SOURCE: Calin, William. “Le Livre du Voir-Dit.” In A Poet at the Fountain: Essays on the Narrative Verse of Guillaume de Machaut, pp. 167-202. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1974.

In the following essay, Calin discusses Le Livre du Voir-Dit, Machaut's principal work, concluding that the ultimate reality implied by the poet's text is the reality of artistic creation itself.

Toute-belle sends a rondeau to the Narrator, in which she says that she offers him her heart. The Narrator replies in kind. Soon the aging poet and his youthful admirer are involved in an amorous correspondence. He visits her several times, and they indulge in physical intimacies. After the Narrator returns home, he dreams that Toute-belle's sentiments toward him have changed. The lovers continue to write to each other. However, a harsh winter, the plague, fear of highwaymen, and losengiers' reports against Toute-belle cause the Narrator to postpone further...