: Secretary, Poet, Musician, Ithaca (NY), Cornell University Press, 2011, p. 7-33.

2  Lawrence Earp, “Machaut’s Role in the Production of His Works,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 42 (1989), p. 461-503; Id., “Introductory Study,” in The Ferrell-Vogüé Machaut Manuscript: Facsimile and Introductory Study, vol. 1, ed. Lawrence Earp, with Domenic Leo and Carla Shapreau, Oxford, Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music Facsimiles, 2014, p. 95-126. In favor of ‘authorial presence’ in the process of creating C, see Domenic Leo, in the collection of papers, An Illuminated Manuscript of the ‘Collected Works’ of Guillaume de Machaut (Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. fr. 1586): A Vocabulary for Exegesis, ed. Domenic Leo, Turnhout/Tours, Brepols/Epigones musicales, forthcoming; Id., “Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms. fr. 1584: An Art Historical Overview,” in Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Music, vol. 1, The Debate Poems, Kalamazoo, Medieval Institute of Publications, 2016, p. 37-45 (for an expanded version of this commentary with color images, see http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk), and Id., “Authorial Presence in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut,” PhD dissertation, New York University, Institute of Fine Arts, 2005, p. 1-19. For an alternate approach, see Deborah McGrady, Controlling Readers: Guillaume de Machaut and His Late Medieval Readers, Toronto/Buffalo, Toronto University Press, p. 82-83, who argues, “that A carries a number of telltale signs of bookmakers working to produce a scholarly inspired document for a professional reader.”

3  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586 (C); see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research, New York/London, Garland Publishing, 1995, p. 77-79. Sigla used for Machaut Manuscripts: A: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584; B: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1585; Bk: Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Kupferstichkabinett, 78 C 2; C: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1586; E: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français  9221; F-G: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545-22546; Vg: Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, The Parker Library, Ferrell 1. (The Ferrell-Vogüé Machaut Manuscript)

4  Charles (1338, r. 1364-1380), became duke of Normandy in 1350 – after the death of his mother, Bonne de Luxembourg, in 1349, and his father’s subsequent rise to the throne as King John II the Good in 1350. See Earp, “Introductory Study,” art. cit, p. 30-31, specifically p. 31, n. 20, who cites Danielle Gaborit-Chopin, L’Inventaire du trésor du dauphin futur Charles V, 1363 : les débuts d’un grand collectionneur, Nogent-le-Roi, Jacques Laget, 1996, p. 68, item 577, “Le dauphin Charles n’apparaît pas encore comme un grand bibliophile: selon l’usage, les livres ne sont évoqués dans le contexte de l’inventaire qu’en raison du prix de leur reliure […]. L’un des manuscrits a pourtant retenu l’attention du rédacteur de l’inventaire : il s’agit du “biau livre en françois à chançons et laiz notez,” dont la reliure était “richement ouvrée.” Le caractère visiblement exceptionnel de cet ouvrage de grand luxe, contenant des lais en français accompagnés de leur notation musicale, et sa date, antérieure à 1363, limitent les possibilités d’identification. À titre hypothétique, il serait possible d’y reconnaître le plus célèbre des manuscrits enluminés de Guillaume de Machaut [...].” I thank Lawrence Earp for bringing this to my attention. On patronage, also see Elizabeth Eva Leach, “Machaut’s First Single-Author Publication,” in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015, p. 247-270, especially p. 251-256.

5  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584 (A).

6  Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love (La Fonteinne Amoureuse) and Two Other Love Vision Poems, ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, New York, Garland, 1993; includes an edition and translation of the Prologue, p. 1-20. Note that the title ‘Prologue’ may not be authorial; see Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op.cit., p. 203. For images of the two large Prologue miniatures, see f˚ Dr, < http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84490444/f17.image.r=machaut%201584>, and f˚ Er, <http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84490444/f15.image.r=machaut%201584>.

7  See Earp, “Introductory Study”, table 2.1, “Chronological growth of the principal Machaut manuscripts”, art. cit., p. 30; and Id., Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 87-89.

8  Earp, “Introductory Study,” art. cit., p. 5, “I use the term ‘fascicle’ in the sense not of a single gathering, but of a group of gatherings that together form a logical, structurally separate segment of the manuscript.”

9  See Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, «Le Dit», in Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, t. VIII/1, Heidelberg, Universitätsverlag, 1988, p. 86-94; Monique Léonard, Le Dit et sa technique littéraire, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1996; and Id., «Dit», in Dictionnaire du Moyen Âge, ed. Claude Gauvard, Alain de Libera and Michel Zink, Paris, Quadrige/Presses Universitaires de France, 2002, p. 421-422.

