Chanson de toile

The Chanson de toile (also called chanson d'histoir) was a genre of narrative Old French lyric poetry devised by the trouvères which flourished in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century. Some fifteen of them remain; five were written by Audefroi le Bastart, the others are anonymous. Typically, they are set to music (though only four chansons remain with musical annotation) and tell the story of a young, often married woman pining for a lover, with a happy ending. The genre's name derives from toile; that is, they are supposed to have been sung by women who were weaving, and the female main characters also sew as they relate their stories.