Alain Chartier

Alain Chartier was born in Bayeux to a family marked by considerable ability. His eldest brother Guillaume became bishop of Paris; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St Denis, whose history of Charles VII is printed in vol. III. of Les Grands Chroniques de Saint-Denis (1477), is also said to have been a brother of the poet.[1] Alain studied, as his elder brother had done, at the University of Paris. His earliest poem is the Livre des quatre dames (1416), written after the Battle of Agincourt. This was followed by the Débat du reveille-matin (1422–26?), La Belle Dame sans Mercy (1424), and others.[2]

He followed the fortunes of the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary, and financial secretary.[2]

In 1422 he wrote the famous Quadrilogue invectif. The interlocutors in this dialogue are France herself[3] and the three orders of the state. Chartier lays bare the abuses of the feudal army and the sufferings of the peasants. He maintained that the cause of France, though desperate to all appearance, was not yet lost if the contending factions could lay aside their differences in the face of the common enemy.[2]

In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to Germany, and three years later he accompanied to Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of James I's daughter, Margaret, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. In 1429 he wrote the Livre de l'Espérance, which contains a fierce attack on the nobility and clergy. He was the author of a diatribe on the courtiers of Charles VII. entitled Le Curial, translated into English by William Caxton about 1484.[2]

He died c. 1430. A Latin epitaph, discovered in the 18th century, says, however, that he was Archdeacon of Paris, and declares that he died in the city of Avignon in 1449. This is obviously not authentic, for Alain described himself as a simple "clerc" and certainly died long before 1449.[2]

"Alain Chartier" by Edmund Blair Leighton, depicting the kiss

Artist's impression of Alain Chartier, 19th century.

The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scotland on la précieuse bouche de laquelle sont issus et sortis tant de bons mots et vertueuses paroles ('The invaluable mouth from which issued and which left so many witty remarks and virtuous words') is mythical, for Margaret did not come to France till 1436, after the poet's death; but the story, first told by Guillaume Bouchet in his Annales d'Aquitaine (1524), is interesting, if only as a proof of the high degree of estimation in which the ugliest man of his day was held. Jean de Masies, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Breviaire des nobles. John Lydgate studied him affectionately. His Belle Dame sans mercy was translated into English in the 15th century by Sir Richard Ros, with an introduction of his own; and Clément Marot and Octavien de Saint-Gelais, writing fifty years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor.[2]

The English Romantic poet John Keats famously wrote the ballad 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', using the title from Alain Chartier.[4]

• Alain Chartier, Baudet Herenc and Achille Caulier, Le Cycle de la Belle Dame sans Mercy : une anthologie poétique du XVe siècle (BNF MS FR. 1131), Edition bilingue établie, traduite, présentée et annotée par David F. Hult et Joan E. McRae. Paris : Champion, 2003.
• Biographical references (provided by the International Alain Chartier Society): https://web.archive.org/web/20120426075432/http://www.forlang.mtsu.edu/alain/bibliography.html