10  On the codicological structure of the Machaut manuscripts, see Lawrence Earp, “Scribal Practice, Manuscript Production and the Transmission of Music in Late Medieval France: The Manuscripts of Guillaume de Machaut,” PhD diss., Princeton University, 1983. In A, Le Confort d’ami begins on a separate gathering, but all previous poems were through-copied, p. 344-399; for C, p. 371-373; and also Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence,” op. cit., p. 50-55, especially the “Chart on Scribal Notation in Manuscript A”, p. 52-53. This chart is also discussed in Id., http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk.

11  For example, the substantial decorative treatment (relative to the rest of A) on the opening folio of La Prise d’Alexandre, f˚ 309r, A149 (this is Lawrence Earp’s through-numbering system where ‘A’ is the manuscript, and ‘149’ is the number of the image within the manuscript), suggests that this section may originally have been intended to have a different placement, at the head of a manuscript or even to stand on its own; see Domenic Leo, “Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1584,” art. cit., p. 40-41, and http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk.

12  On the artist, named after a Bible which Jean de Sy translated for King John II the Good in 1356, but left unfinished (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 15397), see Domenic Leo, “The Beginning is the End: Guillaume de Machaut’s Illuminated Prologue,” in Citation, Intertextuality and Memory in the Middle Ages, vol. 1, ed. Yolanda Plumley, Giuliano Di Bacco and Stefano Jossa, Exeter, University of Exeter Press, 2011, p. 96-122, n. 233-240, especially, p. 102-103; Stephen Perkinson, The Likeness of the King: A Prehistory of Portraiture in Late Medieval France, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 2009, p. 218-226; and Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 87-103. On the index, see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 87; Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 86-87; and Deborah L. McGrady, Controlling Readers, op. cit., p. 98-105.

13  See Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence,” op. cit., p. 249, n. 532, and Id., “The Pucellian School and the Rise of Naturalism: Style as Royalty Signifier?” in Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting, ed. Kyunghee Pyun and Anna D. Russakoff, London, Harvey Miller, 2013, p. 149-170. The group of ‘Machaut artists’ I investigate here are remarkable for their departure from the decorative and stylized work of famed Parisian illuminator, Jean Pucelle (primarily: the Master of the Bible of Jean de Sy, the Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V, and the Master of the Coronation of Charles VI), instead, they espouse ‘naturalism’, a term I use to describe their newly-found interest in realism, most famous for the attention lavished on depictions of contemporary fashion, p. 151; for a full list of manuscripts painted by ‘Machaut artists’, see p. 167-169; for a short, revised list, see Appendix II in this article.

14  For recent work on patronage, see Lawrence Earp, “Introductory Study,” art. cit., p. 28-80; two manuscripts – Vg (The Ferrell-Vogüé Manuscript; Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS Ferrell 1), and E (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 9221) – are heavily illuminated, and, as Earp discovered, p. 35-44, were both in the collection of King Charles V’s brother, the great bibliophile, John, duke of Berry.

15  At one period of time, the person responsible for the layout of C had a difficult task: to decide on the placement of miniatures (and music) within the text – insertion points, as I call them. They change significantly from one Machaut manuscript to another and a comparative study reveals that although subject matter could remain the same, there are no distinct patterns in their disposition. Could Machaut himself have created this list? See Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence,” op. cit., p. 250-251. For a study of paratextual elements such as rubrics and their influence on the interpretation of the text, see Julia Drobinsky, “La polyphonie énonciative et lyrique dans le Remede de Fortune de Guillaume de Machaut : Inscription textuelle, rubrication et illustration”, La Voix dans l’écrit, PRIS-MA, Recherches sur la littérature d’imagination au Moyen Age, 39-40 (2004), p. 49-64; Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 73-74, points out a weakness at the center of many literary, art-historical, and interdisciplinary studies, “[…] the focus on the visual, in tandem with the literary focus on the writerly, has tended to obscure the sounds of the codex […] or, as in the Voir dit, paratextual rubrics that signal the presence of musical setting elsewhere in the codex […]”.

16  Deborah L. McGrady, Controlling Readers, op. cit., p. 98. See Gérard Genette, Seuils, Paris, Le Seuil, 1987.

17  Gérard Genette, “Frontières du récit”, Communications 8/1 (1996), p. 152-163.

18  Lucille Chia, “Text and Tu in Context: Reading the Illustrated Page in Chinese Blockprinted Books”, Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89/1 (2002), p. 241-276, on p. 257.

