The Poet's Notebook: The Personal Manuscript of Charles d'Orléans (Paris BnF MS fr. 25458)

• Published in: Renaissance quarterly 2009, Vol.62 (3), p.876-877
• Main Author: Taylor, Jane H. M
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Fox, John; Poetry; Reviews
• ISSN: 0034-4338; 1935-0236
• DOI: 10.1086/647372

Serious work on the manuscript -the hands, the identities of the poets, the ordering and dating of the lyrics, the complicated and puzzling mise en page - has been dominated by the monumental work of Pierre Champion in the early decades of the twentieth century, to the extent that his edition (1923-27) remains the standard, that his study of the manuscript, written in 1907, remains the only full-scale one, and that later scholars have been daunted by the major reevaluation that would be needed to rethink Champion's characteristically imperious conclusions. In the course of these surveys, Arn offers judicious and prudent discussions of some of the more notorious problems posed by the manuscript: the reasons for the curious mise en page whereby chansons were copied only into the bottom half of some pages; the order in which the poems were composed and copied, and especially those copied later, onto the blank half-pages; the question of generic uncertainties as between chanson and rondeau-discussions, laudably, not necessarily solutions, since it is one of the great strengths of this book that Arn declines to follow so many critics in speculating beyond the evidence. Here, Arn suggests the questions that her book may enable us to answer with far more certitude than previously: questions to do with technical and personal poetic development, questions to do with how collection and anthologization were perceived in Charles's circles, and more broadly in the poetic community of the fifteenth century.What becomes especially obvious is how far her highly important work should inform any new edition; we look forward with enthusiasm to the new edition of the manuscript promised by Arn and John Fox.