Charles D'Orleans in England, 1415-1440

Charles d’Orléans In England (1415–1440)

Charles, duc d’Orléans, prince and poet, was a captive in England for twenty-five years following the battle of Agincourt. The studies in this volume, by European and American scholars, focus on his life and actions during that time, and show him as a serious and learned reader, a cunning political figure (accomplished in the skills that would impress the English nobility around him), and a masterful poet, innovative, witty, and intensely self-aware. Discussion of his manuscripts, his social and political relationships, his extensive library, and his poetry in two languages reveals him as a shrewd observer of life, which in his poetry he describes in ways not seen again until the Renaissance.

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

Plate 1. BL MS Royal 16 F. ii, fol. 73: Charles, duc d’Orléans, in the Tower. By permission of the British Library.

Charles d’Orléans In England (1415–1440)

EDITED BY

Mary-Jo Arn

D. S. BREWER

© Contributors 2000 All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

First published 2000 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge

ISBN 0 85991 580 8

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 00–025693

This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk

Contents List of Plates

vii

List of Contributors

viii

Abbreviations

ix

Introduction

1

‘Gardez mon corps, sauvez ma terre’ – Immunity from War and the Lands of a Captive Knight: The Siege of Orléans (1428–29) Revisited

9

MICHAEL K. JONES

The Brothers Orléans and their Keepers

27

WILLIAM ASKINS

Charles d’Orléans and his Brother Jean d’Angoulême in England: What their Manuscripts Have to Tell

47

GILBERT OUY

Two Manuscripts, One Mind: Charles d’Orléans and the Production of Manuscripts in Two Languages (Paris, BN MS fr. 25458 and London, BL MS Harley 682)

61

MARY-JO ARN

Charles d’Orléans et l’‘autre’ langue: Ce français que son ‘cuer amer doit’

79

CLAUDIO GALDERISI

Glanures

89

JOHN FOX

Le monde vivant

109

ROUBEN C. CHOLAKIAN

Dreams in The Kingis Quair and the Duke’s Book

123

A. C. SPEARING

The Literary Milieu of Charles of Orléans and the Duke of Suffolk, and the Authorship of the Fairfax Sequence

145

DEREK PEARSALL

Charles of Orléans Illuminated JANET BACKHOUSE

157

Charles d’Orléans, une prison en porte-à-faux. Co-texte courtois et ancrage référentiel: les ballades de la captivité dans l’édition d’Antoine Vérard (1509)

165

JEAN-CLAUDE MÜHLETHALER

Translation, Canons, and Cultural Capital: Manuscripts and Reception of Charles d’Orléans’s English Poetry

183

A. E. B. COLDIRON

Bibliographical Supplement

215

Index

227

Plates 1. British Library MS Royal 16 F. ii, fol. 73: Charles, duc d’Orléans, in the Tower

frontispiece

2. Bibliothèque Nationale MS lat. 1203, fol. 2v: draft of parts of Charles d’Orléans’s book of prayers

49

3. Bibliothèque Nationale MS lat. 1196, fol. 25r: Charles d’Orléans’s book of prayers

51

4. Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr. 25458, p. 117

68

5. British Library MS Harley 682, fol. 57v

69

6. Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr. 25458, p. 119

70

7. British Library MS Harley 682, fol. 58v

71

8. Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr. 25458, p. 244

72

9. British Library MS Harley 682, fol. 65v

73

vii

Contributors Mary-Jo Arn, Visiting Scholar, Harvard University. William Askins, Professor of English and the Humanities, Community College of Philadelphia. Janet Backhouse, Curator of Manuscripts (emerita), The British Library. Rouben C. Cholakian, Professor of French (emeritus), Hamilton College. A. E. B. Coldiron, Assistant Professor of English, Louisiana State University. John Fox, Professor of French (emeritus), University of Exeter, and Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Claudio Galderisi, maître de Conférences de Langue et Littérature Française médiévale, Université de Haute Alsace. Michael K. Jones, Research Consultant at the History of Parliament Trust, London. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, professeur de littérature française du Moyen Âge, Universités de Lausanne et de Genève. Gilbert Ouy, Directeur de recherche (emeritus), (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). Derek Pearsall, Gurney Professor of English Emeritus, Harvard University. A. C. Spearing, Kenan Professor of English, University of Virginia, and Life Fellow of Queens’ College, Cambridge.

viii

Abbreviations Abbreviations AN BL BN EETS e.s. o.s. PMLA SATF

Archives Nationale British Library Bibliothèque Nationale Early English Text Society extra series original series Publications of the Modern Language Association Société des Anciens Textes Français

Abbreviated references not found in the following list can be found in the bibliography. de Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans’ Lucy de Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans: An Attempt to Trace the Contacts between them during their Captivity in England’. In Miscellanea di studi e ricerche sul quattrocento francese, edited by Franco Simone. Università degli studi de Torino. Turin, 1967, pp. 61–92. Boffey, English Courtly Love Lyrics Julia Boffey, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge, 1985. Champion, ed. Champion, Pierre, ed., Charles d’Orléans: Poésies. Two volumes in the Classiques Français du Moyen Âge series, vols. 34 (1923) and 56 (1927) (frequently reprinted). Paris, 1971. Champion, Vie Pierre Champion, Vie de Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465). Paris, 1911. Champion, La Librairie Pierre Champion, La Librairie de Charles d’Orléans avec un album de facsimilés. Paris, 1910. Champion, Le Manuscrit autograph Pierre Champion, Le Manuscrit autograph des poésies de Charles d’Orléans. Paris, 1907; repr., Geneva, 1975. Defaux, ‘La poétique du secret’ Gérard Defaux, ‘Charles d’Orléans ou la poétique du secret: A propos du rondeau XXXIII de l’édition Champion’. Romania 93 (1972), 194–273. Fox, ‘Poète anglais?’ John Fox, ‘Charles d’Orléans, poète anglais?’ Romania 86 (1965), 433–62. Fox, Lyric Poetry John Fox, The Lyric Poetry of Charles d’Orléans. Oxford, 1969. ix

ABBREVIATIONS

McLeod, Prince and Poet Enid McLeod, Charles of Orleans: Prince and Poet. New York, 1969. Nelson, Analytical Bibliography Deborah Hubbard Nelson, Charles d’Orléans: An Analytical Bibliography. Research Bibliographies and Checklists, vol. 49. London, 1990. Poirion, ‘Création poètique’ Daniel Poirion, ‘Création poétique et composition romanesque dans les premiers poèmes de Charles d’Orléans’. Revue de Sciences Humaines, nouv. série, no. 90 (1958), 185–211. Poirion, Le Lexique Daniel Poirion, Le Lexique de Charles d’Orléans dans les ballades. Publications Romanes et Françaises, 91. Geneva, 1967. Poirion, Le Poète et le prince Daniel Poirion, Le Poète et le prince: L’Évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans. Université de Grenoble publications de la faculté des lettres et sciences humaines, no. 35. Paris, 1965. Spence, ed., French Chansons Sarah Spence, ed. and trans., The French Chansons of Charles d’Orléans with the Corresponding Middle English Chansons. Garland Library of Medieval Literature, vol. 46, series A. New York, 1986. Steele and Day, ed., English Poems Robert Steele, ed. The English Poems of Charles of Orleans. vol. 1: EETS o.s. 215. Oxford, 1941. Robert Steele and Mabel Day, eds., The English Poems of Charles of Orleans. vol. 2: EETS o.s. 220. Oxford, 1946. Reprinted in one volume and repaginated by EETS. London, 1970.

x

INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION

Introduction When I began studying the life and work of Charles d’Orléans some twenty years ago, many of the major sources were old. Pierre Champion’s biography of the duke and edition of his French poems dated from the early part of the century; Steele and Day’s edition of the English work, from the 1940s. Only the work of Daniel Poirion, especially his book Le Poète et le prince: L’Évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d’Orléans (1965), was relatively recent – but all that has since changed. On assiste depuis plusieurs années à un renouveau des études auréliennes . . . un climat évidemment propice à stimuler l’activité éditoriale . . .1

The growth of interest in the fifteenth century,2 in translation, in trans-channel culture, and in cultural history have all attracted scholars to begin studying the life and work of the duc d’Orléans. What has attracted them, in addition to the perennial interest in his dramatic life story and his times, is primarily the quality of his poetry and the lure of his library. What is most encouraging is that scholars who had once laid aside work on the duke, in some cases for many years, have dusted off their notebooks and taken up the work with fresh zeal and interest. This volume shows the breadth of the late twentieth-century interest in the duke’s poetry, his books, his life, and his times. In the pages that follow the reader will find the work of scholars new to the field as well as that of those who have labored long in it. By laying out new lines of enquiry both groups offer a profusion of new ideas and the promise of more, as well as some new answers to old questions. The work here is refreshingly free from old approaches to the questions that have bedeviled Charles studies for so long. In fact it demonstrates the new freedom from a great many issues that I for one was thoroughly tired of reading about (including the old question of authorship, which I touch on in my own essay for what I hope is the very last time). Instead, the reader will find both new information (e.g., about the manuscript connections between the brothers Orléans and Gerson, and about the duke’s English keepers) and new approaches (e.g., to the history of the reception of Charles’s English poetry, or to his intimate

1 2

P. Uhl, Review of Fortunes Stabilnes, in Scriptorium, Bulletin codicologique (1998), 27*. According to John Watts, ‘nowadays, the one-time ‘‘cinderella century’’ is one of the most widely researched periods of the middle ages’; an ‘explosion’ of research on its history has taken place in recent years (Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship [Cambridge, 1996], pp. 1–2 and n. 3).

1

INTRODUCTION

and prolonged exposure to English culture and its effect on his later French poetry). As the title indicates, the focus of this volume is the period of the duke of Orléans’s life that falls between his capture at Agincourt and his release from captivity. I set these limits to force consideration of the duke as a participant in the trans-channel culture of the late Middle Ages and as the author of two comparable bodies of poetry that, together with the contemporary translation of his work into Latin, make for an œuvre that is exceptionally interesting, both linguistically and culturally. The interdisciplinary currents that flow through this rather narrow gorge spread far beyond the limits of time and geography here imposed, as the essays of Mühlethaler, Fox, Backhouse, and Coldiron demonstrate. One result – and far from the only one – is a multifacetted view of a complex and sophisticated poet, reader, bibliophile, and nobleman. There is a great deal of significant work still to be done on the duke’s life and work. Neither his life nor his writings have received the attention paid to that of other medieval literary and historical figures. The page of literary, cultural, social, or even political history of a writer like Chaucer or a figure like Jeanne d’Arc is fairly fully inscribed, leaving only the narrowest of margins to be filled with some tiny (and too often insignificant) scribbles. The duke’s page has generous, white margins that invite both established scholars and their younger colleagues to take up their pens. Although Charles d’Orléans is respected as an important medieval poet in France, to many scholars in the English-speaking world he remains a shadowy figure – and surely the spread of monolingualism has something to do with this. His name occurs once in the new Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, for instance, in a chapter entitled ‘AngloNorman Cultures in England, 1066–1466’.3 Although selections of his French poetry appear regularly from French presses, his Middle English poetry, as Coldiron notes, still awaits inclusion in major anthologies – or it finds a home in publications like that of Sarah Spence (French Chansons), as ‘translations’ – albeit exceedingly loose ones – of his French verse.4 Nor have many historians on either side of the channel occupied themselves to any significant extent with this pivotal figure, as the bibliography of recent work that follows the essays in this volume demonstrates. Nor yet have his manuscripts, an important seminal chunk of the French royal library, attracted deep and sustained codicological attention; studies remain largely where they were when Gilbert Ouy turned from Charles d’Orléans to other subjects in the 1950s. Champion wrote the poet’s life in impressive detail, yet much remains hidden in the vast collections of Orléans papers to be found mostly in Paris and London, but also scattered in a number of other places. Perhaps most importantly, we 3

By Susan Crane, who allots his English poetry two brief paragraphs (ed. David Wallace [Cambridge, 1999], pp. 58–59). 4 The inappropriateness and inadequacy of the English poems as reasonably close translations of their French counterparts have been noted by many scholars (see Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 94, n. 267).

2

INTRODUCTION

have needed a better picture of the duke’s relations with those around him in France and especially in England (whose sources Champion knew less well than the French).5 William Askins has taken on the daunting task here of sketching the lives, positions, character, and tastes of the duke’s English captors (and some of his brother Jean’s). These ‘keepers’ were not simply political and military figures, of course; many were interested in books and in what lay between their covers. Scholars interested in Lollardy and Wycliffism have done an admirable job of drawing for us a picture of the relations, interests, and reading matter of a group of English noblemen. Askins is the first literary historian who has attempted to characterize a group of politically important men who interacted with the duke, and there is more to be done as we discover more about his contacts with English men and women during his captivity. The duke’s relations with men both noble and non-noble back in France, though outlined by Champion, have never been discussed in the detail they deserve.6 Such investigations would teach us a great deal about the duke as poet, but also about the intricacies of power balances in France in the mid-fifteenth century. Michael K. Jones, convinced that important work on the duke remains to be done, has produced a groundbreaking reassessment of the reasons for the long captivity in England of a member of the highest French nobility. Much more about the duke’s situation cries out for such careful attention. Phillippe Contamine reminded me that we would learn a great deal if someone would investigate the flow of money (and goods) in and out of the coffers of the duke during and after his captivity. How wealthy was he? How ‘poverty-stricken’ did he become in paying off the English? How did he recover from the crippling ransom demands of his captors – or did he? An overview of the exchange of wealth between France and England would be greatly aided by a specific study of the finances of the duke and his household during his lifetime. And then there are his manuscripts. Gilbert Ouy has been ideally placed to augment and improve on the work begun by Pierre Champion. I look forward to the publication of his extensive corrections and additions to Champion’s La Librairie de Charles d’Orléans. The orientation and breadth of his purview take in the intellectual and religious life of the duke as well as his manuscript acquisitions, and the depth of that scholarship provides some surprising connections between figures which those of us with narrower foci relegate to quite separate fields of discussion: Charles d’Orléans, prince and poet, and Jean Gerson, Benedictine theologian, preacher, and Chancellor of the University of Paris.7 A

5

Enid McLeod, who apparently leaned on Champion’s work in writing her English biography of the duke, filled out the years spent in England with pseudo-biographical readings from his poetry (Charles of Orleans: Prince and Poet [New York, 1969]). 6 Gert Pinkernell has returned repeatedly to the contacts between the duke and François Villon, but little has been done on the other poets he knew; Pinkernell has written on a poet whom history has ignored entirely: Marie of Clèves, Charles’s third wife. 7 For an overview of Gerson’s life and works, see the article by G. Ouy in Le Moyen Âge, ed. G. Hasenohr and M. Zink (Paris, 1992), pp. 782–85.

3

INTRODUCTION

number of other manuscripts that were made during and after the duke’s lifetime contain his work and the work of those around him, study of which would tell us a good deal, for instance, not only about the duke’s religious, intellectual, and literary life, but about the influence of Orléanais poetry in France in the fifteenth century.8 I have focused my own study of two of the duke’s manuscripts extremely narrowly in an effort to draw from those manuscripts some sense of the mind and thought of the man who planned and commissioned them. Old literary issues sometimes respond readily to new encounters by sensitive readers of both English and French. Derek Pearsall has sought to moderate the polemics of H. N. MacCracken (which have created so much heat and so little light) by giving us a more realistic evaluation of the likelihood that William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk and friend of the duke, was a poet – and what sort of poet he might have been. Avoiding the biographical fallacy, he instead describes the literary context of the poetry, shifting the basis of discussion to the poetic environment and away from attempts to ‘prove’ authorship on the basis of historical evidence. In the process he re-evaluates the quality of some of the poems attributed to Suffolk (as well as the closeness of the friendship between the earl and the duke).9 We will probably never know whether, at the very beginning of his captivity, Charles met James I during the months both spent in the Tower of London, nor do we know for certain whether either ever read the work of the other. A. C. Spearing treats the two of them, these two finest courtly poets of the first half of the fifteenth century, as writers of literature, especially of dream visions, re-evaluating James’s role as a ‘Chaucerian’ or a ‘Boethian’ poet and using his conclusions as a model against which to test the very different project that Charles undertakes. With a careful and delicate hand, Claudio Galderisi traces the duke’s concept of time (not ‘real time’ but poetic time) and its relationships to language, building on some of Poirion’s best work. From within the duke’s poetry, Galderisi ferrets out a significant effect of his captivity on it: that being among English speakers (and so largely apart from his native language) for twenty-five years affected directly his later rondeaux, thereby forging a new relationship between the duke’s English poetic experience and his French. John Fox, who has argued so cogently for the duke’s authorship of the English poems, responded to my initial request for an article with a clear no, but in thinking afresh about the French poetry has discovered that he had a whole series of problems to explore, of which 8

For instance BN nouv. acq. fr. 15771 (see Barbara L. S. Inglis, Une Nouvelle collection de poésies lyriques et courtoises du XVe siècle [Paris, 1985] and Annie Angremy, ‘Un Nouveau recueil de poésies françaises du XVe siècle, le manuscrit B.N. nouv. acq. fr. 15771’, Romania 95 [1974], 1–53); BN MS fr. 9223 (see Gaston Raynaud, Rondeaux et autres poésies du XVe siècle [Paris, 1889; rpt. New York, 1968]); and Bibliothèque de Carpentras, MS 375 (the property of Marie of Clèves). 9 De la Pole was the earl of Suffolk during the years Charles was at Wingfield, raised to his dukedom only after Charles returned to France. It is worth remembering that the earl was a bit younger than the duke and recently married to Alice Chaucer when he received the custody of the duke.

4

INTRODUCTION

he has shared four. In three of these he returns to Charles’s language, carefully explicating the nuances of meaning and form that so delighted the poet. In the last of his four contributions (‘Les Princesses Lointaines’) he moves beyond the French poems to discuss an English recipient of a manuscript containing them, the famous British Library, Royal MS 16 F. ii, and demonstrates the appropriateness of the choice of reading matter to the young prince Arthur. Janet Backhouse takes up the same manuscript once more, analyzing its production, linking each miniature with a specific poem, and exploring the manuscript’s connections with Calais and a possible source of its text of Charles’s poetry from among books belonging to Charles’s cousin (and in some sense his liberator), Philip the Good of Burgundy. Rouben Cholakian takes on an old assumption about the French poetry, namely that we see a fundamental shift in the duke’s poetry after his return to France in 1440, and particularly his way of viewing the world, le monde vivant. His conclusions are new and, to this reader at least, surprising, for he uncovers a fundamental continuity that runs counter to the narrative earlier critics have constructed. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler measures the gap between referential and allegorical modes in the French lyrics by examining Vérard’s Chasse et Depart, and in particular the omission of several key referential ballades. The essay extends, for example, the work of Poirion on metaphor in the lyrics and of Spearing on prison metaphors. Both Fox and Mühlethaler look beyond 1440 to later texts of the duke’s poetry, but A. E. B. Coldiron takes on no less than the entire Charles tradition in England (and America), surveying a vast landscape of critical sources and in the process showing us, as it were, the nature of the mirror in which we see reflected the image of the poet. The bibliography that concludes the volume indicates the interest scholars not represented here (and those who are) have taken in Charles d’Orléans’s life, work, and library in recent years. Many academics writing about the late Middle Ages, at least in England and America, seem not to have noticed this flowering, however. Though it might seem unsurprising that neither Charles nor James I merited attention in R. F. Yeager’s 1984 Fifteenth-Century Studies (though Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Henryson each came in for two chapters), it is perhaps harder to understand why the duke goes unmentioned in more recent work on fifteenth-century poetry and on the influence of Chaucer on writers who came after him.10 Still, readers can look forward to A. E. B. Coldiron’s forthcoming book on the duke’s English poetry – the first book to consider together work by the duke rendered into three languages: French, English, and Latin. A new and long overdue edition of the French poems is in the works from Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, and a student edition of the English poetry is in the planning stages. 10 Authors of the relevant entries in Medieval England: An Encyclopedia (1998) and The

Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature (1999) cite only the EETS edition of the English poetry from the 1940s, and the former cites the Yenal bibliography rather than the fuller and more recent (1990) Nelson bibliography.

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INTRODUCTION

News about the English poetry at our end of the twentieth century hasn’t been all bad: the duke merited a brief but significant mention in Scattergood’s Politics and Poetry as early as 1971, and John Burrow’s brief account of fifteenth-century English literature in 1987 was unusually well-balanced.11 A selection from Charles’s English poetry has found a place in Derek Pearsall’s new anthology From Chaucer to Spenser. Art historians and students of manuscript studies have demonstrated their interest in Charles, too: in 1987 Patricia Danz Stirnemann revised everyone’s notion of the duke’s own manuscript (Paris, BN MS fr. 25458) by placing its production in England, thereby dating it at least a decade earlier than had earlier scholars,12 and in 1996 Kathleen L. Scott associated the duke with the most extravagant page of illumination to be found in any Chaucer manuscript: the so-called ‘Troilus frontispiece’.13 Finally, the good duke has even found a place in the London tube, among advertisements for West End shows and famous sites: three years ago one of his lyrics was chosen for inclusion in the well-known series, Poems on the Underground. Certainly much has changed in the last decade or so. When I first began discussing my work with other scholars, the vast majority assumed, sometimes arguing adamantly, that the duke would have had absolutely no reason to learn English and would not have done so. All English noblemen and their families ‘of course’ spoke perfectly good French. Now most scholars recognize that French was fast dying as a near-native language among the English nobility and that, moreover, twentieth-century attitudes about French and English as languages simply were not those of fifteenth-century people. The language(s) a person preferred to read (and even that is affected dramatically by questions of genre) may have little to do with the language(s) he could and did speak every day. Though some older prejudices have been swept away, we still have no very clear idea of the precise linguistic situation in late medieval England (much of it scattered). What kind of English Charles spoke and where he learned it are admittedly big questions, but we at least know where in the south and east of England the duke stayed and when. It should some day be possible to compose a picture of his exposure to spoken and written English and French that would shed some light on such problems as language learning, degrees of bilingualism, the relations of language to social class, age, and gender, and the role of translation in all of this. The more such old assumptions are swept away, and the more willing people become to look over disciplinary fences, the more possible it will become to reinvigorate and accelerate the study of the duke’s life and work.

11 V. J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry (London, 1971; New York, 1972), pp. 171–72;

Burrow, The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature, ed. Pat Rogers (Oxford, 1987), pp. 50–56. 12 Avril and Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés (see bibliography). 13 Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490 (London, 1996), II, 183. She has also found a fragment from Chanson 31 in an English manuscript she dates c. 1470 (Oxford, University College MS 85), which gives us a tantalizing bit of evidence that the duke’s French poems were probably being read in England in the later fifteenth century (II, 319).

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INTRODUCTION

Over the years the French poetry has been better served than the English by scholars who have enquired into questions concerning the poet’s lyrics, their structures, their functions, their mutual relationships. Much of the new scholarship is inspired by that of Daniel Poirion, the mid-century figure who did more than any other to stimulate this work. Though most of it promises to endure for a very long time, his important piece of work on the narrativity of the English poetry (‘Création poétique’) is now unfortunately outdated. New work on the relation of the narrative to the lyric portions of the duke’s English work, Fortunes Stabilnes, is essential; in fact, considerable work remains to be done on both bodies of poetry. While Pinkernell and others have been investigating the relationship between the duke and Villon, scholars like Thibault, Bauermeister, Holtz, Kovacs, and Toscano have been bringing to light information about the duke’s library. Meanwhile those students of the duke’s French œuvre represented between the covers of this book have been pouring out work on his poetry and promise a continuing stream of it to refresh us all. Until now many scholars in this field have worked in isolation from one another; students of French literature and of English, of history and of art history, of manuscripts and of texts have never before come together to illuminate mutually this particular subject. It has been deeply gratifying to me to see the serious interest in the duke’s life and work exhibited by these scholars, one measure of which was the interest in and willingness of some of them to read and comment on the work of others, meanwhile adjusting their own work to take account of it. I am honored by their hard and careful work and believe that the freshness and the meticulousness of it will in turn attract others to the study of this late medieval patron and book owner–collector–devourer, this player with language, this charming, clever, cunning, devout intellectual, this prince of poets.

Acknowledgments Harvard University has provided me with an unparalleled work environment by appointing me a Visiting Scholar for 1998–99 and again for 1999–2000. My thanks to Derek Pearsall for acting as my sponsor. Boydell & Brewer have made this whole process very easy, no one more than Caroline Palmer. I am grateful, too, to Ken Heinrich, whose acute proofreading abilities have enhanced the consistency and readability of this book, as well as to Larry Benson and William Calin. Though a number of contributors have read the work of a fellow contributor, A. E. B. Coldiron has been a mainstay and an excellent sounding board for a whole series of ideas, keeping me from donning those blinders we all keep in our desk drawers. The Neil Ker Memorial Fund Committee of the British Academy has generously provided partial funding for the reproduction of an often reproduced but never before so appropriately placed manuscript page: the illumination of Charles d’Orléans in the Tower of London, surrounded by that earliest of London cityscapes. Additional funding was provided by William Askins in memory of 7

INTRODUCTION

William J. Askins (1920–1999). The coat of arms beneath the painting, with its quartered French fleur-de-lis and English lions, also comments in its way on the northern European culture that could give rise to the duke’s bilingual œuvre. I would also like to acknowledge with thanks permission to reproduce this and other manuscript pages from the collections of the British Library and from the Bibliothèque Nationale. While I have aimed to bring some measure of consistency to the names of French persons (substituting Jean for John, for instance), I have allowed each author to name the subject of this book as he or she pleased: Charles d’Orléans or Charles of Orléans. The need to harmonize styles from a disparate group of contributors (from a variety of disciplines and four countries) has required editorial flexibility in regard to decisions about typographical and bibliographical conventions. In some cases I have allowed strong individual preferences to prevail over a single, rigidly imposed style. M. Arn

8

‘GARDEZ MON CORPS, SAUVEZ MA TERRE’

‘Gardez mon corps, sauvez ma terre’ – Immunity from War and the Lands of a Captive Knight: The Siege of Orléans (1428–29) Revisited MICHAEL K. JONES

A

T the end of August 1428 Charles, duke of Orléans, was faced with perhaps tthe most traumatic event of his twenty-five-year captivity, the invasion of his estates by a large English army. Lands that he relied upon to raise his ransom were systematically ransacked. At his town of Janville receivers’ accounts were burnt and estate officials led into captivity. By 12 October the charismatic and skilled English commander Thomas Montagu, earl of Salisbury, had invested the duke’s principal city of Orléans; the surrounding territories, bludgeoned into submission, were paying forced tribute.1 Orléans itself endured a desperate seven-month siege that only ended with the dramatic relief of the city on 8 May 1429 by Joan of Arc. This extraordinary story has usually been told without consideration of Duke Charles’s own political role. As a result, he comes across as rather lost in the interior world of his poetry while his city suffers the bombardment of English artillery. Yet a study of Charles’s part in these events is essential to an understanding of the siege, and allows a broader re-evaluation of the duke and his role as a prisoner during the war in France. Chivalric convention dictated that a captive’s lands should remain safe from attack from his enemy. Maurice Keen summarized the issue as follows: ‘a prisoner’s lands, from the revenues of which he must pay his ransom, became technically immune from war. Thus the siege laid to Orléans in 1428 was in strict law unjustifiable, because Duke Charles, the lord of the town, was a prisoner in England.’2 Most historians, while noting the principle, have been uncertain as to its practical relevance. Jean Favier’s recent survey put the pragmatic view: the 1

Louis Jarry, Le Compte de l’armée anglaise au siège d’Orléans 1428–1429 (Orléans, 1892), pp. 80–84; Amicie de Villaret, Campagnes des Anglais dans l’Orléanais, la Beauce Chartraine et le Gâtinais, 1421–1428 (Orléans, 1893), pp. 62–63. Note: The French gold coin, the écu d’or, was often used in ransom payments. The rate of exchange in the first half of the fifteenth century was usually two écus to one English noble, giving the French coin a value of 3s 4d. I am grateful to Professors Christopher Allmand and Maurice Keen for their comments on an earlier draft of this article, and to the British Academy for the necessary research funds. 2 Maurice H. Keen, The Laws of War in the Later Middle Ages (London, 1965), pp. 160–61.

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chivalric code was inevitably subordinated because both sides recognized the siege as a decisive moment in the war that saw Charles of Orléans remain a bystander. It was a clash between the military might of the Regent Bedford (representing the infant Henry VI) and Charles VII’s ‘kingdom of Bourges’.3 One feature of Favier’s account, and it is common to many others, is its assumption of Duke Charles’s passivity. His supposed lack of political influence mirrors the concept of nonchaloir, indifference or resignation, frequently found in his poetry. The image is reinforced by his surprising absence of reaction, during his captivity and after it, to the rescue of his city by Joan of Arc. The plight of the imprisoned duke and the injustice of the attack on his lands had moved Joan greatly. Her sense of mission was emphatic: God had sent her because He ‘had taken pity on the city of Orléans, and would not allow the enemy to take both the duke and his town’.4 Charles’s silence is a source of puzzlement, and a fuller exploration is needed of its possible context. There was a political rationale to the duke’s imprisonment. A consideration of it must begin with Henry V’s will, which helped determine the exceptional length of Charles’s captivity. The chronicler Monstrelet believed that on his deathbed, in August 1422, the king forbade freeing the duke until his own son and heir came of age.5 There is no independent corroboration of this. But the record of Henry’s last will of 10 June 1421 did contain a restraining clause. The king instructed that Duke Charles was to be kept by his successor ‘for as long as was convenient for his two realms’. He was to be released only at a time when the maintenance of the treaty of Troyes, by which Charles VI transferred the succession of France to Henry V and his heirs, could be fully guaranteed.6 The force of this prohibition was brought out many years later, in 1440, in the debate over the final release of the duke. Henry VI, now of an age to wield power, took apparent responsibility for Charles’s liberation, ‘of his own advis and courage’.7 But the specific criticisms of the duke of Gloucester, his uncle and heir apparent, were hard to rebut. Gloucester, the youngest brother of Henry V, was prepared to invoke the overriding authority of the will in his argument with his sovereign: wher as my lord of blessed memorie, youre fader . . . peysing [heeding] gretly so many inconveniences and harmes that might falle oonly by his [Orléans’s] deliverance, concluded and ordeyned in his last wille and utterly delivered that unto tyme that he had accomplished fully his conquest of France; and thanne it

3 4

Jean Favier, La Guerre de Cent Ans (Paris, 1980), p. 487. Regine Pernoud, The Retrial of Joan of Arc: The Evidence at the Trial for her Rehabilitation, 1450–6, trans. J. M. Cohen (New York, 1955), p. 121. 5 Chronique d’Enguerran de Monstrelet, ed. L. Douet d’Arcq, 6 vols. (Paris, 1857–62), IV, 110–11. 6 P. and F. Strong, ‘The Last Will and Codicils of Henry V’, English Historical Review 96 (1981), 92. 7 Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the Reign of Henry VI, ed. Joseph Stevenson, 2 vols. in 3, Rolls Series (London, 1863–64), II, ii. 452.

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to be done by as grete deliberacion, solemnite and sureties as couth be devised or thought.8

Gloucester equated the firm establishment of the Troyes settlement with a successful end to the war. The terms of the treaty of Troyes (20 May 1420), which disinherited Charles VI’s son in favour of Henry V, required a war of conquest against those parts of France that rejected the agreement and remained faithful to the dauphin (the future Charles VII). Thus the treaty (or ‘final peace’ as it was known in English circles) had to be brought fully into being by force of arms, and in Gloucester’s reading of the will the duke of Orléans could only be freed once that process was complete. Instead Henry VI was intending to release Charles as a mediator between the two sides. This role had been presaged by the negotiations at Calais in July 1439, and since the compromise proposal offered by Charles on this occasion involved the English dropping their title to the kingdom of France, the king was forced onto the defensive.9 Gloucester was able to champion a concerned body of opinion, fearful that if the duke of Orléans was freed he would renege on his promises and provide a focus for French resistance. This unease was recognized by the king, ‘a noyse and a grutchyng amongst his subjects’, and it was bluntly reported by one contemporary newsletter on the occasion of Duke Charles’s public acceptance of his ransom conditions: ‘God yef grace the seid lord of Orlyaunce be trewe, for this same week he shall be toward Fraunce.’10 In response, a formal statement was drawn up, in Henry VI’s name, to justify the duke of Orléans’s liberation. It countered Gloucester’s insistence that the will was morally if not legally binding by suggesting that the king’s father had, shortly before his death, become disillusioned with the war and was willing to treat with the dauphin. The authority for this was oral testimony (‘as it is not unknowen to many that yeet lyven and were aboute hym’).11 This allowed Henry to offer his own interpretation of the will in an exchange of letters with his captive (2 July 1440), that its aim in recommending the duke remain a prisoner was simply to secure a lasting peace between the two countries, and this Charles had now promised to do.12 The king hoped that after his release the duke of Orléans would act to further the chances of a cessation of hostilities, which inevitably in 1440 meant a settlement based on compromise. But the portrayal of Henry V’s legacy as one of peaceful accommodation was highly idiosyncratic,

8 9

Ibid., p. 447. C. T. Allmand, ‘Documents Relating to the Anglo-French Negotiations of 1439’, Camden Miscellany 24 (1972), 135–39. 10 The Paston Letters, 1422–1509, ed. John Gairdner, 6 vols. (London, 1904), II, 47. The duke of Orléans’s solemn oath to abide by his ransom treaty was sworn at Westminster Abbey on 28 October 1440. Gloucester staged his own protest, marching out of the proceedings and taking to his barge. 11 Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, ii. 455. 12 Foedera, Conventiones, Litterae, et . . . Acta Publica, ed. Thomas Rymer [henceforth Rymer], 20 vols. (London, 1704–35), X, 782–86.

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seemingly at odds with the very basis of the English war experience, a furtherance of the treaty of Troyes. Indeed the statement’s repeated stress on the expense of the war, and the resulting impoverishment of both England and Normandy, indicated that the disillusion was much more recent. Duke Charles’s freedom was being sought on pragmatic grounds and these were unlikely to be bolstered by a somewhat fanciful appeal to precedent. As Ralph Griffiths put it, ‘the arguments in favour of Orléans’s release lacked substance’.13 The document’s authorship is not fully clear.14 Some of the diplomatic proposals probably originated from Gloucester’s personal enemy, Cardinal Beaufort, who had played a prominent part in the Calais negotiations of 1439. The emphasis on the value of Duke Charles’s release may, in turn, have emanated from the earl of Suffolk, his friend and one-time keeper. But allowing for the opinions of Henry VI’s councillors, and their role in drafting the document, its content reflected the king’s own views on the question of peace. Henry’s grasp of the day-to-day business of government was weak and fluctuating. But whether the duke’s liberation was pushed through at his personal insistence, as the text suggests, or through the influence of his advisers, the king’s sanction was necessary under the terms of his father’s will. It arose from compassion, but Gloucester’s objections had not been effectively answered. An explanation for Charles’s long captivity is thus provided. Henry V’s will made the duke’s release dependent upon a political settlement: the full establishment of Henry VI as king of England and France. In the absence of this, it took the authority of the new king, at an age when he could properly initiate policy, to face down the very real opposition. The unwillingness to use the duke of Orléans in earlier peace negotiations of the 1430s can then be understood.15 In this view Duke Charles had little hope of freedom during the long minority of Henry VI and remained a victim of events outside his control. He was obliged to reconcile himself to the inner resources of prayer, meditation, and writing. The clause which linked Charles’s ransom with the firm guarantee of the treaty of Troyes was punitive. Its justification lay in dynastic factors: the duke’s position within the French realm as prince of the blood, who was in November 1422 second in line to the throne. After the murder of the Burgundian duke John the Fearless at Montereau (10 September 1419), Henry V sent out a stream of letters concerning his prisoner. As Anne Curry rightly stresses: ‘It is significant that around this time Henry tightened up arrangements for the safeguarding in England of the duke . . . unless the rules of succession were changed, the latter

13 R. A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI (London, 1981), p. 452. 14 The text is printed in full in Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, ii. 451–60. The question of

authorship is most recently discussed in G. L. Harriss, Cardinal Beaufort (Oxford, 1988), pp. 315–17, and John Lovett Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 187–88. 15 This view is expressed in Joycelyne Gledhill Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, 1435 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 50–52.

