Guillaume de Machaut, born in Champagne around the year 1300, was the dominant figure both in lyric poetry and music in fourteenth-century France. Many of his own poems were specifically arranged for musical setting.

In a famous work combining both poetry and music, Le Livre du Voir Dit, probably written between 1361 and 1365, Machaut recounts the progress of his love affair with a young girl called Peronne. At this time the poet was more than sixty years old and blind in one eye. It is likely that the girl was more impressed by the man's reputation as a poet and composer than by the amorous possibilities of the situation. Machaut is considered one of the central figures in the art of courtly love.