Abstract
The medieval vocabulary of writing reflects an awareness of the social fabric of texts and of the diverse types of agency involved in their performance: it distinguishes the material role of the scriptor, the narrative performance of the actor, and the discursive authority of the auctores, to name only a few of the activities collapsed under the modern “author function.”The meaning of such lexical markers and their vernacular equivalents changes according to generic conventions and historical period, creating some leeway in textual transmission; after all, a scribe could easily enough transform actor into auctor. It is indeed flexibility that ultimately characterizes the construction of medieval authorship, a notion marked, as Jacques Dalarun notes, by a near absence “of external constraints, and particularly juridical ones, on the author and his rights” and thus by “the possibility of an internal play on authority.”1 If we accept as a given that in manuscript culture, authorial performance is reenacted at every stage of textual transmission, we may ask how the shift from script to print affects medieval conventions of authorship. My goal here is to examine the new roles taken up by early modern printers in shaping the trajectory of medieval texts and how the presence of these new “players” may reconfigure notions of authorship. I will follow in particular the editorial fortunes and textual transformations of two chivalric romances that reached a broad readership during the first decades of print: Mélusine ou La noble histoire de Lusignan, written in 1393 by Jean d’Arras, and the Franco-Burgundian Histoire d’Olivier de Castille et d’Artus d’Algarbe, signed “Philippe le Camus,” composed before 1460.
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Notes
Jacques Dalarun, “Table ronde conclusive,” in Auctor & Auctoritas: Invention et conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale, ed. Michel Zimmermann (Paris: École des Chartes, 2001), pp. 571–573.
Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, L’apparition du livre (Paris: Albin Michel, 1958, 1999), p. 361.
Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. A. Strubel (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1992), v. 10526.
See Pierre-Yves Badel, Le Roman de la Rose au XIVe siècle: Étude de la réception de l’œuvre (Geneva: Droz, 1980), p. 165.
Histoire de l’édition française. I. Le livre conquérant. Du Moyen Age au milieu du XVIIe siècle, ed. Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin (Paris: Fayard, 1982), p. 211.
Roger Chartier, Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d’Ancien régime (Paris: Seuil, 1982, 1987), pp. 110–111.
Conteurs français du XVIe siècle, ed. Pierre Jourda (Paris: Gallimard, 1965), pp. 620–621.
On the structure of “Melusinian myths,” see Claude Lecouteux, “La structure des légendes mélusiniennes,” Annales Économies, sociétés, civilisations 2 (1978): 294–306;
Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les Fées au Moyen Âge. Morgane et Mélusine ou la naissance des fées (Paris: Champion, 1984);
Jean-Jacques Vincensini, Pensée mythique et narrations médiévales (Paris: Champion, 1996).
Coudrette, Le Roman de Mélusine ou Histoire de Lusignan, ed. Eleanor Roach (Paris: Klincksieck, 1982), pp. 109–110. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from the Old French and Spanish are mine.
Melusine, ed. Karin Schneider (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1958), p. 36. “So hab ich,Türing von Ringgoltingen von Bern uß Oechtland, ein zumol seltzen und gar wunderlich frömde hystorien funder in franckzoyser sprach …” [I, Thüring von Ringoltingen of Bern in Üchtland, found a story both strange and very surprising written in French …]. A survey of the European reception of Jean d’Arras’ and Coudrette’s Mélusine is included in Thüring de Ringoltingen, Mélusine et autres récits, trans. Claude Lecouteux (Paris: Champion, 1999).
The only extant copy of the 1478 Steinschaber edition is preserved in the Herzog August Bibliothek (Wolfenbüttel, Germany). I have consulted it in a facsimile edition: L’ Histoire de la helle Mélusine de Jean d’Arras, ed. Wilhelm Joseph Meyer (Bern: Société Suisse des Bibliophiles, 1923–1924).
Laurence Harf-Lancner, “Le Roman de Mélusine et le Roman de Geoffroy à la grand dent: les éditions imprimées de l’œuvre de Jean d’Arras,” Bibliothèque d’humanisme et de Renaissance 50: 2 (1988): 358 [349–366].
Both Melusine (1526) and Olivier (1535) were listed in the Crombergers’ catalogue. On this “dynasty of printers” active from 1503 to 1553, see Clive Griffin, The Crombergers of Seville: The History of a Printing and Merchant Dynasty (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Father and son specialized in quality editions, producing “some of the best printing in Spanish sixteenth-century typography”
(Juan Delgado Casado, Diccionario de impresores españoles (siglos XV–XVII) [Madrid: Arco Libros, 1996], p. 170). One of Juan Cromberger’s employees, Juan Pablos, brought printing to America.
Melusine compiled (1382–1394) by Jean d’Arras englisht about 1500. Edited from a unique manuscript in the Library of the Bristish Museum, ed. A. K. Donald (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1895), p. 1.
Danielle Régnier-Bohler, “Tradition et structures nouvelles chez Philippe Camus: la genèse de L’histoire d’Olivier de Castille et Artus d’Algarbe,” in Actes du Ve colloque international sur le Moyen français III (1986): 54 [54–72].
See also D. Régnier-Bohler, “Le monarque et son double: la légende des Deux Frères à la cour de Bourgogne, L’histoire d’Olivier de Castille et d’Artus d’Algarbe,” Revue des sciences humaines 183 (1981): 109–123; and
D. Régnier-Bohler, “Béances de la terre et du temps: la dette et le pacte dans le motif du Mort reconnaissant au Moyen Âge,” L’homme 111–112 (July–December 1989): 161–178.