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would be heir presumptive in the event of the dauphin’s disinheritance.’16 Once the treaty of Troyes was sealed the duke of Orléans could, if liberated, become a focus of opposition to the agreement. The charismatic personality of the duke fuelled this fear. Although Charles VII had declared himself king in October 1422, and produced a male heir shortly afterwards, he was in the early part of his reign weak and ineffective and dominated by a series of favourites. Charles of Orléans on the other hand was recognized by his captors as a man of impressive bearing; intelligent and politically astute. Both Gloucester and Henry VI noted his ‘gret subtilite’, that he was a ‘great and felle-witted man’.17 If released, the risk was that he had the dynamism to lead the French against them. In chivalric practice, to introduce a block to the payment of ransom was frowned upon, as Henry VI himself articulated: it semeth not according to the custom or to the law of armes, but contrary therto, to holde a man that is honestly taken in the werre in perpetual prison, where he is redy to putte himself to raisonnable fynaunce, that is to saye, suche as he may of lyvelode bere, and hath not been seen do to eny person that hath be taken before that tyme in the saide werres of Fraunce.18

The earlier efforts of Charles’s servants to set up an exchange between the duke and some of the high-ranking English prisoners captured at the battle of Baugé (22 March 1421) almost certainly failed because of this impediment.19 There was a friction here between the ‘internationalism’ of chivalry, a concept of honour and obligation that bound together a class not a country, and the narrower more pragmatic outlook of ‘national’ self-interest.20 This tension was very much a feature of Charles of Orléans’s English captivity. So, was Charles’s term of imprisonment unavoidable? An alternative interpretation of the political intentions behind Henry V’s will was possible. The ‘final peace’ might be secured through Duke Charles’s active intervention, if he were willing to accept the treaty of Troyes and use his influence in France to bring about a settlement based on the agreement. An examination of such a possibility will provide, in its turn, an altogether different perspective on the siege of Orléans. On 16 July 1427 a treaty was concluded at Blois between Charles’s bastard brother Dunois and the earl of Suffolk, representing the Regent Bedford. It

16 17 18 19

Anne Curry, The Hundred Years War (London, 1993), p. 102. Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, ii. 459; Rymer, X, 764–67. Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, ii. 458. André Joubert, Documents inédits sur la guerre de cent ans: négociations relatives à l’échange de Charles, duc d’Orléans et de Jean, comte d’Angoulême, contre les seigneurs anglais (Angers, 1890). 20 A comparison can be made with Jean de Grailly, captal de Buch, who was captured by the French in 1372. Charles V refused to allow ransom: Keen, Laws of War, pp. 90–91. For political stipulations linked to the release of another poet-prisoner, see Evan Whyte Melville Balfour-Melville, ‘The Later Captivity and Release of James I’, Scottish Historical Review 21 (1924), 45–53.

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declared an abstinence de guerre (a formal truce) for the Loire estates of the captive duke, the duchy of Orléans, and the counties of Blois and Dunois.21 It was the culmination of some two years’ diplomacy, involving approaches to the dukes of Brittany and Burgundy, consultation with townsmen and local nobles, and intensive discussions with the English, that had been co-ordinated and brought to fruition by Charles himself. Allowing for some minor adjustments, covering the far north-east around Montargis (where fighting was still going on) it represented the ending of hostilities in the region.22 An outline of the final stages of the negotiations can be given. In October 1426 three trusted officers of the duke left Orléans and crossed over to visit Charles in England, ‘pour le fait de l’abstinence de guerre de ses pais envers les Anglois’.23 The men were Jean de Rochechouart, seigneur de Mortemart, the duke’s chamberlain, and two of his councillors, Hugues de Saint-Mars and Hugues Perrier. They were bringing money, raised by donation, for Charles to employ as douceurs. The duke was subsequently brought before the king’s council, first in London and then in Canterbury, where in March 1427 a preliminary arrangement seems to have been reached. Matters were finalised when a further delegation from Orléans met Bedford after his return to France, in late April.24 This paved the way for the formal signing. The treaty was publicised with all the niceties of chivalric protocol. The English herald ‘Anjou’ was escorted by Charles’s own counterpart, Nevelon Savary, from Chartres to Orléans on 7 July, so that both could announce the truce together. Orléans’s herald then left the city on 28 July to fulfil instructions given by Bedford.25 Here one may see the influence of Duke Charles, who retained an interest in his own personal order of chivalry, the Camail, during his captivity. It was entirely appropriate, since the abstinence embodied the chivalric precept of relief for a prisoner’s lands, that such an appeal was delivered to the English council. The appeal seems to have been made early in 1427, when Charles was in attendance on the council, for it is referred to in a number of sources close to the duke. The Chronique de la Pucelle, composed by Charles’s chancellor Guillaume Cousinot, related how the duke asked the gathered assembly ‘qu’il ne voulust faire aucune guerre en ses terres, n’y a ses subjets, veu qu’il estoit prisonnier et qu’il ne pouvoit deffendre’.26 The most dramatic testimony is found in the Mistère du Siège (a spectacular piece of theatre first put on in the city of Orléans in 1435) where the captive movingly sets out the justice of his case:

21 22 23 24

BN MS fr. 20379, fol. 45. Jarry, Le Compte de l’armée anglaise, p. 69. Villaret, Campagnes des Anglais, p. 134. Archives Communales d’Orléans CC 653, fol. 12v. The duke’s itinerary has been drawn from Pierre Champion, Vie, p. 669. 25 BL Add. Ch. 334. 26 Chronique de la Pucelle ou Chronique de Cousinot, ed. Auguste Vallet de Viriville (Paris, 1859), p. 256.

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Si vous veuil humblement prier Qu’en ma terre n’en mon dangier . . . Et aussi principalement Ma ville et cite d’Orleans . . . Vous savez, c’est ma substance . . . Ou j’ay toute esperance Espoir et tres grant fiance . . . Gardez mon corps, sauvez ma terre.27

Louis Jarry and Amicie de Villaret, the French historians who drew attention to the abstinence in the late nineteenth century, believed that the truce arose solely from chivalric sensibility. This is unlikely, as a comparison with the plight of the duke of Alençon, captured at Verneuil in 1424, shows only too clearly. Alençon’s principal estates lay in southern Normandy and Maine, and within a year of his imprisonment the English had advanced into his territories and occupied them. The fact that his enemies now benefited from these revenues gave Alençon grounds for considerable bitterness, seen in the complaint of the ducal chronicler, Perceval de Cagny, of the difficulty in raising his ransom.28 Yet the principle of immunity for a captive’s lands here provided no effective sanction. It had been in the English political and military interest to invade Maine, and they had marched southward without hesitation. An abstinence would have to appeal to self-interest as well as conscience. This caution is relevant, for the abstinence seems to have been part of a more ambitious project that intended the duke of Orléans’s eventual release. Late in 1426 discussions were opened between Charles of Orléans and the duke of Savoy, in which Charles offered to cede his principality of Asti in return for 200,000 écus d’or necessary for his ransom.29 On 17 March 1427 he commanded his officials to inventory and sell as much of his tapestry, books, and plate as they were able. It was an order comparable with the duke of Alençon’s decision, also taken in 1427, to raise the first installment of his ransom through a sale of precious moveable wealth.30 In his warrant Charles referred to ‘les tres grans affaires de nous et nostre frere’. His brother, Jean, count of Angoulême, had been taken into captivity as a pledge for the considerable sum of money owed to the English lords at the treaty of Buzançais in 1412.31 After his own capture at Agincourt, on 22 October 1415, Charles was therefore burdened with the need to find two ransoms. The purpose and energy of his letter suggested a situation had now arisen where cash could secure the release of both men. The duke spoke of how 27 Le Mistère du Siège d’Orléans, ed. François Guessard and Eugène de Certain (Paris,

1862), p. 14. 28 Chroniques de Perceval de Cagny, ed. H. Moranville (Paris, 1902), pp. 22–24. 29 Champion, Vie, p. 185. 30 The warrant is given in Leon de Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne pendant le quinzième

siècle, 2 vols. in 3 (Paris, 1849–52), III, 286–87. Background to the Alençon ransom is found in Perceval de Cagny, p. 23; Jenny Stratford, The Bedford Inventories, Society of Antiquaries (London, 1993), pp. 8–9. 31 M. K. Jones, ‘Henry VII, Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Orléans Ransom’, pp. 254–69.

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‘nous soit besoing d’assembler d’argent par toutes voyes et maneres possibles, soit par vendre ou engaiger nos biens, meubles et autres choses’. Commission was given to Jean de Rochechouart to sell on Charles’s behalf. These measures were put into effect speedily. In instructions given at Blois on 31 May 1427 Rochechouart indicated his need ‘a veoir et visiter toute sa tapicerie et ses livres estans en ceste ville, et rassembler tout ce qui s’en pourra trover’. The following day an extensive inventory of the duke’s goods was drawn up.32 Charles’s initiative came just a week after the English had approved the release terms of his fellow Agincourt prisoner, the duke of Bourbon. If the abstinence was part of an overall settlement, the English would expect to benefit substantially from it. There was of course a financial incentive. The Boke of Noblesse noted the value of Alençon’s ransom to the war effort, ‘a gret relief and socoure to the eide of the conquest’.33 Realizing the ransom money from the dukes of Bourbon and Orléans would give fresh impetus when Bedford, engaged in bringing reinforcements back to France, was looking for a military push to end the war. But the prohibition of the duke of Orléans’s release by the late king, and the risks entailed in appearing to defy his wishes, meant greater political security had to be obtained. The duke of Bourbon, looking for an accommodation with the English, had as early as 16 January 1421 recognized the treaty of Troyes, declaring it ‘bonne, saine et juste’.34 Abstinences de guerre in the early 1420s then provided a truce between the Bourbonnais and the Burgundians (allies of the English). The abstinences also came to involve the English themselves, represented by Perrinet Gressart, the garrison commander at La Charité. A letter of Gressart of 16 September 1427 made the link between abstinence, ransom, and political settlement clear. Concern was expressed over the warlike preparations of Bourbon’s son, the count of Clermont, whose lands had so far been at peace, ‘veu que monseigneur son pere [Bourbon] est en Angleterre et qu’il est bien besoing que tiegne ses pais en seurte pour sener la finance [ransom] pour monditseigneur son pere’.35 Bourbon had renewed his agreement with the English at Canterbury on 10 March 1427, swearing that he would honour his promises to Henry V, and also attempt to bring his son, the count of Clermont, into the English obedience.36 Evidence that the duke of Orléans was ready to follow suit comes in an important but little-known statement of his brother-in-law, Jean, count of Armagnac, drawn up on 2 June 1427.37 This was a response to a communication from 32 Le Roux de Lincy, ‘La bibliothèque de Charles d’Orléans à son château de Blois’, Biblio-

thèque de l’Ecole des Chartes 5 (1843–44), 61; Laborde, Les Ducs de Bourgogne, III, 287–303. 33 The Boke of Noblesse, ed. John Gough Nichols (London, 1860), p. 19. 34 André Leguai, Le Bourbonnais pendant La Guerre de Cent Ans (Moulins, 1969), p. 86. 35 The letter is cited in Keen, Laws of War, p. 161, n. 1; the background to the abstinences is

set out in Leguai, Le Bourbonnais, pp. 326–39. 36 Proceedings and Ordinances of the Privy Council of England [henceforth PPC], ed. N. H.

Nicolas, 6 vols. (Record Commission, 1834–37), III, 255–56. 37 Printed in Charles Samaran, La Maison d’Armagnac au quinzième siècle (Paris, 1907), p.

368.

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Charles, informing Armagnac that the duke was prepared to treat for peace, on his own authority, with the English over ‘the matter of the realm of France’. The duke had expressed his intentions without reference to Charles VII, implying that he was instead preparing to accept the ‘final peace’ of Troyes. A justification of such a controversial step necessarily followed, which Armagnac chose to reproduce in full: qui seroit chose profitable, expedient et necessaire, non tant seulement auxdix royaumes et utilite publique d’iceulx, mes a toute christianite qui est en trouble par la division et guerre laquelle est entre lesdiz deux royaumes, qui est picteuse chose a ouyr, mesmement en regart des prinses des citez, villes, chasteaulx et autres fourtresses, murtres de gens, boutement de feux, violation de fames, et autres enormes et detestables dommaiges, lesquieulx pour cause desdites divisions et guerre sont ensuiz et continuent de jour en jour.

Charles added that he was seeking a realization of the peace agreement because the need for it was so great. He wished to know if Armagnac would accept a treaty with the English, and in the remainder of the document the count set out his assent. The content of this engagement (a form of obligation) by Armagnac suggests Charles was attempting to gather a coalition of sympathetic noblemen who would support a peace settlement based on the treaty of Troyes. Such a plan was amplified in a later treaty, drawn up by Charles at Westminster on 14 August 1433.38 The proposals made here need to be considered alongside the earlier agreement with Armagnac. In the treaty of 1433, which Charles stressed he had drawn up of his own free will, he first referred to a number of earlier offers he had made to ‘my lord Henry, King of the French and of England’. He hoped for a convention that many French noblemen could attend, to secure a lasting peace. The peace would come about through the provision of lands and lordships to Henry’s adversary, the self-styled dauphin. This indicated that the removal of Charles VII from the throne was being considered, and that he would be provided with an appanage as compensation. If an immediate peace could not be concluded the duke would willingly recognize Henry VI as king of England and France, pay homage to him and serve him against his enemies. He would be ready to hand over to Henry his main towns and castles, including Blois, Orléans, and Châteaudun, and instruct his subjects to fight for the English king. Tellingly this list of territory corresponded exactly to that designated in the abstinence de guerre. In return Charles asked that his subjects be allowed to retain their lands, titles, and liberties under the new regime, and that when these promises had beeen fulfilled he would be released, with most of his ransom discharged. This remarkable overture to his captors has been treated with scepticism by French historians. Pierre Champion saw it as a desperate attempt by Duke Charles to secure his freedom by dissimulation, promising unrealisable objectives (‘il demeure bien douteux qu’il fut de bonne foi’).39 Yet Charles was a prince 38 Rymer, X, 556–61. 39 Champion, Vie, pp. 205–6; see also the comments of Gaston du Fresne de Beaucourt,

Histoire de Charles VII, 6 vols. (Paris, 1881–91), II, 463–64.

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who set great store by personal honour. He was capable of a resolute refusal of any proposal by the English that he felt might compromise it. In the aftermath of the Congress of Arras, when anti-Burgundian feeling in England was at its height, Charles was pressed to give a commitment to pursue his war with Burgundy on his release. He rejected this unconditionally and made clear ‘qu’il ferait pour sa deliverance toutes choses que faire pourrait, qu’il ne fussent contre son honneur’.40 If similar objectives to those of 1433 lay behind Charles’s appeal to Armagnac, they were politically and militarily more feasible on that earlier occasion. A key clause of the 1433 treaty bears out this line of argument. Charles promised to use his influence to secure Mont-St-Michel for the English. This was a substantial prize. The beleaguered island fortress was the only major stronghold remaining loyal to Charles VII in north-western France. The French king’s identification with the cult of St. Michael gave its continuing resistance enormous symbolic power, and the failure of the siege of 1424 was seen as proof of the saint’s miraculous protection.41 If the duke brought it over to the English, the triumph would improve his own prospects considerably. There is evidence of such a scheme. In the autumn of 1425 Charles’s bastard brother, Dunois, held the captaincy of Mont-St-Michel. Receiving news that the Bastard’s conduct might be in question, Charles VII ‘pour aucunes choses dont sommes informes, lesquelles pourroient grandememt touchier le peril et dangier d’une grant partie de nostre seigneurie’, took the drastic step of informing his own officers that they were not to re-admit their commander under any circumstances.42 Siméon Luce, in his study of the document, perceived that the Bastard of Orléans’s overriding loyalty was to his captive brother, and the proposals of 1433 had their antecedents much earlier. Trouble continued within the fortress, and members of the garrison were later pardoned for their involvement in a conspiracy to oust Charles VII’s replacement, Louis d’Estouteville, and reinstate their former captain.43 Duke Charles had acquired local influence as lord of neighbouring Saint-Sauveur-Lendelin in the Norman Cotentin, where he had been able to cultivate a following of his own. The resultant uncertainties of allegiance were exploited by the duke in a grant of the Camail, during his captivity, to two members of the Mont-St-Michel garrison, Jean d’Argouges and Pierre Crespin. This bid for support could have enhanced any plot, for these men had previusly been Norman demeurants, recognizing and adhering to the English regime.44 How did Charles reconcile his willingness to co-operate with the English as early as 1427, to secure a general peace based on the treaty of Troyes, with his

40 Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, III, 87–88; Champion, Vie, p. 277. 41 Colette Beaune, Naissance de la nation France (Paris, 1985), pp. 194–95. 42 Chronique du Mont-St-Michel, 1343–1468, ed. Simeon Luce, 2 vols. (Paris, 1879–83), I,

223–24. 43 Gabriel de La Morandière, Histoire de la maison d’Estouteville (Paris, 1903), pp. 334–35. I

owe this and the following reference to Dr. Gareth Prosser. 44 AN Collection Dom Lenoir, 29, fol. 373.

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own concept of personal honour? A number of sources offer an explanation. Cousinot’s Chronique de la Pucelle attributed the abstinence to the fact that the duke and his followers had felt utterly abandoned by Charles VII (‘n’esperoient plus avoir secours du roy’), adding that many of the French nobility understood and sympathized with their predicament.45 The comment echoed Charles’s earlier justification for taking up arms against Charles VI in August 1411. On that occasion his appeal to the nobility of the realm cited the denial of rightful justice to him over the murder of his father. In pursuit of his cause he had negotiated directly with the English to secure military support, and in return had transferred the allegiance of his territories of Angoulême and Perigord to Henry IV.46 Cousinot’s remarks were reinforced by comments of the duke of Bourbon, made in February 1429. Bourbon revealed how Duke Charles had recognized Henry VI as king of France, ‘de bouche, par ecrit et de fait’, again because he felt abandoned (‘il se crut abandonne’) by Charles VII.47 It was the failure of his natural lord to fulfil his obligations that allowed Charles to turn to the English. The vulnerability and isolation of the duke’s lands led one contemporary, in July 1427, to describe Orléans as ‘assise en la frontiere des ennemis et adversaires’.48 The threat was not only from the English, who by November 1426 were breaking into the northern Orléanais, but also from the ravages of the free companies which, unchecked by Charles VII, were creating havoc in the region. In these depressing circumstances, Charles felt that nothing had been done by the French king to secure his release.49 But for his own plan to work, his followers in France must be loyal to him, rather than to their sovereign. The Burgundian diplomat Hugues de Lannoy, who had met Charles in England in 1433, indicated as much: ‘le Batard d’Orleans, les serviteurs et les amis du duc d’Orleans sauroient bien contraindre le roy Charles a la paix generale’.50 Such a higher loyalty, to lordship, country, and christendom, was summarized by Enid McLeod, the duke’s principal English biographer: ‘Charles’s offer was made first and foremost with the aim of ending the war that had brought his country into a state of ruin . . . and as a result of his own mature belief that her own sovereign prince was powerless to save and govern her.’51 The abstinence de guerre negotiated between the dukes of Orléans and Bedford in 1427 was thus part of a larger arrangement that envisaged a major role for Charles in bringing the war to an end. It represented an exceptional opportunity that was to be lost through the actions of an alternative faction within the English camp. 45 46 47 48 49

Chronique de la Pucelle, p. 269. Rymer, VIII, 715–16, 745–50. Leguai, Le Bourbonnais, p. 88. Roger G. Little, The Parlement of Poitiers (London, 1984), p. 90. Details of the incursions of English troops are found in Archives Départementales d’Eure et Loir E 2725 (tabellionnage de Châteaudun, 1426–27); the information on the free companies is drawn from Archives Communales d’Orléans CC 549 (town accounts, 1425–27). 50 Champion, Vie, pp. 276–77, citing a report of Lannoy of 10 September 1436. 51 McLeod, Prince and Poet, pp. 200–1.

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Early in 1428 Bedford made preparations for an invasion of Anjou in an attempt to break the resistance of Charles VII’s regime. By May the Norman estates had granted taxes for this major new operation.52 The regent planned to strike against the Angevin power-base of Yolanda of Aragon, the French king’s mother-in-law and a fervent supporter of his cause. Conditions were favourable for such an advance. The duke of Brittany had been brought back into English allegiance, and had sworn to the treaty of Troyes in September 1427. His brother, Arthur de Richemont, constable of France, had been banished from Charles VII’s court in November and was now conducting a private war in Poitou against the French king’s new favourite, Georges La Trémoille. While Charles VII’s kingdom was paralysed by this feud, Bedford’s enterprising lieutenant, John Talbot, had restored English fortunes in Maine. This would be the platform for the invasion. Troops would gather from the French garrisons and it was hoped that a fresh English army would spearhead the offensive. But in England an entirely different course was being formulated. This bolder but more risky alternative was devised by the duke of Gloucester in collusion with the earl of Salisbury. It ran counter to the regent’s policy, envisaging that an English army would instead march on the city of Orléans, regardless of the truce. As Anne Curry wrote of Salisbury’s indenture of service, the terms of reference for his expedition: ‘for the first time, Bedford lost control of strategy: previous reinforcements sent from England had been placed at his disposal’.53 Some contemporaries clearly realized that the initiative for the new campaign had come from the English council, whose meetings were now dominated by Gloucester.54 Gloucester and Salisbury had been leading commanders under Henry V and may have considered their own plan closer to the wishes of the dead king than the more conservative stance of Bedford. Both had briefly reached Orléans in Henry V’s chevauchée of May 1421, when for one day the Lancastrian army drew up outside the city ramparts.55 The capture of Orléans represented the more direct military option. Once a bridgehead across the Loire was established, the English could break into Berry, the administrative heartland of Charles VII’s ‘kingdom of Bourges’. Such a move offered a rapid and spectacular end to the war. The redirecting of the English offensive of 1428 has always been problematic. The new proposal relied on the outstanding reputation of the earl of Salisbury, regarded as the greatest of all the English commanders. As the chronicler Le Fèvre put it, ‘plus vaillant de luy ne fut en Angleterre, ne peult estre soubz le

52 Benedicta J. Rowe, ‘The Estates of Normandy under the Duke of Bedford, 1422–35’,

English Historical Review 46 (1931), 564–65. 53 Curry, Hundred Years War, pp. 110–11. 54 The Brut, or the Chronicles of England, ed. Friedrich W. D. Brie, EETS o.s. 136 (London,

1908), II, 434. 55 C. T. Allmand, Henry V (London, 1992), p. 163.

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soleil’.56 If anyone could finish the war quickly, in the field, it was Salisbury. The mood of optimism he inspired was caught vividly by one contemporary observer: ‘car de vrai, si les Anglais prenaient Orleans, ils pourraient tres facilement se faire seigneurs de France, et envoyer le dauphin querir son pain a l’hopital’.57 Concern over an impending release for the duke of Orléans may well have influenced the decision. Gloucester and Salisbury were strongly antiBurgundian, and Gloucester now feared a possible rapprochement between the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy. This surprising development arose from Charles’s conviction that the Burgundian duke, Philip the Good, was in no way culpable for his father’s misdeeds, and had led to a sincere wish for reconciliation. Such a coalition would give rise to a united front, that might undermine the English position. As Gloucester was later to put it to Henry VI, ‘paix and alliaunce is made bitwix the two saide dukes [Orléans and Burgundy] to the grettest fortefyng of youre capital adversarie . . . and to youre grettest charge and hurt of both youre royaumes’.58 In 1433 Hugues de Lannoy had been struck by the anxiety of the English that Charles indeed felt amity towards the duke of Burgundy.59 These risks would be avoided if an all-out attack were launched at Orléans. The English would then be able to dictate the shape of events without reliance on others. Gloucester’s distrust was real, and the bad blood between him and Bedford, seen in intermittent sniping over his older brother’s conduct of the war, had now found a damaging focus. The underlying tension was evident in a debate in council, of 25 February 1427, over the instructions given by Henry V, at the time of his last illness, concerning Bedford’s power as regent of France.60 This challenge may have been prompted by the release plan. Sadly, an opportunity to seize control of events and undermine Bedford’s prestige was only too attractive to his brother, Gloucester. There is a tangible sense of drama around the events of the summer. In midJuly 1428, Salisbury’s expedition disembarked in France. Bedford, sensing what was afoot, urgently despatched a delegation to meet with Salisbury at Calais.61 On the earl’s arrival in Paris the regent convened the Grand Conseil, and it was here that the plan to march on Orléans was fully authorized. Monstrelet, who gave the fullest account of these proceedings, described a series of meetings, held over several days, at which the future conduct of the war was debated. After 56 Chronique de Jean Le Févre, seigneur de Saint-Rémy, ed. François Morand, 2 vols. (Paris,

1876–81), II, 141. 57 Chronique d’Antonio Morosini: extraits relatifs à l’histoire de France, ed. Germain Lefèvre-

Pontalis and Leon Dorez, 4 vols. (Paris, 1898–1902), III, 17. 58 Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, ii. 445. The strength of Gloucester’s and Salisbury’s

distrust of Burgundy has been emphasized recently in Mark Warner, ‘The AngloFrench Dual Monarchy and the House of Burgundy, 1420–35: The Survival of an Alliance’, French History 11 (1997), 116–29. 59 Stevenson, Wars of the English, II, i. 233–35. 60 PPC, III, 248. 61 Archives Communales d’Amiens CC 22, fol. 88v.

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much discussion, Orléans was made the target of the forthcoming campaign.62 The objectives championed by Salisbury and Gloucester had been pushed through. An indication that Salisbury retained full control over his reinforced army (there had been a rendezvous at Paris with a force collected by Bedford from the French garrisons) came in a fresh indenture of 29 July, which allowed the earl discretion to wage war on the frontiers as he alone wished (‘que prealeblement il adviseroit estre plus convenable au bien, utilite et prouffit dudit royaume’).63 On 9 August Salisbury was ready to leave for Orléans. Bedford delegated one of his councillors, Thomas Fassier, to travel with the troops, ‘en l’expedition de plusieurs besoignes . . . touchans nos affaires et ceulx de la conduite de l’armee ou nostredit cousin [Salisbury] va de present’, and chose to stay behind in Paris.64 His anger over the decision remained unabated. A controversial and potentially damaging volte-face had occurred. The repercussions for the regent’s policy of negotiation with Duke Charles were quickly felt. Guillaume Cousinot noted that the abstinence de guerre had come into being ‘sous la puissance du duc de Betfort’; the breach had been caused ‘par la durete du conseil de Paris, ne voulait passer l’abstinence, mais fist mettre le siege’.65 To keep up the momentum of support for the alternative strategy the earl of Salisbury wrote to London, on 5 September 1428. Salisbury, based at Janville, which he had stormed a few days earlier, relayed to the capital good tidings: his mobile columns had already reached the Loire and a list of captured towns and castles gave proof of his military success.66 The earl’s intention was to maintain popular backing for the offensive. His report was soon being circulated for propaganda purposes, and its contents were picked up by at least one London chronicle, which noted approvingly: ‘and anon as he [Salisbury] was come into Fraunce, he set sore on the Frenshe men that weren the kynges enemyes, and slewe and destroyed many of hem, and toke villagis, tounys and castellys, and made hem be sworen to the kynge of Engelond’.67 By the time Salisbury’s letter was despatched, it was clear that the terms of the abstinence had been jettisoned. Heralds of the earl reached Orléans at the end of August, now summoning the city to surrender.68 This action was greeted with

62 Monstrelet, IV, 294. 63 BN MS fr. 4484, fol. 106. Transport for Salisbury’s artillery was being gathered from

64 65 66

67 68

towns at the end of July, ‘pour aller au siege devant Orleans’: Archives Communales de Compiègne CC 12, fol. 98. Jarry, Le Compte de l’armée anglaise, p. 78. Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 269–70. Salisbury’s letter is printed in Reginald R. Sharpe, London and the Kingdom, 3 vols. (London, 1894–95), III, 370–71; the list of towns is identified in A. Longnon, ‘Les limites de la France et l’étendue de la domination anglaise à l’époque de la mission de Jeanne d’Arc’, Revue des Questions Historiques 18 (1875), 486–88. The Brut, p. 434. Jarry, Le Compte de l’armée anglaise, pp. 82–84. The anger felt over Salisbury’s invasion of the duke’s lands is shown in a letter of Jean, Bastard of Orléans, which refers to ‘la damnable entreprise’ of the English: Archives Communales d’Orléans CC 653, fol. 26v.

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outrage. But prospects looked bleak, and the jewels, books, and tapestry that had been amassed to pay Duke Charles’s ransom now had to be transported further south, to avoid the danger of English pillaging. Charles’s loyal servant Jean de Rochechouart moved rapidly to assemble a convoy. The procession of laden carts was escorted by archers and outriders borrowed from nearby garrisons. It presented a poignant image as it trundled its way to the relative safety of La Rochelle.69 It seems likely that Charles felt personally betrayed by Salisbury’s conduct. As the author of the Journal du Siège put it, the earl ‘avoit failly a la promesse au duc d’Orleans, prisonnier en Angleterre, qu’il ne mesferoit en aucune de ses terres’.70 Further insight on this is provided in another local chronicle, which described the duke’s gift to Salisbury of a precious jewel (valued at 6,000 écus d’or) as a token of their compact. The detail is corroborated in a document reference to Charles’s servant, Alain du Bey, travelling to Blois ‘qui estoit commis a aler devers le comte de Salbery pour pourchacier l’abstinence’.71 Disregarding this pledge was a breach of faith to a fellow-knight, a theme given prominence in the Mistère du Siège, where Salisbury’s oath to the duke was introduced as a dramatic counterpoint to his subsequent attack on the city.72 After making further reductions in the Blésois and Orléanais, Salisbury began a full-scale investment on 12 October, opening his offensive on the south side of the river Loire, where he had concentrated most of his artillery. On 24 October his soldiers stormed the Tourelles, a fortified point at the southern end of the bridge. But two days later he was struck in the face by a splinter from a cannonball shot. The wound was fatal and the earl died on 3 November. The English were stunned by the loss of their best commander. Jean de Waurin, who had fought under Salisbury, believed that if only the earl had lived another three months, the city of Orléans would have fallen into their hands.73 Salisbury’s military ability was acknowledged with grim satisfaction at the court of Charles VII, where great relief was felt at the passing of a man who had done so much damage to their cause. But for the defenders of Orléans his death was seen as divine judgment for 69 AN KK 269, fols. 52v–53r; Le Roux de Lincy, ‘La bibliothèque de Charles d’Orléans’,

pp. 62–63. 70 Journal du Siège, in Procès de condamnation et de réhabilitation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. J. Quich-

erat, 5 vols. (Paris, 1841-49), IV, 102. 71 Jarry, Le Compte de l’armée anglaise, p. 68, citing the reference in Archives Communales

d’Orléans CC 653; Chronique de l’établissement de la fête, in Quicherat, Procès, V, 286. 72 Mistère du Siège, pp. 15–16, 142–43. 73 J. de Wavrin, Recueil de croniques et anchiennes istoires de la Grant Bretaigne, ed. William

and Edward L. C. P. Hardy, 5 vols., Rolls Series (London, 1864–91), V, 252–53. Salisbury’s skilled use of artillery and his record in carrying towns by assault is considered in Mark Warner, ‘Chivalry in Action: Thomas Montagu and the War in France, 1417–28’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 42 (1998), 162–66. The shock felt in England on the news of Salisbury’s death is vividly portrayed in a letter of Chancellor John Kempe to Bishop Gray of 9 December 1428. Kempe described a nation united in grief over the untimely death of a great commander, milice nostre pugilis principis et floris: BL MS Cleopatra CIV, fols. 162v–163v.

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his breach of promise, his faulsette, as a popular song composed within a month of the event made plain.74 The siege now settled into a longer-term pattern of blockade and attrition. The English captains chose to adopt a different, more complex plan, to enclose the city by building fortresses (bastilles) that would guard all the communication routes, by land and water. But it was too ambitious and never became fully effective.75 Bedford, who sent further reinforcements and directed the provisioning of the army, came no closer than Chartres. His refusal to take personal command may indicate that he felt compromised by the breaking of the truce. The war drifted into an uneasy stalemate, and when an attempt to capture an English supply train was decisively defeated by Sir John Fastolf (the battle of Rouvray, or ‘the Herrings’, of 12 February 1429), a last attempt was made to rescue the policy of abstinence. Duke Charles and his followers in Orléans were aware that the death of Salisbury had removed the main instigator of the breach. The lack of military progress and the great expense of the siege allowed an honourable withdrawal. A delegation from Orléans decided to appeal to the duke of Burgundy to act as an intermediary, in an effort to get the abstinence reinstated. Guillaume Cousinot told how a party of nobles and bourgeois from the city visited the duke of Burgundy, hoping through his good offices to reopen negotiations with Bedford that might lift the siege and restore the abstinence de guerre (‘requirant le duc de Bedford qu’il voulust faire lever le siege et consentir ladicte abstinence’).76 The content of their offer, which was intended for the regent in Paris, can be learnt from one source, a letter of the merchant Pancrace Giustiniani (dated at Bruges, 10 May 1429). According to Giustiniani, Bedford was asked to raise the siege under the following conditions: Burgundy would be able to appoint governors of the city, on behalf of the duke of Orléans; half the taxes would go directly to Henry VI, half to Duke Charles to contribute to his ransom; the English would be given military access to the Orléanais, and could pass through it as they wished; a specific contribution of 10,000 écus d’or would be granted to Bedford each year for war expenses.77 It was an astute move, embodying much of the substance of the duke of Orléans’s proposal to the English, and it came close to success. The effectiveness of this offer, which occurred sometime in March 1429, has been underestimated by historians. If the terms related by Giustiniani are accurate, it is difficult to concur with the view of Claude Desama that the embassy was a ploy devised by Charles VII’s councillors to sow dissension between the

74 A. de Blangy, Mort du comte de Salberi (Caen, 1893), pp. 1–25. For the reaction within

Charles VII’s circle see Chroniques de roi Charles VII, par Gilles le Bouvier, dit le hérault Berry, ed. Henri Corteault and Léonce Cellier (Paris, 1979), pp. 132–33. 75 The change of plan is outlined in Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 264–65; the criticism of the system of bastilles is made by Jean de Bueil, Le Jouvencel, ed. Camille Favre and Leon Lecestre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1887–89), II, 44. 76 Chronique de la Pucelle, pp. 269–70. 77 Morosini, III, 19.

