The Poet's Notebook: The Personal Manuscript of Charles d'Orleans (Paris, BnF MS fr. 25458) (TEXTS AND TRANSITIONS) 9782503520704, 2503520707

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T HE POET’S N OTEBOOK

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TEXTS AND TRANSITIONS: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF MANUSCRIPTS AND PRINTED BOOKS General Editors Martha W. Driver Derek A. Pearsall Editorial Board Julia Boffey (Queen Mary, University of London) Jennifer Britnell (University of Durham) Ardis Butterfield (University College, London) Philippa Hardman (University of Reading) Dieter Mehl (University of Bonn) Alastair Minnis (Yale University) Oliver Pickering (Brotherton Library, Leeds) John Scattergood (Trinity College, Dublin) John Thompson (Queen’s University, Belfast)

Volume 3

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T HE POET’S N OTEBOOK

The Personal Manuscript of Charles d’Orléans (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 25458)

by

Mary-Jo Arn

H

F

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Arn, Mary-Jo The poet's notebook : the personal manuscript of Charles d'Orleans (Paris, BnF, M S fr. 25458) – (Texts and transitions ; 3) 1. Charles, d’Orleans, 1394–1465 – Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc. 2. Charles, d’Orleans, 1394–1465 – Criticism, Textual 3. Charles, d’Orleans, 1394–1465 – Literary style I. Title 841.2 ISBN-13: 9782503520704

© 2008, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/2008/0095/38 ISBN: 978-2-503-52070-4 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

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For K. H.

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BnF MS fr. 25458, p. 1.

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C ONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgements

xiii

List of Abbreviations

xv

List of Illustrations

xvii

Note on the Tables

xxi

Introduction

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1

Chapter 1. Description of the Manuscript

19

Chapter 2. The First Stint of Copying (c. 1440 to the mid-1440s) The Structure of the Whole Ballades and Complaintes: Type-1 Lyrics Chansons and Caroles: Type-2 Lyrics

55 60 63 67

Chapter 3. The Second Stint (the mid-1440s to the mid-1450s) The Disordering of Some Ballades and Chansons and the Poet’s Numbering The Layout and Headings of the Chansons and Rondels The Work of the Third Limner

69

Chapter 4. The Third Stint (mid-1440s to mid-1450s) The Poet’s Numbering of the Ballades and the Addition of More Vellum: The Physical Evidence

101

73 77 93

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The Order of the Ballades and Complaintes: The Textual Evidence Scribes and Initial Makers Working in the Third Stint The Rondel Series and the Poet’s Numbering

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106 112 115

Chapter 5. The Fourth Stint (mid-1450s to c. 1465) Scribes, the Household, the Chancery, and the Exchequer (Chambre des comptes) Finished (Scribal) Lyrics Unfinished (Unlimned/Unrubricated) Lyrics The English Lyrics

127

Chapter 6. Implications of this Study

145

Appendix. Other Analyses of Poem Order

171

Select Bibliography

177

Tables

183

Index

199

128 133 134 136

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P REFACE

M

y original purpose for undertaking this project was to lay the groundwork for a long overdue modern edition of the poetry of Charles d’Orléans. I conceived a study that would provide a firmer foundation for an edition than the one Pierre Champion provided in 1911. It would not only correct his errors, but present a reconsideration of the whole ‘shape’ of this most unusual collection. I called it, when asked, a codicological study; today it might be thought of as an exercise in materialist philology.1 The study of the physical composition of the book, copying stint by copying stint, presented itself to me as a necessary procedure. A name for this kind of project, drawn from the field of geology, is a stratigraphic study.2 This is a narrowly focussed study, and there are many things this study does not aim to do, things that are vitally important and should be undertaken in the very near future. First there is the whole matter of dating individual lyrics or groups of lyrics. At present this information (and much misinformation) is scattered in many places. If someone of a somewhat sceptical turn of mind were to survey them and then do the necessary archival work to establish a more correct set of dates for these works, the whole Charles d’Orléans 1

I borrow the term from Stephen Nichols’s introduction to The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, Recentiores (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 2. 2

The Chronicle of Melrose Abbey: A Stratigraphic Edition, vol. I: Introduction and Facsimile, ed. by Dauvit Broun and Julian Harrison, Scottish History Society, 6th series, 1 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, for the Scottish History Society, 2007). Though an English chronicle first copied in the thirteenth century and a collection of secular verse in fifteenth-century French might be thought to have very little in common, Dauvit Brown’s description of the ‘editorial challenge’ of editing Melrose offers many interesting parallels to my own work (see chapter 2: ‘Editing the Chronicle of Melrose’, pp. 29–39.)

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Preface

project would be on much firmer ground. Such a study ought also to look at the historical circumstances of the writing of the poetry, the movement of people to and from Blois, and the exact movements of the Duke. The dates I have used in this study are thus tentative and subject to correction. The other large lacuna in this project has to do with literary considerations. Although many fine studies exist, most are limited to some thesis or theme; what we rather need is a full-blown study of the whole body of the poet's work based on the new archival work. My title refers to Charles d’Orléans’s manuscript as the poet’s ‘notebook’ because the manuscript shares with a (bound) notebook a degree of informality and a dimension of time. The manuscript is a record of current work, written in stages and organized in sections, some never completely filled, others overflowing, many parts labelled, many not, with an ad-hoc look about much of it. But the manuscript is also not like a notebook in significant ways: a notebook would hardly open with a coloured border decoration containing a coat of arms, for instance, or contain illuminated initials with graceful penwork. It functions as a notebook only if it is thought of as a book a person keeps, and keeps up, for his whole life because he values the part of himself inscribed in it. Gérard Gros describes Charles’s manuscript as ‘un ouvrage de référence, l’exemplaire unique enregistrant les actes d’une très sélective académie’3 — and so it is. It is in fact extremely difficult to find a modern designation that fits this particular manuscript, so I have settled for the term that seems to me to expand our idea of a certain kind of manuscript the most, in an effort to revise our expectations about its content and its process of production. This study is largely based on codicological observation; I say largely because I am compelled from time to time to base my argument on textual or historical evidence or, in a few cases, literary form and content. The results of the study are not neat (and certainly much less neat than those of Pierre Champion). Despite taking issue with many of Champion’s statements, I hope that I have done justice to his work, much of which is seminal. Reading the whole work straight through will obviously give a reader the fullest possible exposure to it, but I have organized the material so that the reader less interested in the physical observation and detailed reasoning may skip from the introduction to chapter 6, ‘Implications of this Study’. As a result of this structure, the former sort of reader ought to be aware that the work contains some repetition, not only to satisfy the less energetic, but to refresh the memory of a reader dealing with a great many details. Numbers and letters identify individual lyrics or groups 3

Gérard Gros, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc: édition, diffusion et réception d’une oeuvre (Martin le Franc lecteur de Charles d’Orléans)’, Travaux de littérature, 14 (2001), 43–58 (p. 58).

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Preface

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of poems (quire numbers, pagination, quire letters, stint numbers, scribe and limner numbers, etc.). I have tried to cross reference these identifying markers, to compare like with like, in an effort to smooth the reader’s way.4 The tables are intended in part to relate some of these systems to each other. The reader intent on following the argument closely may find it helpful to familiarize him- or herself first with the tables before taking up the text. I regret not having had the work of two fine scholars (and friends) at hand during the writing of this book. Jane Taylor’s superb study of the way lyric collections function in late medieval France, The Making of Poetry, touches on a number of issues raised here, and fuller use of her concepts would have made this a better book. Gilbert Ouy’s new book, La librairie des frères captifs, which arrived at the proof correction stage, provides new identifications of many of the poet’s manuscripts and lays the groundwork for new study of both Charles d’Orléans’s books and his learning. Talk is also abroad about a digital facsimile of BnF, MS fr. 25458, which would be of tremendous help to us all in understanding the development of Charles’s art. John Fox and I have recently completed an edition of fr. 25458, with a facing-page translation by Barton Palmer. Perhaps the long-overdue renascence in Charles d’Orleans studies is finally at hand.

4

Square brackets are used to indicate inferred information, for example ·2[5·], where only the first dot and the number 2 are visible. Spellings in the manuscript (balade) may differ from those in modern French (ballade). Quotation marks signal a manuscript reading (‘hancon’ for a heading chanson lacking an initial).

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A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I

am deeply grateful to Harvard University for giving me nearly unlimited access to their facilities in which to research and write during my two years there as a Visiting Scholar, 1999–2000 and 2000–2001. I owe that opportunity to Derek Pearsall, who welcomed me into the activities of the English Department's Doctoral Conference. The collegiality of the Harvard community of medievalists, within the English Department and beyond it, enriched (and continues to enrich) my intellectual life. Members of the staff, past and present, of Child Memorial Library have provided me with an intellectual home and companionship I treasure. The superb reference staff of Widener Library have given unstintingly of their expertise and graciously answered many questions that opened new resources to me and saved me a great deal of time. I am also grateful to the staffs of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, and the Library of Congress for permission to reproduce images of chansonnières. A grant from the Neal Ker Memorial Fund, administered by the British Academy, has enabled me to include more facsimile pages to illustrate this study than would otherwise have been possible. I am especially grateful to Mme. Monique Cohen, curator of manuscripts, and the staff of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, for permission to study extensively Charles d’Orléns’s manuscript (a national treasure) and to reproduce a number of pages from it. I first encountered codicology as a mode of study during my years in the Netherlands, but it was in the summer of 1989 that Barbara Shailor and Robert Babcock showed me how to see the structures of manuscripts and to reason about them in a National Endowment for the Humanities Seminar at Yale’s Beinecke Library on codicology and palaeography, an experience for which I will always be grateful. At the Medieval Academy, Richard K. Emmerson and more recently Paul E. Szarmach have allowed me to devise a schedule that made possible the research that goes into such work as this. Both have been the best of colleagues. My

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Acknowledgements

thanks are due to Simon Forde at Brepols, who could see a book in my manuscript before I could; it has been a thorough pleasure to work with him. In Deborah A. Oosterhouse I found an editor par excellence. The many people who have shared their expertise and advice with me will find their names, along with my thanks, in the notes. Johan Gerritsen (professor emeritus, University of Groningen) has saved me from many a seductive fantasy. Despite its shortcomings, this is a much better book than it would have been had he not brought his keen mind to bear on the issues it raises and his acute eye on his microfilmed copy of the manuscript. Many of the most important insights here have come first from him, leaving me the task of working out their implications. His name and his intellectual imprint can be found throughout this book.

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A BBREVIATIONS

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Autographe

Pierre Champion, Le manuscrit autographe des poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 3 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1975)

de Laborde

le Comte de Laborde, Les ducs de Bourgogne: études sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XVe siècle, 3 vols (Paris: Plon frères, 1849–52), III.2: Preuves (1852)

La librairie

Pierre Champion, La librairie de Charles d’Orléans, Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 11 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1910; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1975)

Poésies

Charles d’Orléans, Poésies, ed. by Pierre Champion, vol. I: La retenue d’Amours, ballades, chansons, complaintes et caroles; vol. II: Rondeaux, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, 34 and 56 (Paris: Champion, 1923–27; repr. 1971)

Le poète

Daniel Poirion, Le poète et le prince: l’évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d'Orléans (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1978)

Stirnemann

Patricia Danz Stirnemann and François Avril, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VIIe–XXe siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1987)

Vie

Pierre Champion, Vie de Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465), Bibliothèque du XVe siècle, 13 (Paris: Champion, 1911)

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ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 1, p. 25. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 117. Scribe 1, letter. Figure 2, p. 26. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 119. Scribe 1, ballade (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·72·). Figure 3, p. 27. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 244. Scribe 1, one initial missing, chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·1]0·). Figure 4, p. 28. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 101. Scribe 1, strapwork, narrative. Figure 5, p. 29. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 81. Scribe 1, demi-fleur-de-lis on ascender, ballades. Figure 6, p. 30. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 279. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-1 chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·41·). Figure 7, p. 31. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 284. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: chanson, Scribe 2/Limner 2 (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·5]4·). Figure 8, p. 32. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 475. Supra/infra: stint 3, directors inside lombard initials. Figure 9, p. 35. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 122. Ballade, Limner 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·7]4·). Figure 10, p. 39. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 329. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: Scribe 2/ Limner 2 chanson (autograph), headings ‘switched’ (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·82·). Figure 11, p. 40. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 325. Limner 3, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s nos. ·75· and ·76·).

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Illustrations

Figure 12, p. 41. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 372. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-2 rondel (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·1]022·). Figure 13, p. 43. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 148. Supra/infra: stint-4 rondels, directors in left margin. Figure 14, p. 44. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 535. Supra: stint-4 rondel, directors, final lyric by the poet. Figure 15, p. 45. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 322. Supra: Limner 3/stint-2 rondel; infra: stint-2 rondel undecorated (Charles d’Orléans’s nos. ·70· and [·7]1·). Figure 16, p. 46. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 338. Autograph, upper lyric mislabeled, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·9]1·). Figure 17, p. 48. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 354. Supra: stint-3 rondel in Latin (autograph), f at first line; infra: recto partially finished by Limner 3/stint 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·]104·). Figure 18, p. 51. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 436. Marginal afe, f, ?o. Supra: small initial; infra: large initial, autograph. Figure 19, p. 65. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 197. Scribe 1, Limner 1. Figure 20, p. 75. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 43. Ballade (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·27·). Figure 21, p. 79. BnF, MS Rés. Vm-c 57, fols 21v –22r. Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée. Figure 22, p. 82. Royal Library, Thott MS 2918 , fols 27v –28r, Copenhagen Chansonnier. Figure 23, p. 83. Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, MS M2.1.L25 Case, fols 56v –57r, Chansonnier de Laborde. Figure 24, p. 86. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 327. Stint-2 lyric above stint-3 lyric, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·79·). Figure 25, p. 95. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 355. Supra: stint-3 rondel (autograph); infra: recto partially finished by Limner 3/stint 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·105·). Figure 26, p. 98. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 270. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-2 chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·4]0·).

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Illustrations

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Figure 27, p. 137. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 346. Chansons on final page of quire BB, not autograph. Figure 28, p. 141. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 311. English rondels, acrostic: Anne Molins, stint 4. Figure 29, p. 164. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 536. Supra: Gardez vous bien (Bourbon). Figure 30, p. 165. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 537. Supra: Gardez vous bien (P. Danche).

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N OTE ON THE T ABLES

Table 1. Makeup of the manuscript in its current state This is intended as a summary of the manuscript as we have it. It gives a quick glimpse of the various batches of vellum and how they line up against work done in the various stints, as well as the distribution of verse forms and the extent of the poet’s numbering. Table 2. Ruling patterns This presents the four ruling patterns of the manuscript graphically. Table 3. The state of the manuscript c. 1440 This is a quick picture of the manuscript at the end of the first stint of copying and limning, before additional vellum was inserted at two places and before other hands begin to appear on its many blank leaves. Table 4. The state of the manuscript after the second stint of copying This presents the manuscript as it appeared around the mid-1440s, when many hands had added lyrics, some of poets other than Charles, at a number of places in the manuscript. Table 5. Distribution of poetry over four stints of copying in manuscript page order This is the only table that presents the verse forms stint by stint, as well as through the poet’s life, as work in each verse form appeared in his manuscript. It makes the proportions of verse forms copied in each stint visible and acts as a quick and easy lookup for poems by manuscript page number. Table 6. The makeup of quires T to EE This gives a much more detailed account than any of the other tables of ten of the most complex quires in the manuscript, T through EE. It highlights the

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Note on the Tables

incongruity of Z in its present position between Y and AA. It displays graphically the disorder in quires X and Y, the double numbering in quire AA, the alternation of chansons and rondels in quires AA and BB, the mislabeling of verse forms that follows in quire BB, and the number of lyrics in the Duke’s hand in the period in which they were copied. Table 7. Order of poems in Champion’s edition Table 8. New poem order These two tables are intended to be compared. They present the order of Champion’s edition and that which results from my own analysis of the manuscript, respectively, as well as the poet’s two numbering series, with both stint numbers and quire letters to help orient the reader.

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INTRODUCTION

A

mong the dozens of books Charles d’Orléans brought back to France with him upon his release from English captivity in 1440 was a new, smallish book containing virtually all the poetry he had composed in French before and during his twenty-five years in England (now Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 25458).1 He kept this book near him for the rest of his life, adding new lyrics until his death in 1465.2 The survival of this manuscript gives

1 One of the things he had shipped to him during his captivity was a selection of his books. We know this because they are itemized in the inventory of the books he brought back to France with him when his captivity ended in 1440. (See the records of the Chambre des comptes de Blois, in de Laborde, pp. 317–28; note that, while Pierre Champion lists fewer than seventy books brought back to France (Librairie, pp. xxv–xxix, though he mentions 103 books on p. xxxiv), de Laborde — presumably his source — lists over one hundred. In his new study, Gilbert Ouy lists 106 (La librairie des frères captifs: les manuscrits de Charles d’Orléans et Jean d’Angoulême, Texte, Codex & Contexte, 4 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 45–52).) Charles travelled a good deal during his captivity, and every few years he found himself being transferred from the custody of one nobleman to another, first in the north of England, then in East Anglia, and finally in the West. Most of his movements can be traced in Champion’s biography of the duke, Vie, ‘Itinéraire’, pp. 659–87. Throughout his captivity he continued to collect books, commissioning some, borrowing a few, buying others, while at the same time composing masses of poetry. Just prior to his release in 1440, he had a fair copy made of his own poetry in two manuscripts, one French (BnF, MS fr. 25458), one English (London, British Library, MS Harley 682). (Interestingly, since he dates the French manuscript to c. 1444, Daniel Poirion writes, ‘C’est le moment [the end of the Duke’s captivity] de rassembler son œuvre, son “livre de ballades”, son recueil de “chansons”, pour constituer le mémorial de sa jeunesse, qu’il présentera à ses amis de France et d’Angleterre’ (Le poète, pp. 290–91).) 2

Probably de Laborde, #6564: ‘Plusiers quaiers de parchemin, nouvellement escripts et enluminés, apportés d’Angleterre, qui ne sont point reliés.’ For further discussion of the identity of this manuscript, see below. Much of the information in Champion’s Autographe has been superceded

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Introduction

modern scholars a nearly unparalleled opportunity to study the development of a poet and his shifting attitudes towards his own work. Back in France, he took to copying some of his poems into his manuscript himself, then offering his book to the poets he had drawn around him at Blois, so that they could record some of their own lyrics. Gradually, what began as a professionally copied collection of poetry became a patchwork of hundreds of blanks and written pages — and half pages — in many hands, containing poems composed over a quarter of a century by poets of all ages and more than one social class, including well-known figures such as René d’Anjou, king of Sicily, Jean duc de Bourbon, and François Villon, alongside otherwise little- or unknown poets, visitors, and household functionaries of the period, such as Montbeton, Fredet, and Pierre Danche. Understanding this manuscript, how it was organized and how it was copied, has occupied the minds of many admirers of Charles’s poetry. Some have tried to find in it clues to his life; others have been more interested in the presentation and understanding of his poetry. This analysis is primarily, though not exclusively, a codicological study that arises from a literary impulse, born first of my interest in the English poems the Duke wrote during his captivity,3 then of the realization that the unique manuscript of the English poems was in some ways a mirror image of the partially autograph manuscript of his French poetry,4 and finally of the awareness that such a study as I have here undertaken could provide both new questions and perhaps a few new solutions to old problems. As literary scholarship attempted to rid itself of romanticism in the second half of the twentieth century, good readers (foremost among them certainly Daniel Poirion, as well as Alice Planche, John Fox, and others) undertook to investigate basic problems such as how to write about lyric without falling into the trap of treating the poetry as veiled autobiography or as a key to the poet’s mental state.

by Gilbert Ouy’s new book, La librairie des frères captifs. Not all the books in the inventory are identifiable. He may well have returned with more than one copy of his poetry as he did with more than one copy of a series of prayers (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MSS latin 1201 and latin 1196) or of Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy. See Charles d’Orléans, Ballades et rondeaux: Édition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, ed. by JeanClaude Mühlethaler, Lettres Gothiques, 4531 (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1992), p. 25. 3

Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s Book of Love, ed. by Mary-Jo Arn, MRTS, 138 (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995). 4

See my article, ‘Two Manuscripts, One Mind’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, 1415–1440, ed. by Mary-Jo Arn (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 61–78. The manuscript description in that article is superseded by the one presented here.

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Introduction

3

Scholars laid aside New Critical approaches to grapple with problems common to medieval lyric in a variety of languages and forms: not only how lyric works and how lyric poetry should be read (or not read), but how to relate the personal lyric to political and social forces, how to learn what manuscripts containing lyrics have to teach about their own production and use, how to trace the afterlife of a lyric poet’s œuvre in order to shed light on the shifting tastes and concerns of the postmedieval period, and how to read poetry of all kinds across boundaries — sometimes illusory, shifting, or maddeningly hard to fix — between religious and secular, aristocratic and bourgeois, male and female, and so on. None of these questions has been answered exhaustively, and I shall turn to them from time to time to contribute what I have found in the Duke’s manuscript. The study of manuscripts for what they can tell us about their production, ownership, provenance, and textual content has burgeoned since the midtwentieth century. Most scholars who deal with manuscripts no longer view them as simply text or image carriers but as bearers of many kinds of physical evidence vital to the understanding of those texts. (Indeed it is possible to learn many useful things about a manuscript, its use, and its users even without recourse to its texts.) What was once thought of as ancillary work (analytical bibliography, codicology, paleography, etc.) is now seen, at least among medievalists, as in some instances of primary importance in the understanding of a poet’s work or a literary movement.5 In the case of Charles’s manuscript, the understanding of its construction and use over time will tell us something about Charles as a poet and perhaps even add something about the making of manuscripts in general. I am not the first to tackle the many important problems this manuscript raises,6 but this will be the first fullscale attempt to grapple with them since Pierre Champion’s volume on the manuscript published in 1907: Le manuscrit autographe des poésies de Charles d’Orléans. My goal here is not to solve textual problems, though I will use textual evidence when it is appropriate, but to present the evidence I have found that can speak to the making, and to some extent the planning, of the manuscript. It is for this reason that I do not take up many problems for which readers of this poetry would

5

For an elegant statement of this situation, see Michael M. Gorman, ‘The Commentary on Kings of Claudius of Turin and its Two Printed Editions (Basil, 1531; Bologna, 1755)’, Filologia mediolatina, 4 (1997), 99–131; repr. in Michael M. Gorman, Biblical Commentaries from the Early Middle Ages (Firenze: SISMEL, Editioni del Galluzzo, 2002), pp. 289–321 (pp. 289–90). 6

Any list would have to include Pierre Champion, George Darby, Christopher Lucken, Daniel Poirion, Nancy Regalado, Jane Taylor, and Nigel Wilkins (see the Select Bibliography), and there are others.

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like to receive answers and I do not solve many of the problems I raise. The results of this investigation are not neat; those who seek worthy research projects will find many on show here. One of the largest questions dealt with here is that of Charles’s principles of organization, from the time he first handed a large batch of poetry to the first scribe for copying to his addition of the four final quires of vellum to a large and growing collection. There are many ways of organizing a series of short texts. They can be arranged according to some moral purpose or aesthetic structure (the two not being exclusive of one another),7 or chronologically in the order of composition, or in the case of lyric collections, strictly according to verse form (genre). One of the goals of this study is to determine, on the basis of the manuscript, how the collection is organized and, as a corollary, how Charles thought about poetry, particularly his own, as a collection. The manuscript, BnF, MS fr. 25458, is as intriguing as it is complex. We could say with some accuracy that it is various kinds of manuscripts in one. Different sections of it function in different ways and were produced for different audiences and different purposes. What begins as a lovely scribal copy of Charles’s poetry ends as an undecorated ‘notebook’ of the work of a variety of poets in nearly as many hands. What begins as a representative artefact of his bicultural life, copied by a French scribe and decorated by an English limner, ends as a purely French, in a sense even local, product. Yet the very existence of Grenoble, Bibliothèque de Grenoble, MS 873, a manuscript in parallel columns of the poet’s French text and its Latin translation, tells us that nothing the Duke did was purely local, and this is confirmed by his attempt to reclaim his mother’s Italian lands, by force if necessary. What begins as a personal collection devoted largely to the subject of love in its courtly guise ends as a mixed collection (of challenges and responses) on a large variety of topics, in various languages, and in modes that are often something other than courtly. This is a social poetry, with clear traces of posturing and performance, of occasion and interaction with others.8 Still, no reader can avoid feeling, particularly early on, that the voice is sometimes intensely private. At times it can be read 7

I borrow the distinction from Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Poetry Nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf, trans. by Margaret F. Nims (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), pp. 18–19). The poet’s story of love and loss — the first 122 pages of the manuscript — could be fitted into either category. 8

See Jane H. M. Taylor, The Making of Poetry: Late-Medieval French Poetic Anthologies, Texts and Transitions, 1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

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as a model book for the composition of late medieval lyrics on the subject of love, but at others it treats lyric as social, occasional, performative, or multivocal. Its importance as an author-collected personal record of Charles’s poetry as well as a cross section of lyrics by a number of his contemporaries, drawn from a variety of ranks and literary competencies, can hardly be overestimated. What is more, the many indications of its progress through time, as layer is added to layer of copying, reveals something not to be discerned very clearly even in the wonderful authorial collections of poets like Guillaume de Machaut or Christine de Pizan — insight into the development of the poet’s interests, skills, and formal concerns as the years passed. In addition, the manuscript speaks to the poet’s relationship as duke to the members of his household and to members of various ranks of the nobility. Not all of the implications of these observations can be teased out here, but it is my hope that this work will provide the groundwork for new and further studies. Better understanding the structure and production sequence of this manuscript will thus be useful to a variety of scholars. It has been described as a collection organized by lyric form, but even a casual look at the contents will tell the reader that this neat characterization is too simple. The first text is a verse narrative that is linked by a versified letter patent to a ballade sequence that ends with a composite section (Songe en complainte) made up of narrative, complainte, ballades sans envoys, letters, and a quittance (pseudo-documents in various verse forms), followed by three more ballades.9 Only then, after the first 122 pages of the manuscript (the manuscript is paginated), do we begin to see the lyric collection, sorted, it is said, by form. This idea, that lyric form is the principle — and the only principle — of organization, is incomplete. What is called for is a more nuanced view of the poet’s ideas about lyric forms and their relation to one another. Manuscript evidence can also show us something of the way the poet dealt with two organizing principles that could conflict — organization by form and organization by subject matter. The interplay of form and subject shows itself at various points, as for example in the heading Balades de plusieurs propos, or in the author’s failure to number a group of ‘narrative ballades’ without envoys (that make up part of the Songe en complainte), as he was numbering his ballade collection. Manuscript evidence will also shed light on the series of lyrics composed by various writers on the same first line and, finally, it will tell us something of the Duke’s view of himself as a poet at various stages of his life.

9

Martin Camargo has written about the epistolary form in The Middle English Verse Love Epistle, Studien zur Englischen Philologie, n.s., 28 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991).

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It is sometimes a misfortune to the very cause it serves when a historical or literary figure becomes the subject of a major work or works at an early stage of modern scholarship. I refer, of course, to the many works of Pierre Champion, the foremost scholar of Charles d’Orléans’s life and work in the early years of the last century and one to whom all scholars of Charles’s poetry are deeply indebted. Champion produced a prodigious amount of work on the Duke’s life and poetry: a study of Charles’s own manuscript (1907), a study of Charles’s library (1910), a study of his third wife’s manuscript of lyric poetry (1910), a full-length biography (1911), an inventory of his papers (1912), a study of the reception of his poetry (1913), an edition of his poetry (1923–27), among other works.10 The result of such a daunting quantity of work is sometimes (as in this case or, for instance, in that of Geoffrey Chaucer’s poetry) that subsequent work is partial and derivative because no one is willing to undertake a complete revision of such a massive amount of scholarship.11 But work can begin piecemeal, and this study is, I hope, part of a new beginning of the re-evaluation and revision of all we think we know about this Valois prince and poet. I am fortunately not alone in setting out on this long project. Elizabeth Gonzalez has made available a vast amount of information on members of the Duke’s household, a number of whom contributed to this codex. Jane H. M. Taylor, in work in the same series as this volume, re-evaluates the social life of this poetry. Gilbert Ouy, Gérard Gros, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Nancy Regalado, A. E. B. Coldiron, Claudio Galderisi, Christopher Lucken, and others — all are contributing important scholarship to the ongoing work of understanding what the Duke was about. 10 See Deborah Hubbard Nelson, Charles d’Orléans: An Analytical Bibliography, Research Bibliographies and Checklists (London: Grant & Cutler, 1990), or Claudio Galderisi’s bibliography, Charles d’Orléans, ‘Plus dire que penser’: une lecture bibliographique, Biblioteca di Filologia Romanza, 37 (Bari: Adriatica, [1994]). 11 In the years since Champion’s edition appeared, a number of scholars have published selections but no one has undertaken an edition of all of the French poetry. Sarah Spence published the French chansons alongside their corresponding English roundels, providing modern English translations for those chansons without English counterparts: The French Chansons of Charles d’Orléans with the Corresponding Middle English Chansons, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 46A (New York: Garland, 1986); Jean-Claude Mühlethaler published the ballades and rondels, but excluded all verse in other forms except the opening narrative and all the lyrics from other hands. Most recently, Gérard Gros has published a selection of the lyrics: En la forêt de longue attente et autres poèmes [édition bilingue], Collection Poésie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001). Charles’s poetry, French and English, has been anthologized repeatedly. In an ideal world, the complete French and the English poetry should also be accompanied by an edition of the Grenoble manuscript, with the French and Latin texts copied in parallel columns.

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Pierre Champion was the first to identify the manuscript actually owned by the Duke and copied partially in his own hand. In his revisionary edition of the Duke’s poetry he attempted to present to the world the poems of Charles d’Orléans in something like the order in which the original manuscript had been copied (which had been filled piecemeal and some of which had become disordered in the intervening years) but also to establish the order in which they should be read, since many lyrics were copied into the manuscript ‘out of order’.12 His work has puzzled many who have used his now outdated but still standard edition of the poems. It is true that he provides no very clear explanation in his edition of what he attempted to do, and many readers may not be aware of or may not have grappled with his separate 1907 publication explaining the makeup of the manuscript, Le manuscrit autographe.13 His choice in that study to present his findings in discursive prose — as if his reader were looking over his shoulder as he paged through the manuscript from the first folio, working back and forth between poems copied by the main scribe and those added at various times after that — rather than in a more analytical or graphic way, makes tracing his footsteps very difficult.14 His presentation of evidence requires that we go back and forth from beginning to end of the manuscript’s composition, working through one lyric form, then another. The difficulty of understanding exactly what Champion thought about the manuscript is exacerbated by his habit of declaring something to be true rather than laying out his reasoning or evidence so that others could evaluate it. Daniel Poirion, one of the foremost scholars of Charles d’Orléans’s poetry in the second half of the twentieth century, wrote that Champion’s edition was ‘en grande partie arbitraire’, a not unusual mark of work written for a small pool of like-minded scholars in the early years of the twentieth century.15

12

Autographe, pp. 1–12 and 13–16.

13

He mentions it in his edition in a footnote on p. xix.

14

If Champion had found a way to indicate whether a short lyric were written at the top or bottom half of a leaf, he would have saved subsequent scholars enormous amounts of time in their efforts to sort out his arguments and build on them. Perhaps he felt he had done the work once and for all. Poirion took up some of the same questions and himself cited lists of short lyrics without indicating page placement, which makes checking his claims equally difficult. 15

In his review of Sergio Cigada’s book, L’opera poetica di Charles d’Orléans, in Romance Philology, 16 (1962), 252. I am endlessly grateful to Gilbert Ouy for suggesting a healthy skepticism of all Pierre Champion’s data and conclusions. Champion produced an enormous body of muchneeded work on the duc d’Orléans, the fifteenth century, and many other things, but not all of it was executed with rigour and care. Knowing as I do that many scholars hold Champion in very

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The manuscript is complex in a number of ways for a number of reasons. Charles, who conceived it as an album organized loosely by verse form, added poems to blank leaves over the course of more than two decades, but he also used it as a repository for poems by other authors, copied into the manuscript either by himself, by one scribe or another, or by the authors themselves (some identified and some not). A variety of scribes took up the work over the course of Charles’s life, and many of the spaces left blank on partially written pages by the first scribe were filled in years later by other scribes. Some of the leaves were disarranged, probably during Charles’s lifetime, and are currently misbound. Finally, late in his life and years after the first quires were assembled, quires were added to make space for more rondels. For all these reasons, and others, the manuscript as we have it is a complex puzzle, one that clearly spoke to Pierre Champion, asking to be sorted out carefully and systematically. In discussing the organization of another manuscript, Occitan Chansonnier N (New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 819), Stephen Nichols describes the work of two different scholars, Alfred Jeanroy (in the early twentieth century) and Hermann Suchier (in the 1870s). Though Suchier was the earlier, it is Jeanroy the editor who provides a surprisingly close parallel to Pierre Champion: Suchier’s description respects the order of the manuscript, rather than dividing the contents up by genre or author. Jeanroy, like Curt Bühler in 1947 [. . .], was interested not in how the contents were organized in the manuscript but rather in their generic disposition. The location and classification of the individual texts of songs that could then be edited in author editions interested scholars like Jeanroy and Bühler [. . .]. Manuscripts [for them] were containers, not performative documents. [. . .] For Jeanroy, the lyric content mattered most of all, to such an extent that his discursive description of the codex, by focusing on the lyric, ignores the actual ordering of the manuscript disposition in favour of one proceeding by generic categorization and location. Jeanroy assumes a generic principle of ordering for the manuscript as a whole, even though a coherent presentation of his concept requires him to ‘disassemble’ the manuscript as it exists and to describe an ordering remote from what one actually encounters firsthand.16

The book Champion published (with numerous plates) in preparation for editing the contents of BnF, MS fr. 25458 was intended to serve two purposes: first, high esteem, it was with some trepidation that I undertook to revise his work. I have learned in the interim, however, that he was right to encourage me to look carefully at Champion’s evidence and at the conclusions he derived from them before accepting them into my own work. 16

Stephen G. Nichols, ‘“Art” and “Nature”: Looking for (Medieval) Principles of Order in Occitan Chansonnier N (Morgan 819)’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 83–121 (pp. 86–87).

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to demonstrate that Charles himself wrote significant parts of the manuscript in his own hand and to identify those parts, and then to establish the order in which the manuscript was put together, basing his conclusions primarily on paleographical and decorational observations, in order to justify the order he followed in his edition (which appeared some fifteen years later).17 Champion unquestionably achieved the first of these goals; the priority of this partially autograph manuscript has been universally accepted (though not every attribution has met with equal acceptance). He was less than totally successful in achieving his second goal, however. George Darby, in a 1943 article, was the first to object, in his case to the order of some of the rondels.18 One thing that limited Champion’s view was his absolute belief that the manuscript was originally conceived and strictly arranged by verse form (‘ballade, chanson, complainte, carole, rondeau’). This division he then followed in his edition of the poems. Another was simply that he was hampered by history: he worked before the advent of codicology (codicology, that is, used as a way of conceptualizing a manuscript as in the first place a physical object with a construction history, but also as a body of techniques for the analysis and study of manuscripts). His approach, the predominate one in his period, was paleographical and literary and dealt with text rather than the support on which it was written or the bibliographical codes embedded in the object.19 It is overstating the case only 17

An unstated purpose was to date as many lyrics as possible, an endeavour that led him down a few blind alleys. Christopher Lucken (‘Le poème délivré: le désœuvrement de Fortune et le passetemps de l’écriture dans le manuscrit personnel de Charles d’Orléans’, in Mouvances et jointures: du manuscrit au texte médiéval, ed. by M. Mikhaïlova, Medievalia, 55 (Orléans: Paradigme, 2005), pp. 283–313), discerns three objectives in the whole of Champion’s work on Charles’s poetry: to determine the order in which the poems should be read (which he did in Autographe); to throw light on the fiction the poems present us with (i.e. to read the ‘roman sentimental’ of his poetry in such a way as to reveal the poet’s ‘vie intérieure’ (in Vie); and to edit the whole corpus of the Duke’s poetry (in Poésies). Champion’s edition lacks only the Canticum amoris, a work discovered and identified by Gilbert Ouy (‘Un poème mystique de Charles d’Orléans: Le “Canticum amoris”’, Studi francesi, 7 (1959), 64–71), which was unknown to Champion. Ouy prints the text in full, with commentary, in his new book La librairie des frères captifs (pp. 145–76). 18

George O. S. Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology of Charles d’Orléans’ Rondels’, Romanic Review, 34 (1943), 3–17. For some of his arguments, taken up by Daniel Poirion and later Catherine Emerson, see the Appendix. 19

The thing that allowed him to make sense in the first place of this complex manuscript was his perception that the various limners worked at different times and that the order of their succession could be determined. He did not, however, make the next logical leap to perceiving the manuscript as a physical construction with its own history separate from but parallel to that of the text written on it.

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slightly to assert that Champion never considered the book, always the text.20 Although he sometimes seems to refer to the book, as when he writes of ‘exactement deux cahiers de vélin de huit pages’,21 he is in fact referring to a section of text that fills quires S and T. Finally, he sometimes seems to have felt he understood intuitively when poems were composed (based on his literary expertise and his long years of study — witness the table of dates in the introduction to his edition) and in what order, so that some of his reorderings of lyrics received little or no written justification (and some apparently had none).22 Much serious work remains to be done on this manuscript because so many kinds of information can be brought to bear on the dating and ordering of individual poems and groups of poems (codicological, paleographic, textual, biographical, historical, literary), and I am not suggesting that what follows will answer all the questions that the manuscript raises. In particular, I shall not try to follow out the arguments for dating single lyrics or short groups of them put forward by a variety of scholars.23 This study is simply an attempt to rethink the evidence at Champion’s disposal and to apply modern codicological techniques to the problems surrounding it, in an effort to arrive at a clearer picture of the life and evolution of this manuscript over the course of the Duke of Orléans’s poetic career and beyond, and by means of that to arrive at a better understanding of what Charles had planned and carried out in the making of the manuscript. For that purpose, I approach the poems, not verse form by verse form as Champion did in Le manuscrit autographe, but period by period (across categories of form), attempting to see and display as clearly as possible a succession of layers of scribal work in the manuscript and behind that a series of phases of the poet’s work. The poet composed now a ballade, now a carole, now a rondel; we must therefore look at the composition of lyrics across those categories to see the simultaneous growth of lyrics in various forms. A modern analysis of the manuscript should make the complex structure of the manuscript more transparent and enable readers of Charles’s French poetry to read 20

His use of the word intercalé is a case in point. It is not always clear when he means to say that vellum with lyrics on it has been moved and when he is merely noting that lyrics were copied into the manuscript later among or next to those written earlier and so are out of place chronologically. 21

Autographe, p. 30. He means two quires of eight leaves (four bifolia) each.

22

In constructing a list of the poetry in the order of his edition and comparing it against the arguments in his Autographe, I discovered that he frequently rearranged individual lyrics as he edited, for which he gave no reasons at all (see Table 7). 23

Champion foremost among them, of course, but also Darby, Cigada, Poirion, and most recently Catherine Emerson. I will, however, use the framework suggested by Patricia Stirnemann and followed by Kathleen Scott and others (see the Select Bibliography for these studies).

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the poems in a very different order from that of the manuscript (and a somewhat different order from Champion’s), with confidence that they can indeed read them in something like the order in which they were copied into the manuscript — and by extension the order, in general, in which they were composed. I will, at times, invoke other criteria than codicological evidence, including textual and historical information where it seems to me to be appropriate. Others will surely bring other kinds of information to bear and will in the process refine what I have seen. The main lines of Champion’s argument are unexceptionable. He distinguishes four phases in the development of the manuscript, primarily by the style of decoration: first, the fonds primitif or work of the first scribe and first limner (he did not distinguish a handful of ballades by a second scribe and limner recently identified by Johan Gerritsen), then a second group with mediocre limning, followed by a third with simple red and blue initials (lombards). The fourth group is is made up of lyrics with one of two kinds of mise-en-page (a distinction Champion did not really highlight): many of these texts are not provided with any kind of scribal majuscules and so remain unlimned, though some of them are provided with directors (guide letters); others are unlimned because they were provided with scribal majuscules copied by the person who copied the whole poem.24 He treats the collection as five almost entirely independent sections: ‘ballades, chansons, complaintes, caroles, and rondeaux’.25 He also ‘dates’ lyrics as he goes, profferring various reasons for his ordering, some irrefutable, others more fanciful. His goal is to determine ‘dans quel ordre tourner les feuillets de l’album poétique du cercle de la petite cour de Blois’.26 He argues at times for composition order, at others for copying order, at yet others for manuscript order.27 His edition, based on this analysis, did not represent just a manuscript; it was an attempt to read the poetry more or less 24

Autographe, pp. 84–85. ‘Ces groupes se succèdent dans le même ordre [. . .] dans chaque série des différentes collections du duc d’Orléans’, by which he means that each group of lyrics in a single verse form is copied in the same sequence, thus reflecting the same series of ‘layers’ of copying as in the exemplar any individual scribe was copying from. Table 5 provides a visual image of these layers of copying. 25

Daniel Poirion was influenced by this conception of the work’s structure: ‘des chansons, des complaintes et des caroles en trois collections distinctes [. . .]. Les chansons et les caroles devaint être destinées à la musique, puisque dans le haut des pages on a laissé la place pour quelque notation’ (‘Création poétique et composition romanesque dans les premiers poèmes de Charles d’Orléans’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, n.s., 90 (1958), 185–211 (p. 187)). 26 27

Autographe, p. 12.

For instance he may switch the positions of two or more lyrics simply because he has discerned that they cannot have been composed in the order found in the manuscript.

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sequentially through the author’s life, and this goal seems to me a worthy one, as useful as it is difficult to reach. To determine as clearly as possible in what order the poems were copied, I shall begin by following the lines laid out by Champion as far as they will take us, and then extend the discussion in an attempt to put the analysis on a surer footing and explain why Champion’s analysis is not adequate to the task. Daniel Poirion approached the Duke’s poetry as a sensitive and enormously knowledgeable reader and interpreter. He tackled many of the same problems Champion had dealt with, but from a completely different point of view. He wrote, for instance, ‘assurément le poète ne voulait pas transmettre à la postérité un feuilleton poétique illustrant les épisodes de sa vie privée!’28 He, too, was interested in the order in which the lyrics ought to be read, but he exercised his literary skills, along with his intimate knowledge of literary history, to tease out the clues to it, using his understanding of style, language, and tone to understand the form and evolution of the poetry. In a sense, our approaches to the poetry could hardly differ more, yet I have found that when we each lay out our arguments, our conclusions are often similar. Some might ask (indeed have asked) why the edited representation of the manuscript in its chronological, rather than in its physical, form is desirable. ‘Rearranging’ manuscript texts runs counter to the favoured view in some circles that the contents of a manuscript should be presented in the order in which they occur in the extant document (unless, of course, the manuscript has been disarranged since its original production).29 Why not simply present a ‘snapshot’ of the manuscript, as J. Marie Guichard did in 1842?30 Guichard produced a thoroughly respectable 28

Le poète, p. 272.

29

Jean-Claude Mühlethaler (Ballades et rondeaux), for instance, organized the ballades and rondels solely by their physical order (not even reorganizing the lyrics in quires X and Y, in which the Duke’s own numbering indicates their proper order around the time they were copied into the manuscript). The goal of the reordering here, I suggest, has nothing to do with the intentions of the author. In fact those who argue that the manuscript should be reproduced ‘as it is’ because the Duke may have written a given lyric where he did in order to evoke a sense of subtle connections between the poem he was writing and adjacent lyrics that had been written months or even years before — those scholars (I refer here to Daniel Poirion in particular) are the ones appealing to the idea of the poet’s intentions. Whatever the Duke’s intentions, though, Charles did write (and copy or have copied) one lyric before or after another. What I seek to recover is not the Duke’s intentions, but his actions — the historical and physical facts (as far as they can be recovered) of composition and copying. 30

Poésies de Charles d’Orléans publiées avec l’autorisation de M. le ministre de l’instruction publique, d’après les mss des Bibl. du Roi et de l’Arsenal, ed. J. Marie Guichard (Paris: Gosselin, 1842).

