Douce dame jolie is a monophonic song by the fourteenth-century French composer Guillaume de Machaut. It is an example of the genre known as the virelai, one of the fixed formes of the fourteenth century (the others were the ballade and the rondeau). Schrade catalogues this work as Virelai No. 4. This is a relatively early work of Machaut's, dating from the time of his patronage by John of Luxembourg, King of Bohemia.

Machaut was the most famous and represented composer of the fourteenth century. Writing in the style known as Ars Nova ('New Art', to distinguish it from Ars Antiqua, or 'Old Art'), he is largely responsible for the establishment of the fixed musical and literary secular forms of the fourteenth century. In addition to writing almost one hundred virelais, ballades and rondeaux, he wrote lais, motets, a chanson royal, a complainte and the monumental Messe de Notre Dame.

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