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English and Burgundians.78 Contemporary sources point to it originating from Duke Charles’s supporters within Orléans. Monstrelet was well-informed on the circumstances that led the English eventually to refuse the terms.79 On hearing the request, relayed by Burgundy, Bedford summoned the Grand Conseil to discuss the issue. The regent was initially sympathetic: the siege had become very expensive and they had lost some of their best soldiers; their military position was overstretched and the terms on offer allowed them access to Orléans. But further meetings revealed growing distrust of the role of the duke of Burgundy. The duke’s ostentation antagonized some of the councillors, who felt they had borne the brunt of the struggle and that he was seeking to take all the credit. Bedford himself seems to have become suspicious and angry over the wish to keep the city and its lands in a state of neutrality and, with emotions running high, made it clear that they could only be held of Henry VI as king of France. It was this stand on principle that alienated Burgundy, who then withdrew his forces from the siege. A final opportunity to return to the policy of abstinence had been lost. The English were now unable to maintain any form of blockade. In April a relief force under Joan of Arc gained access to the city. The defenders were given new hope and launched a series of attacks against the bastilles that forced the English withdrawal from Orléans on 8 May. Joan had no knowledge of the earlier treaty with Bedford or Duke Charles’s own political intentions. She saw her mission in straightforward terms: the liberation of the duke would be achieved through military success against the English, leading to the capture of enough prisoners to secure his exchange, and the recovery of his lands.80 It was ironic that Joan felt a particular responsibility for Charles, whom she perceived as an innocent victim; the discrepancy between this simple view and the complex political reality surely accounts for the duke’s subsequent disinclination to comment on her achievement. The debacle at Orléans marked a turning-point in the war. As a London chronicler sadly noted: ‘and sith forth . . . English men never gat ne prevailed in France, bot ever after began to lefe, bi litel and lytel, til al was lost’.81 For the duke of Bedford, who came back to England in the summer of 1433 to face further criticisms from Gloucester, it represented a calamitous decision. His anger was still evident in the articles he drew up for the young king, justifying his policy in France: ‘al thyng prospered for you tyl the tyme of the seige of Orleance, takyn in hand God knoweth by what avys’.82 The regent’s return saw a renewal of discussions with Duke Charles. Charles, who clearly felt he could still trust Bedford,

78 Claude Desama, ‘Jeanne d’Arc et la diplomatie de Charles VII: l’ambassade française

auprès de Philippe le Bon en 1429’, Annales de Bourgogne 40 (1968), 290–99. 79 Monstrelet, IV, 317–18. 80 De Cagny, p. 148; Procès de condamnation de Jeanne d’Arc, ed. Pierre Tisset and Yvonne

Lanhers, 3 vols. (Paris, 1960–71), I, 128–29. 81 The Brut, p. 500. 82 PPC, IV, 223.

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was prepared to reaffirm his support for a peace policy based on the treaty of Troyes. An indication of this co-operation is shown in one report of how the duke of Orléans advised Bedford to create a rural militia in Normandy to deal with the growing problem of brigandage, a measure that was actually put in place in January 1434.83 But the situation in France had changed greatly in the six-year interval between their talks. Charles VII had been crowned at Reims, and his authority and prestige had grown considerably; the English had lost their confidence and had suffered a number of demoralising military defeats. As a consequence, the plan for assembling a conference of noblemen without the sanction of the French king was no longer realistic. Gloucester’s influence was in the ascendant again. The death of Bedford in September 1435, accompanied by Burgundy’s defection from the English alliance at the Congress of Arras, left the only hope for Duke Charles in Henry VI’s own wish that he adopt a mediating role. It was this that finally led to his release on 3 November 1440. Yet a real possibility had existed, when the abstinence de guerre had been signed at Blois in July 1427, of bringing the duke of Orléans and other great feudatories into the war on the English side. The sense of betrayal that the duke felt towards his natural sovereign, Charles VII, was brought out at Nevers in January 1442, when the lords of the realm attempted a reconciliation between the two men. Duke Charles’s articles recalled his bitterness. During his imprisonment he claimed to have had no ‘substance or provision’ sent to him by the crown, in fact no financial help at all. He accused Charles VII of enjoying the profits of taxes and subventions from his lands without diverting any to him in England. Moreover, royal officials had taken advantage of his long absence to seize castles, towns, and lordships that were rightfully his. The king replied pointedly that the days of peace conventions proposed by the duke of Orléans were over. He reminded the duke, and the other lords, of the English insistence on holding their French possessions without paying homage. It was a thing he would never consent to, and he added with wry humour that he was sure they would not either.84 Duke Charles’s longing for la bonne paix during his imprisonment, a theme of a number of his ballades, had offered the English an extraordinary chance. They might have capitalized on his disillusionment and engineered a settlement for the whole of France, based on the treaty of Troyes. The decision to put aside both chivalric scruple and a formal truce, and to besiege the city of Orléans, lost them this opportunity. It proved a terrible mistake.

83 Les Cronicques de Normendie, 1223–1453, ed. A. Hellot (Rouen, 1881), p. 82. 84 McLeod, Prince and Poet, pp. 263–64.

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THE BROTHERS ORLÉANS AND THEIR KEEPERS

The Brothers Orléans and their Keepers WILLIAM ASKINS

T

HERE have been several detailed accounts of the many years Charles of Orléans spent in England, but a full exploration of the cultural environment in which he found himself has been circumscribed, if not stifled, by several of the commonplaces which have emerged from these studies. The first of these is that both Charles and his brother, Jean of Angoulême, found their English years troublesome, worrisome, perhaps even inhospitable.1 Unless one subscribes to the view that adversity and misery foster creativity or, in Jean of Angoulême’s case, scholarship, it is difficult to imagine how under such circumstances Charles, for his part, could have turned out such a substantial body of first-rate poetry. A variation on this theme is the claim that Charles was at sixes and sevens until he fell into the hands of his English friend, William de la Pole, duke of Suffolk. Thus Enid McLeod, for one, believed that Suffolk rescued him from ‘the pit of loneliness and despair’ and the ‘bonds of frustrating inactivity that had held him captive for seventeen years’, and, more recently, Nigel Wilkins suggests that Charles entered ‘a network of Anglo-French poetic exchange . . . especially from August 1432 when he was put into the keeping of William de la Pole’.2 But Charles had been in England for seventeen years at that point, and, as Wilkins himself acknowledges, wrote poetry before his capture at Agincourt and arrived in England wearing it, as it were, on his sleeve. A fresh look at the course of Charles’s captivity in England and his guardians other than Suffolk might indicate that Wingfield was not the only place in England which might have proved congenial to him. As a number of the contributors to this volume suggest, an account of the time Charles and his brother, Jean of Angoulême, spent in England is essentially an account of their intellectual lives. These can be measured, in part, by the libraries they accumulated during their stay, and a clearer sense of the circumstances in which they collected those books seems therefore desirable. The sheer weight of that evidence provides the student of fifteenth-century literature 1

For the range of opinion regarding the conditions Charles faced during his imprisonment, see M. Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 15–17. I am indebted to Professor Arn for a number of the references cited in these notes to material which she has generously shared with me, as well as the suggestion that I undertake this essay. 2 McLeod, Prince and Poet, p. 186 and Nigel Wilkins, ‘Music and Poetry at Court’, in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherburne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 1983), p. 197.

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with an unusual opportunity to study the forces that stirred the mix of French and English literary cultures during this period and suggests that, whatever the exigencies of political history and whatever their problems raising their ransoms, Charles and Jean responded to their ‘captivity’ in England with imagination and intelligence. A privileged glimpse into the feelings the brothers may have had about their ‘imprisonment’ might be provided, for example, by (of all things) Jean of Angoulême’s autograph copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron (Paris, BN MS fr. 1122), a manuscript which has received none of the attention lavished upon his copy of The Canterbury Tales (Paris, BN MS angl. 39).3 This manuscript, like the Chaucer manuscript, opens with a table of contents which suggests that Jean had planned to transcribe the whole of the Decameron. For whatever reason, he abandoned that idea and copied but one of its hundred tales, not the first, nor the last, but the eighth tale of the second day, one of the few in the collection with an English setting and one which offers some intriguing parallels to the situation in which Jean and Charles found themselves. The story deals with a certain Gualtieri, the viceroy of France, who is humiliated and victimized by intrigues at the French court. Having had a price put on his head by the French king, he is forced to flee to England with his two children with only the clothes on their backs. Unable to support them, he leaves them in the care of the English nobility, one with the wife of ‘one of the King of England’s marshals’ in London and the second with ‘another of the king’s marshals’ in Wales. There the children are raised in comfortable circumstances while Gualtieri himself journeys to Ireland looking for work. The story continues with a number of fairy-tale twists and turns, until, years later, Gualtieri’s reputation is restored at the French court and he, the two children who have since married, and their Anglo-French families live happily ever after in Paris. The shape of this story depends partially on its contrast between the civility and generosity of the English nobility and the depravity of the French court, marked by ‘envious proclivities’ and lasciviousness to the point of obscenity, and it does not seem surprising that Jean of Angoulême or Charles of Orléans would have been drawn to it. After their mother, herself the victim of slander, had been banished from Paris in 1395 and their father murdered in the city in 1407, the brothers were repeatedly humiliated by the French crown. From this point of view, they might have regarded their removal to England with, at the very least, a sense of relief and Boccaccio’s tale might have struck that chord. On a more general level, one of the distinguishing features of the English library of Charles of Orléans is that, unlike that of his brother, it is dominated by a number of scientific works contained in at least a dozen manuscripts. These include several texts at the fringe of the scientific tradition, Simon de Couvin’s 3

Among several studies of Jean of Angoulême’s Chaucer manuscript, see Martin M. Crow, ‘John of Angoulême and his Chaucer Manuscript’, Speculum 17 (1942), 86–99, and Paul Strohm, ‘Jean of Angoulême: A Fifteenth Century Reader of Chaucer’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971), 69–76.

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astrological poem on the Black Death (Paris, BN MS lat. 8389) and what I believe may have been a copy of an alchemical handbook attributed to Raymond Lull.4 More traditional texts include works by Hippocrates and Galen (Paris, BN MS lat. 6868) and the usual medieval authorities, Bernard Gordon, Arnauld of Villanova and others, the standard texts read by medical students in Paris and at the English universities.5 Though Charles had with him in England a French translation of a widely-read medical manual, The Tables of Health, La Tour de la Grant Richesse (Paris, BN MS fr. 222), he did not hesitate to purchase from the estate of the duke of Bedford the Latin version of the same text (Paris, BN MS lat. 6977). Most of these works seem to have been sent to Charles by his French friends and thus tell us little about his contacts with English culture. They do, however, suggest something about his character, his intellectual curiosity perhaps, his concern for his well-being certainly. Nor are they unrelated to the study of his poetry, since, as Glending Olson and others have pointed out, medieval medical authorities subscribed to an aesthetic in which pleasure and delight are central, and texts about the circulation of the blood and the rhythms of the heart especially are closely associated with the composition of lyric poetry.6 As is well-known, the library that Charles collected in England contained an even more substantial number of devotional texts. Some of these too were sent to him from France, for example, his mother’s copy of the Franciscan Durand of Champagne’s Miroir de l’âme which Champion describes and inadvertently retitles Miroir des dames! However, unlike the scientific and medical texts, many of these works appear to have been acquired in England. These include exotic works like his anthology of prophetic writings attributed to Joachim of Fiore (Paris, BN MS lat. 3319).7 But the bulk of them indicate that Charles fully participated in the preoccupation with Christ’s humanity which characterized late medieval spirituality and drew much of its energy from a work which has been described as ‘that great storehouse of late medieval devotion’, the pseudoBonaventuran Meditationes vitae Christi.8 Charles had a copy of this text with him 4

5

6

7 8

All references to works owned by Charles are to those listed in Pierre Champion, La Libraire. Based on its incipit, the only record of what it might have contained, the volume which Champion entitles ‘Physique’ could be an alchemical work attributed to Raymond Lull, more commonly known as De secretis naturae. See the description of the manuscripts of this work in Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science (New York, 1934), IV, 648–49, especially the description of Bologna, University Library MS 1353 (2591). See Robert S. Gottfried, Doctors and Medicine in Medieval England: 1340–1530 (Princeton, 1986), pp. 168–206, for a sense of how the medical texts owned by Charles compare with those read in the medical schools. Glending Olson, Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages (Ithaca, 1982), pp. 19–38, and Madeline Pelner Cosman, ‘Machaut’s Medical Musical World’, in Madeline Pelner Cosman and Bruce Chandler, eds., Machaut’s World: Science and Art in the Fourteenth Century (New York, 1978), pp. 1–36. On this and related manuscripts, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1967), pp. 535–36. For a recent discussion of these developments in religious history, see David Aers and

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in England and may have acquired it there, and Jean of Angoulême, for his part, copied the Meditationes in his own hand (Paris, BN MS lat. 3756). When it came to books, the situation in which the brothers found themselves must have been similar to that faced by Poggio Bracciolini when he was attached to the household of Cardinal Beaufort and toured England looking for rare classical texts. What he found instead, to his distress (and Poggio’s letters from England are filled with distress), was a sea of religious texts.9 Jean of Angoulême and Charles, unlike Poggio, seem to have valued these works highly, and they seem critical to any discussion of the impact of English culture on their intellectual lives. There is no reason to believe that Charles was not drawn to English books as soon as he landed in England. Between October 1415 and June 1417, he was housed at Eltham, Windsor, Westminster, and the Tower of London as were the other Agincourt captives, and he could have availed himself of the library at Eltham which Henry IV had built there in 1401 or the books collected by Henry V and, at the Tower, may have met his fellow poet, James the First of Scotland.10 Though Henry V owned copies of the works of Chaucer and Gower, authors with whom Charles and his brother would become familiar, a comparison of the published inventories of the libraries of Henry V and Charles is not very helpful.11 The inventory of Henry’s books seems not to include the volumes mentioned in the codicil to his will, the devotional texts he gave to Christ Church, Canterbury, to the Charterhouse at Sheen, and to Syon Abbey. In the course of his discussion of several Latin books of devotion with which both Charles and Jean

Lynn Staley, The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in Late Medieval Culture (University Park, Pa., 1996). 9 For a recent discussion of Poggio Bracciolini’s stay in London, see David Rundle, ‘On the Difference between Virtue and Weiss: Humanist Texts in England during the Fifteenth Century’, in Courts, Counties and the Capital in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Diana Dunn (New York, 1996), pp. 181–204. 10 Most accounts of the itinerary of James I indicate that he was kept in the Tower throughout 1416 and taken to the north of England in March of 1417, shortly before Charles travelled the same road; see, for one, the introduction to John Norton-Smith, The Kingis Quair (Oxford, 1971). 11 I have of course compared the books which Champion inventories and indicates were in England with Charles with the list of Henry’s books prepared by G. L. Harriss, ‘Henry V’s Books’, in K. B. McFarlane, Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights (Oxford, 1972), pp. 233–38. Titles common to both lists include: the Epistles of Seneca, The Sentences of Peter Lombard, and the Epistles of Peter of Blois, but in each instance the copies owned by Charles were gifts from France, and though Henry and Charles both owned copies of the Summa of Raymond Pennaforte, Charles’s manuscript (Paris, BN MS lat. 3520) was formerly the property of a canon of Winchester. Furthermore, most of the books listed by Harris were confiscated in Meaux in 1422. For more information about the libraries of Henry IV and his son, see Jenny Stratford, ‘The Royal Library in England before the Reign of Edward IV’, in Nicholas Rogers, ed., England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford, 1994), pp. 191–93, and Jeanne Krochalis, ‘The Books and Reading of Henry V and his Circle’, Chaucer Review 23 (1988), 50–77.

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of Angoulême were familiar, A. I. Doyle has indicated that ‘the manuscripts of the Orléans brothers evince links with Syon and Canterbury’.12 Syon Abbey, however, did not open its doors until 1432, ten years after Henry V’s death and seventeen years after Charles arrived in England, and it might be reasonably suggested that Charles and his brother might have come across these works before they reached these religious houses. In any event, London did not provide Charles or his brother with the only opportunity to find such manuscripts. For his part, in June 1417, shortly before Henry V returned to France, Charles was removed from London to the West Riding of Yorkshire and placed in the care of Robert Waterton. Though several authorities have described Waterton as the constable of Pontefract, he was not appointed to that post until 1424, well after Charles had left his keeping. In 1417, Waterton’s duties were far more complex. He was chief steward of the duchy of Lancaster’s northern lands and Pontefract was his administrative center. At least twenty years older than Charles, Waterton did not participate in the Agincourt campaign, but he had served Henry IV, first, by looking after the deposed Richard II who died on his watch, and, second, as an ambassador to the Low Countries and to Scandinavia. The skills suggested by these responsibilities came into play when Henry V asked him to mind a slew of Scottish and French prisoners which included the duke of Bourbon, Arthur of Richmond, and Marshall Boucicault, as well as Charles.13 The circumstances under which these prisoners were kept are worth some pause. Though Pontefract has been described as ‘a stern and comfortless dwelling in that bleak northern climate’ by one of the biographers of Charles of Orléans, another scholar argues that it possessed ‘a stylish grandeur which would have made it worthy of depiction among the chateaux of the duke of Berry in the Très Riches Heures’.14 Sorting through these competing claims might prove worthwhile, but the plain truth may be that Charles spent much of his time at Waterton’s new home, Metheley Hall, which has been ambiguously described as a ‘country estate’.15 Apart from several massive oak doors, little was left of the original architecture of Metheley Hall by the time English antiquarians got around to describing it, but its remains nonetheless include signs of a moat ‘at

12 A. I. Doyle, ‘The European Circulation of Three Latin Spiritual Texts’, in A. J. Minnis,

ed., Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 129–46. 13 Most of the information about Waterton’s career which follows is drawn from H. Armstrong Hall, ‘Some Notes on the Family and Personal History of Robert Waterton of Metheley and Waterton’, Thoresby Society Miscellanea V (1909), 81–102. When Waterton was appointed constable of Pontefract in 1424, the post may have been given him in recognition of his advancing years; he died the year after. 14 McLeod, Prince and Poet, p. 145, and Anthony Goodman, John of Gaunt (London, 1992), p. 308. 15 There is an autograph letter from Henry V to Waterton indicating that the latter should keep Charles at Pontefract rather than Metheley Hall, but the letter is undated and may have never been sent. Though not a signet letter, it is calendared in J. L. Kirby, Calendar of Signet Letters of Henry IV and Henry V (London, 1978), p. 180, item 881.

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least sixty feet wide’ according to one estimate and such evidence as there is would suggest that it was the first of a number of formidable strongholds in which Charles was kept.16 Furthermore, though recently published household accounts from Metheley Hall have suggested to their editor that Waterton and his household ‘lived on a lavish scale’, they might be better read as a sign that Waterton took his charges home with him, the better perhaps to keep an eye on them, and that he fed them well.17 Furthermore, since there is a record of Charles having given gifts to Waterton’s wife, he may have been lodged at Metheley Hall for long periods of time and been taken with the generosity of his hosts. These considerations cast doubt on the claims of several scholars that Waterton may have been a bit too free and easy with Charles and that Henry V was distressed with Waterton for this reason.18 In a letter of October 1419, Henry asked the bishop of Durham to ascertain whether or not Waterton had been ‘reckless’ in his ‘keeping’ of Charles and told the bishop to warn Waterton not to be ‘blinded’ by Orléans and to beware the ‘fair speech and promises’ to which Charles was inclined.19 This letter might better serve as an indication of Henry’s political anxieties rather than evidence that he had well-founded misgivings about Waterton. Indeed, if Waterton were truly reckless, he would not have been asked to shepherd more than a half a dozen Scottish prisoners some years later, in 1424, the year before he died. This same letter might also be read as homage paid to the charm of Charles of Orléans. Though readers of the poetry might think themselves well-served by a picture of Charles moping in some chilly room in Yorkshire and turning out the occasional roundel to alleviate his suffering, the evidence as easily indicates that Charles was unusually adept at the social graces. This seems confirmed by yet another letter written almost twenty years later, in which the duke of Gloucester, no friend to Charles, opposed his return to France in 1438 on the grounds that his ‘grete Subtilite and Cautaleux Disposition’ might be turned against English interests in France.20 In addition to the evidence that Waterton was an intelligent and capable civil servant, he may have been as congenial as was Charles. He was well known throughout the community, once assuring Henry V that he would ‘excite and stir’ the local gentry to participate in what would prove the king’s last French campaign.21 Though the scant remains of Metheley Hall are not a clear guide to Waterton’s own cultural interests, the striking alabaster effigy of himself and his 16 See Hilda le Patourel, The Moated Sites of Yorkshire (London, 1973), and W. B. Crump,

‘Metheley Hall and its Builders’, Thoresby Society Miscellanea XI (1945), 313–15. 17 C. M. Woolgar, ed., Household Accounts from Medieval England (Oxford, 1993), II, 503–22. 18 Lucy de Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans: An Attempt to Trace the Contacts

Between Them During Their Captivity in England’, in Miscellanea di studi e ricerche sul quattrocento francese, ed. Franco Simone (Turin, 1967), p. 69. 19 The text is given in full in Hall, ‘Some Notes of . . . Robert Waterton’, pp. 84–85. 20 McLeod, Prince and Poet, p. 237. 21 The text is given in full in Hall, ‘Some Notes of . . . Robert Waterton’, pp. 85–86. Hall dates it 1320 but its content is more suitable to the first half of 1321 when Henry was actively recruiting soldiers to return to France with him.

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wife which Waterton commissioned for his tomb, the work of artisans in York, suggest that his sensibilities were refined and that the West Riding was hardly a cultural wasteland.22 Shortly after he took Charles there, he was also assigned the responsibility for the education of Richard, duke of York, which he supervised from 10 October 1417 until 1423. Though it is possible that Waterton, sometimes keeper of the king’s horses and dogs, might have taught Richard to ride and to bear arms himself, it is likely that training in literacy was assigned to someone else, that the duke of York was educated not in the collegiate school at Pontefract but by a private tutor associated with Waterton’s household.23 That tutor, whoever he was, was himself clearly capable. The English chronicler, John Hardying, would later marvel at the duke of York’s intelligence and his Latin.24 One person who might have whipped the duke of York’s Latin into shape was Richard Fleming, kinsman to Waterton’s wife, Cecelia Fleming, and then a curate in the area. His name appears on several legal instruments associated with Waterton and Metheley Hall, and, recently graduated from Oxford where he was by all accounts a brilliant student, this is the same Richard Fleming who would later become bishop of Lincoln (1420–1431), exhume Wycliffe, and throw his bones into the Swift. Whether or not he actually tutored the duke of York, his dealings with Waterton while he was in Yorkshire indicate that he certainly could have met Waterton’s distinguished guest, Charles of Orléans. Later Fleming initiated the founding of Lincoln College, Oxford, and, while it is not clear that he owned the twenty-nine manuscripts he would eventually bequeath to Lincoln College at this point in his life, a comparison of their titles with those in the possession of Charles might be of some value. These include Fleming’s Flores ex St. Bernardi operibus collecti (Oxford, Lincoln College MS latin 29); miscellaneous works of Bernard frequently appear in the prayer books Charles had compiled in England (Paris, BN MS lat. 1196, BN MS lat. 1201 and BN MS lat. 2049). Charles also seems to have acquired in England a copy of Heinrich of Suso’s Horologium divinae sapientiae, a title which Fleming also owned (Oxford, Lincoln College MS latin 48). Among Fleming’s other books were two copies of the Sentences of Peter Lombard and one of the Epistulae of Peter of Blois, though, in each instance, the copies of the same titles which Charles carted about England seem to be of French origin. This does not, however, preclude the possibility that Fleming’s manuscripts could have been copied from the French texts, and, whatever the merit of this specific comparison, I would suggest that serious inquiry into the formation of the English library of Charles of Orléans has to take into account not

22 For what they found, see Crump, ‘Metheley Hall’, pp. 314–15, and for the effigy see

Lawrence Stone, Sculpture in Britain: The Middle Ages (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1972), p. 200 and plate 157. 23 For the account of the education of princes on which these assertions rest, see Nicholas Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London, 1973), pp. 70–71. 24 Henry Ellis, ed., The Chronicle of John Hardying (London, 1812), pp. 421–22.

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only his keepers and their households but also the gentry and ecclesiastical circles through which these keepers moved.25 Richard Fleming, if not Waterton himself, could have also familiarized Charles with the some of the Latin devotional authors, especially those from Yorkshire, whose works comprise a significant portion of his English library as well as that of his brother. Both brothers seem to have been drawn to the work of Richard Rolle, though, by the early fifteenth century, one could have come across a Rolle manuscript virtually anywhere in England. Jean owned a copy of Rolle’s Latin Psalter (Paris, BN MS lat. 431) and Jean and Charles seems to have shared a copy of Rolle’s Judica (Paris, BN MS lat. 543) which resembles, as Doyle points out, a manuscript in Syon Abbey.26 Another work sometimes attributed to Richard Rolle is found in another manuscript partially in the hand of Jean of Angoulême, this a meditation on the Holy Spirit (Paris, BN MS lat. 3638).27 Charles also owned and imitated the work of another Yorkshire writer, John Hovenden, the Franciscan chaplain to Eleanor of Aquitaine, though in this instance he certainly found the manuscript containing Hovenden’s work in London.28 But copies of the work of a third Yorkshire divine, the Meditations of Stephen of Sawley on the joys of the Virgin Mary are not as common and most of the nine surviving manuscripts tend to be from the north of England.29 I do not know if the manuscript of the Meditations that Charles owned (Paris, BN MS lat. 1201, fols. 24v–38) shows signs of having been copied from an English exemplar, but if it does, Yorkshire would have been a likely source. It seems likely that Robert Waterton and Richard Fleming especially would have been familiar with these local authors. Rolle himself had of course haunted Pontefract three quarters of century before Charles of Orléans entered its confines. In December of 1419, shortly after Richard Fleming was promoted to the see at Lincoln (20 November 1419), Charles of Orléans was transferred to the care of Sir Nicholas Montgomery, the constable at Tutbury castle (Staffordshire). Montgomery was another Lancastrian retainer, at least ten years Charles’s senior, but a veteran of the campaigns of 1415 and 1416 who was responsible, from time to 25 For Richard Fleming and a list of twenty-nine books he bequeathed to Lincoln College,

26 27

28

29

Oxford, see A. B. Emden, A Biographical Register of the University of Oxford (Oxford, 1957), I, 697–99. Though the Oxford scholar possessed the De proprietatibus rerum of Bartholemew Anglicus (Oxford, Lincoln College MS latin 57), the illuminated copy Charles had with him in England was the French translation of this work by Jean Corbechon. A. I. Doyle, ‘Three Latin Spiritual Texts’, p. 140. For an edition of this text and a description of its manuscripts, many of which were English, see André Wilmart, Auteurs Spirituel et Textes Dévot du Moyen Age Latin (Paris, 1971), pp. 415–56. For his imitation of Hovenden, see Gilbert Ouy, ‘Un poeme mystique de Charles d’Orléans: le ‘‘Canticum Amoris’’ ’, Studi Francesi 20 (1959), 64–71. Copies of the poem appear in Paris, BN MS lat. 1196 (the work of an English copyist) and Paris, BN MS lat. 1203. The text of Stephen of Sawley’s work is edited and its manuscripts described by Wilmart, Auteurs Spirituel, pp. 316–60.

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time, for looking after another Agincourt prisoner, the duke of Bourbon. Tutbury, like Pontefract, was a Lancastrian stronghold and the site of the annual summer gathering of minstrels established there by John of Gaunt in 1381, an event that Charles of Orléans, who had a taste for minstrel fare, would have missed.30 Indeed, since Charles spent only the winter of 1419–1420 in Montgomery’s custody, an extended discussion of Montgomery’s character, his circle, or the cultural ambience at Tutbury might prove of little value. Nor, I think, it is necessary to read intrigue into the fact the Charles spent only a season at Tutbury. The author of the most recent biographical sketch of Montgomery speculates that, like Waterton, ‘he too may have been captivated by the Frenchman’s blandishments’ and was thus deprived of Charles’s company, but, for reasons I have explained, this strikes me as a fiction, and, if Montgomery were a lax keeper, he would not been asked to look after the duke of Bourbon after Charles had left his care.31 The simple truth may be that Montgomery was better positioned than Waterton to escort Charles to London, which is precisely what he did in the spring or early summer of 1320.32 It was in London that Charles met his next keeper, Sir Thomas Burton, who had represented Rutland in the Parliament of 1320 and, at its conclusion, must have escorted Charles from the city to Fotheringay castle, Northampton, where Burton was constable. Charles now found himself in the company of a man twenty-five years his senior, a retainer of, first, Edward, duke of York, and then the house of Lancaster. Burton had participated in both the Glendower war and the Agincourt campaign and had also looked after some of the other prisoners collected in 1415: Arthur of Richmond, Marshall Boucicault, and Charles, count of Eu, all of whom had left Fotheringay by the time the duke of Orléans arrived.33 Since Charles was with Burton for little more than a year, it is difficult to subscribe to the exaggerated claim that his stay at Fotheringay ‘were the grimmest and most hopeless years of any that he spent in England’.34 Burton himself was not uncivilized. He was personally responsible for the upkeep of the college his grandfather had founded at Tolethorpe, his ancestral home, and it does not seem unlikely that during this period, he could have taken Charles to see his brother, Jean, then at Maxey, Peterborough, a few miles away from Fotheringay. It is true while Burton looked after Charles he was being hounded by his creditors (this the result of his service to the Crown), that he had been outlawed as a result, and that he seems to have little to do with his neighbors. It seems worth noting, nonetheless, that while Charles was at Fotheringay and Jean of

30 For one such work, see Pierre Champion, La Librairie, pp. 53–54. 31 See J. S. Roskell, Carol Rawcliffe and Linda Clark, The House of Commons: 1386–1421

(Stroud, 1992), III, 762–64. 32 All references to the itinerary of Charles of Orléans are based on that prepared by

Champion, Vie, pp. 667–74. 33 This description of Burton’s career is indebted to Roskell, et al., House of Commons, II,

441–43. 34 De Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans’, p. 70.

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Angoulême at Maxey, the region was visited by Poggio Bracciolini then, as I have mentioned, touring the libraries of local religious houses. Whether or not the Florentine would have called on one or both of the sons of Valentina Visconti is of course anyone’s guess and it is doubtful, in any case, that the brothers would have been much use to him. The classical texts in their possession, works by Cicero, Seneca, and Terence, for example, seem to have been copied in France as were their copies of the work of Boccaccio and Petrarch.35 As for Burton, he hauled Charles and his library back to London in the early months of 1422, delivered him to the Privy Council, and himself petitioned for relief from outlawry (which he was granted in May of this year). Before too long, he would abandon England altogether, try to recoup his fortune in France and spend his final years as the mayor of Bayonne, and Charles, after having spent three years in three separate residences, would finally settle in Lincolnshire. The death of Henry V prompted the removal of Charles to Lincolnshire and the care of Sir Thomas Cumberworth with whom he spent more than seven years. Though he had been knighted in 1415, Cumberworth never saw military service and his wealth was drawn primarily from farming sheep on his vast estates in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. Though the date of his birth is unclear, he seems to have been ten to fifteen years older than Charles, and, though he had had considerable experience with the affairs of the crown beginning with the reign of Henry V, his career, apart from his appearance in the Parliament of 1425, was almost completely interrupted when he took charge of Charles. Though Charles may have spent some time at Bolingbroke castle while Cumberworth was tending to his duties as sheriff of the county, the Privy Council had permitted Cumberworth, who was appointed knight of the body to the king at the accession of Henry VI, to keep the poet at his home.36 It is difficult to say which of Cumberworth’s manor houses was home to Charles, but his estate at Somerby, Lincolnshire, is the most likely possibility. The duke also seems to have enjoyed considerable freedom, since he and Cumberworth spent a great deal of time travelling together. Champion’s itinerary indicates, for example, that on 4 September 1428, the two of them were in Peterborough where Charles again could have visited his brother at Maxey Castle, still the home of the widowed duchess of Clarence. It is difficult to subscribe to the view of Enid McLeod that ‘the only occasion on which [the brothers] met during the years of their imprisonment’ was November of 1437.37 Champion’s itinerary also indicates that Cumberworth and Charles made frequent trips to London where Cumberworth owned a home. Some of these

35 For works by these authors which Charles had with him in England, see Champion, La

Librairie, s.v. Of these, only a copy of Cicero’s De senectute and Seneca’s De remediis might have been acquired in England. 36 De Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans’, p. 74. Additional information on the career of Sir Thomas Cumberworth and his itinerary while he looked after Charles is drawn from Roskell, et al., House of Commons, II, 713–15. 37 McLeod, Prince and Poet, p. 224.

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visits, like that of March 1425, were probably undertaken as a result of business, in this particular case, Cumberworth’s participation in the parliament of this year. But a number of them, by virtue of their timing, suggest a Christmas holiday away from his Lincolnshire estates and Bolingbroke castle, in January of 1424, January of 1426, December and January of 1427, and January of 1429. Charles also journeyed to Canterbury in March of 1426, and, given both Cumberworth’s religious and literary interests, discussed below, it would not be inappropriate to suggest that Cumberworth took Charles on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket. By way of perhaps expressing his gratitude to his keeper, Charles became involved in a scheme at Canterbury to restore to the cathedral a grant of wine that it had first received from the French crown in the twelfth century.38 A sense of Cumberworth’s character is suggested by the remarkable and frequently-noticed last will and testament in which he instructs his executors to display his corpse with its mouth open for twenty-four hours, covered with nothing but a sheet and black cloth decorated with ‘a white cross of cloth of gold’. The same document also refers to a collection of relics (and pilgrimage memorabilia) which include a piece of the pillar to which Christ was tied when he was scourged and a crystal vial containing the breast milk of the Virgin Mary. Cumberworth also distributed in his will a substantial collection of books of the sort that would have proved especially attractive to his prisoner. Though the author of a recent biographical sketch expresses some surprise that someone as pious as Cumberworth would own a copy of The Canterbury Tales, this seems consistent not only with his interests but also with the company he kept. Among Cumberworth’s friends was Robert Lord Willoughby, whose Suffolk estates were administered by Cumberworth after Willoughby’s death. The signatures of Willoughby’s widow, Maud, and her second husband, Sir Thomas Neville, appear in another early manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (London, BL MS Sloane 1685).39 A third manuscript containing both Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and some of the Tales (London, BL MS Harley 1239), seems, by virtue of an armorial initial, to have belonged to a younger member of Cumberworth’s circle, Thomas of Horbling, twice married, first to the daughter of Cumberworth’s friend, Leo, Lord Welles, second to the daughter of Robert Waterton, Charles of Orléan’s first keeper. This manuscript seems to have been copied from the same exemplar used by Jean of Angoulême and his scribe, John Duxworth.40 Indeed, other of the manuscripts described by Manly and Rickert are associated with these gentry families from the Midlands, but what is immediately important is that when Charles fell into Cumberworth’s company, he was surrounded by persons as drawn to Chaucer as he himself seems to have been. It 38 For the details, see Raymonde Foreville, ‘Charles d’Orléans et le ‘‘Vin de Saint

Thomas’’ ’, Cahiers d’Histoire et de Folklore 1 (1955), 22–32. 39 John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of ‘The Canterbury Tales’ (Chicago, 1940), I,

507–9. 40 Manly and Rickert, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, I, 189–97.