19  As with Le Dit dou vergier in C and the Le Dit de la fonteinne amoureuse in A, to be discussed below.

20  Maria Cristina Pîrvu, “Quand le paratexte est texte et poésie. Analyse de cinq exemples extraits de l’oeuvre de Michel Butor”, Loxias 20 (14 mars 2008), http://revel.unice.fr/loxias/index.html?id=2149.

21  As with the frontispieces for the following dits: Jugement Behaingne (f˚ 1r, C1), Remede, (f˚ 23r, C10), Lyon (f˚ 103r, C68), Alerion, (f˚ 59, C44) and Vergier (f˚ 93, C62). There are also full-folio images in the Remede.

22  If she were familiar with the illuminated text in one manuscript, and is viewing the iconographic program in another, the illuminations could revitalize the experience. The first-time consumer of C would have paid considerable attention to the large miniatures before transitioning to read the following dits. The illumination was a conspicuous signifier of wealth, not to mention the gem studded cover it must have had, in and of itself a reason to delight in the privilege of seeing (or owning) it.

23  Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy de Behaingne, ed. cit. Abbreviations for the dits are: Alerion: Le dit de l’alerion, Confort: Le confort d’ami, Fonteinne: Le dit de la fonteinne amoureuse, Jugement Behaingne: Le jugement dou roy de Behaingne, Lyon: Le dit dou lyon, Prologue: Le prologue; Remede: Le remede de fortune, Vergier: Le dit dou vergier, Voir dit: Le livre dou voir dit.

24  Anne Stone, in a lecture at the International Medieval Conference, Kalamazoo, 2016, presented her discovery that the layout and codicological structure of the fascicle for the Remede, in C, was executed in a complex, meaningful fashion. The level of difficulty involved was high, given the need to balance portions of text, music, and images. I thank Anne for sharing her work.

25  I discuss the Fonteinne in A below.

26  The Remede Master’s avant-garde, naturalistic rendering of the scene is diametrically opposed to the earlier, highly stylized work of illuminator Jean Pucelle and his follower Jean le Noir. See Domenic Leo, “The Pucellian School,” art. cit., p. 149-170. The ground-breaking work on the Remede Master’s artistic achievements is François Avril, “Les manuscrits enluminés de Guillaume de Machaut: Essai de chronologie”, Guillaume de Machaut: poète et compositeur, Colloque-table ronde organisé par l’Université de Reims (19-22 avril 1978), Paris, Klinksieck, 1982, p. 117-133, see p. 119-122.

27  For the seminal work on reception theory, see Hans Robert Jauss, Pour une esthétique de la réception, trad. Claude Maillard, Paris, Gallimard, 1978. For a brief overview, see Id., “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” in Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents, trans. Elizabeth Benzinger, ed. Dennis Walder, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 67-75. For the work of an influential proponent of this methodology, see Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Publications, 1978.

28  Bonne certainly knew Machaut from his years in service to her father, John of Luxembourg the Blind, king of Bohemia, who visited Paris frequently. On Machaut’s possible service to her as poet and composer, see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 24-26. Bonne’s name appears in three jeux de mots in the Remede, based on the homophones ‘bonne’ and ‘Bonne’ as discussed in Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy de Behiangne, op. cit., p. 34, v. 54-56; v. 268-269; v. 3816-3817.

29  For the dates of Machaut’s appointment as ‘secretarius’, and his likely duties, see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 21.

30  Roger Bowers, “Guillaume de Machaut and His Canonry of Reims, 1338-1377”, Early Music History 23 (2004), p. 1-48.

31  Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., documents the relationship between Machaut and King Charles V in detail, p. 42-46, and points out that Machaut wrote a motet for Charles: one celebrating his marriage in 1350.

32  See the edition and prose translation of the Remede, in Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement dou roy de Behaingne, op. cit.

33  Ibid., on its didactic quality, see p. 37, 39.

34  My use of the term ‘modulus’, refers to the method in which a component of iconography, set in a new context, takes on a new meaning. Elizabeth Eva Leach, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 72, discusses the artist/iconographer’s role in what I would call ‘visual citation’ in light of Machaut’s literature: In the same way that Machaut’s verbal texts draw on resonances from vernacular literature in their use of exempla, their miniatures cue similar external resemblances as well as having particular meanings generated from their specific place within Machaut’s books.

