Originally published in 1988, this volume includes the full text and translation of The Judgment of the King of Navarre by Guillaume de Machaut, alongside textual and biographical notes includiging the life of the author, comparative studies of Chaucer and Machaut, and criticism and study guides.

Originally published in 1988, this volume includes the full text and translation of The Judgment of the King of Navarre by Guillaume de Machaut, alongside textual and biographical notes includiging the life of the author, comparative studies of Chaucer and Machaut, and criticism and study guides.

Guillaume de Machaut was an important fourteenth-century French poet and composer. The four-part Messe de Nostre Dame is historically significant as the earliest example of a complete, stylistically coherent, through-composed setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by a single composer. The setting has close connections with Reims Cathedral and is thought to have been composed in the early 1360s, becoming a memorial mass on the death of Machaut's brother in 1372. It would most likely have been performed by unaccompanied solo male voices, and the suggested scoring for modern performance is two altos and two tenors or two tenors and two baritones. The five movements of the Mass are followed by a short dismissal, Ite missa est.

Guillaume de Machaut, the most important poet and musician of fourteenth-century France, had considerable influence on subsequent generations of writers in both France and England. With this scholarly translation, Minnette Gaudet and Constance B. Hieatt made his longneglected narrative poem, the Dit de l'alerion - a treatise on love and falconry - available to students of medieval literature. In the poem, Machaut defines the problems and pleasures of courtly love by comparing them to those of falconry, a sport which modern readers know little about. The introduction and notes to this edition provide valuable information about the art of falconry, thus clarifying aspects of the poem which might be hard to understand today. The scholarly notes and introduction furnish explications and variant readings of obscure passages and comments on wordplay. A running summary of the contents of the poem is also provided in the margins.