Le Dernier Ménéstrel? Jean de Le Mote, une poétique en transition (autour de 1340) by Silvère Menegaldo (review)

Around 1350 Jean de Le Mote was ranked among the top four living poets, alongside the great Guillaume de Machaut and Philippe de Vitry. Although, like them, he was said to be equally skilled as a composer, only three poetic works now survive in his name. This first, book-length monograph devoted to Le Mote aims to assess his output 'comme un tout' (p. 18) — avoiding the 'excès d'enthousiasme' or 'mépris' of certain previous studies — and to re-evaluate his historical position. Chapter 1 reviews the sketchy biographical links to the courts of Hainaut and England and his patronage by Simon de Lille, goldsmith to the French king, and usefully explores the few extant manuscripts, before raising the question evoked in the book's title: was Le Mote last of a dying breed of itinerant minstrel that was soon to be replaced by the professional courtier-poet, as poetry became emancipated from music? This rather traditional premise, and the casting of Le Mote as an essentially transitional figure, underpins the ensuing analysis. Les Regrets Guillaume, an elegy on the passing of Guillaume I^er of Hainaut (d. 1337), is shown in Chapter 2 to draw on existing models but also to share elements with works by younger contemporaries; despite its formal virtuosity, it is deemed hardly 'une grande réussite' (p. 141) because of its length and repetitiveness. Le Mote's grasp of diverse forms and genres and his ambitions to surpass earlier models is demonstrated further in Le Parfait du paon, which completes the famous peacock chanson de geste cycle begun by Jean du Longuyon and continued by Brisbarre, and in La Voie d'enfer et de Paradis, considered here Le Mote's best work, which demonstrates his familiarity with moral and didactic literature. Le Mote's contribution to the development of the ballade is discussed in Chapter 5; the argument here, which downplays the role of music in the form at around 1350, lacks nuance and betrays an imperfect grasp of the musical sources and associated recent scholarship. Given the author's aspiration to present a holistic view of Le Mote as poet and musician, this seems a pity. Recent work has revealed that a surprising number of Le Mote's ballades feature intertextualities with older or contemporary musical works. Three of his ballades were quoted in one anonymous motet; an extant song also quoted in that work might well be by Le Mote himself (see Yolanda Plumley, The Art of Grafted Song: Citation and Allusion in the Age of Machaut (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)). In sum, Le Mote's engagement with the musical as well as literary culture of his day, reflected also in his exchanges with fellow poet-musicians Machaut, Vitry, and Jehan Campion, speak of a culture where music and poetry were far less polarized than one might imagine today. Nevertheless, from a literary perspective this study provides a useful synthesis of previous scholarship on Le Mote and offers some valuable interpretations that will hopefully stimulate further exploration of this fascinating period and its neglected authors.