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Audefroi le Bastart (modern French Bâtard) was a French trouvère from Artois, who flourished in the early thirteenth century.[1]
Of his life nothing is known, though he is certainly the illegitimate child of a noble or upper-class bourgeouis family, but his family is not to be identified with the noble family Arras or with the bourgeouis family of Louchart, also from Arras; Audefroi himself is not to be identified with Gautier d'Arras.[1] The Seigneur de Nesles, to whom some of his songs are addressed, is probably the Châtelain of Bruges who joined the Fourth Crusade.[2]
Audefroi was the author of ten chansons d'amour and five chansons de toile: "Argentine," "Belle Idoine," "Belle Isabeau," "Belle Emmelos," and "Biatrix." These five follow older chansons in subject,[1] but the smoothness of the verse and beauty of detail readily compensate for the spontaneity of the shorter form.[2]