In his lifetime, Adam de la Halle was perhaps best known by the name "Adam le Bossu," which means in English, "Adam the Hunchback." The hump in Halle's upper back was a birth defect, which caused Halle, all his life, to appear slightly stooped in his posture; and to be noticeable if not extremely hunch-backed ("Adam de la Halle", Encyclopedia Britannica Online). Halle was born around 1237, in Arras, France, a city located in the Picardy region of northern France ("Arras, France"). Within this essay, I shall discuss some of Adam de la Halle's major artistic accomplishments: e.g., within the 13th-century French secular theater he founded; in poetry and musical composition, and will also explore various other highlights and key events of his life.
             According to the article "Adam de la Halle" (Wikipedia), Halle's father, Henri de le Hale, one of the city of Arras's notables, intended that his son join the church. However, Adam de la Halle himself did not ever in fact do so. Obviously, he much preferred an active, even peripatetic life filled with artistic creativity (and quite secular creativity, at that). Nowhere is this medieval French musical artist's essentially non-religious, personal orientation better reflected than within his creative works, especially the music and poems Halle composed for the French secular theater he founded. In this same sense, then; in Adam de la Halle's singularly original approach to musical and poetry composition alike, Halle, single-handedly, ruptured a very long medieval tradition of the way of writing traditional liturgical poetry and music. Based on that boldly innovative accomplishment and its results, Adam de la Halle then also founded; wrote poetry and music for; and even performed within some of the earliest examples of medieval French secular theaters ("Adam de la Halle", Encyclopedia Britannica Online): ones that he himself had founded and that he then further popularized.
             ...