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text of BnF, MS fr. 25458 (which Champion used in his work), apparently without the sense that it was possible to discern anything about the composition or copying history from the manuscript itself. To produce another edition in the manuscript order, however, in light of what we have since learned, would be no more useful than is Guichard’s edition. Anyone interested in reading the poems in the order in which they occur in the extant manuscript can do so already; in fact the reader has three options: to read Guichard’s edition, to reconstruct the manuscript order from Champion’s notes to his edition, or to read Jean-Claude Mühlethaler’s edition (though only the ballades and rondels). The reordering argued for here is no smoke and mirrors attempt born of a desire to create something new, but rather a corrective undertaken to further Pierre Champion’s aim to present the lyrics in something approximating their order of copying and hence of composition. Its justification is in the physical object and in reasoning about the physical evidence. Later scholars may see something I have not seen or reason about the evidence in a different way, but the foundation on which this argument is built is available for inspection by any reader. Still, why try to ‘untangle’ the manuscript and present the lyrics in some other order? Is the manuscript we have not the text the way the poet left it to us and therefore wanted it arranged? Yes and no. Evidence suggests that he supervised its production and growth throughout his life, but also that, as careful as he was in its initial organization and as consistent and systematic as he was about adding poems to the manuscript, through the years he came to care less and less about the visual impression of the book as he wrote in it and invited others to do the same. If he had stayed with his original plan (and had himself had the book bound), the manuscript would have been a perfect candidate for a diplomatic edition (there is still a place for a digital facsimile of this fascinating manuscript, as Champion recognized). If we want to see — or want others to be able to see — the development of each form and of the poet’s art, however, we must present them to the reader in something like the order the poems were copied. In this manuscript, two versions of history run sometimes parallel, sometimes counter to one another. The first is the history of the physical manuscript, and this has the distinct advantage of material remains. (Was this quire part of the original manuscript? Are these folios out of order?) The other history is the history of composition and, though it arises from a variety of kinds of evidence (historical, linguistic, formal/generic, textual), much of the evidence for it is not material but circumstantial or logical or linguistic, and this history does not always match up neatly with the physical evidence. (Was this run of one hundred lyrics copied on the upper halves of pages X to Y copied in the order in which we read them? In

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what form is this lyric written? Is this an early poem or a late poem?) Occasionally codicology provides a kind of bridge between these histories, as when it tells us that this poem must precede that one because the catchword matches the following quire or that a certain poem must have existed in this manuscript because a copy made from the manuscript contains the poem at exactly the place that the original has had a leaf cut out. At other times, no such bridge presents itself. A certain level of uncertainty will always remain in such a study, but it should in this case at least remain at a tolerable level. The presumption that lyrics were copied into these quires soon after they were composed is important to consider with some care. It is possible, on the one hand, to theorize that nothing at all can be known about the composition history from the manuscript because we have no fixed dates for individual lyrics, or even for the various layers of copying and limning, and what is more cannot prove that lyrics were not copied into the manuscript years after they were composed. There is, however, some evidence that this extreme view at least is untenable. Though not susceptible of proof, there is both textual and physical evidence to support the idea that most of the manuscript reflects to some degree the composition history of the poet’s œuvre.31 Evidence in the form of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 1203, a small paper book that contains prayers later copied into BnF, MS lat. 1196, indicates that Charles entered at least some of his writing in paper notebooks, which are somewhat less likely to fall prey to accidental disarrangement than are individual leaves.32 What is more, BnF, MS fr. 25458 contains many poems that are related to one another (by author, theme, time of exchange), sometimes in twos, sometimes in larger groups that are copied in very close proximity to one another in the manuscript. It is easier to argue (and believe) that the time lag was short than that it was long. The same is true of lyrics composed by a number of people on the identical first line (such as the Je meurs de soif lyrics). To 31

Gérard Gros envisages the copying into the Duke’s manuscript as something like making a fair copy after initial correction or improvement, but does not suggest that this constitutes a much delayed layer of copying (‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée: étude sur le manuscrit personnel des poésies de Charles d’Orléans (Paris, B.N.F., FR . 25458)’, in Le manuscrit littéraire: son statut, son histoire, du Moyen Âge à nos jours, special issue, Travaux de littérature, 11 (1998), 55–74 (p. 69); see also p. 72). 32

See Gilbert Ouy, ‘Recherches sur la librairie de Charles d’Orléans et de Jean d’Angoulême pendant leur captivité en Angleterre, et étude de deux manuscrits autographes de Charles d’Orléans récemment identifiés’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1955), 273–88, and ‘Charles d’Orléans and his Brother Jean d’Angoulême in England: What their Manuscripts Have to Tell’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 47–60.

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follow another line, Champion dates some poems with reference to the names some of the poets took, such as Jean de Calabre, the son of King René of Sicily, who took the title Lorraine in 1453. Though there is no proof that a poem headed Lorraine was copied in, say, 1454, we have no instances of a poem headed ‘Lorraine’ preceding in the manuscript one headed ‘Calabre’ (and this is true of other writers as well), though there is no reason why a lyric composed by ‘Calabre’ before 1454 could not be copied into the manuscript after (even long after) one that had been composed after 1454, headed ‘Lorraine’.33 The exception to this premise is the body of lyric and narrative verse copied by the first scribe, which can be shown to contain a few pieces composed before Agincourt in 1415 as well as some composed immediately prior to the Duke’s release from captivity in 1440. Because this group of poems is scribally homogeneous and shares a single batch of vellum ruled all at one time, little or no codicological evidence can be adduced as to the order of copying or composition (Daniel Poirion referred to it as ‘énigmatique dans sa perfection graphique’) though other kinds of evidence can be brought to bear.34 In what follows, then, I will attempt not to fall into the trap that caught Champion: I will not declare that a specific poem was composed in a specific year, based on its appearance in the manuscript (unless a historic event is clearly referred to), but I will maintain that it is possible to learn something about the composition history (that this/these poem/s was/were composed before that/those) from the arrangement of the lyrics in the manuscript. Poems were copied into the Duke’s manuscript, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, not long after they were composed, and in no very different order. I shall be concerned not with absolute dating (i.e. with assigning certain months or years to specific lyrics) but with the ordering of the poetry, reaching for dates only when we are certain of them or when it is obviously necessary. Beyond the dates 1440, when Charles returned to France, and 1465, the year of his death, virtually all the dates in this study are provisional, and the whole dating question is the subject of another study, but I have accepted many of the dates proposed by Champion, Poirion, and others for the dating of individual lyrics or groups of lyrics. 33 I am not claiming that every poem in the collection is in the exact order of composition, only that there are no major displacements or disruptions caused by long-term collection of poems, which are then copied into the book all at once. The variety of hands in the later portions of the manuscript in fact argues the opposite. Daniel Poirion felt the same way: ‘Cependant, lorsqu’aucun principe logique n’apparaît dans l’ordre des poèmes, on peut provisoirement admettre que les copistes les ont laissés dans leur rapport chronologique approximatif’ (Le poète, p. 274). 34

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This work is intended as an aid to literary scholars, indeed to all readers interested in the development of the poet’s art and in the process of that of other poets. A more narrow scholarly reason for undertaking this study would be that understanding how a manuscript comes to be what it is today always teaches us things useful in studying other manuscripts. Though it is a unique document in many important ways, in others it dovetails with numbers of other manuscripts: as a manuscript made for a nobleman, as one that contains work from the owner’s pen, as a lyric collection in a variety of forms, as a manuscript that was filled slowly over a long span of years, as a ‘container’ for script and decoration from two traditions, the French and the English — and the list could be extended. Nor is that all. The manuscript can tell us something about the poet’s inner life — by which I do not mean his biography, and especially not his supposed love life.35 What we can see is something of the poet’s attitudes towards both his own work and that of others. We can trace the evolution of ‘his book’ and see in it something of his changing attitude towards poetry and towards what a poet is. What is unique is that though Charles was a serious artist — indeed one of France’s finest lyric poets — he came in his later life to invite others (I count more than forty in all), not all of them worthy of the name poet, to present their poetry without distinction in his album, and it is certain that many of them copied their own lyrics into the Duke’s book. It also tells us something about the man behind the collection, a social man who yet strikes all who read his work as one capable of great solitude, a man who ‘saw’ people who were not of his exalted social rank, who must have encouraged the less talented around him both to compose and to record their writings in his book, who rejoiced in the life of his small, relatively informal court as much as he seemed to detest the ‘courtliness’ of his more flamboyant (and wealthy) noble contemporaries. In the rarefied world of France’s highest elite, this is an astonishingly ‘democratic’ approach to collecting that gives us a kind of poetic snapshot of the court at Blois that is surely unique. Nancy Regalado writes, ‘A Blois la poésie est un passetemps pour tous. Elle est fondée sur une fiction d’égalité communautaire, d’une communion lyrique autour du coeur, d’échanges sans hiérarchie de rang ou de classe, bien qu’en fait tous les échanges lyriques partent du duc ou se dirigent vers lui’.36 This is not to say that anyone ever forgot who Monseigneur was. Words like 35

‘Il y a un rapport entre les images de l’allégorie et la vie du prince. Mais on ne peut simplement tourner les pages de son manuscrit pour retrouver sa secrète histoire’ (Le poète, p. 285). 36

Nancy Freeman Regalado, ‘En ce saint livre: mise en page et identité lyrique dans les poemes autographes de Villon dans l’album de Blois (Bibl. Nat. MS. FR . 25458)’, in L’Hostellerie de pensée: études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poirion par ses anciens élèves, ed. by Michel Zink

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‘democratic’ and ‘égalité communautaire’ are used in an extremely relative sense here. Jane H. M. Taylor writes that these miscellaneous manuscripts are not manuscripts for readers so much as manuscripts for the poets themselves — manuscripts which represent event: they are, that is, manuscripts which foreground, and confirm, social bonds by means of literary production and transmission; they are a record of socially restricted literary communication whose function is to signify class and kinship ties, or to acknowledge shared poetic tastes. What they present therefore is the social embeddedness of verse: as visibly the products of princely and aristocratic courts of the fifteenth century, they encode social relations via the games — dialogue, courtship, competition — which flourish in that environment. We need to reread these collections capaciously, inclusively, alert to the ways in which the ‘star’ poets emerge from a manuscript environment especially receptive to occasional verse, and to the ways in which they participate in a wider literary institution, reinforcing a particular circle’s ownership of the poetic texts it has produced.37

This study will, then, fall into three unequal parts, the first being a modern description of the manuscript as we have it. In the second (and longest) part, I will present my observations of the manuscript divided into four chapters in accord with the four stints or layers of copying that Champion observed. Where possible, I will extend the descriptions he offered, laying out my own step-by-step explanations of how the manuscript contents evolved (together with some ‘picture’ of the state of the manuscript at each successive point in its development). This presentation of the data will lead into the third part, a chapter on the implications of the new material presented, where I will offer some interpretation of the data I have gathered. The discussion will of necessity be complex and technical at times, but my aim is to make it comprehensible to a reader uninterested in the fine points of the manuscript’s makeup.38 and Danielle Regnier-Bohler (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 355–72 (p. 361); see also p. 369 on François Villon’s ‘transgression’ of this fiction with his panegyric. 37

Jane H. M. Taylor, ‘Courtly Gatherings and Poetic Games: “Coterie” Anthologies in the Late Middle Ages in France’, in Book and Text in France, 1400–1600: Poetry on the Page, ed. by Adrian Armstrong and Malcolm Quainton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 13–29 (p. 15). For another perspective on a nobleman’s court of this period, see Ralph Hanna III, ‘Sir Thomas Berkeley and his Patronage’, Speculum, 64 (1989), 878–916 (pp. 914–15). 38

I refer throughout to lyrics by their manuscript page numbers (using supra and infra to indicate parts of a page) or their incipits, being unwilling to link this work solely to Champion’s numbering, which will be outdated when another edition of the work appears (as was Champion’s use of Guichard’s numbering when he brought out his own edition). A few arguments by various scholars that are of some importance but are not essential to my main argument can be found in the Appendix.

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The four stints or layers (Champion’s campaigns) of copying are spread over a quarter of a century, from the late 1430s (as I see it) to the early 1460s. If Champion is right that ‘ce manuscrit nous représente donc la dernière pensée du poète, le classement définitif de ses compositions poétiques’,39 then it is of the utmost importance to analyse its makeup correctly if we wish to understand the development of the poet’s art or to make some approximate guesses as to when one or another of the poems was composed. The makeup of the manuscript can also tell us something of the Duke’s aesthetic, his attitude towards his various compositions, his strategies in organizing his work, and something of what he thought of it, both in prospect and in retrospect. Some of these will perforce be matters of speculation, but it will be speculation grounded in the facts as we know them.

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escriptions of manuscripts have, in recent years, grown longer and longer as those who study manuscripts attempt to organize and present material that will be helpful to others. Pierre Champion’s description of BnF, MS fr. 25458, by contrast, was cursory, even for its day. Because of the nature of this particular manuscript and the identity of its owner, a full description of it will be useful to scholars working in a number of disciplines. As extensive as this description may seem, I am certain that there is more information to be gleaned from the manuscript — enough to keep scholars busy long into the future. For a schematic representation of the makeup of the manuscript in its current state, see Table 1.1 Charles d’Orléans, French poems c. 1439–c. 1465, fols 1r–300v . Ou temps passe quant nature me fist / . . . / Gardez vous bien de ce fauveau.2 A collection of fixed-form and narrative verse by Charles de Valois, duc d’Orléans, interspersed with lyrics by poets known to him, on the subject of secular love and several other matters. 299 leaves, fols iv + 295; pp. viij + 1–159 + xxxviij + 160–537 + xv.3 The initial quire, which is blank except for an unused (and here 1

A certain amount of anomalous material is elided in the tables for the sake of visual simplicity. The particulars are detailed in the text. 2 On the early date of 1439, see below. This manuscript may be item 65 in Champion’s list of the inventory of the Duke’s books on his return to France in 1440 (La librairie, p. xxix; printed in de Laborde, #6564: ‘Plusieurs kaieres de parchemin, nouvellement escripts et enluminez, apportez d’Angleterre, qui ne sont point reliez’), for which see Stirnemann, p. 181. See also Ouy, ‘Charles d’Orléans and his Brother’, p. 49. 3

Patricia Stirnemann (p. 180) apparently does not include the unnumbered blank leaves in the middle of the manuscript in her tally, nor does Pierre Champion, when he counts only 217 folios

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unneeded) ruling that differs from all others in this book (particularly in not allowing for the correct number of lines per page), will therefore in all probability not have been prepared for it, and so should be accepted as a binding quire.4 The final quire has text on its first leaf and is therefore (with its conjugate and the three intervening bifolia) an integral part of the text volume. (It is, besides, an eight, the normal size for this manuscript, whereas the binding quire at the front is a four.) The three blank quires in the middle (L, M, N) have the batch-2 ruling (see Table 2), which makes it most unlikely that they were ever intended as pre- or postliminary leaves. Modern pagination, with most blank leaves unnumbered, predates the eighteenth-century binding.5 Vellum.6 Thirty-one lines per page. Collation: ð4 A–K8 L–N6 O–P8 Q6 R–PP8 (-EE6).7 Binding threads are visible in all quires except G. 165 x 120 mm; written space c. 125 x 82 mm.8

(Autographe, p. 13). Although his work is admirably accurate, J. P. M. Jansen’s collation is incorrect insofar as, misled by the BnF’s incomplete microfilm and the manuscript’s gaps in pagination, he omits ð and reads L8 for what is in fact L–N6 (‘The “Suffolk” Poems: An Edition of the Love Lyrics in Fairfax 16 Attributed to William de la Pole’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Groningen, 1989), pp. 8–9). I made a similar mistake in my description of the manuscript in my own article ‘Two Manuscripts, One Mind’, p. 63. 4

If it were provable that it is of the same date as those following it, this might possibly be otherwise, but it was probably added after the copying of the manuscript was underway and perhaps after it had been completed. 5 The fact that some of the page numbers are cropped suggests this, though the book was probably cropped again, perhaps when the binding was restored. The person who cropped or had cropped p. 169, cutting off most of the name ‘Berthault de Villebresme’, must be the same person who wrote the name at the new top edge of the leaf, as too little of the name remains to read. This eighteenth-century hand adds names in the same way elsewhere in the manuscript, corrects limning errors, writes difficult-to-read words in the margin, and makes other minor corrections throughout. Champion (Autographe, p. 13) is mistaken when he states that the same hand that wrote ‘Lavall 193’ at the beginning of the manuscript also paginated it, as comparison of the number 9 in the two hands makes clear. In addition to the pagination, individual lyrics are numbered in red crayon in a modern hand. A series of faint roman numerals in the margins could be for payment of a scribe or limner. 6 Vellum is of good quality throughout, though that of the last four quires (MM–PP) is stiffer and thicker than the rest (though just as white). 7 8

No stub is visible in quire EE; the missing leaf is located by the gap in the Duke’s numbering.

The lower margin seems to have been trimmed (if at all) much less than the outer and top margins. If we imagine a leaf with nearly identical margins on all three sides (which, judging from the decoration, would be adequate), the original manuscript might have measured something like 195 x 130 mm, but Gumbert’s ratio of length to width at 0.71 would make something like 195 x

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Pricking and Ruling Pricking has generally fallen under the binder’s knife, but it is found in two parts of the manuscript, in the first leaf of the inserted (second) ruling batch (quire I, p. 129) and in the last batch of vellum (in the last leaf of MM, pp. 503–04 (but not 489–90) and in the two outer bifolia of NN, pp. 505–08 and 517–20). The pricking in I is within the bounding line, about 26 mm from the present outer edge of the leaf; that in NN is at the very outer edge of the leaves.9 The ruling standard throughout is thirty-one lines (thirty in ð), the top line not written on. Ruling is in shades of red ink. The manuscript shows four different systems of ruling: in all four the vertical bounding rules go right down the page and the top horizontal rule goes right across the page.10 In all four systems the line initials have a space reserved by further vertical ruling (see Table 2).11 (1) The first system is found in the eighteen quires 1–8 (A–H) and 16–25 (Q–BB), the former containing mostly the work of the first scribe and the first limner, and the latter containing mostly the work of the first scribe and limner, as well as the second scribe and second limner on the lower portion of leaves (the upper portions of many leaves being filled later with other lyrics). This ruling is double and goes right down the page, while horizontal rules 1, 2, 30, and 31 carry right across it. (2) In the second system, found in the sixteen quires 10–16 (I–P) and 27–35 (CC–LL), the double rules that follow the initials do not extend much beyond the text area, and horizontal rules 2, 30, and 31 remain within the ruling frame. (Lyrics sometimes continue into the lower margin, as on p. 326.)

138 mm more likely (‘Sizes and Formats’, in Ancient and Medieval Book Materials and Techniques, ed. by Marilena Maniaci and Paola F. Munafò, Studi e Testi, 357–58 (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1993), I, 227–63 (p. 233)). 9

Quire N, pp. 505–06, 507–08, 517–18, 519–20.

10

It was Johan Gerritsen who first noticed the differences in ruling pattern (on film, no less) in different parts of the manuscript and brought the fact to my attention. That discovery has had a profound impact on the amount of information we can extract from the physical manuscript about the history of its composition, and I am grateful for his sharp eyesight and scholarly generosity. 11

See Albert Derolez, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), where he notes that through lines are slightly old fashioned at this point (p. 38).

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(3) The third system, found in the final four quires (MM–PP), is the same as the second except that the single rules that precede and follow the initials run the whole length of the leaf. (4) The initial quire of four ruled but blank leaves (ð), probably a binding quire, has a double rule inside the vertical bounding rule on the left side, the horizontal bounding rule at the top is single, and the bottom rule stays within the vertical bounding rules (hffhhffh).

Scribes and Hands Written in various, mostly cursive, French hands of the fifteenth century, usually in black ink. The entire manuscript is virtually unpunctuated, and abbreviations are rare. The first hand is a very regular cursive gothic book script (see frontispiece).12 The second most frequent hand is that of the Duke himself. Champion lists eightyone entire lyrics in his hand (though a few of them should be re-evaluated), and there are numerous corrections, headings, and numberings in his hand as well.13 The remainder of the leaves are filled with work of a variety of French scribes (or scribal authors), nearly all working in very short stints (often writing only a single lyric) and in no apparent pattern. Virtually all are French and of the period of the Duke’s life post-1440. Only a few are truly distinctive, most sharing letter forms and shapes common to northern French hands of the period. Comments on some of the hands of individual scribes will be taken up in the course of the exposition. Scribe 1 J. P. Gumbert, following and building on G. I. Lieftinck’s sytem of categorizing hands, designates the script with single-compartment a, long s, and looped l such

12

See Derolez, Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books, pp. 130–32 and 163–64. This scribe places his letters above, rather than on, the line (ibid., p. 39). Jacques Stiennon would have designated the work of the first scribe, which is coextensive with that of Limner 1, by the older paleographic term, a ‘bâtarde’ of the ‘lettre de forme des ducs de Bourgogne’ type (Paléographie du Moyen Âge (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973), pp. 120–21). In her 1987 description, Patricia Stirnemann identified the scribe as English but has more recently said that he is clearly French. 13

Autographe, pp. 9–11. Corrections are sometimes extensive, as in lines 8–11 of the rondel on p. 365.

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as the first scribe writes C or Cursiva.14 The hand of Scribe 1 is very regular and cursive, with generally broad strokes and few hairstrokes. It is generally upright and rounded, disciplined, and easy to read. The first scribe’s descenders are generally quite short (except for the last line of the page). The p begins sometimes at or near the baseline with a clockwise onstroke, and the stroke that makes the bowl sometimes crosses the descender (see Figure 1, p. 117, line 9 and 4 lines from the bottom). The letter r takes one of two forms: the 2-shaped r or a Textualis r with a hairline that travels up to meet the second stroke, sometimes giving it a v-shaped appearance (e.g. 55, 58, p. 149). The d takes various forms (see Figure 2, p. 119, lines 1, 8, 13). The onstroke of the letter v usually begins high and to the left of the letter, but occasionally the scribe uses an offstroke that begins at the top of the onstroke and moves to the right (Figure 2, p. 119, lines 2, 5). In this form of v a spur is visible somewhat to the left near the baseline, making the letter look a bit like b (Figure 2, p. 119, 4 lines from the bottom). The et sign takes the form of a z encircled by a counterclockwise hairstroke. In addition to long ascenders and descenders at the top and bottom of the page, the scribe often exaggerates the tails of y, x, or r at the ends of lines (see Figure 3, p. 244; Figure 1, p. 117). On some leaves the first scribe adds tall ascenders to the text of the first line, and to the last sometimes graceful descenders; while l goes straight up with a ‘tail’ that abruptly descends nearly to the body of the letter, the f or s may ‘fly’ far to the right in a wide shallow curve (this may occur at line ends in the midst of a lyric, as well; see Figure 3, p. 244). He occasionally embellishes his ascenders with strapwork (Figure 4, p. 101). This scribe writes exclusively on vellum ruled in the first of the three batches that contain text (he probably did the ruling himself), and his work is limned exclusively by the first limner, with graceful pen flourishing. A rubricator (if it was not the scribe or limner) adds yellow to the half fleurs-de-lis (sometimes with label) drawn on some ascenders to suggest the Duke’s coat of arms and touches the majuscules beginning each line with the same colour (Figure 5, p. 81).15

14

Peter Gumbert, ‘A Proposal for a Cartesian Nomenclature’, in Essays Presented to G. I. Lieftinck, ed. by J. P. Gumbert and M. J. M. de Haan, 4 vols, Litterae Textuales (Amsterdam: A. L. van Gendt, 1972–76), vol. IV : Miniatures, Scripts, Collections (1976), pp. 45–52. Gumbert follows Lieftinck in describing hands according to this ‘Cartesian’ system. 15

These demi-fleurs-de-lis can be found on pp. 74, 80, 81, 82, 192 (on the last l of ‘Trois fleurs de lis’), 207, 218 (which the rubricator missed), and 304 (two of them). Such demi-fleurs-de-lis are common in Charles V manuscripts. They appear in line fillers and border decorations, sometimes in blue and gold or blue and red. They can be found (in borders rather than on ascenders) in the

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Scribe 2 Scribe 2, whose work is limned by Limner 2, writes a similar but less graceful Cursiva. The first scribe shares with the second a number of letter forms, though the aspect of the two hands differs significantly. The two scribes share the doublelooped form of d (though both employ a recurved ascender at times in the top line of a lyric and Scribe 2 also uses a single-looped form: cf. Scribe 1, Figure 6, p. 279, and Scribe 2, Figure 7, p. 284), the g with a top stroke across two uprights, and the r that resembles the modern typographical form. The first stroke of p, however, Scribe 1 makes in the shape of a graceful closing parenthesis (sometimes beginning below the line so far as to make a nearly complete oval, as on p. 259), whereas Scribe 2 uses a heavier line that begins slightly to the left of a simple downstroke. The abbreviation for etc. of Scribe 1 is generally composed of the tironian note followed by c, the former being finished with a stroke beginning from the lower right that curls up to circle the nota; the upper stroke of c curls up to the right, sometimes resulting in a small circle. Scribe 2’s flourish on the c of etc. is more extravagant than that of Scribe 1. Scribe 2’s flourish begins from the upper right, curls up to the right, then turns down to cross itself and go far below the line, then rises to produce a nearly complete circle (see Figure 8). Corrections, which are few, are by erasure and rewriting.16 The hand of Scribe 2 is smaller and a bit spikier, with more space between letters, which do not always connect with others. Both of these scribes share the late medieval tendency to make their final s spiky. Following the work of these two scribes, no correlation exists between the work of scribes and limners or painters of red and blue initials.

Hours of Isabelle de France (?), London, British Library, Additional MS 15420, fol. 52v (see Lilian Randall, ‘To Have and to Hold: The Bridal Hours of Isabelle de Coucy’, in Tributes in Honor of James H. Marrow: Studies in Painting and Manuscript Illumination of the Late Middle Ages and Northern Renaissance (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 395–404 (p. 403, fig. 5), where she writes that the Bridal Hours are closely related to the de Coucy Hours) and in a text of the Somnium viridarii in Cambridge, MA, Houghton Library, MS Typ 127, fol. 3v (see Jenny Stratford, ‘The Illustration of the Songe du Vergier and Some Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts’, in Patrons, Authors and Workshops: Books and Book Production in Paris around 1400, ed. by Godfried Croenen and Peter Ainsworth (Leuven: Peeters, 2006), pp. 473–88 (p. 485, fig. 81). Those in Charles’s would seem to be a very late example of the motif. I am very grateful for Lilian Randall’s readiness to point the way when I needed it. 16

The scribe’s and limner’s work is not coextensive with the vellum, i.e. the work of both ceases (by design, in quire AA) before the leaves of the first batch of ruled vellum (ending with BB) are filled.

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Figure 1. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 117. Scribe 1, letter.

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Figure 2. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 119. Scribe 1, ballade (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·72·).

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Figure 3. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 244. Scribe 1, one initial missing, chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·1]0·).

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Figure 4. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 101. Scribe 1, strapwork, narrative.

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Figure 5. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 81. Scribe 1, demi-fleur-de-lis on ascender, ballades.

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Figure 6. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 279. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-1 chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·41·).

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Figure 7. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 284. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: chanson, Scribe 2/Limner 2 (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·5]4·).

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Figure 8. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 475. Supra/infra: stint 3, directors inside lombard initials.

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The Poet’s Hand The poet’s own (hybrida) hand is evident throughout the remainder of the manuscript, sometimes in corrections, sometimes in headings, sometimes through entire lyrics, and it changes very little over the course of his lifetime. Charles writes a rather small, neat, compact hand,17 which on the page looks distinctively round in comparison to the other hands in the manuscript, with more space between the bodies of the letters (Figure 9, p. 122). The letters are rounded and upright rather than slanted, giving it a markedly different appearance than other hands in the manuscript. He eschews flourishes but uses more abbreviations than most of the scribes in this manuscript. He uses both the 2-shape of r and a rather characteristic backward-slanted r18 and a single-compartment a. His sign for etc. consists of an unflourished tironian et, followed by a c with a brevigraph similar to a looped l.19

Decoration and Limning The recto of the first written folio (p. 1), with its full border and large initial O,20 is the only highly decorated page in the manuscript (see frontispiece). Within the pink/blue initial O formed of acanthus leaves on a gold ground is the Duke’s coat of arms (azure, three gold fleurs-de-lis, a label of three points sable).21 Clockwise beginning at the top centre of the page, in the border are the torso of a small blue figure with arms outstretched emerging from a vegetal form like a gold flower;22 in 17 Not unlike that of his childhood teacher, Nicole Garbet, as Gilbert Ouy has many times said, both in print and in person. 18

Derolez, Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books, 164.6 and 145.24.

19

A thorough paleographical study of this manuscript would be impossible in a study of this size, because of the dozens of hands in it, a number of them found only in single lyrics. I shall therefore reserve (brief) comments on any individual hands to the sections on stints 2 through 4. 20

The scribe allots five lines for the initial; the limner paints an initial at least seven lines high by extending up and to the left. The appropriateness of the O surrounding the Orléans coat of arms cannot be accidental. 21 One of the poet’s early editors suggests that the opening page, unlike that of Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 1104, with ‘les armes d’Orléans et de Milan qui indiquaient un livre destiné à la famille du duc d’Orléans’, that of BnF, MS fr. 25458 contains ‘un seul écusson, aux armes du prince, et qui lui donne un caractère plus personnel’ (Charles d’Héricault, Poésies compléte de Charles d’Orléans, 2 vols (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1874), II, 288). 22

Champion referred to this figure as an angelot, but it has no wings, though the colour blue might suggest a cherub. It grasps a pink vine with its right hand. Its dot-like eyes are similar to those

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the right margin a standing figure in a blue robe wearing a strangely shaped ?halo and holding a harp or lyre,23 perhaps a reference to the poetry to follow; in the lower margin, two flying angels in blue hold up a helm with blue mantling surmounted by a crest of a gold fleur-de-lis;24 in the left margin, a blue pedestal vase or urn with acanthus, around the widest part of which is painted a finely written text, now unreadable.25 The entire border is strikingly blue. The page is badly rubbed, as is the verso, making the quality of the decoration difficult to estimate. It already showed significant dirt and wear when Champollion-Figeac saw it over a century and a half ago.26 The limning of the text underlines the structure of the poems that follow. The first limner, who added initials (champes) in gold on a blue ground touched with white, with graceful spray work, may or may not have been the same person who painted this opening page.27 In addition to the opening narrative section, he (or

in the figures in the decoration of BnF, MS lat. 1196, the Duke’s illuminated prayer book, but there is not enough evidence to make even a tentative association between the two artists. In the upper right margin, a tiny figure that suggests a ladybug is drawn in ink; a creature that also shows up in the margins of BnF, MS lat. 1196, but also in many other manuscripts. 23 Champion thought the figure ‘une figure féminine sans doute’ (Autographe, p. 14), but it is unclear to me what its gender is. The figure’s head seems to wear a tall oval of gold for a halo, but a much larger, quite round, area of colour (brown) seems to lie behind both head and ‘halo’; what is more, this brown area seems to contain an overall pattern of small red strokes, rather like a depiction of fur (despite the colour). If the brown area is meant to represent wings, it is still unclear what the gold behind the figure’s head is meant to represent. 24

Champion saw both a ducal coronet that I cannot see and a coat of arms that is certainly not there (Autographe, p. 14). 25

An A and an H are all that is readable, and I may even be mistaken in those. Such objects with text are not at all unusual; see, for example, the opening page of Margaret of York’s devotional manual, in which a ‘planter’ bears her motto and the initials of her husband, Charles the Bold: Andrea G. Pearson, ‘Gendered Subject, Gendered Spectator: Mary Magdalen in the Gaze of Margaret of York’, Gesta, 44 (2005), 47–66 (p. 48). 26 ‘La bordure de la première page est presque entièrement effacée’ (Les poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans publiées sur le manuscrit original de la Bibliothèque de Grenoble conféré avec ceux de Paris et de Londres, ed. by Aimé Champollion-Figeac (Paris: J. Belin-Leprieur et Colomb de Batines, 1842), p. xxxviii). Champion writes that the foliage is ‘malheureusement très abîmés par le frottement’ (Autographe, p. 14). 27

For all the terminology of initial making, see Kathleen L. Scott, ‘Limning and BookProducing Terms and Signs in situ in Late-Medieval English Manuscripts: A First Listing’, in New Science Out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), pp. 145–47.

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Figure 9. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 122. Ballade, Limner 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·7]4·).

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she) limned some of the lyrics in each form (ballades, complaintes, caroles, chansons), except for the rondels, which the poet began to compose only after the first limner had ceased to work. The champe is unendented more often than not, the four edges of the painted letter bowing slightly inward.28 Sometimes the lower left corner of the ground is extended down and to the left, almost forming a second, smaller square (Figure 6, p. 279). Springing from these two-line initials are feathering ends in pointed, gold trefoils, ears of wheat, or gold balls (from all of which filaments, beginning from a squiggle touched in green, may extend outward); secondary filaments terminate in small lobes touched in green.29 Smaller one-line flourished initials alternate between gold with sometimes fine blue pen flourishing and blue with red pen flourishing. From them, tendrils sprout into the left margin (sometimes, if sitting on the last line of the page, into the bottom margin), sometimes horizonally, occasionally diagonally, and sometimes vertically, ending in graceful and more or less extravagant curls. At their best, they are quite free and very decorative. One-line flourished initials are surrounded by boxes, each side of which is made with three or more penstrokes, the outermost scalloped (from it one or two tendrils may curl out into the margin).30 Most poems have headings (‘Chancon’, ‘Balade’, etc.), which are limned in the same style as the smaller initials. The Duke was apparently lavish with his commission; some chansons copied in the course of the first stint have five or more one-line initials per lyric (see Figure 6, p. 279). Patricia Stirnemann describes this style of decoration as ‘typiquement anglais’.31

28

When initials are endented, they are usually symmetrical (i.e. endented on all four sides). For the term ‘endented’, see Scott, ‘Limning and Book-Producing Terms and Signs’, p. 150. 29

See Stirnemann, plate 98. New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M 775, containing, among other texts, Christine de Pizan’s Epistle of Othea as translated by Stephen Scrope (and ed. by Curt F. Bühler, EETS, o.s., 264 (London: Oxford University Press, for the Early English Text Society, 1970)), is limned (in the mid-fifteenth century) in a similar style (see recto of foldout frontispiece). For examples of spray work that are similar to that of Limner 1, see Kathleen L. Scott, Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders, c. 1395–1499 (London: The Bibliographical Society and The British Library, 2002), plates X–XIV (1421–35). 30

For a similar style, see Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 253, in Scott, ‘Limning and Book-Producing Terms and Signs’, p. 175, plate 23. 31

As Patricia Stirnemann has noted, the limner of the ballade on p. 224 (whom she identifies as Scribe 1) uses gold balls in place of the vegetal forms seen thus far: ‘La pièce [. . .] est écrite par le scribe du fonds primitif mais sa lettre champie et ses initiales filigranées, quoiqu’anglaises, sont d’un style et d’une coloration légèrement différents, ce qui induit à croire que la ballade fut copiée dans le manuscrit en Angleterre peu de temps avant le départ du duc’ (Stirnemann, p. 181; see also Ballades et rondeaux, ed. by Mühlethaler, p. 25). This style of limning, anomalous in this

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Limner 2 worked on the manuscript very briefly, limning only the six chansons copied by Scribe 2 (in Quire Y). This limning style is distinctive and easily identifiable (see Figure 7, p. 284). The endented initial of the opening line of each lyric is notched in the middle of the left side and directly to the left of it is a quatrefoil from which the sprays spring, ending in wheat ears. The feathering has a nervous, wiggly quality, and tiny circles float in the interstices between the main stem and tendrils. The penwork is if anything even more distinctive. The box surrounding the one-line initials is made up of no more than two strokes per side. To the left a curl in the shape of a stylized bass clef contains within its curve a tendril flanked by the same floating circles. A smaller C-shaped stroke in the opposite direction lies atop the enclosing box, and around the box and between its strokes are more small circles. The penwork on the initial letters of the headings is particularly elaborate and painstaking. The similarity in style between the penwork of the one-line initials and the feathering on the champes suggests that perhaps one initialer was responsible for both. Kathleen Scott has identified this limner as not English.32 He or she was almost certainly Flemish. This means that the Duke might have employed a Fleming living and working in London or he may have employed one of Burgundy’s limners (as well as one of his scribes, perhaps) in the closing weeks of 1440.33 manuscript, can be found in earlier manuscripts (e.g. Scott, Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders, plates VII–IX, 1408–16). 32

Private correspondence, March 2003. Kathleen Scott has been endlessly patient with this non-art historian, answering questions, describing manuscript features, and clarifying art-historical terms, for which I am most grateful. 33

See in Manuscrits datés conservés en Belgique: manuscrits conservés à la Bibliothèque royale Albert Ier, Bruxelles, ed. by François Masai, Martin Wittek, and Albert Brounts (Brussels: Éditions Scientifiques E. Story-Scientia, 1972–78), esp. vol. II: 1401–40, #143, plate 276 (a Flemish compilation of pseudo-Bonaventure and Ludolphe de Saxony, copied, by the way, by a woman, dated 1422), and #189, plate 361 (a copy of a French version of the Consolation de la philosophie, dated 1435), as well as vol. III: 1441–60, #312, plate 565 (a treatise on consolation translated and copied by Jean Miélot, dated 1451). Such work is found readily (and the style is long lived) among scribes of the Low Countries. See also, for example, the penwork in the manuscript of Marie de Clèves’s older sister, Catherine (The Hours of Catherine of Cleves, facsimile, introduction, and commentaries by John Plummer (New York: George Braziller, [n.d.]), #159, c. 1440), and that in a later text by Geert Grote (New York, New York Public Library, Spencer MS 152, fol. 143r , in The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library, ed. by Jonathan J. G. Alexander, James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler, with Elizabeth Moodey and Todor T. Petev (New York: New York Public Library; Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2005), #68, p. 306, c. 1465). Female scribes were employed in the copying of manuscripts in the late Middle Ages (Yvonne de la Motte copied a number of texts for Marie de Clèves). The reader should assume that possibility throughout this study.

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The third limner, who is Continental (and presumably working in France, see below), uses only gold initials on a red and blue background, the red (inside the initial) and blue (outside) alternating. He or she uses a simpler and clumsier version of vegetal forms in his feathering than either Limner 1 or Limner 2.34 The sprays are shorter and more awkwardly drawn. When he (or she) begins limning the first ballade of the second stint (copied in the poet’s hand), the forms are more leaf-like than are his predecessors’, pinnate on a single stalk (Figure 9, p. 122). Although the feathering usually sprouts from the corners of the larger initials, in the manner of the first limner, sometimes they sprout from a point at the center of the left side of the initial, as do those of Limner 2.35 He seems to experiment as he proceeds, at first touching the lobes of sprays with red and blue,36 then adding little corkscrew forms between the leaves, sometimes using a pinwheel just to the left of the initial. This limner is sometimes afforded the space to limn five initials of a chanson (see Figure 10, p. 329); at other times, as few as the single large initial (see Figure 11, p. 325). Sometimes the limner seems not to have filled space left for one-line initials (see Figure 12, p. 372). There seems to be no particular pattern to the irregularity, and this kind of variation carries on through the rest of the manuscript. The pen flourishing of the one-line initials in this stint, which varies from a rather delicate and lively form (p. 225i) to heavier and clumsier forms (e.g. on p. 341i), seems to be modelled on that of the first limner (or is at least of that style), for the flourisher draws a larger form of the scallops with which Limner 1 edged the (double) box surrounding the one-line initial. Later at least two (perhaps more) people added to many of the lyrics alternating plain red and blue initials, sometimes called lombards, without any sprays or pen flourishing (see Figure 8, p. 475; see below, chapter 4).37 One or other of these artisans seems to have gone back over the work of Limner 3 to fill in many initials that were skipped during the second layer of production (see Figure 12, p. 372i, lines 5, 7, and 12). Some may have been added by the scribes of individual or 34

Champion describes his first initial, on p. 122, as ‘très médiocre’ (Autographe, p. 20).

35

His champe on p. 335, for example, looks to my eyes like an attempt to imitate the work of Limner 2. 36

To the lobes on p. 225 (the first of the Balades de plusieurs propos falling into the second stint), he adds red; to those on p. 227, red and blue; on p. 228, blue; and on p. 229, red and blue. These are the only places he does this. 37

Following Kathleen Scott’s reservation of the word ‘limner’ for someone who works with both gold and paint, I shall describe these artisans who painted red and blue initials (commonly called lombards) as ‘initialers’.

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Figure 10. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 329. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: Scribe 2/ Limner 2 chanson (autograph), headings ‘switched’ (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·82·).

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Figure 11. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 325. Limner 3, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s nos. ·75· and ·76·).

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Figure 12. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 372. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-2 rondel (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·1]022·).

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groups of lyrics, but a run of double-sized initials in the third stint suggests that these, at least, were added by a single initial maker. Finally, some lyrics are either uninitialed (i.e. the initial was planned for but never added, see Figures 13, p. 148, and 14, p. 535) or written without allowance for any decoration (i.e. provided with scribal majuscules, see Figure 15, p. 322i). Directors (guide letters) are visible sporadically throughout the manuscript (except in those lyrics for which the copyist has provided his own majuscules), indicating that the poet intended the decoration to be continued from layer to layer of copying. Some copyists placed their directors in the left margin (Figure 13, p. 148); others in the space reserved for the letter (see Figure 14, p. 535). Some left space for initials but did not provide some or all of the directors (though it is possible that in some cases they were trimmed off). The many errors in the initials of the third stint seem to be at least in part due to the lack of directors.38 It is interesting that the poet never seems to have made any effort to correct these or have them corrected.

Numbering The poet numbered many of his poems, in two series.39 Each number is placed between centered dots: ballades [·1·]–·107·; chansons and rondels in a single series, [·1·]–[·164·].40 The numbers were entered near the end of stint 2 or at the very beginning of the third stint (see below). Where he was numbering ballades already written on the page, he placed the number at or very near the first line of the poem (e.g. ballades numbered ·46· to ·74·, see Figure 9), whereas he placed it in the upper, outer corner of pages still blank (Figure 16, p. 338). He appears to have numbered the ballades at one go. His numbering of the shorter lyrics was not so simple (see chapter 5) and may have been done in two or more stints. An extra digit appears 38

Except for two errors by the first limner (pp. 244 and 248, among the earliest chansons), these are the only mistakes in initial-making in the manuscript. They occur in the work of the first (small) lombard maker working during the third stint (pp. 298s, 335s, 359s, 364s, 365s, 375s (3 errors), 385s, 397i, 401i, 404i, and 409s (4 errors)) and that of the painter of large lombards (pp. 419i, 421i, 422i, 431i, 436i, 437s, 440s, 461s, and 468i (2 errors)). As we do not know how many hands were involved in the making of the small initials, all we can conclude about the errors on pp. 134, 136, 138 (all ballades), and 188 (a complainte) is that they were not made by the painter of the large red and blue initials. 39 40

See Autographe, pp. 11 and 31.

See, e.g., Figures 2 and 11. The numbering ends long before the end of the rondels. In this analysis, the Duke’s numbers will always appear between dots, as they do in the manuscript.

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Figure 13. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 148. Supra/infra: stint-4 rondels, directors in left margin.

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Figure 14. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 535. Supra: stint-4 rondel, directors, final lyric by the poet.

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Figure 15. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 322. Supra: Limner 3/stint-2 rondel; infra: stint-2 rondel undecorated (Charles d’Orléans’s nos. ·70· and [·7]1·).

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Figure 16. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 338. Autograph, upper lyric mislabeled, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·9]1·).

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in his numbering of short lyrics after ·109· and continues until the numbering stops altogether (·1010·–·1064·, see Figure 12, p. 372). If he noticed the error, he made no attempt to correct it. A second set of numbers is pagination in an early modern hand, which I will use throughout this study, usually followed by a point. These numbers are generally correct, with these exceptions: one blank page following p. 158 (K8v ) is unnumbered, as are three quires in 6s (L, M, N) and another blank page preceding p. 160 (quire P1r). Pages 305 (or perhaps 304, from which the first digit is cropped, as it is on p. 306) through 307 are numbered 205 through 207. Pages 327 through 339 were first misnumbered, then corrected. Page 327 is written over the first error, 237. Erroneous numbers are overwritten as far as p. 330, where the correct number is written beside the crossed-out erroneous number (330 next to 240). This continues as far as p. 339, where the correct numbering takes over with 340 (AA7r–BB5r). A third set of large numbers, in modern red crayon and followed by a centered dot, number the individual lyrics, usually under, over, or to the right of the heading, if there is one. These numbers are ignored here.

Marginalia In addition to these numberings, the manuscript contains, opposite the first line of many lyrics, a letter f (more than 250 of them between pp. 252 and 435; see, for example, Figures 3, 10, 12, 14, and 17), and/or a letter o (about 130 of them between pp. 252 and 530; see, for example, Figures 10, 11, and 12). The letter f also appears in similar position in two manuscripts copied from this one: Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, MS 375 and BnF, MS fr. 1104 (see below for further information on both). Champion determined that these were signs of collation and stood for fait, i.e. copied.41 If the o served the same function (though what it stands for is unclear), it may represent collation with a manuscript other than these. In addition, there is a + sign to be seen on about fifty pages, sometimes in the upper margin, sometimes in lateral margins. These are found not only in the later quires, where they may or may not correlate with fs or os, but in the very first quire, in fact to the right of line 8 on the very first page of the manuscript (see frontispiece and Figure 9), the last one appearing in the upper margin of p. 496. Those between pp. 262 and 273 (quires V and X) appear to be entered in the same ink as the Duke’s numbers, and so may represent yet another collation of some sort. The 41

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Figure 17. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 354. Supra: stint-3 rondel in Latin (autograph), f at first line; infra: recto partially finished by Limner 3/stint 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·]104·).

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letters afe appear in the left margins of pp. 319 (upper margin), 341i, 434i, 435i, 436s (Figure 18), and 439i. Their significance is uncertain, as is that of a few faint roman numerals (perhaps records relating to payment) that appear on six pages opposite the first line of text.42 No quire signatures are visible. Catchwords in quires B–G, R, T, and X, centred at the bottom of the page in pale ink, were clearly meant to be trimmed; they are all the work of Scribe 1. Final sides of a number of quires are left blank.43 In quire C it seems as if the second and third bifolia in the quire (of 8) were reversed between the time they were copied and the time the Duke numbered the poems (probably in the mid-1440s). In his first numbering (of poems, not of pages), he did not notice the reversal, but a later scribe or reader (perhaps the Duke himself) did notice and returned the quire to its proper order. The Duke’s numbering in this quire is consequently incorrect.44 The bifolia of quires X and Y are presently misbound. They became disarranged after the Duke had numbered the lyrics in them but before the modern pagination, so it is a simple matter to return the texts to their original order.

Transmission History It is more difficult than would be expected to trace the manuscript from the court at Blois to the eighteenth-century library of the duc de la Vallière. It is not to be identified in any of the inventories of the royal library that I have consulted. Most books in the Duke’s collection bore the sign of the ducal chancery: De camera compotor. Bles., but BnF, MS fr. 25458 does not and seems not to have followed the same trajectory into the French royal collection as did the bulk of his books. It is unclear where La Vallière, who was a lover of old poetry and a voracious purchaser of books from all quarters, bought (or ‘borrowed’) it.45 The manuscript was sold 42

Pages 383i: ?xxii; 385i: xi; 387i: xxv; 407i: xxvij; 409i: xxv; and 412: xix.

43

These include the entirely blank quires L, M, and N. At the end of the first stint of copying, the final leaves of H–S and Y–BB were probably blank. 44

The fact that these leaves are filled with ballades, which repeat the refrain line three or four times and often run longer than a page, makes the reordering of them simple. Their English equivalents in BL, MS Harley 682 are in the correct order (see Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn). We do see here that the Duke was not always paying close attention when he was numbering lyrics. 45

For information on Louis-César de la Baume le Blanc, duc de La Vallière (1708–80), see Henry Martin, ‘Les bibliothèques de La Vallière’, in Histoire de la Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal (Paris: Plon, 1900), pp. 134–78; and Dominique Coq, ‘Le parangon du bibliophile français? Le duc de la

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in the post mortem La Vallière sale of 1783, whereupon it was purchased by the Bibliothèque du Roi.46 The La Vallière manuscripts purchased at that sale were kept as a separate ‘La Vallière’ collection and numbered sequentially (this manuscript receiving the number 193).47 It was not until the end of the nineteenth century, with the compilation of a new catalogue, that this collection was incorporated into the sequence of fonds français and given its present numbers in the Bibliothèque nationale catalogue.

