ABSTRACT
Following the tradition of the Roman de la Rose, Guillaume de Machaut's poems revisit the pleasant garden space suitable for engendering Love. Machaut's places of enjoyment commemorate the amusements offered at historical courts, but Sara Sturm-Maddox argues that these settings are not mere homages to his patrons. Instead, they are linked to the education of the courtly lover as places where innocence gains experience through the maturing effect of love. In Le remède de Fortune, Machaut's narrator gains access to elite society by his competence in poetic composition, singing, and dancing. This positions artistic performance on par with physical feats as a means of acquiring cultural capital. The praiseworthy act of composition extends to noblewomen as well: in the Voir Dit, an aspiring female poet sends the aging Machaut a rondel she has composed. The playfulness of their epistolary exchange is underscored in the narrator's dream where Le roi qui ne ment is played at a fictive court.