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seems significant too that it was during this period, in 1434, that Charles had a copy of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium delivered to him by his chancellor, Guillaume Cousinot, a book which he may have given away.41 Cumberworth owned a number of other texts, and it would appear that, like the Chaucer, these books were not inherited but purchased during his lifetime. These include two copies of William Deguilleville’s Pèlerinage de l’âme, one of which survives, this the English translation sometimes attributed to Thomas Hoccleve, the author of the lyrics scattered throughout its text (New York, Public Library MS Spencer 19).42 Though Charles owned a manuscript which contained the three pèlerinages of Deguilleville (which his father had purchased from Eustace Deschamps), he apparently did not have that text with him in England, and he could have been drawn to Cumberworth’s copy for any number of reasons. Cumberworth’s will also refers to ‘my boke of vita christi’, most likely the pseudo-Bonaventuran Meditationes Vitae Christi, copies of which, as I have mentioned, Charles and his brother had with them in England. The work of Walter Hilton also appears in the inventories of manuscripts owned by the brothers Orléans as well as Cumberworth’s will, and the latter document also refers to a ‘gret boke of David sauter’, a book on the Passion, and a roll of prayers.43 This point here is not simply that Cumberworth and Charles had similar tastes in devotional literature but that they might have exchanged manuscripts. When Charles was moved from the royal court to the world of provincial gentry, he was thrown into a situation where manuscripts were borrowed and borrowed manuscripts were copied. Evidence that books were freely circulated within Cumberworth’s circle is provided not only by his will but also that of his sister-in-law, Johanna Hilton who, in 1432, distributed her books much as Cumberworth would do in 1450. To her sister, Catherine, Cumberworth’s wife, Johanna Hilton bequeathed a book described as ‘a romanse incipientem cum Decem Preceptis Alembes’, perhaps a collection of framed moral tales not unlike her copy of The Seven Sages of Rome, which she left to Marguerite Constable, the daughter of her brother, Sir Robert Constable of Flamborough. It was to the wife of the same Robert Constable that Cumberworth left his copy of The Canterbury Tales.44 However, since they were frequently down to London, Charles and Cumberworth were not confined to whatever texts might have been being passed around in Lincolnshire. Cumberworth was deeply involved in the endowment of relig41 Charles nonetheless seems to have valued the Boccaccio. He commissioned a new

copy of the work after he returned to France (Champion, La Librairie, p. 19). 42 On these, see Victor Palsits, ‘The Petworth Manuscript of ‘‘Grace Dieu’’ or ‘‘The

Pilgrimage of the Soul’’ ’, Bulletin of the New York Public Library 32 (1928), 715–20. 43 As Palsits points out, the best text of Cumberworth’s testament will be found in

Edward Peacock, ‘Sir Thomas Cumberworth’s Will’, The Academy 16 (1879), 230–32 and 284–85. 44 For the will of Johanna Hilton, a member of the Constable family and the wife of Sir Robert Hilton of Swyne, see James Raine, ed., Testamenta Eboracensia, Surtees Society 30 (London, 1855), II, 23–25.

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ious houses and churches throughout Lincolnshire and (to a lesser extent) London, and it would have not been out the question for him to have been the one who took Charles to the Franciscan house where the duke of Orléans met Thomas Winchelsey. Unfortunately little is known of the books housed in the library that Dick Whittington built for the Franciscans.45 This has not prevented scholars, however, from imagining that Charles and his brother regularly raided the stacks, a notion which perhaps originates in Eugéne Vinaver’s claim that Charles ‘had borrowed many a manuscript book’ from this library where, he also believed, Sir Thomas Malory as well found the ‘French books’ he translated in the course of his stint in prison.46 All that is certain is that Charles borrowed from the Grey Friars a manuscript (now Paris, BN MS lat. 3757) containing the Latin poetry of John Hovenden, poetry which he imitated, and that the librarian, Thomas Winchelsey, in his turn, borrowed from Charles a copy of the Testamentum Peregrini of Jean Gerson which Winchesley imitated and dedicated to Charles.47 That Charles did not return his copy of the Hovenden to the library does not attest to repeated visits, unless Winchesley was an unusually casual librarian. Furthermore, since Cumberworth was especially generous to the recently founded Carthusian houses in Axholme, Lincolnshire, and London, one might suspect that he could have also provided Charles of Orléans with an introduction to their London library about which considerable information does survive. As is well known, the Carthusians played a significant role in the dissemination and vernacular translation of the kinds of mystical and devotional literature which appealed to both Cumberworth and Charles: the works of Walter Hilton and Richard Rolle, Nicholas Love’s English version of the Meditationes Vitae Christi, The Cloud of Unknowing, The Chastising of God’s Children, and The Mirror of Simple Souls.48 Another site to the south of London that deserves the attention of those interested in Charles is the library attached to the Cluniac abbey at Bermondsey. As A. I. Doyle has discovered, a manuscript formerly housed there (Oxford, Bodley MS 918) contains a copy of the Donatus devocionis corrected in the same hand that appears in copies of portions of the same text which belonged to Jean of Angoulême (Paris, Arsenal MS 410 and Paris, BN MS lat. 3594), these, in turn, the basis for the copy of the Donatus owned by Charles of Orléans (Paris, BN MS lat. 3593). It should be noted too that when Margaret, the widowed duchess of Clarence and keeper of Jean of Angoulême, retired from public life, she, like the

45 For the surviving texts, see N. R. Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain (London, 1964),

p. 123. 46 Eugene Vinaver, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1967), I, xxvi. 47 For a specific discussion of these texts, see Gilbert Ouy, ‘Un Poeme mystique’. 48 For these texts see Ker, Medieval Libraries, pp. 122–23. On the Carthusians, see Michael

G. Sargent, ‘The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 (1976), 225–40, and Anthony Tuck, ‘Carthusian Monks and Lollard Knights: Religious Attitudes at the Court of Richard II’, Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, no. 1 (1984), 149–61.

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widow of Henry V, was attached to Bermondsey abbey. If the manuscript in question, Bodley 918, could be more definitely associated with the duchess of Clarence, it would provide perhaps the clearest evidence that Jean and Charles shared their manuscripts with their keepers. The duchess of Clarence also owned a book of hours of some note and a copy of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, this, again, a poem with which Charles seems to have been familiar.49 In December of 1429, custody of Charles was transferred from Cumberworth to John Cornwall, Lord Fanhope, a member of the Privy Council allied with Cardinal Beaufort, with whom he would stay until August of 1432. The circumstances surrounding this exchange are not clear but it is certain that Charles and Cornwall were in London in February of 1430 and the motive of the King’s Council might, again, have been to move Charles closer to the capital. Though Charles seems to have spent most of his stay with Cornwall at his castle at Ampthill, Bedfordshire, he would have been an occasional guest at Cornwall’s home in London. Cornwall is associated with several London houses, but there is no evidence that he and Charles necessarily stayed at Coldharbor as Lucy de Angulo claims. Coldharbor or Poultney’s Inn had belonged to the Holland family since 1390 and Cornwall’s association with that property must have ended in 1425 or 1426 after the death of his wife, Elizabeth Holland. It seems more likely that Charles would have stayed at Cornwall’s own substantial London property on Oyster Hill, Thames Street.50 Furthermore, there seems little reason to believe that Charles and his brother, Jean of Angoulême, were reunited at Cornwall’s home in London or at Ampthill ‘for the next two years or more’, or that the brothers would have whiled away the time with Thomas Winchelsey in the library at Greyfriars. In his recent biography of Lord Fanhope, A. C. Reeves indicates that Charles left London in February of 1430 and spent the rest of his time at Ampthill through which a parade of French prisoners had passed since 1415. The first of these was the French diplomat and author, Ghillebert de Lannoy (1386–1462), whom Cornwall had personally captured at Agincourt and who had managed to raise his ransom within the space of a year. The second, also captured at Agincourt by Cornwall, was Louis de Bourbon, count of Vendôme,

49 For the Bermondsey abbey Donatus, see Doyle, ‘Three Latin Spiritual Texts’, p. 136; for

the Clarence Hours, Carol M. Meale, ‘Laywomen and their Books in Late Medieval England’, in Carol M. Meale, ed., Women and Literature in Britain: 1150–1500 (Cambridge, 1993), p. 137; for the Clarence Gower, V. J. Scattergood, ‘Literary Culture at the Court of Richard II’, in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherburne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (New York, 1983), p. 41. 50 De Angulo (‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans’, p. 76). I can find no record indicating that Cornwall owned Coldharbor after the death of his wife; see Philip Norman, ‘Sir John de Pultney and his Two Residences in London, Cold Harbor and the Manor of the Rose’, Archaeologia 57 (1900), 257–84. For the house on Oyster Hill, originally the property of the mayor of London, William Walworth, and, on his death, given by Cornwall to the Fishmongers for their hall, see John Stow, The Survey of London (London, 1987), p. 193.

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THE BROTHERS ORLÉANS AND THEIR KEEPERS

who stayed at Ampthill from 1423 to 1425 when he too made his ransom and was released. He was followed by Sir Guillaume de Botiller and, then, Charles. John Cornwall may have been as much as thirty years older than Charles and may have met him well before Agincourt. Cornwall was himself no stranger to imprisonment, having been slapped into the Tower by Henry IV in 1400 after he had entered into a clandestine marriage with Elizabeth, the king’s sister, shortly after Henry had had her first husband, John Holland, executed. Cornwall and his new brother-in-law were, however, quickly reconciled and John had spent the decade before Agincourt engaged in a series of diplomatic missions with the French. He was a well-known athlete who had once been awarded prizes by, among others, the duke of Burgundy when he tourneyed in Paris before Charles VI. During this period, before the Dauphin is supposed to have sent those celebrated tennis balls to Henry V, John had himself played tennis with Charles’s father Louis, beaten him soundly and pocketed 3,000 francs for his troubles, unaware that his subsequent relationship with Charles would prove far more profitable.51 In addition to his prowess on playing fields and battlefields, Cornwall was heavily involved with the English mercantile community. His biographer has noted that the retinues he took to France were dominated by merchants like the London weaver, John Cheyne.52 If, as Professor Arn has pointed out, the Harley manuscript of Charles’s English poems eventually wound up in the hands of persons engaged in the wool trade,53 a close examination of the relationship between the persons whose names appear in this manuscript and those in Cornwall’s mercantile circles might tie that manuscript to this keeper and suggest that it might have been originally a gift to Cornwall, the only one of the keepers of Charles present at his wedding to Marie of Clèves in November of 1440. Nor was Cornwall himself uninterested in what might be called the theme of love. Here it is necessary to see through the claim of Lucy de Angulo that after Elizabeth Holland died in 1425, ‘Sir John (who never remarried) was left without wife or child to admire or to share in his successes.’ The reality is that Sir John did not lack for female companionship, as the mention of several bastards in his will attests. Furthermore, while no books are mentioned in that will, the recent discovery of an illuminated psalter which belonged to him (Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.11.7) indicates that Cornwall was not unfamiliar with the London book trade. Apart from the work of A. I. Doyle, which I have frequently mentioned, much still needs to done on the common elements that mark the

51 My sense of John Cornwall’s career is indebted to A. C. Reeves, ‘Sir John Cornewaille,

Lord Fanhope’, Lancastrian Englishmen (Washington, D.C., 1981), pp. 139–202. Biographers since William Dugdale have puzzled over the date of John Cornwall’s birth. For a biographical sketch of Cornwall which maintains that he was born in 1365, see F. D. S. Darwin, Louis d’Orléans (London, 1936), pp. 221–25. 52 Reeves, ‘Sir John Cornewaille’, p. 154. 53 Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 116.

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manuscripts owned by Charles and his keepers. The illumination of this psalter by the ‘Cornwall Master’ might serve as one point of departure for such work.54 From August of 1432 until May of 1436, Charles was in the care of William de la Pole, earl of Suffolk, who, like Cornwall, was aligned with Beaufort’s party in the King’s Council. There is first-rate account of this period by Professor Pearsall elsewhere in this volume to which little can be added. Though Suffolk and Charles clearly had much in common, one might raise questions about how Charles would have interacted with Lydgate, if indeed he met him at Wingfield or Ewelme or at Suffolk’s house in London on Lombard Street, Cornhill. Suffolk had recently married Alice Chaucer who has been described as ‘John Lydgate’s most active and faithful patron’, and there is evidence that Lydgate and Charles had similar tastes in literature. However, while Lydgate worked on his Fall of Princes during this period, he relied on the French translation of Boccaccio rather than the Latin which Charles had in his possession, and, though Charles had a copy of The Passion of Saint Alban with him in England (and probably would have acquired it there), it seems most likely that the Latin sources of Lydgate’s verse life of same saint were provided to him by his patron, the abbot of St. Alban’s.55 Furthermore, Lydgate’s politics were Burgundian, and one wonders how Charles might have felt about the reference to his father’s ‘lechery’ in Lydgate’s earliest catalogue of fallen princes.56 Too, the idea that the life at Wingfield was especially congenial has to be tempered by the sense that Suffolk’s neighbors, like the Pastons, were not especially fond of him, and that he and his wife and their son were later portrayed as specimens of vice in the morality play, Wisdom.57 Whatever the case, while there is every reason to believe that Suffolk and Charles were friends, Wingfield was not the only place in England where the talents of the duke of Orléans would have been nourished. When the war with France resumed and both Suffolk and John Cornwall readied armies for another invasion in May of 1436, custody of Charles became the responsibility of Reynald Cobham of Sterborough Castle, Lingfield, Surrey, fourteen years his senior and the father-in-law of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. Gloucester, as I have mentioned, seems to have disliked Charles and may, in any event, have been too busy to look after the duke of Orléans himself. The move to Surrey brought Charles closer to London (Cobham escorted him there in the 54 Nicholas Rogers, ‘The Artist of Trinity B.11.7 and his Patrons’, in Nicholas Rogers, ed.,

England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1992 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford, 1994), pp. 170–86. 55 On The Lyfe of Seint Albon and the Lyfe of Saint Amphabel, see Walter Schirmer, John Lydgate: A Study in the Culture of the Fifteenth Century (Berkeley, 1961), pp. 166–70. 56 For the text of this poem, ‘The Sudden Fall of Princes’, see Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Historical Poems of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (New York, 1959), pp. 174–75. 57 See John Marshall, ‘ ‘‘Fortune in Worldys Worschyppe’’: The Satirising of the Suffolks in Wisdom’, Medieval English Theatre 14 (1992), 37–64. Evidence for the animosity with which the East Anglian community regarded Suffolk dates from the 1440s to the 1460s; it may be that when Charles was with Suffolk in the 1430s, these feelings were less fully developed.

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spring of 1437 and 1438) and it also provided him with the opportunity to meet with his brother, kept at Speldhurst, Kent, by a soldier too old to return to France, Richard Waller. Reynold Cobham (1381–1446) was himself no soldier at all and had never been called to Parliament. He may have been a person of some refinement, as the founding of Lingfield College in 1431 by himself and his second wife, Anne Clifford, would suggest.58 The couple donated a substantial library to Lingfield College and Cobham’s celebrated daughter, Eleanor, Gloucester’s wife, possessed a copy of the Ancrene Riwle which she perhaps acquired after she, like the mother of Charles of Orléans, was accused of witchcraft and began her own turn in prison. One of Reynold Cobham’s tenants was Stephen Scrope, the translator of Christine de Pisan’s The Epistle of Othea, a French version of Cicero’s De senectute, Guillaume de Tigonville’s Dit moraulx des philosophes, and The boke of noblesse.59 Though Charles was no longer in England when Scrope began these translations in the 1440s, both and he brother were familiar with these works and had copies of several of them in their possession while they were in Surrey and Kent. The degree to which the presence of Charles and Jean of Angoulême and their libraries in England prompted the contemporary translation of French texts is a subject which requires much closer scrutiny. Charles’s last keeper, five years his junior, was John, first Lord of Stourton, Wiltshire. Stourton was granted custody of Charles on 9 July 1438 and within a fortnight they seem to have travelled to Wiltshire by way of Winchester where they probably met with Cardinal Beaufort and where Charles may have acquired his English manuscript of Raymond of Pennaforte’s Summa de casibus poenitentia (Paris, BN MS lat. 3520), once the property of a Winchester canon. During this period, Stourton was commissioned to raise loans for the crown in Wiltshire and finished a term as Sheriff. The following spring, he returned to London, where he too owned a house, with both Charles and such loans as he was able to raise in tow. The both of them then went to Calais where Stourton served as ambassador (from 20 June to 2 August 1439). Afterwards they returned to Wiltshire where they spent the remainder of the year, the second of two winter seasons which Charles spent at Stourton, another fortified manor house which Leland once described as ‘magnificent’ and ‘castelle lyke’. By 8 February 1440, Stourton and Charles had returned to London where they remained until Charles was returned to France in November of this year.60 When Charles met Stourton, the latter was on the verge of a career which 58 For Lingfield College, see David Knowles and R. Neville Hadcock, Medieval Religious

Houses: England and Wales (London, 1953), p. 334; for reference to a sixteenth-century inventory of the twenty-one books donated by founders, an inventory I have not seen, see Ker, Medieval Libraries, p. 119. 59 For these, see Curt Bühler, ed., The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, EETS o.s. 264 (London, 1941), pp. xxxix–xlvi. 60 This account of the movements of Stourton and Charles is based on Champion’s itinerary and the detailed list of commissions given to Stourton in Roskell, et al., House of Commons, IV, 492–96.

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eventually led to his appointment as Treasurer of England. He was the son of the prominent lawyer, William Stourton, and, when his father died, the ward of his uncle, John, himself a lawyer, and William Hankford, a sergeant-of-law, who was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer. Like those who had watched Charles before him, he owned a library but, unlike that of Cumberworth, for example, it was inherited. It included service books, a collection of saints lives in English and a medical text. John’s father, William, had also once possessed an English bible which belonged to a William Bount of Bristol, a hotbed of Lollardry, and the nature of William Stourton’s will once suggested to K. B. McFarlane that the father might have sympathized with that cause. However William Stourton’s brother, also John, had in fact hunted down Lollards and there is no reason to believe that this John Stourton, his nephew and ward, had unusual or adventuresome religious preoccupations. Indeed, though he donated land for the endowment of King’s College, Cambridge, his failure to endow any religious foundations in his own will and testament has suggested to his most recent biographer that, unlike Charles, he may have had very little interest in religion at all. John Stourton seems to have been a lawyer through and through and his talents in this area may have proved useful to Charles as he approached the end of his captivity in England. However, the books owned by the gentry circles through which Stourton moved are another matter. Stourton himself had married Margery Wadham, the daughter of John Wadham, who had also been a colleague of Geoffrey Chaucer, and his earliest associates in Wiltshire and Somerset included William Carent who had married his sister and whose family owned a copy of The Canterbury Tales (BL Egerton MS 2863) and an illuminated copy of Lydgate’s The Seige of Troy (Manchester, John Rylands Library MS Crawford 1).61 Stourton was also intimate with the family of Sir Walter Hungerford whose family’s substantial library included The Canterbury Tales (Cambridge, University Library MS DD.4.24), The Seige of Troy, some version of The Golden Legend, and a number of theological texts.62 Stourton’s cousin, Margaret Beauchamp, had commissioned Lydgate’s Guy of Warwick and his friends included Cardinal Beaufort, Leo, Lord Welles, the duke of Buckingham, and a number of others. There is then every indication the company Charles kept at Stourton was every bit as sophisticated as that he may have found at Wingfield with Suffolk. Though a narrative of the twenty-five years that Charles spent in England ends with Stourton accompanying him to Calais for the last time, I would suggest that the study of the cultural affiliations which shaped his intellectual work and his poetry has only just begun. Such an inquiry needs to expand well beyond the duke’s stay at Wingfield and his visits to the Greyfriars’ library in London and this, in turn, requires that scholars see through the theatrical exaggeration which has marked some of the biographical studies of the poet. Had

61 Manly and Rickert, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, I, 140–42 and 614–15. 62 Manly and Rickert, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, I, 104–7.

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Charles of Orléans spent his English captivity simply writing poetry in French, the circumstances of his stay in England might warrant little attention and might indeed suggest that the writing of lyric poetry is a private act, all the more so when the author of such verse happens to be imprisoned, in dire straits, alone in his cell with only his books and the candies and marmalade Charles had carried to his chambers from France. I would suggest that Charles shared his sweets with his hosts and that his decision to write in English indicates that he meant them to hear his verse. The substantial number of books that he and his brother acquired in England is also a sign that there was a great deal of interaction between the brothers and their keepers. In the course of sorting this out, there is always the possibility that the biographical conjecture which has obscured this interaction might be replaced by bibliographical guesswork, and I have perhaps not been innocent of that here, but the available evidence is massive, as I have tried to suggest, and the subject worthy of much fuller treatment than I have been able to give it here.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

Charles d’Orléans and his Brother Jean d’Angoulême in England: What their Manuscripts Have to Tell GILBERT OUY

E

VEN after being in daily contact with medieval manuscripts for more than thalf a century, one will never get tired of them. Actually, the more one studies them, the more exciting the study becomes. People who are not familiar with them may imagine that – with the exception, perhaps, of some lavishly illuminated books – they are just dead and dusty old things. Quite the contrary: there is life in them, like in the dried grains found in the Egyptian tombs which, they say, can still sprout. But codices will not be brought back to life unless one knows how to deal with them. First of all, a manuscript must always be treated as a whole: one should never separate the text, considered as the only valuable element, from the book itself, regarded as a mere wrapping of the text, packing paper of the Christmas present; for, in many cases, one can reach a full understanding of the text only through a careful scrutiny of the archæological object. Then, one must remember that, like any other archæological object, a manuscript is primarily a part of a set, more exactly of several sets in succession: it belongs to a family of books that were copied by a given scribe or in a certain scriptorium, commissioned or bought by a particular person, annotated by a known scholar, and so on. Therefore, if one wants to know what a manuscript has to tell, one must first attempt at least a partial reconstruction of the ‘set’ of which it was originally a part. If one succeeds, then the various parts will become complementary and explain one another, so to speak, as do the small pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Otherwise, remaining isolated, the manuscript will reveal nothing; it will keep its secrets. The manuscripts that had belonged to the two legitimate sons of Duke Louis d’Orléans, of which at least two hundred have survived, can provide the perfect pedagogical exercise for acquiring a working knowledge of these fundamentals which, even nowadays unfortunately, are not as widespread as they should be. A long time ago, when working on the catalogue of Latin manuscripts as a librarian attached to the Department of Western Manuscripts of the Bibliothèque Nationale, I was entrusted with the description of a good dozen books of these two princes which, by sheer luck, chanced to be part of the ‘slice’ of the collection 47

GILBERT OUY

that was allotted to me: it was mostly thanks to them that I soon became aware of the need for a new methodology.1 This is how I happened to identify a small notebook (BN MS lat. 1203) written simultaneously by Charles d’Orléans and his younger brother Jean d’Angoulême.2 This volume was described in the inventory of the books which Charles took with him when he returned to France after his liberation in November 1440;3 so it had necessarily been copied by the two brothers while they were prisoners in England, since Jean had been given over to the English as hostage as early as 1412 at the age of only twelve and his brother was captured at Agincourt and sent to England in 1415. There would have been nothing remarkable in finding a manuscript in which the hands of the two brothers mingle, were it not for the fact that it had always been taken for granted that Charles and Jean had never lived together in the twenty-five years during which they were both detained in England.4 This document in itself was a proof to the contrary. But when, where, and for how long they had been under the same roof remained a mystery. Fortunately, a few years later, I happened to correspond with an American scholar, Mrs. Lucy de Angulo, who had spent several years doing research work in the English archives, and was especially interested in Charles d’Orléans. My late friend Professor Franco Simone of Turin had proposed that she should write an article in a miscellany on the Quattrocento francese he wanted to publish, and she consulted me on the choice of a suitable topic. Of course, I hastened to suggest that she should try and solve the problem raised by my little notebook. And she did solve it in a masterly manner. I am not going to summarize her long article,5 which is scholarly and yet very lively, for the story of the captivity of the two princes is most intricate, each of them having been transferred from place to place many times, and entrusted to a succession of keepers. From 1420 until 1428, Jean had been living at Maxey Castle, in northern Northamptonshire, the chief country seat of Duchess Margaret of Clarence, which had belonged to her first husband John Beaufort, earl of Somerset. The unfortunate duchess was again widowed when, in 1421, her second husband, Thomas, duke of Clarence, was 1 2

3

4 5

Gilbert Ouy, ‘Pour une archivistique des manuscrits médiévaux’, Bulletin des Bibliothèques de France 3 (1958), 897–923. 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. AN K 500, 7, no. 101: ‘Ung livret en papier, escript de la main de mondit seigneur, contenant plusieurs oroisons’. It was more fully described later in the inventory of the books of Jean d’Angoulême (AN P 1403, 38–39, no. 158): ‘Item ung petit livret de petite marge, couvert d’une peau noyre, commençant en premier fueillet Domine Deus misericors, et commençant d’une autre part, au contraire dudit premier fueillet Jhesu rex omnipotens’. Pierre Champion, Vie; Gustave Dupont-Ferrier, ‘La captivité de Jean d’Orléans, comte d’Angoulême (1412–1445)’, Revue historique 62 (1896), 42–74. De Angulo, ‘Charles and Jean d’Orléans’.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

Plate 2. BN MS lat. 1203, fol. 2v: draft of parts of Charles d’Orléans’s book of prayers. Cliché Colomb-Gérard, Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris.

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killed at the battle of Beaugé. Three years before, she had lost her eldest son, and her two younger sons were prisoners in France. It seems that she had a motherly feeling towards Jean, who had been in her care for several years in London during his boyhood. In 1428, Margaret somewhat reluctantly entrusted the young prince and the other French hostages she kept to Sir John Cornwall, who had had them in his charge before. Cornwall managed to take over the custody of Charles as well. So, in January 1429, the two brothers, who until then had seen little of each other, were at last together in the care of the same keeper, living under the same roof for the first time in England. And Charles, whose contacts with fellow countrymen had hitherto been limited and few, now not only enjoyed the companionship of his brother, but had about him the servitors of early days in France, the men who had themselves become prisoners and exiles for the sake of their loyalty to him. For three and a half years, until the summer of 1432, the two sons of Louis d’Orléans were to live in London – presumably at Coldharbour – or sometimes at Ampthill Castle, in the wooded countryside of Bedfordshire. It was a quiet period, during which Charles and Jean enjoyed the privilege of being together, indulging in their love of books and planning the library that they would own in common. It may well have been while Charles was with Sir Thomas Comberworth, at Bolingbroke or Somerby, that he first met with John Duxworth, who was probably, like Sir Thomas, from Lincolnshire. Duxworth, who seems to have been an acquaintance or a friend rather than a professional scribe, copied a few manuscripts for Charles and Jean;6 his signature is always accompanied by a little leaf,7 the mysterious motto A elle magre (an anagram?), and the number .XII. It was no doubt at Maxey that he had commenced to make for Jean d’Angoulême a copy of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, probably from a model found in the castle. It is a modest and inexpensive book – naturally enough, when there was so little money to spare – written on paper with almost no decoration; but a great deal of work went into it before the end, for it was corrected and revised many times, both by Duxworth and by Jean, and further portions added, apparently whenever there happened to be another copy available that was more complete or better than the original exemplar. Jean must have followed the work closely as it was in progress, for more than once he stopped Duxworth in the midst of a tale, bidding him go on to the next one; and the copyist did as he was told, after putting down in Latin the reasons for the omission. For instance, the Monk’s Tale, De casibus virorum illustrium, is cut short at the story De Barnabo de Lumbardia (Barnabo Visconti was Jean’s own great-uncle) with the comment ‘Non plus de ista fabula, quia est valde dolorosa.’ When Jean left Maxey for London, Duxworth followed him there. He may

6

BN MSS angl. 39 (Canterbury Tales), part of lat. 3436 (Exempla) and lat. 3579 (Gerardus Leodiensis, De Doctrina cordis). 7 Presumably related to his name: ‘duxworth’ could mean ‘duck’s wort’, the name of a plant.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

Plate 3. BN MS lat. 1196, fol. 25r: Charles d’Orléans’s book of prayers. Cliché Colomb-Gérard, Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris.

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have been at hand when both Charles and Jean were living with Cornwall, ready to carry out other commissions for them. But their interests then were directed not so much toward English poetry as toward works that they must have felt had more lasting importance. The strongest influence in their lives was now that of a Franciscan, Thomas Wynchelsey, a very learned man, who was Professor of Theology at the school at Greyfriars, and the founder of the library of the convent. The London House of the Franciscans stood in the western part of the city, near Newgate, in Saint Nicholas Shambles – a beautiful place with its vast church, its cloisters and its gardens. Charles had probably been acquainted with Greyfriars and with Friar Thomas for a number of years, perhaps from the time when he first began coming up to London after his long absence, for it was then that the new library of the Grey Friars was finished and ready for use. It was well stocked with books, philosophical and theological treatises and works of history and natural sciences; a large number were by English authors and especially English Franciscans. Charles, who loved books, must have spent many hours in this new library, and we can imagine him in the long hall ‘all sealed with wainscot’, seated at one of the twenty-eight desks, reading the Latin poetry of the early Friars. He also borrowed books from the library and one of them he kept – a little book that he evidently cherished, containing the poems of John of Hovedene. It is described in the inventory of the books which Charles took back to France in 1440 as ‘ung autre petit livre, couvert d’ais, escript de lettre angloiche, commensant ‘‘Ave Verbum’’, le quel est aux Cordeliers de Londres’. I found it many years ago at the Bibliothèque Nationale, where it bears the shelf-mark lat. 3757. This small book was the model from which the French scribe of BN MS lat. 1201 – one of the several collections of prayers and devotional texts copied for Charles – executed the transcription of two of John of Hovedene’s poems, Philomela and Cythara. The texts are identical, with the exception of various mistakes made by the copyist who was not familiar with the English script; also, the scribe stopped exactly where Charles had written in the margin of the model usque hic. Another collection of prayers and meditations copied for Charles (BN MS lat. 930) contains a long poem attributed to St. Bernard or, in other manuscripts, to Anselmo da Lucca, entitled Stimulus Compassionis or Devota meditatio de beneficiis Dei. It too is very likely the work of John of Hovedene. The Philomela and the Stimulus Compassionis were the two main sources of inspiration for a long poem (624 lines) entitled Canticum Amoris,8 the second draft of which, bearing various alterations, is in the little notebook (BN MS lat. 1203) I mentioned earlier. It was later copied by a very skilled English scribe into BN MS lat. 1196, a splendid volume with delicate illuminations which was certainly written and decorated in London in 1439 or 1440, a few months before Charles’s return to France, when financial problems were no longer harassing the two

8

G. Ouy, ‘Un poème mystique de Charles d’Orléans: le Canticum Amoris’, Studi francesi 3 (1959), 64–84.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

princes.9 The Canticum Amoris is not the only poem which Charles wrote in Latin: another, under the title of ‘Carole en latin’, appears among his French poems in the partially autograph manuscript BN MS fr. 25458; it is much shorter, but shows the same Franciscan inspiration and expresses the same ideas, especially that the Redemption is the most outstanding proof of God’s love for mankind. Having discovered the Canticum Amoris, I could be tempted to pass it off as a masterpiece, but, to be frank, it is not. To call it an imitation of John of Hovedene would be an understatement: a pastiche is a more appropriate term. Some repetitions of words reveal hasty work: for instance, the adjective mirus and the adverb mire appear twenty-seven times (but in one case, Charles cancelled it and put another word instead); almost half of the instances of mirus/mire are to be found in the lines which give a lengthy description of the heavenly hierarchy, reviewing all the categories of archangels and angels – in my opinion the worst part of the poem. The general idea is quite simple: the poet exhorts his soul to love the Creator more than mortal creatures. In order to prove that God deserves this love, he lists all the favours which the Almighty has bestowed upon mankind: the many splendors of the universe, and also such precious gifts as the various faculties of the soul or, on the supernatural level, grace, redemption and, above all, the heavenly beatitudes, which he describes in great detail. As a conclusion to this imaginary tour of Paradise, the author advises his soul to rise above all worldly pleasures and to contemplate the Holy Trinity, for nowhere else can true bliss and true love be found. While Thomas Wynchelsey provided Charles with books which gave him poetic inspiration, the prince paid him back by lending him some works of Jean Gerson which the Franciscan read and even used as models. Unlike German, Swiss, Austrian and Dutch libraries, which are crammed full of manuscripts of Gerson’s works, English libraries – or more precisely their home-grown collections – are almost entirely devoid of texts by this author. Their diffusion across the channel seems to have been barred at the very time when they were spreading all over France and north-eastern Europe, that is during the years which immediately preceded and followed Gerson’s death (1429), when his youngest brother, the Celestine monk Jean Gerson, was spending all his days and nights copying and sending manuscripts to many Charterhouses and Celestine convents whose scriptoria turned out hundreds of copies. Such censorship is by 9

In a recent book by Kathleen L. Scott, entitled Later Gothic Manuscripts (1390–1490), this manuscript is dated ‘after 1415 to before 1440, probably before 1424 and perhaps c. 1417’, and some of the paintings are ascribed to ‘Herman Scheerre, the foreign artist active in England from about 1405 until about 1420’ (II, 178–82). Such an early date is unacceptable: since some manuscripts (especially BN MS lat. 1203, with the draft of a few prayers and the autograph of the Canticum Amoris) bear witness to the care with which Charles and Jean worked on the preparation of the collection of texts which was to become BN MS lat. 1196, this precious volume was necessarily copied during or after the period 1429–1432, when the two princes lived together in London, and almost certainly as late as 1439–40, when they could afford it.