Binding As the wear on the outsides of some quires and especially of the first written page show, the work lay unbound for some time after it was copied.48 The spine from the eighteenth-century binding was reused in the modern restoration: olive green morocco elaborately stamped in gold; the spine reads, ‘Ballades du duc d’Orlean / mss en vers sur velin’.49 The manuscript was apparently trimmed at least twice, once in the eighteenth-century binding process and again probably in the most recent rebinding, when the edges of the pages were also gilded.

Vallière et sa collection’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises: Les bibliothèques sous l’Ancien Régime, 1530–1789, ed. by Claude Jolly ([Paris]: Promodis-Editions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1988), pp. 317–31. I am grateful to Roger Middleton for help (many years ago) in dealing with the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history of the manuscript. 46

Guillaume de Bure, Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de feu M. le duc de la Vallière, 3 vols (Paris, 1783), II, 264. 47

La Vallière 193; not, as in Stirnemann, p. 181, ‘La Vallière 14’. The hand that wrote the ‘La Vall. 193’ followed it with ‘olim’, but the previous catalogue name and number was never added. A heavier, broader hand writing in dark ink underlined ‘La Vall. 193’ and added (after olim but not in regard to it) ‘N o . 2788’, the de Bure catalogue number, in which catalogue it is described thus: ‘Manuscrit sur vélin du XV siècle, contenant 269 feuillets écrits en ancienne bâtarde, à longues lignes. Il a des lettres tourneurs peintes en or & en couleurs’ (Catalogue des livres, II, 264). Champion suggests that the person who catalogued the La Vallière collection also paginated the manuscript. Many of these page numbers have been partially cut off, suggesting that it was paginated before it received its eighteenth-century binding. 48

For example, quires Q (p. 190), R (p. 202), T (p. 234), X (p. 266), AA (p. 314), and CC (p. 346). 49

Pierre Champion described the binding as ‘sobrement orné’ (Autographe, p. 13), but to more modern eyes the delicate gold flowers, bands, and tiny starbursts on the spine would evoke another descriptor. Most La Vallière books were bound in red (for a photograph, see Coq, ‘Le parangon du bibliophile français?’, p. 323) and look quite different.

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Figure 18. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 436. Marginal afe, f, ?o. Supra: small initial; infra: large initial, autograph.

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Written in England (London) and France between 1439/40 and c. 1465. Marks of ownership: On fol. 9r, ‘La Vall. 193’. Modern Bibliothèque nationale stamp on p. 1 (quire A1), on the recto of the preceding leaf (ð7) and the verso of p. 537 (PP2); Bibliothèque Impériale stamp on p. 158 +1 (L16), p. 160 -1 (P1), and p. 190 (Q16). A partial list of facsimile pages reproduced from this manuscript includes Champion, Autographe (1907; repr. 1975), pp. 5 (MS p. 14), 7 and 67 (p. 365), 9 (p. 122), 15 (p. 1), 27 (p. 158), 31 (p. 203), 37 (p. 235), 43 and 73 (p. 247), 45 (p. 337), 53 (p. 328), 63 (p. 350), 69 (p. 393), 77 (p. 473), 79 (p. 515), and 81 (p. 522); Champion, La librairie (1910; repr. 1975), plate 7, no. 23 (p. 203), no. 24 (p. 14), no. 25 (p. 328), no. 26 (p. 365); plate 8, no. 27 (p. 337), no. 28 (p. 374), no. 29 (p. 329), no. 30 (p. 359); and plate 9, no. 31 (p. 122), no. 32 (p. 356), no. 33 (p. 357), no. 34 (p. 358); Champion, Vie (1911), plate 13 (p. 388); Sergio Cigada, ‘Studi su Charles d’Orléans e François Villon relativi al ms. B.N. 25458’, Studi Francesi, 11 (1960), 201–19, between pp. 216 and 217 (pp. 162–65); The French Chansons of Charles D’Orléans, ed. and trans. by Spence (1986), p. xlv (p. 235); Stirnemann (1987), plate 98, no. 222 (p. 1); Henri-Jean Martin and Jean Vezin, Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit ([Paris]: Editions du Cercle de la librairie Promodis, [1990]), p. 333 (p. 465), Regalado, ‘En ce saint livre’ (1995), between pp. 368 and 369 (pp. 336–37, 432–33, 162–63, 164–65, 166–67); Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’ (1998), pp. 56 (p. 1) and 71 (pp. 364 and 365); Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn (2000), plate 4, p. 68 (p. 117), plate 6, p. 70 (p. 119), and plate 8, p. 72 (p. 244).50

Other Manuscripts Three manuscripts, all copied from BnF, MS fr. 25458 at various times, are of some use in helping to understand the copying history of the Duke’s manuscript: Grenoble MS 873 (G, 1450–53, with Latin trans.), Carpentras MS 375 (M, c. 1456,

50

For further comment on the Duke’s hand, see La librairie, pp. xli–xliii, lxii–lxiv, and its accompanying Album; Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’; Ouy, ‘Un poème mystique de Charles d’Orléans’; Gilbert Ouy, ‘À propos des manuscrits autographes de Charles d’Orléans identifiés en 1955 a la Bibliothèque nationale: hypothèse “ingénieuse” ou certitude scientifique?’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 118 (1960), 179–88, and A. Perreau, La véritable édition originale des poésies de Charles d’Orléans (Paris: L. Giraud-Badin, 1923).

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made for Marie de Clèves), and BnF, MS fr. 1104 (O2, post-1458, once belonged to Catherine de Medici).51 Charles d’Orléans’s Italian secretary, Antonio Astesano, copied the ‘book’ of his Duke in order to translate his poetry into Latin, thereby making it available to the whole civilized world and preserving it for all time.52 We know that he finished his copying in 1453, because the final lyric in his copy is Comment voy je ses Anglois esbays, which dates to that year. The parallel-column (French/Latin) copy that resulted, Grenoble MS 873 (G), was copied by Nicolas Astesano, Antonio’s brother (who also lived at Blois), and completed some time after 1461 (the death of Charles VII is referred to in the manuscript).53 Aimé Champollion-Figeac edited the contents of this manuscript in 1842. The value of this manuscript for present purposes is that it provides a dated (1453) collection of the poetry of BnF, MS fr. 25458, made near the end of the third stint of copying. What it does not do is confirm the order of the poems in the Duke’s manuscript, for it is organized on completely different principles. It does, however, show us that the poet was willing to present his lyrics in a different order when a different audience presented itself. A. E. B. Coldiron, in a recent and quite brilliant book, has analyzed this new order of the corpus of the Duke’s poetry and discussed in detail its meaning and function.54 The manuscript of her husband’s poetry made for the Duchess in about 1456, Carpentras MS 375 (M), gives us a very different picture of BnF, MS fr. 25458, in this case of a moment in the fourth stint of copying. This collection has been

51

London, British Library, MS Harley 6916 (H) was, according to Champion, copied from BnF, MS fr. 25458 after 1465. London, British Library, MS Royal 16.F.ii (C) contains only poetry written before 1441, i.e. the work of the first scribe, but the manuscript itself was copied in the 1480s (see Janet Backhouse, ‘Charles of Orléans Illuminated’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 157–63, and notes), suggesting that a copy or copies of the poetry the Duke composed before his release from English captivity in 1440 circulated in England for some time. Though useful in various ways, no other manuscript takes precedence over the textual authority of BnF, MS fr. 25458. 52

On the Duke’s latinity, see Geneviève Hasenohr, ‘L’essor des bibliothèques privées aux XIV e et XV siècles’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises. Les bibliothèques médiévales: du VIe siècle à 1530, ed. by André Vernet ([Paris]: Promodis-Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1989), pp. 214–63 (p. 255); and Ouy, ‘Charles d’Orléans and his Brother’. e

53 54

Vie, pp. 366–72, 484; Poésies, pp. xiv–xv.

A. E. B. Coldiron, Canon, Period and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans: Found in Translation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000). Champion notes the ‘intercalation du groupe ancien de chansons parmi le groupe des ballades les plus anciennes’ (Poésies, p. xiv, n. 5).

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partially edited.55 Because it was copied exactly as it stood on the page, the text is not useful in sorting out the subtleties of copying order, but it does offer other information. It gives us, for instance, some lyrics in a pre-edited stage, and the very mechanical copying helps us to know when the first stint of copying ended, for thereafter (post-1456) the lyrics are no longer sorted at all by verse form. The utility of this manuscript will appear more clearly in chapter 5. Finally, BnF, MS fr. 1104 (O2 ) is a copy made near the very end of the poet’s production and, like the Carpentras manuscript, copied accurately and in the order of the exemplar. It remains largely unedited. It also includes a few texts copied from the Carpentras manuscript that do not appear in BnF, MS fr. 25458, including a transcript of the trial of Charles’s son-in-law, the duc d’Alençon, copied from the latter part of that manuscript in 1458. It does not include the final three rondels found in BnF, MS fr. 25458, a matter to which I will return in chapter 6. Daniel Poirion, in an article of 1958, tried to make a case for a series of manuscripts as preliminary versions of the Duke’s collection, from which grew (in 1444) what became manuscript O (BnF, MS fr. 25458). In discussing the compilation of these manuscripts (A, B, C, L, and P), he omits any mention of their dates, all of which, to the best of my knowledge, post-date O.56 Gérard Gros cites Poirion on this. Though Gros calls ‘un point de codicologie’ his claim that B (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, français 19139) was the exemplar for O, he offers no codicological explanation why it must be so.57

55 Champion included in the notes to his edition of the Duke’s poetry two rondels, one by Thignonville, the other by Gilles des Ormes, that are not part of the Duke’s collection (Poésies, pp. 582 and 583), as well as a series of eleven unique lyrics copied at the end of her manuscript (ibid., pp. 596–601). 56 Poirion, ‘Création poétique et composition romanesque’, pp. 191–93; reprinted in Écriture poétique et composition romanesque, Medievalia, 11 (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994), pp. 307–37 (pp. 314–16). 57

It is true that someone has written on the first page of the manuscript ‘Cy commance le Livre que Monseigneur Charles duc d’Orleans a faict estant prisonnier en Angleterre’ and at the end ‘Cy fine le livre que mons. le duc d’Orleans a faict estant prisonnier en Angleterre’, but ‘le livre’ is the text, the ‘livre de pensée’, the ‘livre qu’il fit en Inglant’ (to quote Martin Le Franc), which could be copied at any time and any number of times (Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 60 and n. 24).

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harles d’Orléans was an eager student from a very young age (his first extant composition dates to his tenth year), used to putting his thought down on paper or parchment with his own hand, though he generally hired others to copy texts for him. We cannot know for certain what the Duke’s original ‘foul papers’ of his French poetry looked like, but Champion seems to posit a prior ‘cahier de poésies’, an ‘ancienne collection indépendante des Ballades’, as if talking about a codex.1 The remarkable survival of a paper notebook (BnF, MS lat. 1203) containing texts in the Duke’s hand that were later copied by a professional scribe into his wonderful prayerbook (BnF, MS lat. 1196), suggests that he would keep short compositions together and in order this way before handing them over to a scribe.2

1

Autographe, p. 35 and p. 30. On imposed sheets, see Pieter F. J. Obbema, ‘Writing on Uncut Sheets’, Quaerendo, 4 (1978), 337–54. 2 It was Gilbert Ouy who discovered that the paper manuscript contained texts copied into the vellum codex (‘Recherches’). Charles returned to France with more than one proper paper codex, indeed with many more than those he left behind in France when he was taken captive. For some of the Duke’s paper manuscripts, see de Laborde, #6500, 6547, 6548, 6553–54, 6556, and 6561. In the fiction of his English poetry, written before 1440, Charles refers once to ‘enke or parchement’ (line 1000) but four times to writing on ‘papir’ (Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn, lines 197, ‘penne and papir’; 820 ‘papir [. . .] or enke’; 4664 and 4678 ‘enke and papir’. (None of these passages have counterparts in the Duke’s French poetry.) In one of the English dream visions the speaker imagines himself going to the seashore, sitting on ‘a benche of mosse & gras’, and, having composed the poem in his mind, spreading out his ‘papir’ and writing it down (and the poem he writes follows). We might think of a single, large leaf, but the Middle English word ‘papir’ does not

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On one of his many trips to London and perhaps in preparation for his eventual return to France (a return he had reason to believe, as the 1430s drew to a close, might be near at hand), he commissioned two copies of his poetry, one of his French work, the other of his English. That he ‘dealt’ with books while in London is confirmed by the existence in his library of a book he borrowed from the library at Greyfriars, probably from the new library there established by Fr. Thomas Winchelsey and funded by the lord mayor of London, Richard Whittington.3 Greyfriars is close by Paternoster Row, hard by St Paul’s, where the book trade was centred, and it is very likely that he used the services provided there, where the scriveners had their shops and one might commission a new work, buy a book secondhand, or have a book repaired. It may have been there that he handed his French poetry, perhaps in the form of one or more tacketted paper notebooks, to a French scribe to copy into a form that would be handsome, easily portable, and well organized. He engaged an English limner to add initials to the French manuscript (and an artist to paint an elaborate border on the opening page) but failed to find a limner for his English manuscript. (Whether this was because he ran out of time or for some other reason, we cannot know, but the fact that the manuscript was never finished suggests that it did not end up in the hands of the person it was intended for, either the Duke himself or someone to whom he wished to give it.) The manuscript of English poetry was left behind, but the manuscript of French poetry went into the baggage that accompanied him home to France. Charles seems to have conceived BnF, MS fr. 25458 as a kind of album, with plenty of blank leaves distributed through the manuscript into which he could have copied poems he intended to write in the years to come.4 The copied texts were handed on to an English limner, who added gilded initials with gracefully branching sprays and smaller ones in blue and gold with beautiful red and blue penwork. It is the work of this limner and this scribe that defines the first stint in the

necessarily support this reading. ‘Papir’ can mean a book, such as a record book or account book, in fact a book much like BnF, MS lat. 1203. 3

According to Champion’s itinerary, Charles was in London every year from 1436 to 1440 (Vie, pp. 671–72). 4

Because some blank leaves, but not all, are unpaginated, it is difficult to gain a clear view of the whole manuscript without inspecting it physically. No printed description takes account of them and no modern codicological description of the manuscript has been written to show how the manuscript has been put together. The whole problem is complicated, of course, by the fact that the BnF microfilm of the manuscript not unusually includes a few but not nearly all of the blank leaves in the manuscript, making checking impossible without on-site inspection of it.

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manuscript’s production. The fonds primitif, the manuscript the Duke brought back to France, then, would have looked something like the layout described in Table 3.5 The manuscript in this early state (quires A through BB) differed from the manuscript as we now have it in three ways: – it contained nearly sixty blank leaves (in H, Z, Q, S, and Y–BB), as well as blanks above all the type-2 lyrics (see below) copied during the first stint (T–AA); – it lacked the quires of the second (I–P and CC–LL) and third (MM–PP) ruling batches (see Table 1; we have no way of knowing when the quire of four leaves was added to the beginning of the manuscript); and – the complaintes in quire Z had not yet been misplaced between the first group of chansons and the caroles (see below, chapter 4). It is immediately evident that the manuscript at this point was only a small part of the manuscript it was to become. The poet seems originally to have envisioned (i.e. assembled parchment for) a collection of some eighteen or nineteen quires. By the year of his death it had grown to thirty-eight.

Commentary Scholars have differed in their conceptions of the evolution of this manuscript. Champion thought of it as created in 1450 (when he supposed the first scribe worked), growing steadily thereafter until the end of the Duke’s life.6 Daniel Poirion writes that ‘vers 1444 le prince fait rédiger le fonds ancien du ms. 25458 (O), dont s’est inspirée la traduction anglaise (ms. Harley 682)’.7 His choice of date seems to be based on the presence of English lyrics in the manuscript and on the Duke’s use of the word jubilée, which he takes to refer to the Duke’s fiftieth birthday, celebrated in 1444. The word occurs, however, near the end of the first

5

Included along with the ballades are the opening, untitled narrative account of the speaker’s first encounter with Cupid, the God of Love titled by Champion ‘La retenue d’Amours’ (pp. 1–14); ‘Copie de la lettre de Retenue’ (pp. 14–16); ‘Songe en complainte’ (pp. 100–05); ‘La Requeste’ [narrative] (pp. 105–09); ‘La departie damour En Balades’ (pp. 109–12); and ‘Copie de la quittance dessus dicte’ (pp. 112–14). The poetry is essentially lyric from the end of this section to the end of the first stint of copying.

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6

Autographe, pp. 14–15.

7

Le poète, p. 273.

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series of ballades, copied by the first scribe (p. 120) so in the first stint of copying, and also occurs in the Duke’s English poetry, certainly composed before he left England in 1440.8 He seems to associate the making of the manuscript with the arrival at Blois in 1444 of a delegation of high-ranking nobles, led by William de la Pole (then Marquess of Suffolk and former ‘keeper’ of the imprisoned Duke for a time when he was in England). ‘C’est vers cette date qu’après avoir “visité ses papiers” (Bal. 97) il fait copier les poèmes qui constitueront le fonds ancien du manuscrit O [BnF, MS fr. 25458], ceux que ses visiteurs anglais, en 1444: Suffolk, Adam Moleyns et l’ambassade venue chercher Marguerite d’Anjou, feront connaître chez eux [note: l’étendue de cette collection est à peu près identique à celle de la traduction anglaise]. Mais tandis que d’édifiait cette partie du manuscrit, soigneusement enluminée de lettres dorées, d’autres poèmes avaient sans doute vu le jour.’9 It is slightly odd that Poirion chose 1444 as the originary date for this manuscript, for he also posits, quite reasonably, two periods of intense editorial activity on Charles’s part before and after that date, the first running from 1432 to 1440; the second, from 1450 to 1458: ‘en réalité ces periodes de concentration sont celles où l’on rédige les manuscrits’.10 It is difficult to see how this proposal of 1444 might have worked: visited by his old friend Suffolk, he entertains the nobleman and his train at Blois for six weeks, during which time he has two copies made of the poetry he had written. One he gives to ?Suffolk, who takes it back home and has it translated into English; the other he has limned by an English limner ?travelling with the Marquess, all the while entertaining his guests and no doubt discussing French-English relations. Gérard Gros saves Champion’s dating of the manuscript by positing a manuscript anterior to BnF, MS fr. 25458, probably BnF, MS fr. 19139 (B), a paper manuscript, the first page of which reads ‘Cy commance le Livre que Monseigneur Charles duc d’Orleans a faict estant prisonnier en Angleterre’.11 According to Gros,

8

Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn, line 3104.

9

Le poète, p. 293. The visit lasted from 16 April to 29 May. See Vie, pp. 344–46; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), q.v. Pole, William de la. 10 11

Le poète, p. 274.

He also believes (as do other scholars) that the use of the word jubilée as referring to the Duke’s fiftieth birthday established definitively the date the manuscript was begun. He associates the entry in the 1441 inventory (‘Le livre des Balades de Ms. A ung fermouer a ses armes’, the entry Champion identified as referring to BnF, MS fr. 25458, in La librairie, p. xxviii, #44, and pp.

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this manuscript was then copied in 1444 and new lyrics, written in the interim, were added at that time. The use of the word ‘livre’, though, is a slippery one. Is the ‘livre’ the Duke wrote a physical object, or (as in Martin Le Franc’s knowledge of ‘le livre qu’il fit en Inglant’) a body of poetry? The latter is much more likely, and it permits any number of people to own a copy of the Duke’s ‘book’. Although Champion claimed that the hand of the first scribe was ‘identique aux pièces si élégantes de sa [Charles’s] chancellerie’,12 a statement for which he provided no evidence, it is very difficult to believe that Scribe 1 worked in France, though he might well have been part of the Duke’s retinue in England.13 Charles certainly had scribes and other retainers with him throughout his captivity. Though the presence of French artists is well documented in England, it is extremely unlikely that an English limner could have been working in the Loire region around this time (1440–50).14 In Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work, Jonathan Alexander writes that ‘the mobility of illuminators is also increasingly evident in this period. Paris, in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, draws illuminators from all over France and Flanders [. . .]. Zebo da Firenze, an Italian, is at work there at the time. [. . .] in England, a German or Fleming, Herman Scheerre, works during the first decade of the fifteenth century in London and later in Paris’.15 He details both German and Italian artists moving north, but he finds no English artists working in France. This is not to say that there were none in France, however. Catherine Reynolds has found evidence that there were English artists working in Normandy, but she distinguishes carefully between ‘English France’ (i.e. roughly, Normandy) and ‘French France’ (i.e. France under the control of the French king and his family),16 and indeed the road from 83–84) with BnF, MS fr. 19139 (‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, pp. 60–61; see also Ouy, La librairie des frères captifs, #99, p. 48, and p. 80, fr. 25458). 12

Autographe, p. 17.

13

David Fallows seems to share this scepticism, though he makes nothing of it: ‘It is not clear exactly what Champion meant when he wrote, Le Manuscrit autographe, 17–18: “C’est l’écriture d’un scribe de la maison du duc d’Orléans.” Had he in fact identified the scribe elsewhere?’ (‘Binchois and the Poets’, in Binchois Studies, ed. by Andrew Kirkman and Dennis Slavin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 199–219 (p. 208, n. 32)). 14

In July of 2003, Patricia Stirnemann wrote: ‘After 1440 I would have thought that Blois would not be a particularly welcoming place for English craftsmen’ (private correspondence). 15

Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 124–25. 16

Reynolds, ‘English Patrons and French Artists in Fifteenth-Century Normandy’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Bates and Anne Currey (London: Hambledon

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Rouen to Orléans was much longer than would at first seem. I have compared a number of documents from the Duke’s household with this manuscript without finding any from the hand of Scribe 1.17 The Structure of the Whole Charles obviously valued this early work, produced in England. He had it copied and recopied, along with various amounts of later work. Although others have separated his lyrics from this opening construct, he seems never to have done so. It is easy to forget that there is more to this manuscript than a generic collection of lyrics, but the Duke apparently never forgot it. It is therefore worth spending at least a little time in considering its structure and possible functions. The entire ‘work’ — the ‘story’ of love, loss, and retirement from love — takes up 122 pages of a 537-page manuscript, more than twenty percent of the written spaces (not including blank, unnumbered pages). This would seem to be the poet’s version of a dit, an odd version that does not consist of narrative verse with occasional lyric insertions, but a lyric work bound together by bits of narrative. It contains in all seventy-four ballades plus seven (perhaps experimental) ‘narrative ballades’, which altogether take up about three quarters of the whole. Thus it is a sort of dit-inside-out. Besides the function of showing off the author’s poetic skills, this construction plays intricately with the

Press, 1994), pp. 299–313. See also her article, ‘“Les Angloys, de leur droicte nature, veullent touzjours guerreer”: Evidence for Painting in Paris and Normandy, c. 1420–1450’, in Power, Culture, and Religion in France, c. 1350–c. 1550, ed. by Christopher Allmand (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989), pp. 37–55. I have discussed with various scholars conversant with French manuscripts the possibility that English limners were working in the Loire Valley in the mid-1400s. All agree that the likelihood is virtually nil. Although it is conceivable that Charles could have brought an English limner back to Blois with him (though it is difficult to see why he would), the fact that high-quality English limning is not to be found in other manuscripts belonging to the Duke (or indeed to anyone else in his vicinity) suggests that this is not a useful hypothesis. In his edition, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler describes our manuscript thus: ‘Aux armes de Charles d’Orléans qui l’a rapporté d’Angleterre et complété ensuite par des additions au fonds primitif’ (Ballades et rondeaux, p. 23). 17

I am grateful to Elizabeth Gonzalez, Gilbert Ouy, and Joel Rosenthal for sharing microfilm and prints of documents from their own research, and to the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the British Library for providing microfilms and photographs of further documents.

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to and fro of narrative and lyric.18 It also provides the reader with an account of the Duke’s life as seen in a distorted mirror, what Jean-Claude Mühlethaler calls ‘une sorte de théâtre d’ombres’.19 There is no doubt that Charles expected the reader to measure his ‘story’ against his life, and many a scholar has been taken in by the game. Just as Machaut (and Chaucer, too) holds up that mirror in which the reader is invited to ‘see’ the reflection of the poet, so Charles caters to the reader’s desire to know about the famous Duke’s life — and love — and loss. To heighten the false reality, he constructs pseudo-documents — a petition, then letters, many letters, including the ‘lettre de retenue’ that seals the feudal bond between the lover and his lord, Cupid, signed on Valentine’s day in the city of Gracious Desire, followed by many letters to the chosen lady.20 After the speaker’s lady dies, Cupid’s Parlement issues a quittance under his seal on the ‘Feste des Mors’, 1437, and finally, having dissolved his bond with his lord, the ex-lover writes a retrospective letter to beg pardon for his lack of self control in his grief and to thank his former lord for his many favours, signed on the evening of 3 November in the château of Nonchaloir, by ‘Charles duc d’Orlians’. Recounted in this way, the work sounds much like the sort of thing many poets in France had been writing for a hundred years, and in its language and action, it is. However, the lady’s voice is entirely silenced. Unlike the exchanges of views in so many lyric collections (of the Cent ballades d’amant et de dame type), we hear only reflections of the lady’s voice in the

18

It is entirely likely that he was influenced by Christine de Pizan’s early lyric collection Cent balades. 19 20

Ballades et rondeaux, ed. by Mühlethaler, p. 13.

Although the poet seems to have conceived from the beginning a collection of verse that was primarily lyric, organized at least in part by verse form, he introduces from the outset the idea of a love story with a beginning, a middle, and an end (but with a most unusual distribution of verse forms), as follows: the opening narrative of the speaker’s entry into the service of Love (pp. 1–14, in couplets arranged in forty ten-line stanzas; ending with ‘Copie de la lettre de Retenue’ (pp. 14–16, in long and short lines rhyming aaab); the first seventy-one ballades, in the course of which the lady dies and the lover mourns (pp. 17–99); ‘Songe en complainte’ (in long and short stanzas rhyming ababbaab), twenty-two stanzas that contain a narrative vision of Age as an old man and the lover’s decision to take his advice to withdraw from the service of Love (pp. 100–05); ‘La Requeste’ to Cupid for the return of the lover’s heart (pp. 105–09, in long and short lines rhyming aabaabbbaba); ‘La departie damours En Balades’, consisting of four (unnumbered) narrative ballades (pp. 109–12); the ‘Copie de la quittance dessus dicte’ (pp. 112–14, in octosyllabic couplets); three more narrative ballades (pp. 114–17); the letter of the speaker to Amour to thank him (pp. 117–19, in decasyllabic couplets, with a narrative introduction in three stanzas rhyming ababbcbc); and three additional ballades (pp. 119–22).

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reply of the lover, the poet never speaks as a lady. It is the fact that the bulk of this early work is made up of lyric rather than narrative verse or prose that allows this strange one-sided presentation of the ‘story’. The cause of this lopsided structure may lie in the way the work was constructed. It is difficult to say with any certainty what structure the Duke might have envisioned from the outset (and the earliest poetry antedates Agincourt), but it is at least likely that many of these lyrics were first composed without an eye to inclusion in such a lyrico-narrative sequence. The date of 1437 mentioned in the quittance suggests that, as Daniel Poirion suggested, the later 1430s were a period of editorial work, of gathering together what had been composed and organizing it into some sort of pleasing and more or less coherent shape. In the process, some lyrics were probably taken into the ‘story’ though they had not been composed with that function in mind; others were accorded a place under the rubric Balades de plusieurs propos, and yet others, composed in other verse forms, were organized by form, complaintes, chansons, and caroles. The poet’s two strategies here, one narrative, one formal, are not necessarily compatible, and it is very difficult to say whether these poems have been rearranged, some perhaps long after their composition, to form a shapely narrative. It has been generally observed that the first run of chansons is very close in a number of ways to the opening run of ballades (quires A–H), with similar themes and vocabulary, yet they fall outside the story the poet is telling and occupy another part of the manuscript (quires T to Y and AA). For the same reason, some of the Balades de plusieurs propos (in quires Q to S) are on the subject of love, but not part of the love story the poet opens with. If we want to consider work of the poet’s English period, therefore, we must include, in addition to this fairly coherent piece of work, another series of ballades, three complaintes (Q and Z), a series of chansons, and the first three of the caroles (quires Q through AA; see Table 1). It has been suggested that the opening narrative and perhaps a few other ballades and chansons were composed before Agincourt, but it is difficult to say with any certainty which they might be. We know that the Duke composed poetry from an early age because of the account of his having embroidered the first line of one on the sleeves of a robe in 1414.21 An exchange of ballade-letters with Jehan de Garencières, Louis d’Orléans’s chamberlain, whom Charles knew before his capture in 1415, suggests, not surprisingly, that some of the poetry — perhaps including the

21

de Laborde, #6241. The entry does not actually say that the chanson was the poet’s own composition, but it is a very strong possibility.

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opening narrative — was composed before the Duke’s twenty-first year.22 The two ballades of the exchange with Garencières are not part of the ‘story’ of love and loss, but the first of the Balades de plusieurs propos. It seems reasonable to think that a young poet might begin with a narrative based closely on the Roman de la Rose to open a collection of his own (primarily) love poetry.23 This notion that the first series of ballades and chansons are copied in something like their order of composition may have arisen in part from the cluster of lyrics that describe the lady’s illness and death (Champion’s ballades LV–LVII), followed by the beautiful series of mourning poems (LVIII–LXXI, followed by the Songe en complainte). Until fairly recently, these were read as a more or less literal transcription of the Duke’s grief over the death of his second wife, Bonne d’Armagnac, in the mid-1430s, which lent them a biographical coherence. Such reasoning carries less weight today than it once did. Still, it is difficult to find any grounds on which to reason that the stint-1 ballades and chansons are not in the order in which they were composed. An argument can be made, however, for the composition order of at least some of the Balades de plusieurs propos (Q–S). At the opposite end of the Balades de plusieurs propos from the Duke’s exchange with Garencières (pp. 203–05; quire R), we find the exchange of ballades with Philippe le Bon (between pp. 215 and 226), composed in the weeks and months before the Duke’s release. Ballades and Complaintes: Type-1 Lyrics Charles does not seem to conceive of his lyrics strictly as a collection of five different forms (ballade, complainte, chanson, carole, rondel) but as sortable into two large 22

Champion identifies this poet as the son of Louis’s chamberlain, but Young Abernathy Neal identifies him as the father (‘Les poésies complètes de Jean de Garencières publiées pour la première fois d’après le manuscrit (B.N.Fr. 19139)’, ed. by Young Abernathy Neal, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1952–53), I, 196–98), seigneur de Croissy, and chamberlain to Louis d’Orléans, who died at Agincourt, and Daniel Poirion accepts his identification (‘Creation poétique et composition romanesque’, p. 192). Champion is mistaken when he writes that Garencière took part in the Cent ballades (Vie, p. 237). 23

The late medieval afterlife of the Roman de la Rose has been investigated in a number of recent studies, most pertinent in this case the article by Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, ‘Récrire Le roman de la Rose au XV e siècle: les commandements d’Amour chez Charles d’Orléans et ses lecteurs’, in ‘Riens ne m’est seur que la chose incertaine’: études sur l’art d’écrire au Moyen Âge offertes à Eric Hicks par ses élèves, collègues, amies et amis, ed. by Jean-Claude Mühlethaler and Denis Billotte (Geneva: Slatkine, 2001), pp. 105–19.

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categories: longer, weightier lyrics, such as ballades, complaintes, and a few other forms; and shorter lyrics, chansons, caroles, and rondels (and we will see this confirmed at a number of points). For the purposes of this study, I shall refer to the two longer forms (complainte and ballade) as type-1 lyrics, and to the three shorter forms (carole, chanson, and rondel) as type-2 lyrics.24 That he associated the complainte form with that of the ballade and that subject matter was often more significant to him than form is clear from the arrangement of his prominently identified Balades de plusieurs propos,25 which he separated from his ballades on the theme of love, as well as from the composition of quire Q, which favours theme over form (one complainte and two ballades).26 It is also worth noting that the poet does not number individually the seven narrative ballades in quires G and H that tell the story of the lover’s withdrawal from the service of Cupid (La departie damours) or the larger section of which they are a part (which he calls, significantly, Songe en complainte); in this case the narrativity of the group of poems and their place in the larger whole takes precedence over their form. Included among the stint-1 ballades and complaintes in quires B–S are also a variety of other forms put to the service of narrating the story (see note 20 above). This is not to say that theme trumps form in all circumstances. For instance, he never mixes ballades with chansons, or rondels or caroles with complaintes. In fact it is the incongruity of the complaintes in quire Z adjacent to both chansons (on one end) and rondels (on the other) that makes their displacement from some other place in the manuscript evident. Quire Q begins with the Complainte de France, followed by two ballades — or rather a ballade (En regardant vers le pais de France) and a ballade royal (Pries pour paix doulce vierge Marie) — which the poet included in his numbering as ·83·. These are followed by a blank leaf with the heading ‘Complainte’ (see Figure 19); the rest of the quire is blank, but quire R contains ballades, so we may reasonably 24

Some writers use the word ‘genre’ to refer to verse form (thus rondels are said to be a different genre from complaintes). I shall use the word ‘genre’ to refer to lyric, as opposed, for example, to narrative poetry. I shall treat the various verse forms as subcategories of the genre ‘lyric’. 25 See Autographe, p. 31. For Christine de Pizan, the reverse seems to hold, e.g. the Cent balades and Autre balades contain love poetry, but also poetry on other subjects. I am grateful to Barbara Altmann for giving me some direction on the matter of verse form and subject matter in the work of these writers. Deborah Sinnreich-Levi and Ian Laurie kindly shared their thoughts on Deschamps’s poetry with me and pointed me to some useful sources. In response to a rather general call for help, a number of scholars took time to offer helpful suggestions, including Nadia Margolis, Jane Taylor, and Sylvia Huot. 26

Champion admits of Q that ‘les ballades qui suivent la complainte ont un sujet identique, et c’est là la raison de leur place’ (Autographe, p. 29).

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Figure 19. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 197. Scribe 1, Limner 1.

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suppose that the blanks were planned for either complaintes or ballades.27 Although he numbered his poems after his return to France (ballades first, then chansons), the complaintes never received numbers (including his Songe en complainte in quire G — surrounded, significantly, by ballades). A number of details about this original scheme requires comment. The two love complaintes in quire Z, copied and limned during the first stint or layer of copying, followed by nine blank pages (later filled with another complainte plus six roundels and a ballade in English) appear to be misplaced. They now intrude between the end of the first series of chansons and the caroles and are separated from the other complaintes in the manuscript.28 Champion obviously realized that the complaintes did not really belong where they stand in the manuscript as it has come down to us; he says that they are intercalaires between the chansons and the rondels (i.e. copied in the wrong place), but he did not say that they belonged somewhere else.29 Everywhere else in the manuscript the poet has separated the longer type-1 lyrics from the short type-2 lyrics. That he did so quite consciously is confirmed dramatically by the arrangement of poems in Grenoble MS 863, a parallel-column French and Latin ‘edition’ of his poetry made late in his life in which each of eight sections begins with a type-1 poem (complainte or ballade), followed by other type-2 lyrics (rondel or chanson).30 For a discussion about the later ballades and complaintes and the order of the whole, see chapter 4.

27

If this quire started life as an 8, it must have lost a bifolium early on. As the quire opens with the grand Complainte de France, the missing leaves (if there are any) are unlikely to have been the outer bifolium of the quire, and as the complainte runs on to the second bifolium, it must lack either the third or fourth. If it were the third, there would be room only for a ballade, which could not be the case because the Duke’s numbering would not allow for it. It must therefore have been the inner bifolium (if any) that was either lost or borrowed for another use, which would allow enough space for a complainte and/or a series of ballades. 28

For the purposes of this discussion, I define a chanson as a lyric that has a two-line refrain copied at its midpoint. Those with a single line in the manuscript are categorized as rondels. I realize that there are other kinds of distinctions made between the two forms, but a formal distinction works best with the kind of analysis I am here attempting. For further discussion of the relationship of the chansons and rondels, see chapter 4. 29

Autographe, pp. 46–47. He may have been misled by the misnumbering of pp. 305–07 (in Z) as 205–07, which belong in the quire following Q. He also writes that ‘une ancienne numérotation des rondeaux [. . .] permet de rattacher cette section à celle des chansons’ (ibid., p. 46), though he does not rejoin the now-divided series. 30

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Chansons and Caroles: Type-2 Lyrics From the layout of the manuscript, the Duke seems to have planned to follow his dit (A–H, pp. 1–121) with a collection of lyrics distributed over four categories, ballades, complaintes, chansons, and caroles, but his thinking changed on a number of issues as his collection evolved. Apart from the heading Balades de plusieurs propos (R), none of the forms is given any kind of special heading.31 Each new stint1 form, however, is positioned at the beginning of a new quire: chansons on p. 235 (T), complaintes on p. 299 (Z), and caroles on p. 315 (AA; see Table 6). The number of chansons quickly outstripped that of the caroles. The poet seems to have realized that he was not really interested in or challenged by the carole form and so filled the quire he had begun with chansons and eventually rondels. He did this not out of necessity; this juxtaposition of forms was not dictated by the lack of unwritten vellum. The caroles are followed immediately by stint-2 lyrics. Just as the complaintes were eventually subsumed by ballades (as they had been already in the dit, in quires G and Q; see Tables 1 and 3), so the caroles became part of the section of the manuscript reserved for other kinds of lyrics in the short form. A number of general conclusions can be drawn from the state of the manuscript at this point, in or just before 1440. The fact that the work of the first limner is English means that there is a very high probability that he worked in England prior to the Duke’s release in 1440. It was Patricia Stirnemann who first identified the stint-1 limning as English work. This permits a more precise dating than Champion assigned to the fonds primitif (c. 1450), and an earlier one than Daniel Poirion has suggested (c. 1444). According to Stirnemann, Les cinq dernière ballades du fonds primitif sont: Des nouvelles d’Albion, J’ay tant joué avecques Aage, l’énergique pièce Visage de baffe venu, Amour, qui tant a de puissance, et enfin Beau frère je vous remercie. Champion date les quatre premiers d’octobre 1439, tandis que Beau frère je vous remercie aurait pu être écrit en 1440, après le paiement de la rançon de Charles par le duc de Bourgogne. La pièce, qui se trouve à la page 224, est écrite par le scribe du fonds primitif mais sa lettre champie et ses initiales filigranées, quoiqu’anglaises, sont d’un style et d’une coloration légèrement différents, ce qui induit à croire que la ballade fut copiée dans le manuscrit en Angleterre peu de temps avant le départ du duc.

31

It is worth noting that the poet never gives the opening dit a title. Assuming, as I do, that these lyric and narrative pieces were composed over a fairly long period of time (beginning before Agincourt and ending in the late 1440s), it shows the kind of restraint that is characteristic of Charles that, although he commissioned a decorative border that included a prominent coat of arms for the opening leaf, the work simply begins Ou temps passe. . . .

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She goes on to write: A la page suivante [the last of the Balades des plusieurs propos, which marks the end of the first stint, on p. 225], on trouve la ballade dans laquelle Charles proclame sa loyauté au duc de Bourgogne: Pour ce que je suis [a present] avec la gent vostre en[n]emie . . . , celle-ci écrite par un scribe qui revient plusieurs fois dans le deuxième groupe d’écritures, articulées à la française.32

As it was largely through the efforts of Philippe le Bon and especially his wife Isabelle de Portugal that the Duke was finally released from captivity, this ballade is placed unsurprisingly at the very end of the work done in England. The manuscript tells us that the poet planned to compose more lyrics when he returned home, and he apparently expected to compose more chansons (type-2 lyrics) than ballades (type-1 lyrics). In the end he never filled the space he had first allotted for ballades. Although he organized his poems in general by verse form, he may not have had an absolutely clear idea of the final order in which he wanted to arrange quires. The manuscript nevertheless shows considerable evidence of the poet’s concern with the organization of his work. At this point he planned to begin each verse form at the beginning of a quire (on the exception of the first quire of rondels, see chapter 3). The final leaves of a number of the quires remained blank at the time those quire were filled, probably because the ‘book’ existed (and was treated as) a group of quires.33 We should probably think of the work at this point as ‘a box of quires’ rather than a codex.34 I shall use the word ‘book’ in this sense throughout. The wear and tear evident on the recto of the opening leaf likewise suggests that the manuscript may have been unbound (or at least lacked a cover) for a very long time.

32

Stirnemann, p. 181.

33

The last leaf of quire A (the first written quire) contains only eight lines of text; the rest remains blank because the ballades begin on the first recto of quire B. 34

It may be difficult for us to think of a ‘box of quires’ as a ‘book’, but given the numbers of manuscripts that survive of which we can ascertain that they were bound long after the scribes had finished copying, this was apparently no difficulty for medieval scribes, limners, or readers. It was my colleague and friend Gilbert Ouy — to whom I am most grateful for all his help and encouragement — who suggested this state of affairs. See Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 70.

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T HE S ECOND S TINT (THE MID -1440 S TO THE MID -1450 S)

‘L

e retour de Charles d’Orléans dans ses domaines en 1441, coïncide heureusement avec la reprise de réjouissances aristocratiques à travers toute la France libérée du spectre de la guerre. Il est probable que ces rencontres princières et ces réjouissances communes constituaient des conditions très favorables à la collaboration poétique.’1 On his return, the Duke was much in demand and had many things to accomplish and debts of many kinds to repay. The relatively small number of poems copied in this period suggests that the work of the third limner was done by the mid-1440s, a period in which the Duke had many responsibilities and distractions: marriage to his third wife, Marie de Clèves, Burgundy’s niece, the festivities and duties occasioned by his return, dealing with Philippe le Bon and then with Charles VII, attempting to raise ransom money for himself and his younger brother, attempting to further the cause of peace between France and England, and putting his own duchy in order.2 From his landing at Calais on 11 November 1440 and a visit with the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy that included his marriage to the fourteen-year-old Marie, he went on a sort of grand progress, first through the Burgundian Lowlands, then across north-eastern France to Paris (where the King refused to meet with him) and on to Orléans and Blois, which he reached by 24 January 1441. Two months later he was on his way to Nantes. In July he was back in Brittany; in August he was at home in Blois. In September he announced a visit to Philippe le Bon and passed through Paris on his

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1

Le poète, p. 178.

2

Champion suggests that the earliest rondels date to 1443–44 (Poésies, p. xxv).

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way. Travelling from there to Arras, he arrived on 5 November, and then travelled again to Paris. By 14 December he was back at Blois. Before the holidays were over, he was on the road again. On Epiphany he was in Nevers, where Philip had assembled ‘la pluspart des princes du sang de France’ (and their consorts) and was celebrating le noël: ‘et y fit on moult grant feste, joutes, banquetz et divers festimens les ungs avec les aultres, et entre les princes fut pourparlé et traictié de moult grans choses tendans a l’utillité et prouffict du Roy, des princes et du royaulme de France’.3 Charles did not leave Nevers until the end of February of 1442. On 18 May he visited the King (finally) at Limoges — and so on.4 During these years he would have found the ordinary systems of life disrupted in many ways, and it must have been simpler to copy lyrics (perhaps collected in a paper quire) into the manuscript in one or other place he stayed along the way than to find a scribe and have it done for him.5 Gérard Gros describes his manuscript as ‘un manuscrit qu’il gardait pardevers lui, consultait volontiers, et qui probalement l’accompagnait partout’.6 He had returned from England with a partially filled album of his poetry, newly copied, containing the poetry he had composed up to that time. Over the years that followed, as he assembled a new body of lyrics (most of them type 2), he seems to have realized that he had not allowed enough space for them, for he added sixteen new quires to the existing ones, identifiable by their distinctive ruling pattern (Table 2). Nine quires he added to the end of his manuscript (CC–LL). The rest he seems to have held in reserve. Only later (sometime during, perhaps even near the end of, stint 3) did he add them to the end of the section containing love ballades (7 quires, I–P), for the third limner (who decorated the initials of the stint-2 copyists) does not work on lyrics in those quires at all. On this new vellum the Duke copied a number of type-2 lyrics himself and engaged scribes to copy more. He also numbered the ballades and chansons/rondels in two separate series, first numbering the lyrics already copied, then working on ahead of the scribe,

3

Olivier de La Marche, Mémoires, ed. by Henri Beaune and Jean d’Arbaumont, 4 vols (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1883–88), I, 250. I am grateful to Catherine Emerson for supplying further information to that in her book, Olivier de La Marche and the Rhetoric of Fifteenth-Century Historiography (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004), pp. 174–78. 4

Monstrelet gives an account of many of the Duke’s activities during this period (‘Chroniques d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet’, vol. VIII, vol. XXXIII of Collection des chroniques nationales françaises, ed. by J.-A. Buchon (Paris: Verdière, 1826).

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5

See Vie, pp. 329–40.

6

Gros, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc’, p. 57.

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numbering blank leaves.7 It is at this time (in the second stint) that the lyrics from hands other than the Duke’s begin to appear, beginning almost immediately with an exchange of rondels with Charles de Nevers, cousin of the Duke of Burgundy (pp. 318–19, quire AA). The second stint of copying is distinguished by the work of the third limner, though no single scribe is associated with his work. Judging from the changes of hands and new limning scheme of the manuscript, in the period immediately following his release, the Duke added the following (see Table 4): – four ballades (one in quire H, p. 122, autograph; and three in S, pp. 226–30, in various hands);8 – thirteen chansons (in Y, pp. 291i, 293i–294i, 297i–298i, in various hands, and in AA–BB, pp. 329–36, all but one autograph); – one carole (in Latin, in CC, p. 347, autograph); and – sixty-five rondels (in AA–EE, pp. 318–45 irregularly supra and infra, and 349i–386i, some autograph).9 By the end of the second stint, the most important differences from the manuscript as we now have it (quires A through H and Q through MM, in addition to the differences noted in the discussion of stint 1) were that – nearly all the upper halves of the pages in quires T–EE were blank (though the bottoms of those pages contained short lyrics); – some of the ballades (C) and chansons (X and Y) were in a different order than they are at present;10 7

Johan Gerritsen has pointed out to me that, though two lyrics were copied on pp. 352 and following, the Duke still writes only one number on the page, which demonstrates that he was numbering blank pages at this point. 8 Daniel Poirion writes that ‘Entre juin 1439 et novembre 1440, date de son retour définitif en France, le duc semble avoir composé huit ballades, dont cinq font des allusions précises aux négociations dont il fut, pour ainsi dire, l’enjeu à cette époque’, and n. 80: ‘Bal. nos 87 (1439 à Calais); 88, 89 (avant le 25 octobre 1439); 93, 94 (juillet 1440)’ (Le poète, p. 291). Though we would seem to disagree on this point, in fact the order of the poems is the same. Only the way of framing the description is different. The poet must have written the lyric Pour ce que je suis a presant (Poirion’s no. 94) while he was still in England, but it was not limned until later, when he was back in France. Likewise, the ballade on p. 230 (Ung jour a mon cueur devisoye), falls into the same part of the copying sequence, marked by the work of Limner 3, though it contains no historical referent that Poirion can use to include it in his series. 9

See Table 4; for a more detailed, graphic account of these complex quires, see Table 6.

