SOURCE: Olson, Glending. “Deschamps' Art de dictier and Chaucer's Literary Environment.” Speculum 48, no. 4 (October 1973): 714-723.

In the following essay, Olson examines the views on poetry expressed in L'Art de dictier and explores their possible influence on Chaucer.

Written in 1392, Eustache Deschamps' L'Art de dictier et de fere chançons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx defines lyric poetry as a species of music and describes, with examples, the formal requirements of various lyric types.¹ Perhaps because it is so much a manual and so little a theoretical examination of poetry, its ideas and implications, and their significance for contemporaries like Chaucer, have not been fully appreciated. Yet it is perhaps the only critical document we have from a poet whose connections with Chaucer, both literary and personal, are demonstrable; and it is therefore important to attend to whatever attitudes toward poetry it reveals. The purpose of this essay is to...