Although the Remede de Fortune has long been seen as an advanced art of poetry because it contains examples of the most common fixed forms in late medieval French,the Voir Dit is an even better illustration of the art, and for several reasons. First, it too contains numerous examples of commonly used fixed forms, including lyrics that are models for poetic responses to them. Second, its prose passages are epistres (VD, v. 494) or art letters illustrating the art of prose composition in the epistolary mode. Third, common poetic images such as Fortune and her Wheel and dream vision, and poetic modes like exemplification and allegory, contribute to the dit’s subtlety while illustrating a more advanced art and greater diversity than the Remede does. The moral instruction and allegorical subtlety extolled by Alain de Lille in this chapter’s first epigraph echo Machaut’s reference in the second epigraph to the subtlety of a significant portion of the Voir Dit. For these reasons, my discussion of the late medieval art of poetry in Part II of this book relies primarily, but not exclusively, on this dit. A consummate and truly original work, it takes the reader through the major features of the late medieval art of poetry in a narrative that relates an advanced apprenticeship in that art.

Subtlety in invention becomes a prominent desideratum in French poetry during the late medieval period.It is especially prominent at the time of the so-called ‘translation movement’ inaugurated by Charles V that made more widely available the clerical learning of the late Middle Ages; by the same token, the new vernacular learning led to greater subtlety in poetic composition.Of course, translating from Latin into French was complex because of the difficulty of the subject matter, the absence of an adequate learned vocabulary in French, and the lack, but not total absence, of a clerical education among the laity. Moreover, the translations revealed new subject matter that often included topics abstruse or unfamiliar to lay audiences unaccustomed to such language and subjects.