SOURCE: Varty, Kenneth. “Deschamps's Art de dictier.” French Studies 19, no. 2 (April 1965): 164-68.

In the following essay, Varty argues that Deschamps's primary object in L'Art de dictier was “divorcing lyric verse from music and claiming as much prestige for the composition of the verse as for the music, if not more.”

Most of the comments one reads in literary histories on Deschamps's Art de Dictier tend to lead one away from what may well be its main point. The fault is partly Deschamps's because he wrote so badly. Indeed, Georges Lote's brief study of the Art de Dictier is devoted entirely to its imperfections, mostly to be found in the last two-thirds of the treatise.¹ In one brief paragraph Lote dismisses the first third as a long exordium which has little or nothing to do with the subject.² To my mind, this ‘exordium’ is in fact an exposition of...