10

If my assumption is correct that the quires were unbound for a number of years, these quires might have become disarranged at any point between the time of their copying, c. 1440, and (for

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– of the new batch of quires added to the manuscript (to the amount of sixteen quires), the seven presently between H and Q (following the first series of ballades) were blank and the nine following BB (i.e. at end of the manuscript as it was at that time) were only partially filled (CC, DD, EE);11 – the manuscript lacked the last four quires (MM–PP, the third ruling batch), and probably the first four, blank folios; and – quire Z may have been displaced, perhaps when the new batch of vellum was added near the end of this stint.12 The poet’s addition of the quires of the second ruling batch meant that he could add his newly composed lyrics and still have plenty of space for future compositions. Not counting other blank pages or half-pages throughout, the expanded manuscript in its new form (counting all the quires in the second ruling batch, some of which were probably not yet placed) was nearly half blank, a measure of the poet’s literary plans. That quires CC to LL of the second batch of vellum were added to the manuscript early in the second stint we know because little vellum remained in the first batch to receive type-2 lyrics: only pp. 318–46 in quires AA and BB (as well as six pages in Y); however, the fact that the third limner does not work in quires I through P suggests that this portion of the second batch of vellum was not inserted in its present position until very late in this stint or even early in the next stint. Assuming that the limner provided penwork for the initials (which may not, or not always, be the case), I shall refer to the third limner as one person, but there is some evidence that either this limner’s work was in general not very uniform or two or more limners worked in very similar styles. The penwork, for instance, sometimes consists simply of waving tendrils; at other times those tendrils are decorated by detached strokes that give a vegetal appearance (Figure 12, p. 372i), though both might be made by the same artisan.

the chansons) the time of the copying of Marie de Clève’s manuscript (Carpentras MS 375), post1456 according to Champion (Poésies, p. xvii). However, they occur in the correct order in Grenoble MS 873, copied by Antonio Astesano before 1453 (ibid., p. 38n) and so must have been disarranged some time between 1453 and c. 1456–60. 11

I shall assume that the two unequal halves of the second batch of vellum are presently in the position they were inserted; that is, no quires were shifted from the earlier position (I–P) to the later (CC–LL) or vice versa, though this is not demonstrable. 12

Since it is made up mostly of complaintes, which are never numbered, it is impossible to say exactly when it was displaced. This could have happened at any time up to its first binding.

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Commentary Many hands besides that of the poet appear in the course of the second stint of copying, and the number of initials limned per lyric drops, perhaps because the Duke did not have the leisure to concern himself with the precise details of the copying. His scribes (or authors) sometimes leave as many as five lines to be limned, sometimes as few as one. Comparing the pattern of the Duke’s copying with the work of his scribes casts an interesting light on the development of the manuscript in his first years back in France. After the first dozen or so stint-2 lyrics were copied, scribes began to copy lyrics on both halves of the page, supra and infra, in quire AA. After only nine pages (and three blanks were left in that short run: see Table 5), the Duke seems to have stepped in to halt the practice. On p. 328 (a recto) are copied two rondels; on pp. 329 and 330, the Duke has copied lyrics on the lower halves of the pages. No further use is made of the entire page for type-2 lyrics until much later, in stint 3, when the copying reaches p. 428. There is no sure way of knowing why and on what authority a scribe or scribes began copying two lyrics per page here. Any scribe who took his cue from the preceding pages would not have done so. But the fact that the Duke himself took over copying at exactly this point (and full-page copying ceased, at least for the time being) points, I think, to some kind of error or misunderstanding (but note that those copied onto the upper halves of the page could have been erased — as was the lyric on p. 487s — but were not). The Disordering of Some Ballades and Chansons and the Duke’s Numbering The bifolia of quire C were disarranged at some point between the time the scribe copied the text and the time Charles numbered the ballades. The Duke was numbering pages and apparently did not notice that the bifolia had been shuffled, the second and third bifolia being reversed (the quire being now correctly arranged; the numbers are currently out of order): Page 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

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·16· [·17·] ·20· ·18· [·19·] ·21· [·22]· ·23· [·2]4· ·27·

number opposite the first line, a fourth of the way down the page ballade begins a fourth of the way down the page number opposite the first line, ballade begins mid-page (number erased) seventeen lines of ballade ·20· number in upper right margin (not opposite first line), entire ballade on page entire ballade on page number in upper right margin number opposite second line, ballade begins after envoy of previous ballade number opposite first line, ballade begins after envoy of previous ballade number opposite second line, midway down page number in upper right margin, ballade begins mid-page

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·25· [·26·] ·28[·] [·29·]

eighteen lines of ballade ·27· number in upper right margin, entire ballade on page entire ballade on page number in upper right margin, entire ballade on page ballade begins mid-page

When numbering in the first sequence (but not in the second) appears in the upper margin rather than opposite the first line of a lyric, this is usually an indication that the page was blank at the time, but that could not have been the case here, as the construction of the quire demonstrates. Four of the five numbers (pp. 37, 39, 45, and 47) are placed on rectos on which the limned initial is at the top left. The fifth (see Figure 20, p. 43) is at the top of the (recto) page even though the ballade begins halfway down the page. The fact that he never corrected the numbering of the quire — or even made sure that the lyrics ran from page to page — means that he did not go back over the manuscript to check that everything was in order. Then again, if the numbering were a way of counting the lyrics rather than keeping them in order, there is no reason why he should ever have noticed the numbers again once he had entered them on the page.13 The leaves of chansons in quires X and Y became disarranged in the Duke’s lifetime, causing the disordering of the series of chansons in manuscripts copied from BnF, MS fr. 25458. They were in the correct order, however, when the Grenoble scribe, Nicolas Astesano, copied them (and his brother Antonio translated them into Latin) between 1449 and 1453; it might even have been one or other Astesano brother who disarranged the leaves in the copying process. But they are out of order in the manuscript that belonged to Marie de Clèves, in 1456, so the disarrangement must have occurred between about 1449 and 1456, when Marie’s manuscript was made. It is easy to spot the disarrangement, for the catchword at the end of X (·je ne les pri·) does not fall at the end of the quire or match the incipit of the following lyric. Fortunately, the fact that the catchwords survive in these two quires and that the Duke numbered the poems a few years after his return to France allows us to put the leaves of these two quires into their correct order easily, as Champion has done in his edition.14 That the Duke seems never to have noticed this shuffling of quires (or at least didn’t concern himself with correcting their order) seems to say that he was not micromanaging the order of his collection, that 13

Daniel Poirion was apparently stymied by this problem (‘Création poétique et composition romanesque’, p. 190; repr., p. 313). 14

See also Autographe, pp. 38–40. BL, MS Harley 682, the pre-1440 English manuscript that parallels this manuscript closely in the course of the first stint of work, also presents the English versions of these lyrics in the original order, giving us a terminus a quo for the shuffling.

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Figure 20. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 43. Ballade (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·27·).

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indeed his conception of the collection was looser than modern scholars and editors have allowed.15 Quire X:

MS page Limner 273 1 274 1 271 1 272 1 267 1 268 1 269 1 270 1 279 1 280 1 281 1 282 1 277 1 278 1 275 1 276 1

Duke’s no. ·33· [·34·] ·35· [·]36· ·37· [·38·] ·39· ·40· ·41· [·4]2· ·43· [·4]4· ·45· [·4]6· ·47· [·4]8·

Incipit Dedens mon sein De vostre beaute Prenez tost ce baisier Comment vous puis Je ne prise Ma seule amour ma Se desplaire Malade de mal ennuieux Sil vous plaist vendre Ma seule amour que Logies moy Se Dangier me tolt Va tost mon amoureux Je me metz Trop estes vers moy Vostre bouche [catchword: ·je ne les pri·]

Quire Y:

MS page Limner Duke’s no. Incipit 289 1 ·49· Je ne les prise 290 1 [·5]0· Au besoing congnoist 287 1 ·51· Fuyes le trait 288 1 [·]52· Mon seul amy 283 2 ·53· Fault il aveugle 284 2 [·5]4· Regardez moy 285 2 ·55· Reprenez ce larron 286 2 [·]56· Et eussiez vous 295 2 ·57· Donc vient ce soleil 296 2 [·5]8· Laissez moy penser 297 3 ·59· Levez ces cuevrechiefs 298 3 [·]60· Entre les amoureux 293 3 ·61· Dieu vous conduie 294 3 [·6]2· Les fourriers damours 291 3 ·63· Que cest estrange compaignie 292 (blank and unnumbered at this point)16

15

This seems to be not entirely uncommon. Editors frequently give in to the urge to tidy up the texts before them (see Nichols, ‘“Art” and “Nature”’, pp. 87–88). 16

Johan Gerritsen has noticed that the disarrangement is identical in the two quires: pp. 267–70 and 279–82 (in X), as well as pp. 283–86 and 295–98 (in Y), were originally in the centre

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The work of Scribe 2 and Limner 2 (pp. 283–86 and 295–96) is easy to see here. This is the only sample we have of their work. As it follows on from the work of the first scribe and limner and is in turn followed by that of the third limner, we can be sure of the succession of artisans, but not of exactly when (or where) they worked on the manuscript. These two seem to have worked in quick succession and they may have been available to the Duke in England or (perhaps more likely) among the artisans surrounding the Duke of Burgundy. Wherever he found them, they were certainly not English. The scribe is French; the limner, probably Flemish. The Layout and Headings of the Chansons and Rondels Understanding the ordering of the chansons (and later rondels) becomes notoriously difficult because of the Duke’s original plan to place only one short lyric at the bottom of each page, leaving the (ruled) top of the page blank (see Figure 3, p. 244). Champion summarizes the Duke’s possible motives for leaving the tops of these leaves blank thus: ‘Deux hypothèses sont à écarter: cette place ne peut avoir été réservée pour une miniature puisque le vélin est réglé; elle ne parait pas non plus avoir été ménagée pour des additions postérieures, et ce n’est que par accident que ces blancs ont reçu de telles additions. Cette place était destinée à la musique qui n’a jamais été transcrite.’ According to Champion, because Charles was a musician and loved music, ‘Il est donc naturel de penser que Charles d’Orléans avait fait, ou fait faire, la musique de ses chansons’.17 Champion notes the Duke’s ability to play the harp (an instrument, by the way, played by many other French noblemen and noblewomen of the period) but can adduce no evidence that the Duke ever composed any music. Although he admits that the layout of the manuscript is ‘tout à fait anormale’ for the addition of music, he concludes with the astonishing statement that ‘cette place était peut-être réservée pour la musique polyphonique’.18 He of their respective quires. Those originally in the centre of quire Y belong to Scribe 2 (followed by lyrics from the second stint). For Vincenç Beltran’s argument concerning these lyrics, see the Appendix. 17

Autographe, p. 36, n. 1. Any number of scholars, both French and Anglo-American, have followed Champion down this blind alley, including, among others, Daniel Poirion (Le poète, p. 294), Gérard Gros (‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 70), and Sarah Spence (ed. and trans., The French Chansons of Charles d’Orléans, p. xx). 18

Autographe, p. 36, n. 1. In La librairie he writes that ‘au-dessus des chansons on avait réservé le parchemin blanc pour y inscrire la musique correspondante’ (p. lx). He holds to this conclusion in his edition (Poésies, published between 1923 and 1927, p. 564). Nor is it possible that this manu-

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unfortunately has it backwards: ruling is no deterrent to the adding of miniatures. In fact the painting of miniatures over ruled parchment is not all that uncommon, and it seems more likely that the poet would be planning for illuminations than for music.19 However, the ruling of these leaves for text presents a serious impediment to the addition of music, as is the layout of the page in general.20 Ruling of staves differs entirely from ruling for text, and the ruling, both for music and for text, was generally the first thing done in preparing the page for its content.21 The layout for a chanson (or other short verse form) set to music in this period followed a standard form: the music for the highest voice is copied at the top of the verso; the remaining text, beneath.22 On the facing recto, the music for the other two parts is copied, one on the upper portion of the page, the other beneath it. In the case of the Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Réserve Vm-c 57, a mid- to late fifteenth-century manuscript; see Figure 21), three decorated initials (champes with spray work) are provided, one at the opening of each part.23 According to its editor, ‘Nivelle preserves a relatively conservative repertory of formes fixes chansons; all but one of its pieces are either script or part of it is the item number 44 in the inventory of books brought back from England by the Duke, ‘Item quatre feuillets oú sont plusieurs chansons notées’, since no music exists in the manuscript (see La librairie, p. xxxii (item 44 on p. xxviii), n. 5; Ouy, La librairie des frères captifs, #114, p. 49; de Laborde, #6560). The entry tells us neither whose poetry (or music) it was nor in what language it was written. His further remarks on the later addition of a few notes of music above a roundel in the manuscript of Charles’s English poetry (BL, MS Harley 682) are a red herring; the music was added long after the manuscript was made and has nothing to do with the poetry. Nor does the fact that a couple of his lyrics were set to music by others have any bearing on the disposition of the text in this manuscript (see David Fallows, ‘Words and Music in Two English Songs of the Mid-15th Century: Charles d’Orléans and John Lydgate’, Early Music, 5 (1977), 38–43). 19

Autographe, p. 36, n. 1. Lilian Randall kindly spoke to ‘numerous experts’ on my behalf about this phenomenon. She reported (via e-mail) that ‘All said they had seen examples, but conldn’t be more specific.’ 20

Nigel Wilkins, ‘Charles d’Orléans: avec musique ou non?’, Romania, 112 (1991), 268–72. I find the unwillingness of scholars to take note of this evidence inexplicable. This is one of the many issues surrounding Charles d’Orléans on which romance triumphs consistently over scholarly expertise and physical fact. 21

I am grateful to Karen Duys, Nancy Regalado, and Tom Kelly for help in locating and understanding this kind of manuscript. 22

See the New Grove Dictionary of Music, ed. by Stanley Sadie, vol. (London: Macmillan, 1980), p. 681. 23

XVII:

Schütz–Spinto

Paula Higgins, introduction to Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Rés. Vmc. ms 57, ca 1460) (Geneva: Minkoff, 1984), pp. i–xix (p. vii and Plate 18).

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Figure 21. BnF, MS Rés. Vm-c 57, fols 21v–22r. Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée.

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rondeaux or bergerettes’.24 Four of the poets identified in the manuscript have some association with the court at Blois, including Villon (the only poem of his known to be set to music) and Fredet. Various people associated with this manuscript can be traced to Tours, Bourges, the Loire Valley, and Central France.25 It thus provides a good indicator of the preferred mise-en-page of a chanson or rondel. Not only is this layout not followed in the Duke’s manuscript, however, but, given the relative size of script to page, there is not enough room on the page even for monophonic music, let alone polyphonic music. Another well known chansonnier, the Copenhagen Chansonnier (Figure 22), though decorated differently, is laid out in exactly the same way. In this manuscript, the initials are replaced by unframed drolleries, hybrid creatures, snails, and half-humans engaged in a variety of activities.26 The Chansonnier de Laborde (Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, MS M2.1.L25 Case),27 dated to the mid-1480s, follows the usual mise-en-page, but the three initials are filled, not with vegetal forms or grotesques, but with figures (Figure 23, fols 56v –57r). A number of them show on the verso the bust of a man facing to his left, on the recto, a woman facing to her right, thus suggesting the relationship in which the song plays out. On other leaves we find heads rather than busts, and in yet others full-length figures, or Love with his bow, thus suggesting one possible use for the spaces the Duke left blank.28 24

Higgins in Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée, p. ii. All of my information concerning this manuscript is taken from Higgens’s introduction. 25

Higgins in Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée, p. ix. Though very little is known about Fredet, at least one of his lyrics (A quoy tient il le cuer me vole) earned him a place in at least five manuscripts, for which see David Fallows, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 89. 26

Der kopenhagener Chansonnier: Das Manuskript Thott 2918 der königlichen Bibliothek Kopenhagen, ed. by Knud Jeppesen (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard; Leipzig: Bretikopf & Härtel, 1927; repr., New York: Broude Brothers, 1965). 27

For a description, see the Census-Catalogue of Manuscript Sources of Polyphonic Music, 1400–1550, vol. IV : V–Z and Supplement, Renaissance Manuscript Studies, 1 ([Rome]: Hänssler, for the American Institute of Musicology, 1988), pp. 125–26. 28

For examples of miniatures to accompany individual lyric poems, see Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyrics and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), ch. 2, ‘Scribal Practice in Lyric Anthologies: Structure, Format and Iconography of Trouvère Chansonniers’, esp. pp. 49–59 and ‘The Iconography of Lyricism’ on pp. 74–76. The well-known and frequently used mid- to late fifteenth-century Chansonnier Cordiforme (Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Rothschild 2973), a heart-shaped manuscript, is likewise illuminated (see Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu (Bibliothèque nationale, Rothschild 2973 [I.5.13]), ed. by G. Thibault, with commentary by David Fallows (Paris: Publications de la Société

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Charles planned the layout of his manuscript long before the Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée was copied and on the other side of la Manche. French manuscripts containing music certainly circulated in England in the first half of the fifteenth century, but what about English lyrics set to music? Do English manuscripts give us any idea what sort of layout the Duke might have seen during his years of captivity? Very few English manuscripts containing text and music survive, but one with royal associations, copied well before the Duke planned his manuscript, is the Old Hall manuscript, dated 1415–25. In it, the Gloria, identified as a composition by ‘Roy Henry’ (Henry V), is laid out in the same way as is the Chaussée de la Nivelle, with one part on the verso, the other two on the facing recto.29 The Gloria is, of course, not a chanson, but a ‘piece’ of the Mass, but the example demonstrates that this kind of distinction had more to do with geography and the nature of the music itself than with a secular/liturgical one.30 Another piece of evidence suggests the impossibility of squeezing music into this format. For decorating the young Duke’s robe in 1414 with the words and music of a chanson, 960 pearls were required, of which 568 were reserved for the music, consisting of 142 notes (four pearls en quarré per note).31 In addition to the text, it would be simply impossible, given the chansons we have, to fit anything like 142 notes on a single page. In an article written in 1980, Alice Planche surveyed the poet’s references to music and found them largely negative:

française de musicologie, 1991)). This mise-en-page is very long lived and reproduced in many modern publications. For a manuscript of chansons notées made in the center of France at the very end of the fifteenth century for Charles’s son, Louis XII, see Ursula Baurmeister and Marie-Pierre Laffitte, Des livres et des rois: la Bibliothèque royale de Blois, preface by Jack Lang, foreword by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1992), pp. 66–67. 29

For a recent colour reproduction of this opening, see Margaret Bent, ‘Music Seen and Music Heard: Music in England c. 1400–1547’, in Gothic Art for England 1400–1547, ed. by Richard Marks and Paul Williamson, with Eleanor Townsend (London: Victoria and Albert Publications, 2003), pp. 121–22. Of course he might just as easily have seen a French manuscript with music as an English one. 30

I am grateful to Helen Deeming for helping me to understand something about the copying of music manuscripts. 31

‘Lettres de Charles duc d’Orléans, ordonnance de payement d’une somme de 276 liv. 7 s. 6 den. tour., pour prix de 960 perles destinées à orner une robe; sur les manches est escript de broderie, tout au long, le dit de la chanson: Madame je suis plus joyeulx en notté tout au long sur chacune desdites deux manches. — 568 perles pour servir à former les nottes de ladite chanson, où il a 142 nottes, c’est assavoir pour chacune notte 4 perles en quarré, etc.’ (de Laborde, #6241).

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Figure 22. Royal Library, Thott MS 2918, fols 27v–28r, Copenhagen Chansonnier.

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Figure 23. Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, MS M2.1.L25 Case, fols 56v–57r, Chansonnier de Laborde.

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Chapter 3 Il ne serait ni signe de paresse, comme l’a cru Pierre Champion, ni économie, ni, comme je l’ai moi-même avancé, preuve de confiance dans la parole poétique autonome, mais aveu d’un double échec: celui d’un vieil homme que ne tentent plus les musiques neuves et pour qui les sons mêmes font trop de bruit, celui d’une technique un temps égarée dans les subtilités et le maniérisme, après la perfection indépassable de Guillaume de Machaut.32

John Fox’s contribution to discussion of this puzzling layout is to suggest that the heading was placed at the top of the page to reserve the space for the lyric at the bottom. No one would copy a lyric between a heading and the lyric it belonged to, clearly matched by the work of a single limner (although, as the poet gradually lost interest in the presentation of the poetry as he had once envisioned it, he did just that). Nancy Regalado has suggested another alternative, that of a ‘principe de la largesse princière, pratiqué au niveau de la mise en page’.33 The question of why he wrote all of the chansons he composed on the bottom of their respective pages is probably still open (at least no single explanation has yet gained wide acceptance), and the reasons may be multiple. No parallels to such a mise-en-page have been found in manuscripts of work by other late medieval French poets. However, the corresponding English lyrics (roundels) in BL, MS Harley 682 are laid out in exactly the same way, as are the roundels in the ‘Oxbridge’ fragment of a copy made from the Harley manuscript.34 It seems from this that the poet felt strongly about this layout and made sure his copyists followed his instructions. I do not think that solving this riddle matters a great deal, however, in the determination of the history of this manuscript. The existence of the blank half-pages is as fascinating as it is baffling, but I shall not attempt to guess at Charles’s reasoning here.

32

Alice Planche, ‘Charles d’Orléans et la musique du silence’, in Musique, littérature et société au moyen âge: actes du colloque, 24–29 mars 1980, ed. by Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin ([Amiens]: Centre d’Études Mediévales, Université de Picardie, 1980), pp. 437–48 (p. 447). 33

She too argues cogently against the possibility that the spaces were left for music (‘En ce saint livre’, pp. 365–66). See also Catherine Reynolds, ‘The Undecorated Margin: The Fashion for Luxury Books without Borders’, in Flemish Manuscript Painting in Context: Recent Research, ed. by Elizabeth Morrison and Thomas Kren (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2006), pp. 10–26. 34

See Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn, pp. 106–09 and 122–23. The Duke’s English poetry was copied at about the same time as BnF, MS fr. 25458, probably in London. It is a recasting in English of the ballade sequence in its narrative frame, a series of roundels that are near translations of the first fifty or so chansons, and further poetry that exists only in English, both narrative and lyric. The survival of fragments of the Harley manuscript with the same layout tells us that the Duke had his English poetry copied more than once (as he did his French work), probably as gifts to friends or in response to requests for it.

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It is similarly impossible to know why, in quire AA (pp. 320–28, stint 2), the scribe copied and the Duke subsequently numbered two short lyrics per page. Throughout the rest of the series of chansons, Charles’s numbers appear near the upper outer corner of the leaf, but on six of these pages one number appears in the usual place, the other at the first line of the lower lyric (see Figure 11, p. 325): p. 320: ·66· and ·67· p. 321: ·68· and ·69· p. 322: none (cropped) [·70·] and [·7]1· p. 323: ·72· (323s was copied in the third stint) p. 324: [·7]3· and [·7]4· p. 325: ·75· and ·76· p. 326: [·7]7· and [·]78· p. 327: ·79· (327i was copied in the third stint; see Figure 24) p. 328: [·8]0· and [·8]1· The rest of the quire is numbered in the usual way. The lyric on p. 322i (Laissez aler) is not limned by the third limner, but the fact that this series of lyrics must have been copied into the manuscript before the Duke added the numbers tells us that it cannot have been copied in the final (fourth) stint.35 It looks as if the eye of the limner who made the initial for the lyric on the upper portion of the page was not stopped by a heading of any kind above p. 322i and so assumed that the four strophes on the page belonged to one poem.36 On the pages that contain two stint-2 chansons, the poet placed one number opposite the first line of each one. On p. 327 (see Figure 24), on which a stint-2 rondel is copied above a stint-3 rondel, the number is opposite the opening line of the upper lyric, confirming the later addition of the lyric infra. From p. 329 on, as far as p. 386, where the stint-2 chansons end, however, the number shifts back to the top of the page (see Figure 12). This curious deviation is confined to this quire and represents some of the earliest work of this stint. It is difficult to know what to make of the ‘transgression’ of what had seemed to be a rule for the layout of short lyrics in this manuscript up to this point. Was this an experiment by the poet? a mistake by the scribe? No evidence presents itself that would answer these questions, but the fact remains 35

Arguing on other grounds, Champion writes that it is in the same hand as the previous six pieces, all written at the same time, and he traces the ideas that link them (Autographe, p. 51). 36

This argument was suggested to me by Johan Gerritsen, who noted further that reading the text is not the limner’s job, an observation that might be used profitably more often than it is. It is also possible that the scribal majuscule (the L of Laissez) deterred him. The hands of the scribe or scribes who copied the two lyrics are very similar.

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Figure 24. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 327. Stint-2 lyric above stint-3 lyric, rondels (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·79·).

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that well before he decided to use those blanks above the chansons (and later the rondels), there were some short lyrics copied into the manuscript two-to-a-page. Charles does not switch over to the two-lyrics-per-page layout wholeheartedly until p. 430 (quire HH), years later and well into the third stint. Is there some reason that the Duke would suddenly adopt a new layout, only to abandon it a few pages later? — and does it have anything at all to do with the fact that the quire opens with three (stint-1) caroles? I can only postulate that a certain amount of experimentation took place especially in the early part of the second stint, and this may perhaps go some way to account for the other irregularities. The general impression conveyed by Champion’s edition and by a number of subsequent discussions of these lyrics is that the chansons are the work of the poet’s years of captivity and the rondels the work of his later years, that he ‘discovered’ the rondel form on his return to France and took to it immediately and completely.37 This is not the case, but before we can address it, we must deal with another matter. There is some disagreement about exactly which lyrics fall into which category. Two kinds of confusion have muddied the editorial waters. The first is caused by a scribe (or in some cases perhaps the poet) who writes ‘Chancon’ (or ‘hancon’ with a director for the C) at the top of the page, intending to label the lyric at the bottom (because no further use of the space on the page was contemplated at that time). When rondels were later added in the spaces, the heading at the top of the page was misapplied by readers to the later lyric, copied immediately below the heading. To complicate things further, in some cases a scribe, feeling that the lyric at the bottom deserved its own heading, wrote the word ‘Rondel’ between the two lyrics, thereby introducing a second misnomer on the page. See, for example, Figure 10 (p. 329), where the heading ‘Chancon’ is copied above a rondel and then the heading ‘Rondel’ above a chanson; in fact, they should be reversed. The decoration of the initials gives the game away. The word ‘Rondel’ in the middle of the page has a third-stint plain red and blue initial like those of the upper lyric; the heading ‘Chancon’ at the top of the page and the lower lyric are both limned by the third limner during the second stint.

37

‘After his return to France and retreat to Blois, Charles wrote only rondeaux’ (Karen Newman, ‘The Mind’s Castle: Containment in the Poetry of Charles d’Orléans’, Romance Philology, 33 (1979), 317–28 (p. 325, n. 154)). This is not only not true but represents a hurried reading of Champion’s claims. It is clear from his comments on p. 48 of Autographe that he saw the alternation of forms, though he chose to segregate them in his edition. Both terms, chanson and rondel, are much older than the fifteenth century, though their precise meaning at any specific point in time may be difficult to define.

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A second kind of confusion is caused by the way the two terms were used in the early years of the 1440s, not only by scribes, but by the poet himself. Scribes tended to use the heading rondel exclusively. Before he went to England, everyone was calling what he wrote while he was there ‘chansons’.38 Charles himself had been calling the form chanson for nearly three decades (and he composed nearly a hundred of them), and it is probable that his use of the terms chanson and rondel was unstable for some time after his return to France. After he returned, poets were still writing them (though they had generally dispensed with one of the central refrain lines), but though they still recognized the term ‘chanson’ they referred to them with the more usual term ‘rondel’. After a period of adjustment, so did Charles. It is easy to understand that he would not be bothered by the heading ‘Chancon’ above a rondel composed after his return to France. He did, after all, number the chansons and rondels in one long, unbroken series. Scribes seem to have been just as unruffled by the minor differences in form. When they saw a lyric at the bottom of a page that appeared to lack a heading, they inserted the word Rondel, the word they commonly used, whether the middle refrain contained one line or two. The words ‘chanson’ and ‘rondel’ probably both meant to Charles a short poem with a certain shape. In fact, in the only case in which someone has crossed out the heading ‘Chancon’ and written ‘Rondel’ beside it (p. 349), the word is in a postmedieval hand. Someone recognized the ‘old-style’ heading and ‘corrected’ it (we have no idea when it was done; it is an anomaly). In time, of course, the poet must have become used to the new term, because he came to use it exclusively. The implications of these observations go beyond the merely pedantic. Identification of the first limner as English and comparison of hands and limning schemes shows that the poet did indeed continue to compose chansons (decorated by the third limner during the second stint) at least for a while, after his return to his native land.39 This points to a transitional period in which the poet experimented with rondels while he was yet writing chansons almost exclusively. During these first months following his release the Duke, who was travelling much of the time,40 was 38

Christine Reno kindly shared with me this snippet from L’advision Cristine, book 1, where Libera, the personification of France, is made Christine’s scribe: ‘Et n’ot orreur d’enjoindre a moy femme telle honneur comme de m’instituer estre antigraphe de ses adventures, et voult que par moy oroisons et chançons en fussent faictes’ (emphasis mine; Le livre de l’advision Cristine, ed. by Christine Reno and Liliane Dulac, Études Christiniennes, 4 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2001), p. 16). 39 Although Champion knew this, he did not seem to realize fully its implications (see, e.g., Autographe, pp. 46 and 83; Poésies, pp. lxiv and 567). 40

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See Champion, ‘Itinéraire’, in Vie, pp. 672–74, and Poirion, Le poète, pp. 293–95.

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learning (or relearning) a great deal, in his attempt to familiarize himself with recent developments in French politics and culture — and poetry. Quires AA and BB contain a series of anomalies, a not-surprising situation given the turn of events in Charles’s life. There is physical evidence to buttress this analysis of these two closely related verse forms. The poet drew attention to each verse form in this manuscript by beginning in a new quire. This is true of the ballades (p. 17, quire B, and the Balades de plusieurs propos on p. 203, R), the complaintes (p. 299, Z), the chansons (p. 235, T), and the caroles (p. 315, AA),41 but it is not true of the rondels, which begin on p. 247, near the end of quire T. The rondel was, in fact, not a ‘new form’.42 This would seem to explain the matter of the headings, but on p. 338 a new problem arises. There ‘Chancon’ stands at the top of the page and ‘Rondel’ stands between the two lyrics, but both lyrics on the page are certainly rondels (see Figure 16, p. 338, and Table 6). Thereafter, a number of lyrics labelled as chansons are in fact rondels: pp. 338i–345i, 349i, 354si–355si, and 356i–357i (i.e. the heading at the top of the leaf applies to neither lyric on the page). Champion’s solution to this confusing puzzle was to simplify: Voici comment [i.e. by sorting out ‘Chancon’ and ‘Rondel’ headings on pp. 329–57, campaign 2] nous devons compléter la série primitive des chansons. Il nous faudra chercher ces morceaux dans le groupe des rondeaux (et ces pièces, dans cette section sont naturellement postérieures au retour de Charles d’Orléans en France).43

He trusted the headings to identify the verse forms because he believed that they were autograph, though one would be hard pressed to demonstrate the truth of that assertion. He allows that the chansons between pp. 329 and 337 were composed after the Duke’s return to France, but he wants very much to sort lyrics by verse form. Because he defines chansons and rondels as completely different forms, and because he identifies form by heading, he must pluck the offending chansons out of his garden of rondels, which occupies the whole of the second volume of his edition. The chansons must be backward looking and are therefore said to ‘complete’ the

41

The caroles are found in two places in the manuscript: at the openings of quires AA and CC. The three in AA were copied in the first stint; the single one in CC (in Latin, copied by the poet), in the second. Both are followed by type-2 lyrics, rondels copied in the second stint. 42

Gérard Gros writes that the word ‘rondel’ could be applied to any short poem in the late fifteenth century (‘L’écriture du prince: étude sur le souci graphique de Charles d’Orléans dans son manuscrit personnel (Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 25458)’, in L’Hostellerie de pensée, ed. by Zink and Bohler, pp. 195–204 (p. 199)). Similarly the word ‘balades’ could be used to mean simply poems. 43

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Autographe, p. 42.

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fonds primitif.44 Yet on the basis of verse form, Champion can be said to print fifteen ‘false’ chansons (see Table 6).45 A number of scholars have found this way of sorting the lyrics unsatisfactory. Although Daniel Poirion based his reasoning on the premise that Charles’s chansons were (to be) set to music, he disagrees with Champion’s manipulation of categories. ‘Malgré cette différence [between chanson and rondel], sur laquelle Champion a eu le tort de fonder le classement des poèmes, il convient de suivre l’ordre du manuscrit, confirmé par une numérotation du duc’.46 Jacqueline Cerquiglini is also concerned with the problem of sorting by headings: La nomination du rondeau est instructive et nous renseigne à la fois globalement sur l’évolution de cette forme du XIIIe au XVIe siècle et spécifiquement sur son interprétation par des individus. On constate ainsi, nous l’avons vu, qu’au XIIIe siècle des rondeaux peuvent être appelés chansons alors qu’ils pourront porter comme titre au XV e siècle le terme général de ditié [a term Charles never uses in this manuscript]. Cette désignation différente met l’accent sur le passage d’une pièce de nature essentiellement musicale à une pièce qui peut se suffire de son écriture. On remarque toutefois que certains rondeaux de Charles d’Orléans sont désignés par la rubrique chanson [. . .]. Différence de sensibilité des auteurs [Charles d’Orléans et Anthoine Busnois] quand ils composent, différence de milieu, différence de fonction de la pièce [. . .], différence technique aussi, vraisemblablement, dans l’utilisation du refrain.47

It is not possible to match the script of the headings in this part of the manuscript with those of the lyrics beneath (pace Champion), but it does appear (though it is impossible to prove) that many of the headings are in a single hand, suggesting that they were entered by a person either working mechanically without looking closely at the page or writing headings ahead on blank leaves, which makes sense, since the predominant form in the preceding quire (Y) was the chanson.48 The second group of chansons, copied in the course of the second stint, are found on the lower portions 44

Autographe, p. 42.

45

Poésies, pp. 247–56; Autographe, pp. 42–44. The lyrics at the tops of pp. 354 and 355 are rondels, as are the lyrics at the bottoms of those pages. All four are headed ‘Chancon’. The two English lyrics that fall within this series (p. 346si) are genuine chansons. 46

Le poète, p. 294 and n. 90.

47

Jacqueline Cerquiglini, ‘Le Rondeau’, ch. 4 in La littérature française aux XIV e et XV e siècles, ed. by Daniel Poirion, Grundriss der Romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters, 8.1 (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1988), pp. 45–59 (pp. 46–47). 48

Charles copied a number of the lyrics early in the second stint, and his hand is in evidence right through the series of rondels that Champion misidentified as chansons on the basis of their headings.

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of pp. 329–37. The mislabeling of rondels as chansons follows them immediately, beginning on p. 338 (see Figure 16) and running as far as p. 357. It is easy to understand and not unlikely that the scribe(s) who was copying chansons continued the headings beyond the point at which the lyrics were copied onto the page. If so, the result would be that rondels were copied beneath the heading ‘Chancon’. The fact that these lyrics vary so little in length (unlike the ballades) makes it easy for a scribe to misidentify them. On the other hand, if the lyric were copied onto the page and the headings added to a group of lyrics (rather than one by one as the copyist wrote out the lyrics), the inattentive scribe could very easily have assumed that the lyrics were a continuation of the chanson series in Y. We might therefore chalk up the series of errors to a lapse in scribal attention. At p. 337 it may be that someone brought the matter to the scribe’s (or Charles’s) attention, or it may be that the scribe ceased to add forward headings. Whatever the case, the word ‘chanson’ does not appear anywhere in the manuscript after that page. We have here yet another instance of a poet who, though exercising a certain amount of care in ordering his manuscript, was not compulsive about correcting errors that seemed to him to be trivial. After all, none of his fellow poets, if asked, would have any problem identifying either form (see chapter 4). Champion recognized the formal distinction between the two variants: ‘Dans cette section des rondeaux, le duc d’Orléans n’a pas, d’ailleurs, été très conséquent avec le classement qu’il s’était proposé de son œuvre: c’est ainsi qu’il y a introduit un certain nombre de chansons, et elles ont été numérotées dans la suite des rondeaux’,49 but he was misled into trusting their identification by their headings. So on the one hand, he corrected the errors of his editorial predecessors: ‘Ces pièces ont toujours été données dans les éditions comme des rondeaux, et on n’a pas su reconnaître à quelle pièce s’adressait la rubrique qui se lit dans le haut des pages, comme un titre courant’.50 On the other hand, when he claims that ‘On trouvera ces chansons pages 329 à 349 où elles occupent les numéros 82 à 99’,51 he fails to discriminate between the real chansons (pp. 329i–337i) and rondels copied beneath the heading ‘Chancon’ (pp. 338s–345s, 349s, and 354s–357s). These Champion removed to another part of the edition (volume I) in order to maintain what he thought was an accurate series of headings, but he merely preserved an erratic labelling system, correcting one error only to introduce another. No one (including himself) has taken seriously Champion’s observation that the poet includes both

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49

Autographe, p. 48.

50

Autographe, p. 48, n. 2.

51

Autographe, p. 48.

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chansons and rondels in one long numbering system, thereby suggesting that there is in Charles’s own mind a distinction (length of mid-lyric refrain) but no great difference among type-2 lyrics,52 and what is more that they were meant to be read as a single series: chansons: pp. 235i–298i (T–Y); [caroles: pp. 315–17;] rondels: pp. 318i–326i and 328i (AA); chansons: pp. 329i–337i (AA–BB). This series includes all the chansons copied into the manuscript during the second phase of production. I would suggest that the distinction is as much historical as formal (and might even be reduced to the level of scribal convention). The poet himself copied more than thirty lyrics during the second phase of this manuscript’s life, most of them chansons and rondels. In addition to the lyrics on the lower portions of the page in quires AA to EE, he copied the ballade on p. 122 (Figure 9), the Latin carole on p. 347, and the four lines in the bottom margin of p. 337. We do not find his hand in those lyrics copied two to a page between pp. 320 and 328 (see Table 6), but the Duke steps in immediately following that run of rondels to copy the first of a second series of chansons on pp. 329i, 330i, and 333i.53 He then goes on to copy a number of rondels on the pages between pp. 340i and 357i that bear the heading ‘Chancon’, continuing on intermittently through p. 386i (see Table 6), copying rondels beneath the heading ‘Rondel’. Interspersed among these lyrics in the Duke’s hand are a series of pairs of lyrics copied in other hands. Some of the first chansons limned by the third limner (pp. 291i, 294i, and 298i) were copied by the same accomplished scribe, the first and last appearance of his hand in the manuscript. The two earliest rondels, an exchange between the Duke and Charles de Nevers, are in a different hand.54 Yet another

52

After this, Charles wrote rondels exclusively. So pp. 318i–328i contain the only intrusive series of rondels, all decorated, like those that follow, during the second layer of production. I recognize that many readers will be unhappy with my narrowly codicological and formal view of these poems. Although I cannot here discuss differences between early and late subject matter, vocabulary, and treatment, I recognize that there is much more to be said on the subject of early and late lyrics, and about Charles’s poetic development, and I hope with this study to provide a sound basis on which others can build. 53 54

The Duke copied the first six lines of the chanson on p. 332i over an erasure.

The earliest two rondels in the collection (quire EE), copied during the second stint, constitute an exchange with Charles de Nevers, second cousin to Philippe le Bon, who repaid the Duke’s hospitality with a poem. (‘C’est là une politesse et en même temps une flatterie délicate’, Poésies, p. 624, s.v., Nevers. Cf. Vie, pp. 445–46 and 457.) He must have been at Blois soon after the Duke’s return, for in early 1442, Jean de Moucy left Blois ‘pour chercher certains harnois que Charles avait donnès à Mgr de Nevers et qu’il voulait faire conduire à Nevers’ (London, British Library, MS Additional 11542, fol. 27 v ; Vie, p. 334, n. 1). In late 1441 Charles had been at Nevers with

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scribe takes over and copies two rondels in the following opening (pp. 320s and 321s), and yet another fills the bottom of those leaves, as well as one lyric on the verso of p. 321 (p. 322i). The lyric at the bottom of p. 322 is undecorated; the scribe has provided the initials himself. But the fact that the poet has placed his number ·71· halfway down the page, to the left of the large initial, tells us that the lyric had already been copied when the numbering was done. A fourth scribe copies the rondels on pp. 320s, 321s, 326s, and 327s, and so it goes, each scribe copying a short run of lyrics, then giving way to another.55 What is interesting is that nearly every pair (and there are no long strings of lyrics copied by a single hand) is copied across an opening. This observation reinforces the relationships that are obvious to the reader: that in many cases a writer responded to a lyric composed by someone else (and in the same lyric form, though not built on the same first line), and the author or a scribe emphasized that relationship by writing them on the same opening of the manuscript, facing one another. Some of these lyrics refer to an adjoining poem, some are simply on the same theme, but it was common practice for the residents of and visitors to Blois to compose responses to each other’s literary efforts, a custom that led eventually to the writing of longer groups of lyrics that share the same first line. The fact that poems composed on the same first line generally occur together points to the poet’s interest in keeping them, in general, together, as do many pairs or groups of poems that respond one to the other.56 It would be reasonable to conclude that his interest in poem order ebbed and flowed depending on whether he saw connections between poems and how strong he felt the connection to be. The Work of the Third Limner After the first few years, when he was settled into his new life at Blois and had copied or had had copied a number of new lyrics into his manuscript, Charles Burgundy and many members of the nobility who had gathered to discuss his ransom (Vie, p. 332). The visit therefore probably took place in the very early 1440s. 55

Many of these hands are very similar except for a few quirky flourishes, the style (or variety of styles) of especially d or g, or the shapes of ascenders. Few are markedly amateur or idiosyncratic. 56

The ballades beginning Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine are grouped in quire O, written during the fourth stint, with the exception of one in H (p. 123, stint 3) and one in K (p. 147, stint 4), both of these from Charles’s hand. It would seem that, having written the first ballade (p. 123) sometime in the mid-1440s, he returned to the theme nearly a decade later to write a second ballade (p. 147). Only sometime after that, after 1450, did he or someone in his entourage take up the line and initiate a debat, in which both they and a number of poets participated.

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engaged a new limner to decorate these added lyrics. He seems to have planned to continue the decoration of the manuscript in a style similar to that of the first two limners, a task that the third limner was perhaps not equal to. According to Patricia Stirnemann, ‘Le deuxième style [i.e. of the third limner; the second had not yet been recognized] [. . .] n’est qu’une faible imitation dont l’origine française est attestée par le graphisme et l’usage de la couleur rouge terne’57 (see Figure 9, p. 122), though his feathering springing from the large initial looks more like an attempt to reproduce the style of Limner 2 (whereas the penwork of the one-line initials, usually done by someone other than the limner, resembles that of the flourisher of stint 1). The limner was less skilled than Limner 1, and his work is awkward where that of his predecessors is graceful.58 The sprays that sprout from the initial letter of each poem are shorter, the lines thicker, the penwork around the one-line initials less expert. The Duke may have been less than pleased with his or her work, for he apparently did not attempt or could not find a limner to reproduce this style thereafter, instead opting for a simpler style of unflourished, ungilded red and blue initials. A number of this limner’s initials are unfinished, and it is the way they are unfinished that is of interest. The limner did not work on the lyrics consecutively, nor even on small batches of them, but went over and over a fairly long series of lyrics (some fifty of them) doing more or less the same thing to each one: gilding, outlining, painting one colour, adding spray work. Even more interesting is the fact that this limner seems to have set up work in such a way that he finished (not always completely, but partially) the versos ahead of the rectos (cf. Figure 17, p. 354, a verso, with Figure 25, p. 355, the following recto).59 Variations in these initials may, however, be the result of more than one person being involved in the decoration. A lesser artisan may have blocked out the initials, drawing the letter and framing it in black ink, with the limner then adding the gold and the sprays.60 Many of the one-line initials are finished and flourished on pages with an unfinished large initial, suggesting that these, too, may have been made by two different artisans. Penwork was a different craft altogether, and it may also be that two 57

Stirnemann, p. 181.

58

Of the work of the first limner Stirnemann writes, ‘Des jets plumetés jaillissant gracieusement des coins des lettres champies et les filigranes à longue feuille sortant des petites lettrines’ (Stirnemann, p. 181). 59 The partially finished initials are to be found on a number of (but not all) rectos beginning on p. 353i and ending on p. 385i (quires CC to EE). 60

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Figure 25. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 355. Supra: stint-3 rondel (autograph); infra: recto partially finished by Limner 3/stint 2 (autograph) (Charles d’Orléans’s no. ·105·).