35  Genette, “Introduction to the Paratext”, art. cit., p. 261. Further consideration of this theory may be useful for scholars who question Machaut’s authorial presence in C.

36  For an early discussion of the iconographic program in C by scholars of literature, see Guillaume de Machaut, Le Jugement du roy de Behaigne and Remede de Fortune, ed. and trans. James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler, Athens (GA)/London, The University of Georgia Press, 1988, p. 449-470. On Machaut’s frequent and sophisticated use of visual imagery in the dits, see Isabelle Bétemps, L’Imaginaire dans l’œuvre de Guillaume de Machaut, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1998.

37  On this topic, see Julia Drobinsky, “Procédures de remaniement dans un programme iconographique posthume des œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut (Paris, BnF, ms. fr. 22545-22546)”, Pecia, Du scriptorium à l’atelier. Copistes et artisans dans la conception du livre manuscrit au Moyen Age 13 (2010), Turnhout, Brepols, p. 405-437. This examination of F-G, a posthumous manuscript of c. 1390, details the manner in which the iconographer is more faithful to the text in comparison to the earlier manuscripts. I would argue, however, that this interpretation does not take into account iconographic simplification, the two artists’ lack of creativity, or their literal presentation of the subject matter. This may reflect the use of a list of subject matter rather than a sketchbook. Clearly, there are no signifiers of Machaut’s presence here in the iconographic program, even via transmitted ‘directions’.

38  Paul Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, nouvelle édition: Avec une préface de Michel Zink et un texte inédit de Paul Zumthor, Paris, Le Seuil, 1987; Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie, Paris, Le Seuil, 1989. See Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence”, op. cit., p. 40-41, 55-61. For an in-depth and helpful overview of Zumthor’s concept, see Bella Millet, ‘What is mouvance?’ (2003), in Wessex Parallel Web Texts, http://www.soton.ac.uk/~wpwt/mouvance/mouvance.htm (accessed December 2010). For a discussion of mouvance which applies to both texts and images in the illuminated Voeux du paon manuscripts, see Domenic Leo, Images, Texts, Marginalia, op. cit., p. 5.

39  They were never meant to be seen by the reader, and normally would have been erased.

40  See Domenic Leo, http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk, art. cit., ‘Table I: Scribal Notation in A’. There are also traces of a list of subject matter in C: a hairline Roman numeral ‘iii’ is visible above the third image in the Lyon (f˚ 104v, C70).

41  A number of Machaut manuscripts have spaces for miniatures in the text which are largely or completely unfinished. B (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1585), is a copy of Vg on paper. For discussions of its function, see Elisabeth Keitel, “La traduction manuscrite de Guillaume de Machaut”, in Guillaume de Machaut: poète et compositeur, op. cit., p. 75-94, see p. 82-89; and Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 85-87: “As in the exemplar, Vg, room was left for illuminations. These were never executed, but of course they were never meant to be executed, since the manuscript is on paper.” On Bk (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz Kupferstichkabinett, MS 78 C 2), which only has the Lyon, see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 103-104; and Domenic Leo, The Ferrell-Vogüé Manuscript, op. cit., p. 105-107. The iconographic program in Bk is incomplete, there are still twenty spaces left empty for miniatures; parts were overpainted in c. 1400 or later. Vg had spaces, probably for images, which were painted with blue and red grounds and gilded hatching.

42  On the Vergier, see: Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 206; William Calin, A Poet at the Fountain: Essays on the Narrative Verse of Guillaume de Machaut, Lexington, The University Press of Kentucky, 1974, p. 32-38; Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love, ed. cit.; and Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, ed. and trans. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Paris, Stock, 1993. Both editions of the Fonteinne have substantial commentaries.

43  On the iconography, see Julia Drobinsky, “L’Amour dans l’arbre et l’Amour au coeur ouvert: deux allégories sous influence visuelle dans les manuscrits de Guillaume de Machaut”, in L’Allégorie dans l’art du Moyen Âge. Formes et fonctions. Héritages, créations, mutations, ed. Christian Heck, Turnhout, Brepols, 2011, p. 273-287.

44  The conceit of the dew drops which wake the narrator is repeated in the later Dit de lAlerion. In this instance, however, it is a flock of birds that shakes the tree when flying away (v. 4530-4537).

