Although almost all of Machaut’s dits treat issues centering on love, the Confort d’ami’s attempt to solve love’s commonplace problems relies on firmer religious and moral foundations than was common in earlier love poetry.The poet’s allusions to Boethius are testimony to this conviction. They also testify to his reliance upon his late medieval audience’s knowledge of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, an influential work throughout the Middle Ages.Moreover, beginning in the thirteenth century there appear a number of French translations and adaptations into French of Boethius’s work for lay audiences like those Machaut addressed.Importantly here, the Consolation and its French versions contain dialogue and debate that serve in form and substance as models for Erlebnismuster in Machaut’s dits. And, as we have seen, Boethius’s worldview in the Consolation along with its French translations and adaptations informs Machaut’s conception of good love and, at the same time, provides a broader context as well as a deeper, firmer foundation for his dits on love.

Dialogue and Debate

Dialogue is the most common mode in Machaut’s dits and lyric clusters. It may take the form of a modus docendi, when, for example, Guillaume instructs a nobleman on love and other obligations in the context of noblesse oblige. Elsewhere, personifications like Amour and Esperance teach Guillaume about different kinds of love. While dialogue is most wide-ranging in the Confort d’ami, the Fontaine amoureuse, while developing the Confort’s treatment of love, shows Guillaume sharing prominence with other less literally autographical figures like the nobleman’s lady whose confort d’amie teaches her beloved nobleman how he should think, feel, and act during their separation. The Dit dou Lyon develops dialogue as well, but in this dit Guillaume is a spectator. In the Alerion, there is dialogue between Guillaume and various falconers; it alternates with interior monologue as he experiences the different loves represented allegorically by the dit’s raptors.