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different flourishers worked on these initials, one employing a style similar to that of the work in stint 1 (but less fine, as in Figure 16), the other adding alternating but detached strokes along the pen lines (Figure 12, p. 372).61 The very complexity of this process hints at a reason Charles may have proceeded with much simpler decoration in stint 3, dispensing with gold and penwork altogether. What we cannot know is whether there were lyrics the limner never got to because his work terminated prematurely (which would make those lyrics appear later than they were). That it did end abruptly is evidenced by its unfinished nature. Perhaps this limner’s method of work was considered an inconvenience. This situation has a number of interesting implications. Daniel Poirion claimed, without providing any specific evidence, that the book did not travel with the Duke, at least not on some occasions: Il est possible, comme l’a suggéré Champion, que les pages aient manqué pendant un certain temps, pour écrire de nouveaux poèmes. [. . .] On peut aussi penser que les enlumineurs accaparaient le manuscrit pour l’embellir, ce qui retardait la transcription. On songe surtout aux déplacements au cours desquels le poète a pu se trouver parfois séparé de son livre, sans pour autant cesser de composer: il fallait ensuite raccorder les poèmes, d’où la nécessité, puis l’amusement, de réviser le manuscrit.62

He may well be right about this particular stint of limning, and this may have influenced Charles’s decision to move to simpler initials. However, this was not the usual way things went. The fact that the Duke’s own hand is the second most common in this manuscript (exceeded only by that of the first scribe),63 that the book is a very portable size, and that the post-1440 work is copied by a great many scribes points in precisely the opposite direction. If the book were larger and the hands and decoration more uniform, it would be much easier to make the case for a stationary book and a travelling author (perhaps collecting lyrics by others copied into paper notebooks perhaps of a single large quire of bifolia tacketted together).64

61

E.g. pp. 122, 330, 350i, 353s, 359i. NB: some lyrics have no one-line initials at all, e.g. pp. 318i–328i. 62

Le poète, p. 299 (see also Emerson, Olivier de La Marche, p. 176).

63

There are eighty-one lyrics entirely in the Duke’s hand; they are detailed in chapter 5. In addition the Duke corrected the text throughout. See Gros, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc’, p. 57. 64

The situation is, for instance, quite unlike that sketched by Julia Boffey of lyrics written on scraps of paper or parchment (‘Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate in Two Fifteenth-Century Collections’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 69–82).

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The work of this stint is also marked by the wide variation in the number of lines given initials, which they were, and what kind of initials they were (fully limned, with gold applied; plain red or blue; or simply scribal majuscules). The scribe must first leave space for initials or draw his own majuscules before the quire is handed on to the initial maker, and the variety of scribes may go some way to accounting for this variation, though the patron was the one who determined the amount of decoration he or she was paying for. As to the kind or level of decoration, that, too, was the patron’s decision to make. (Authors will surely have varied in what lines they thought should be given prominence by coloured initials; scribes certainly seem to.) In stint 1, both scribe and limner were fairly consistent in the number, type, and position of limned initials. There are occasional deviations, but generally in the chanson series, the first, fifth, and ninth lines received such initials, as did any refrain lines. As the first stint nears its end, however (in quire X, for instance), the scribe seems sometimes to forget to leave space for a second initial in the middle refrain, providing an initial of his or her own. In a few cases (as on Figure 26, p. 270i, lines 5 and 9), one or more initials are apparently missed by the limner and later supplied with a simple red or blue initial. This happens much more frequently in the section of unfinished limning in the second stint, where an initial may have been allowed for the middle refrain line but not the final refrain — or vice versa (there are a variety of apparently random patterns). The first stint-2 lyrics in the manuscript, which run from p. 319i to p. 327i (quire AA), generally have only a single limned initial by the third limner, the remainder of the lines having scribal majuscules. On the other hand, the lyrics on pp. 349i–353i (in quire CC, also stint 2) are fully limned (though some lack penwork), with five initials per lyric (the final one lacking on p. 353s). This group falls within the larger group of incomplete limning by the third limner, but within that same run of lyrics we find from p. 354i to p. 386i (CC–EE) that the first initial is (of course) limned, but the second, at line 5 or 6, is never limned (with the exception of p. 380i, which is limned at lines 5 and 8) and is filled instead with a simple, usually blue, initial (presumably added during the third stint, for which see below). The remaining positions for initials in this group (lines 7/9, 8/10, and 12/15) are supplied irregularly — one might almost say randomly — with limned initials, red and blue initials, or scribal majuscules. Did the third limner alternate between full limning and red and blue initials at his own discretion? Surely not. It is much more likely that the limning of the oneline initials, like that of the first initial, was never finished. Was an initial maker who worked on the next (third) phase of the manuscript’s development told to go back and fill in most of the blanks left by his predecessor? If so (and this is much

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Figure 26. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 270. Supra: stint-3 rondel; infra: stint-2 chanson (Charles d’Orléans’s no. [·4]0·).

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more likely), then Charles would seem to have lost interest in the consistency of the decoration per se of the lyrics, for the experienced eye would spot it immediately. This section of the manuscript, then, seems to mark the beginning of the withdrawal of Charles’s attention from the decorative elements that had engaged him from the beginning, and it reinforces the reader’s perception that this is emphatically not a ‘presentation’ copy. The Duke was never interested in mechanical regularity, and the physical beauty of the book from here on seems not to matter much to him, at least not as much as the content.65 The simple lombard initials found in the following layer of copying are simpler to make and so quicker to produce. Such an initial is, after all, the ‘core’ of the more elaborately limned initials, so it would seem natural for the Duke simply to strip off the elaboration of the letter to leave it in its simplest form, painted in red or blue. The second stint of copying is marked by a number of kinds of disruption or signs of it. The fact that the Duke himself copied so many of the lyrics into his book during this period implies that he was not always in close proximity or was not staying in one place long enough to employ a scribe. The disorder in quires C, X, and Y (and perhaps the three quires with only three bifolia each) tells us that the manuscript was still unbound, but also that it was being handled enough to disarrange leaves. In addition to all this, the third limner seems to have had an uneasy task before him, one that saw him first experimenting with details of his style, then quitting or losing the job (or his life) before it was finished, leaving behind many half-limned lyrics. The poems composed after the Duke’s return from captivity show the beginning of a formal shift in his work that would carry on for the remainder of his writing life. This new body of verse contains no narratives. Having tried his hand at verse in the style of Guillaume de Lorris’s Roman de la Rose and having even used a series of ballades for narrative ends, the poet seems to have decided that such verse was not his forte (though his early narrative verse was copied again and again during his lifetime, so certainly with his approval). His early work contains pieces in a variety of other verse forms as well, but this kind of experimentation seems to have come to an end with his return to France. It was at this time that he turned from writing chansons to writing rondels, a form that became his favourite, far outrunning in numbers his writing in longer lyric forms: ballades and complaintes. He continued to play with form, but his formal variations became much finer and more subtle as the years passed. 65

of use.

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T HE T HIRD S TINT (MID -1440 S TO MID -1450 S)

T

he period of the third stint, from around the mid-1440s to around the mid1450s, was probably the richest in Charles’s life poetically. Once he was firmly settled at Blois, his court became a magnet for those interested in a kind of poetry that had a decidedly social component. It is the period of what has come to be known, somewhat inaccurately, as the ‘concours de Blois’, with reference to a group of lyrics linked by identical (or nearly identical) first lines, a poetic habit that reaches to the very end of the manuscript. More poets record their work in his manuscript during this period than during any other. In part for these reasons, the establishment of the ordering of the manuscript beyond the work limned in the second phase of the production of the manuscript becomes a more complex process, and the third stint of copying is by far the most difficult to sort out. The identifying marker of this stint is the red and blue initials (lombards) that replace the limned initials of the first three initial artists. After the work of these three limners ceases, initials (or layout for them) generally becomes only one of many ways to make sense of the patchwork appearance of the manuscript. In the red and blue initials undecorated with pen flourishing, it is possible to discern the work of two (or more) initial makers adding initials to a series of rondels, but we cannot be certain how many hands were involved, two or twentytwo. Many lyrics are only partially initialed in this way;1 in such cases I have categorized all of them as belonging to the third stint because a maker of the red and blue initials worked on them, but here more than ever other evidence provides clues to the order of copying, such as the poet’s numbering of the poems, the 1

The erratic presence or absence of initials is evident on p. 391 of the manuscript, where the heading at mid-page is ‘Rondel’ but the one at the top of the page is ‘ondel’, though both lyrics are otherwise fully provided with red/blue initials.

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content of the poems, the form in which they are written (and their opening lines), the hands in which they are copied, and the makeup of the manuscript. If Champion’s analysis by decorative scheme has any validity, the poems written in the third phase of the life of this manuscript are – twenty-two ballades, most on the subject of love or fortune (pp. 123–43, quires H–I, and 231–34, quire S), – four complaintes (pp. 175–89, quire P, and 306–09, quire Z), and – about 250 rondels (quires T–LL).2 In this period, the poet adds another series of ballades to his growing collection, the chanson form metamorphoses into that of the rondel, the carole disappears, Charles composes his final complaintes, the number of rondels far outstrips his production of poems in any other form, and the number of rondels by poets other than the Duke grows as well. The Duke probably began numbering his lyrics (the ballades and the chansons/rondels) at the very end of the second stint, following on into the third. In addition to the dislocations mentioned in previous chapters, at the end of the third stint the manuscript differed from its present state in that it still lacked the third batch of vellum (MM–PP) and ð (probably), and a number of blanks remained in quires II–LL.3 It may have also lacked some of the lyrics in English (in BB and Z).4

Commentary The Poet’s Numbering of the Ballades and the Addition of More Vellum: The Physical Evidence The ballades, or pages yet to receive them, are numbered consecutively from 1 to 107 in Charles’s hand, with the exception of most of the lyrics in quires I through P (part of the new batch of vellum) and the narrative ballades mentioned earlier (part of the Songe en complainte), which had apparently been skipped intentionally (see Table 1). Champion established that the numbering between dots was in the

2

See Table 5; some of them are detailed in Table 6, quires T–EE, plus others in FF–LL.

3

The upper portions of leaves in quires S through CC and EE into HH (to p. 428) were largely filled, as were most of the leaves of HH (from p. 429) through LL. 4

It is difficult to say when the anomalous four lines in the lower margin of p. 337 (BB) were added.

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hand of the poet, based on a clear example of a number (·84·) and heading (Balades de plusieurs propos) written at the same time at the top of p. 203, the opening page of quire R.5 The fact that this same pale ink is found throughout Charles’s first series of numbers suggests that the ballades were numbered at one go. Their page position, moving from the first line to the upper right corner after ballade ·74·, tells us that the Duke continued to number blank pages (beginning with ·75·, p. 123) when he came to the end of the ballades the scribe had copied.6 This is confirmed by the presence of a number (·77·, on p. 125) on a page that contains only the final nine lines of a ballade copied on the previous page (perhaps he took his cue, none too carefully, from the error of the scribe who wrote ‘Balade’ at the head of that page). Since the Duke’s ·75· is written on the page that contains the first stint-3 ballade, this numbering must have been entered when the second stint was complete. The variation in the placement of the numbers on the page suggests that the numbering was undertaken at the very end of stint 2.7 The number ·81· stands on the recto of p. 129, the first leaf of quire I; the number ·82· (inferred, the number has been cropped), on p. 194 in quire Q. To understand why so many quires should intervene, it is necessary to begin in H (pp. 113–28), the quire that precedes those that lack numbers, and to remember that quires H and Q were adjacent before the insertion of the new batch of vellum (see Table 1). H contains the last part of the (unnumbered) Songe en complainte, which consists of, in order, the continuation from the previous page of the quittance followed by three (unnumbered) narrative ballades and a letter to the god of love. This is followed by two more stint-1 ballades (·72· and ·73·) then one (autograph) stint-2 ballade (·74·), and then five stint-3 ballades (·75·–·76·, ·78·–·80·). Quire I continues with stint-3 ballades. 5 Autographe, pp. 11, 31 (plate), and 34. Johan Gerritsen noticed that at times Champion seems to treat the Duke’s numbering of chansons as early pagination (see Autographe, p. 39, where he suggests that manuscript p. 235 was ‘paginée anciennement’, and p. 48, n. 1). Evidence of his textual rather than physical reasoning can be found in his statement that chanson/rondel numbers ·1[0]39· and ·1[0]40· ‘manquent’ (Autographe, p. 48, n. 1) — with no further comment. In fact the sixth leaf of quire EE is missing (see Table 6). 6

See pp. 130–58, 160–73, 225–34. It is true that rectos in stint 1 sometimes receive a number in the corner, whereas the versos receive a number at the first line of text; this may have been because the limning was felt to be in the way. Johan Gerritsen’s sharp eye and ability to hold the complexities of this manuscript firmly in mind have improved my own grasp of the manuscript's development. 7

Champion suggests that, in numbering the lyrics, he was trying to make things clear for the copyist.

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Quire I begins on p. 129, midway through a stint-3 ballade, followed by Caillau’s Intendit followed by fourteen more stint-3 ballades on love and fortune (pp. 129–44). This is the first of the inserted quires from the second ruling batch (I–P). The number ·81· was placed on p. 129 by the poet, who was numbering blank leaves at this point.8 Quire K contains seven stint-4 ballades and the encomium Jam nova progenies by Villon (O louee concepcion)9 (pp. 145–59 + 1; final leaf blank, recto numbered 159, verso unnumbered). Quires L, M, N (in 6s) are ruled but blank and completely unpaginated. Quire O contains twelve stint-4 ballades (including two by Villon, pp. 1 + 160–74, initial side blank and unnumbered, final side blank, numbered 174). Quire P contains stint-3 complaintes exchanged between Charles and Fredet (pp. 175–90, final side blank). This is the last quire of the second ruling batch in this part of the manuscript. Quire Q contains the stint-1 Complainte de France (France jadis, pp. 191–93), followed by a stint-1 ballade (En regardant vers le pais de France, p. 194, numbered by the poet (inferred) [·82·]), a stint-1 ballade royal (Pries pour paix, p. 195, numbered by the poet ·83·), and a heading (‘Complainte’) on a blank page, all in the hand of the first scribe (p. 197, Figure 19); the rest of the quire is made up at this point of blank leaves (pp. 197–202). The quires of the second ruling batch inserted here (I–P) did not receive text for a long time, for they contain no stint-2 work. At any rate, when Charles began his numbering, he first numbered written pages then blank pages to receive ballades, continuing as far as the first leaf of the new vellum, quire I (·81·, p. 129, which would later receive a stint-3 ballade). Whether because he tired of numbering blank leaves or because the new vellum had not yet been put in its current position,10 he then skipped the rest of that (empty) quire and placed the number ·82· on the leaf that contained the next-following ballade (p. 194 in Q, a stint-1 ballade following the Complainte de France, En regardant vers le pais de France).11 8

Given the position of the Duke’s numbers here and on the preceding leaves, at least part of the ·82· would be visible on p. 131 if he had written it there. It was certainly written, therefore, on p. 194. 9

On the handwriting of the lyrics in this section composed by Villon, see Cigada (‘Studi su Charles d’Orléans’), Gert Pinkernell (‘Une nouvelle date dans la vie et dans l’œuvre de François Villon: le 8 octobre 1458’, Romania, 104 (1983), 377–91), Regalado (‘En ce saint livre’), and Gros (‘L’écriture du prince’). 10 11

These quires (with the exception of I) may have been kept in reserve for quite a long time.

Following the heading ‘Complainte’ on p. 197 (limned by the first limner), the rest of Q is blank; ·84· appears on the first page of R.

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He continued numbering stint-1 ballades (at the level of the first line) from p. 195 through p. 224 in S and then the stint-2 ballades on pp. 225–29. At that point his numbering ceases. So the intervening blank vellum in I (presently filled with ballades copied in the third and fourth stints) never received numbers, nor did the ballades in K or O (both filled with stint-4 ballades) or the remaining stint-3 ballades in S (pp. 231–34, see Table 1).12 At the end of the first stint of copying, as we have seen, there were many (more than sixty) blank leaves scattered through the manuscript. Why, then, add more vellum? At the end of the first stint, only seven blank pages remained in the ballade section (quire H). Nine blank pages followed the complaintes in Z; five followed the mixed ballade/complainte series in Q; ten followed the Balades des plusieurs propos in S; six followed the chansons in Y; and twenty-nine followed the caroles in AA–BB (see Table 3). In other words, there was not a great deal of usable space except following the caroles at the end of the manuscript. Foreseeing that he would be writing lyrics for a very long time, when the opportunity presented itself, the Duke chose to expand his manuscript, and the amount of vellum he added tells us something about his writing plans. The numbering of the ballades tells us is that the poet was numbering these pages after the new batch of vellum was added, for his ·81· (p. 129) is on the first leaf of that batch. The fact that the second batch of vellum added here (I–P) is empty of limned initials tells us that the vellum was added near the very end of the second stint of copying, probably near the middle of the 1440s. We also know that the new vellum was acquired and ruled before the end of the second stint because, in the latter part of the manuscript, the third limner (who worked in stint 2) worked on it, limning type-2 lyrics in quires CC (the Carole en latin on p. 347), DD (rondels), and EE (rondels). A glance at Table 4 will show that the composition of type-2 lyrics (dozens in AA–EE) far outstrip his production of type-1 lyrics (one in H, four in S). Because he was apparently unaware of the boundaries of a second batch of vellum (I–P), it was Champion’s reasoning on the basis of the script and lack of ornamentation that led him to conclude that the lyrics in quires O (stint 4) and P 12

The numbering seems to have been begun at some time during the second stint (in the early to mid-1440s) and discontinued in the third (perhaps around the mid-1450s, in GG, p. 412). This is a man who could introduce an extra digit into his numbering system without apparently noticing (or at least without being concerned enough to correct) that he had jumped from hundreds to thousands. We have plenty of evidence that the Duke was careful, but not rigidly so, about his work (see, e.g., Poésies, p. xix, n. 2). In many of the poems that he corrected he has missed minor errors, for instance, and he never attempted to correct or have overpainted the many limning errors.

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(stint 3) were ‘intercalaires’, that is, added or interpolated, presumably after the Duke’s numbering had been entered. This conclusion was bolstered by recourse to the non-consecutiveness of the Duke’s numbering: Ce cahier [the text in quire Q] n’est d’ailleurs pas à sa place, puisque la ballade, page 195: Priés pour paix doulce Vierge Marie est numérotée 83, tandis que l’Intendit de Caillau, page 129 [quire I], porte le numéro 81. Nous avons ici la preuve que les feuillets qui comprennent et les pièces du concours de Blois [O; pp. 160–73, stint 4] et la correspondance [complaintes] du duc d’Orléans avec Fredet [P; pp. 175–89, stint 3] sont bien formés de cahiers intercalaires [i.e. come between two sections of text that were once adjacent to one another].13

What he could not explain was why such a large group of ballades should have intervened. The Order of the Ballades and Complaintes: The Textual Evidence Although most of this study is based on codicological observations, one problem requires a textual solution, as no physical evidence can be adduced to solve it: the correct position of quire Z in the manuscript. The ballades the Duke numbers; the complaintes he does not. Champion prints the ballades in this order: H H Q R S S S H I S I I K O

119–2114 122 194–96 203–18 219–24 225–30 231–32 123–28 129–30 233–34 131–43 144 145–58+1 1+160–73

·72·–·73· ·74· ·82·–·83· ·84·–[·98·] [·99·]–·103· ·104·–·107· ·75·–·80· ·81·

stint 1 stint 2 stint 1 stint 1 stint 1 stint 2 stint 3 stint 3 stint 3 stint 3 stint 3 stint 4 stint 4 stint 4

on love (end of Songe) on love on a variety of subjects Balades de plusieurs propos Balades de plusieurs propos Balades de plusieurs propos Balades de plusieurs propos on love on love Balades de plusieurs propos on love on love on love on love (L, M, and N are blank)

13

Autograph, p. 30, n. 1. ‘De la page 131 [in quire I; the lyric following the one numbered ·81·] à la page 193 [in quire Q, the last written page before the one numbered ·82·], nous avons affaire à des piéces intercalaires, et qui n’étaient pas à cette place [he means they had not yet been copied] quand le duc relut son cahier de poésies, et songea à en faire faire une nouvelle copie’ (pp. 34–35). 14

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With the exception of the stint-2 ballade on p. 122, the stints run in order from one to four.15 The Duke’s numbering, however, is non-consecutive. This order also mixes up the two kinds of ballades, those on the subject of love and those de plusieurs propos. Champion, grouping the ballades together, privileges form over subject matter and manuscript evidence. If we allow the poet’s division of subject matter, however, this list could be rectified to run as follows: Ballades on the subject of love: H 119–28 (·72·–·80·) stints 1, 2, 3 I 129 (·81·) stint 3 I 130–43 stint 3 I 144 stint 4 K 145–58 stint 416 O 160–73 stint 4 Ballades on miscellaneous subjects: Q–S 194–224 (·82·–·107·) stint 117 S 225–30 stint 2 S 231–34 stint 3

| | Second | batch | of vellum |

Though simplified significantly, this is not without its own apparent problems. For instance, Comment voy je ses Anglois esbays, a stint-3 ballade on a political subject, is found in quire H (·76·, on p. 124) surrounded by ballades on the subject of love. There is no codicological explanation for its presence in H and no physical grounds for removing it from its present setting. It always makes more sense to follow the general outlines of the manuscript, where they are discernable, than to create an entirely new order. This quire, which contains the end of the Songe en complainte, seems to have been filled out (after the copying of stints 1 and 2) with miscellaneous material. We do have evidence, however, that the poet considers subject matter in the organization of his lyrics, so it behooves us to remain attentive to this criterion. An editor might well want to print Comment voy among the Balades de plusieurs propos and justify the move by appealing to the poet’s obvious interest in arranging his ballades by subject matter. 15

Of the ballades, those in quires Q, R, and S clearly belong together (stint 1), being political poems and ballades on other subjects. Some of the poems in H were copied long after the opening leaves were filled (stints 1, 2, and 3). Quire I must follow S if the order of limning is taken into account (stints 1, 2, and 3 in S; stint 3 in I).

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The final side of K is empty, as is the first of O.

17

The heading Balades de plusieurs propos is found at the top of p. 203, at the beginning of R.

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The complaintes in quires P and Q Champion removes to a separate section and prints in this order: Q France jadis on te souloit nommerer (p. 191, stint 1) Z Amour ne vous vueille desplaire (p. 299, stint 1) Z Ma seule dame et ma maistresse (p. 302, stint 1) P Monseigneur pour ce que scay bien (p. 175, stint 3) P Fredet j’ay receu vostre lectre (p. 179, stint 3) P Monseigneur j’ay de vous receu (p. 183, stint 3) Z L’autrier en ung lieu me trouvay (p. 306, stint 3) Here again, Champion mixes the lyrics on the subject of love with those on other subjects. As the manuscript is now organized, the ballades and complaintes in Q–S and the complaintes in Z are interrupted by four quires of chansons and rondels (T–Y; see Table 1). Of the quires that flank Z, Y contains stint-1, followed by stint-2, chansons; AA begins with stint-1 caroles followed by stint-2 rondels. No wonder Champion said of the lyrics in Z that they are ‘indûment intercalé’.18 These complaintes have no relation to their manuscript context and are separated from the other complaintes by lyrics that relate clearly to those that follow this quire of complaintes. Quire Z has been displaced from the vicinity of the other ballades and complaintes at some point before the manuscript was bound. I have said (see chapter 3) that Z began life following quire H. In order to understand the progression of copying, let us go back to stint 1, in which H, Z, and Q were, I contend, contiguous. H contained ballades on the subject of love, Z contained complaintes on the subject of love, and Q contained complaintes on many subjects. No complaintes were added to the manuscript in the course of the second stint, but near the end of that stint, a great deal of new vellum was added between what was then the quire we designate now as Z and Q — all told (including that inserted elsewhere), enough vellum to nearly double the size of the book. If, as I maintain, the manuscript was unbound at this point, this created a situation in which it would have been easy to displace one or more quires. It may have been at this point that Z was inadvertently moved to its present position.

18

Autographe, pp. 29, 46. Champion considers the material in quire Z intrusive, but he never suggests that it was moved from some other place (or indeed belonged in some other place). In his edition, however, he prints the complaintes following the chansons, which end in quire BB, which implies (he nowhere explains why) that the position of the complaintes in Z influenced his decision. He simply moved the short series of chansons in quires AA and BB (and a handful of ‘false’ chansons) back to join the other chansons preceding the complaintes.

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What other dislocations might have taken place in the course of adding new quires to the existing ones? One obvious anomaly in this part of the manuscript is the three blank quires in 6s, L, M, and N. Champion did not concern himself with untexted leaves; he merely notes their existence in passing.19 The membrane of the three quires is in every way like what precedes and follows it (which is not at all true of the quires added at the end of the manuscript), and the quires share the second ruling pattern with those that surround them, so it makes no sense to assume that these quires were added after the rest of the second batch, though they might have been intended for another place in the manuscript — or were kept in reserve for later use. The simplest explanation for their irregular makeup would be that, inasmuch as the manuscript remained unbound for some time, bifolia were borrowed from these blank quires at some point or points and never returned to the manuscript, but this is of course unprovable. The obvious original place for them is either at the (then) end of the ballade series (preceding Q; see Table 1) or at the end of the chansons (following BB), but they could have been placed almost anywhere among the second-batch quires for quite some time before they were shifted to their present location.20 As to why they were not used instead of the third vellum batch (MM–PP), it is only possible to appeal to the medieval concept and experience of the book. We are used to page numbers and tables of contents and indexes that take us to the precise page we want to find; medieval scribes and readers seemed in general not to require such aids. One leafed through a book (or an unbound box of quires, or a temporarily-tacketted group of quires), which displayed its structure less obviously than does a modern book. Conceiving of the manuscript in these terms makes it at least a bit easier to understand how the anomalies that are so striking to us might have been less obvious to a fifteenth-century reader. There is one other curious thing about these three quires that lie between pp. 159 and 160: François Villon copied his lyrics on both sides of them, that is to say, on pp. 154–58 (at the end of the quire that precedes, K) and 163–64 (at the beginning of the quire that follows, O; p. 159 is blank), thus ‘jumping over’ the blank quires L, M, N. This suggests, though it certainly does not prove, that these three blank quires were in some other place at the time Villon visited Blois in the late 1450s.21 19

Autographe, pp. 25 and 84. For further discussion of various earlier scholars’ ideas about the addition of vellum to the manuscript, see the appendix. 20

Quires I–P (the first group of batch-2 quires) are filled with work of the third and fourth stints; CC–EE (the second group of batch-2 quires) contain some stint-2 work, but FF–LL (the rest of the batch-2 quires) were only filled in the third and fourth stints. 21

Assuming (as I do) that our present quires K and O were contiguous at the time, Nancy Regalado suggests that the copyists have inadvertently turned two pages at one time, resulting in

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If quire Z initially followed H, and if L, M, and N began life at the end of one or the other insertion points, what picture does that give us? The remaining quires of the second ruling batch inserted between H and Q consist of I, K, O, and P. The first three all contain ballades on the subject of love and so might be seen as running reasonably in a row, copied in stints 3 to 4. Quire P, however, is filled with complaintes copied in the third stint (an exchange between the Duke and Fredet) and so does not easily follow stint-4 work. Placing it before these three, however, it would follow Z, in which complaintes copied in the first stint are followed by complaintes copied in the third. The result gives a picture like the following: Type-1 lyrics on the subject of love: B–H ·1·–·74·

Ballades on the theme of love, including Songe en complainte, made up of seven ballades plus sections in other verse forms, ending with the quittance, plus three ballades (pp. 17–122, stints 1, 222) Z Complaintes on the theme of love (pp. 299–305, stint 1) H ·75·–·80·, all copied on pages not Ballades (pp. 123–28, stint 3) yet containing text I–K ·81·, copied on a page that con- Ballades, including Jam nova (pp. 129–58, stints tained only the end of the ballade 3, 4) begun on the previous page [L, M, N blank and unnumbered] O Ballades on the theme of love (pp. 160–74, stint 4)

Type-1 lyrics on all subjects: Q

·82·

Complainte de France and ballades on patriotic themes (pp. 191–96, stint 1)

the last side of quire K and the first of O remaining blank (‘En ce saint livre’, p. 360, n. 27). This may explain the gap in the (modern) page numbering, but the ‘someone’ who did so was probably not Villon himself, for the scribes who copy the first three lyrics in O are not the same as the one who copied the encomium in K, but a similar circumstance may explain the error, the second scribe having found the Villon piece in K, intending to follow it with another by the same author turns two leaves when he means to turn one. 22

The single stint-2 lyric, a ballade in the Duke’s hand (on p. 122), was initialed by the third limner. The Duke’s number is at the first line of text. However, the ballade may have remained unlimned for some time. If so, this would explain the apparent interruption in the order caused by the move back to stint-1 lyrics in Z. The remainder of H is filled with stint-3 lyrics written on prenumbered pages. This is easily demonstrated, for the number ·77· is written at the top of p. 125, which contains the last nine lines of the ballade that begins on the previous page.

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·84·–·107·

111 Balades de plusieurs propos, on all subjects (pp. 203–34, stints 1, 2, 3)23 Complainte in dialogue form on the theme of past love (pp. 306–09, stint 3) Complaintes exchanged between the Duke and Fredet (pp. 175–89, stint 3) Ballade in English (p. 313, stint 4)

The first group gives us a coherent group of poems on love (with the exception of Villon’s encomium on the birth of Marie. The second group needs no rearrangement to run in the order of copying (the ballade Comment voy je ses Anglois esbays, on p. 124, is one of the very few anomalies and the only subject matter ‘error’ in the manuscript). It would seem that the complainte form did not hold the Duke’s attention after his return to France. Only the challenge of a friend spurred him to a brief return to the form. This exchange (in P) was copied during the third stint and consists of an exchange between the poet and Fredet on the subject of the latter’s marriage.24 Why did the Duke not have these copied in the same quire as the Complainte de France, which to the present day is followed by six blank pages? The most obvious reason is that there is not enough room in the quire for the entire exchange. Since there was no space after it, he had it copied immediately before the quire that held the Complainte de France. But what about the final complainte (pp. 306–09, Z), written in the form of a dialogue between l’Amant and Amours? Although added to the manuscript during the third phase of production, it is a poem on the subject of love, written in the poet’s inimitable style and language. The love it celebrates, however, is past, in retrospect a bittersweet experience. It follows a complainte composed during the first stint; is it a copy of a poem composed earlier? It might be argued that it should be printed immediately after the complainte that precedes it on the grounds that it belongs among the poems on love, but it also fits well at the end (as I have it), on 23 An editor might then print the ballade Comment voy somewhere in the vicinity of R–S, on consideration of the subject matter. 24

He is identified as Guillaume Fredet in the manuscript of Cardinal Rohan (Die Liederhandschrift des Cardinals de Rohan (XV. Jahrh.) nach der berliner Hs. Hamilton 674, ed. by Martin Löpelmann, Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 44 (Göttingen: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1923), p. xv). See also Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS nouvelles acquisitions françaises 15771 (Barbara L. S. Inglis, Un nouvelle collection de poésies lyriques et courtoises du XV e siècle: le manuscrit B. N. Nouv. Acq. Fr. 15771 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1985)), and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 9223 (Gaston Raynaud, Rondeaux et autres poésies du XV e siècle, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 30 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1889; repr., New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968)).

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the grounds that it speaks of a love long gone in the late style of the poet and was copied into the manuscript during the third phase of its production.25 Scribes and Initial Makers Working in the Third Stint Plain red and blue lombards are often so informally drawn, so standard in letter shapes, yet so easily varied by haste or lack of care, that it is difficult to distinguish one initial maker from another. The initials of the first lines of the lyrics beginning on p. 330 are one line high except when the scribe has left space for a two-line initial. Whether we are dealing here with one initial maker or with more than one is impossible to say. Beginning on p. 415i (GG), however, the height of the initial at the beginning of a lyric no longer depends exclusively on space left by the scribe. The letter is expanded upward and sometimes to the left to fill empty space allotted so generously in the rondel section, resulting in a two-line initial where the scribe has left space for one of only a single-line height (Figure 18, p. 436). This maker of large initials works right through to the end of the text that receives any decoration at all (p. 482), making initials for over a hundred lyrics, but he does not apparently work entirely alone. Another initial maker or makers (whether the one or more who worked on pp. 330–414 or not) paints one-line initials on pp. 453si, 457i, 468s, 472i, 476si, and 477s; so near the end of their work at least two artists were apparently alternating, each adding initials a few lyrics at a time. In addition to the lyrics copied by the Duke in this stint are lyrics copied by many hands. The first ballade in the third stint (p. 123, in H), a lyric beginning Je meurs de soif, is followed by the well-known Comment voy je ses Anglois esbays, both of them composed by the Duke but copied by different scribes.26 On p. 131 we encounter the first of the lyrics beginning En la forest de longue Actente (the only ballade in this series), followed by ballades in various hands, few scribes writing more 25

The stylistic judgement is that of John Fox and R . Barton Palmer (private correspondence, September 2002). If the reader should not find the specifics of this analysis of the placement of type-1 lyrics convincing, I trust that I have at least made compellingly clear that the complaintes do not belong where they now stand but with the rest of the ballades and complaintes. I should add that Johan Gerritsen, who is interested in the codicological truth about this manuscript, feels strongly that there is no (codicological) reason to suppose that this quire has been displaced. He is absolutely correct, but I feel compelled to invoke a purely textual argument here because of what I see as a radical incongruity between two organizational principles. 26

Observation of changing hands can tell us something about the order of copying, in particular, the borderline in the rondel section between the work of the second and third stints.

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than one, two, or at most three lyrics, the poet erasing and correcting a number of words or lines in this part of the manuscript. More ballades copied during this stint are to be found in the section of Balades de plusieurs propos (pp. 231–34, S), containing macaronic poems, the first two of them in one professional hand, the other two in another. These poems are not, however, sans ‘toute ornementation’, since they have red and blue initials, nor are they copied ‘dans la dernière période de formation du manuscrit’,27 as Champion claimed, since they have painted initials. Hence it is difficult to concur with Champion’s opinion that they are ‘certainement de la vieillesse du duc d’Orléans’.28 Of course, thinking that the manuscript was not begun until 1450 and the second stint near 1455, it was natural that he should think that these lyrics were the product of the Duke’s old age. The stint-3 complaintes the poet composed are currently found in two widely separated parts of the manuscript (pp. 175–89, quire P, and 306–09, quire Z). The first, the exchange between the poet and Fredet, consists of two complaintes in the same very regular hand and a third in a less disciplined one. The second consists of a single complainte in the form of a dialogue between l’Amant and Amours, written in a smaller, more current hand. The earliest stint-3 rondels begin in quire EE (p. 387, see Table 8) at the bottoms of the pages. The Duke himself copied into the manuscript the rondels on pp. 374i to 390i (some limned, or partially limned, during the second stint, some with red and blue initials added in the third). Other scribes take over from p. 391 to p. 407, after which the Duke then takes over again and copies five more (pp. 408i–412i). The length of the run of most scribes writing thereafter is not much beyond two or three lyrics, and so it goes: pairs of poems or very small groups of lyrics seem to be copied at a time in a single hand, with the Duke taking up the book from time to time to add a few lyrics.29 Beginning with p. 429, for the first time we are reading a long series of rondels page by page, which affords scribes the possibility of copying two lyrics on the same page or more than two on a single opening, and they immediately begin doing so. On p. 430, the two rondels are on the same theme (one by Charles) and they are in the same hand, but this is not the way every scribe saw the page. Two rondels by Vaillant with very similar hands are copied on the bottoms of two facing pages

27

Autographe, p. 33.

28

Autographe, p. 33.

29

Scribal groups include, e.g., pp. 338i–339i, 342s–343s, 344s–345s, 386i–387i, 402i–403i, 411i–412i (Charles), 434s and 435s.

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(434i and 435i); above them, another scribe has copied a rondel by Olivier de La Marche and one by Georges Chastellain. The rondels at the tops of pp. 440s and 441s are both on the theme of love as illness, and in the upper left margin of each a contemporary has written the word ‘Recepte’. Layout of this sort seems not to have concerned Charles, who seems to have allowed whoever wrote in the book (scribe or author) to arrange his copying as he pleased. Sometimes such groups of lyrics were composed on the same first line or on the same theme and copied into the manuscript by a single scribe.30 The final group of rondels copied into the manuscript in the course of stint 3 begins in the upper spaces of the pages in quire T and continues into the disarranged leaves of quires X and Y. These poems cluster thematically or linguistically into pairs and small groups, for example, those on pp. 247s and 248s (the idea of hope, quire T7), or on pp. 249s and 250s (Soing et Soussy, quire T8). Unlike the lyrics of the second stint, however, these pairs are not associated scribally. The scribe who wrote both lyrics on the (upper half of the) opening of pp. 248 and 249 wrote neither the lyric that precedes them nor the one that follows. The next group, consisting of three rondels that address the conflict between the heart and the eye (pp. 253s, 254s, 256s), are copied by three different hands. The lyrics on pp. 257s and 258s (both mention hope, but they may be otherwise unrelated, quire V) are in the same hand, as are those on pp. 279s and 280s (both on the idea of sight, quire X).31 From this sample we can make some generalizations about scribal practice in this part of the manuscript and about the Duke’s supervision of the scribes’ work. The frequent change of hands argues wide and frequent access to the book by those in the household at Blois and suggests the number of household staff and visitors capable of writing in it. The lack of confusion about what goes where (rondels with rondels, for instance) suggests either well-trained scribes or some supervision of copying, whether by the Duke himself or by someone in his household. However, the fact that ‘matching pairs’ of lyrics may be written across an opening, on a single

30 Pairs of lyrics in which one writer responds to another using an identical, or nearly identical, first line are common; I count sixteen pairs. There are also five groups of three such lyrics and one of four. (The count may vary, depending on whether the ‘seasonal’ lyrics are included: Valentine’s Day, May poems, and Easter poems, all of which I have disregarded.) Champion details a long list of groups in the same hand, but I am unconvinced by a number of his identifications (Autographe). Johan Gerritsen pointed out to me, for instance, that the lyrics on pp. 446s and 446i are not in the same hand (see Autographe, p. 61). 31

According to Champion, the rondels on pp. 263s–264s and 273s–274s are all in the same hand (Autographe, pp. 74–75).

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leaf, or on two sides of a leaf, by one scribe or by two, indicates that a certain freedom was allowed the copyists who entered poems into the Duke’s book.32 Call it an aesthetic freedom or a practical one, it points to a book owner more interested in the recording of the poetic material than in the precise placement of it. The Rondel Series and the Duke’s Numbering The visual impact of the move from work of the third limner to that of the painters of red and blue initials is powerful. Up to this point, something of the decorative impulse is evident in all the written pages of the manuscript. The sudden replacement of flourished initials, no matter how unaccomplished, by plain red and blue ones suggests in no uncertain terms that this has become a working manuscript, a reading manuscript rather than a showpiece. The shift is, however, largely illusory. The stint-2 lyrics on pp. 374i–386i are in the poet’s hand; so are the stint-3 lyrics that follow, on pp. 387i–390i, and later on pp. 408i–412i, 418i, 421i–423i, and 427i. All that has changed is the maker of initials, yet the look of the page has been altered profoundly. The Duke, as before, has one or another scribe on hand who can copy a pair of poems, a small group, or a longer series (such as pp. 400i–407i). And various other, unidentifiable, hands copy individual lyrics. At this point, another remarkable shift takes place. Until now, we have been reading the chansons and rondels only at the bottoms of the pages. Suddenly things change. Even a cursory inspection of the manuscript reveals that some poems, copied above those we have already seen, should be read across the page (rather than up and down), but beyond p. 428, it is equally evident, on the basis of the distribution of hands, among other things, that the poems are to be read as we would normally read them, from top to bottom of the page. It is difficult to envision this complex result of a whole series of decisions on Charles’s part, probably combined with a few accidents of copying. It will be necessary, therefore, to resort to charts and schemata to provide a comprehensible overview of the process. Though it would seem that the poet numbered his ballades in one go, it is more difficult to determine whether the same is true of his numbering of the type-2 lyrics. There the poet numbers 164 short lyrics, beginning with the first chanson on p. 235. As the numbers are written in the top margin rather than at the first line, 32

That same freedom can be seen in the number and placement of initials to be decorated in each lyric. Note, however, that no one utilized the space in quires L, M, and N, suggesting that someone steered scribes away from that part of the manuscript.

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it cannot be shown that the lyrics had been copied when the numbering was written (though they surely were), but on p. 320 we suddenly encounter two stint2 lyrics on the same page, each with its own number opposite the first line (·66· and ·67·). This pattern is followed on pp. 321, 322, 324–26, and 328. It then ceases and the Duke’s number returns to the upper margin. This tells us that the chansons on these six pages must have been copied before the numbering was added. However, when we arrive at p. 353, we find two stint-2 lyrics on the page but only one number, telling us that from this point on the Duke was numbering blank pages.33 In the end, Champion himself treats the rondels differently from the rest of the poems in the manuscript. For him the decoration is no longer the sole (or even the most important) guide to poem order. Instead, page position joins the Duke’s numbering, the hands, and the content, and all play a role in his judgements. This has the effect of disconnecting his history of the rondels to some extent from that of the poems in other verse forms. He lays out the order of rondels thus: A) Le plus ancien groupe a été numéroté par le poète: il commence à la page 318 et peut être prolongé jusqu’à la page 428, comprenant le plus généralement les pièces du bas de la page. B) Le deuxième groupe se rencontre de la page 429 à la page 482 et doit être lu page par page, de bas en haut.34 C) Le troisième groupe est formé des rondeaux inscrits après coup dans l’étage supérieur des rondeaux de la page 318 à la page 428. D) Les rondeaux qui se lisent au-dessus des chansons de la page 247 à la page 298 forment le quatrième de ces groupes. E) Le dernier groupe comprend les pièces sans ornementation qui se rencontrent de la page 482 [he means 483] à la page 537.35

In rough schematic form, this part of the manuscript might look like this (reference to Table 6 may help to make some of this complex copying situation easier to envision):

33

Once again, I am grateful to Johan Gerritsen for helping me to sort out the many factors involved in analyzing the order in which work proceeded. He also noticed that the numbering jumps over the Latin carole on p. 347, indicating that the lyric had been copied when the numbering was done (though why the Duke chose not to number the carole is not thereby answered). This carole is in quire CC, the first quire of vellum of the second batch, which means that the vellum must have been added to the manuscript only recently but was still largely empty when the Duke did his numbering. 34 When Daniel Poirion rehearses this argument, he mistakenly prints page 452 for 482 in Champion’s group B, a number he may have picked up from George Darby (Le poète, p. 297). 35

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——————————————————————————————— (D) 247s–298s (C) 318s–428s (T–Y) (AA–HH) ———————————————— (B) 429si–482si (E) 483si–537si [chansons] (A) 318i–428i (HH–LL) (LL–PP) (AA–HH) ——————————————————————————————— Let us begin with Champion’s Group A. Champion’s first group of rondels runs from p. 318 to p. 428 (mostly at the bottoms of the pages). This group includes without distinction the work of Limner 3 and that of the lombard painters. Champion defined these leaves as a group by page position and the Duke’s numbering.36 He chooses p. 428 as his cut-off point for the end of series A. However, since the rondel on p. 386 is the last lyric on which Limner 3 worked, it would be preferable for the sake of aligning this argument with previous ones to split this run into two groups, one decorated by Limner 3 (pp. 318i–386i) and one with red and blue initials (pp. 387i–428i). After p. 386, where the plain initials begin, he suggests that we should continue reading consecutively the lyrics copied only on the lower half of the page.37 In this section, where two or more rondels are copied by the same person, those lyrics are found on consecutive (usually facing) pages either at the tops of pages or at bottoms, but not from top to bottom. He reserves the group of lyrics at the tops of the leaves to a place after his next large ‘batch’ of lyrics (group B), though he does not explain why he does so. What he does say about the lyrics at the tops of these pages (group C) is that they must be dealt with as a separate group because they share a ‘rapport de sens entre elles’.38 This sounds like an aesthetic literary-critical response, but what I suppose he meant is that these poems contain a number of pairs or small groups of lyrics constructed upon identical first lines: Le truchmant de ma pensee, Las le faut il, En faictes vou doubte, and so forth. His second group (B: pp. 429si–482si (429i is blank), reading top to bottom consecutively) works (internally) quite sensibly. For his third group (C: pp. 36 Champion makes some (almost inevitable) errors in his discussion of the numbering, these pointed out to me by Johan Gerritsen: he writes that the rondel Envoyez nous on p. 412 is misnumbered 163, but the number ‘·1064·’ is certainly legible, and ‘·1063·’ stands on p. 411 (Autographe, p. 48). On p. 38 of Autographe he quotes the same number as 154. There are a number of such numerical errors in the index to his edition, as well.

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37

Autographe, p. 48.

38

Autographe, p. 48.

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318s–428s) he skips back to those rondels that received initials during the third stint, copied above the (second- and third-stint) lyrics on pp. 318i–428i. The reasoning with which he supports his division of lyrics in his fourth group (D: pp. 247s–298s) is based on his belief that the poet felt strongly about separating the rondels from the chansons, and so wrote in these rondels above the stint-1 chansons only after he had exhausted the spaces above the rondels on pp. 318–428.39 He concludes that the group D rondels were copied above the chansons after the rondels in C had been copied because they are copied at the end of the collection in Marie’s manuscript (Carpentras MS 375, c. 1456), rather than preceding the lyrics in his group C, as in this manuscript.40 In other words, the poet filled pages beyond the end of the chanson series for some time (group B) before he finally decided that he was probably never going to make use of (or no longer wanted to reserve) the space above the earlier lyrics. He was nearing the end of the manuscript (writing on the vellum of the second batch, before the third batch was added) and probably felt that he would need more space than the book appeared to provide. So he returned to an earlier point in the manuscript that contained (group A) rondels and began adding (group C) rondels above them. When he came to the end of that space, on p. 428, he decided he was willing to introduce some ‘désordre dans ses divisions par genre et rompait son plan primitif’,41 so he moved back even further and began adding (group D) rondels above stint-1 chansons. Group E (pp. 483si–537si) consists of those lyrics Champion defines as final, because undecorated. He does not explain why he positioned the lyrics in group C (the tops of pp. 318s–428s) after the lyrics in group B (pp. 429si–482si). In his edition, Champion seems to have changed his thinking on the order of the lyrics in his group B radically. He never explained (to the best of my knowledge) his divergence from the plan as he published it (see Table 7). He prints the rondels on pp. 428si–451si and 452s (thus changing the borderline between A–C and B, quires HH and II) reading top to bottom of each page. He then moves back to group C (pp. 318s–427s, quires AA to HH). At this point he returns to group B (which I will call B´, for which see Table 7) to pick up from p. 452i (in quire II, reading top to bottom), finishing on page 482s, the end of the stint-3 lyrics in this part of the manuscript. Only then does he jump back further to pp. 247s–298s (his group D), and finally then, from 474si to the end of the manuscript. He picks up the undecorated rondels on pp. 474 and 477 and then prints group E. However, a

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39

He seems temporarily to have forgotten that the lyrics written on pp. 329i–337i are chansons.

