Francis Poulenc is invariably associated with music of the 1920s in Paris. His name is inextricably linked with those ofhis five contemporaries Darius Milhaucl, Georges Auric, Arthur Honneger, Louis Durey, and Germaine Tailleferre, who, together with Poulenc, formed Les Six, supplanting most other French composers in the collective awareness of most listeners in respect of that era. However, Les Six was a contrived and short-lived medium for publicity. Poulenc's career as a composer was already established before the advent of the concept of Les Six, and endured for more than forty years afterwards, in which he composed prolifically, including large-scale works for stage, film scores and solo pieces in his eventual output. A passionate lover ofpoetry, Poulenc immersed himself in French verse throughout his life, and devoted much time and effort to setting poetic texts to music in his songs and song cycles. Chansons Gaillardes, the main subject of this thesis, was written in the mid- 1920s, and was a composition with which the composer was especially pleased. Poulenc's decadent lifestyle at this time was in keeping with the images and attitudes apparent throughout the collection of eight seventeenth century poems chosen for the text ofthis cycle. It is probably for this reason that the texts are handled with considerable sympathy, and that the composer could derive such pleasure from the end result. This thesis begins by examining Poulenc's background and formative influences in Chapter One. Chapter Two puts Chansons Gaillardes into historical context within Poulenc's most significant compositions, and provides an overview of the song cycle. A more detailed discussion of the work will ensue in Chapter Three. My account of Chansons Gaillardes seeks to analyse the style and content of Poulenc's compositional techniques within this particular song-cycle; to examine the effectiveness ofhis textsetting; finally, to demonstrate how eight songs ofvarying mood, length and structure are cohesively brought together to form one single cycle.