Details
This study of Charles d'Orléans personal manuscript of his poetry - the first in nearly a century - paves the way not only for a new edition of the duke's uvre (by Mary-Jo Arn, John Fox, and R. Barton Palmer) but for a new view of it. Following the first complete modern description of the manuscript, this study reconstructs the history of the manuscript, copying layer by copying layer. Codicological observations supplemented with palaeographical, historical, art-historical, and textual information reveal the approximate sequence of the manuscript's composition, which in turn allows a re-dating of it. Charles saw lyric form differently than did his predecessors and contemporaries, a view made manifest in the poet's own numbering of his poems. He mixed his complaintes with ballades and his rondels with chansons , each pair of forms in a numbered series, but never presenting the longer alongside the shorter forms. The analysis of the manuscript's construction corrects the current physical disorder of the later chanson and rondels , as well as that of the 'En la forest de longue actente' series (including the lyric omitted from the standard edition) and re-evaluates the handful of English poems in the manuscript. In the end, we come to understand the relationship between the visual 'messiness' of the manuscript and the poet's strong concept of lyric order. The technical aspects of the study are clarified by many tables and fascimile pages; the interactive CD contains an index of first lines that can be sorted in various ways to reveal a variety of kinds of manuscript relationships.
Reviews & Quotes
"Arn describes her study as an aid to literary scholars (16). This it undoubtedly is, but it is much more besides. It is a valuable example of good codicological practice, which both novice and experienced medievalists in all related disciplines may consult with profit. It offers important insights into fifteenth-century book culture. In a broad sense, it is a major work of literary scholarship in its own right. Finally, it is a powerful statement of the fascination and the value of codicology.'"
Adrian Armstrong
The Medieval Review 09.09.14 ()
"Mary-Jo Arn has undertaken a mammoth and extremely valuable task in this reexamination and reevaluation of Charles dOrléanss personal manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 25458 [...] her endeavor is excellent in its clarity, depth, and detail, and a highly entertaining read.'"
Emma Cayley, University of Exeter
Speculum
(July 2010)