40

Autographe, pp. 49–50.

41

Autographe, p. 49.

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more straightforward ordering is easily achieved and more easily defensible because more transparent: 1) 318i–386i (stint 2; bottoms of pages; Champion’s group A; quires AA–EE) and 387i–428i (stint 3; bottoms of pages; group A; EE–HH) 2) 318s–428s (stint 3; tops of pages; group C; AA–HH)42 3) 429si–482s (stint 3; page by page; group B; HH–LL)43 4) 247s–298s (stint 3; above stint 1 chansons; group D; T–Y) 5) 483–537si, and all ‘strays’ (campaign 4; page by page; group E; LL–PP)44 This order might (roughly) be represented schematically like this (see Figure 10, p. 329, Figure 18, p. 436, and Figure 26, p. 270): ——————————————————————————————— (4) 298s–247s45 (2) 318s–428s st. 3 (T–Y) st. 3 (AA–HH)46 _________________________________ (3) 429si–482s (5) 483si–537si47 st. 3 (HH–LL) st. 4 (LL–PP) [chansons, then (1) 318i–386i/387i–428i caroles] st. 2 (AA–EE)/st. 3 (EE–HH) ——————————————————————————————— This ordering has many things to recommend it. It reverses the second and third series of rondels. Placing group 2 before group 3 is a reasonable hypothesis. Having copied a series of over a hundred rondels on the lower portions of a series 42

Some of these spaces are already filled with stint-2 lyrics (see Table 6).

43

The only lyric on p. 429 could be counted as belonging to this group or to group 2, above; Champion lists it in his group B on Autographe, p. 50 but discusses it under his group A on p. 56. 44

Autographe, p. 50. As the previous table makes clear, these are only ranges within which the poems in question fall. There is a great deal of irregularity within each range. 45

The reason for the reversal in order will be discussed later in this chapter. Quire Z, filled with complaintes, currently follows p. 298. 46

The simple schema I have provided cannot represent the order of composition absolutely, because ten of the lyrics in the group I have just labelled group 2 — at the tops of pp. 318–428 — are in fact lyrics written during the second stint (pp. 320s–322s, 324s–328s, numbered by the Duke when he was numbering two lyrics to a page, in quire BB, and pp. 351s and 353s, in quire CC ; see Table 6). This forces us to contemplate the thought that the poet’s decision to utilize the spaces above the rondels was taken during the period the poems in group 1 were copied (which we are calling stint 2), before the mid-1440s, and so not very long after the Duke’s return to France — but practiced erratically at first. This schema also elides such things as pairs of lyrics in which the response is copied immediately before, rather than after, the challenge. 47

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of pages, the poet, knowing that he plans to compose many more rondels, returns to the first rondel and fills the upper portions of those same leaves (pp. 318s–428s). This puts form with form (i.e. the rondel), and from p. 387i forward even the style of initials of the two lyrics on the page matches.48 The distribution of the work of the maker of large initials, who initialed intermittently the lyrics on pp. 415i–482 confirms the fact that the lyrics on pp. 318i–428i are to be read before the lyrics above them. Small initials are provided for the lyrics between p. 318i and p. 414i, whereas the painter of the large red and blue initials works on most of the lyrics between p. 415i and p. 428i (group 1/A), then all of the lyrics pp. 318s–428s before crossing the boundary between p. 428 (group 2/C) and p. 429 (group 3/B) to work as far as p. 482si (with one exception on p. 250s, the initials of group 4, pp. 247s–298s, are all small).49 Other evidence points to a chronological connection between the lyrics on pp. 318s–428s and the lyrics copied beneath them. Of the stint-2 lyrics on pp. 318i–428i (group 1/A), forty-eight are autograph; of those stint-3 lyrics copied above them (group 2/C), only twenty-eight are autograph. The number then drops dramatically in the final three groups: 3/B, stint-3 lyrics on pp. 429si–482si: three 4/D, stint-3 lyrics on pp. 247s–298s: none 5/E, stint-4 lyrics on pp. 483si–537si: none Though the poet clearly maintained his intellectual and literary interest in his life’s project, as the years passed he copied fewer and fewer of the lyrics himself (see Tables 5 and 6).50 48

The question that is not answered by either my analysis or Champion’s is why, at p. 428, with some sixty blank pages remaining, the Duke should have decided to change course so dramatically. I have yet to find an answer to this question. We can only suppose that (not for the first time) the poet underestimated his future output of rondels, thinking that, by the time he filled the spaces above the earliest rondels, the remaining vellum would suffice. 49 A painter of small initials works intermittently with that of large ones on pp. 453si, 457i, 468s, 472i, 476si, and 477s. 50

Champion refers more than once to the Duke’s physical inability to write after 1461 (see below). Given the large number of lyrics between p. 247s and p. 298s, and then p. 430 and p. 537, this would not seem to bear, however, on his withdrawal from copying through most of the third stint and all of the fourth. Gilbert Ouy has recently confirmed his statement that all of these lyrics are copied in Charles’s hand — one of the few things about which he agrees with Champion — but Johan Gerritsen feels that a number of the identifications, especially in the third stint, are doubtful. Certainly all share a general appearance (e.g. rounded, upright letters, loosely connected, and a specific form of the et sign), and I shall treat them as a group. A detailed paleographical study of the manuscript remains to be done.

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These are lyrics said to be in the Duke’s hand (in two series, as indicated in the schema above) Mon cueur ma fait commandement

122

ballade, stint 251

Beaute gardez vous de mez yeulx Bien viengne doulz regard qui rit

329i 330i

chanson, stint 2 (AA) chanson, stint 2

Mon cuer il me fault estre mestre52 Mes yeulz trop sont bien reclames

332i 333i

chanson, stint 2 (BB) chanson, stint 2

En gibessant toute lapres disnee

340i

rondel, stint 2

Me fauldrez vous a mon besoing Cueur endormy en pensee

344i 345i

rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2

Laudes Deo sint atque gloria

347

carole, stint 2 (CC)

Il vit en bonne esperance Maistre Estiene le gout nominatif

349i 350i

rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2

En la vigne jusquau peschier

352i

rondel, stint 2

Mon cueur plus ne volera Chascun dit questez bonne et belle Encore lui fait il grant bien Avugle et assourdy Jestraine de bien loing mamie

354i 355i 356i 357i 358i

rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2

Cueur a que prendrez vous conseil Deden mon livre de pensee En regardant ces belles fleurs Onquez feu ne fut sans fumee Chantez ce que vous penses

366i 367i 368i 369i 370i

rondel, stint 2 (DD) rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2

De riens ne sert a cueur en desplaisance Fies vous y De legier pleure a qui la lippe pent Dont viens tu maintenant souspir Ou pis ou mieulx Sen mez mains une fois vous tiens Plus penser que dire Je ne suis pas de sez gens la Remede comment Quant e voy ce que ne veuil mie

374i 375i 376i 377i 378i 379i 380i 381i 382i 383i

rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 (EE) rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2

51 This list of eighty-one lyrics is ranged in two series to reflect the order of composition (see also Table 5). 52

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Chapter 4 Sot euil raporteur de nouvelles Est ce vers moy que voyez a souspir Alons nous esbatre Je vous areste de main mise En mes pais quant me treuve a repos Alez vous ant allez ales Se vous voulez que vostre deviengne

384i 385i 386i 387i 388i 389i 390i

rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 2 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Cueur que fais tu revenge toy Par lez portes des yeulx et dez oreilles A qui les vent on A qui vendez-vous voz coquilles Envoyez nous un doulz regart

408i 409i 410i 411i 412i

rondel, stint 3 (FF) rondel, stint 3 (GG) rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Maudit soit mon cuer se jen mens

418i

rondel, stint 3

Par mame sil en fust en moy Mon cueur se plaint quil nest paye Ou loyaulte me payera

421i 422i 423i

rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Si hardis mez yeulx

427i

rondel, stint 3

Pense de toy Ce nest riens qui ne puist estre Or est de dire laissez men paix Quant je la regarde

334s 335s 336s 337

rondel, stint 3 (BB) rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 quatrain in lower margin

Presla riquet aus pendantes oreilles

351i

rondel, stint 3 (CC)

Satis satis plus quam satis Non temptabis tien te coy Gardez vous de mergo Quant nont assez fait dodo Procul a nobis Faulcette confite Il fauldroit faire larquemie

354s 355s 356s 357s 358s 359s 360s

rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Pour ce que plaisance est morte A Dieu quil manuye Ci pris ci mis Et de cela quoy Et de cela quoy Le trouveray je jamais

366s 367s 368s 369s 370s 371s

rondel, stint 3 (DD) rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Payes selonc vostre deserte

380s

rondel, stint 3 (EE)

Mort de moy vous y jouez vous

385s

rondel, stint 3

Hau guette mon euil et puis quoy

390s

rondel, stint 3

—————————————————————

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THE THIRD STINT Se vous voulez mamour avoir

418s

rondel, stint 3

Par laumosnier plaisant regart Ce nest que chose acoustumee Chascun devise a son pourpos Ennemy je te conjure

420s 421s 422s 423s

rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Plaisant regard mussez vous Je ne vous voy pas a demy Mon cueur pour vous en garder

426s 427s 428s

rondel, stint 3 (HH) rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

Je regrette mez dolans jours Se regrettez voz dolens jours Celle que je ne scay nommer

432i 433s 436s

rondel, stint 3 (HH) rondel, stint 3 rondel, stint 3

—————————————————————

For headings and incidental additions and corrections in the poet’s hand, see Champion, Autographe.

As I have already explained, many of the chansons and rondels copied soon after the Duke returned to France (stint 2) are in his hand, but in addition, a group of rondels copied in stint 3 are his work. It is interesting to note that a number of the stint-3 autograph lyrics are copied in the same quires as the stint-2 lyrics in his hand had been copied (CC and DD). From the tabular results, it might seem that the lyrics listed were copied at the same time, supra and infra, but the lyrics that share a page are very evidently copied with different pens, one broad-tipped, one finer (see Figure 17). What we can derive from this list is an additional reason to believe that groups 1 and 2 succeed one another, without Champion’s group B (pp. 429si–482si) intervening between his groups A and C. In fact this evidence shows that the copying of the lyrics in group 2 followed on directly from that of those in group 1. When the poet decided (round about p. 429) to utilize the tops of the pages, he went back to the beginning of the rondels he had composed after his return home (p. 318, stint 2; p. 317 contains a carole) and began filling in the blank upper portions of leaves, leaving the stint-1 chansons untouched. Later, having filled all those upper spaces (i.e. up to p. 428), he proceeded page by page to fill blank leaves. When he arrived at p. 482, he may have realized that it no longer mattered to him, as it once had, that the work of the first scribe and limner remain in a pristine state. Was it that those blank spaces no longer seemed beautiful, as they once had, but wasteful? Does this mark his decreased interest in the way the lyrics were presented in his manuscript? Had he concluded that the distinction of the terms ‘chanson’ and ‘rondel’ was an artificial or inconsequential one? More likely, the reason he turned to earlier blank spaces was considerably more practical: he was within three

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leaves of the end of the original manuscript (quire LL ends on p. 488), so he returned to a point early in the series of chansons he had composed in England, filling most of the upper spaces before moving on to blank leaves at the end of the book.53 There are more reasons to believe that groups 2 and 3 are in the correct order. Reading the lyrics in group 2 before those in group 3 rights the inverted order of the rondels beginning with the line En la forest de longue Actente. This series is divided into two groups in the manuscript, some in group 3/B, some in 2/C. The group that falls into group B includes the lyrics by Thignonville, Philippe Pot, Antoine de Lussay, Guiot Pot, Gilles des Ormes, and Jacques, bâtard de la Tremoille (pp. 447si–448si, 450i, quire II); that in his group C includes those by Nevers (p. 413s), Charles himself (pp. 414s and 417s), his wife Marie (p. 415s), and Fredet (p. 416s, quire GG) — and so he prints them in his edition.54 However, this flies in the face of the common assumption that it was the Duke himself who set the first line to structure the competition. Reversing the two groups, as Champion does, presents a picture of the Duke and his Duchess deciding to enter a competition among those around them only after the theme had become common property. Of course there can be no proof that those poems entered later into the manuscript were always composed later (though a general presumption of it has undergirded all such work on this manuscript). It is conceivable that Charles and Marie wrote their poems and circulated them independently of the manuscript, only later putting them together with those of Nevers and Fredet and having them copied into the manuscript, but it does not sound altogether likely, given the care apparent throughout the Duke’s life in France to chronicle the poetic activity at Blois both extensively and intensively, both personally and socially. Daniel Poirion describes the progression of events thus: ‘Le débat sur la Forest de Longue Attente, inauguré [by the poet] avec Fredet et la duchesse [. . .], se ranime, peut-être à Bourges, avec la participation de Philippe et Guiot Pot, Antoine de Lussay et Gilles

53 It is perhaps worth noting here that, confused as this procedure may sound, the poet did not add rondels to any pages outside those he had dedicated to the chanson/rondel form. He was not confused. Daniel Poirion observes that the poet’s hand disappears after p. 436 (Figure 8), in group 4/B (Le poète, p. 298). There is no evidence of his hand in the lyrics on pp. 247s–298s (group 5), though Champion claims that the name ‘Fraigne’ (a very small sample) at the top of p. 296 is in the Duke’s hand. 54

Except for one by Nevers, which he omitted inadvertently (Mary-Jo Arn, ‘A “Lost” Poem by Charles de Nevers Recorded by Charles d’Orléans’, Notes & Queries, 244, n.s., 46 (1999), 185–86.

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des Ormes’.55 Having begun as a game played by a tiny inner circle (the Duke, his wife, and Fredet), it was later offered to a larger outer circle of writers. In refuting George Darby’s contentions about poem order, Daniel Poirion added one piece of evidence that bears on the matter before us — that the lyric that refers to the theme of the Observant Franciscans, also by Orléans, on p. 437 (Champion’s group B) refers back to a rondel, p. 424, composed by the poet in group C, thereby necessitating the reversal of Champion’s groups B and C.56 Another piece of evidence, too, points to the necessity of reversing Champion’s groups B and C. Simply by counting, we can see the number of other authors represented in the manuscript ebb and flow. Between p. 318s and p. 429s (group 2/C, supra and infra), only sixteen lyrics by other authors are identified. Between p. 429 and p. 482 (3/B), with only half as many lyrics as are in 2/C, the number swells to thirty-nine as more people are drawn to Blois to take part in the literary culture whose reputation was becoming more widely known. If the lyrics are taken on Champion’s order, however, there is a sudden falling off of attributions between 3/B (II) and 2/C (AA) and again between 3/B´ (LL) and 4/D (T).57 Once the Duke reached p. 482, he was nearing the end of the manuscript (p. 488, LL). When he had only three blank leaves left, he had to choose one of two courses: add more vellum or return to an earlier place in the manuscript and begin filling the spaces. For reasons we do not know, he chose the latter course.58 He did not use the three blank quires in the ballade/complainte section of the manuscript (which he could have repositioned at the end of the manuscript if he had wanted to). Instead he returned to those pages that held the early chansons in quires T through Y. The Duke certainly did not want a jumble of forms thrown together, but he could tolerate in close proximity forms he saw as similar. He had already copied chansons

55 Le poète, pp. 301–02. Thignonville’s entry in the competition survives only in Marie’s manuscript, where it is written on fol. 56v . Pierre Champion, Histoire poétique du quinzième siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1923), II, 43–44, and Autographe, p. 22. Both Darby (‘Observations on the Chronology’, p. 17) and Poirion (Le poète, p. 301) argue against Champion’s reversal of the two groups of rondels. Poirion accepts Darby’s rearrangement of the rondels without providing any rationale for doing so (ibid., p. 302). See a brief form of these arguments in the Appendix. 56

See Le poète, p. 299, for Poirion’s argument.

57

See Table 7: B´ is the second portion of Champion’s group B (pp. 472i–482s; KK–LL).

58

Parchment sellers were readily available and he could have added more vellum at any point very easily. In fact, he must have had quantities of vellum (and paper) in house for use in his chancery. I suspect that the reason had more to do with some sense of design or form than with expediency.

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and rondels together in quires AA and BB, so he was not transgressing his own sense of form by having rondels copied on the same pages with the earliest chansons (see Table 6). But why did he begin the copying on p. 247, mid-quire, rather than on p. 235, the first recto of quire T, which holds the first chanson? The decision looks completely arbitrary (like the change of course after p. 429). Marie’s manuscript of her husband’s poetry provides a key. In that manuscript (Carpentras MS 375), copied some time between 1455 and 1458 (according to Champion), the lyrics on pp. 318s–429s (group 2) are not copied as a group but interspersed with the lyrics copied onto the lower register of those pages (group 1). The scribes simply copied the work page by page in this part of the manuscript. However, those on pp. 247s–317s (group 4) do not either precede or follow them; they are copied at the end of the manuscript and in the reverse order from that found here.59 If they had copied mécaniquement when the group 4/D lyrics were in place, the lyrics would appear alternated with the stint-1 chansons beneath them. The fact that they do not means that they were added later.60 When Charles reached p. 428, he seems not to have had a clear idea of how much space he would need for future type-2 lyrics, so he asked the scribe(s) to begin copying on p. 298s and to work from there back towards the beginning of the manuscript, filling the upper halves of the leaves. The result is that they appear in reverse order (pp. 298s–247s) at the end of Marie's manuscript. 61 As his scribes neared the beginning of the chanson series, the Duke finally opted to add four quires of vellum (MM–PP) and continue page by page, picking up where he had left off in LL and continuing into the final quire of the manuscript. Copyists resumed work on the final leaves of quire LL and continued on as far as the first leaf of PP, where the lyrics cease.

59

Champion noticed this but drew no conclusions from it. See Autographe, pp. 49–50; Poésies, p. 589. 60 The Je meurs de soif series (quire O) is absent from Marie’s manuscript. Clearly additions to her manuscript after the original copying were not inclusive. 61

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T HE F OURTH S TINT (MID -1450 S TO C . 1465)

T

he lyrics without decoration of any kind include – twenty-one ballades:1 pp. 144–58 (quires I–K), and pp. 160–73 (O) – two English roundels: p. 346si (BB); six English rondels: pp. 310si–312si (Z); and one English ballade: p. 313 (Z) – about 125 rondels: pp. 292si (Y); (337, BB, four lines in lower margin); 393s (FF); 455s (II); 465s (KK); 473i, 474si, 477i, 478i, 482i (LL); and 483si–537si (LL–PP). The fourth stint of copying is distinguished by the lack of decorated initials of any kind and the addition of one more batch of vellum at the end of the manuscript (quires MM through PP). There is little here to arouse any serious controversy. The ballades continue the ballade sequence, the rondels (beginning with those in the 480s) continue the rondel section. A few poems are stuck, apparently randomly, into blank spaces (see Tables 5 and 8). The only placements that call for much comment are the English poems. Although the lyrics of the fourth stint are unlimned, it is not because the poet had given up all thought of decoration. Directors (guide letters) for the initial maker, though entered erratically, are evident to the end of the manuscript. This might be taken to mean that Charles meant to employ someone to initial a large number of lyrics all at once, or it may mean that he simply did not get around to having the initials added because it did not seem very important to him. Though many of the final lyrics lack headings (such as ‘Rondel’), many are headed by authors’ names, and it would seem that it was only the accident of death that resulted in the final group of lyrics remaining entirely undecorated.

1

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The last, Villon’s encomium (Jam nova, pp. 154–58), contains a double ballade.

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The pattern of the stint-3 section of the manuscript, or lack of it, continues through stint 4: single scribes copy one, two, or three lyrics, then disappear to be replaced by others. The literary images in ballades on pp. 144, 145, and 146 are related, and the latter two are in the same hand. The Je meurs de soif ballades between p. 160 and p. 173 (quire O) are in various hands, some if not all apparently authorial.2 The two rondels on p. 292 (originally the final leaf of the disarranged quire Y) are copied by the same scribe on a page that had been left blank. Four different poets tried their hands at the poet’s Jaulier des prisons de Pensee (p. 502s): Simmonet Cailleau (p. 502i); Thignonville (p. 503s); Gilles des Ormes (p. 503i); and H. le Voys (p. 505s). These five are copied very close together by five different scribes, at least some probably the authors of them, during the last stint of copying, Charles’s lyric first. This is followed by two poems on the line Comme monnoye descriee (pp. 506i, 507i, NN), the first by Charles, the second by le Voys. But the intense poetic camaraderie of the third stint seems to have played itself out in the Duke’s final years. Among the lyrics of the fourth stint, only Jaulier des prisons de Pensee and Comme monnoye descriee (MM–NN), share first lines. The third batch of vellum, added to the end of the manuscript (MM–PP), varies significantly from the first and second batches. Those are supple whereas the new vellum is stiff and thicker. If the manuscript was still, as I believe, unbound, this more substantial vellum may have been selected as protection for it, in anticipation of later binding.

Commentary Scribes, the Household, the Chancery, and the Exchequer (Chambre des comptes) De Laborde’s precious transcription of the documents of the chambre des comptes of the Dukes of Orléans, from Louis through Louis XII (1490) concludes with a simple, rough list of members of the household at Blois, sorted by position. In it he 2

See Autographe, p. 27. Champion identifies some of the Je meurs lyrics that follow as probably in the hands of their composers (Autographe, pp. 25–28). In his recent study of late gothic hands Albert Derolez comments on the fanciful majuscules, which could vary in form even on the same page and sacrificed legibility for display (Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books, pp. 183–84). Such line-initial majuscules are used, not only by scribes who eschewed the limning of their lyrics, but by those who left space for painted initials. It is in these later lyrics, however, that the majuscules become most exaggerated.

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lists sixteen écrivains-copistes, thirty-nine peintres et enlumineurs,3 and twenty libraires et relieurs. These lists include only those people named in this particular, fragmentary set of records. The names of many translateurs, poetes, and historiens appear in the records: Nicolas Astezan, Philippe de Commynes, Eustache Deschamps,4 Jean Froissart,5 Jean de Garencières, Gilles des Ormes, Guiot Pot, Thignonville, and four Villebresmes (Antonio Astesano is one name missing from this list, and there must have been many more). To those who study literature, the Duke’s court at Blois can seem more a site of leisure than of business and bustle, but it is essential to bear in mind when considering Charles as poet and patron that he was in possession of a large duchy that required of him serious administrative skills and a position in the kingdom that placed heavy burdens on his time and his strength. Although his accounts reveal a level of wealth any of us would envy, his role in the larger world of French politics and his financial obligations to the English were onerous. It is against the background of this great enterprise of a functioning dukedom that we must picture the poet, who attempts to seduce us with scenes of leisurely boating trips on the Loire to make us believe that his life was one of nonchaloir. A dukedom is many things. It is a court, a storehouse of records, a dispenser of payment and privilege and patronage. It is, above all, a center of writing and the written word, a guardian of history, a glorifier of nobility, a defender of reputation, a maker of propaganda, and a very large and complex household full of servants in every sense of the word, from minstrels to jewelers, sculptors, barbers, tailors, architects, glass workers, doctors, fools, embroiderers, armorers, priests, scholars, and translators — even a faiseur de grimaces and a hermite. And all of these are in addition to the household officers, the stewards, cupbearers, etc.6 Organizing an enterprise of this size and governing a territory this large required a great deal of writing (and many who could write). Inventory followed inventory, jewelry must be kept track of, and so must religious objects and costly clothing, tapestries, books, and other valuables. Payments for wages and pensions and favours must be recorded, even down to the chambermaid, the gardeners, the diplomats, the heralds, and the children who sing in the choir. 3

Who painted not only manuscript illuminations, but banners and other necessary accoutrements of the Duke’s household (see, e.g., de Laborde, #6981, #6999). 4

Whose poetic exchange with Louis seems similar to many exchanges between Charles and his friends in the next generation (see Champion, La librairie, p. x; see also p. xi). 5 6

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Who presented the Duke with a copy of his Dit royal (see Champion, La librairie, pp. ix–x).

For which see Elizabeth Gonzalez, Un prince en son hôtel: les serviteurs des ducs d’Orléans au siècle, Histoire Ancienne et Médiévale, 74 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004).

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The Duke had a large library, a chancery, and an exchequer (chambre des comtes), and the few records de Laborde prints of purchases of fairly small amounts of special kinds of vellum must be weighed against the steady supply of writing materials of all kinds needed to keep the household running. Much has been made of the purchase in 1455 from one Michau Boudet, marchant, of ‘xiiii peaulx de veslin [. . .] pour adjouster et mettre ou livre des Ballades de MS’.7 In part because Champion posited a late date of c. 1450 for the making of the original manuscript, he seemed to think that this vellum was that of the second ruling batch (though he was unaware of the change in ruling pattern and hence of the precise boundaries of the added quires). He refers to it as being provided for poetry copied after that of the fonds primitif (the work of the first scribe and limner). George Darby thought it might have been ‘added to the end of the exhausted section of rondeaux’. It is not certain where precisely he placed that point of exhaustion, but his discussion seems to point to the vicinity of quire II. The second ruling batch ends at LL. Assuming that no quires were shifted between the two separate ruling batches (I–P, CC–LL) since that time, he would seem to have hit on the third ruling batch (MM–PP) as the vellum purchased from Michau Boudet. Daniel Poirion refers to the sale but does not make clear where in the manuscript he thinks it was used.8 What the record actually says is that a quantity of vellum (in the form of a number of skins) was purchased (or at least paid for) by the Duke in 1455. This was destined for use in a ‘livre des Ballades de MS’. Who was this man Boudet? He was a parchmenter, but he also furnished the household with all sorts of commodities: small goods, such as soap, sponges, harpstrings, cloth, and the rosary ‘d’Alemaigne’ mentioned in this entry.9 How do we know that the ‘livre des Ballades’ was BnF, MS fr. 25458? In short, we do not.10 Some readers have taken the word ballade as

7 De Laborde, #6765: ‘A Michau Boudet, marchant, demourant à Blois, pour xiiii peaulx de veslin, baillées à Bertran, pour adjouster et mettre ou livre des Ballades de MS, xxix s. ij d. t., et pour une patenostres d’Alemagne pour MdS, iii s. iiij d.’ (Bertran Richart being one of the Duke’s scribes, who copied the Duke’s manuscript for his wife Marie; see de Laborde, #6971). 8

Poésies, p. xix; Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology’, pp. 15–16; Poirion, Le poète, p. 299 (also Autographe, p. 84). See also Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 70, though he goes on to suggest that at least some bifolia were at that time kept in ‘une layette’. 9

Champion knew that Boudet was a small-time merchant (see La librairie, p. xxxvi, n. 1). Boudet also handled some of the duties surrounding the funeral arrangements for the Duke in 1464 (see de Laborde, #7028). 10

Champion has suggested that the following item in an inventory of about 1440 refers to this manuscript: ‘Le livre des Ballades de Ms, a ung fermouer a ses armes’ (de Laborde, #6545; Ouy, La

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a key to the referent, but the word is used loosely (as are chanson and rondel) in the fifteenth century to mean simply lyric, or even composition in verse. What is more, the collection under discussion here neither opens nor closes with ballades; in fact the ballades constitute only a small part of the whole. Charles had a succession of copies of his poetry made from his own manuscript, each (according to the usual terminology) a ‘livre de Ballades de MS’. He had one copied for his wife c. 1456; another for Marguerite de Rohan, his sister-in-law and the wife of his brother Jean d’Angoulême (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 20026); another to accompany the Latin translation in Grenoble MS 873 (1450–53);11 yet another for Mme. d’Argueil (1449);12 one for ‘ma damoiselle de Roygny’ (1460);13 one in all probability for Philippe le Bon;14 and perhaps others whose identification has not survived. In the same list of purchases is recorded payment for parchemin of various sizes and qualities for other books belonging to the Duke and Duchess, for instance ‘xii s. ix d. t.’ for six large ‘peaulx de parchemin veslin’ for a book of astronomy the Duke was having made and another batch of ‘pareil veslin’ for a book for Madame of the story of Troilus.15 These purchases seem to be for unusual sizes or qualities of membrane. There is nothing, however, that ties this purchase definitively to Charles’s manuscript, or that requires that all of it be used in the book mentioned. In any case, Charles need not have made a special purchase of

librairie des frères captifs, #99, p. 48). This is very unlikely, since the brand new quires were unbound. He is perhaps closer to the mark when he suggests that it might refer to ‘une collection analogue’, such as Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS 2070 or BnF, MS fr. 19139 (La librairie, pp. 83–84). Champion himself writes that ‘Charles d’Orléans a copié durant sa captivité plusiers manuscrits’ (referring to de Laborde, pp. 322–24; Autographe, 8, n. 1). The Duke had a number of manuscripts of his poetry made in the course of his relatively long life, including one for which the Duke had three clasps made in the form of flowers: ‘A luy [Jehan Lessayerur Orfévre de MdS], pour avoir mis trois cloux d’argent, en façon de fleurs, ou livre des Balades de M.S. xv. d. t.’ (de Laborde, #6739). Unfortunately, we do not know to which manuscript this refers. 11 The inventory refers to the Grenoble manuscript as ‘en grant volume, ung livre de parchemin, enquel livre sont contenus le livre des ballades de monseigneur le duc d’Orléans, tant en françois, comme en latin’ (de Laborde, #7026, 1463). Poésies, p. xii, n. 4. 12

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, P. Orig. 1251, dossier 27987, no. 6; see J. de Croÿ, ‘Un portrait de Charles d’Orléans’, Mémoires de la société des sciences & lettres de Loir-et-Cher, 19 (1999), 100–10 (pp. 108–10); see also Champion, La librairie, p. lx, n. 2. 13

Copied by Bertran Richart (see Champion, La librairie, p. lxxviii, item 9).

14

See Champion, La librairie, p. lx, n. 1, Vie, p. 505, n. 3. See also Gros, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc’, p. 53 and notes. 15

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De Laborde, #6769 and #6784.

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parchemin to enlarge his manuscript. The membrane is of no special size or quality (such as the ‘pareil veslin’ bought for use in the French Petrarch), and the Duke had to have in house a stock of various kinds and qualities of parchment (and paper) to supply his own chancery.16 Equally, of course, we cannot prove the opposite, that this entry has nothing to do with the manuscript under construction. It does, however, seem most unlikely that this purchase could refer to the second batch of vellum, on which many of the lyrics of the second stint are copied. If that were so, we would have to think, for instance, that the ten quires Q to BB took some fifteen years to fill. (I realize that Champion’s dating of the first stint to c. 1450 did not allow for this.) If indeed Charles did buy vellum in 1455 to add to his own manuscript, it would more likely have been for the final four quires. It is not unreasonable to posit that the final four quires contain the latest poems the poet wrote and so naturally belong to stint 4 (pp. 489–537, plus fifteen unnumbered pages; third ruling batch). Nor would it stretch the reader’s credulity in the least to extend that suggestion to cover the last quire or two of the second vellum batch (KK–LL), but lyrics found elsewhere in the manuscript must surely be dealt with according to other criteria, if any can be found, since it cannot be shown that Charles told each writer exactly where to copy a poem. Copyists must inevitably have approached the book-in-progress differently. Each must have had a slightly different idea about both a book and this book. Did Charles hand someone a quire in which to write? Did poets hand their poems to one or another scribe? Did one writer offer to copy another’s response with his own composition? Did Charles look over the writer’s shoulder, pointing to the exact place he wanted a given rondel copied? Did Charles say, ‘The box is on the table next to the gold porcupine’? At the risk of sounding facetious, I mean to suggest that each of these vignettes describes a relationship between owner, scribe, author, and book that is worth our consideration and would affect the way we reason about the evidence the manuscript offers us. Theoretically, all of the undecorated poems could be among the last lyrics the poet wrote, but it will repay us to deal with them one at a time. The final stint of copying is defined primarily by the lack of limning or rubrication.17 There are actually two kinds of undecorated poems in the manuscript: those with directors (guide letters) that were clearly awaiting the painting of initials (see Figure 13, p. 148), and those for which the copyist of the text provided

16 See de Laborde, p. 339, for note of ‘Achats d’encre, papier, parchemin, etc., pour les divers services de cette administration’. 17

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See Autographe, p. 75.

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line-initial majuscules, using the same pen and ink with which he wrote the lyric itself (see Figure 30, p. 537).18 A limner would probably not have added initials (though he could have) to poems a scribe or author had already provided with majuscules — for example, the poems Villon copied into the manuscript. As to a lyric with blank spaces where we would expect to see initials, such a lyric might have been skipped by a limner working his way through a manuscript to limn whatever added pieces of poetry he might find here and there and so could have been copied earlier than its unfinished state seems to declare. Alternatively, a limner might have been asked to work on a particular section of the manuscript, while a lyric or two added to another section of the manuscript went unlimned. Where there are groups of lyrics in close proximity, however, we might be on firmer ground to suggest a late composition date. Finished (Scribal) Lyrics The following lyrics were copied by their original scribes with majuscules that were not designed for added decoration: 154 Jam nova (K) 160 161 162 163

Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine (O) Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine Je nay plus soif tairie est la fontaine Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine

166 Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine 166 Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine 168 Je meurs de soif au pres de la fontaine 393s Qui veulst acheter de mon dueil (Clermondois, FF) 455s Quant Leaute et Amour sont ensamble (II) 465s Pour mon cueur qui est en prison (KK) 469i Cest pour rompre sa teste (KK)19

18 19

Derolez, Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books, pp. 183–84. See, e.g., Autographe, p. 27.

Though supplied with scribal majuscules, we know that Laissez aler ces gorgias (p. 322i, AA) does not belong to this stint because Charles numbered it along with the surrounding stint-2 lyrics (see chapter 3). It is in the same hand as the two preceding rondels, both provided with initials by the third limner.

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Skipping over the three blank quires (L, M, N), the ballades in quire O follow naturally the final (stint-4) ballade in quire I (Escollier de merencolie) and the stint4 ballades in quire K (which may indicate a late insertion of these blank quires at this place in the manuscript). The rondel Qui veulst (p. 393s), by the Count of Clermont, evokes a response from the Duke that is copied on the previous page, in the course of the third stint (Vendez autre, p. 392s).20 This relationship ties the undecorated rondel to the third stint, and indeed Champion prints the two rondels in reverse order.21 The only other lyric copied in the same ‘très personnelle et caractéristique’ hand, and likewise provided with scribal majuscules (Quant Leaute et Amour sont ensamble, p. 455s) is headed ‘Orls’ (though not in the Duke’s hand). Champion suggests that because the hand is ‘dans un groupe de pièces du duc d’Orléans d’une écriture uniforme’, it appears to have been added ‘après coup’.22 I would add that, as it is (like the lyric on p. 393s) surrounded by stint-3 rondels, it ought to be left in its place in the poem order, which is exactly where Champion prints it. He does not mention the rondels on pp. 465s and 469s but prints them both in the course of the third stint, as if they had red and blue initials. There seems to be no compelling reason to dislodge them from this position. Unfinished (Unlimned/Unrubricated) Lyrics Perhaps surprisingly, this does not leave many lyrics (apart from those at the end of the manuscript on pp. 482–537): 145 146 147 148 149

Lautre jour tenoit son conseil (K) En la chambre de ma pensee Je nay plus soif tairie est la fontaine Pourquoy mas tu vendu Jennesse Mon cueur vous adjourne Vieillesse

151 152

Plus ne voy riens qui reconfort me donne Chacun sebat au myeulx mentir

165

Je meurs de soif au pres de la fontaine (O)

169 170

Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine Je meurs de soif aupres de la fontaine

20

These are the lyrics copied in reverse order.

21

Autographe, p. 68; Poésies, pp. 407–08.

22

Autographe, p. 59; Champion claims that this hand ‘ne se trouve pas ailleurs dans le ms. O’ (note to rondel CCV, Poésies, pp. 585–86).

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292s Sera elle point jamais trouvee (Y ) 292i Duc dorleans je l’ay trouvee 310s 310i 311s 311i 312s 312i 313

Ayens the comyng of may (Z) Go forth myn hert wyth my lady For the reward of half a here Alas mercy wher shul myn hert yow fynd Ye shal be payd after your whylfulnes So fayre so freshe so goodely on to se O thou fortune which has the gouvernance

346s Myn hert hath send glad hope in hys message (BB) 346i Whan shal thow come glad hope fro þi vyage 473i Quant pleur ne pleut souspir ne vente (LL) 474s Chose qui plait est a demy vendue 474i Quant je congnois que vous estes tant mien 477i 478i

Souper ou baing et disner ou bateau En yver du feu du feu

482i

Ces beaux mignons a vendre et a revendre

The ballades in quires K and O surely belong with their fellows with scribal initials, at the end of the first ballade series. The rondel on p. 292s, Champion writes, is ‘postérieur à 1456’ because the poem that follows (on the page and in his edition), which responds to it, is by Bourbon.23 They are copied on the unused verso of the final leaf of quire Y (when it was in its original order). Champion positions them in his edition between what he has (in Le manuscrit autographe) labelled group D and group E, followed in turn by the rest of the unlimned lyrics in this list, except the one on p. 473i (Quant pleur ne pleut souspir ne vente). In printing them at the end of the lyrics of the third stint of copying and before those of the fourth, Champion chose one logical option, one which I would not hesitate to adopt. In dealing with the one exception, Champion writes, ‘c’est ainsi qu’il faut considérer comme une addition postérieure le rondeau que le duc d’Orléans fit écrire, page 473[i], Quant pleur ne pleut souspir ne vent [/ Le bruit] [. . .] sous le morceau de Benoît Damien [En la grant mer de desplaisance]. La pièce du duc d’Orléans est

23

Poésies, p. 591. He continues, ‘A partir de cette pièce (Sera elle) commencent les rondeaux transcrits sur les cahiers additionnels qui ne sont pas passés entre les mains du rubricateur’. It is not clear what he is referring to, as the rondels on the following page are decorated, the upper one by a maker of red and blue initials, the lower by the third limner, nor is there any physical evidence of ‘les cahiers additionnels’ in this part of the manuscript. In fact the quire ends on p. 298 (Y), and p. 299 opens with a complainte written in the first stint.

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construite sur des rimes analogues et exprime la même idée’.24 Champion adds that the Charles’s rondel (p. 473i) is ‘une addition postérieure’ presumably because it is unlimned.25 Inasmuch as it is composed on the same opening line as the poet’s rondel on the previous page (p. 472s) and is itself positioned on the lower half of the leaf, it is doubtful how much of an afterthought it might have been, especially since Champion elsewhere claims that Damien was inspired to compose his rondel by Charles’s, adding again, ‘cette dernière pièce est une addition’, though he says nothing about when it might have been ‘added’.26 He likewise refers to the two lyrics on p. 474, one by Lorraine, as ‘des additions postérieures’ and contemporary with one another, though copied in different hands.27 The unfinished rondels on pp. 477i and 478i are also ‘additions’, according to Champion, who concludes that they are ‘de la derniére manière du duc’, and so justifies their position near the end of the collection on the basis of their lack of decoration and a knowledge of the poet’s developing style. On the last of these unlimned poems, Ces beaux mignons a vendre et a revendre (p. 482i), from the Duke’s hand, Champion has no comment. All of these rondels are in quire LL (pp. 473–88), the final quire in the second portion of vellum from the second ruling batch (i.e. CC–LL), most of which are decorated, like most of quires FF through LL, with red and blue initials (up to p. 482). Hereafter, we are dealing with the last addition of vellum and lyrics without decorative initials. Remembering that the rondels on the upper portions of pp. 247–92 were copied after the lyrics in LL, we can see what Champion means by ‘later additions’. They were copied onto blank half-pages of quire LL after the work of the initial makers was complete and (perhaps) before the vellum of the last four quires had been added to the manuscript (MM–PP). The English Lyrics The collection contains nine lyrics in English with directors but no completed initials. The placement of the English poems does present some special problems. It is true that codicological reasoning does not get us very far. The physical evidence (all are uninitialed and both groups follow stint-3 work) seems to dictate a place in the last stint of copying. When we turn to the evidence of verse form and

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24

Autographe, p. 76.

25

Autographe, p. 76, and Poésies, p. 588.

26

Autographe, p. 61.

27

Autographe, p. 61.

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Figure 27. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 346. Chansons on final page of quire BB, not autograph.

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historical circumstance, however, we may arrive at a different conclusion about their actual dates of composition and decide on the basis of it to place them elsewhere. Two roundels (the English term for the chanson form, Figure 27, p. 346), preceded and followed by lyrics in the poet’s hand, are copied at the end of a quire (BB) that contains stint-2 chansons infra (that I earlier identified as written soon after the Duke’s return to France) and stint-3 rondels supra (Figure 18, p. 436). They are followed by a quire (CC) of stint-2 and stint-3 rondels and one stint-2 carole.28 Champion, who knew the Duke’s hand well and who showed the reader of his poetry a completely new poem order based on it, identified the copyist of these two roundels as the Duke himself,29 but he was in this instance fooled by a look-alike hand, and perhaps a disposition to believe that Charles wrote at least a few lyrics in English.30 Daniel Poirion accepted Champion’s identification of the hand,31 but Johan Gerritsen has pointed out to me the more upright stance of the hand and the curious extra backwards curl at the top of the g in line 4 of the lyric at the top of p. 346 (see Figure 27). The 6-shaped final s with projecting horizontal headstroke (lines 2, 11, 12 supra and 6 and 8 infra), two-compartment a (lines 2 and 5 supra), crossed l (line 10 supra), and the sign for et (line 12 supra and line 10 infra) are entirely absent from the repertoire of letter shapes the Duke used in this manuscript. The form of the scribe’s d (line 1, infra), with a downward curl in the final stroke, is unlike the Duke’s more compact d (cf., e.g., p. 329i) and the w (line 11 supra, line 1 infra) is closed with a 3-shaped stroke that is absent from the Duke’s much simpler form (cf. p. 329i). The scribe’s use of thorn (line 9) and English r (line 1) would have provided excellent evidence of Charles’s familiarity with written English (which can hardly be doubted on the basis of other evidence), but it is not to be found here. Champion prints the two English roundels (p. 346si, quire BB) among the other poems in his text, as the last of the chansons. He argued in favour of Charles

28

See Poésies, p. 559, note to Ballade CIX on the relation of a French ballade to these two. A ‘roundel’ is a lyric in chanson form composed in English; an ‘English rondel’ is a lyric in rondel form composed in English. 29

See La librairie, p. xxxiii, n. 9.

30

Champion also claims that two lyrics written on pp. 161 and 162 are in the same hand, but the hands are clearly different (Poésies, p. 561). Many of the lyrics that follow, however, are in the poet’s hand. 31

Daniel Poirion, ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre: un secret désir’, Marche romane (1978), 517 (reprinted in Écriture poétique et composition romanesque, Medievalia, 11 (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994), pp. 359–79).

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as author of these two lyrics on other grounds than the hand in which they are copied. He saw the English Whan shal thow come glad hope fro þi vyage (the first rondel also mentions ‘Glad Hope’) as ‘une interpretation assez libre’ (i.e. not a translation) of the stint-2 chanson, Dieu vous conduie Doubz Penser (p. 293i) and the penultimate line, ‘In blake mournyng is clothyd my corage’, as similar to ‘Je suis cellui au cueur vestu de noir’ (first line of the envoy of the stint-1 ballade, Douleur, Courroux, Desplaisir et Tristesse, on p. 37). He linked the mention of the heart’s hermitage in the first of the two to the opening of the stint-1 ballade, Mon cueur est devenu hermite, which follows on with ‘en l’ermitage de Pensee’ (pp. 64–65).32 It is not necessary to identify the hand as the Duke’s to make a strong case for his authorship of these two lyrics. Their very form suggests a composition date before or immediately after his return in 1440. It is possible that these are two old chansons he had composed and then laid aside, to be copied only later into the manuscript, or they may have been copied during stint 2 but for some reason never limned. (They are copied on the last page of quire BB, and a number of ‘backs’ of quires were apparently not originally intended for text.) Whatever the case, their form and the use of English characters in transcribing them (the hand is probably French), as well as their verbal echoes of French stint-1 and stint-2 lyrics, would seem to provide evidence for their fairly early composition. The two roundels occur in a very interesting part of the manuscript in which the poet seems to cluster a number of kinds of experimental lyrics on the upper portions of successive leaves. The quire that follows these roundels contains, among other lyrics, a Latin carole (stint 2): Laudes Deo (p. 347, autograph); a series of bilingual (Latin-French) rondels (stint 3): Ubi supra / N’en parlons plus (p. 349s), Noli me tangere / Faulte de serviteurs (p. 350s), Satis, satis, plus quam satis / N’en avez vous encor asses (p. 354s, autograph), Non temptabis tien te coy / Regard plain d’atrayement (p. 355s, autograph), Gardez vous de mergo (p. 356s, autograph), and Procul a nobis / Soyent ces trompeurs (p. 358s, autograph); two rondels based on grammatical terms (stint 2): Monseignour tres suppellatif (p. 351s, composed by Estienne Le Gout, in response to the Duke’s Maistre Estienne Le Gout, nominatif (p. 350i, autograph));

32

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and his famous rondel containing baby talk, as well as some Italian (stint 3): Quant n’ont assez fait dodo (p. 357s, autograph).33 One wonders whether Champion printed the two bilingual rondels next to the two English roundels (at the very end of the chanson series in his first volume) because he felt that they shared some sort of marginal status, or whether he considered them simply the latest copied because they are not limned.34 The poet may have felt that these two lyrics in a language other than French belonged near the other anomalous lyrics that follow them.35 The other seven English lyrics, six rondels and a ballade, are another story (pp. 310–13, Z; see Figure 28). They are preceded by complaintes and followed first by a blank leaf that ends quire Z and then (in the manuscript as it is presently constituted) by caroles (stint 1; see Table 6). However, if quire Z belonged, as I have suggested, much earlier in the manuscript, between present quires H (then only partially filled) and Q, the leaves on which these English lyrics are written would have been preceded by two complaintes decorated by Limner 1 and another with red/blue lombards (p. 306, L’autrier, stint 3) and followed by a full quire of stint-1 lyrics (see Table 6). The use of the rondel form suggests that these could belong in the second, third, or fourth stint. They could have been passed over by the initialers of the second and third stints who worked during that time, or they could belong to the fourth. Two pieces of evidence, however, point to an earlier date of composition and perhaps of copying. The rondel on p. 311i contains an acrostic that spells out ANNE MOLINS. A delegation of English nobility headed by William de la Pole, the Marquis of Suffolk, stopped at Blois in the course of their progress in 1444 to London with Marguerite d’Anjou, the future bride of Henry VI. In the entourage was Adam Molyns, bishop of Chichester, keeper of the Privy Seal, and associate of

33

Much later the Duke wrote another bilingual rondel that contains Italian: Contre fenoches et nox buze, p. 461s (answered still later by Benoit Damien, p. 496s). 34 35

Poésies, p. 568, lxxxviii.

