Everything about Alain Chartier totally explained
Alain Chartier (c.
1392 - c.
1430) was a
French poet and political
writer.
He was born at
Bayeux, into a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother
Guillaume became
bishop of Paris; and
Thomas became notary to the king.
Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of
Charles VII is printed in vol. iii. of
Les Grands Chroniques de Saint-Denis (1477), was not, as is sometimes stated, also a brother of the poet.
Alain studied, as his elder brother had done, at the
University of Paris. His earliest poem is the
Livre des quatre dames, written after the
battle of Agincourt. This was followed by the
Débat du reveille-matin,
La Belle Dame sans merci, and others. None of these poems show any very patriotic feeling, though Chartier's prose is evidence that he wasn't indifferent to the misfortunes of his country.
He followed the fortunes of the
dauphin, afterwards
Charles VII, acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary, and financial secretary.
In 1422 he wrote the famous
Quadrilogue-invectif. The interlocutors in this dialogue are France herself and the three orders of the state. Chartier lays bare the abuses of the feudal army and the sufferings of the peasants. He rendered an immense service to his country by maintaining that the cause of France, though desperate to all appearance, wasn't yet lost if the contending factions could lay aside their differences in the face of the common enemy.
In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to
Germany, and three years later he accompanied to
Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of
James I's daughter,
Margaret, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards
Louis XI. In 1429 he wrote the
Livre desperance, which contains a fierce attack on the nobility and clergy. He was the author of a diatribe on the courtiers of Charles VII. entitled
Le Curial, translated into English by
William Caxton about 1484.
The date of his death is to be placed about 1430. A Latin
epitaph, discovered in the 18th century, says, however, that he was
archdeacon of Paris, and declares that he died in the city of
Avignon in 1449. This is obviously not authentic, for Alain described himself as a simple clerc and certainly died long before 1449.
The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scotland on
la précieuse bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles ('The invaluable mouth from which issued and which left so many witty remarks and virtuous words') is mythical, for Margaret didn't come to France till 1436, after the poet's death; but the story, first told by
Guillaume Bouchet in his
Annales d'Aquitaine (1524), is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree of estimation in which the ugliest man of his day was held.
Jean de Masies, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his
Breviaire des nobles.
John Lydgate studied him affectionately. His
Belle Dame sans merci was translated into English by Sir
Richard Ros about 1640, with an introduction of his own; and
Clement Marot and
Octavien de Saint-Gelais, writing fifty years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor.
The English Romantic poet John Keats famously wrote the ballad 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', using the title from Alain Chartier.
See
Mancel,
Alain Chartier, étude bibliographique et littéraire, 8vo (Paris, 1849);
D. Delaunays
Etude sur Alain Chartier (1876), with considerable extracts from his writings. His works were edited by
A. Duchesne (Paris, 1617). On Jean Chartier see Vallet de Viriville, Essais critiques sur les historiens originaux du règne de Charles VIII, in the
Bibl. de l'Ecole des Chartes 1857).
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