Raoul de Houdenc 12th-century French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 trouvère

Trouvère

Trouvère , sometimes spelled trouveur , is the Northern French form of the word trobador . It refers to poet-composers who were roughly contemporary with and influenced by the troubadours but who composed their works in the northern dialects of France...

, takes his name from his native place, generally identified with Houdain (Artois

Artois

Artois is a former province of northern France. Its territory has an area of around 4000 km² and a population of about one million. Its principal cities are Arras , Saint-Omer, Lens and Béthune.-Location:...

), though there are twelve places bearing the name in one or other of its numerous variants.

It has been suggested that he was a monk

Monk

A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...

, but from the scattered hints in his writings it seems more probable that he followed the trade of jongleur and recited his chansons, with small success apparently, in the houses of the great. He was well acquainted with Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, and probably spent a great part of his life there.

His undoubted works are:

• Le Songe d'enfer (Le Songe d’Enfer, Raoul de Houdenc, Raoul de Houdenc, Le Songe d'Enfer, suivi de La Voie de Paradis : poèmes du XIIIe siècle, éd. Philéas Lebesgue, Paris, 1908)
• La Voie de paradis
• Le Roman des eles (pr. by A Scheler in Trouvres belges, New Series, 1897)
• the romance of Meraugis de Portlesguez, edited by M. Michelant (1869) and by M. Friedwagner (Halle, 1897)

Houdenc was an imitator of Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...

; and Huon de Méry

Huon de Méry

Huon de Méry was the author of Li Tournoiemenz Anticrit , a 3,546-line Old French poem written in octosyllables.-Life:...

, in his Tournoi de l'antéchrist (1226) praises him with Chrétien in words that seem to imply that both were dead. Méraugis de Portlesguez, the hero of which perhaps derives his name from Lesguez, the port of Saint-Brieuc

Saint-Brieuc

Saint-Brieuc is a commune in the Côtes-d'Armor department in Brittany in northwestern France.-History:Saint-Brieuc is named after a Welsh monk Brioc, who evangelized the region in the 6th century and established an oratory there...

 in Brittany

Brittany

Brittany is a cultural and administrative region in the north-west of France. Previously a kingdom and then a duchy, Brittany was united to the Kingdom of France in 1532 as a province. Brittany has also been referred to as Less, Lesser or Little Britain...

, is a roman d'aventures loosely attached to the Arthurian cycle.