Antal Lökkös, “La production des romans et des récits aux premiers temps de l’imprimerie genevoise,” in Cinq siècles d’imprimerie genevoise: actes du Colloque international sur l’histoire de l’imprimerie et du livre à Genève 27–30 avril 1978, ed. Jean-Daniel Candaux and Bernard Lescaze, 2 vols. (Geneva: Société d’histoire et d’archéologie, 1980), p. 20 [15–30].
R. Foulché-Delbosc, “Review of La historia de los nobles cavalleros Oliveros de castilla y artus dalgarbe,” Revue Hispanique 9 (1902): 590 [587–595]. The hystorye of Olyuer of Castylle, ed. Gail Orgelfinger (New York: Garland, 1988), pp. 247–253.
I have consulted BnF Rés Y2 143 in microfilm. D. Régnier-Bohler provides a transcription of the publisher’s prologue and epilogue in “‘Pour ce que la memoire est labille …’: le cas exemplaire d’un imprimeur de Genève, Louis Garbin,” Le Moyen Français 24–25 (1990): 210–211 [187–213].
Gérard Genette, Seuils (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1987), pp. 7–8.
On “paratextual interaction” between writers and publishers in early print culture see Cynthia Brown, Poets, Patrons and Printers. Crisis of Authority in Lute Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), pp. 61–79.
Following Jean-Luc Solère in Entrer en matière: les prologues, ed. Jean-Daniel Dubois and Bernard Roussel (Paris: Cerf, 1998), pp. 306–310,
Jean-Claude Mühlethaler opposes the rhetorical nature of the preface to the “axiomatic” function of the prologue in Seuils de l’œuvre dans le texte médiéval, ed. Emmanuèle Baumgartner and Laurence Harf-Lancner, 2 vols. (Paris: Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2002), 1:224–225. This distinction is implicit in my opposition between authorial prologue and editorial paratext.
Jean d’Arras, Mélusine: roman du XIVe siècle, ed. Louis Stouff (Geneva: Slatkine, 1974), p. 312.
Jacques Le Goff L’imaginaire médiéval (Paris: Gallimard, 1985), p. 27.
On the opposition between writer (actor) and authority (auctor) in classical culture and the medieval tradition of commentary, see Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship : Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984), p. 26, 157. On the semantic shifts of acteur in Middle French see Brown, Poets, pp. 203–206.
The Troyes editions of Melusine have been commented by Lise Andries, “Mélusine et Orson: deux réécritures de la Bibiothèque bleue,” in La bibliothèque bleue et les littératures de colportage, ed. Thierry Delcourt and Elisabeth Parinet (Paris: École des Chartes, 2000), pp. 78–92; and, in the same collection of essays, by Hélène Bouquin, “L’illustration du Roman de Mélusine dans la bibliothèque bleue,” pp. 138–147.
For a comparison of the 1489 and 1526 Spanish editions see Alan D Deyermond, “La historia de la linda Melosina: Two Spanish Versions of a French Romance,” in Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton, ed. Alan D. Deyermond (London: Tamesis Book Ltd., 1976), pp. 57–65;
Historia de la linda Melosina, ed. Ivy A. Corfis (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1986), pp. v–xi; and
Ana Pairet, “Histoire, métamorphose et poétique de la réecriture: les traductions espagnoles du Roman de Mélusine (XVe–XVIe siècles),” in Le mythe de Mélusine dans la littérature et dans les arts, ed. Ariette Bouloumié (Paris: L’âge d’homme, 2002), pp. 47–55.
On this mother/son polarity, see S. Roblin, “Le sanglier et la serpente, Geoffroi à la grand dent dans l’histoire des Lusignan,” in Métamorphose et bestiaire fantastique au Moyen Age (Paris: École Normale Supérieure de jeunes filles, 1985) pp. 245–285; and Harf-Lancner “Le Roman de Mélusine,” pp. 349–366.
Alfred Morin, Catalogue descriptif de la bibliothèque bleue de Troyes (almanacks exclus) (Geneva: Droz, 1974), pp. 307–309; 328–329.
The signature “David Aubert” appears in 43 manuscripts produced under his supervision, four of which indicate that he copied them himself (manu propria). The expression “clerc” is only recorded two other times in combination with Aubert’s name. In the manuscripts of Chronique normande and Perceforest, two autograph manuscripts copied the same year (1459), Aubert calls himself “clerc” and “escripvain” respectively. The expression used to introduce himself in Perceforest, is close to the one used in Olivier: “Je David Aubert comme l’escripvain, me suis emploié de mettre au net et en cler francois certaines anciennes histoires” [I, David Aubert, the writer, have endeavored to copy certain ancient stories in clear and concise French.] See Richard Straub, David Aubert, escripvain et clerc (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995), pp. 35, 76, 278–279.
La historia delos nobles caualleros Oliueros de Costilla y Artus díAlgarve. From Romance to Chapbook: The Making of a Tradition, ed. Ivy Corfis, (Madison: The Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies, 1997), p. 45. All subsequent references are taken from this edition.
Foulché-Delbosc, “Review of La historia,” pp. 587–595. Miguel Ángel Frontón, “Del Olivier de Castille al Oliveros de Costilla: anâlisis de una adaptación caballeresca,” Criticón 46 (1989): 64 [63–76].
The hystorye of Olyuer of Castylle, ed. Gail Orgelfinger (New York: Garland, 1988), p. XIII.
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Pairet, A. (2006). Medieval Bestsellers in the Age of Print: Melusine and Olivier de Castille. In: Greene, V. (eds) The Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature. Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403983459_11
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