The Châtelain de Couci was one of the best-known trouvères, this being the term for lyric poets from the late twelfth through to the end of the thirteenth century. Although they composed in a variety of genres (some drawn from popular song), they are best known for their grands chants courtois, songs of unrequited fine amour ('pure love'), modelled on the Occitan troubadour lyric, and addressed to a haughty noble lady. These were originally performed to music, which is often transmitted in the manuscript anthologies that preserve them, known as chansonniers.

Unusually for a late twelfth- or thirteenth-century French author, we do know something about the Châtelain. Gui, castellan of Couci from at least 1186, was like most contemporary trouvères a high-ranking noble (which may account for why we can identify proportionally more trouvères than other twelfth-century writers); his death on the Fourth Crusade in 1203 is chronicled by Villehardouin’s Conquête de Constantinople. Do we have, then, in his lyrics, a body of texts attributable with some certainty to a named and identifiable author, whom we can situate in time and space? And should we thereby think about them differently from the majority of contemporary texts, which are either anonymous or attributed to a name we cannot identify, particularly since courtly lyrics are written in the first person and purport to speak sincerely of the subject’s experience of love? Finally, should these questions matter to the modern reader?