The character of this interesting group of poems is not especially evident in Champion’s edition. He breaks it up (as he must), printing the carole at the end of vol. I, along with two of the macaronic rondels (Satis, satis and Non temptabis), which he prints among the chansons; the rest appear in vol. II among the rondels — but not all close together because of the time lapse evident between the ‘grammatical’ lyrics (stint 2) and the others (stint 3). I am not suggesting that another principle, that of common stylistic features, should override the criteria we have been using all along, but it is useful for the reader of an edition to know that such associations (in this case, manuscript proximity) exist.

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Figure 28. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 311. English rondels, acrostic: Anne Molins, stint 4.

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Suffolk. Another branch of the Molyns family was associated with Thomas Chaucer, father of the Duchess of Suffolk.36 Both families included women named Anne. These lyrics (or at least this one) were older lyrics, probably composed in the early 1440s. The subject matter of the six rondels confirms this hypothesis: all are on the subject of love, in the style of the Duke’s earlier poetry (the complaint to Fortune in the accompanying ballade fits with them nicely). The acrostic does not suggest the composing hand of the Duke, who does not employ such techniques elsewhere (in spite of Ethel Seaton’s claims to the contrary), but there is no strong evidence against his authorship. Champion claimed that the scribe who copied this little group of lyrics was English, but the likelihood of an English scribe working in the Loire region in the middle of the fifteenth century is very small indeed.37 J. P. M. Jansen felt that they must have been copied by a French scribe — or at any rate, not an English one. He argued that the phrase written ‘to se fro’ in the second line of the ballade (p. 313), in error for ‘to & fro’, shows that the scribe was not familiar with the shape of the English ampersand in the copy he received.38 The same argument (unfamiliarity with the language) might be made to account for ‘Me thyng’ for ‘Me thynk’ in line 8 of the ballade. If the scribe were English, however, this might explain the spellings of dangere and strangere and would bolster the argument for an earlier position in the poet’s œuvre than their undecorated form would suggest. Ian Doyle (who ponted out the ‘Me thyng’ error to me) agrees that it is unlikely that Charles brought an English scribe with him from England (if he had, we would expect to find evidence of his presence in other manuscripts), but the hand does seem to be that of an English scribe.39 36

See Eleanor Prescott Hammond, ‘Charles of Orléans and Anne Molyneux’, Modern Philology, 22 (1924–25), 215–16; Poésies, pp. 568–72; Ethel Seaton, ‘Charles d’Orléans and Two English Ladies’, in Studies in Villon, Vaillant and Charles d’Orléans (Oxford: Blackwell, 1957), pp. 20–35. 37

Autographe, p. 47. They are copied on vellum from the first ruling batch.

38

Jansen, ‘The “Suffolk” Poems’, p. 110, n. 8.170 (the spelling quippe in Go forth might point to the same conclusion). Champion was inclined to believe that they were composed by the Duke. If (as Champion believed) the Duke wrote the two roundels in quire BB, then why not the lyrics in quire Z? And although Jansen has argued against the notion that all poems by hands other than Charles’s are identified as such in the manuscript (‘The “Suffolk” Poems’, pp. 26–27), it would seem more likely that the author of a poem in another language would be identified than the reverse, if he were not Charles himself. 39

Johan Gerritsen disagrees with Champion and Doyle. The question remains open, and sharper eyes and minds than mine will be needed to settle the question definitively.

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According to Doyle, the scribe may have been and Englishman (or women) attempting to write a French hand but lapsed into some English forms near the end of his stint in the ballade on p. 310. There he employs the usual Anglicana form of w along with the more modern (French-derived) unlooped or unhooked form. He points to the awkward formation of k from l and r found in some hands of Secretary character. ‘The awkward formation of the final Secretary s is also not unparalleled.’ The ‘confident’ use of English characters such as þ mark the scribe as English, the various odd spellings presumably deriving from the scribe’s exemplar.40 Given this evidence, the simplest explanation for the way they entered the manuscript is that they were copied near the end of a blank quire in 1444 by an English scribe in the entourage of the Marquis of Suffolk. But why were they copied near the end of the quire? And why in a quire that already had two complaintes copied at the beginning? The first question is easier to answer, at least hypothetically. In a sense, there is no place these lyrics actually belong because, being composed in English, they are completely anomalous, not like any of the lyrics in the manuscript (except, of course, the two English roundels). The scribe might have copied them at the end of a quire so as to leave room for another complainte, and a complainte was duly copied in that empty space in the course of the third stint. As to the second question, why they were copied into a quire containing complaintes, in this case, language trumps form. Whether they were copied into a quire containing complaintes or a quire containing other forms, they are not to be seen as part of the internal logic of the manuscript. That is also why all seven are copied together, even though six are rondels and one a ballade. That leaves only one question: if they were copied as early as 1444, why do they lack initials? For this question I have no answer. The scribe who copied them designed them for initials. Did successive initialers pass over them because they looked foreign? Supposing that this group was copied into the manuscript earlier than their lack of decoration would imply, where should an editor place them? The ballade could find a place among the love ballades, though the subject of Fortune might also make a place for it among ballades on other subjects. It must be placed after the stint-1 lyrics, but my placement of it in the various lists in this book is based on nothing more than convenience and the need to print it somewhere. The English rondels would seem to belong, both on the basis of their form and on that of their language, among the rondels of the second stint, which run from p. 318i in quire AA to p. 386i in quire EE. For lack of any evidence that would indicate a more 40

lyrics.

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specific place, it might be simplest to print them immediately after the two English roundels copied on the last page of BB, though there may be reasons to print them elsewhere in that series. The lyrics of the fourth stint are fewer than half those of the previous stint but, as much as the manuscript looks less and less careful, with its gaping holes where initials should have been painted, the contents declare that, for all his talk of nonchaloir, the Duke is not ready to ‘go gentle into that good night’. The extended play on the En la forest de longue Actente in rondel form in the third stint is unmatched, but a string of fourth-stint ballades play more briefly on contraries: Je meurs de seuf. Numbers of versifying visitors dwindle, but they continue to engage in (smaller) verbal duels (or duets): Escollier de merencolie, Comme monnoye descriee, Dedans la maison, Jaulier des prisons, Quant pleur ne pleut. The name of Orléans at the head of many lyrics in this section of the manuscript signals Charles’s regular attention to the book and its progress. It is difficult to see in these leaves declining health and energy, though we know that its end betokens the Duke’s death.

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T

he order of the progression of lyrics in the Duke’s manuscript is obscured as the result of four codicological or textual acts or accidents: (1) two quires (X and Y) containing chansons and one quire (C) containing ballades were disordered after the manuscript was first made; (2) some stint-2 rondels (a group of fifteen) were mislabeled by a scribe as chansons; (3) Charles did not number the complaintes, which meant that, if they were displaced, it could be difficult to rectify the error; and (4) later type-2 lyrics were copied into the manuscript above lyrics copied much earlier, and not, apparently, in the order we now have them. (1) The three quires that became disorganized after they were copied are not difficult to put right because, in X and Y, the poet numbered the stint-1 lyrics before the bifolia were shuffled. Charles’s misnumbering in quire C is also easily straightened out because the ballades sometimes run over from one page to the next; this has no further implications for ordering the poet’s work (see chapter 3). (2) The misidentified rondels found among the lyrics copied in the second stint would not pose much of a problem had not Pierre Champion decided that the headings must be correct and therefore the form itself must somehow be ‘wrong’ (justifying his shift of these mistitled lyrics to his collection of chansons).1 The poet’s numbering shows clearly his willingness to treat them as ‘equivalent’ to the lyrics that precede and follow them. There is no reason to displace them from their present manuscript position amid stint-2 rondels (see chapter 3). (3) The order, or rather the placement, of the complaintes is more vexed. As the manuscript has come down to us, the complaintes are to be found in four different places: 1

His analysis was further hampered by his failure to recognize the different ruling patterns, which help so much in sorting out the order in which the manuscript was assembled.

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G: stint-1 complainte (Songe en complainte, pp. 100–05), surrounded by stint-1 ballades (in F and H) P: stint-3 complaintes (pp. 175–89), preceded in quire O by stint-4 ballades Q: stint-1 complainte (Complainte de France, pp. 191–93), followed in quire R by stint-1 ballades Z: stint-1 complaintes (pp. 299–305) and stint-3 complaintes (pp. 306–09), preceded in quire Y by stint-1 and -2 chansons and followed in quire AA by stint-1 caroles The Complainte de France (p. 191, copied in stint 1), at the opening of quire Q, looks very much like the beginning of one of those large sections, like the Songe en complainte, that the Duke planned to alternate with numbers of blank leaves. The fact that the poet followed the Complainte de France with a series of ballades demonstrates his willingness to present the two forms side by side in the same quire. The same is true of the placement of the Songe en complainte (in G, a complainte opening a quire and surrounded by ballades), which likewise shows clearly that the poet made no attempt to separate the two forms. On the contrary, he mingled them purposely (as he did pieces like the quittance and others, in a variety of verse forms). Finally, the complaintes in Z also open a quire and might be thought to stand, therefore, as the opening of a manuscript section, though the surrounding lyrics differ markedly from those surrounding the other complaintes in the manuscript. Champion could have dealt with this apparent anomaly in a number of ways. He thought that the complaintes in Z were ‘indûment intercalé’, but rather than moving them to a more logical position in the collection somewhere in closer proximity to the other complaintes, he printed them exactly as they are found in the manuscript, between the chansons and the rondels. (The only adjustment he made in this part of the manuscript was to move the short series of chansons found among the rondels in quires AA and BB back to join the earlier chansons (in X and Y) preceding the complaintes in Z, and that was done only to print what he saw as like with like.) In light of the many lyrics he moved in order to present an edition of the collection in something like a reading order, this refusal to move the complaintes in Z (or lack of interest in doing so) seems an odd choice, not least because they interrupt the poet’s numbering of the shorter forms. I see no codicological evidence that points to a specific place where the complaintes must belong. It is only textual evidence that provides us with some options. Where might the complaintes in quire Z have started life and how might they have become separated from the rest? If the quire were displaced from the vicinity of the other complaintes and ballades (and it is difficult to see where else it might belong), then the boundary between the first batch of vellum (ending with quire H) and the

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second (beginning with I; see Table 1) would seem likely. Though there is no way of proving it, it is likely that Z was displaced when the second batch of vellum was added (around the mid-1440s).2 Before that new vellum was added, H (filled with ballades) and Q (Complainte de France, followed by ballades) were adjacent quires (see Table 1). No complaintes could have been copied in the immediate vicinity of the Songe en complainte (quires G and H) because it was already surrounded by ballades, but they could have been intended to follow the Songe. Just as the poet created separate quires for the love ballades and the ballades on all subjects, he created separate quires for the love complaintes (found in G) and the complaintes on various subjects (found in Q). At present the Complainte de France (Q) is in the quire preceding the Balades de plusieurs propos (R–S), so it would seem to be in its proper place. The love complaintes, then, would belong somewhere before the miscellaneous collection. At present the quire that precedes Q is filled with stint-3 complaintes (P), confirming the likelihood that the complaintes were intended to be copied close to one another. The evidence points to this fault line between H and Q, and I would suggest that Z originally stood immediately after H. The order at the end of stint 1 and before the addition of new vellum would thus run: love ballades (B–H, which includes the Songe en complainte, stint 1), love complaintes (Z, stint 1), followed by complaintes and ballades on various subjects (Q–S, stint 1). For further details, see chapter 4. (4) Because later type-2 lyrics were copied above much earlier ones, reordering the shorter lyrics into something like their original sequence is a project with many pitfalls, not least because some of them were clearly copied two to a page, while others were just as clearly copied on only the upper or only the lower portions of consecutive leaves. The many hands of scribes and of initial makers give the manuscript an appearance of chaotic complexity, as if numbers of people had copied in lyrics and added initials higgledy-piggledy, but this is far from the case. The layers of decoration go some way to making sense of the collection of type-2 lyrics, but further refinements are possible. To get a sense of the order of lyrics copied in a single stint, we can resort to other kinds of evidence. An overview of the copying habits of the poet reveals that, after an intense bout of copying soon after his return from captivity, he copies here and there, but slowly cedes that job entirely to others. A totting up of the numbers of lyrics by other poets recording their lyrics over the course of years shows a similar increase, with the height of literary ferment falling into the latter part of the third stint of copying. The order of the lyrics on the first 2

It could have been displaced later, but certainly before the manuscript was bound or rebound in the eighteenth century.

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line En la forest de longue Actente confirms this evidence. Aligning what we know of the Duke’s activities with the visits of various people to the court at Blois is of some help here, too. Comparison of this manuscript order with that of Marie de Clèves’s copy of her husband’s book suggests that one series of short lyrics was copied into the Duke’s manuscript in reverse order. Taken together (and the various ‘tests’ do confirm one another), they provide the basis for a more rational order of the Duke’s shorter lyrics (see chapter 4).3 Pierre Champion devoted much of his life to making available to scholars the life and work of Charles d’Orléans, prince and poet. Most of his work has stood the test of time admirably, especially his monumental biography of the Duke. Like all scholars, he was a product of his times and worked within limits that he could not always perceive. The most fundamental of these may have been his conception of the contents of Charles’s manuscript as a ‘generically organized’ collection. When he claimed that ‘il est certain que l’idée du poète était de réunir ses compositions selon leur forme rythmique. Les Ballades formaient l’une des sections, puis venaient les Chansons, les Complaintes, enfin les Rondeaux [he does not mention the caroles]: nous avons la preuve de ce plan dans la numérotation de ses pièces par le duc d’Orléans’,4 there is no such proof. The Duke’s numbering proves nothing in regard to the complaintes, but it provides the strongest evidence that Champion’s absolute distinction between the chanson and the rondel reflects his modern interpretation of the data. As it developed, the idea of the manuscript got looser, not tighter, and Charles never attempted to straighten out the order of the manuscript — except perhaps in Grenoble MS 873, but that is the subject of another study.5

3

It is not in the least surprising that the Duke’s earliest editors, the scribes of BnF, MS fr. 1104, BL, MS Harley 6916, and Carpentras MS 375, did not (as Champion charged) interest themselves in ‘correcting’ the order in which the Duke’s manuscript was copied or the way it was first organized. Even his wife’s manuscript was copied mécaniquement from her husband’s own manuscript at his request, which demonstrates that he was not interested in correcting the order of his own lyrics (see Poésies, p. xvi). Charles knew when the various lyrics were composed and transcribed. There is thus no reason to expect that the order in which the poems were first copied would interest scribes. Being apparently ordered by form, rather than by theme or by any other principle, scribes considered each group of lyrics a miscellaneous collection and copied page by page what they saw before them. 4 5

Autographe, p. 83.

For which we must thank A. E. B. Coldiron (Canon, Period and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans, ch. 5: ‘Creating World Lyric: Translation, Ordinatio, and the Politics of Selection in Grenoble Ms. 873’, pp. 112–44 and figs 2–8).

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Nor did he attempt to correct the errors among the painted initials or those of placement on the page. Champion moved the earlier complaintes to a spot where later ones are found in order to preserve his hypothesis of ordering by verse form (though he could have chosen other places than the one he did and still preserved that distinction). He also separated the complaintes that were not firmly embedded in larger compositions (such as the Songe en complainte) from the ballades. The result, as the subtitle of his edition declared, is to present the poems in this order: ‘La Retenue d’Amours, Ballades, Chansons, Complaintes et Caroles’, with the rondels filling the second volume, in spite of the fact that this mixed up the longer and shorter forms, divided conceptually the chansons from the rondels, and apparently linked by juxtaposition the two less-favoured forms, the complaintes and the caroles. By placing the caroles at the end of the first volume, he thus divided them from both the rondels (in vol. II) and the chansons. More significantly, he severed the chansons from the rondels, placing them in separate volumes, even though they are knit together by a transitional stage during which the poet was composing in the forms alternately, and even though Charles himself numbered them in one long series. It is easy to understand why Champion’s separation of the two forms was absolute. ‘En ce temps-là Charles dira qu’il a mis en oubli ballades et chansons. Il écrira surtout de charmants rondeaux, d’une forme parfaite.’ The Duke simply ‘forgot’ the chanson form when he discovered the ‘parfait’ rondel.6 Here Champion echoes the voice of Charles’s lover commenting on his withdrawal from the service of Love in a ballade: ‘Balades chançons et complaintes / Sont pour moy mises en oubly’ — thus expressing in ballade form that he can not or will not compose ballades. What effect does arranging Charles’s French poetry along the lines I have indicated have on the reading of the whole body of his work? Does it change the way we think about his poetry? Restoration of all the English lyrics to the text will raise the reader’s awareness of (and questions concerning) the poet’s multicultural outlook and his multilingual skills and capacities. Reconnecting the poet’s ballades and complaintes demonstrates that the Songe en complainte, which itself contains a series of ‘narrative ballades’ without envoys, is not an anomaly, but part and parcel of a felt relationship (both formal and contentual) between poems composed in type-1 forms (ballades and complaintes). The same is true of quire Q, where ballades follow the Complainte de France and are in turn followed by a planned complainte that was never copied (or perhaps never composed). 6

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By the same token, reconnecting the chansons (and caroles) and the rondels and labelling each lyric correctly according to a stated definition of the two forms helps us to perceive that the type-2 form was of even greater interest to the poet than Champion’s second volume declares. It also forces the reader to consider the various formal versions of these type-2 lyrics and to become involved in the play the refrains invite (see chapter 4). Removal of the idea of plans for music from the Duke’s chanson/rondel series clears away yet another red herring. They were surely written to be read aloud, but never to be sung (see chapter 3).7 Charles departed in a remarkable but subtle way from the tradition of organizing a collection of poetry strictly on the basis of verse form, a tradition followed by the great poets of his father’s generation and that of his father’s father’s. The collections of French corpora from those of the trouvères to those of Guillaume de Machaut and Christine de Pizan, and on to Jean Froissart and Eustache Deschamps were generally sorted by verse form (or were quite miscellaneous).8 In assembling lyrics of different ‘weights’ as well as different verse forms, Charles preferred a more associative structure that allowed him on occasion to copy a ballade next to a complainte or a rondel next to a carole.9 This is not a failure in his ordering, but a different way of looking at poetic form,10 which is not to say that no other poet ever thought of lyrics as ‘long’ or ‘short’, but that Charles demonstrated visually what must have been an important distinction between two groups of long-established forms and gave that distinction a prominence not employed by other poets of his time. The poet seems to have been sensitive to a kind of organic structure in his collection, but not a strictly formal one. Because of the place of the ballade in the Songe en complainte, part of a larger whole composed in various forms, and perhaps because the ballade was used for narrative purposes, the ballades that form part of the withdrawal from the service of Love did not receive numbers. Once

7

The fact that an incidental lyric or two was later set to music has no bearing on this manuscript’s history. 8

David Fallows refers to the ‘coherently planned collections that exist for Machaut, Eustache Deschamps, or Christine de Pizan’, but he describes the lyrics of Charles d’Orléans as in a ‘semiordered state’ (‘Binchois and the Poets’, p. 209). 9

He was unusual in very many ways, not all of them appreciated (yet) by scholars. His ‘insideout dit’, which occupies the first eight quires and reverses the customary proportion of lyric to narrative, is only one of them. 10

He was, however, interested in knowing how many lyrics he had composed when they exceeded the easily and quickly countable, so he numbered them — thereby telling us what he thought of his move from chanson to rondel form, i.e. that it was a distinction without any great difference.

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again in quire Q the poet mixed complainte and ballade, linking his Complainte de France with the ballade, En regardant vers le païs de France, and the ballade royal, Pries pour paix. In the same way, he organized his shorter lyrics by mingling forms. Charles seemed to define his lyrics not simply by verse form but by their level of gravitas.11 What he did not do is create a fixed-form collection in imitation of those of earlier lyric poets, though his editors have sometimes made it appear so. The lyrics of Guillaume de Machaut that were set to music provide a model for this kind of collection organized strictly by form. Using Machaut as his example, James I. Wimsatt describes neatly the manuscript situation that the Duke inherited: In their presentation of the various lyric types all of the comprehensive Machaut collections offered two differing models. One of these was supplied by the section known as the Louange des Dames, made up of his lyrics not set to music, some 282 works ultimately. In the Louange variety is the organizing principle, with the types intentionally mixed and alternated. Ballades dominate, 207 of them providing nearly three-quarters of the total. However, the series of ballades are invariably brief, being frequently interrupted by single specimens of the 60 rondeaux, 7 chants royaux, and 7 virelays. By contrast, the other model which the Machaut MSS supplied dictates a careful segregation of types; the lyrics set to music are always rigidly divided, with a section devoted to the lays followed by separate groups of motets, ballades, rondeaux, and virelays. [. . .] The MSS of the non-musician poets of the next generation followed one or the other of the two Machaut models. Froissart’s lyrics are strictly separated by type [. . .]. The same in general holds for the great Deschamps collection, except only that the rondeaux are intermixed with virelays (apparently reflecting the near kinship of the forms). On the other hand, Granson’s collections follow the model of the Louange.12

These were the models Charles inherited from the poets of his immediate past (though they were only adapting an organization based on musical form from their

11

This matches in some sense the instability we have observed in the poet’s use of verse forms during this period. He wrote now rondels, now chansons, now rondels. He wrote them, or had them written, on the lower halves of the leaves, but sometimes in the spaces above them. We might suppose that it was, in fact, an uninitiated scribe’s transgression of the custom of leaving the upper part of the leaf blank that eventually precipitated the poet’s change of heart about preserving the blanks, but this is unlikely. 12

James Wimsatt, Chaucer and the Poems of ‘Ch’ in University of Pennsylvania MS French 15, Chaucer Studies, 9 (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer; Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1982), pp. 63–64 (see Guillaume de Machaut, Poésies lyriques, ed. by V. Chichmaref. vol. II (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1909)).

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predecessors).13 Charles, however, followed neither model. Ballade and complainte fit easily with narrative verse, and in fact both forms can be (and were) used for narrative ends. The two forms can rub along together quite comfortably. But the chansons are no part of it. There is another organizing principle that cuts across that of form: that of theme or subject matter. The poet divides his ballade/complainte collection into two parts: one on the subject of love, the other on miscellaneous subjects. This division did not seem to be necessary when the poet came to organizing his lyrics in shorter forms. He wrote (and numbered in a single long series) chansons, rondels, more chansons, and many more rondels, all side by side, or on two halves of a single page. Nor did he segregate lyrics in the other short form, the carole, from these, surrounded as they are by chansons and rondels. It is among the lyrics in this series, too, that we find the English lyrics in rondel and roundel form, but the subject matter is as miscellaneous as are these various short forms. Literary scholars are accustomed to thinking of manuscripts as those copied more or less homogeneously in book hands or as longer texts (especially ‘royal’ manuscripts) that present a fairly homogeneous appearance. General awareness of and interest in the ‘miscellany’ and in composite manuscripts is recent.14 The visual

13 A third kind of organization is that found in collections compiled from the work of many authors such as BnF, MS fr. 9223, and later BnF, MS nouv. acq. fr. 15771. These collections are not organized rigidly by verse form, though they often contain runs of lyrics in a single form before it is interrupted by one in another form. 14 The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, seems to have sparked widespread interest in the medieval miscellany, though there are a number of earlier contributions to the subject, such as Julia Boffey, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1985), and J. J. Thompson, ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 279–315. More recently, see Seth Lerer, ‘Medieval English Literature and the Idea of the Anthology’, PMLA, 118 (2003), 1251–67; and Derek Pearsall, ‘The Whole Book: Late Medieval English Manuscript Miscellanies and their Modern Interpreters’, in Imagining the Book, ed. by Stephen Kelly and John J. Thompson (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 17–29. I am grateful to Helen Deeming for bringing to my attention these works on the subject: A. G. Rigg, ‘Medieval Latin Poetic Anthologies’, Mediaeval Studies, 39 (1977), 281–330; Theo Stemmler, ‘Miscellany or Anthology? The Structure of Medieval Manuscripts: Ms Harley 2253, for Example’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 39 (1991), 231–37; and Codices miscellanearum: The Brussels Van Hulthem Colloqium 1999, ed. by R . JansenSieben and H. van Dijk (Brussels: Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique, 1999). Deeming herself shared with me a work in progress on Anglo-Norman miscellanies associated with religious communities, in which she asks interesting questions of a broad range of miscellaneous texts and talks

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‘messiness’ of this manuscript is cultural. It speaks not of the poets of common or gentry origins, pleasing others with their compositions, perhaps in anticipation of monetary or like return, but of a prince who was also a poet who took seriously his craft for his own reasons (which were the acquisition neither of wealth nor of fame) and devoted his life to exploring his art in the absence of any outer compulsion of any kind to do so.15 As such, his manuscript gives us a unique record of the evolution of a poet’s style.16 BnF, MS fr. 25458 is not a rough draft. It has no interim status. Nor is it a fair copy. Later corrections suggest that many poems were copied into it in haste or from unrevised copy. It is certainly no presentation copy, either. It was in a limited sense both a private and a public copy, a personal possession and a household object. It probably went abroad with the Duke on at least some of his journeys, whether for him to study or to add more lyrics to, or for him to show to someone, perhaps gaining thereby the work of another author. It was available to scribes to copy for those who might want their own manuscripts,17 and to poets who wished to copy their own poems into it. All of this affects the work of the future editor of these poems. The seeming mixture of care and carelessness is not random. Though it looks like a patchwork, it is carefully constructed, and who among us has planned a real, physical, handwritten book and carried out that plan over a number of years without realizing the mistake of allotting too much space for one kind of work, too little for another, and none at all for a new idea that arises years after we have begun?18 The resultant quires, I would contend, will repay

about their multifunctionality. She writes that ‘their ubiquitous presence in library catalogues and book-lists indicates that they were sanctioned by the authorities; moreover, those who made them must have been given access to the requisite materials, and the time to undertake their copying. The fact that such books remained in the community’s collection after the original compiler was gone, and in some cases even found their way into the library, suggests that miscellanies were deemed by subsequent readers to have some value as textual or musical repositories’ (‘Anglo-Norman Miscellany Manuscripts and the Transmission of Song’, p. 23). 15

This is not to say that Machaut and many other poets did not compose poetry ‘for its own sake’, but that there were other desiderata operating in their work of poetic creation, desiderata that cannot have operated in Charles’s, such as the need for wealth, status, or position. 16 It is also a valuable collection of contemporary hands (including the poet’s) belonging to people working in a single location and a document that teaches us how at least one limner (Limner 3) went about his work. 17 18

See Poésies, pp. viii–xxi.

Ralph Hanna, who has by any measure seen more manuscripts than most of us have, has observed: ‘I am especially struck by the degree to which producing these [miscellaneous] volumes required constant flexibility and readjustment of what may, at some points in production, have been

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our attempts to understand their principles of organization and progression of production. Yet very few scholars have made use of poem order to gain insight into Charles’s development as a poet or into the development of his ideas, poetic techniques, or evolving interests. An edition of lyric poetry sorted by verse form looks clean and appealing to the reader. It satisfies our notion that poets and scribes wanted to present their poetry to the world in that way. It does not match up, however, with the evidence Charles d’Orléans left us. The same editorial urge that leads scholars and readers to want to divide the poems up along strictly formal lines, to separate out the poems in different languages, to place together the poems that are somehow in their minds related seems to have led his editor to place the Duke’s ‘farewell’ poem last because it provided the kind of symmetry of closure that appeared to him somehow of aesthetic importance to the end of the Duke’s roman sentimental.19 Replacement of the final three poems in the text stands as final proof that Charles was not interested in his later years in the metanarrative of his own life — that he had learned, if he learned nothing else, to take life as it comes, unshapely and even unseemly as it may be. Three wives, with a decades-long hiatus between the last two, children after sixteen years of married life to a lady less than a third his age in 1440, loss of his parents as a very young man, imprisonment during early adulthood, exile in the proximity but rarely the company of a younger brother — he had grown past deception (of which he was such a master in his English years), and certainly past self-deception.20 The clarity, simplicity, and endless playfulness of the later poetry do not suggest a man given to a Victorian need for symmetry, for closure that consists of a valediction followed by silence. The bibliographical codes in the leaves particularly of the third-stint lyrics can give us some sense of what questions we can ask of the manuscript. Were the members of and visitors to the court at Blois accustomed to looking in ‘the book’ or ‘the box of quires’ to see what one another had written? Did earlier copies written on individual leaves of paper or vellum, not only exist prior to the manuscript copies (a not unlikely proposition), but constitute an earlier, primary layer of circulation? If so, the manuscript becomes a container for copies of record rather than for living, au courant lyrics begging for responses. Is there any evidence at all to support

a reasonably fixed program’ (‘Miscellaneity and Vernacularity: Conditions of Literary Production in Late Medieval England’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 37–51 (p. 38)).

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19

See Champion, Poésies, pp. 524 and 602; I shall return to this point.

20

See Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 74.

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the idea that individuals at Blois would have had access to the manuscript, either to add a lyric or to copy one out? Of course the many hands (a number of them obviously not in any sense professional) give evidence that many different people wrote in the manuscript. Most of them are the very people who would be most interested in seeing what others wrote, in turning a few pages, perhaps entering an ascription that was lacking, and taking away ideas for yet more poems.21 The fact that a ‘stray’ response is sometimes copied into the manuscript at some distance from the others, or that a response to a single poem is separated from that poem by many other lyrics, may argue for another scenario: someone newly arrived or out of the loop, finding that he had missed a good game, provides his entry at a later point.22 This line of reasoning suggests that this document was seen as the source, the place to look to learn what was going on poetically at the court at Blois.23 The work of the third stint suggests that Charles’s book had become a locus of record. Just as an orally delivered oath or judgement was transcribed as a matter of record in the late Middle Ages, so these lyrics would seem to be lent some authority by being transcribed in the Duke’s book and labelled with the names of their authors. The outlines of the development of the manuscript are fairly clear. It began with Charles’s decision to have the poetry he had already composed, first in France, then in England, copied into a manuscript before he returned from captivity. Among them, the ballades labelled Orlians contre Garencieres (p. 203) and Response de Garencieres (p. 204), composed years before this manuscript was made, and the exchange with Philippe le Bon on the eve of his release seem a kind of prelude to the later opening of the manuscript to other poets. The dating of this fonds primitif prior to 1440 permits us to reconsider d’Héricault’s suggestion that this was the ‘book’ that Martin Le Franc saw around 1440 and called le livre qu’il fit en 21 The rondel on p. 487s is an interesting anomaly, written over a completely erased lyric. The new lyric (labelled ‘Bourbon’) is written without regard to the space allotted for majuscules, starting to the right of the double line. It has no middle refrain. See Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, pp. 69–70. 22 Lorraine provides his version of Chose qui plait est a demy vendue (p. 474) long after a pair entered on p. 443. Fredet enters the fray with his Le truchement de ma pensee (p. 439) well after the first two versions are copied into the manuscript (pp. 398, 399). Vaillant responds to the Duke’s rondel, Des amoureux de l’observance (p. 424), sometime later (p. 435). I am not suggesting that there is no other way these poems could have been separated from one another, but that the pattern of either a group and a later addition or a later response to an earlier single lyric suggests access to a central collection of texts. 23

Gros refers to it as ‘un exemplaire de consultation’ and writes that its format suggests ‘le compromis de l’œuvre au net et de l’œuvre en cours’ (‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 66).

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Inglant.24 Though present-day scholars of his work seem sometimes to lose sight of it, he never abandoned his early work. It was copied and recopied into a succession of manuscripts. Nor did he reorganize his collection so as to highlight the lyric by moving the opening narrative to some other place in the manuscript. What we have in manuscript after manuscript is a chronicle of his literary life, documented by a series of scribes, a record of what interested him, of how he developed his skills, of what concerned him, of who he shared his interest in poetry with, of how he looked at form, of what he thought poetry was and what it was for. The style of the first part of the manuscript is certainly uniform; copied by an accomplished scribe, the book is simple but elegant, portable, and at this point almost entirely single-authored. We cannot say whether this reflects the duke’s opinion of the quality of the French poetry composed by those around him in England — and certainly those English noblemen around him were writing ‘fixedform’ verse in French25 — or whether it simply means that he did not yet think of his manuscript as an album in the sense of a book in which to assemble the work of friends and followers as well as his own (an ‘album amicorum’, in Champion’s words). When the poet had his poetry copied, he seems to have thought of the original collection as a substantial work (hence the decoration of the first leaf) still under construction. If he had wanted nothing but a fair copy all in one place, he need not have had it decorated at all. It is not claiming too much to see in this stage of the manuscript the reflection of an author who thinks of himself as a poet of some significance who has composed work worthy of the kind of presentation accorded serious poetry. The bibliographical codes say, this is a princely book. The Valois-Orléans coat of arms, the demi-fleurs-de-lis on the ascenders, the identification of the narrator of the work as Charles, duc d’Orliens, the mention of ‘la maison de France / Creu ou jardin seme de fleur de lis’ and of the poet’s lineage (lines 166–76), all point to a highly self-conscious production. At the same time, its style reflects with considerable accuracy the personality of its owner. It was commissioned by a man who was neither pompous nor timid nor concerned about his literary reputation — he probably never thought of himself as a beginner. The very

24

Gaston Paris ‘Un poème inédit de Martin Le Franc’, Romania, 16 (1887), 383–427; see also Champion, Poésies, p. viii; Champion, La librairie, p. lix. 25

See Boffey, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics. See also, for instance, Rossell Hope Robbins, ‘Geoffroi Chaucier, poète français, Father of English Poetry’, Chaucer Review, 13 (1978), 93–115, and Robbins, ‘The Vintner’s Son: French Wine in English Bottles’, in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician, ed. by William W. Kibler, Symposia in Arts and the Humanities, 3 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), pp. 147–72.

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well-executed spray work and penwork along with the rest of the decoration, the generous spacing, and the quality of the vellum all point to a certain amount of wealth that lies behind the manuscript, but it is not at all a lavish production. It is a book to handle and to admire for its restraint. At the same time it holds a promise: this is going to be a very sizable and a significant collection of poetry. The Duke is middle aged. He has accomplished something. He is putting his house in order in preparation for a radical change, a new chapter in his life: home.26 His book is optimistically filled with blank leaves, and indeed he had nearly as many years of life left as he had spent in England, and he filled most of the much-expanded manuscript before he died, doubling its size after his return to France and adding four additional quires to accommodate his prolific output of rondels. Soon after his return to France, he copied a number of his poems into a few of the many blank leaves of the manuscript, while scribes copied lyrics on others. Once well settled in at Blois, in about 1445, he had a limner complete initials to the lyrics copied in the intervening years. Thereafter, as his household began to attract more and more poets and to draw the poetic impulse from those of his acquaintance and those of his household inclined to join in, many people copied lyrics into the manuscript. At that point, either someone (perhaps one or more people already at work in his chancery or chambre de comptes) provided plain red and blue initials (lombards) to this growing group of lyrics from time to time, or perhaps after about ten years (in the mid-1450s) the Duke decided once again to have a large portion of the manuscript initialed by professionals, this time simply, without gold or pen flourishing. It is also possible that the quality of the third batch of vellum (MM–PP), or rather the lack of it in comparison to the rest, may imply that the Duke’s attitude towards this manuscript was continuing to change. What began as a beautiful, if far from sumptuous, manuscript that declared the intentions of the Duke has become a working manuscript whose content was far more important than its beautiful form. The visual presentation of the poetry mattered less and less in this period of intense socio-literary activity. As it passes through successive stages of copying, the manuscript becomes more and more informal, less highly decorated, less rigidly organized, less a thing to show (even to himself) and more a thing to use.

26

Poirion’s idea that the poet was ‘taking stock’ of his life and output, first around the time of his release, then again in the early 1450s makes perfect sense. As we saw earlier, he posited two intense ‘editorial’ periods, one that ran from 1432 to 1440 and one from 1450 to 1458 (Le poète, pp. 274 and 300).

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Nevertheless the manuscript presents us with no evidence that the material copied into it late in Charles’s life mattered any less to him than that composed in those hopeful prerelease days. It is above all a serious collection of poetry. Neatly corrected in many places, no documentary notations of any sort intrude — no fragments, no letters, no bills, no family events, no pen trials even on flyleaves or other blank pages including quires L, M, and N, which remain unwritten — and even at its worst it offers no written work so sloppy as to be unreadable.27 It is a book treated at all times with a certain respect by everyone who was privileged to add to its pages.28 It was François Villon who referred to this book as a saint livre, and it would seem that he was not the only one who thought it unique and precious. From the end of the third stint of copying until the Duke’s death in 1464, although scribes continued to add directors to blank spaces left for initials, no maker of initials put his or her hand to the manuscript, so the new accretions (again in many hands) were supplied with majuscules only if the copyist provided them at the same time he copied a lyric. And so the manuscript remained from that day until this, despite its somewhat motley, composite, heterogeneous, less than perfect appearance, preserved and protected from the intrusion of later pens.29 In light of the evidence I have presented in chapters 2 through 5, a sketch of Charles’s literary life might look something like this: He began writing poetry early in life, as we would expect.30 As a child, he knew Eustache Deschamps, who was in the service of his father for some years and true friend of his mother,31 as well as Christine de Pizan, who dedicated her Épître d’Othéa to his father.32 One of his 27

‘Mais il a l’orgueil de la belle page’, writes Gros (‘L’écriture du prince’, p. 202). See Regalado, ‘En ce saint livre’, pp. 358–59. BL, MS Harley 682, the manuscript of his English poetry, was treated quite differently (see Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn, pp. 115–19), though it, too, was never abused. 28

Even considering Villon’s ‘transgressions’ of the page (see Regalado, ‘En ce saint livre’, pp. 355–71) and the English ballade at the end of quire Z (p. 313). 29

It never, apparently, entered the chambre de comptes, which may be a partial explanation of why it was spared. It was apparently considered a very personal possession, not part of the hôtel’s archives. 30 The reader who has perused the previous four chapters will find here some repetition of previous information and arguments. 31 32

See Champion, Vie, pp. 14–15.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 606; MSS français 605, 835, and 836 were also prepared for Louis (see Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Duke of True Lovers, trans. by Thelma S. Fenster (New York: Persea, 1991), p. 32; Champion, La libraire, p. ix). For a reproduction of the presentation miniature in which Christine offers the book to Charles’s father, see La

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English poems is a loose translation of one of her most famous lyrics, ‘Seulete suy et seulete vueil estre’.33 He grew up surrounded by books and had a learned tutor (Nicholas Garbet) from an early age. He was born of a mother who was literate and cultured — in fact bicultural.34 His father was a book collector, a patron of the arts, and a serious commissioner of books, as the ongoing project of the large bible demonstrates.35 Charles had a chanson he had probably composed embroidered on a garment and had already been exchanging lyrics with Jehan de Garencières by 1415, when he turned twenty-one. His earliest narrative that survives and some of his first ballades were almost certainly composed before that date. He continued to compose poetry — including a number of pseudo-documents — in a variety of verse forms during his captivity, but among the fixed forms the ballade and the chanson were his early favourites. A number of the lyrics copied at this time seem to be occasional poems, and there is little doubt that he honed his skills in competition (social rather than formal) with his English ‘hosts’ and their visitors. In the late 1430s, sensing that he might at last be freed, he gathered his poetry, sorted it according to type (narrative/lyric), subject matter (love/all subjects), and form (ballade, complainte, chanson, carole) and engaged a good, professional French scribe (perhaps someone already working for him, perhaps a London scribe) to copy it (specifying an unusual layout for the chansons) and an accomplished English limner to limn it. He included along with his own poetry lyrics composed in exchange with Garencières and, much more recently, with Philippe le Bon. He returned to France in 1440 with the unbound book, which was designed to hold nearly as many more lyrics as the Duke had already written. France et les arts en 1400: les princes des fleurs de lis, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004), p. 32. For a plate of the Orléans copy of Christine’s Chemin de longue étude in its original binding, listed in the Duke’s inventory of 1417, see Françoise Robin, ‘Le luxe des collections aux XIVe et XV e siècles’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises. Les bibliothèques médiévales, ed. by Vernet, pp. 192–213 (p. 205). 33

It is Ballade 59 of his English series (Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. by Arn, pp. 209–10). Christine offered Valentina a copy of her Description de la Prudhomie de l’Ome (see Champion, La librairie, p. ix). 34

See Robin, ‘Le luxe des collections’, p. 210. Valentina was the daughter of Giangalleazzo Visconti and Isabelle de France. For Deschamps’s association with Giangalleazzo, see Ian Laurie, ‘Eustache Deschamps: 1340(?)–1404’, in Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and his World, ed. by Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, AMS Studies in the Middle Ages, 22 (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 1–72 (pp. 3–4). 35

Payments for it can be found in de Laborde, e.g., #6175–76 (not 7175, as Champion has it in La librairie, p. xxi, n. 8; see also de Laborde, #6400).

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Once back on the Continent, he was welcomed by Philippe le Bon and his duchess, Isabelle. There, in addition to the marriage feasting and politicking, he may have had a scribe and a Flemish limner, perhaps someone in Philippe’s employ, copy and limn an additional six chansons.36 In the course of the first year or two back home, travelling frequently, he may well have had less time and occasion to compose poetry than he had had in England. He certainly took to copying some of his poetry into the manuscript himself during this period. He welcomed contacts with other poets and began immediately to include lyrics from other hands in his manuscript, usually copied together, sally and response. This custom grew into an expression of a literary-social culture that blossomed at Blois. From the beginning of this period, Charles seems to have cast his net wide, inviting people of various social classes and literary abilities to enter the circle and to see their lyrics copied into the Duke’s book. We would like to know what lyrics were composed on the occasion of the 1444 visit to Blois of the then Marquis of Suffolk, William de la Pole, with his marchioness, Alice Chaucer (in connection with the escorting of Marguerite d’Anjou to England), which lasted from 16 April to 29 May. One lyric might well have been a product of that visit: the English rondel with the acrostic Anne Molins, one of seven English lyrics clustered near the end of quire Z.37 They are all unattributed and are probably Charles’s work. With the exception of one ballade, they are all in rondel form, a form he had experimented with immediately on his return to France. In an effort to estimate the size of his growing body of poetry, the Duke began numbering the two largest bodies of lyrics, the ballades and the chansons/rondels. He did not distinguish the latter, simply beginning with the earliest chansons, skipping over a tiny clutch of caroles, continuing through the first rondels and returning to the chanson form and on into the rapidly growing series of rondels. He kept this up for some time but eventually abandoned it when he had numbered 107 (most) of the ballades and 164 (less than half) of the chansons/rondels. In Pierre Champion’s words, ‘Les écrivains et les amateurs du beau langage allaient en pèlerinage à Blois’.38 As the years passed Charles had copies made of his growing collection (including the work of other poets) for family and friends, and each of the copies that survives provides a picture of his poetic output at a given 36

Pages 283i–286i and 295i–296i; the texts could of course have been brought from England already limned. 37 See Poésies, p. 569; Hammond, ‘Charles of Orléans and Anne Molyneux’; see also (but take with a grain of salt) Seaton, ‘Charles d’Orléans and Two English Ladies’. 38

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point in time: one for Marie de Clèves, for instance, and another for his sister-inlaw, Marguerite de Rohan.39 A copy of his ‘livre de monsegneur d’Orleans, [. . .] armoyé ou premier feuillet en bas, des armes de monseigneur d’Orléans’ turns up in an inventory of the Duke of Burgundy, a gift to Philippe le Bon and his duchesse.40 In the early 1460s, Antonio Astesano, his Italian secretary, copied a selection of his work and translated it into Latin.41 Antonio’s brother Nicholas then made a magnificent copy of the two collections, in parallel columns of Latin and French, followed by a number of other texts (Grenoble MS 873).42 At the height of the literary ferment at Blois, visitors were responding to the poems of one another and many were responding to a challenge thrown out by the poet in the form of an intriguing first line. Reading through the poetry, it is easy to sense the intensity of the literary activity in the lyrics of the third stint, composed in the late 1440s and 1450s. Toward the end of that period the number of lyrics from other hands begins to drop off. Fewer lyrics are copied into the manuscript by Charles himself, and the whole enterprise seems to wind down slowly. The year 1457 saw the birth of a daughter (named for her mother), another daughter, Anne, then Louis. Whether this new phase in the Duke’s life affected his interest in writing poetry or in keeping up the literary circle he had drawn around him, we cannot know, but François Villon sensed that a grand piece of verse of a sort not represented elsewhere in the Duke’s collection and in a new form, an encomium on the birth of the Duke’s first daughter, would be well received — and the Duke did allow Villon to copy it into his collection. At the same time, signs of 39

See also Robin, ‘Le luxe des collections’, p. 194, for other books he gave as gifts.

40

Gros, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc’, p. 53 and nn. 64 and 65.

41

One of the many questions that begs to be answered is how deep his involvement was in this project. A selection was made of the poems, they were reorganized along very different lines, and they were then translated into Latin. It is difficult to imagine that he allowed Astesano to make these decisions by himself. More likely, he made the selection and reordered the lyrics. As a fine Latinist, he may also have had final say about the translation or worked with Antonio during the process. The brothers Astesano remained at Blois for the rest of the Duke’s life as part of his household, performing composing, translating, and copying service. Given the sumptuousness of Grenoble MS 873, it would be surprising if he were to let someone else determine the Latin text (see Coldiron, Canon, Period and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans, for a detailed account of the manuscript and a number of plates from it). 42

This manuscript contains a number of texts, among other things Le ciel de Bayonne, for discussion and text of which, see Philippe Contamine, ‘Prodige et propagande. Vendredi 20 août 1451, de 7 h à 6 h du matin: Le ciel de Bayonne’, in Observer, lire, écrire le ciel au Moyen Âge (Paris: Klincksieck, 1991), pp. 63–86 (repr., pp. 213–32).

