HOUDENC or HOUDAN, RAOUL DE, French trouvere, takes his name from his native place, generally identified with Houdain (Artois), though there are other places bearing the name in one or other of its variants. It seems prob able that he followed the trade of jongleur and recited his chan sons in the houses of the great. He seems to have spent a great part of his life in Paris. His undoubted works are Le Songe d'enfer, La Voie de paradis, Le Roman des eles (pr. by A. Scheler in Trouveres belges, new series, 1897) and the romance of Meraugis de Portlesguez, edited by M. Michelant (1869) and by Dr. M. Friedwagner (Halle, 1897) . Houdenc was an imitator of Chretien de Troyes; and Huon de Meri, in his Tournoi de l'antechrist (1226), praises him with Chretien in words that seem to imply that both were dead.
See Gaston Paris in Hist. litt. de la France, xxx. W. Zingerle, Ober Raoul de Houdenc and seine 'Werke (Erlangen, 188o) ; and O. Boerner, Raoul de Houdenc. Eine stilistische Unter suchung (1885).