Alain Chartier
Alain Chartier by Edmund Blair
Leighton
born c. 1385, Bayeux, Normandy,
France
died c. 1433, Avignon, Provence?
French poet and political writer
whose didactic, elegant, and Latinate
style was regarded as a model by
succeeding generations of poets and
prose writers.
Educated at the University of Paris,
Chartier entered the royal service,
acting as secretary and notary to both
Charles VI and the dauphin, later
Charles VII. He carried out various
diplomatic missions for Charles VII, and
in 1428 he was sent to Scotland to
negotiate the marriage of Margaret of
Scotland with the future Louis XI.
His work, written mainly from 1415 to
1430, is distinguished by its variety of
subject matter and form. Chartier was a
poet, orator, historian, moralist, and
pamphleteer who wrote in Latin and
French. His earliest-known poem, the
Livre des quatre dames (1415 or 1416;
“Book of the Four Ladies”), is a
discussion between four ladies who have
lost their lovers at the Battle of
Agincourt. The same technique is used in
the prose Quadrilogue invectif, written
in 1422, the dialogue being between
France and the three estates of the
realm (clergy, nobility, and commoners).
This work exposes the sufferings of the
peasantry, the misdeeds of the church,
and the abuses of the feudal army but
maintains that France could yet be saved
if the kingdom’s contending factions
would lay aside their differences in the
face of the common enemy.
Chartier’s poems are mostly
allegories in the courtly tradition but
show the influence of his classical
learning in their frequent Latinisms.
They include La Belle Dame
sans merci, Le Lay de paix
(“The Lay of Peace”), and Le Bréviaire
des nobles, the first of which, a tale
of unrequited love, is the best known
and was translated into English in the
15th century.