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age began to appear. He took to wearing glasses and was treated more than once by his physician.43 How are we to imagine the Duke’s final months and years? Champion tells us that the Duke was unable to hold a pen after the end of 1461,44 but that ‘il peut avoir composé entre cette date et sa mort’ on 5 January 1465, a period of over four years.45 A document that lists salaries due to the Duke’s officers and representatives at the Parlement de Paris in 1463 closes thus: ‘Donne en nostre chastel de blois le xxxe jour de jiung Lan de grace mil CCCC Sexante & trois Et pour ce que ne pouons signer de la main pour la malladie que avons au braz dextrer Nous auons fait mettre a ces lettres le present signet par nous ordonne a ceste cause’.46 Cigada claims that Charles ceased to compose poetry after 1458,47 but Poirion seems not to have questioned Champion’s judgement here.48 The Duke was apparently active right up to his death, attending the gathering of nobles and the king at Tours to discuss the betrayal of the Duke of Brittany (in dealing with the English) in the autumn of 1464. Already ill, he died on the return trip, at his castle at Amboise, on 4/5 January 1465. The Duke’s physical and mental condition in the final period of his life could have some bearing on his poetry and therefore on this manuscript. Champion introduces the final four texts in the Duke’s collection thus: the final rondel by the duke, ‘salut aux amis, où l’on pourrait voir un adieu à la vie, n’est pas absolument la dernière pièce du ms. fr. 25458; mais les trois rondeaux qui suivent sont certainement des additions’.49 He therefore prints the Duke’s final rondel at the very end of his text (see Figure 15), allotting the final three rondels a place in his notes at the end of the volume, thereby implying that they are not really part of the Duke’s collection or have some sort of liminal status that makes them inappropriate as markers of the end of that collection. Two of these final three rondels, clearly labelled 43

See de Laborde, #6789 and #6805.

44

Vie, p. 565. Champion’s account of the Duke’s loss of the ability to write is not entirely clear. He also writes, ‘Le dernier compte signé qe nous possédions est du 25 janvier 1460 (Bibl. Nat., Pièces orig., 2160, no. 680)’ (Vie, p. 565, n. 2). In La librairie, he seems to attribute the problem to the Duke’s gout (p. lxiv). 45

Poésies, p. 594

46

I am very grateful to Rachel Gibbons for apprising me of the existence of this document and supplying me with a transcription of part of it.

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47

Cigada, ‘Studi su Charles d’Orléans’, p. 209, n. 1.

48

Le poète, p. 303.

49

Poésies, p. 594.

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‘Bourbon’ and ‘P. Danche’, share a common opening phrase (Gardez vous bien; see Figures 29 and 30, pp. 536–37); the third is anonymous. Though Danche’s is a new voice in this collection, Bourbon (Clermont) contributed seven other lyrics to the collection, over a long period of time (and perhaps in his own hand, cf. pp. 453s and 492s with p. 536s). Champion does not actually say anything very meaningful about the situation of these lyrics in Le manuscrit autographe.50 In his edition, where he prints them in the order 2, 1, 3, perhaps to point up the first lines of 1 and 3, his comment is cryptic: what exactly does he mean by ‘certainement des additions’ (additions to what? when?), especially as he goes on to write ‘La pièce III, de Pierre Danche, pourrait être un autographe’.51 In the absence of documentary evidence, my attempt at a preliminary history is based on a tissue of probabilities. It stands or falls by the analysis of the manuscript’s physical state, by the strength of its logic, by its internal consistency, and by the persuasiveness of the network of those probabilities. By attempting to think through anew the issues Pierre Champion raised, we have been able to see a little further than he did, but this work is only a prelude to the study of the poet’s output, a substructure on which literary historians and scholars of literature can build. What problems and questions remain? There are many. Why was the decoration of the manuscript never completed? Why were those spaces above the chansons left 50

Autographe, p. 82. On the other hand, Champion was only interested in the manuscript insofar as it represented what Charles d’Orléans wrote or had written on its pages. If the final three lyrics were written after the Duke’s death (note that Champion does not say clearly that they were), then, as far as he was concerned, they deserved no place in his edition. This situation apparently applied to the seven English lyrics as well, though why he would think they were not copied under the eye of and with the approval of the Duke is unclear. 51

Poésies, p. 594. The lyrics by Bourbon and Danche face one another on the upper halves of pp. 536 and 537. Champion seems not to know Danche, at least not at the time he wrote Le manuscrit autographe, where he refers to him as ‘Danthe’ (p. 82). He is not included in the index of names at the end of Champion’s Vie or that of his edition, though he corrects the spelling in his edition (Poésies, pp. 594–95). He may have picked up the ‘Danthe’ spelling from Marcel Schwob, Le Parnasse satyrique du quinzième siècle: Anthologie de pièces libres (Paris: Weler, 1905) (see pp. 6, 7, and 46; see also p. 43 for an unattributed lyric beginning Gardez vous bien de l’oeil d’Artuse, also found in Die Liederhandschrift des Cardinals de Rohan, ed. by Löpelmann, p. 388). Little is known about Danche, although this particular poem appears in Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS français 1719 (Au grey d’amours . . . (Pièces inédites du manuscrit Paris, Bibl. nat., fr. 1719): Étude et Édition, ed. by Françoise Fery-Hue, special issue, Le moyen français, 27–28 (1991), p. 109, see p. 47) and in Chasse et Depart d’Amours (Vérard, 1509, ed. by Mary Beth Winn, La Chasse d’Amours attribuée à Octovien de Saint-Gelais (Paris, 1984); see Ballades et rondeaux, ed. by Mühlethaler, p. 701).

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Figure 29. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 536. Supra: Gardez vous bien (Bourbon).

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Figure 30. BnF, MS fr. 25458, p. 537. Supra: Gardez vous bien (P. Danche).

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blank? Did the Duke compose any or all of the English lyrics in the manuscript? There are myriad dating questions that can be addressed by careful historical and perhaps stylistic investigation. What more can we learn, for instance, about when authors of lyrics visited Blois or had contact with the poet and his book elsewhere? Both social historians and literary scholars have much to do, too. The social nature and significance of this poetry has only recently begun to be addressed, though Jane Taylor has provided us with a splendid new way of considering them. What does it mean to say that this literature has a social function (or many)? What was the social situation of the Duke in England before 1440, and how does this poetry bear witness to it?52 As the poetry develops, its social situation is also changing. Can such evolution be mapped, even in the most general terms? The development of the concept of the book that we can see when we scrutinize BnF, MS fr. 25458 is evidence that Charles was open to new ideas to the very end of his life and that his poetic vision evolved in many ways over a long period of time. The alternating written and blank leaves attest to this: the ultimate turn from love as the engrossing subject to a variety of other themes, his experimentation with a variety of languages, and his many ongoing poetic exchanges, not only with recognized poets, but with seemingly any member of his household or visitor who wished to take up a pen and write.53 His verse-form preferences changed dramatically as the poetic ideas the manuscript embodies evolved. Over the years, from writing a wide variety of kinds of verse, he honed his skills and distilled his poetic interests down to two forms, the ballade and the rondel, with the latter occupying his attention almost exclusively. Charles planned an isomorphic collection, but he ended his life with a chronicle of his poetic journey (not his biography, either inner or outer), readable on the surface and in the very structure of his manuscript. But BnF, MS fr. 25458 is finally the Duke’s manuscript, not ours, and it is the job of the editor not to tidy up what the poet has written, to organize and explain it, but to weigh all the evidence in order to help readers to understand what the poet has written by presenting it as clearly and with as few interventions based on personal opinion as possible. Just as

52

See William Askins, ‘The Brothers Orléans and their Keepers’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 27–45. 53

Grenoble MS 873 gives strong evidence that he was capable of recasting entirely his collection of compositions, excising the majority of them to form a tightly constructed ensemble that tells quite another story than does BnF, MS fr. 25458. For another kind of evidence of his dynamic approach to his writing, see my article ‘Form as a Mirror of Meaning in the English Poems of Charles of Orleans’, Philological Quarterly, 69 (1990), 13–29.

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Chaucer’s tales of Canterbury remain fragmentary to the present day, much to the distress of most readers, critics, and editors (whose repeated attempts to ‘fix’ them have foundered), so in its absolute order Charles d’Orléans’s French œuvre remains ultimately uncertain. I have no doubt that careful, sensitive reading will allow us to refine the picture I have presented here, but we will never be able to look over the poet’s shoulder as he wrote, much as we would like to imagine doing so. We cannot read the roman sentimental that Pierre Champion longed to present.54 In the twentieth century Charles was often portrayed as a formalist, a poet living in the past, or the last of a dying breed. Misconceptions about a poet are often spawned by contact with criticism that is supposed to be informative and open-ended but is all too often biased and itself based on earlier biases. Among English readers, Charles d’Orléans has been particularly unfortunate in this regard. Enid McLeod introduced many readers to the Duke as romantic exile, as did Norma Lorre Goodrich (both looking back to Pierre Champion), Helle Haasse (in fiction), and especially Robert Louis Stevenson.55 Among the French, Elisabeth Gonzalez has described very well the decline into romantic overstatement by earlier historians writing about the house of Orléans.56 A surprising number of later scholars have unconsciously ingested these points of view, which have affected the way scholars (and teachers) described the poetry and what questions they ask of it.57

54

In fact the end of the manuscript as it has come down to us has a curiously inconclusive air about it, finished by a lyric from an author who appears nowhere else in the collection. 55

Goodrich, Charles Duke of Orleans: Poet and Prince, A Literary Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1963). McLeod (Charles of Orleans: Prince and Poet (New York: Viking Press, 1969)) leaned heavily on Champion’s writing in his Vie, imbibing his romanticism but lacking the intellectual rigour that would keep her from falling into poetic reveries. Stevenson’s Familiar Studies of Men and Books (London: Chatto & Windus, 1905) went, by my count, through at least forty-four printings in the early years of the twentieth century, so popular were his writings. His ‘portrait’ of Villon was written with the same vicious sense of disregard for historical verisimilitude that he lavished on Charles. 56 57

Gonzalez, Un prince en son hôtel, pp. 13–15.

Nor were these images absent from visual conceptions of the Duke, which sometimes depict a melancholy ‘royal’ figure or an unpleasant looking, fat nobleman. His French poetry has appeared frequently in slight, ‘pretty’ formats or in private press publications, and he is still occasionally spoken of as if he were a slave to rigid verse forms through which he voiced platitudes heard by an early modern society that had already passed him by. In the new millennium, we are still not entirely free of our romantic inheritance, and to the degree we insist on reading the romantic Duke of Orléans, we will have as a corollary a writer of faint but elegant powers who lives in the shadow of François Villon.

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This is not the poet of whom Daniel Poirion wrote so brilliantly. More recently, A. E. B. Coldiron has introduced us to a transcultural figure with vast linguistic resources (placed in the service of two different political forces with two different literary histories), a poet with an endlessly playful and inventive mind, for whom form was as flexible as language and both were not barriers but vehicles for adventure. John Fox has also seen another kind of poet, one whose forms were singularly fluid and deceptively simple. Gérard Gros, Claudio Galderisi, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Nancy Regalado, and Jane Taylor are just a few of the many scholars who are discovering that ‘the old story’ about Charles d’Orléans is not the whole story. How would the conception of a poet of progressive adaptability, unfettered by literary requirements, with an extensive bicultural background, play in relation to the rearrangement of his magnum collectum in the ways I have suggested? In fact, the fit is very good, and not because I have made the bed to suit the sleeper.58 Charles was a man who determined on his poetic course early in life, before his long exile, and followed it to the end with singular focus, allowing for changes in fashion and inclination that affected and reconfigured the shape of his work. One kind of variety (narrative poetry and verse in a variety of different forms) gives way to another (rondels in a greater variety of shapes and subjects than ever before). Poetry in French and English gives way to poetry in French and Latin and Italian. Throughout his life he remained committed to poetry as both a private and a social activity, an activity to pursue in whatever place he lived, in whatever language he felt compelled to speak, in whatever social circumstance he found himself.59 He also seems to have had a great capacity to nurture the poetic life in others, even if those on whom he lavished encouragement were as poets sometimes more sow’s ear than silk purse. This capacity of his speaks of a man to whom poetry was profoundly important — a way of life rather than a hobby, much less a profession. After all, Charles felt none of society’s pressures to write. He did not need to impress his betters, to find a patron, to gain the esteem of his friends, to become famous. He was the duc d’Orléans, the descendant of kings and the father of one.

58

See Claudio Galderisi, ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’“autre” langue: Ce français que son “cuer amer doit”’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 79–87. 59

Some of this evolution of thought probably grew out of the profound uncertainties of his life, from the days of his mother’s exile from Paris to his father’s murder, from his capture at Agincourt to his long imprisonment, and so on and on. Charles seems to have dealt with uncertainty by making a virtue of its necessity, and his manuscript, BnF, MS fr. 25458, attests to his ability to render from a chaotic and painful life a body of poetry that is as elegant as it is complex.

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But there is another way to look at the inclusiveness of his book: as both an author-collected manuscript and a cross-section of the poetry of his contemporaries. In Jane Taylor’s important study of this phenomenon, she presents the collection as a significant social document as well as a poetic one.60 To some degree, the book shows us the household in which and by which it was produced. It tells us that a wide range of people had access to it, not only to read, but to write — a group that included many copyists, but also many authors — and that those who wrote in it often copied more than one lyric but seldom more than two or three. Some scribes and limners were surely part of the Duke’s household, others likely not. It also tells us that, whether the supervision was immediately physical or simply understood among members of the coterie, the message was clear that this was to be an orderly collection. The book requires us to believe that care was taken to enter related lyrics (including those that share a common opening line) in close proximity to one another, whether in the exact order they were composed or not. Charles chose poetry as a lifelong occupation; the figure with the harp or lyre on the opening page says as much. He began with a construct that would help him keep track of his poetry, seeing at that early date that this would be a large body of work. He clearly loved the book that contained it. He wrote his own poetry into it. He identified poems composed by others. He corrected both. He had a clear idea of what he was creating — a clear idea, but not a rigid one. Over the years, he preserved some of his early ideas (he never wrote a rondel on a blank page that already held part of a ballade, a complainte, or a carole), but other ideas evolved, like that of the most suitable poetic form for his thoughts or the limits of that form, the rondel. In fact the manuscript gives us a rare glimpse into the writing of a poet working from young adulthood until his death as an old man. In its ability to reveal the poet’s progress it surpasses those manuscripts that give us discrete works of narrative prose or poetry that must each be dated or those that give us a fresh copy of the entire œuvre of a poet. Marie de Clèves continued to invite poets to add to her own copy of her husband’s poetry,61 but at the time of the Duke’s death, it seems that his manuscript

60

Taylor, The Making of Poetry; this work presents an interesting pairing with Gonzalez, Un prince en son hôtel. 61

See Pierre Champion, ‘Un “liber amicorum” du XV e siècle: Notice d’un manuscrit d’Alain Chartier ayant appartenu a Marie de Clèves, femme de Charles d’Orléans (Bibl. Nat., ms. français, 20026)’, Revue des bibliothèques, 20 (1910), 320–35 plus 7 black-and-white plates.

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was seen as finished.62 The fact that the collection was not extended signals the importance to Marie of Charles’s copy of his collection. Although it retains blank spaces and entirely untexted quires, the book was no longer made available to members of the household or visitors to the court at Blois. It seems, in fact, to have been treated as a kind of relic of the prince-poet. No part of the official papers of the duchy, it was preserved as a private object, respected and protected from prying eyes and busy pens.63

62

Though there is no way of knowing whether the final three lyrics were composed after his death, they seem of a piece paleographically and textually with the material in the final four quires. 63

A chansonnier belonging to his son Louis XII was likewise seen as a personal possession and does not bear the stamp of the Chambre des Comptes de Blois; see Bauermeister and Laffitte, Des livres et des rois, pp. 66–67.

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O THER A NALYSES OF P OEM O RDER

O

ther scholars have attempted to revise Champion’s ordering of the poems of the third stint, among them the four discussed here.

In 1943 George Darby based his arguments largely on the dating of individual lyrics. Like Champion, he had little sense of the book as an object to excavate for dating information and he seems not to have followed out Champion’s reasoning about the four campaigns of copying, which results in some blunders. He posits the addition of ‘twenty-four new folios [he means pages] [. . .]. Here the rondeaux were set down in order, two to a page on folios [pages] 429 to 452 [quires HH and II] — not, as before, on the lower half of the page only’.1 Unfortunately for Darby, these two quires fall in the middle of the second insertion point of vellum that forms part of the second ruling batch (which runs from CC to LL). To take another example, he argues that when the poet arrived at p. 428 (HH) ‘only 3 folios [pages] remained blank [. . .]. Presumably no new pages were added immediately to the manuscript, so the scribes had to turn back and use the vacant upper half of folios [pages] 293 to 298 above the chansons’.2 This cannot be the case, for quire HH is in the second batch of vellum, which ends, not on p. 431, but on p. 440. In his judgement, the order of the rondels in this part of the manuscript should run as follows: folios [i.e. pages] 318 to 428 bottom [Champion’s A] folios 318 to 428 top [Champion’s C] folios 293 to 298 top [the last few lyrics in Champion’s D] 1 Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology’, p. 9. Note the following corrections: p. 3, para. 2: for ‘428’ read 429 (see Autographe, p. 50); para. 3: for ‘162’ read 76. 2

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Appendix folios 429 to 452 [the first lyrics in Champion’s B] folios 247 to 291 top (above the chansons) [the first lyrics in Champion’s D] folios 453 to 537 (end of the manuscript) [the later lyrics in Champion’s B plus E].3

He corrects the order of Champion’s groups B and C, but at the same time breaks his group D into two: pp. 247–91 and pp. 293–98. He never states clearly why he has settled on p. 293 except to say that (p. 292 being at that moment blank) ‘It seems logical to believe that this page, left vacant in 1454 [?], served as a natural break from which the series of rondeaux was continued. There is no definite evidence to support this conclusion — only a reference on page 294 to one of Charles’ visits to Savonnières [. . .]. We know of such visits in 1454, 1457, 1458 and 1459. Since the year 1454 is a satisfactory solution and does not entail any juggling of the order of the poems as would be necessary to accept one of the other dates, I offer it as passive confirmation of my argument’.4 His dating is based in part on the reference Champion makes to the addition of vellum bought from M. Boudet in 1455 and another even less convincing purchase of book clasps,5 neither of which can in any way be connected definitely with this manuscript. This obviates the need both to postulate a late date for the first of the two sections of Champion’s group D and to complicate the order by reversing them. Having reconnected pp. 247–91 to pp. 293–98, can we then reconnect pp. 429–52 with pp. 453–537? We can. The dates Darby adduces for the former section run from 1453 to 1456; for the latter, from 1456 to 1458. Daniel Poirion is the first major scholar to look at this manuscript as a historical object and to understand the implications of its construction for arguments made about the poetry in it.6 He posits a time when the Duke did not have access to his manuscript, though he continued to compose poetry in its absence. Beginning from Champion’s supposed date of 1455 for the addition of a batch of vellum, he continues: ‘On peut aussi penser que les enlumineurs accaparaient le manuscrit 3

Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology’, p. 17.

4

Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology’, p. 8. It is easy to fall into the habit of believing that the evidence we have is all the evidence there is or ever was. Especially given the history and state of the Orléans papers, might we not imagine quite reasonably that the Duke may have visited Savonnières on other occasions, as well? 5 6

Darby, ‘Observations on the Chronology’, pp. 15–16; Autographe, p. 75.

See, for example, Le poète, p. 299, n. 104. His implicit question (why break the series between p. 428 and p. 429, since this occurs in mid-quire?) is easily answered: it is clear that at this point we must begin reading page by page.

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pour l’embellir, ce qui retardait la transcription. On songe surtout aux déplacements au cours desquels le poète a pu se trouver parfois séparé de son livre, sans pour autant cesser de composer: il fallait ensuite raccorder les poèmes, d’où la nécessité, puis l’amusement, de réviser le manuscrit.’7 However, when he mentions specific lyrics (i.e. those on pp. 344s and 345s), we can see that he is dealing with stint-3 lyrics, when the three limners had finished their work and the painters of plain initials could be adding them fairly quickly, obviating the need for the poet to give up the book for long periods of time.8 Most memorable (to judge by later references to it) is his claim that some of the lyrics were copied above particular rondels because they provided subtle echoes of those lyrics copied earlier on the bottom halves of those pages.9 He claims that the poems on pp. 358s, 361s, 364s, 375s, 383s, and 384s share words or ideas with the lyrics on the lower halves of those pages. Given his small sample, it is difficult to know whether he had actually detected a significant pattern or not. The coincidence of the spring season or of the word ‘melancholy’ are not very convincing, nor is the exclamation ‘Fie on you!’ The speaker’s longing for dark/brown bread while he has a surfeit of white bread (two ladies would seem to be involved) in one and his inability to distinguish white from brown (light from dark, because of his tears) in the other looks more coincidental than intentional. The poem at the top of p. 361 is not even Charles’s work, but that of his physician and friend Jehan Caillau. Without a more detailed explanation, it is difficult to see exactly what sequence of events Poirion was imagining. His hypothesis is attractive because it gives us the picture of the poet poring over his own past work and then deciding, in effect, to initiate a dialogue with his former self (though it does not chime with Poirion’s idea that the poet was separated from his manuscript when he travelled). The argument would be more convincing if we had occasionally a stray lyric placed in the upper half of a leaf for no apparent reason but to provide an intertext with the lyric beneath it. This never happens; lyrics on the upper halves of leaves are always ‘in series’ with others (and there are no lyrics copied above those at the bottoms of 7

Le poète, p. 299. Would that both Champion and Poirion had provided more evidence for their claims. 8 9

Le poète, p. 299. For Catherine Emerson’s argument, see below.

He writes that ‘P. Champion a bien tort d’affirmer: “Les pièces copiées dans le haut des pages ont, d’ailleurs, un rapport de sens entre elles, et n’en ont aucun avec les rondeaux transcrits dans l’étage inférieur”’ (Le poète, p. 298, n. 102). His argument would have been more convincing if he had been able to present a few examples from group D, written over earlier poems (ibid., p. 297). See also Gros, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée’, p. 72, and ‘L’écriture du prince’, p. 200.

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pp. 235–46). Fortunately, the ordering of the poems does not ride to any significant degree on whether these perceived connections are real or not.10 Poirion realized that this part of the manuscript presented the scholar with an important problem, to be solved with thought and care.11 Writing a little over twenty years after Darby, he appears to agree with Darby’s conclusions, though he does not discuss the matter in much detail (he does not, for instance, produce a list of his own indicating poem order).12 The way that Vincenç Beltran presents and sets out to ‘correct’ Champion’s poem order is misleading.13 Quoting the opening of Champion’s section on the chansons (‘La section des chansons commence à la page 235 et va jusqu’à la page 298, comprenant 4 cahiers de 8 ff. de vélin’14), he then deduces that Champion means to divide these pages into four equal and successive parts, each representing a quire (‘235–250, 251–266, 267–282 y 283–298’15 ). Arguing that quire X does not end with p. 282 nor quire Y with p. 283, he draws Champion’s ‘mistaken’ quire and presents a diagram of a ‘corrected’ one, whereas a glance at the correctly ordered list of manuscript pages Champion presents on Autographe, pp. 39 and 40 (and Beltran prints on pp. 194–95) would reveal that in this case Champion knew

10

See Poirion, Le poète, p. 297. Like Champion, he sometimes pronounces without explaining, as when he writes that ‘les ballades transcrites dans les pages 131–153 du manuscrit autographe (no. 105–123) ont probablement gardé l’ordre de la composition. Parallèlement on peut voir se dérouler la création des rondeaux, après la page 424 du manuscrit, en suivant à peu près l’ordre dans lequel se présentent les pièces. Mais il y a eu encore un certain piétinement, en 1455, et il convient d’intercaler après la page 448 (et avant la page 484) les rondeaux additionnels transcrits au-dessus des chansons’ (ibid., p. 301). His choice of runs of lyrics is not congruent with Champion’s, but he does not tell the reader the reasons for his choices. 11

Le poète, p. 297.

12

Le poète, p. 299. Note the following corrections (in order) to Poirion’s text: for ‘428–52’ read 429–82; for ‘318–427’ read 318–428; for ‘482’ read 428; for ‘318–427’ read 318–428; for ‘428–52’ read 429–82. His discussion of the supposed addition of vellum to the manuscript, purchased from Michau Boudet, does not give enough detail for us to determine just what vellum he thought this might be (ibid., p. 299). 13

Vincenç Beltran, ‘El Cancionero de Charles d’Orléans y Dregz de naturade M. Ermengau, I: Una transposición de folios en el ms. fr. 25458 de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris’, Romania, 115 (1997), 193–99.

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14

Beltran, ‘El Cancionero de Charles d’Orléans’, p. 195.

15

Beltran, ‘El Cancionero de Charles d’Orléans’, p. 195.

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exactly what he was about. As in Champion’s list16 and perhaps because of it, Beltran omits the final page of the series, the last leaf of quire Y, giving us only thirtyone sides to make up two quires of eight. Champion mentions the blank page in a footnote.17 Catherine Emerson, reading Poirion on the manuscript order, rearranges the poems in accordance with her work on Olivier de La Marche and references to the Observant Franciscans circulating in the Blois circle.18 The poem order she produces does not accord with the makeup of the manuscript (though she recognizes that ‘the two poems in question [one by de La Marche, the other by the Duke] appear on the fault lines of this [i.e. Darby’s] analysis’). Following a ballade by the Duke on p. 126 (not 226 as she has it, which she dates 1450), she posits a series of rondels by various authors in the following order: p. 434s (La Marche), p. 435s (Chastelain), p. 434i (Vaillant), p. 424s (Orléans), p. 437s (Boucicault), p. 437i (Orléans), p. 438s (Boucicault), p. 438i (Orléans). In order to position the Duke’s rondel after de La Marche’s (both of which she dates 1454), she is forced to move from group B/4 back to group C/3 and then forward again to group B/4. She arrives at this order by invoking Daniel Poirion’s suggestion that poems were not necessarily copied into the manuscript in the order in which they are composed and that the Duke was separated from his manuscript. Though not obvious, this is possible, and each such suggestion will have to be judged on its own merits. There is no way to prove or to refute such an argument without further evidence.

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16

Autographe, pp. 39–40.

17

Autographe, p. 40, n. 2.

18

Emerson, Olivier de La Marche, pp. 174–80.

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S ELECT B IBLIOGRAPHY

Works used in passing or only to illustrate a single point can be found in the footnotes to the text and apparatus. For post-1990 publications on Charles d’Orléans’s life and work, see http://karolus.net (under Charles d’Orléans).

Manuscripts Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France MSS français 605, 835, and 836 (manuscripts prepared for Louis d’Orléans) MS français 606 (Christine de Pizan’s Othea dedicated to Charles’s father) MS français 1104 (a copy of MS fr. 25458, post-1458) MS français 1719 (also contains the lyric by Pierre Danche found in MS fr. 25458) MS français 9223 (lyric collection, ed. by Raynaud) MS français 19139 (close parallel to MS fr. 25458) MS français 20026 (gift to Marguerite de Rohan, Madame d’Angoulême) MS français 25458 (Charles d’Orléans’s personal copy of his French poetry) MS latin 1196 (book of prayers, made in England) MS latin 1203 (paper copy of prayers composed by the Duke, copied into MS lat. 1196) MS nouvelles acquisitions françaises 15771 (lyric collection, ed. by Inglis) MS Pièces Originales 1251, dossier 27987, no. 6 (manuscript of his poetry given to Mme. d’Argueil by Charles) MS Réserve Vm-c 57 (Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée) MS Rothschild 2973 (Chansonnier cordiforme) London, British Library MS Additional 11542 (ref. to Nevers and Charles d’Orléans) MS Harley 682 (the English poetry of Charles d’Orléans) MS Harley 6916 (posthumous copy of the Duke’s collection) Carpentras, Bibliothèque Inguimbertine, MS 375 (owned by Marie de Clèves) Copenhagen, Royal Library, Thott MS 2918 (Copenhagen chansonnier) Grenoble, Bibliothèque de Grenoble, MS 873 (Latin-French manuscript of Charles d’Orléans’s poetry)

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Select Bibliography

New York, New York Public Library, Spencer MS 152 (penwork comparable to that of MS fr. 25458) Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, French MS 15 (the so-called ‘poems of Ch.’) Washington, D.C., Library of Congress, MS M2.1.L25 Case (Chansonnier de Laborde)

Editions of the Poetry of Charles d’Orléans (by editor) Arn, Mary-Jo, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s Book of Love, MRTS, 138 (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995) Champion, Pierre, ed., Poésies, vol. I: La retenue d’Amours, ballades, chansons, complaintes et caroles; vol. II: Rondeaux, Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, 34 and 56 (Paris: Champion, 1923–27; repr. 1971) Champollion-Figeac, Aimé, ed., Les poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans publiées sur le manuscrit original de la Bibliothèque de Grenoble conféré avec ceux de Paris et de Londres (Paris: J. BelinLeprieur et Colomb de Batines, 1842) Gros, Gérard, ed. and trans., En la forêt de longue attente et autres poèmes [édition bilingue], Collection Poésie (Paris: Gallimard, 2001) Guichard, J. Marie, ed., Poésies de Charles d’Orléans publiées avec l’autorisation de M. le ministre de l’instruction publique, d’après les mss des Bibl. du Roi et de l’Arsenal (Paris: Gosselin, 1842) d’Héricault, Charles, Poésies complétes de Charles d’Orléans, 2 vols (Paris: Alphonse Lemerre, 1874) Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude, ed. and trans., Ballades et rondeaux: édition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, Lettres Gothiques, 4531 (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1992) Spence, Sarah, ed. and trans., The French Chansons of Charles d’Orléans with the Corresponding Middle English Chansons, Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 46A (New York: Garland, 1986)

Chansonniers Chansonnier de Jean de Montchenu (Bibliothèque nationale, Rothschild 2973 [I.5.13]), ed. by G. Thibault, with commentary by David Fallows (Paris: Publications de la Société française de musicologie, 1991) Higgins, Paula, introduction to Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée (Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, Rés. Vmc. ms 57, ca 1460) (Geneva: Minkoff, 1984), pp. i–xix Der kopenhagener Chansonnier: Das Manuskript Thott 2918 der königlichen Bibliothek Kopenhagen, ed. by Knud Jeppesen (Copenhagen: Levin & Munksgaard; Leipzig: Bretikopf & Hartel, 1927; repr., New York: Broude Brothers, 1965)

Sources and Studies Alexander, Jonathan J. G., Medieval Illuminators and their Methods of Work (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992)

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179

Arn, Mary-Jo, ‘Form as a Mirror of Meaning in the English Poems of Charles of Orleans’, Philological Quarterly, 69 (1990), 13–29 ———, ‘A “Lost” Poem by Charles de Nevers Recorded by Charles d’Orléans’, Notes & Queries, 244, n.s., 46 (1999), 185–86 ———, ‘Two Manuscripts, One Mind’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 61–78 Askins, William, ‘The Brothers Orléans and their Keepers’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 27–45 Au grey d’amours . . . (Pièces inédites du manuscrit Paris, Bibl. nat., fr. 1719): étude et édition, ed. by Françoise Fery-Hue, special issue, Le moyen français, 27–28 (1991) Baurmeister, Ursula, and Marie-Pierre Laffitte, Des livres et des rois: la Bibliothèque royale de Blois, preface by Jack Lang, foreword by Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1992) Beltran, Vincenç, ‘El Cancionero de Charles d’Orléans y Dregz de naturade M. Ermengau, I: Una transposición de folios en el ms. fr. 25458 de la Bibliothèque nationale de Paris’, Romania, 115 (1997), 193–99 Boffey, Julia, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1985) ———, ‘Short Texts in Manuscript Anthologies: The Minor Poems of John Lydgate in Two Fifteenth-Century Collections’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 69–82 de Bure, Guillaume, Catalogue des livres de la bibliothèque de feu M. le duc de la Vallière, 3 vols (Paris, 1783) Champion, Pierre, Histoire poétique du quinzième siècle, 2 vols (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1923) ———, ‘Un “liber amicorum” du XV e siècle: Notice d’un manuscrit d’Alain Chartier ayant appartenu a Marie de Clèves, femme de Charles d’Orléans (Bibl. Nat., ms. français, 20026)’, Revue des bibliothèques, 20 (1910), 320–35 plus 7 black-and-white plates ———, La librairie de Charles d’Orléans, Bibliothèque du XV e siècle, 11 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1910; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1975) ———, Le manuscrit autographe des poésies de Charles d’Orléans. Bibliothèque du XV e siècle, 3 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1907; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1975) ———, Vie de Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465), Bibliothèque du XV e siècle, 13 (Paris: Champion, 1911) Charles d’Orléans in England, 1415–1440, ed. by Mary-Jo Arn (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2000) Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Duke of True Lovers, trans. by Thelma S. Fenster (New York: Persea, 1991) ———, Epistle of Othea, trans. by Stephen Scrope, ed. by Curt F. Bühler, EETS, o.s., 264 (London: Oxford University Press, for the Early English Text Society, 1970) Christine de Pizan and Medieval French Lyric, ed. by Earl Jeffrey Richards (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998) Cigada, Sergio, ‘Studi su Charles d’Orléans e François Villon relativi al ms. B.N. 25458’, Studi Francesi, 11 (1960), 201–19 Coldiron, A. E. B., Canon, Period and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans: Found in Translation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2000) Coq, Dominique, ‘Le parangon du bibliophile français? Le duc de la Vallière et sa collection’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises: les bibliothèques sous l’Ancien Régime, 1530–1789, ed. by Claude Jolly ([Paris]: Promodis-Editions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1988), pp. 317–31

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de Croÿ, J., ‘Un portrait de Charles d’Orléans’, Mémoires de la société des sciences & lettres de Loir-etCher, 19 (1999), 100–10 Darby, George O. S., ‘Observations on the Chronology of Charles d’Orléans’ Rondels’, Romanic Review, 34 (1943), 3–17 Derolez, Albert, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) Deschamps, Eustache, L’Art de dictier, ed. and trans. by Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi (East Lansing: Colleagues Press, 1994) Emerson, Catherine, Olivier de La Marche and the Rhetoric of Fifteenth-Century Historiography (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2004) Fallows, David, ‘Binchois and the Poets’, in Binchois Studies, ed. by Andrew Kirkman and Dennis Slavin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 199–219 ———, ‘Words and Music in Two English Songs of the Mid-15th Century: Charles d’Orléans and John Lydgate’, Early Music, 5 (1977), 38–43 La France et les arts en 1400: les princes des fleurs de lis, exhibition catalogue (Paris: Éditions de la Réunion des musées nationaux, 2004) Galderisi, Claudio, ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’“autre” langue: ce français que son “cuer amer doit”’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 79–87 ———, Charles d’Orléans, ‘Plus dire que penser’: une lecture bibliographique, Biblioteca di Filologia Romanza, 37 (Bari: Adriatica, [1994]) ———, En regardant vers le païs de France. Charles d’Orléans: une poésie des présents, Medievalia, 59 (Orléans: Paradigme, 2007) de Garencières, Jean, ‘Les poésies complètes de Jean de Garencières publiées pour la première fois d’après le manuscrit (B.N.Fr. 19139)’, ed. by Young Abernathy Neal, 2 vols (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Paris, 1952–53) Gonzalez, Elizabeth, Un prince en son hôtel: les serviteurs des ducs d’Orléans au XV e siècle, Histoire Ancienne et Médiévale, 74 (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 2004) Gros, Gérard, ‘Écrire et lire au Livre de Pensée: étude sur le manuscrit personnel des poésies de Charles d’Orléans (Paris, B.N.F., FR . 25458)’, in Le manuscrit littéraire: son statut, son histoire, du Moyen Âge à nos jours, special issue, Travaux de littérature, 11 (1998), 55–74 — ——, ‘L’écriture du prince: étude sur le souci graphique de Charles d’Orléans dans son manuscrit personnel (Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 25458)’, in L’Hostellerie de pensée: études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poirion par ses anciens élèves, ed. by Michel Zink and Danielle Regnier-Bohler (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 195–204 ———, ‘Le livre du prince et le clerc: édition, diffusion et réception d’une œuvre (Martin le Franc lecteur de Charles d’Orléans)’, Travaux de littérature, 14 (2001), 43–58 Gumbert, Peter, ‘A Proposal for a Cartesian Nomenclature’, in Essays Presented to G. I. Lieftinck, ed. by J. P. Gumbert and M. J. M. de Haan, 4 vols, Litterae Textuales (Amsterdam: A.L. van Gendt, 1972–76), vol. IV : Miniatures, Scripts, Collections (1976), pp. 45–52 Hanna, Ralph, III, ‘Miscellaneity and Vernacularity: Conditions of Literary Production in Late Medieval England’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 37–51 Hasenohr, Geneviève, ‘L’essor des bibliothèques privées aux XIV e et XV e siècles’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises. Les bibliothèques médiévales: du VIe siècle à 1530, ed. by André Vernet ([Paris]: Promodis-Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1989), pp. 214–63 Huot, Sylvia, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyrics and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987)

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181

Inglis, Barbara L. S., Un nouvelle collection de poésies lyriques et courtoises du XV e siècle: le manuscrit B.N. Nouv. Acq. fr. 15771 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1985) Jansen, J. P. M., ‘The “Suffolk” Poems: An Edition of the Love Lyrics in Fairfax 16 Attributed to William de la Pole’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Groningen, 1989) [available from this author ([email protected])] de Laborde, le Comte, Les ducs de Bourgogne: études sur les lettres, les arts et l’industrie pendant le XV e siècle, vol. III.2: Preuves (Paris: Plon frères, 1852) de La Marche, Olivier, Mémoires, ed. by Henri Beaune and Jean d’Arbaumont, 4 vols (Paris: Société de l’histoire de France, 1883–88) Laurie, I. S., ‘Eustache Deschamps: 1340(?)–1404’, in Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and his World, ed. by Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, AMS Studies in the Middle Ages, 22 (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 1–72 Die Liederhandschrift des Cardinals de Rohan (XV. Jahrh.) nach der berliner Hs. Hamilton 674, ed. by Martin Löpelmann, Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 44 (Göttingen: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1923) de Machaut, Guillaume, Poésies lyriques, ed. by V. Chichmaref, vol. II (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1909) Martin, Henri-Jean, and Jean Vezin, Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit ([Paris]: Editions du Cercle de la librairie - Promodis, [1990]) Monstrelet, Enguerrand, ‘Chroniques d’Enguerrand de Monstrelet’, vol. VIII, vol. XXXIII of Collection des chroniques nationales françaises, ed. by J.-A. Buchon (Paris: Verdière, 1826) Nelson, Deborah Hubbard, Charles d’Orléans: An Analytical Bibliography, Research Bibliographies and Checklists (London: Grant & Cutler, 1990) Nichols, Stephen G., ‘“Art” and “Nature”: Looking for (Medieval) Principles of Order in Occitan Chansonnier N (Morgan 819)’, in The Whole Book, ed. by Nichols and Wenzel, pp. 83–121 Ouy, Gilbert, ‘Charles d’Orléans and his Brother Jean d’Angoulême in England: What their Manuscripts Have to Tell’, in Charles d’Orléans in England, ed. by Arn, pp. 47–60 ———, ‘Un poème mystique de Charles d’Orléans: le “Canticum amoris”’, Studi francesi, 7 (1959), 64–71 ———, ‘À propos des manuscrits autographes de Charles d’Orléans identifiés en 1955 a la Bibliothèque nationale: hypothèse “ingénieuse” ou certitude scientifique?’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartes, 118 (1960), 179–88 ———, ‘Recherches sur la librairie de Charles d’Orléans et de Jean d’Angoulême pendant leur captivité en Angleterre, et étude de deux manuscrits autographes de Charles d’Orléans récemment identifiés’, Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres (1955), 273–88 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, ed. by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) Pearson, Andrea G., ‘Gendered Subject, Gendered Spectator: Mary Magdalen in the Gaze of Margaret of York’, Gesta, 44 (2005), 47–66 Poirion, Daniel, ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre: un secret désir’, in Écriture poétique et composition romanesque, Medievalia, 11 (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994), pp. 359–79; repr. from Marche romane (1978), 505–27 ———, ‘Création poétique et composition romanesque dans les premiers poèmes de Charles d’Orléans’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, n.s., 90 (1958), 185–211; repr. in Écriture poétique et composition romanesque, Medievalia, 11 (Orléans: Paradigme, 1994), pp. 307–37

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———, Le poète et le prince: l’évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d'Orléans (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965; repr., Geneva: Slatkine, 1978) Raynaud, Gaston, Rondeaux et autres poésies du XV e siècle, Société des Anciens Textes Français, 30 (Paris: Firmin Didot, 1889; repr., New York: Johnson Reprint, 1968) Regalado, Nancy Freeman, ‘En ce saint livre: mise en page et identité lyrique dans les poemes autographes de Villon dans l’album de Blois (Bibl. Nat. MS. FR . 25458)’, in L’Hostellerie de pensée: études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poirion par ses anciens élèves, ed. by Michel Zink and Danielle Regnier-Bohler (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 355–72 ———, ‘Gathering the Works: The “Œuvres de Villon” and the Intergeneric Passage of the Medieval French Lyric into Single-Author Collections’, L’Esprit créature, 4 (1993), 87–100 Reynolds, Catherine, ‘“Les Angloys, de leur droicte nature, veullent touzjours guerreer”: Evidence for Painting in Paris and Normandy, c. 1420–1450’, in Power, Culture, and Religion in France, c. 1350–c. 1550, ed. by Christopher Allmand (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 1989), pp. 37–55 ———, ‘English Patrons and French Artists in Fifteenth-Century Normandy’, in England and Normandy in the Middle Ages, ed. by David Bates and Anne Currey (London: Hambledon Press, 1994), pp. 299–313 Robin, Françoise, ‘Le luxe des collections aux XIV e et XV e siècles’, in Histoire des bibliothèques françaises. Les bibliothèques médiévales: du VIe siècle à 1530, ed. by André Vernet ([Paris]: Promodis-Éditions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1989), pp. 192–213 Scott, Kathleen L., Dated and Datable English Manuscript Borders, c. 1395–1499 (London: The Bibliographical Society and The British Library, 2002) ———, ‘Limning and Book-Producing Terms and Signs in situ in Late-Medieval English Manuscripts: A First Listing’, in New Science Out of Old Books: Studies in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books in Honour of A. I. Doyle, ed. by Richard Beadle and A. J. Piper (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995), 142–88 The Splendor of the Word: Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts at the New York Public Library, ed. by Jonathan J. G. Alexander, James H. Marrow, and Lucy Freeman Sandler, with Elizabeth Moodey and Todor T. Petev (New York: New York Public Library; Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2005) *Stemmler, Theo, ‘Miscellany or Anthology? The Structure of Medieval Manucripts: Ms Harley 2253, for Example’, Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 39 (1991), 231–37 Stirnemann, Patricia Danz, and François Avril, Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VIIe– XX e siècle (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1987) Taylor, Jane H. M., ‘Courtly Gatherings and Poetic Games: “Coterie” Anthologies in the Late Middle Ages in France’, in Book and Text in France, 1400–1600: Poetry on the Page, ed. by Adrian Armstrong and Malcolm Quainton (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 13–29 *Thompson, J. J., ‘Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475, ed. by Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 279–315 The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany, ed. by Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, Recentiores (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996) Wilkins, Nigel, ‘Charles d’Orléans: avec musique ou non?’, Romania, 112 (1991), 268–72

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T ABLES

Note on the Printed Tables

T

he eight tables that follow are intended to illuminate the text by presenting in visual form what is explained there. Much can be learned, however, by studying the tables themselves and by comparison of one table with another, as they present much of the same material in a variety of different ways. Every table offers limitations as well as revelations, so it is worth keeping in mind that every table omits or elides some of the information the manuscript holds at the same time as it presents other information. Simply by ‘slicing’ the information in different ways, a surprising amount of new information has come to light. Note on the Synoptic Table (accompanying CD-ROM)

The multiplicity of uses may be even more true of the large, sortable table on the CD-ROM, which can be manipulated to present a variety of kinds of information, in conjunction with one or another of the printed tables. It can be (1) used as an alphabetical list of incipits or first-line index, (2) rearranged to provide a list of the poems in manuscript order (cf. Table 1), (3) sorted into the order found in the edition of Pierre Champion (by lyric or by page of his edition, cf. Table 7) or that of Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, (4) organized by quire letter/number (cf. Table 1), (5) ordered by verse form (genre), (6) ordered using the poet’s own numbering, (7) used to locate autograph lyrics or lyrics by one or another author, (8) sorted to reveal the type-2 lyrics written only at the top half of pages, (9) organized by stint, or (10) sorted to present the order that results from this study. There are probably even more discoveries to be made by tinkering with the ‘sort’ function. The program it was created in does have some limitations, however. For instance, it was necessary to input leading zeros (001, 002, 003) in order to make the program sort in proper numerical order.

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Table 2. Ruling patterns

Ruling Batch 0: Quire π

Ruling Batch 1: Quires A–H, Q–BB

Ruling Batch 2: Quires I–P, CC–LL

Ruling Batch 3: Quires MM–PP

N.B.: A few pages are unruled. These are generally the back of the final leaves of quires (as in O, P, Q).

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Tables

Table 3. The state of the manuscript c. 1440 (Limner 1, Scribe 1, Limner 2, Scribe 2) Quire A

Contents Ou temps passe [Champion’s heading ‘La retinue d’Amours’, narrative]

MS page numbers 1–16

B–H[5r] ballades and Songe en complainte followed by 7 blank pages (122–28)

17–121 (incl. Songe, Requeste, Departie, Quittance)

Za

complaintes (on love, see below) followed by 9 blank pages (306–14)

299–305

Q

Complainte de France

191–93

Q

ballades on patriotic themes another leaf headed Complainte (197) followed by 5 blank pages (198–202)

194–96

R–S

Balades de plusiers propos followed by 10 blank pages (225–34)

203–24

T–Y

chansons (incl. Scribe/Limner 2) followed by 6 blank pages (291–94, 297–98)

235–90, 295–96 b

AA–BB

caroles followed by 29 blank pages (318–46)

315–17

Reasons for shifting this quire are explained in chapter 4. All chansons are copied on the lower portion of the page.The lyrics of Scribe 2 and Limner 2 are found on pp. 283–86 and 295–96.

a

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