45  Lawrence Earp has through-numbered the miniatures for ease of reference in his Concordance of illuminated Machaut manuscripts and Comparative table of Miniatures in Guillaume de Machaut: A Guide to Research, p. 139-188, a practice I adopt here: i.e., C62 signifies: manuscript C, miniature number 62. This does not harmonize with Julia Drobinsky’s dissertation, where she numbers the miniatures according to their places within the component parts of texts and music. Julia Drobinsky, “Peindre, pourtraire, escrire, le rapport entre le texte et l’image dans les manuscrits enluminés de Guillaume de Machaut (xive-xve siècles)”, thèse de doctorat préparée sous la direction de Mme le professeur Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, soutenue en 2004 à l’Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.

46  I thank Nancy Thompson, conservator of manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum, for her thoughts on the type and method of application of this medium.

47  On turf bank benches, see Johanna Bauman, “Tradition and Transformation: The Pleasure Garden in Piero de’ Crescenzi’s Liber ruralium commodorum,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 22 (2002), p. 99-141. Piero writes (translated from the original Italian), p. 99, “Between these plants and the level turf, raise [and form] another turf in the fashion of a seat, flowering and pleasant. Plant trees or train vines on the turf against the heat of the sun; the turf will have a pleasant and cool shade from their leaves in the manner of an overhang.”

48  I am grateful to Jacques Boogaart who, through private communication, points out that the void in the bower can be an alluring place which serves to stimulate the narrator’s curiosity and, perhaps, his fantasies.

49  American sociologist Robert King Merton’s influential theory of role strain is particularly helpful in reconstructing the aspirations of Machaut’s fictive, quasi-autobiographical narrators in his early dits. See Robert King Merton, “The Normative Structure of Science”, in Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations, ed. William W. Storer, Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1973, p. 267-280. In the Remede, for example, the narrator’s likely social status as a non-noble cleric definitively precludes him from joining the ‘reference group’ of nobility. This prevents fulfillment of his desire to be with the noble-born woman who is the object of his fantasies. He remains the ‘amant’ only in red ink rubrics, despite his transparent yearning for physical consummation. Kevin Brownlee, Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut, Madison, The University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, p. 62, stresses the narrator’s lack of access to anything physical with his beloved, “Thus at the very end of the [Remede], all that the first-person narrator possesses qua lover is hope”; Also see Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, “Tension sociale et tension d’écriture au XIVe siècle : Les dits de Guillaume de Machaut”, in Littérature et Société au Moyen Âge, ed. Danielle Buschinger, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1978, p. 111-129.

50  His courtly garb does not preclude him being a cleric. He is probably dressed as the other members in John of Luxembourg’s retinue. See Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence”, op. cit., p. 103-109, “The dress of the narrator in C transgresses the contemporary mores for a cleric. Fashion here marks Guillaume de Machaut’s importance as a member of the court, sartorially enabled by his fame as a poet, composer, and moralist. The Remede miniatures are a bold statement of Machaut’s status”, p. 130; and “The Pucellian School”, art. cit., p. 151, for a further commentary on sartorial iconography.

51  Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence”, op. cit., p. 117-124. See Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love: Subjects and Objects of Desire, New York, Abrams, 1998, p. 27-28, “Access to [the beloved] is only visual”, p. 27, fig. 18.

52  The pink hat the god of Love wears replaces Machaut’s textual description of a chaplet made of flowers: “S’ot .i. chapelet de rosettes, / De muguet, et de violettes / Par cointise mis en son chef” (Vergier, ed. cit., v. 180-182); see the text and commentary in Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love, ed. cit.

53  See the discussion of the Wheel of Fortune image, f˚ 30v, and the iconography of the pink hat in Domenic Leo, “The Pucellian School”, art. cit., p. 160-161; Julia Drobinsky, “La coiffure féminine entre moyen d’identification et principe axiologique dans l’iconographie de Guillaume de Machaut”, La Chevelure dans la littérature et l’art du Moyen Âge, ed. Chantal Connochie-Bourgne, Senefiance 50 (2004), p. 111-128; and, most recently, Lawrence Earp, The Ferrell-Vogüé Manuscript, op. cit., p. 34, n. 41.

54  The Fountain of Love appears on: f˚ 163r/A91; f˚ 163c/A92; f˚ 163d/A93; f˚ 165v/A95; f˚ 169a/A99; f˚ 169v/A100; f˚ 173a/A101. For two editions of the Fonteinne, see: Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, op. cit.; and Guillaume de Machaut, The Fountain of Love, op. cit. On this dit, see Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 220-222.

55  He will be sent as ransom to England the following day in exchange for his father, King John II the Good (he had been taken hostage at the Battle of Poitiers in 1356).

