Challenging the Patronage Paradigm

This chapter revisits the portrayal of poet-prince relations in late-medieval francophone literature to expose writers’ use of these accounts to critique nobility’s role in literary production. A consideration of select texts from Guillaume de Machaut, Eustache Deschamps and Jean Froissart will show that literary portrayals of the poet-prince relationship frequently served to challenge patrons’ authority over literary production, criticize the failure of nobility to recognize the power of poetry, and acknowledge the increasing presence of a dynamic literary network that stretched beyond the prince’s reach. Far from serving as mouthpieces to the prince, these writers used the patronage paradigm to assert, often at the prince’s expense, the inestimable value of poetry and the wisdom of writers.