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no means unexpected, since Gerson had been for many years a staunch opponent of the English and their Burgundian allies: only a few weeks before his death, he had still found enough strength to write a treatise in which he claimed not only that Joan of Arc was not a witch, but even that she was inspired by God. In 1434, Thomas Wynchelsey (who was to die three years later) composed the Instructorium providi peregrini10 which he dedicated to Charles d’Orléans, thanking him in the prefatory letter for the gift of a copy of Gerson’s Testamentum peregrini in which he had found inspiration. This immediately raises a question: how had Charles managed to obtain a manuscript of one of the Chancellor’s later works? Who had brought it from France? But the problem became more and more of a puzzle when I came to realize that the small library built up by the two princes during their captivity, the main part of which was taken back to France by Charles in November 1440, actually contained many more works by Gerson, most of them anonymous, some even deprived of their titles. If they had been widely circulated works, anybody might have found them in France, and it would just have been a matter of smuggling them into England; but there are among them some very rare texts, of which only a few copies are still extant. And two of them are indeed so rare that they had remained unknown until I found them. Let us begin with the earlier one, which was also the first to be discovered. In a long sermon, which he delivered in Marseilles on 9 November 1403, in the presence of the Avignon pope Benedict XIII (Pedro de Luna),11 Gerson, who was then forty years old, recalled to his listeners’ minds the many tribulations which the Schism had inflicted upon the flock of the faithful, and he quoted a few lines he had written long before, when he was young: ‘Quam ego olim cladem iuvenis pastorio carmine deplorans: Heus – inquam – ‘‘Heus, gregis impacata lues nimis, heu grave ruris / Exitium! Experta, heu, pecoris sors aspera semper . . .’’ ’. When I first read those lines at the beginning of Gerson’s sermon, I was far from expecting that, soon after, I would retrieve the whole Pastorium carmen12 in a manuscript where its presence was, to say the least, quite unlikely. BN MS lat. 3638 is one of the many volumes Jean d’Angoulême copied or had copied in England, probably around 1430, during the period when he was living with Charles in London.13 The book is made up of a series of paper quires which were visibly copied at different times, some by Jean himself, others by three members of their little circle, two Frenchmen and one Englishman. Some of the

10 BN MS lat. 2049, fols. 226–32. There is a fragment of this work (with a few variants) in

BN MS lat. 8751E, fols. 30–31. 11 Jean Gerson, Œuvres complètes, ed. P. Glorieux (Tournai, 1963), vol. 5, no. 214, p. 108. 12 Ouy, ‘Gerson émule de Pétrarque: le Pastorium Carmen, poème de jeunesse de Gerson,

et la renaissance de l’églogue en France à la fin du XIVe siècle’, Romania 88 (1967), 175–231. 13 This manuscript has been studied by my friend G. M. Roccati, ‘A propos de la tradition manuscrite de l’oeuvre poétique latine de Gerson: les manuscrits Paris, B.N. lat. 3624 et 3638’, Revue d’Histoire des Textes 10 (1980), 277–304.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

texts were copied twice, and the various elements of the collection are gathered in some disorder. However, the contents are fairly homogeneous, being mostly composed of meditations, devotional treatises and prayers in prose or verse. At the beginning of this manuscript, on folios 4 to 12, there are seven poems, most of them rather short, devoid of indications of authorship and often without titles. I could easily identify the last six as known poems of Gerson, five of which appear in the De canticis, although in a different sequence. As for the first one, which is also the longest (191 hexameters), it begins like this: Heu! gregis impacata lues, nimis – he! – grave ruris Exitium, experta et pecoris sors altera semper . . .

It is the same pastoral poem which Gerson declared he had written long ago when he was young! Jean d’Angoulême was less cultured and probably less bright than his elder brother, but he was a conscientious copyist, although not remarkably skilled. Yet, his copy of the Pastorium carmen is marred by a number of mistakes, some of them serious enough to render parts of the text unintelligible. But they are not commonplace blunders: they belong to the type of mistakes a scribe will make when his model is an ill-written draft in which some words have been left blank, some cancelled and replaced by synonyms. In the latter case, if the copyist is over-zealous and none too clever, he will copy both words, the word which has been crossed out and its substitute; for example: Titirus unus erat; huic multus grandis acervus.

Multus acervus would be correct; so would grandis acervus; but multus grandis is meaningless; what is more, an important word is missing: what was this big heap made of? We also notice certain slips of the pen which Gerson often made in his drafts, like quidem instead of quidam or olivio for oblivio, two mistakes that occur (the former three times) in the draft of the treatise against Juan de Monzón.14 Such particulars may look like mere trifles, but actually they give a capital clue. First of all, we are now virtually certain that the copy of the Pastorium carmen was made from a draft. Then, of the only two people likely to be in possession of such a document, we may eliminate one: the author, who, besides the fact that he would never have dreamt of offering an old draft to the princes, had died in July 1429, a short time after the two prisoners were at last re-united. As for the other, the Celestine monk Jean Gerson, we have, on the contrary, every reason to think that he was the one who sent the draft, not as a piece of literature, but as a relic of the deceased Chancellor whom many people in France – and among them certainly the sons of Louis d’Orléans – already considered a saint. 14 Ouy, ‘La plus ancienne oeuvre retrouvée de Jean Gerson: le brouillon inachevé d’un

traité contre Jean de Monzon’, Romania 83 (1962), 433–92. The title of this old article was rendered inaccurate by the discovery of the Pastorium carmen, which is some seven years earlier than the treatise.

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GILBERT OUY

Why precisely the Pastorium carmen and not any other of the many autographs of his illustrious brother which he probably kept as exemplaria in his cell at the Celestine convent of Lyons? For the obvious reason that he had no other use for it: this poem was definitely not the kind of text of which he would send copies to various scriptoria all over the continent. The Pastorium carmen is an eclogue, in other words a dialogue between two shepherds. But these are not ordinary peasants: the feminine character is Pales, goddess of flocks, and her partner is Pan, god of shepherds, respectively symbolizing the Church and Jesus Christ. They are still in love with each other, but they no longer live together; actually, they have been parted for many years. They were once very poor, but perfectly happy together, and their little flock was happy too. Alas, one day, some oxen attacked Pan and tore his garment to pieces – it was a beautiful tunic made of the fleece of a spotless white ewe. So the unfortunate god appeared naked, causing a panic and a general stampede of the sheep in all directions. Only after Pan had put on a new tunic, this time made of linen, did the sheep consent to come back. Soon after, Pan bade farewell to Pales and went up into the mountains; but he took great care to hunt out an excellent shepherd to help his friend, a man by the name of Cephis.15 So the flock was well looked after for some time. Unfortunately, Pales made the acquaintance of a wealthy farmer, Tityrus, who owned a large flock of black sheep. This man suffered from a strange disease: multicoloured leprosy. Pales’s new shepherd, whose name was Sylvester, cured him with a very effective ointment. Then Tityrus decided to marry Pales, and he had his sheep well washed, so that they turned as white as the others. But here is where all the trouble began. Tityrus showered Pales with presents: honey, incense, milk, violets, gold, rubies, and many rich garments. Instead of making her happy, those riches made her utterly miserable. The sheep grew too fat and became wicked; although they had much to eat, they kept fighting for more food. They also suffered from various diseases. Worse still, instead of one good shepherd, Pales now had two who were worthless: one was lazy and kept sleeping; the other had no authority with his flock and let himself be led by the sheep and goats instead of leading them. At first, Pan cannot believe what Pales has told him, because it sounds so incredible: how could all the riches Tityrus had given her be the cause of such evils? So he goes to inspect the flock and is appalled by what he discovers. On coming back from his inspection, he swears to Pales that he will soon arrange everything and put an end to the division of her flock. The symbolism of this long eclogue strikes us as both very complicated and rather naive. But, apart from the fact that young Gerson’s hexameters are less correct, there is little difference between his Pastorium carmen and Petrarch’s twelve eclogues grouped under the general title of Bucolicum carmen, or Boccaccio’s seventeen eclogues, also entitled Bucolicum carmen. In Boccaccio’s eleventh eclogue, for instance, we have a dialogue between lovely Myrtilis, who repre-

15 The name Jesus gave to Simon, alias Petrus, was Cephas (John 1:42).

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

sents the Church, and Glaucus, who stands for St. Peter. They talk about the life, passion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ in about a hundred lines, in which we find the names of practically every god and demi-god of Greek and Latin mythology; and if Boccaccio chose the name Myrtilis for the Church, it was because the leaves of myrtles are red underneath like the blood of martyrs, and green on top, like the hope of salvation. There is one point where the comparison works in favour of Gerson: he is much bolder than his models. For instance, Petrarch made one obscure reference to the Donation of Constantine, but it was really very mild as compared with what Gerson dared to write on the subject. Also, in one remarkable line at the beginning of his poem (line 10), he likened the two rival popes to two thieves trying to steal the sheep from a pen at night. In the sermon he delivered in 1403 in the presence of Benedict XIII, Gerson refrained from quoting this verse and chose to stop at line 9; perhaps he thought the Avignon pontiff would not be amused, even if the comparison referred to his predecessor Clement VII, not to himself. Of course, this boldness can be explained partly by the fact that the author was an angry young man of nineteen at the time; but it is also true that the Schism created a situation in which the spirit of criticism could develop, a new attitude toward religion, to use Jacob Burckhardt’s phrase, that heralds the upheaval of the sixteenth century. This text also foreshadows the sixteenth century from a different point of view: historians of literature had hitherto agreed that, while Vergilian eclogues were written in Italy as early as the middle of the Trecento, this type of poem had only made its first appearance in France some 175 years later, under the reign of François I. We can see now that the time lag actually did not exceed a third of a century. If someone should object that one swallow does not make a spring, I could answer that I found yet another eclogue16 written by a French scholar of the same period, a fellow student of Gerson at the Collège de Navarre and a close friend of his, Nicolas de Clamanges. And why should we presume that these were the only two eclogues produced in France at the end of the fourteenth century? Let us go back to the manuscripts copied by Charles d’Orléans and Jean d’Angoulême, or for them, during their captivity. Another book in their library, BN MS lat. 2049, which contains, among many other texts, the copy of Thomas Wynchelsey’s Instructorium providi peregrini, also contains an anonymous work entitled Deploratio super civitatem aut regionem que gladium evaginavit super se.17 It

16 It was published by my friend Dario Cecchetti, ‘Un’egloga inedita di Nicolas de

Clamanges’, Miscellanea di studi e ricerche sul Quattrocento francese, a cura di Franco Simone (Torino, 1967), 27–57. Cecchetti found the decisive evidence of Clamanges’s authorship which I had only suspected. 17 Ouy, ‘La Deploratio super civitatem aut regionem que gladium evaginavit super se: Gerson est-il l’auteur de ce texte anonyme sur les massacres de juin 1418 à Paris?’, Divinitas 11 (1967), 747–84.

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is a handsome copy made by an English scribe, certainly between 1434, the date of the composition of Wynchelsey’s Instructorium, and 1440, the year of Charles’s release. Among the books which he took to France was the model from which the scribe had made his copy; it is described in the inventory as ‘ung autre livre en parchemin contenant Deploration par cité ou region, commansant Vocate, avecques pluseurs autres traictiés’. The description cannot possibly refer to our manuscript, since the Deploratio begins on folio 232 verso, in the very middle of a quire. This text is a long dirge in metrical prose deploring the massacre that took place in Paris in May–June 1418 after the Burgundian troops took control of the capital. Soon after studying it, I happened to read a letter18 which the Chancellor’s youngest brother, the Celestine monk Jean Gerson, wrote in 1423 to a monk of the Grande Chartreuse by the name of Anselm. In this letter, Jean describes his elder brother as another Jeremiah: Gemit insuper amarissime, ut alter Hieremias, videns contritionem populi sui et laborem et contradictionem in regali Parisiensi civitate, quæ nuper erat urbs perfecti decoris, gaudium universæ terræ. Talibus suspiriis et singultibus tumidum cor exonerans, sedet solitarius et tacet . . .

Whatever admiration young Jean had for his illustrious brother, the mere fact that the latter was sitting still and sighing might not have been enough of a reason for comparing him to Jeremiah. On the other hand, we can easily believe that Gerson grieved over the sad plight of the kingdom of France, but why does the Celestine refer to the civil war in Paris? In 1423, Paris is the capital of the double monarchy, where the chancery of the child Henry VI, by the grace of God king of France and England, is busy putting into proper form all the seizures of properties carried out for the benefit of the occupants and their trusty lieges. Order prevails, and there is no contradictio, since the opponents who survived have fled to the provinces which remain under the dauphin’s rule. This probably means that Gerson, as was his habit, was at the time resuming work on a text which he had outlined some years before. We must remember that, at the beginning of the De Consolatione Theologiæ, the Chancellor describes his feelings when, in the Tirolian castle of Ratenberg, he hears the distressing news of the capture of Paris and of the ensuing slaughter: Deflet miseram patriæ propriæ sortem . . . Quinetiam super conculcatione veritatis et justitiæ plorans ingemiscit; miserabilem denique civitatis celeberrimæ desolationem tanquam Jeremias ruinas Jerusalem lamentatur.

And, in a poem inserted in the same work, he develops this same topic at greater length. In five other Latin poems, such as the Carmen lugubre pro desolatione Universitatis Parisiensis propter bella civilia, or the Lamentatio de miseriis Franciæ, we 18 Joannis Gersonii opera omnia, ed. Ellies Du Pin (Antwerp, 1706), I, clxxvij.

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WHAT THEIR MANUSCRIPTS HAVE TO TELL

find the very same ideas and expressions, to say nothing of the comparison of the fate of Paris with that of Jerusalem. Thus, when I published the Deploratio some thirty years ago, I was certain that Gerson was the author, but I could not prove it. The direct evidence appeared a few years later, when I happened to study a collection of small manuscripts and fragments (Reg. lat. 623) at the Vatican library. These documents had probably been stolen by Pierre Daniel from the cathedral or a convent of Orléans in the sixteenth century, then sold to Paul Petau who in his turn sold them to Queen Christine of Sweden. Some of the items are of English origin, and most of them belonged to Charles d’Orléans; they are described in the inventory of the books he brought with him when he came back to France in 1440. Among them is the copy of the Deploratio which was used as model by the English scribe who wrote part of BN MS lat. 2049 for the duke. This copy is entirely faultless and is written in the easily recognizable hand of the Celestine monk Jean Gerson – more precisely in the somewhat heavy, yet very handsome book cursive he used during the last years of his life (he died in 1434). So the hypothesis that had first been suggested by the discovery of the Pastorium carmen among the books of the captive princes was at last proved correct. Gerson’s younger brother, at the time when he was the prior of the Celestine convent of Lyons, had actually sent various copies – and even an autograph – of some of the Chancellor’s works, probably soon after the author’s death (July 1429), to Charles d’Orléans and Jean d’Angoulême during the few years when they both lived in London in the custody of Sir John Cornwall. This also means that an exchange of letters must have taken place between the sons of Louis d’Orléans and the Celestine Jean Gerson; but through what channels remains a mystery. The fact that the princes received a few books on loan from the Celestine convents of Paris and Ambert during their captivity does not prove that it was the Celestines who acted as intermediaries. The Grey Friars are much more likely to have organized the smuggling of letters and manuscripts from London to Lyons and back under the supervision of Thomas Wynchelsey, who must have been a man of high reputation and authority in the Franciscan order. When I look back now on this unfinished research, which was the first real inquiry I ever conducted, I see no reason to pride myself on having retrieved many manuscripts of the two princes which Gustave Dupont-Ferrier and Pierre Champion had not found. After all, Charles d’Orléans being the father of Louis XII and Jean d’Angoulême the grandfather of François I, almost all their books would normally end up at the royal library, and since, as a librarian, I had free access to the stacks – a privilege which makes this type of research much easier – only my want of experience at the time accounts for my not finding more than some fifty new items. Nor does it seem such a wonder, nowadays, that one should identify an autograph manuscript of a medieval author. But, in this respect as in so many others, people had a different outlook forty or fifty years ago: among the medievalists especially, quite a few (who were more interested in bibliography than in 59

GILBERT OUY

research) seemed to imagine that scholarship was forever settled, and therefore viewed any discovery with suspicion. So, although the prince’s very secretaries too had recognized their master’s hand more than five centuries before I did,19 my identification of the little notebook as an autograph of Charles d’Orléans was soon called an ‘ingenious hypothesis’ – a polite euphemism for humbug.20 This was not, of course, enough of a reason for abandoning my inquiries into the books of the Orléans brothers. I never actually decided to give them up – I just grew more and more involved in other pursuits. Only recently, after so many years, did my colleague and friend Professor Mary-Jo Arn succeed in drawing me back to this old topic, and now I regret my lack of perseverance all the more as I realize that I shall certainly not live long enough to finish the task. In the first place, it remains necessary to carry on the search for more manuscripts of the two princes, at the Bibliothèque Nationale and in various other libraries, since I may have overlooked a good few of them. Then, many of those already identified deserve to be carefully examined and analysed, for who knows if they do not still conceal some long-forgotten texts as significant as Gerson’s lost works or the Canticum Amoris? Even if it should bring no new discovery, a careful scrutiny of his manuscripts will enable us to learn a great deal more about Charles’s intellectual activity during his exile, to understand how he could build up an English spiritual culture for himself thanks to his association with Thomas Wynchelsey and through the many books he borrowed from the Greyfriars’ library. A quarter of a century of captivity and exile hung heavily over the prince’s life; but this black cloud had, as the saying goes, a silver lining, since it won him a rare and perhaps unique status for the period: that of intermediary between two cultures which tended to become the stranger to each other as war and the occupation of a large part of France by the English outwardly increased the contacts between the peoples of the two countries.

19 See above, n. 3. 20 Ouy, ‘A propos des manuscrits autographes de Charles d’Orléans identifiés en 1955 à

la Bibliothèque nationale: hypothèse ‘‘ingénieuse’’ ou certitude scientifique?’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des chartes 118 (1960), 179–88.

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Two Manuscripts, One Mind: Charles d’Orléans and the Production of Manuscripts in Two Languages (Paris, BN MS fr. 25458 and London, BL MS Harley 682) MARY-JO ARN

A

S peace negotiations between the English and French intensified in the late t1430s, Charles d’Orléans’s hopes must have risen. In the final years of his English captivity (1436–1440), the duke was travelling back and forth between first Surrey, then Wiltshire, and London,1 where he was working actively to nurture the peace process that would end the Hundred Years War. After more than twenty years in England, he must have sensed that the end of his long ordeal was at hand. One bit of evidence for this is that the duke had two manuscripts made, one in French, one in English, of the poetry he had written over the previous two decades or more. One motive for this copying was surely preservation, his desire to collect in one document material written in a variety of places (individual sheets, bifolia, quires). Another was probably stock taking. The duke was in his mid-forties.2 He had written a substantial body of verse in two languages. What exactly did it amount to, and how would it look in book form? Some of the shared characteristics of the two manuscripts can speak to us of the Part of the research for this article was carried out with help from grants from the Bibliographical Society of America and the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education; forms of parts of it were delivered as lectures at the Early Book Society conference in Lampeter, Wales, and the Manuscripta conference in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1997; the writing of it was made possible by a leave of absence from Bloomsburg University and an appointment as visiting scholar by Harvard University. 1 He was a prisoner in the charge of Sir Reynold Cobham at Sterborough, Surrey, from May of 1436, and from July of 1438 in the charge of Sir John Stourton, who made his home in Wiltshire. 2 Pierre Champion, the primary interpreter and biographer of the duke’s life and works in the first half of this century, believed that the manuscript of his French poetry was produced in France around 1450, and many scholars have repeated this opinion. Patricia Stirnemann has shown, however, that the manuscript is an English product and therefore must have been produced before 1440 (Avril and Stirnemann, Manuscrits enluminés, pp. 180–81).

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duke’s personal taste in manuscript layout; their differences testify eloquently to his radically different attitudes toward the two languages in which they are written, to his outlook on his own life at this crucial moment, and to the audience he was envisioning for each. At some point in the closing years of the 1430s Charles had a copy made, probably in London, of the French poetry that he had written before and during his captivity. Nearer the time of his release, in 1439 or 1440, he also had a copy made of the English poetry he had written during his English sojourn.3 Neither copy was lavish, although both were to have received decorated initials. In the case of the English work, it amounted to over 6600 lines of lyric and narrative verse, woven into a coherent whole to tell a story of love, the loss of that love, and a new love; in the case of the French, a good deal of work ran parallel to the English, but a good deal consisted of various other pieces which did not contribute to any ‘story’ about love or about anything else. For this reason, the duke arranged his French poems, not according to content, but according to form: ballades and complaintes, chansons and caroles, and rondeaux.4 More than one scholar writing on the duke’s poetry has noticed this similarity between the two manuscripts.5 However, no one has yet taken a look at them ‘up close’ to see what a comparison might tell us about the duke’s tastes and habits as well as about the two bodies of poetry. In order to see clearly their relative sizes, shapes, and makeup, I first present an abbreviated description of each.6 In comparing the two manuscripts, we must look at the French manuscript as it was

3

His English poetry includes a mock-epistolary ballade based on a letter (in ballade form) from Burgundy written in 1439–1440. For a discussion of the dating of the English poems, see Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 37. My reasons for dating the French manuscript a little earlier will become clear in the course of my argument. 4 In an attempt to correct some of Champion’s conclusions about the order of Charles’s own manuscript (Le Manuscrit Autographe), I am at work on a study of the original order of the manuscript and a complete description of it, to be entitled ‘The Order of Composition in Charles d’Orléans’ Personal Manuscript (Paris, Bibl. Nat. MS fr. 25458)’. 5 Robert Steele, who edited the English poems in the 1940s for the Early English Text Society, comments on it, as does Champion. Others may be simply repeating their observations. 6 For a complete description of the English manuscript, see Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 101ff. Plates of manuscript leaves not reproduced here can be found in the following (see bibliography for details of publication): Steele and Day, ed., English Poems, frontispiece, Harley 682: fol. 134r; Champion, Le manuscrit autographe, fr. 25458: pp. 5 [MS p. 14], 7 [365], 9 [122], 15 [1], 27 [158], 31 [203], 37 [235], 43 [247], 45 [337], 53 [328], 63 [350], 67 [365], 69 [393], 73 [247], 77 [473], 79 [515], and 81 [522]; Champion, La Librairie (Album), fr. 25458: plate VII: no. 23 [MS p. 203], 24 [14], 25 [328], 26 [365]; plate VIII: 27 [337], 28 [374], 29 [329], 30 [359]; plate IX: 31 [122], 32 [356], 33 [357], 34 [358]; Champion, ‘Prince des lis’, fr. 25458: opposite p. 1: p. 365; Spence, French Chansons, preceding 1, Harley 682: fol. 61r; fr. 25458: p. 235; Nancy Regalado, ‘ ‘‘En ce saint livre’’ ’ (poems by Villon), between pp. 368 and 369, fr. 25458: fig. 1, pp. 336–37; fig. 2, pp. 432–33; fig. 3, pp. 162–63; fig. 4, pp. 164–65; fig. 5, pp. 166–67; fig. 6, p. 158; Willi Erzgräber, ed., Europäisches Spätmittelalter (Wiesbaden, 1978), p. 365 (fr. 25458: Rondeau 31); and elsewhere.

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at the time of the duke’s release, not as it survives today; in 1440 it was the product of a single scribe and a single limner containing nearly as many blank leaves as written ones. Such a reconstruction necessarily contains some interpretation, but the codicological evidence is clear enough to make such inferences highly probable. French poetry (O) Dates:

c.

English poetry (H)

1436–1440a

1439–1440

leavesb

164 leavesc

Size of manuscript in 1440: 268 Dimensions (extant):

165 x 115 mmd

Written space:

125 x 83 mm

196 x 142 mm 128 x 72 mm 1/4se

21 qq. in 8s, 1/6sf

Makeup of manuscript in 1440:

30 qq. in 8s, 4/6s,

Collation of manuscript in 1440:

A4 B–L8 M–O6 P–Q8 R6 S–2M8 g

[A]–[O]8, c8, P–T8, V6 h

Support:

Parchment, very good quality

Parchment, good qualityi

Ruling:

Four single compartment rules the full length and width of the side Below top line

Identical to O Below top line

For:

30 lines of verse

31 lines of verse

Hand and ink:

A regular, easily-readable French bastard hand, usually in black ink

‘An erect bastard hand with anglicana ductus but mainly secretary forms’,7 in dark brown ink that pales occasionally to yellow

Catchwords (extant):

In B–G, S, U, Y

In B–M, Q–T

Quire signatures:

No (prob. cropped)

Yes

Outsides of quires:

Many dirty,

Decoration:

Completel

rubbedk

(Spaces left for)

a I base this estimate on the fact that the manuscript is finished, i.e., the red, blue, and gold initials with pen flourishes are complete. If my contention that H is modelled on O is correct, then O must have been begun (if not finished) before H, whose dates are fairly certain.8

7 8

Many dirty, rubbed

b

Size of extant manuscript: 300 leaves (paginated). The duke added 4 quires in 8s to the end of the manuscript after his return to France. c Extant manuscript: 147 leaves (foliated). The first and fourteenth quires (8s) plus one leaf are lacking.

So described by Ralph Hanna III in a private communication. See Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 37.

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MARY-JO ARN d H retains prickings and many (not all) signatures, but O has been cropped significantly, which is probably why the quire signatures are not visible. e The collation likewise omits the final four quires in 8s, which were added after 1440. The first four folios do not make up a binding quire; ruled but unpaginated, they are part of the original manuscript. The three unpaginated, blank quires in 6s (M–O) could have been added at any time between the first construction of the manuscript and the poet’s death. f The first quire is no longer extant. Quire c was added early in the construction of the manuscript, before that section had received text. g Currently (–2F6).9 h Currently (–A.1–8, –O.1–8, –c.7 [a stub remains]). i Though the parchment of O is not exceptional, it is of better quality than that of H. k Folio 9a (the opening of the text) already

showed significant dirt and wear when Champion saw it nearly a century ago. A number of final sides of quires in O are left blank. l Of the work completed in England (O), initials, or champes, are gold on a blue ground touched with white, with blue pen flourishing; larger sprays end in gold ‘pine cones’ or trefoils, finer sprays in small lobes touched in green. Smaller one-line initials alternate between gold with (sometimes fine) blue pen flourishing and blue with red pen flourishing. On various pages (e.g., 74, 80, 81, 82) flourishes on ascenders in the first line are given the form of half a fleur de lis touched in yellow, sometimes with label, meant to suggest the duke’s coat of arms [e.g., MS p. 304]. Avril and Stirnemann describe the style of decoration as ‘indiscutablement d’origine anglais, avec des jets plumetés jaillissant gracieusement des coins des lettres champies et les filigranes à longue feuille sortant des petites lettrines’ (p. 181).

Some of the similarities of these pre-1440 manuscripts are striking. Not only are the two of very nearly the same size, the English manuscript with a written space of 128 x 72 mm and the French with a written space of 125 x 83 mm, but both manuscripts were ruled identically, the English for 30 lines, the French, for 31. (Judging from the apparent amount of cropping of the French manuscript, I estimate the two manuscripts to have measured originally about 8 by 5 inches.) The French manuscript was in its original state of course much thicker than the English, with 268 leaves to the English manuscript’s 174 leaves (two quires and one leaf of which are now missing). The order of the poems (i.e., French and English counterparts) are very similar with two easily explainable disorganizations, one caused by an inattentive scribe, the other by a disarrangement of leaves in a quire.10 9

There is evidence of disruption of the original plan near the end of the roundel series (quires O, c) of H (see Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 104–6). Coupled with the fact that centuries of fixed-form lyrics were extremely common and that some leaves were left blank to receive roundels, this points to the likelihood that the scribe was waiting for poems not yet written (or not yet delivered) to complete the series. (From codicological evidence, it would seem that the series would have numbered c. 102 roundels; the corresponding series of chansons in BN fr. 25458 contains eighty-nine lyrics.) Whether Charles was still writing roundels for the series at this time or whether he had simply not yet decided on their final order (or on which to include), it is clear that the scribe was at this point a bit ahead of him. Although most of his work is admirably accurate, J. P. M. Jansen’s collation is incorrect; he seems not to have counted correctly the quires in 6s (The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 8–9). Stirnemann apparently does not count the unnumbered blank leaves in the middle of the manuscript in her tally (p. 180). 10 For particulars see Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 119. Other minor variations in poem

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* Twentieth-century criticism of the English poetry has been marked by repeated questioning of the attribution of this body of work to Charles, duc d’Orléans, contained in the poems, and at least one noted scholar still feels that the English poems were not from duke’s hand at all.11 If for a moment we entertain this possibility, what implications does this comparison of two manuscripts as physical objects have on the argument? I see only three possible ways in which these two manuscripts could have been produced: They might have been produced independently, but only if the mise-en-page and ordinatio is so thoroughly typical of both English and French manuscripts of lyrics respectively as to be quite unremarkable. Both might have been produced by the duke in effect standing at the elbow of the respective scribe and telling him how to lay out the poetry. The first might have been produced under the supervision of the duke and the second by a scribe modelling his work on that of the first at the behest of the duke. This cannot be the work of an English scribe who copies a ‘new translation’ of the work of an English poet, a translation of some of the poetry of one of England’s most famous French prisoners (to which he adds a number of new narrative and lyric poems of his own creation). This opinion requires the positing of an English scribe who goes and finds a manuscript of the duke’s French poems and patterns the layout of his poetry in English on that manuscript (and it would have had to be precisely this manuscript, as copies of it do not resemble the miseen-page of this manuscript at all closely).12 I, at least, know of no medieval attempts to create a literary ‘forgery’ quite that authentic, or quite that effete. Who, after all, would appreciate it? It is just as unlikely, in fact nearly impossible, that the English scribe simply made up a format and procedure that imitates so closely that of the French scribe,

order are explainable on the grounds of the different conceptions that lie behind the two collections. 11 Publications on this question are detailed in a number of places. Salvos have been exchanged most recently by Calin (see bibliography) and Arn (‘The Poems of Harley 682’). 12 Manuscripts copied in the poet’s lifetime, including Bibliothèque de Grenoble MS 873, Bibl. de Carpentras MS 375 (his wife’s), BN MS fr. 1104, and BN MS fr. 9223, are all laid out very differently from fr. 25458 (without spaces above the chansons, for example) and present the poems in different orders. For a summary of reasons why O cannot be modelled on H, see Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 119. In addition, Hans Meier has argued persuasively that the English must be a translation of the French and not vice versa (in H. H. Meier, ‘Middle English Styles in Translation: The Case of Chaucer and Charles’, in So Meny People Longages and Tonges: Philological Essays in Scots and Mediaeval English Presented to Angus McIntosh, ed. Michael Benskin and M. L. Samuels [Edinburgh, 1981], pp. 367–76).

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especially since H often looks quite different in such respects from contemporary English manuscripts of lyrics or other courtly verse.13 It is necessary to look to other kinds of manuscripts for visual parallels. Bodl. Lib. MS Laud Misc. 559, for instance (as reproduced in the new EETS edition [o.s. 311 and 312] of Sidrak and Bokkus, scarcely a literary manuscript according to contemporary definitions, though the text is versified), is laid out much as the surviving opening leaves of H and includes inset initials similar to those found in O. There is nothing un-English about the layout of H. What links it unmistakably to O is not its distance from English style but its similarities to O in a few, very specific particulars. The mise-en-page of individual parts of each work (lyric or narrative) is not always identical, nor would anyone expect them to be, but similarities are pervasive. The letter from Cupid admitting the lover (named Charles and duke of Orléans in both texts), for instance, receives (space for) a three-line opening initial in the English manuscript, but only a two-line initial in the French, and the two pseudo-documents are spaced a bit differently.14 On the other hand, the letter the ex-lover writes to Cupid after his retirement is laid out on the page in a virtually identical way in the two manuscripts: the two-line opening address takes a one-line initial, followed by a blank line (two in the French manuscript [Plates 4 and 5]). At the end of the letter, each scribe leaves a space before the two-line closing, which again takes a one-line initial (Plates 6 and 7).15 Likewise the roundels/chansons are virtual mirror-images of each other, with the same pattern of indented lines, one and two-line initials, and placement at the bottom

13 More differences than similarities in layout emerge from comparison of H with such

manuscripts as Cambridge University Library MS GG.IV.27 (a Chaucer manuscript of the first quarter of the fifteenth century); the Hengwrt manuscript of the Canterbury Tales (Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales MS Peniarth 392, c. 1400–1410); Pierpont Morgan MS M 817, which almost certainly belonged to Henry V, though also a bit early for our purposes (1403–1413); Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Tanner 346 (produced around the time of H, in London); the Fairfax manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, c. 1450, London). None of these manuscripts, chosen from among manuscripts of courtly literature produced in the first half of the fifteenth century, shows anything like the intricate decorative scheme of the roundels, for instance, or on the other hand the extreme plainness of a manuscript lacking headings entirely. Although certain leaves of the Ellesmere manuscript (Huntington Library MS 26 C 9) look at first glance strikingly like O, it is only because the small initials share a common style of pen flourishing. Set outside the textblock between two rules that run right around the four sides of the text, on second glance they just as clearly proclaim another patrimony. Nor is H much like any of the seventeen or so manuscripts chosen for reproduction by R. K. Root in his Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Troilus, Chaucer Society, first series 98 (Oxford, 1914), despite their stanzaic structure. 14 The scribe of H uses three-line initials at three points to indicate major breaks, whereas the scribe of O never uses an initial larger than two lines. 15 The only difference is that the English scribe spaces between stanzas, as he does throughout the manuscript. The French scribe is not in the habit of spacing between stanzas; the one-line initials do the job for him.

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of the page (Plates 8 and 9). Each manuscript was written by a single scribe who employed two-line initials at the beginnings of most lyrics and narrative sections, with single-line initials at other significant points. Both scribes use inset initials rather than marginal ones, so common in English manuscripts of the period. On occasion both scribes also leave spaces at the ends of ballades for envoys, as if they were waiting for more lines. The scribe of O even leaves space after the last line of the ballade and the heading ‘Lenvoy’ at the top of p. 95 for an envoy to be entered later, then continues with the next ballade. This may be one reason why the he often leaves spaces at the bottoms of leaves rather than beginning a new ballade on the same page, though it may be only part of the reason. Both manuscripts contain corrections, some in O from the duke’s own hand; more in O and those in H are in other hands, but clearly entered under the direction of the duke.16 Most strikingly, of course, both scribes leave large blank spaces above the chansons/roundels. The scribe of O ruled all the pages for chansons completely, but most of those spaces above roundels in H are unruled. I would contend that the third statement describes most accurately the procedure followed in copying the duke’s poetry: he supervised the copying of the French manuscript (O) and later showed it or lent it to the English scribe and that scribe then modelled his work (H) on that of the French scribe (of O), with directions from, but only intermittent supervision by, the duke. The evidence of the manuscript layout is that the scribe began with perhaps verbal directions from the poet to produce a space-efficient manuscript, with a few specific exceptions, points in the manuscript at which a good deal of space is left blank on a leaf for reasons that can only be surmised. The first quire of the English manuscript is unfortunately missing, but the letter patent that opens the first extant quire is written without any space after the two-line opening or before the two-line closing. After that, the first seven ballades (the first of which does begin on a new leaf) are run together, with no space between stanzas or even between separate lyrics. The scribe was following his orders to the letter, but at this point, when apparently the duke had a look at the scribe’s work, he revised his instructions.17 The scribe leaves one space between the end of Ballade 7 and the beginning of

16 Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 111–13. BN MS fr. 25458 was of course in the duke’s pos-

session until the end of his life. 17 If Kibler and Wimsatt are correct in their suggestion that ‘it often seems . . . that once

the typical medieval author consigned his text to the scribe he cared but little for its subsequent fortunes’ (p. 42), then the duke of Orléans was certainly no ‘typical medieval author’, but the model they argue against (of ‘an exemplar that the author kept with him and which he presumably perfected over the years’, p. 46) suits the duke’s position vis-à-vis his manuscript of French poetry fairly well. Whereas the authors discern the concerns of Machaut to be the arrangement of works within the manuscripts and their illustrative program, Charles shows much more interest in the text itself, though he does rearrange a few of the ‘translated’ lyrics in the English manuscript (William W. Kibler and James I. Wimsatt, ‘Machaut’s Text and the Question of his Personal Supervision’, Studies in the Literary Imagination 20 [1987], 41–53).

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PLATE 4

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BN MS fr. 25458, p. 117. Cliché Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris.

