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French medieval poets

9 articles

Benoît de Sainte-Maure

Benoît de Sainte-Maure was a 12th-century Norman or Tourangean poet who wrote the Roman de Troie, around 1160, and the unfinished Histoire des ducs de Normandie.

Charles d'Orléans

Charles d'Orléans (1394–1465) was Duke of Orléans and one of France's major lyric poets; captured at Agincourt in 1415, he spent 25 years writing poetry in captivity in England.

Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet, probably from Troyes in Champagne, active from about 1160 to 1181, considered the creator of Arthurian romance as a literary genre.

François Villon

François Villon (born François de Montcorbier, around 1431 in Paris) was a French poet of the late Middle Ages, known for his mock-testament poems and ballades; he disappeared after 1463.

Guillaume de Lorris

Guillaume de Lorris was a 13th-century French poet who wrote the first part of the Roman de la Rose, an allegorical dream-vision love poem in Old French.

Jean Bodel

Jean Bodel, also written Jehan Bodel (c. 1165 – 1210), was a French trouvère and playwright of Arras, author of the oldest French miracle play.

Jean de Meun

Jean de Meun (c. 1240 – c. 1305) was a French poet who completed the Roman de la Rose, adding about 17,000 lines to Guillaume de Lorris's allegory.

Marie de France

Marie de France, writing in Anglo-Norman French in the late 12th century, is regarded as the first woman to compose literary texts in French, best known for her twelve Lais.

Wace

Wace, born on Jersey around 1100 and a canon of Bayeux, was a Norman poet whose Roman de Brut (1155) gives the first French account of King Arthur.