Alain Chartier

Chartier, Alain 

Born circa 1385, in Bayeux; died circa 1433, in Avignon. French poet.

Chartier was secretary to King Charles VII. As a diplomat, he visited many countries, including Italy. In ballades and rondeaux and in such narrative poems as The Book of the Four Ladies (1424) and La Belle Dame sans merci (1424), Chartier surmounted the linguistic conventions of late medieval love lyrics.

Chartier’s political tracts The Quadrilogue Invective (1422) and The Curial (mid-1420’s) sharply and eloquently addressed France’s problems, especially the decay of the nobility and the suffering of the people, who bore the brunt of the Hundred Years’War of 1337–1453.

WORKS

Le Quadrilogue invectif. Paris, 1923.
La Belle Dame sans merci et les poésies lyriques. Paris, 1945.

REFERENCES

Istoriia frantsuzskoi literatury, vol. 1. Moscow-Leningrad, 1946. Pages 178–79.
Hoffman, E. J. Alain Chartier, His Work and Reputation. New York, 1942.