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PLATE 5

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BL MS Harley 682, fol. 57v. By permission of the British Library.

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PLATE 6

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BN MS fr. 25458, p. 119. Cliché Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris.

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PLATE 7

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BL MS Harley 682, fol. 58v. By permission of the British Library.

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PLATE 8

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BN MS fr. 25458, p. 244. Cliché Bibliothéque nationale de France, Paris.

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PLATE 9

This illustration has not been reproduced for copyright reasons

BL MS Harley 682, fol. 65v. By permission of the British Library.

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Ballade 8; thereafter he leaves one line between stanzas and two lines between lyrics (or a lyric and a narrative section).18 From Ballade 8 to the end of the work the scribe always spaces between stanzas and between poems, even dividing a poem written in couplets into ‘stanzas’ (lines 2982–3045). The French scribe, on the other hand, spaces after the opening of the corresponding (French version of the) letter patent and before its closing. He then proceeds to space identically every ballade he writes. The spacing in the latter part of the two manuscripts is much more similar than is the spacing of these opening leaves. The fact that the English scribe made a start, but then modified the layout once the duke had a look at what he was doing (see below) argues for his intermittent supervision, as do large blanks left at various points in the manuscript (which do not accord with the idea that the scribe was saving space at all cost), and the fact that the duke was travelling a good deal of the time during these years. Besides the spacing between stanzas in H (which is not like his exemplar, where no spaces are left except before the heading ‘Lenvoy’), the English scribe’s most striking divergence from his model is his omission of the many headings that the French scribes uses, including ‘titles’ such as ‘Complainte de France’ or ‘Copie de la lettre de Retenue’ as well as the words ‘Balade’, ‘Chançon’, or ‘Lenvoy’ at appropriate points. The scribe of O attempts (and fails) to write one ballade per page,19 but this was never part of the English scribe’s plan. These systematic differences are minor, however, compared with the many divergences between the style of either of these manuscripts and most of the manuscripts contemporary with them. The differences between them point, not to different patrons, but to scribal freedom within the guidelines set by the prince-poet who commissioned them. In short, H is more like O in significant details than it is like other manuscripts of courtly verse written in England in the first half of the fifteenth century.20 This argues for one mind at work on both manuscripts – and if on both manuscripts, then by necessity on both bodies of poetry. 18 A. I. Doyle has suggested to me that the scribe probably received the first seven

unspaced ballades in much the form we see them in the manuscript; perhaps they were written on a large sheet or in a loose quire. The duke may have run them together to save space, and the scribe followed his lead until told to do otherwise. 19 The scribe succeeds as long as successive ballades do not have envoys. As early as the third ballade, the lyric is too long to fit on one side (because of the longer stanzas and envoy). The scribe writes the envoy at the top of the following side (p. 20), followed by a shorter ballade. Things go well until he is forced to split an envoy between pp. 30 and 31. At that point he seems to give up the scheme, but on p. 36 he leaves a large blank at the bottom of the side in order to begin a new ballade on p. 37. Thereafter his habit is to run the ballades on from side to side, with occasional ‘corrections,’ i.e., he leaves a number of blank lines at the bottom of a page in order to allow himself a new start on a new side (e.g., pp. 44, 50, 61, 65, 75, 90). The English scribe simply skips two lines after each ballade and then begins the next, without regard to where on the page he begins a lyric. 20 For reproductions of French manuscript pages (of lyrics) comparable in various ways to O, see for example Deschamps (ed. G. A. Crapelet, Poésies morales et historiques d’Eustache Deschamps), or University of Pennsylvania MS French 15 (c. 1400, with royal

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* When they were made, both books were a handy size, easy to carry around but not so small as to be hard on the eyes (what Janet Backhouse refers to in her essay as ‘good reading copies’).21 The duke was travelling a good deal during this period, as he had at various points in his captivity (between Wingfield and Ewelme or London with the earl of Suffolk in the early 1430s, for instance, or between Bolingbroke [Lincs.] and London with Thomas Cumberworth in the 1420s), so he had good reason to consider the size and shape of books he was likely to travel with, and he was apparently accustomed to reading by himself rather than being read to. They were both copied on good (but not first quality) vellum. (There are no holes, and the vellum is fairly thin and fairly uniform.) They are very neatly written and easily readable, the French in a standard bâtarde and the English in a very plain bastard hand without flourishes of any kind. Both show evidence of care in their production but neither is a luxury volume in any sense.22 They are books to hold and read from easily. What do these similarities and differences tell us about the duke’s tastes in manuscripts? Some things about the appearance of his poetry on the page were apparently important to the poet; some were not. One scribe liked using headings and used them consistently; the other preferred to leave them out. This is not the sort of thing that concerned the poet and he left it to his (surely professional) scribes to do as they saw fit. He did have a decorative scheme in mind, and he must have asked the English scribe to pattern his layout of the lyrics on the work of the French scribe, with its hierarchy of decorated initials and placement of chansons/roundels at the bottoms of pages. He wanted a fairly simple but aesthetically pleasing book of convenient size for reading. His library is impressive in its size and content matter, but it is certainly not lavish, and these books are produced very much in his style.23 The English manuscript is written on a slightly more miscellaneous collection of parchment and may have been a somewhat cheaper job – hence his directive to the scribe not to waste space, which the

associations; ed. James I. Wimsatt, Chaucer and the poems of ‘Ch’), both of which are extremely plain. 21 See her essay in this volume, p. 162. 22 Both scribes refuse to squeeze a line on to the bottom of page (though omitted lines are written in the margins in a few cases), the scribe of H at one point leaving only one (final) line at the top of a page (fol. 23v). This is exactly the sort of consideration that takes precedence over visual symmetry or the kind of precision that bespeaks luxury. The text was of much more interest to the poet than the book’s ability to impress others. 23 Many of his manuscripts have elaborately decorated opening leaves followed by very simple text pages. He does not own a high proportion of heavily illuminated manuscripts. Even the exquisite book of prayers he had made for himself in England (Paris, BN MS lat. 1196) is marked more by extremely high quality materials and fine workmanship than by gorgeous illumination.

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scribe followed all too literally at first, leaving no space at all between stanzas or even between ballades, until he was told with Ballade 8 to allow a little more room. The fact that he did not try to work at the one-page-per-ballade scheme that the French scribe would have liked to have followed also suggests that he was in general trying not to waste space. It must have been the poet’s idea for the scribe of H to leave fairly large blanks at other points in the manuscript (generally at the openings and closings of sections), since it is difficult to see why else the scribe would have wasted space when he worked so hard to save space elsewhere.24 When the duke returned to France in November of 1440, the fates of these two manuscripts whose short lives had run parallel up to this point diverged dramatically. Unfinished, the English manuscript stayed behind in England, while the fully decorated French manuscript began a new life in France as an album, receiving at intervals new poems by and in many hands, a series of efforts at initial decoration, and even an addition of four new quires. This manuscript, which Charles kept with him to the end of his life in 1469 and into which he copied a number of poems (even two in English), looked very different in 1440 than it does today, before the incorporation of the lyrics he composed after his return to France and those of other poets around him at the court at Blois, including some by his third wife, Marie de Clèves. The duke was interested in a book that was comfortable to hold and read, well spaced, with a simple, uncluttered page, in style both restrained and neat. A man not interested in visual pyrotechnics, he was more pleased by clarity than pomp. He wanted the ballades to be set off one from the other in some way, for instance by larger two-line initials and at least some extra space. He wanted the headings and signatures of his pseudo-letters to be visible on the page. He wanted consistency and at least an illusion of completeness. These manuscripts show this kind of care, but not luxury, perhaps partly because of the endless strain on his finances of his attempts to raise both his own ransom and that of his brother Jean, perhaps because restraint was simply the personal style he preferred. These manuscripts tell us more than just the tastes of the author; they tell us something about his attitudes toward his work and even toward the two languages in which he wrote. Some of their differences are a function of a difference in conception of the two bodies of work. In O each new genre must begin on a new recto, if not a new quire. This is not true of H, where for instance the first ballade series begins mid-page on folio 4 verso. This difference in the mise-en-page of the lyric sections is purposeful and reflects the difference in the nature of the two works. The English work, with its complex narrative frames interrupted by interludes of lyric meditation, tells a coherent story of love and loss. The French work parallels some of this very closely. The introduction of ‘the duke that men call ‘‘of Orléans’’ ’ to the God of Love, the first series of ballade-epistles to the

24 I plan a further study of all the blanks in the manuscript, including those above the

chansons/roundels.

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lady, the subsequent withdrawal from Cupid’s service, the narrator’s retirement to the Castle of No Care or Nonchaloir, all point to a single vision of a work written in two languages, in the manner of the French dits. The subsequent divergence of the two manuscripts, however (which bothered Daniel Poirion so much that he took it as proof that the same man could not have written both works25), points to the poet’s two purposes. In addition to this group of lyric and narrative poems that seem to have a narrative purpose, the scribe of O also wrote a series of ballades des plusieurs propos (not part of the ballade series that describes the love of a man for a lady), as well as a series of complaintes, some of them political rather than amatory. What is more, he did not present the chansons as part of the ‘story’, but relegated them to a separate section of the manuscript, so that the ballades announcing the retirement to the Castle of No Care end the only (mixed form) narrative section of the work, evidence that his experimentation with narrative – at least extended narrative – was at an end, and that he did not see this narrative as including the shorter lyric forms, the chanson, the carole, or the rondeau. He occupied himself from 1440 until his death exclusively with the lyric, and especially the rondeau. The result of this conceptual difference between the two works is that the French manuscript is constructed formally, each new genre beginning on a new recto,26 whereas the English manuscript, which is busy telling a story while it clearly foregrounds three lyric sequences (ballade/roundel/ballade), appends the ballades to the verse that precedes, skipping only the usual two lines before beginning on a verso in the middle of a quire.27 BN fr. 25458 starts out looking intriguingly like BL MS Harley 682. The duke was not, however, simply producing the same work in two languages. The open-endedness of the French work marks it as the beginning of a larger project (perhaps even a life’s work, as it turned out), while the English work, finished at least conceptually, is intended to be read, not as simply a collection of lyrics, but as a whole: a major work in the form of a dit. What is more, we can see in those lovely, white, virginal blank leaves that filled so much of the French manuscript in 1440 some measure of the poet’s ambitions. At least thirty-four blank leaves follow the ballades written by the first scribe;28 forty-eight plus one side follow the chansons. Today, twenty-five leaves 25 ‘Création poétique’. 26 He seems to have wanted to begin the ballades on the first recto of the third quire (p.

17), but he or his scribe made a mistake in the calculations, for the first ballade begins in the middle of the recto of that leaf. 27 The first ballade sequence begins on fol. 4v with a 3–line initial, following 14 blank lines (probably left for decoration). The first roundel is on fol. 51r, mid-quire. The vision of Venus and Fortune begins on fol. 111r, where the dirt on the page shows unmistakably that this is the opening of a quire, but the second ballade sequence begins at the bottom of fol. 124v after only two blank lines following the end of that vision. 28 I say ‘at least’ because an additional fourteen blank leaves may have been intended for either ballades or complaintes.

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intended for ballades remain blank, but the rondeaux came pouring from his pen in such profusion that he was forced to add more parchment to the manuscript to contain them.29 While writing some of the best narrative verse in English of the first half of the fifteenth century and completing his work with a series of 33 original ballades (only four are English versions of French lyrics), he little dreamed that he would soon lose interest in the longer form and abandon it in order to write some of the most loved short poems of the Middle Ages in any language.30 The question of why he left the English manuscript behind in England cannot be answered conclusively, but it is more than likely that it represented a body of work that he had no intention of ever enlarging. Although he took a certain pride in his English poetry (perhaps even preparing this manuscript as a gift, perhaps in answer to a request31), it would have been little more than a curiosity on the Loire. (It might even have been a bit suspect.) A reading knowledge of French among the English nobility could usually be taken for granted; the reverse could not. Charles knew that back in France he would probably lose his desire to compose poetry in English – a natural enough thought. The leaves of Harley 682 are therefore full. The manuscript does not end with a series of blanks; it is virtually complete. BN fr. 25458 was a living album, whereas Harley 682 was, from the moment of its creation, a souvenir.

29 Today the last two quires of the manuscript (8s) remain blank. 30 The number of modern composers who have set his rondeaux to music attests to the

continuing appeal of his late rondeaux. 31 Some scholars have been dissatisfied with Steele’s conclusion that the manuscript was

left, virtually complete, on the scribe’s hands but never paid for. Others can not accept the likely explanation that his English poetry was not in the forefront of the duke’s consciousness when he was busy negotiating his own release from his long captivity and so, in the tangle of trips between country estate, the capital, and northern France, the manuscript was inadvertently left behind. An attractive possibility, and one that would make sense, is that he intended to make a gift of his English poetry to one or other of his keepers or some other friend he had made in England, Suffolk or Cumberworth, perhaps. The idea that the blank spaces were left for some sort of decoration supports this idea (since his books are notable for their general lack of decoration). Friends he surely had in England, if the word is given as wide a meaning as it carries now, but his motivation for such a gift could as well have been political (or politic), since, uncertain of the shape of his own future, he was interested in being in and staying in the good graces of many of the Englishmen around him who would be able or inclined to speak a word on his behalf if he needed it. It is in any case not unthinkable that even so serious a poet as Charles d’Orléans might have seen in his approaching release a time to put all his English experience behind him. I find it extremely unlikely that he would have intended to write English poetry back in France.

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Charles d’Orléans et l’‘autre’ langue: Ce français que son ‘cuer amer doit’ CLAUDIO GALDERISI

Covient entrer en ceste Queste et muer l’estre de chascun et changier . . .1

P

EUT-ON lire la poésie, toute la poésie, comme autre chose qu’un ‘Zwecklosen Sang’,2 un chant sans but? Pour beaucoup de poètes, rimer, au début du XVe siècle, est aussi, sinon surtout, un ‘Passe Temps’. Comme l’a clairement mis en évidence Jean-Claude Mühlethaler,3 c’est dans cette perspective poétique en ton mineur que semble s’inscrire toute une branche de la production poétique de cette période, de Jean Regnier à Alain Chartier, de François Villon aux Grands Rhétoriqueurs. Par delà le rapprochement traditionnel et courtois aux activités de la chasse, de la pêche ou de l’amour, le mot Passe Temps paraît lié surtout aux notions d’inutilité, d’ennui ou d’oisiveté, c’est-à-dire à une activité de l’esprit qui semble être à la fois en opposition et en osmose avec l’inactivité du corps. On retrouve, en effet, l’expression ‘Passe Temps’ dans un grand nombre de textes de l’époque,4 associée sémantiquement à l’écriture, aux livres, dans une perspective horacienne de delectare et prodesse. Son emploi tend à souligner l’utilité du musage intellectuel opposée à l’‘inutilité’ des autres passe-temps, comme dans ces vers de Jean Regnier:

1 2

La Queste del Saint Graal, éd. par Albert Pauphilet (Paris, 1984), p. 163, vv. 21–22. ‘Zwecklosen Sang der Nachtigall’: le chant sans but (‘zwecklos’) du rossignol est comparé par le poète Konrad von Würzburg, qui écrit à la fin du XIIIe siècle, au travail du poète. (Cité in Peter Wapnewski, Deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters [Göttingen, 1980], p. 100.) 3 Cf. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Poétiques du quinzième siècle (Paris, 1983), pp. 26–32. Les emplois de ‘Passe Temps’ que je cite ici sont tirés pour la plupart de ce chapitre. 4 Cf. François Garin, ‘Complainte’, vv. 1185–1192, dans La Complainte de François Garin, marchand de Lyon (Lyon, 1978); Jean Molinet, ‘Chappelet des dames’, dans Les Faicts et dictz de Jean Molinet, éd. par Nicole Dupire, SATF 80, vol. I (Paris, 1937), p. 121.

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Un petit livre vueil emprendre De ma fortune, sans mesprendre, Pour passer temps et pour apprendre.5

La formule n’est pas nouvelle, et l’on pourrait y reconnaître aisément un motif traditionnel des littératures romanes. Aussi, dans le poème ‘Passe Temps’ de Michault Taillevent, par un jeu d’antonymie, le temps qui passe devient-il le temps passé, celui du regret et de la nostalgie: ‘Temps passé jamais ne retourne’.6 Encore plus marqué le rapprochement entre ‘Passe Temps’ et temps passé dans le Passe Temps de tout Homme et toute Femme de Guillaume Alecis, inspiré du De contemptu, sive de miseria humanae conditionis d’Innocent III: Cy finissent en brefve espace, Pour eulx qui ont passé sept ans, Ung passe temps et ung temps passé, Et ung jamais ne passe temps, Dieu nous doint si bien temps passer Et notre passe temps sçavoir, Que quant viendra au trespasser Puissions tous paradis avoir.7

Ici, toutefois, l’imbrication passe-temps/temps passé/temps qui passe/temps du discours en train de passer/temps de la fabula circulaire transforme la réflexion sur la futilité du temps et sur une ‘eschatologie’ poétique, en jeu de mots plaisant, en exercice rhétorique. Mais, il est intéressant de remarquer que ce ‘Passe Temps’ poétique est déjà celui de la recherche d’un temps perdu, et retrouvé, dans l’écriture de cette même recherche. C’est aussi dans ce sens métapoétique qu’on le rencontre, à peu près à la même époque (1435–1455), dans l’œuvre du prince Charles d’Orléans, poète dilettante par destinée et intention, lui pour qui le ‘Passe Temps’ finira par ressembler ironiquement à un contrappasso dantesque. Après vingt-cinq ans de vie passés dans les prisons anglaises, le poète se condamne, pour donner un sens au temps passé de l’homme, à vingtcinq ans, ou presque, d’enfermement poétique, passés à rechercher à travers la forme du rondeau et de la ballade, une identité artistique et linguistique anachronique, perdue ou oubliée. Il convient de dire, tout de suite, que si le syntagme ‘Passe Temps’ se prête parfaitement au jeu de la personnification, Charles d’Orléans, pourtant si sensible à ce genre de divertissement lexical, n’en a certes pas abusé. Il l’utilise, en effet, une seule fois dans les Ballades, deux fois dans les Rondeaux, dont une comme personnification, et surtout il en fait à trois reprises, dans le Songe en

5

Jean Regnier, Les Fortunes et adversitez, éd. par Eugène Droz, SATF 67 (Paris, 1923), vv. 16–18. 6 Michault Taillevent, ‘Passe Temps’, l. 14, dans Robert Deschaux, Un Poète bourguignon du XVe siècle: Michault Taillevent (Genève, 1975). 7 Guillaume Alecis, ‘Passe temps de tout homme et de toute femme’, vv. 5303–10, dans Œvres poétiques, par Arthur Piaget et Emile Picot, SATF 37, vol. II (Paris, 1896), p. 291.

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Complainte, le gouverneur amical de la maison où le poète est gardé en compagnie de Nonchaloir.8 Ce sont ces mêmes trois occurrences du Songe en Complainte, que l’on retrouve dans les poèmes anglais de l’édition Steele, traduites par le syntagme tyme a-past (ou apast), ou passid tyme.9 L’absence de lexicalisation de ‘Passe Temps’ à cette époque renforce, comme l’a bien vu Shigemi Sasaki,10 la notion temporelle du syntagme, mais ce temps en train de passer n’est pas nécessairement celui de la vie du poète. S’il est vrai que la date de composition présumée du ‘Songe en Complainte’ (1437–1438) semble bien indiquer que le temps qui passe dans la réalité de chaque jour rapproche l’homme de sa délivrance, et le remplit d’espoir de retrouver sa ‘doulce’ France et son château de Blois, il n’est pas évident, comme l’affirme Shigemi Sasaki,11 qu’une fois libre, le poète pourra enfin retrouver son enfance heureuse dans l’‘ancien manoir’. Au poète âgé de 46 ans lors de son retour en France, il ne reste plus que l’espace et le temps de la poésie pour reconquérir à la fois le temps du souvenir et celui de l’enfance de la vie, qui est aussi, en partie, celui des enfances de son œuvre: Il n’est nul si beau passe temps Que se jouer a sa pensee Mais qu’elle soit bien despensee Par Raison; ainsi je l’entens.12

Ce ‘passe temps’ du jeu dans la chambre de pensée est donc celui du temps qui passe, qui est despensé, consommé raisonnablement, parce que manifestement il n’en reste jamais assez au poète pour ‘jouer a sa pensee’. Les deux autres occurrences de ‘Passe Temps’ témoignent en effet de cette recherche de la dimension du temps passé par le passe-temps poétique, qui est alors surtout, un repasse-temps. Le goût et l’habitude du divertissement courtois se transforment, ainsi, vers après vers, en jeu de miroirs convexes, dans lesquels se reflètent à la fois l’image du prince-poète et celle du prisonnier-poète. Une ironie amère, une pudeur ontologique, un désir de rebâtir sa vie telle une enluminure du cœur, mais d’un cœur jeune, se fondent dans une poésie de la facilité, du musage intellectuel, du jeu, qui tend à mimer la jeunesse de l’œuvre et le souvenir de cette saison de la vie. A la perspective du regard rétrospectif se superpose celle du regard autoscopique. Un regard autoscopique, cependant, qui vise un moi multiple: celui du 8

9 10 11 12

Ballade 97, v. 6; Rondeaux 329, vv. 1, 7, 12, et 339, v. 6, dans Mühlethaler, éd., Ballades et rondeaux, pp. 282, 682, 694; et ‘Songe en Complainte’, vv. 464, 484, 507, dans Champion, éd., Poésies, vol. I, p. 17. Ballades 81, vv. 2958–59, 2979–80, 3002–3, dans Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 242, 243, 244. Shigemi Sasaki, Sur le thème de Nonchaloir dans la poésie de Charles d’Orléans (Paris, 1974), p. 86. Sasaki, p. 87. Mühlethaler, éd., p. 682, Rondeau 329, vv. 1–4.

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jeune homme prisonnier des anglais ainsi que celui du poète qui tente l’opération de réconciliation ontologique, et encore celui du jeune poète qui s’imagine un jour en compagnie de Nonchaloir. Le voyage dans le temps, la juxtaposition diachronique d’émotions et de souvenirs cachent une poésie de la synchronie, de la quasi-coïncidence entre singularité et subjectivité poétique. Ce n’est pas la perspective poétique du regard que le prince-poète porte depuis son présent sur le passé, mais l’invention d’une fiction psychologique et linguistique dans laquelle le futur est appréhendé à partir du passé, c’est-à-dire du présent poétique. Deux figures allégoriques, à l’apparence antonymes, comme j’ai eu déjà l’occasion de le signaler, règlent et définissent a contrario ce ‘Passe Temps’ poétique (surtout dans les Rondeaux), en présidant l’espace conceptuel de la ‘Forest de Longue Actente’: Jeunesse-Vieillesse. Ce sont les deux géôliers-compagnons d’un voyage à rebours poétique qui va durer jusqu’à la vraie vieillesse de l’homme et du poète. Deux personnifications qui apparaissent dans les Rondeaux presque toujours ensemble (onze fois sur douze Jeunesse est en compagnie de Vieillesse), comme si le temps du récit de chaque rondeau représentait en miniature celui de la recherche poétique et de la vie de Charles d’Orléans. Or, comme j’ai déjà pu le constater, ces deux figures, sorte de Janus bifrons, n’ont jamais été décrites physiquement par le poète, ‘qui en a fait [. . .] les parques-hamadryades de la forêt de Longue Attente’.13 Elles évoquent et symbolisent, en effet, une dimension de l’esprit où le poète peut imaginer, et de ce fait construire, une existence autre que celle que le destin lui a réservée: un espace géo-temporel neutre où les arrêts de Fortune seraient enfin cassés ou décriés par une dame nommée Poésie. Elles constituent, pour l’homme promis désormais à Vieillesse, mais, au fond, en pleine jeunesse créative, une dimension toute psychologique du temps, et personnifient sur un plan poétique le défi esthétique à la linéarité temporelle de la vie. Toute la poésie de Charles d’Orléans, celle de la période anglaise, et encore plus celle des années 1445–1460 à Blois, est soumise à un procédé de ‘remythisation du temps’.14 Mais cette remythisation est toute subjective, en équilibre précaire entre jeu de la fiction poétique et fiction du jeu poétique. Cette singularité temporelle de la poétique aurélienne me paraît être structurellement liée à une distance, ou plutôt à des distances linguistiques que le poète s’est efforcé de sonder et de réduire son œuvre durant. Distance, d’abord et naturellement, au début de sa captivité en Angleterre, par rapport à une langue française quotidienne qui désormais lui est interdite; distance aussi du poète prisonnier par rapport aux modèles linguistiques et littéraires de sa jeunesse, qui doivent apparaître au jeune prince, aux prises avec la dure réalité de sa condition de prisonnier, comme les miroirs fêlés d’un monde et 13 Galderisi, ‘Personnifications, réifications et métaphores créatives’, p. 402. 14 La formule est de Paul Ricœur, qui attribue à la seule réalité fictionnelle, artistique, le

pouvoir d’évoquer et faire coïncider vision mythique du temps et actualisation de remythisation. (Cf. Paul Ricœur, Temps et récit, 3. Le Temps raconté [Paris, 1985], p. 238.)

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d’une littérature révolus. Distance, encore, de l’homme et du poète prisonniers par rapport à une langue anglaise qui n’a jamais autant été celle de l’autre, en même temps qu’elle représente la réalité linguistique du présent de l’homme; distance, ensuite, de l’homme enfin libre qui de retour en France redécouvre une langue qui est la sienne, mais de laquelle le séparent vingt-cinq ans d’Angleterre, d’anglais aussi en partie, et vingt-cinq ans de poèmes écrits dans une langue française, qui doit maintenant lui paraître à la fois comme sienne et étrangère. Distance, enfin, du poète enfermé dans son château de Blois par rapport au lexique de ses poèmes écrits en Angleterre, mais aussi distance, le secret désir dont parle Daniel Poirion, par rapport à une langue anglaise qui pour avoir été la langue de ses geôliers n’en a pas été moins la langue d’une partie de sa vie, et en particulier de sa jeunesse, ainsi que la langue de quelques amis fidèles, que le Duc n’est pas prêt d’oublier. Autant de distances et de manques qui ont laissés des traces esthétiques dans le lexique de Charles d’Orléans,15 sans doute aussi dans sa conscience poétique, qu’il est possible de reconnaître et de suivre, comme l’a déjà fait de manière magistrale Daniel Poirion.16 Autant de distances, ou plutôt autant de dimensions poétiques et psychologiques du thème de la distance – distance spatiale, temporelle, ontologique, linguistique – par rapport à l’aventure d’un langage poétique, qui se cherche dans et par la contradiction comme condition esthétique et poétique, mais qui se cherche aussi à l’intérieur d’une langue quotidienne, le français, que le poète semble percevoir à la fois comme langue maternelle et langue de l’autre, étrangère, et en tant que telle désirée. Certes, il s’agit là d’un désir moins secret et plus affiché que celui dont parle Daniel Poirion à propos de l’Angleterre, mais ce qui fait sa particularité c’est qu’il semble découler paradoxalement du second, du moins sur le plan poétique. 15 La comparaison entre les lexiques utilisés par Charles d’Orléans dans les Ballades et

dans les Rondeaux, que j’ai développée en particulier dans la partie centrale de mon étude sur langue des rondeaux (cf. Galderisi, Le Lexique de Charles d’Orléans dans les Rondeaux [Genève, 1993], pp. 27–85) permet, en effet, une approche ‘diacronesthétique’ de la langue poétique aurélienne, c’est-à-dire une analyse de l’évolution linguistique, en fonction non seulement d’une chronologie créative, mais aussi du choix d’une forme poétique: le rondeau à la place de la ballade. L’analyse des résultats qualitatifs et quantitatifs des deux lexiques a offert, en effet, une série d’indications sur l’évolution du langage poétique de Charles d’Orléans. Ainsi, les résultats aussi bien du classement par champs sémantiques, que l’étude des mots-thèmes et des mots-clés, ainsi que le classement par écart réduit, semblent non seulement confirmer l’hypothèse d’une évolution asymétrique du lexique aurélien, mais aussi appuyer statistiquement le concept de diachronie esthétique, qui m’a permis de suivre et de représenter l’évolution linguistique et poétique d’une réflexion créatrice par rapport à la forme poétique. Ces résultats, étonnants pour certains aspects, montrent un renouveau, dans un sens réaliste, du lexique que le poète utilise dans les Rondeaux – et cela par rapport aussi bien aux autres poètes contemporains, qu’au lexique employé par le poète lui-même dans les Ballades. 16 Voir, en particulier, Daniel Poirion, ‘Création poétique’.

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Réécoutons, alors, Daniel Poirion évoquer le sens d’une mélancolie fondée sur une nostalgie a contrario: La poésie de Charles d’Orléans, à la fin de sa vie, est celle d’un prisonnier volontaire, d’un exilé. Exilé d’Angleterre! L’insaisissable bonheur ne se confond décidément pas avec les plaisirs de la cour. Longtemps avant la prison romantique Charles d’Orléans s’invente, sur ses vieux jours, une Chartreuse où le secret désir dont parlent ses poèmes prend plus vraisemblablement un sens mystique.17

Lorsqu’on pense qu’une partie très importante de la production aurélienne a été composée dans cette ‘Chartreuse’ à la fois concrète (château de Blois) et poétique (‘la chambre de Pensee’), on se rend compte à quel point l’exil en Angleterre a été surtout l’exil de sa propre langue, de cette langue et de sa ‘doulce plaisance’, qui a tant dû lui manquer pendant sa captivité, et dont les mots ont dû finir par avoir un ton et une sonorité à la fois familiers et exotiques, en un mot poétiques. On se rend compte aussi que chez cet ‘exilé d’Angleterre’ la poésie naît d’une double translatio celle de la langue et de la structure poétique courtoise traditionnelle vers cette langue française du XVe siècle de plus en plus réaliste, et celle que le poète opère entre le français, langue de sa mémoire et celui de ses poèmes. Tous les poètes s’accordent à dire que si l’on peut penser et écrire dans plusieurs langues, on ne peut être poète que dans une seule langue, celle qui résonne à la fois comme la plus familière et la plus hostile, la plus proche du langage quotidien et la plus étrangère dans sa mystérieuse différence.18 Dans son Contre Sainte-Beuve, Proust, par exemple, définit le langage littéraire comme cette ‘espèce de langue étrangère’ dans laquelle sont toujours écrits les beaux livres. Une ‘langue étrangère’ que les critiques se donnent pour mission naturellement de traduire, mais qui est d’abord accessible au public des nonconnaisseurs par sa proximité-distance avec la langue quotidienne. Proust prend en effet la précaution esthétique de connoter le syntagme ‘langue étrangère’ par le substantif abstrait ‘espèce’, qui loin de rendre indéterminée la catégorie ‘langue étrangère’, la précise en tant qu’objet esthétique ayant une apparence et une forme sensibles, où se rencontrent et se reconnaissent l’émotion disconve-

17 Daniel Poirion, ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre: un secret désir’, dans Mélanges de

philologie et littérature romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem, Marche Romane (Liège, 1978), p. 527. 18 Dante arrive jusqu’à définir le reniement de la langue maternelle comme la plus grave des fautes contre nature pour un lettré. C’est une telle faute qui vaut, d’ailleurs, à son ami paternel Brunetto Latini, coupable d’avoir écrit le Trésor en français, d’être condamné à l’Enfer. Ailleurs, dans le Convivio, cette position de Dante apparaît encore plus nettement, lorsqu’il fustige avec une extrême dureté tous ceux qui ‘dispregiano lo proprio volgare, e l’altrui pregiano: e tutti questi cotali sono li abominevoli cattivi d’Italia che hanno a vile questo prezioso volgare’, ‘déprisent leur vulgaire et prônent le vulgaire d’autrui: et tous ceux-ci sont les infâmes méchants d’Italie qui n’ont pas de considération pour un vulgaire si précieux’ (Dante, Convivio, I, 11).

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nante de l’artiste et celle, conventionnelle, du lecteur. C’est la différence, la tension, entre langue quotidienne et les ellipses et les excroissances du langage poétique, qui produisent pour lui cette étrangeté de la langue dans laquelle sont écrits les ‘beaux’ livres. D’autre part, une langue qui est véritablement étrangère, c’est-à-dire celle des autres que l’on ne comprend pas, ou seulement partiellement, fût-ce celle des plus beaux livres de Dante, de Shakespeare, de Cervantès, de Mann ou de Dostoïevski, ne se donne pas aux lecteurs, mais aussi aux poètescréateurs, comme un langage poétique du simple fait de sa distance linguistique. Dans ce sens, le langage poétique semble rentrer dans la catégorie ‘espèce de langue étrangère’, parce qu’il est l’œuvre d’un truchement, qui s’engage pour les autres, tous les autres: Et qui n’a pas langaige en lui Pour parler selon son désir, Ung truchement lui fault quérir; Ainsi, ou par la ou par cy, A trompeur, trompeur et demi.19

Il est intéressant, cependant, de remarquer qu’il manque dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans la trace d’une tentative de composition synchronique de ces multiples présents linguistiques. Chez le poète qui a composé quelques poèmes bilingues français-latin et français-italien, sans que ces deux langues aient eu le même impact psychologique et linguistique sur sa vie et son œuvre qu’a dû sans doute avoir la langue anglaise, il n’y pas de traces de poèmes bilingues françaisanglais. Pourtant le bilinguisme français-anglais aurait pu et dû sans doute offrir au Duc une solution linguistique privilégiée dans l’enfermement formel des Ballades et surtout des Rondeaux; il aurait pu constituer une passerelle linguistique entre les deux espaces temporels de son expérience poétique, se révélér au poète comme le guide capable de l’orienter dans son vain périple de la ‘Forest de Longue Actente’. Dans ce sens, les poèmes anglais, qu’une partie importante de la critique surtout anglophone a voulu attribuer à la période anglaise de la production aurélienne, par delà la question controversée de la paternité sur laquelle il ne me semble pas utile de revenir ici, ne sont à la rigueur, et quelle que soit l’autorité, Charles ou ‘the poet’, qui les ait signés, qu’une tentative esthétique de ‘traduire’ un texte ou un sentiment poétique, selon les points de vue, dans une forme poétique20 anglaise. Or, justement, dans les textes bilingues de Charles d’Orléans, ce que semble rechercher le poète, ce n’est pas la translation partielle d’une idée, ou d’un texte, dont le discours nous suggère la présence, mais plutôt le dépassement sous

19 Mühlethaler, éd., pp. 422–24, Rondeau 79, vv. 9–13. 20 Je fais référence, ici, au titre de l’article que M. Arn a consacré aux formes poétiques

auréliennes dans les ‘English poems’ de Charles d’Orléans: ‘Poetic Form as Mirror of Meaning in the English Poems of Charles of Orléans’.