56  Both images are on f˚ 163v: one is in the first column, and the other in the second.

57  This conceit occurs multiple times in A, most famously in the ymage of Toute Belle in Machaut’s late poem, the Livre dou Voir Dit, f˚ 293r; see Guillaume de Machaut, Le Livre dou Voir Dit (The Book of the True Poem), ed. Daniel Leech-Wilkinson and trans. R. Barton Palmer, New York/London, Garland, 1998; and Guillaume de Machaut, Le livre du Voir Dit (Le Dit véridique), ed. and trans. Paul Imbs, rev. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Paris, Librairie Générale Française, 1999. For a fully developed exploration of the use and function of iconic images in A, see Domenic Leo, http://machaut.exeter.ac.uk. For an exploration of this conceit, see Sixten Ringbom, “Some Pictorial Conventions for the Recounting of Thoughts and Experiences in Late Medieval Art”, in Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, ed. Flemming G. Andersen, Odense, Odense University Press, 1980, p. 38-69.

58  The Prayerbook of Bonne de Luxembourg, New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters Collection, 1969, MS 69.86, f˚ 331r. See Sixten Ringbom, From Icon to Narrative: The Rise of the Dramatic Close-Up in Fifteenth-Century Devotional Painting, New York, Davaco, 2nd ed., 1984.

59  The word ‘esmaillie’ describes a technically difficult use of enameling that is only appropriate for a small scale object. Machaut brilliantly uses it to reinforce the rich and delicate nature of the fountain. See Appendix II in this article.

60  Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987, p. 275.

61  Ibid.

62  Guillaume de Machaut, La Fonteinne amoureuse, op.cit., p. lvi-lvii; he also discusses the reference to the Rose.

63  Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 22545-22546 (F-G). See Lawrence Earp, Guillaume de Machaut, op. cit., p. 90-92.

64  Nigel J. Morgan, Illuminating the End of Time: The Getty Apocalypse Manuscript, Los Angeles, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2011; for commentaries on these images, see p. 52 and 54.

65  Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, ed. cit., p. 10-13, Cerquiglini-Toulet remarks on a recurring dédoublement in the title, and the structure of the text itself, where “Au centre exact de l’œuvre, au vers 1,413 d’un texte qui en comporte 2,848, est révélé le nom de la fontaine qui offre un de ses titres au dit”.

66  Ibid., p. 25.

67  My commentary on the Fonteinne in the forthcoming Guillaume de Machaut: The Complete Poetry and Music, vol. 3, Love Visions, ed. and trans. R. Barton Palmer, explores the homo-erotic overtones of the head-in-the-lap motif, based on Domenic Leo, “Authorial Presence”, op. cit., chapter 5, “The Narrator’s Masculinity”, p. 168-197.

68  This is a meaningful motif in relation to the imagery in the text, explored in Julia Drobinsky, “Effets de miroir dans la Fontaine Amoureuse de Guillaume de Machaut: texte et iconographie”, in Miroirs et jeux de miroirs dans la littérature médiévale, ed. Fabienne Pomel, Rennes, 2003, p. 265-282.

69  The narrator uses primarily Ovidian exempla to fortify the duke. See Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Reading Myth, Classical Mythology and Its Interpretations in Medieval French Literature, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1997, especially p. 136-139 and 144-148.

70  Oddly enough, even though the horse’s open mouth and arched neck indicate he should be wearing a bridle, the artist has forgotten to paint it.

71  See Domenic Leo, “The Pucellian School,” art. cit., p. 167.

72  Basse-taille enameling is part of a decorative scheme on what is perhaps the most stunning extant example of a table fountain; see: Stephen Fliegel, “The Cleveland Table Fountain and Gothic Automata”, Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 7 (2002), p. 6-49; and William Wixom, “A Glimpse at the Fountains of the Middle Ages”, Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 8 (2003), p. 6-23. For other luxury examples made with this type of enameling, see Marc Gil, “Jean Pucelle and the Parisian Seal-Engravers and Goldsmiths”, in Kyunghee Pyun and Anna D. Russakoff, Jean Pucelle, op. cit., p. 27-52.

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References

Electronic reference

Domenic Leo, The Empty Bower and the Lone Fountain Perspectives médiévales [Online], 38 | 2017, Online since 01 January 2017, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/peme/12917; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/peme.12917

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About the author

Domenic Leo

Duquesne University
Pittsburgh, PA – États-Unis-d’Amérique

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