CHARTIER, AMAIN (c. 1392—c. 1430), French poet and political writer, was born at Bayeux about 1392. His eldest brother, Guillaume, became bishop of Paris ; and Thomas became notary to the king. Jean Chartier, a monk of St. Denis, whose history of Charles VII. is printed in vol. iii. of Les Grands Chron iques de Saint-Denis (1477), was not, as is sometimes stated, also a brother of the poet. Alain studied, as his elder brother had done, at the University of Paris. His earliest poem is the Livre des quatre dames, written after the battle of Agincourt. This was followed by the Debat du reveille-matin, La Belle Dame sans merci and others. He was attached to the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., acting in the triple capacity of clerk, notary and financial secretary. In 1422 he wrote the famous Quadrilogue-in vecti f . The interlocutors in this dialogue are France herself and the three orders of the State. Chartier lays bare the abuses of the feudal army and the sufferings of the peasants. He rendered an immense service to his country by maintaining that the cause of France, though desperate to all appearance, was not yet lost if the contending factions could lay aside their differences in the face of the common enemy. In 1424 Chartier was sent on an embassy to Germany, and three years later he accompanied to Scotland the mission sent to negotiate the marriage of Margaret of Scot land, then not four years old, with the dauphin, afterwards Louis XI. In 1429 he wrote the Livre d'esperance, which contains a fierce attack on the nobility and clergy. He was the author of a diatribe on the courtiers of Charles VII., entitled Le Curial, trans lated into English (Here followeth the copy of a lettre whyche maistre A. Charetier wrote to his brother) by Caxton about 1484. The story of the famous kiss bestowed by Margaret of Scot land on la precieuse boucle de laquelle sont issus et sortis taut de bons mots et vertueuses paroles is mythical, for Margaret did not come to France till 1436, after the poet's death. Jean de Masles, who annotated a portion of his verse, has recorded how the pages and young gentlemen of that epoch were required daily to learn by heart passages of his Breviaire des nobles. John Lyd gate studied him affectionately. La Belle Dame sans merci was translated into English by Sir Richard Ros about 1640, with an introduction of his own ; and Clement Marot and Octavien de Saint-Gelais, writing 5o years after his death, find many fair words for the old poet, their master and predecessor.
See Mancel, Alain Chartier, etude bibliographique et litteraire, 8vo (1849) ; D. Delaunay's Etude sur Alain Chartier (1876) , with con siderable extracts from his writings, and G. Joret-Desclosieres, Alain Chartier (4th ed., 5899) . His works were edited by A. Duchesne (Paris, 1617).