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forme de clichés,21 de catachrèses, du seuil qui sépare la langue du langage, plus encore que les langues entre elles. Le mélange qui en résulte témoigne de la recherche d’un ton, d’une modalité, d’une voix qui est en dehors du poète, qui est l’Autre: Le trucheman de ma pensee, Qui parle maint divers langaige, M’a rapporté chose sauvaige Que je n’ai point acoustumee.22

Parce que ‘trucheman’, comme le rappelle Jacqueline Cerquiglini peut aussi s’écrire ‘trichement’, attirant ainsi le mot, ‘par paronomase, du côté de la tricherie’.23 Parler ‘maint divers langaige’ signifie évidemment pour Charles d’Orléans une métaphore du ‘privé martire’ du poète; il préfigure la violence et l’effort de mémoire, linguistique et psychologique, qu’implique l’acte d’écriture, recomposés dans l’image pathétique du poète qui découvre dans son ‘Livre de Pensee’ le cœur en train d’écrire ‘la vraye histoire de douleur/ De larmes toute enluminee’.24 Dans ce langage aurélien qui court comme une eau vive sous la glace du français, il n’apparaît pas d’‘eau de résurgence’, pour paraphraser la célèbre image du rondeau 29,25 de l’anglais. Certes, le bilinguisme n’alimente que rarement l’écriture aurélienne, d’autant plus que la plupart des expressions latines, et même italiennes, que Charles d’Orléans utilise appartiennent à un bagage linguistique que l’on pourrait définir traditionnel ou du moins neutralisé sur le plan des images. Mais même si les poèmes bilingues ou plurilingues de Charles d’Orléans sont typiques de l’écriture mixtilingue à la fin du Moyen Âge, c’est-à-dire, d’une écriture qui conjugue divertissement polyphonique et confusio linguarum, les mots latins et italiens que le poète utilise dans ces poèmes (ballades, chansons et rondeaux) semblent davantage suggérer que dire, et suggérer un raccourci poétique entre la langue et le langage privé, qu’institue la communication poétique. ‘L’immobilité du champ d’images des mots italiens, ou latins, c’est-àdire leur non paraphrasabilité, leur être clichés, est ainsi transférée au contexte tout entier, devient consubstantielle à la forme du poème.’26 Le caractère lapidaire de ces expressions, de ces formules, leur valeur proverbiale, épiphonémique, apportent au poème un sens qui est celui de sa forme; ils sont l’expression d’un pur jeu verbal, qui permet, cependant, de faire resurgir à la

21 J’entends ici le mot ‘cliché’ au sens que lui prête Paulhan dans sa réflexion sur les 22 23 24 25 26

apories de la traduction (Jean Paulhan, Œuvres complètes [Paris, 1967], II, 182). Mühlethaler, éd., p. 514, Rondeau 168, vv. 1–4. Jacqueline Cerquiglini, La Couleur de la mélancolie (Paris, 1993), pp. 20–21. Mühlethaler, éd., p. 452, Rondeau 107, vv. 3–4. Mühlethaler, éd., p. 372, Rondeau 29, vv. 1–2. Galderisi, ‘Greffe et plurilinguisme’.

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surface du poème le ‘réseau des relations que le langage par ses conventions institue entre les choses’.27 Charles d’Orléans connaissait assez bien l’anglais pour mener ce jeu verbal entre les deux langues de sa jeunesse, pour en faire ressortir une autre image et une autre forme de la ‘Forest de Longue Actente’, pour nous offrir un éclairage nouveau de la ‘Chambre de Pensee’. S’il a choisi de manière ostentatoire de ne pas en faire usage, même par simple divertissement, c’est que ses poèmes instituent déjà un raccourci entre son langage privé, le français que son ‘cuer amer doit’28 et l’anglais que son cœur ne peut aimer, mais non plus oublier. Un raccourci qui n’est pas linguistique, qui ne court pas à la surface du langage, mais qui est formel, c’est-à-dire musical et rythmique. Un raccourci dans lequel il ne devrait pas être ardu de reconnaître les traces syntaxiques et rythmiques de l’autre langue, de la langue de l’autre. Ce raccourci entre les deux langues est celui qu’offre le rondeau. Le rondeau aurélien, avec ses séquences d’images, sa narration hoquetée, le disloquement de la phrase, la danse syncopée des adverbes, apparaît alors non seulement comme la représentation iconique de la prison aux portes de laquelle veille Jeunesse-Vieillesse, mais aussi et surtout comme le vestige structurel d’une musique poétique battant la mesure du français selon le secret désir du tempo de l’anglais.

27 Ibid. 28 Mühlethaler, éd., p. 286, Ballade 98, vv. 7, 14, 21.

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Glanures JOHN FOX

I. Charles d’Orléans: Three Macaronic Rondeaux Whilst the evolution of Charles d’Orléans’s themes and moods, during the five decades of his writing career (1410s to 1450s), has received a good deal of comment,1 less attention has been paid to the duke’s changing attitude towards his linguistic material, becoming much bolder with the passage of time. Words became objects of fascination for the ageing duke, even to the extent of inventing some, occasionally for rhyming purposes, or introducing others from nonliterary sources, numbers appearing in the written language for the first time. Nowhere is his imaginative treatment of words more evident than in his macaronic verse. There are at least a dozen such poems, mostly mixing French and Latin as was the fashion, but two mix French and Italian, one French and English. These three poems will be our principal concern here. Quant n’ont assez fait dodo Cez petitz enfanchonnés, Il portent soubz leurs bonnés Visages plains de bobo. C’est pitié s’il font jojo Trop matin, les doulcinés. Quant n’ont assez fait dodo, Mieulx amassent a gogo Gesir sur molz coissinés Car il sont tant poupinés! Helas! che gnogno, gnogno, Quant n’ont assez fait dodo.2

What more unlikely subject could there possibly be for a poem than the cries of infants who have not slept enough? The tour de force in this amusing little piece is in the rhymes: dodo:bobo:jojo:a gogo:gnogno, all found here for the first time, the

1 2

Fox, Lyric Poetry; Poirion, Le Poète et le prince; McLeod, Prince and Poet. This poem is Rondeau CLXX, II, 387 in Champion’s edition, and Rondeau 89, p. 470, in Mühlethaler’s edition. In the present article all poems are presented in accordance with the principles set out in John Fox, The Poetry of Fifteenth-Century France, 2 vols. (London, 1994), II, 20–24.

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last word the only time. Dodo and bobo are still in current use with very young children: dodo is the equivalent of ‘bye-byes’, bobo is any sore, hurt or pain, but in this context it appears to mean ‘spots’; jojo is a reduplication based on jouer, which is Champion’s translation, though Galderisi prefers joujou, since faire joujou is still used with the sense ‘to play’.3 Likewise a gogo still exists, equivalent nowadays to English ‘galore’ (e.g., whisky à gogo); here ‘mieulx amassent a gogo’ is ‘they would far rather’. The real mystery, however, is the last word of the series, evidently Italian as the preceding che indicates. It is not found in any of the standard Italian dictionaries, and Galderisi states that it appears not to be attested elsewhere,4 but that is not strictly true. It is recorded as a dialect form in the north of Italy (gnogn, gnogna) meaning ‘caress’, and as an adjective in the south meaning ‘ignorant’ or ‘ foolish’, neither of which fit the present context.5 The most likely source of this mysterious word is Middle French gnongnon, recorded by both Godefroy and Huguet as a noun meaning ‘scolding’. Godefroy adds: ‘Dans la Haute Normandie les enfants usent souvent entre eux de ce mot.’6 So it is a noun, it is associated with young children, it has a meaning which suits the context . . . but it does not quite suit the rhyme! Faced with this dilemma, and the obvious difficulty of finding a fifth rhyme in -o, Charles has boldly changed gnongnon to gnogno, signalling that it is an Italian form with preceding che, so that he was, as it happens, morphologically correct, but not semantically so as regards Italian, even though the meaning here is transparent enough: ‘scolding’, because that is what noisy children get, but in the context it can equally well refer to the overall noise: the cries of the children, and the scolding by the adults trying to quieten them, the repetition of the word having an obvious onomatopoeic effect. Also transparent are the playful double diminutives enfanchonnés and poupinés, both recorded elsewhere before and during Charles’s lifetime, doulcinés not so, though it was probably not one of Charles’s inventions. The old duke’s familiarity with vocabulary of the nursery is quite surprising – despite his rank he evidently did not hold himself aloof from the humdrum details of domestic life. His own family is most unlikely to have been involved. His son, the future King Louis XII, was born in 1462, the year after the duke ceased writing, while his two daughters had been born earlier, but many years apart. Recent research has confirmed the view, long held by many, that Charles himself was responsible for the English translations of the French poetry he composed during his twenty-five years as a prisoner in England, and that he was also the author of the original material which forms part of the English collec-

3 4 5

Galderisi, Le Lexique de Charles d’Orléans, p. 207. Galderisi, Le Lexique, p. 200. Carlo Battisti and Giovanni Alessio, Dizionario etimologico italiano, 5 vols. (Florence, 1965), III, 1836. Spanish has the adjective ñoño with a variety of meanings: ‘characterless’, ‘shy’, etc. 6 Frédéric Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française et de tous ses dialectes du IXe au XVe siècle, 10 vols. (Paris, 1881–1902), IV, 297. Edmond Huguet, Dictionnaire de la langue française du XVIe siècle, 7 vols. (Paris, 1925–1967), IV, 328.

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tion.7 Charles’s English is very much a Procrustean bed: if a line is a syllable too short he will boldly add a prefix to a verb, or insert an interjection, in a way no native writer would do, or if syntax does not allow a word needed for the rhyme to appear at the end of a line, he will twist the word order to suit his purpose. Here too, in the same way as noted above, he introduces words or phrases from non-literary sources appearing here for the first, and sometimes only, time. Indeed, it may well have been his writing English that changed his attitude towards language. There can be no better illustration of this innovative attitude towards his linguistic material than these first six lines of a particularly enigmatic rondeau: Oblesse,oblesse – que porrar obler 8 All hevy thought that bryngith in distres, For, so forcast am y in hevynes, That, though y wolde, y may in no manere, Syn that – allas, myn hertis lady dere! – The Deth hath slayne hir of his cursidnes. Oblesse,oblesse que porrar obler All hevy thought that bryngith in distres . . .9

The two editions associate oblesse and obler with French oubli and oublier, though these forms are not found elsewhere. Steele and Day translate: ‘Let him forget who can forget’, and Arn: ‘Forgetfulness, forgetfulness – that I might forget’.10 I believe both are wrong, for the following reasons: (1) Oblesse is attested as a verb in Middle English, with a meaning which suits the context, as we shall see: ‘to pledge (something to somebody)’.11 Beyond the early fifteenth century it was essentially a Scottish term.12 How can Charles have come across it? The answer is not far to seek: he and King James I of Scotland (born in July 1394, just four months before Charles) were prisoners in the Tower of London in 1416, the first full year of the duke’s imprisonment. Like Charles, James whiled away the time writing poetry, some of which has survived in The 7 8

9 10 11

12

Arn, ‘Charles of Orleans and the Poems of BL MS. Harley 682’. The French infinitive ending -er could be pronounced ε:r in Charles’s day – the so-called ‘rime normande’ – while English manere was accented on the second syllable (see Sir William A. Craigie, et al., A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue from the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth Century, 7 vols. A–R [Chicago–London–Aberdeen, 1937–1990], IV, 65) and pronounced with the same half-open vowel (see Alexander J. Ellis, On Early English Pronunciation, EETS, part I [London, 1869], pp. 724–25 and 730–31), final -e not being pronounced as the syllable count shows, so Charles managed a satisfactory rhyme between a French word and English words, as elsewhere between Latin and French words, e.g., fais tu: in questu, Champion, ed., Rondeau CCCXXVII, II, 478; Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 31, p. 408. Steele and Day, ed., pp. 143–44; M. Arn, Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 299–300. Steele and Day, ed., p. 290; Arn, ed., p. 299. Hans Kurath, Sherman Kuhn, et al., Middle English Dictionary, 16 vols. (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1954–1996) (A–T), s.v. obligen, X, 26–28; and A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, s.v. oblis, V, 10–12. Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, V, 10.

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Kingis Quair. It is certain that they were allowed their freedom within the Tower and treated with the respect due to their rank. No doubt they met and talked together. Although the word oblesse does not appear in James’s extant work, he may well have used it when discussing the terms of the ransom he was required to pay for his release. (2) It is not difficult to see why Charles completed the line in French. Oblesse has a very French appearance (cf. noblesse, faiblesse, souplesse, etc.), so the train of thought that led him from English oblesse to French que porrai obler,13 is the same as the one which has led modern editors in the opposite direction, making them believe that oblesse actually is French. (3) Without an antecedent, que porrai obler should be a question: ‘What can I . . .?’ This too, as will presently be shown, fits the context very well. (4) Obler is the hapax legomenon, not oblesse, no such verb ever having been found. However, such a word could readily be invented by a mind which clearly enjoyed experimenting with words. Not only does oblesse itself call up a verb obler, but, far more so, the feminine past participle oblee, common in Charles’s day, meaning ‘thing offered’, specialised already in the fifteenth century, though not entirely so, to mean ‘the wafer offered at mass’, modern oublie. Oblation, literally ‘offering’, was also well established in Charles’s day in both languages. The Latin origin of oblee is the verb offerre, obtuli, oblatum. Theoretically, the past participle oblatum, the feminine of which gave oblee, could have given rise to a new verb, oblatare, which would have given obleer, then obler, just as the past participle pensum gave pensare, whence peser and penser. In pre-literary times, however, the exceptional offerre was remodelled to offerire, whence French offrir and Italian offrire, the past participle remaining in the form indicated. So the invention of obler, meaning ‘to offer’, or ‘to make a pledge’, is easily understood. It must have seemed strange to Charles that a past participle could exist without a corresponding infinitive. (5) What, then, is the meaning of the line? Oblesse is an imperative – ‘give a pledge’ – in the context of these poems a pledge to love or the God of Love who appears a few lines later. In several other poems, the heart is given as a pledge to love,14 the idea being a commonplace within the courtly love tradition as a whole. I suggest the following punctuation, and interpretation, of the poem: Oblesse! . . . Oblesse? Que porrai obler? ‘Give a pledge (to love) . . . A pledge? What can I offer? Nothing but grieving, distressful thought, for, so full of grief am I, though I would give a pledge, in no way can I do so since wicked Death has killed my lady . . .‘

13 porrar is an obvious error for porrai. Probably the English scribe did not understand the

French expression. 14 Rondeau I, line 2 (Champion, ed., II, 291; Mühlethaler, Rondeau 48, pp. 426–28); Arn,

ed., lines 594–95, 2758–59, etc.

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* Contre fenoches et nox buze Peut servir ung ‘tantost’ de France. Da ly parolles de plaisance, Au plus sapere l’en cabuze. Fa cossy maintes foiz s’abuze, Grandissime fault pourveance Contre fenoches et nox buze. Sta fermo toutes choses uze, Aspecte ung poco par savance, La Rasone fa l’ordonnance De quella medicine on uze Contre fenoches et nox buze.15

Of the entire series of 435 French rondeaux, this is arguably the most obscure. It has not been well served by its editors. Champion’s explanation of the first two lines yields the following translation: ‘Against Italian jokers and an empty walnut, an ‘‘at once’’ of France can serve . . .‘.16 A brief note tells us that the poem is anti-Italian (but why ‘jokers’?) and contains words in the dialect of Asti.17 Why Asti? And why ‘empty walnut’? No help at all is offered with the second line, but it should be noted that medieval tantost meant ‘at once’ rather than ‘this afternoon’, or ‘presently’, as nowadays. Mühlethaler’s rendering is even less helpful: ‘Against stupid people and an empty walnut an ‘‘at once’’ of France can serve . . .‘.18 This fails to explain why the poem uses Italian expressions and is no less obscure than the original. Another poem in the collection, by a member of Charles’s court, Berthault de Villebresme, uses the word fenouches, but not nox buze, in its first line: Puis que chascun sert de fenouches . . .19

What are we to make of this? ‘Since we’re all in the service of idiots’? How would Charles have felt about that? This, surely, is nonsense, and it is necessary to seek some other explanation for the mysterious fenouches, and also nox buze. Before doing this, however, it will be useful to pay some attention to Charles’s Italian connections. Charles’s mother was Italian, Valentina Visconti of Milan. Through her he had inherited territories in the north of Italy, including Asti and Milan. During his twenty-five years of imprisonment in England contact with his Italian possessions had inevitably been lost. On his return to France in 1440 he set about trying to regain control. Promises to accept his authority were made, but not kept.20 In 15 16 17 18 19 20

Champion, ed., Rondeau CCLVI, II, 437; Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 252, pp. 642–43. Champion, ed., II, Glossary, pp. 652 and 656. Champion, ed., II, note on p. 588. Mühlethaler, ed., p. 643. Champion, ed., Rondeau CCCLXXII, II, 506 (not in Mühlethaler). See below, p. 96. Champion, Vie, p. 360.

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1447, after protracted negotiations had yielded no tangible results, he led an expedition across the Alps in an endeavour to re-assert his rights. Poor Charles! It all came to nothing: constant prevarication, possible alliances that never materialised, professions of loyalty that had no real substance, different factions vying with one another in a bewildering political entanglement, a sorry tale of unending disappointments and frustration.21 It was more a matter of words and parleys than actual conflict.22 Disillusioned and weary, Charles returned to Blois,23 resolved henceforth to undertake no more expeditions, and not to concern himself any longer with troublesome people, such as financiers and the citizens of Milan: A la court plus ne prendray paine Pour generaulx et Millenois . . .24

Champion is being rather imaginative, but no doubt near the truth, when he pictures the old duke, near the end of his life, cursing the people of Lombardy, and wishing that the snow-capped mountains of Savoy would block them all in!25 We return now to the fenoches and nox buze. Champion is doubtless right in seeing Italian finocchio, ‘fennel’, as the origin of this gallicised form, while nox is Italian noce and buze the now archaic buso, all three based on dialect forms from the region of North Italy which in theory was Charles’s inheritance.26 Finocchio had several figurative meanings absent from its French counterpart fenouil.27 Finding which one is intended here has to be a matter of detective work, looking at the word in the context of the poems in which it occurs. It is surely significant that the three words had one possible meaning in common: finocchio, ‘something worthless’, buso, an adjective meaning ‘useless’, ‘futile’, noce, literally ‘walnut’ ‘a thing of no value’: il valere di una noce meant ‘having no value’, and French valoir une noix with the same meaning (usually negative with the sense ‘not worth a bean’) is well attested before and during Charles’s time.28 Moreover, finocchio had

21 Champion, Vie, pp. 358–79. 22 Mühlethaler’s statement that Charles d’Orléans’s troops were defeated at Bosco on 18

23 24 25 26

27 28

October 1448 is most misleading (p. 9). Charles actually arrived on the scene nine days after this battle. The defeated army was one raised in the name of King Charles VII (Champion, Vie, p. 365). Champion, Vie, p. 378. Champion, ed., Rondeau CCXIX, II, 416, lines 10–11; Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 181, p. 566. Champion, Vie, pp. 593–94. Champion, ed., Glossary, II, 652 and 656. Fenoj is given as a Piedmontese form by Vittorio di Sant’Albino in Gran dizionario Piemontese-Italiano (Turin, 1859; rpt. 1976), p. 561, but he does not record the figurative meanings. See Salvatore Battaglia, Grande dizionario della lingua italiana, 18 vols. (Turin, 1961–1996) (A–S), V, 1052; and the Cambridge Italian Dictionary (Cambridge, 1962), p. 300. Grande dizionario, XI, 478; also Adolf Tobler and Erhard Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, 11 vols. (A–V) (Berlin, 1925–1995), VI, 738. For Charles’s use of the expres-

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a derivative: finocchiata, explained as meaning cicalata in modern Italian,29 which the Cambridge Italian Dictionary translates as ‘long, pointless talk’.30 There could not be a more exact description of Charles’s protracted, fruitless negotiations with his erstwhile Italian subjects. The context within this rondeau makes it clear that it is indeed a matter of spoken words, so fenouches can be translated as ‘chatter’ (‘talk with more sound than sense’ – Oxford English Dictionary), while nox buze emphasises its utter futility, and de France in the next line makes it clear that the first line does indeed refer to Italians, so we get the meaning: ‘In the face of useless Italian chatter one French ‘straightaway’ can serve . . .‘. So one French word can ‘cut the cackle’, ‘straightaway’ being an ironical and mocking concession to whatever has been said and not really listened to because it is long and pointless and not worth the bother. For the next two lines we have to sidestep for a moment to another of Charles’s rondeaux in which he maintains that, within reason, it is better to tell lies in order to keep the peace rather than tell the truth and land in trouble. This poem contains the following couplet: Rien ne perdons se nous taisons Et se jouons au plus savoir.31

‘We lose nothing if we hold our tongues and play at knowing more than we say.’32 Au plus sapere is obviously the same expression adapted to Charles’s Franco-Italian rondeau. So lines 3–4 mean ‘Give him (i.e., whichever Italian is holding forth) ‘‘sweet talk’’, you can put him off by saying little and pretending to know more than you say.’ The poem then goes on: ‘Act in this way, he’s many a time mistaken (i.e., taking this line will often mislead him), great caution is needed in the face of . . . Sit tight, he exhausts all topics (i.e., keep mum and let him talk on) just watch out and keep your wits about you. Reason writes the prescription for the medicine one uses against . . .‘. The use of Italian expressions – Da ly, Fa cossy, Sta fermo, Aspecte ung poco – in giving advice to the French listener follows on from fenoches and nox buze. Whoever understood those words – and numbers of courtiers had accompanied the duke to north Italy or been sent there on separate missions, or were Italians who had sided with Charles – would no doubt understand the rest and grasp the real meaning beneath the poem’s superficial banter. It was Charles’s habit to provide a first line and invite other poets at his court to write a rondeau using it. Only one responded to this particular challenge, and

29 30 31 32

sion see Champion, ed., Rondeau CCXXV, line 8, II, 419, and Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 194, p. 540. Manlio Cortelazzo and Paolo Zolli, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana, 5 vols. (Bologna, 1979–1996), II, 438. Ibid., p. 157. Champion, ed., Rondeau CXLIX, lines 5–6, II, 375–76; Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 65, pp. 446–47. Jouer au plus savoir – a game played at court, perhaps?

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he was Italian – Benoit Damien (Italian name Damiano)33 – perhaps the only poet able to reply in kind. Here is his effort: Contre fenouches et nox buze Convient l’un faire, l’autro dire, Plourer d’un oeil, de l’aultro rire, Questo modo les gens abuze. Or dapoy que lo mondo en use, Non est dy besoigno dormire Contre fenouches et nox buze. Tanto principo comme duze Veullent le lour fato conduire Et li soy servitor instruire A sapere jouar la ruze Contre fenouches et nox buze.34

Reverting for a moment to the Champion/Mühlethaler ‘explanation’, the rendering that would immediately come to mind of the first two lines would no doubt be: ‘Against Italian jokers (or idiots) and an empty walnut it is necessary to act the one and say the other . . .‘. Once again this makes no sense. What point could there be in pretending to be an Italian joker? Or pretending to be stupid amongst really stupid people? Above all, however, this would miss the point of the second line, emphasised by the one following, that the two verbs faire-dire are in strong contrast, hardly the case if a joker, or fool, is saying foolish things. So the meaning is: ‘In the face of useless Italian chatter, you don’t have to do what you say.35 You can weep with one eye and laugh with the other. This way puts people off. Ever since people talk like this it’s necessary to stay alert in the face of . . . Princes no less than dukes want to manage their affairs and instruct their servants to play a clever game in the face of . . .‘. Lastly comes Villebresme’s rondeau: Puis que chascun sert de fenouches Et de mentir, neiz que de mouches, Aucun au jour d’uy ne tient conte, Mais a chascun d’avoir son compte Souffist, soit honneur, ou repproches, Retraire je me vueil es touches Des bois, ainsi que les farouches, Car d’estre au monde j’ay grant honte, Puis que chascun sert de fenouches. Je y congnois tant de males bouches, De clers voyans faisans les louches,

33 Champion, ed., II, 616. 34 Champion, ed., Rondeau CCCLXXI, II, 505 (not in Mühlethaler). 35 English, Italian, and French all have proverbs contrasting doing and saying: ‘Easier

said than done’, ‘Altro è dire, altro è fare’, medieval French ‘Entre faire et dire a moult’ (Joseph Morawski, Proverbes français antérieurs au XVe siècle, Classiques Français du Moyen Age, vol. 47 [Paris, 1925], p. 235).

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De bons et simples que l’on donte. Veu donc que mal bien y surmonte Plus me plaist vivre entre les souches, Puis que chascun sert de fenouches.36

‘Since everyone is indulging in foolish talk (the context strongly suggests deceptive, or hypocritical talk), and nobody is bothered by telling lies these days, any more than they are by flies . . .’ This use of servir de followed by an abstract noun occurs elsewhere in medieval French: servir de guile, servir de mal, ‘to indulge in, to practise, guile, evil’, etc.: Tant de gens servent de guile C’on n’en puet nus loiaus trouver . . .37

‘So many people indulge in guile that there is no trustworthy person to be found . . .‘ Villebresme’s poem is markedly different from the other two. While Charles’s poem contains seventeen Italian forms and Damien’s considerably more, fenouches is the only such word that Villebresme uses. On the strength of this one word Champion sees the poem as an attack on Italian duplicity,38 but it is quite clear that it is more far-reaching: everyone talks misleadingly, everyone tells lies, everyone is motivated by self-interest, the world appalls him and he wishes to live in solitude, he knows so many wicked tongues, good people downtrodden, evil triumphing over good . . . Fenouches was clearly a useful word for him, conveniently rhyming with mouches, etc., and was on its way to becoming a general word for ‘deceptive talk’, but never got established beyond Blois. The idea that the world is increasingly evil is a commonplace of medieval literature, found already in the opening lines of the earliest French text of real importance, the eleventh-century Vie de Saint Alexis. Of the three poems, Charles’s is the mildest, advocating a short, bland, noncommital reply to the Italian fenouches without revealing one’s inner thoughts – a sin by omission, if sin it is. Damien’s goes much further and argues for outright deception, sin by commission. Villebresme’s poem, coming immediately after Damien’s, is clearly intended as a rejoinder and neatly turns the tables on the Italian poet. His universal condemnation of all lies and dishonourable ways does not exclude Damien, while it cannot be said to involve the far more covert and subtle approach of the duke himself, since he leaves his Italian interlocutor to go off on the wrong track without actually lying to him. Much of Charles’s poetry is autobiographical, though references to his life are often oblique, as here, rather than direct. This whole Italian episode, following on his twenty-five years in England, no doubt contributed to the resigned, melancholic mood of his later years:

36 Champion, ed., Rondeau CCCLXXII, II, 506 (not in Mühlethaler). 37 Tobler-Lommatzsch, IX, p. 568. 38 Champion, Vie, p. 598.

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Le monde est ennuyé de moy, Et moy pareillement de luy. Je ne congnois rien au jour d’ui Dont il me chaille que bien poy . . .39

‘The world is tired of me, and I equally of it. I know of nothing nowadays that matters to me very much at all . . .‘ Surprise has sometimes been expressed that Charles, despite having an Italian mother, and several Italians at his court, never followed Italian fashions in writing in the already long-established sonnet form. In fact nothing in Charles’s verse makes any concessions to Italian ways and habits, and the reasons are obvious enough. It was in all likelihood a deliberate exclusion. All poets at his court wrote exclusively refrain-based poems, mainly rondeaux, in the traditional French style. Poets of fifteenth-century France frequently complained of the harsh treatment meted out to them by that most fickle of goddesses, Fortune, none more vociferously than François Villon, although in his case his troubles were largely self-inflicted, consequences of robbery, murder, and profligacy. None complained with more justification than Charles d’Orléans, whose misfortunes were invariably brought on by his fulfilling his duties to the best of his abilities. There was, however, one substantial consolation: his poetry. During the long years of his captivity it reflected the strength of his emotions on being separated from the country and the people he loved, though the English poems strongly suggest that he formed some romantic attachments in England, while his later verse, written after his return to France, reflected more his passing moods, whims, likes and dislikes, resentments, and above all the melancholy which never ceased to haunt him towards the end. Macaronic verse was only a small part of Charles’s output, but the difficulties it inevitably entails were no doubt a considerable distraction. It certainly reveals his versatility with language: Latin and Italian words in addition to French and English, words and expressions introduced from the most unlikely quarters and recorded for the first time, words of different languages rhyming together, words of his own invention, originality with all manner of words in use, form, pronunciation and meaning. More complex and subtle than has usually been realised, some of these seemingly trivial rondeaux have kept their secrets to this day, and on a careful reading can be seen to have a fascination that is entirely unique.

II. Contre-sens? Certain of Charles’s compatriots seem reluctant to accept that he was the author of the English transcriptions of his poems. Here is a case in point:

39 Champion, ed., Rondeau CLXXXVII, lines 1–4, II, 397; Mühlethaler, ed., Rondeau 120,

pp. 502–3.

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D’aucun reconfort accointer Plusieurs foys m’en suy dementé; Mais j’ay tousjours, au par aler, Le rebours de ma voulenté.40

The English version is: Without comfort havyng in anywhere, Thus wayle I that myght as well be stille, For me so nygh is brought – it may no nerre – The contrary of all my wrecchid wille.41

These are the concluding lines of a ballade written in early May, a time of joy and happiness for lovers, but he – ‘le plus dolent de France’ – is alone, his only refuge Loyalty, and all he ever gets is the opposite of his wishes. In his Lexique de Charles d’Orléans dans les Ballades (p. 48), Poirion notes that aucun here has a positive sense and draws attention to the accuracy of the contemporary Latin version: sepe fui nixus aliquod solamen habere42 (‘I often tried very hard to find some comfort’), then he adds ‘au contraire la traduction anglaise fait un contre-sens’ (ed. Steele, line 730): ‘Without comfort havyng’; ‘c’est bien la preuve qu’elle n’est pas de Charles d’Orléans’.43 This is pure non-sequitur. If Charles has many a time tried to find some comfort but has always got the very opposite of his wishes then he has many a time been without comfort, and accordingly the English translation is perfectly correct. This accusation reveals a misunderstanding of the nature of the English version. It remains faithful to the spirit of the original but is by no means a literal rendering. Anybody who has translated verse of one language into verse of another knows this to be impossible. The English is a re-working of the French, at times introducing ideas and images of its own which none the less closely reflect the meaning of the French, as in these four lines, which, put into Modern English prose, would read as follows: ‘I complain that I am without comfort, but might just as well stay quiet, for close to me is brought – it could not be any closer – the opposite of all my wretched will.’ Poirion’s Le Lexique returns to the fray under the word mer (p. 97): Steele’s comment that the English poems make more numerous and picturesque allusions to the sea than do the French, in a way

40 Champion, ed., Ballade XVII, lines 28–31, I, 34–35; Mühlethaler, ed., Ballade 17, lines

28–31. 41 Arn, ed., Ballade 17, lines 730–33, p. 163. 42 Ibid. 43 The Latin deponent verb nitor, nixus, implies great effort: ‘to strive, to exert oneself,

make an effort, labor, endeavor’ (Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary [Oxford, first edition 1879, quoted from the impression of 1958], p. 1210). Similarly, medieval French se dementer de is translated by Godefroy ‘se tourmenter, se démener afin de, témoigner un vif désir de’, and these two lines of Charles’s are quoted under this definition (Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, II, 497). It is strange, and very ironical, that Poirion’s Le Lexique has missed this, and explains se dementer here as ‘se lamenter, se désoler’, so giving the translation: ‘Many a time I have lamented finding some comfort.’ Where now is the contre-sens?

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uncharacteristic of English translators of the time, is no proof, Poirion asserts, that Charles was the author. This is true, of course, if taken in isolation. But taken in conjunction with the numerous other factors pointing to Charles as the author, it becomes significant. Where absolute proof is absent, the weight of circumstantial evidence must be the judge. This has been repeatedly and ably analysed, but it is not the place here to set out the case for Charles as translator, since it has been so convincingly done elsewhere.44

III. The Other Door No problem concerning Charles d’Orléans’s French poetry has been the subject of more debate than the length of the rondel refrains.45 In Charles’s personal manuscript, now 25458 fr. of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the obvious choice for a modern editor of his works, the chansons which precede the rondels have been beautifully copied out with richly ornamented initial letters. The opening words of the first two lines, followed by the sign for et cetera, are written for the first refrain, and of the first line only for the second. The rondels have not received such careful attention. The writing, the work of a number of hands, is not so conscientious, and the initial lettering is far simpler. Here only the first words of the first line are indicated for both refrains, so the question inevitably arises: are the later copyists simply being more casual and economical, taking it for granted that the second line would be included for the first refrain as with the chansons, or did they really mean that only the first line was to be repeated? Editors have differed in their views,46 critics likewise. One has maintained that the refrains should always be of two lines,47 whereas another believes that all rondel refrains should be limited to a single line.48 Pierre Champion, whose edition has for many years been the best available for the complete French works, has simply followed his own inclinations, retaining a single line on occasions, expanding this to two if he thought that more suitable. The latest edition, limited 44 Arn, ‘Charles of Orleans and the Poems of BL MS. Harley 682’. 45 Marcel Françon, ‘Les Refrains des rondeaux de Charles d’Orléans’, Modern Philology 39

(1941–42), 259–263; also ‘Note sur les rondeaux et les chansons de Charles d’Orléans’, Studi Francesi 31 (1967), 76–77; also ‘La Structure du rondeau’, Medium Ævum 44 (1975), 54–59. Gérard Defaux, ‘La poétique du secret’ and Omer Jodogne, ‘Le rondeau du quinzième siècle mal compris, du dit et de l’écrit’, in Mélanges de langue et littérature médiévales offerts à Pierre Le Gentil (Paris, 1973), pp. 399–408. Howard B. Garey, ‘The Variable Structure of the Fifteenth-Century Rondeau’, in The Sixth LACUS Forum, 1979, ed. H. J. Izzo (Columbia, SC, 1980), pp. 494–501. 46 Aimé Champollion-Figeac, ed., Les Poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans (Paris, 1842). JeanMarie Guichard, ed., Poésies de Charles d’Orléans (Paris, 1842). Charles d’Héricault, ed., Poésies complètes de Charles d’Orléans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1874). Pierre Champion, ed., Charles d’Orléans. Poésies, 2 vols., Classiques Français du Moyen Age (Paris, 1923–27; rpt. 1956, 1971). 47 Françon, ‘Les Refrains’. 48 Defaux, ‘La Poétique du secret’.

