Machaut’s recognized masterpiece, the Voir Dit, relates the progress of an exemplary apprentice poet, Toute Belle, in the acquisition of her master’s art of poetry and prose and his new art of love as it emerged from dit to dit. From this evidence, I have set out the content and scope of Machaut’s dual arts of love and poetry and shown how Toute Belle acquired and practiced these arts. This led to consideration of the poet’s juxtaposition of truth and fiction in the Voir Dit. Rightly so in its medieval context: titles were expected to shed light on the work they introduce.And indeed, beginning with the resurrection of the Voir Dit in Paulin Paris’s first modern edition (or version), what Machaut meant by voir dire has preoccupied scholars. In the epigraph to this chapter Guillaume claims in jeu-parti mode to mouth ideas far removed from what he really thinks and feels, implicitly posing the problem of speaking the truth in Machaut’s diverse lyric and narrative montages and mélanges. Moreover, to speak truthfully about any subject matter, even in social play like that in the Remede quote, could be perilous.

To be sure, twelfth-century writers like Marie de France and Benoît de Sainte-Maure enthusiastically evoke in their prologues the commonplace duty to transmit what one has learned. Yet in the thirteenth century caution became the byword. The anonymous author of Claris et Laris refuses to write about contemporary events; the Prose Tristan refers to a warning that the romance not treat religious truths in secular narratives,anticipating the same warning in the anonymous Tresor amoureux and, implicitly, in other works too.