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to the ballades and rondeaux, copies the manuscript, reproducing the first words only of the first line, so contributing nothing to this important matter.49 In the new edition now under preparation,50 a simple principle will be followed: where the manuscript indicates that one line only is to be repeated, and that line makes good sense on its own and integrates well with the context, then the refrain will be limited to that one complete line.51 That far more can be involved than the simple presence or absence of a line is well illustrated by the following poem, reproduced here exactly as it appears in Champion’s edition: Je ne suis pas de sez gens la A qui Fortune plaist et rit, De reconfort trop m’escondit, Veu que tant de mal donne m’a. S’on demande comment me va, Il est ainsi, comme j’ay dit: Je ne [suis pas de sez gens la A qui Fortune plaist et rit] Quant je dy que bon temps vendra, Mon cueur me respont par despit: Voire, s’Espoir ne vous mentit, Plusieurs deçoit et decevra. Je ne [suis pas de sez gens la A qui Fortune plaist et rit].52

In this form the poem is static, a simple commentary on its first two lines: Fortune has not smiled on him, while the thought that good times lie ahead is dashed by the conviction that Hope is a liar and Fortune hostile. However, a reading of the poem as it appears in the manuscript, without the repetition of the second line, gives an altogether different meaning to the final stanza: I say good times will come – my heart objects that Hope is a liar who deceives many people – I am not one of them. So, far from being a pessimistic poem which never moves beyond its opening couplet, it becomes an optimistic one with a dramatic, unexpected development in its concluding section. Hope, in the twin forms Espoir and Esperance, is a fundamental theme in 49 Mühlethaler, Ballades et rondeaux. 50 Mary-Jo Arn, A. E. B. Coldiron, and John Fox, for Medieval and Renaissance Texts and

Studies (ACMRS). 51 Defaux (‘La Poétique du secret’) favours the single-line refrain on different grounds,

having regard to the rondeau’s internal structure. Whereas the two-line refrain brings the second stanza to a full stop, the single-line refrain allows a continuous development from beginning to end of the poem. The rondeau becomes a more complex and subtle poem, at times deliberately ambivalent: read in one way, the first refrain concludes the second stanza, but in another it leads on to the final stanza, so that any punctuation is a betrayal (p. 222). The new edition will none the less punctuate in the conventional manner, and notes will draw attention to any intended ambivalence. 52 Rondeau XLVII in Champion’s edition (henceforth C.); 135 in Mühlethaler’s (henceforth M.).

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Charles’s poetry, from the early years of his imprisonment in England right through to his last years: Bon Espoir, Loyal Espoir, Joyeux Espoir, Espoir mon bon conseillier, Esperance ma deesse, M’amye Esperance . . . and yet no one has known more than he how hope can lead to bitter disappointment, he who had stood on the cliffs of Dover in 1433, looking across to his beloved France, hoping for release after eighteen years of captivity, only to be returned to the Tower of London with a further seven years to wait before at last regaining his freedom.53 Hence his very complex, contradictory relationship with hope, clinging obstinately to it even while knowing full well, from bitter experience, that it may never be fulfilled: Et bien, de par Dieu, Esperance, Esse doncques vostre plaisir? Me voulez vous ainsi tenir Hors et ens tousjours en balance? Ung jour j’ay vostre bienveillance, L’autre ne la sçay ou querir . . .54

tousjours en balance . . . always wondering, uncertain as to what, if anything, hope may bring: Tousjours dictes: ‘Je vien, je vien,’ Espoir! je vous congnois assez, De voz promesses me lassez, Dont peu a vous tenu me tien . . .55

And yet hope will sometimes bring reward: au derrain guerdon rendrez.56 You are always running away, he complains, and I am always running after you,57 and if I find you, you send me to knock on the other door.58 His heart’s promptings had been right, hope was le beau menteur plein de promesses,59 but he never turned his back altogether on the prospect offered by those promises, never, in fact, gave up hope. Hope and doubt co-existed in Charles’s mind, the one presupposing the other like the two sides of a coin. Sometimes one was uppermost, sometimes the other, but in the last resort it was hope that prevailed. Near the end of his life and in failing health, to whom did the old duke turn for assistance, if not le medecin Espoir Qui est le meilleur de France?60 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Ballade LXXV in C.; 98 in M. Rondeau CCCXII in C.; 16 in M. Rondeau CCCXIV in C.; 18 in M. Rondeau CCCVI, line 13 in C.; 12, line 11 in M. Rondeau CCCXX, line 3 in C.; 24, line 3 in M. Rondeau LVII in C.; 155 in M. Refrain of Ballade CVI in C.; 80 in M. Rondeau CCCCXXI, lines 9–10 in C.; 334, lines 8–9 in M.

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Was the result the usual disappointment? Possibly, but even now he did not lose faith, for in an even later poem, certainly amongst the last he wrote: Bon Espoir, quoy qu’on le contrarie, A droit vendra.61

A life so privileged in some ways, so unfulfilled in many, buoyed up by the unfailing hope that good times lie ahead, a hope, surely, that so many down the ages have shared, even while knowing it may never come about. We may all find, as Charles did so long ago, that all too often the other door remains closed, but still, against all the odds, the hope persists.

IV. Les Princesses Lointaines The lyric poetry of the twelfth-century troubadours was unmatched throughout the Romance-speaking world for the sophistication of its themes and versification. One of the most famous is Jaufré Rudel, despite the fact that only six short poems by him have survived.62 All that can be said about him with reasonable certainty is that he was a member of an aristocratic family from Blaye and took part in the abortive second crusade (1147–1149).63 Like many of the troubadours he had only one theme: the idealisation of love.64 His sole concern is the feeling that love inspires in him, with no thought as to whether or not it is reciprocated. Love is a joyful, uplifting experience, intimately linked with the sounds and sights of nature: birdsong, a rippling stream, trees and meadows in flower. However, this all-consuming passion eventually turns out – as so often with the troubadours – to be unrequited. Possibly this disappointment is what caused him to conceive the theme for which he is best remembered, and which appears in three of his six poems, his amor de lonh: Ja mais d’amor no.m jauziray Si no.m jau d’est’amor de lonh, Que gensor ni melhor no.n sai Ves nulha part, ni pres ni lonh; Tant es sos pretz verais e fis Que lay el reng dels Sarrazis Fos hieu per lieys chaitius clamatz!65 61 Rondeau CCCCXXVIII, lines 11–12 in C.; 339, lines 10–11 in M. 62 Alfred Jeanroy, ed., Les Chansons de Jaufré Rudel, 2nd ed., Les Classiques Français du

Moyen Age, 15 (Paris, 1924). 63 Jeanroy, ed., Jaufré Rudel, p. iii. 64 It is entirely appropriate that the word amour is Provençal. The French form would

have been ameur, like heure, fleur, etc. 65 Jeanroy, ed., Jaufré Rudel, p. 14, poem V, stanza 5, lines 29–35. ‘Nevermore shall I have

any pleasure in love, unless it be with that faraway love, for I know of none more noble or better in any land, near or far. So true and great is her worth that I would gladly be called a captive in the land of the Saracens for her sake!’

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Who was the lady? Was she a figment of his imagination, or a real person about whom he had learned from pilgrims returning from the Holy Land? This is what a short thirteenth-century Provençal biography asserts, but it was shown long ago to have no historical basis and to be a romantic fiction extrapolated from the poems.66 According to this account, the lady was the countess of Tripoli;67 Rudel, ‘prince of Blaye’, set sail to see her, but fell ill on the voyage. Eventually he did manage to reach her, but died in her arms. Rudel did indeed take part in the second crusade as we have seen, but whether any of this romance was true remains unknown, and extremely doubtful. This did not prevent Edmond Rostand from making it the subject of his play, La Princesse Lointaine (1859), but it was impossible to capture on stage the almost mystical essence of Rudel’s amor de lonh: physical inasmuch as he hoped one day to meet her, yet with an abstract, spiritual aspect, a vortex drawing to itself all his hopes and ideals, a yearning for a happiness he can glimpse in his own mind, but which he knows only too well is unlikely ever to be attained. Many years later another lonely poet built up a similarly idealised portrait of his far-away love: Elle semble, mieulx que femme, deesse; Si croy que Dieu l’envoya seulement En ce monde pour moustrer la largesse De ces haultz dons, qu’il a entierement En elle mis abandonneement. Elle n’a per: plus ne sçay que je dye; Pour foul me tiens de l’aler devisant, Car moy ne nul n’est a ce souffisant; De ces grans biens est ma Dame garnie.68

This, of course, was Charles d’Orléans writing in England, but who was this acme of perfection he describes? Was she too a shadowy figure drawn from the poet’s imagination? It has indeed been suggested that such was the case: ‘ . . . ce n’est pas telle femme, c’est la femme, la femme belle, la femme qu’on aime. C’est le symbole, l’allégorie de tous les coeurs féminins qui se sont donnés à lui’.69

66 Jeanroy, ed., Jaufré Rudel, p. iv. 67 There are just two oblique references to the Holy Lands: a conventional poem on the

joys of love ends rather inconsequentially with a bit of crusader propaganda: whoever does not ‘follow Christ to Bethlehem’ will never be a true knight (ed. Jeanroy, Jaufré Rudel, p. 3, lines 36–42). The second is the last two lines of the stanza quoted above, which is simply the poet’s way of saying that he would endure any fate, however harsh, for a glimpse of his amor de lonh. The next stanza expresses the hope that he will meet her in some pleasant place – not much chance of that if he were in truth held prisoner! 68 Champion, ed., Ballade IX, lines 28–36, I, 25–27; Mühlethaler, ed., Ballade 9, lines 28–36. 69 Charles d’Héricault, Poésies complètes de Charles d’Orléans, 2 vols. (Paris, 1896), I, xxx. Quoted by Champion, Vie, p. 261.

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Charles’s fulsome praise of ‘Celle qui est des princesses l’estoille’,70 recurring in poem after poem, has even been viewed as an allegory referring to France.71 Champion is dismissive of such interpretations, highly unlikely in his view,72 and yet, so steeped in allegory is Charles’s verse, so rich in ambiguities, so special the circumstances in which his poetry was written, that there can be no disproving them altogether. For his part, Champion believes that the unnamed lady of the ballades is no other than the duke’s wife, Bonne d’Armagnac.73 At first sight this is no less unlikely. Not only were courtly love and conjugal love traditionally poles apart, but also, elsewhere, Champion admits that Charles was at times writing for an English lady.74 However, apart from his own very persuasive reading of the text, he has more concrete evidence to put forward: the heading in one of the manuscripts to the series of ballades: ‘Sensuit le livre que fist Monsr d’Orléans, lui estant prisonnier en Angleterre, ouquel y a dedans contenu plusieurs ballades et rondeaux envoiez a madame sa femme.’75 This suggests that some at least of the ballades were intended for Bonne d’Armagnac. Another manuscript points in exactly the same direction, but in a very different manner, as we shall see. Catherine of Aragon was the youngest daughter of King Ferdinand II of Spain, and was married by proxy in May 1499 to Arthur, Prince of Wales, oldest son of King Henry VII.76 They were both just fourteen years old at the time. Arthur wrote to his betrothed assuring her of his affection, but, clearly no poet, his letters were couched in formal Latin prose. Henry VII’s poet laureate and historiographer, Bernard André, was also the prince’s tutor for French. Perhaps it was he, or, more likely, the first Royal Librarian, Quintin Poulet of Lille,77 who was given charge of the compilation of what is now the British Library’s MS Royal 16 F. ii, the most sumptuous of all the manuscripts of Charles’s poetry. The margins of the magnificent full-page illuminations have the prince’s device, an ostrich feather, along with his motto, ‘ic dene’ (‘I serve’). The last work in the manuscript gives the date 1500, the probable date of the final compilation, or revision.78 The very choice, in the opening pages of the manuscript, of Charles’s poems written in England in praise of his faraway princess is significant, reflecting, as it does, Prince Arthur’s circumstances at the time. According to

70 Champion, ed., Ballade LV, line 22, I, 79–80; Mühlethaler, ed., Ballade 55, line 22. 71 Constant Beaufils, Etude sur la vie de Charles d’Orléans (Paris, 1861). Quoted by Cham-

pion, Vie, p. 261. Vie, p. 261. Ibid., pp. 261–66. Champion, ed., II, 552. MS A (Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal MS 2070, fol. 1; see Champion, Vie, p. 266, and ed., I. ix). 76 See John Fox, ed., Charles d’Orléans. Choix de Poésies. Editées d’après le ms Royal 16 F ii du British Museum (Exeter, 1973), pp. xvi–xxiii. 77 See Backhouse, ‘Illuminated MSS associated with Henry VII’, in particular pp. 175–76. 78 Fox, ed., Choix de Poésies, p. xx. 72 73 74 75

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Champion, their order is ‘tout à fait brouillé’.79 While this is indeed the case, beneath the apparently haphazard arrangement, a particular intention can be discerned: the opening mixture of ballades and chansons adds up to a romantic tale bound to have particular interest and appeal for the young prince during the long wait for his betrothed to arrive in England. Here is what I wrote twenty-five years ago: Sont écartés de la série les poèmes d’amour où il est peu probable que la dame anonyme fût la duchesse, ceux où elle paraît rester indifférente à ces témoignages d’affection (Champion VII, XV, XVI, XVII, XVIII), ceux qui laissent entendre que le duc la rejoint de temps en temps (I, III, V, XIII), alors que rien ne suggère que son épouse lui ait rendu visite en Angleterre, ceux où il n’est pas question d’une ‘loyauté’ qui les unit, ceux où le désespoir l’emporte sur l’optimisme tenace qu’il s’efforce de garder vivant, ceux enfin où la tristesse règne à cause de la maladie et de la mort de la dame (LV, LVII, LVIII, LIX, LX, LXI, LXII, LXIII, LXIV) que C [Royal 16 F.ii] ne mentionne pas avant le Songe en Complainte. De cette série intercalaire, C a gardé surtout les pièces où l’amour que chante le poète présente un aspect conjugal et heureux. Les exceptions les plus notables sont les quatre poèmes entièrement conventionnels placés au début de la série, exercices poétiques qui servent d’entrée en matière. Assez surprenant est le choix de la première ballade; malgré les tristes circonstances qu’elle évoque, elle est gaie, charmante, optimiste, et fournit le renseignement essentiel pour la compréhension de la majorité des poèmes suivants: l’auteur, obligé de vivre loin de son entourage habituel, s’en remet à la poésie pour communiquer avec les siens. La quatrième ballade de la série est la première où il s’agit de l’amour. C’est un badinage spirituel, léger, joyeux, un flirt avec l’amour susceptible de plaire à toute dame de la cour. Loyauté, confiance malgré la souffrance imposée par son exil, croyance en un bonheur remis à l’avenir mais non pas disparu à jamais, l’effet de ce nouvel arrangement est de faire ressortir ces thèmes, et c’est seulement à la fin, après une trop longue attente, que la tristesse, qu’il persiste pourtant à défier, perce la carapace des apparences extérieures. Plusieurs poèmes dans C semblent avoir été groupés par paires. Ainsi 7 et 8 (Ball. IV et Chanson LI dans O [BN fr. 25458]) partagent le même sujet et le même vocabulaire. 22 est la contre-partie exacte de 21 (Ballades XX,XXXII dans O), Il est une chanson adressée par la dame au poète et 12 donne la réponse de celui-ci (Chanson LII et Ball. XXXVI dans O). Remarquons que le classement d’après les formes – ballades d’un côté, chansons de l’autre – n’est plus respecté, l’ordre chronologique non plus, le poème placé en tête de la série étant postérieur à la plupart de ceux qui le suivent. D’autre part, six paires, chacune traitant son sujet à elle, présentent la même juxtaposition que dans O (2–3= LXXVIII–LXXIX; 9–10=XXXIV–XXXV; 12–13=XXXVI–XXXVII; 14–15=XLII– XLIII; 27–28=VIII–IX; 30–31=XXIV–XXV), ainsi que deux suites de quatre poèmes, et une de trois (16–19=XXXVIII–XLI; 35–38=XLIV–XLVII; 39–41=L– LII). Ce nouvel arrangement semble être une fragmentation et un regroupement de celui de O destiné à faire ressortir le thème d’une correspondance entre le poète et la dame, séparés par la mer, vivant dans l’espoir d’une réunion éventuelle.80 79 Champion, ed., I, xi. 80 Fox, ed., Choix de Poésies, I, xiv–xvi. The complete order of the poems in C, between La

Retenue d’Amours and Le Songe en Complainte, is as follows (Roman numerals refer to Champion’s edition; B=Ballade, C=Chanson): B LXXXII, B LXXVIII, B LXXIX, B II, B X,

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Particularly significant is the bringing together of Chanson LII and Ballade XXXVI, the former from the lady, the latter the poet’s reply, quoting four lines of the lady’s chanson, proof, if proof were needed, that the compiler is not assembling the poems in a purely haphazard fashion. The text of a letter in Latin from Arthur to Catherine has survived, in which he thanks her for her letter and assures her of his love.81 The parallel is obvious and surely deliberate, designed to afford the young prince some reassurance and pleasure, a pleasure reinforced by the famous illumination showing the Tower of London opened up to reveal Charles d’Orléans seated at a desk writing his poetry, with armed knights and ladies behind him. The presentation of the text also strongly suggests that the compiler did not view the lady of the ballades as some allegorical abstraction, but as a creature of flesh and blood, most likely (as with the compiler of MS A82), Charles’s wife, Bonne d’Armagnac. The dominant note of the first forty poems is one of optimism and pleasurable anticipation. Those reflecting the melancholy of Charles the prisoner, or concerned with the lady’s illness and death, are plucked out and relegated to a place after the Songe en Complainte, joining the remainder of Charles’s poems written in England, this time with no particular order. That a more sombre note should eventually replace the bright beginning is not so unusual. Not only is this development present, though less sharply marked, in the duke’s personal manuscript, it also reflects age-old ideas, popular in medieval times: make the most of your early years, happiness is fleeting – carpe diem . . . memento mori. If Arthur had read on, beyond these poems, he would have come across this warning: even princes ‘par mort departiront de ce monde et ne savent quelle, quant ne comment elle vendra’.83 This warning is toned down somewhat by the concluding lines: Que le prince pour qui ce livre Est fait puisse regner et vivre Longuement en estat de grace . . .84

Whatever the origins of this manuscript, there can be little doubt that the form in which it has survived is the one prepared for Arthur, prince of Wales.

81 82 83

84

B XXXIII, BIV, C LI, B XXXIV, B XXXV, C LII, B XXXVI, B XXXVII, B XLII, B XLIII, B XXXIII, B XXXIX, B XL, B XLI, B XIV, B XX, B XXXII, B XXXI, B XXX, B XXI, B XXVI, B VIII, B IX, B XXVII, B XXIV, B XXV, B XII, B XXXIII, B XXXIX, B XLIV, B XLV, B XLVI, B XLVII, B L, B LI, B LII, B XLII, B LIV. Fox, ed., Choix de Poésies, I, xvi–xvii. See note 75. In the final work of the manuscript (215r). The title page reads as follows: ‘Cy commence le livre dit Grace Entiere sur le fait du gouvernement d’un prince’ (210v). The work immediately following Charles’s poems is Les Epistres de l’abbesse Heloÿs, in which the abbess gives advice on love to a young disciple. A lover should really be at least eighteen years old, she declares (142v), but at the beginning says something rather different: love is allowed to ‘tout homme qui a quatorse ans’ (141r) – precisely Arthur’s age at the time of his betrothal in 1499. Fol. 248v.

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Oh History! How fond of ironies you are! Catherine eventually arrived in England – ‘princesse lointaine’ no longer – in October 1501. The marriage ceremony took place the following month, but the idyll of the young couple was to be cruelly short. Arthur died within five months of the marriage, while his widow was to live on for thirty-four years. She became the first of Henry VIII’s six wives. He eventually divorced her, only too happy for her to become, once again, a ‘princesse lointaine’.

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Le monde vivant ROUBEN C. CHOLAKIAN

Ne m’en racontez plus, mes yeulx, De beaulté que vous prizez tant, Car plus voys ou monde vivant Et mains me plaist, ainsi m’aist Dieux

(R 216).1

Posing the Problem Is the invented narrator in Charles of Orléans’s poetry a split personality? Are there two distinct poetic personae, the persona of the captivity years, introspective and forlorn, and a second post-captivity persona, more confidant, more happily attuned to the world around him? In short, is Charles in 1440 suddenly transformed into an active viewer of and participant in le monde vivant? Such would appear to be the consensus among critics to date: The first stage tends to portray the interior world, the poet striving to capture the immediacy of his mental and emotional experience. With the second stage another dimension is added to his work, namely, the perception of the natural and human world surrounding him and a new perspective of himself as a part of this world.2

In the following pages I propose to compare the ballades composed during Charles’s capitivity years in England (1415–1440) with the more than 300 rondeaux written after his return to Blois. In doing so, I will ask whether the poet’s attitudes towards his surroundings changed significantly.

Feeling is Seeing: Prosopopeia By the fifteenth century the endlessly repetitive courtly romance had become a kind of allegorical shorthand for love.3 There was no longer any need to tell the 1 2

All citations are from the Mühlethaler edition. David Fein, Charles d’Orléans (Boston, 1983), p. 153. See also in this regard Norma Lorre Goodrich, Charles of Orleans (Geneva, 1967), p. 133. 3 As Stephen Barney writes: ‘The new language of love for several centuries fed upon itself’ (Allegories of History, Allegories of Love [Hamden, Conn, 1979], p. 176).

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entire story; it was already known well enough. The reader/listener needed little more than a nudge to re-envision the all-too-familiar verbal tryst. By the late Middle Ages, the courtly narrative had surrendered to a shallow anthropomorphization, a kind of personified name-dropping. Minus the story-telling elaboration, therefore, it is more appropriate, it seems to me, to call what poets like Charles were doing ‘prosopopeia’.4 True to the traditions of courtly verse, the world that Charles examines is above all that of objectified feminine beauty. But in fact just how objective are his observations? In the ballade sequence composed principally in England,5 he often speaks of the pleasure of gazing at the beloved (B 3/8, B 9, B 13, B 20, B 65, B 73). Looking is one thing, however, and seeing quite another.6 The woman Charles describes has a ‘gent corps, plaisant et gracieux’ (B 11/6) or, redundantly, a ‘tresgracieux corps gent’, (B 67/24). Nothing really sets her apart from any other woman. She is remarkably undefined. While there may be implied emotion, there is not much flesh and blood in most of this courtly poetry.7 And on the rare occasions when nature seems to play any sort of role in the ballades, the descriptive elements are also consistently elusive and quite unpersuasive.8 The poet recommends that his heart listen for the song of the birds in the merry month of May when men’s minds should turn to matters of love. But it is not the signs of spring that are important to him per se, but the troubadouresque urge to sing of love.9

4

5

6

7 8

9

Paxson notes that for years prosopopeia was erroneously and ‘automatically equated with allegory’. He further argues that these mute figures are often not even legitimate cases of prosopopeia, but simple ‘anthropomorphism’ (James J. Paxson, The Poetics of Personification [Cambridge, 1994], pp. 1, 42). There is much debate about chronology, but critics generally agree on two major periods of production: 1432–1440 when the bulk of the ballades were produced, and 1450–1458 when most of the shorter rondeaux were created. For a good summary of the whole problem of chronology see the opening chapters in Sergio Cigado, L’Opera poetica di Charles d’Orléans (Milan, 1960). Charles also complained of the ‘danger’ of looking at the beloved. Falling under the sway of ‘Beauty’ could cause loss of control. See, for example, B 73. For a more complete psychological examination of this issue, see Cholakian, ‘Subtexual Love Message’, pp. 81–91. ‘Ni la description du corps, ni son analyse ne sont très poussées’ (Daniel Poirion, Le Lexique, p. 17). ‘S’il saisit vivement le monde, il ne le rend que par bribes . . . Aucune vue panoramique ne nous renseigne sur la diversité ordonnée de la nature’ (Alice Planche, Charles d’Orléans ou la recherche d’un langage [Paris, 1975], p. 166). The Natureingang topos is common in troubadour love poetry. Bernart de Ventadour writes, for instance, Lo gens temps de Pascor, Ab la fresca verdor, Nos adui fuelh e flor De diversa color:

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Alons au bois le may cueillir Pour la coustume maintenir! Nous orrons des oyseualx le glay ... Le dieu d’Amours est coustumier A ce jour de feste tenir Pour amoureux cueurs festier. (B 48/4–6, 9–11)

There are no nineteenth-century descriptions of nature here – only the usual quest for amorous encounters.10 On the other hand, the prosopopeian technique provides the poet with an unusual opportunity for probing his inner feelings, and love is by no means the exclusive theme. This courtly poet’s originality lies in the resourceful way he eventually expands the older poetic model to define other emotions besides those having to do exclusively with love. Charles ingeniously broadens the subject matter and establishes intimate connections with his own personal drama. What may start out as a classic courtly story is metamorphosed into something quite different. The love plot does not altogether vanish; it simply serves as the decor for a psychological investigation. The stage is filled with familiar performers based on courtly stereotypes, but the poet goes far beyond their original functions. Beginning with the theme of love, he deftly moves on to explore his anguished soul: Mon cueur est devenu hermite En l’ermitage de pensee, Car Fortune, la tresdespite, Qui l’a haÿ mainte journee, S’est nouvellement alïee Contre lui aveques Tristesse, Et l’ont banny hors de lyesse. Place n’a ou puist demourer Fors ou boys de merencolie. Il est content de s’i logier; Si lui dis je que c’est folie. (B 43/1–22)

In much of the poetry of his captivity, the despondent poet battles the unrelenting assaults of Deuil, Merencolie, Dangier, and Destresse, all well-established figures in courtly literature, but here signifiers of a deeper trouble. In Ballade 79, for example, an imagined itinerary leads to ‘L’ostellerie de pensee’. Although Fortune and Dangier play their expected roles, in the end, love is not the issue. The journey is an attempt at escape; it ultimately moves inward, away from the

Per que tug amador Son guay et cantador. (Lovely Eastertide brings us renewed plants, leaves and flowers of diverse tones/ All lovers also sing happily . . .) 10 ’Even a superficial comparison of Charles’s poetry with that of Chaucer makes clear that Charles is no lover of nature’ (Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 50).

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external world. In these ballades, Charles establishes himself as one of the most intriguing poets of self-examination in all of early French literature. In Ballade 91, for example, the poet describes himself as an ‘Escollier de Merencolie’ and victim of ‘Follye’. He seems to reprimand himself for his youthful waste of intellectual energy, but self-condemnation somehow goes deeper. This is not just an older man deploring the fact of not having studied enough, as does his contemporary, Villon. This is a disheartened and demoralized person whose isolation has greatly amplified the need to look within himself, to live an interior life. In a similar vein, in Ballade 95, ‘Jeunesse’ and ‘Viellesse’ become signs of anguish in the face of fleeting time. The poet looks into himself and asks haunting questions about human mortality: [D]ire ne saroye conbien Dedans mon cueur mal je retien, Serré d’une vielle sainture, Puis que c’est le cours de nature.

(23–25)

As in most fifteenth-century lyrics, giving shape to one’s feelings through personification hardly constitutes poetry that describes the real, physical world. On the other hand, the prosopopeian trope allows Charles not only to procreate visible figures by the naming process, but to do so upon a much larger emotional canvas. Love by no means provides the only thematic energy in his ballades. Charles uses the courtly rhetoric of his time because that is the poetic language available to him, but in his hands the old anthropomorphized feelings take on a new urgency and psychological value.

Seeing is Feeling: Metaphor Along with the prosopopeian trope is found a parallel but not unrelated phenomenon. In the same way that emotions are externalized in the form of personifications, the material world furnishes the poet with objects whose significance grows out of an internalization process, more metaphoric in nature.11 In simplest terms, a metaphor is the substitution of one idea or word for another.12 Charles’s own use of metaphor points to several ways in which the arbitrary distinction between self-conscious anthropomorphic expression of emotion and metaphoric identification of feelings becomes blurred. The complex relationship of prosopopeia to metaphor is fundamental to his entire poetic opus and deserves further exploration. 11 ‘Inversement, et de façon, à notre avis, plus significative, le monde n’apparaît que

comme le miroir des états de conscience’ (A. Strubel, ‘En la forêt de longe actente’). 12 Modern linguists see the phenomenon as inherent in most speech. ‘The only difference

between literal and metaphorical language is the degree of gap between a speaker’s thought and the proposition expressed’ (Andrew Goatly, The Language of Metaphors [New York, 1997], p. 23).

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The more common use of metaphor in this poetry appends some identifiable human figure from the real, external world to a prosopopeian invention. In each case a secondary characteristic (godhead, sovereignty, counselor, etc.) amplifies and enhances the original prosopopeia. Amour provides the most obvious example. The figure becomes ‘dieu d’Amour’ (B 44/3, 48/9, 70/11, 84/1), or it becomes ‘Amour, le puissant roy’ (B 30/13, B 62/31), and ‘Amour conseillee’ (B 54/12). While the first, rudimentary personification begins as a psychological projection, the supplementary trait draws the external world of people and events into the poet’s interiorized drama. The creative process thus oscillates from inward/outward to outward/inward, common enough in all poetic creation, but quite special and new in the way it develops in the imagination of this gifted poet. The technique can also be reversed. Here a metaphor is made of an inanimate object and then added to a familiar prosopopeian figure like ‘pensee’:13 ‘En la prison de desplaisance’ (B 25/9), ‘en l’hermitage de pensee’ (B 43/2), ‘la nuee de ma tristesse’ (B 45/1–2), ‘roche d’esperance’ (B 50/5), ‘dur lit d’ennuieuse pensee’ (B 66/8). The parallel strategies represent two sides of the same phenomenon: poetic structuring in both instances is subordinate to the psychological exigencies of the highly self-referential ‘je’. In the ballade sequence of the captivity years, the poet expands the metaphorical conceit significantly. An overriding, pervasive metaphor sets the scene against which the poet places familiar personages of the prosopopeian manner. The defining trope often comes early in the text. For instance, Ballade 28 begins: ‘En la nef de bonne nouvelle/ Espoir a chargié reconfort’.14 Within the syntactical confines of the opening sentence, the lonely and love-sick poet quickly establishes the link between image and emotion. Hope’s merchandise, ‘reconfort’, is being sent by his ‘belle’. Never abandoning the governing metaphor, the poet further dramatizes his distress by making ample use of the familiar courtly figures. ‘La mer de Fortune’ struggles against ‘Dangier, le rebelle’, who cannot, however, discourage the persistent ‘nef plaine de plaisance’. A deftly turned envoi reminds readers, however, of the nautical metaphor that dominates the poem: Dieu vueille celle nef garder Des robeurs escumeurs de mer, Qui ont a Dangier aliance;

13 In defining the essential instability of personification in Charles’s English poetry, Arn

notes: ‘In many cases it is difficult to know when Charles intends a noun to act as a personification and when he does not; the poems are full of very weak personifications’ (Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 127). 14 This will not be the only time Charles uses boat travel as a metaphor. See Daniel Poirion, ‘La nef d’espérance: symbole et allégorie chez Charles d’Orléans’, Mélanges de langue et de littérature du moyen âge et de la renaissance offerts à Jean Frappier (Geneva, 1970), pp. 913–28 and Paul Zumthor, ‘Charles d’Orléans et le language de l’allégorie’, Mélanges offerts à Rita Lejeune, 2 vols. (Gembloux, 1969), pp. 1481–502.

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Car, s’ilz povoient, par rudesse M’osteroient ma desirance Et le tresor de ma liesse. (34–39)

Lexical borrowing from the physical world defines an emotional quest. There is no descriptive intent. Key words like nef, port, mer, plaisant vent, robeurs escumeurs, are all part of a metaphoric schema. They do not attempt to portray travel by sea. Once more, Charles uses the elements of the external world to elucidate what is happening within himself. An entirely different example of the same formula, Ballade 46, begins, ‘Au court jeu de tables jouer/ Amour me fait moult longuement’. The metaphoric frame also permits the poet to create here a courtly drama where familiar figures are subordinated to the initiatory conceit: Fortune fait souvent tourner Les dez contre moy mallement. Mais Espoir, mon bon conseillier, M’a dit et permis seurement Que Loyauté prochainement Fera Bon Eur vers moy venir, Qui me fera a mon plaisir Gaangnier le jeu entierement. (17–24)

Nothing suggests any genuine desire to expound upon medieval pastimes. Whatever information the poet furnishes in speaking of ‘Le point d’atentte’, and ‘Gaagnier le jeu’ is less a matter of depicting a popular game than using this conceit to isolate and analyse the poet’s psychological disposition. What interests Charles is the analogy between the element of chance in the games. In Ballade 65, Charles introduces one of his favorite metaphoric constructs, illness and the efforts of the doctor ‘nonchaloir’ to cure his lovesick patient. Emphatically and strategically situating the metaphor in the refrain gives added force to the analogy: Mais de nouvel, presentement, Un bon medecin qu’on appelle Nonchaloir, que tiens pour amy, M’a geury, la sienne mercy, Se la playe ne renouvelle. (5–9)

The repetition of the ballade’s refrain ironizes it in a way that is comical and at the same time poignantly pathetic. The competent medical man deserves thanks, ‘Se la playe ne renouvelle’. He in turn warns his patient that he is well for the moment, ‘Se la playe ne renouvelle’, and promises permanent relief, ‘Se la playe ne renouvelle’. Clearly, this is far from being a treatise on medical practices of the period, nor is it in any sense an explicit portrayal of a medical doctor. The world outside the poet exists only as a metaphoric springboard. Charles comes closer to giving a true picture of what it is to be ill in Ballade 85. But before long, with his aptitude for taking over a metaphoric frame to describe 114

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his personal feelings, the resourcefully subjective poet leads us into the deeper meaning of his hyperbolic description: Yeulx rougis plains de piteux pleurs, Fourcelle d’espoir reffroidie, Teste enrumee de douleurs Et troublee de frenesie, Corps percus, sans plaisance lie, Cueur du tout pausmé en rigueurs Voy souvent avoir a plusieurs Par le vent de merencolie. (1–8)

Despite a Molièresque barrage of anatomical symptoms the ultimate aim is to interiorize the patient’s disorder. Charles finds it humorously apt to use physical infirmity as a metaphor for an emotional malady. The source of his despair comes from within, something that the poem’s refrain takes note of in a second metaphor. And in case the slow-witted have still not caught on, the closing lines state the invalid’s real problem explicitly: Guerir ne se puet maladie Par phisique ne cireurgie, Astronomians n’enchanteurs, Des maulx que seuffrent povres cueurs Par le vent de merencolie. (25–29)15

We quickly understand that the person being described is none other than the describer himself; and the psychosomatic illness is his own. The seemingly observant observer makes a joke of what he does not really find all that funny, since the joke is in the end on himself. In other words, Charles’s captivity poems do what everyone has always said they do. They are more often than not personal probings, even if the probing is accomplished through the sometimes off-putting and obfuscating terminology of courtly language, and even if, at times, he freely borrows from the physical world to define his psychological state. Prosopopeian tropes and metaphoric constructs in the ballades often give physical reality to emotions. In that sense Charles does not differ from any of his contemporaries. He simply improves upon the process by broadening the psychological scope of his investigations. Before long it becomes obvious that love’s pangs have been relegated to a lesser position. One uncovers a host of desires, longings, fears, doubts and apprehensions which emanate from the psychic world of a highly introspective poet. Modern psychologists might conclude that this is his way of ‘acting out’. It is his ‘talking cure’.

15 For a similar pattern see Ballade 113, probably composed only a year before Charles’s

final release.

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Le monde vivant Does all this suddenly change when Charles is at last freed in 1440? Does he abruptly and unexpectedly alter his poetic vision? Or to put it differently, does the introspective mode give way to a descriptive one? First of all, the rondeau, which Charles turns to as the poetic form of choice, is not a form that lends itself to fulsome documentation of what one sees. It can give at best a fast-paced, impressionistic view of the world. With that restriction in mind, nevertheless, it has to be said that on occasion Charles demonstrates remarkable skill in seizing just the right detail. In Rondeau 62, for example, he easily competes with such later masters of acerbic satire as Du Bellay and La Fontaine: La veez vous la, la lyme sourde Qui pense plus qu’elle ne dit? Souventeffoiz s’esbat et rit A planter une gente bourde. (1–4)

Incisive and mercuric imagery elswhere manages to communicate much in a few words: Les fourriers d’Esté sont venus Pour appareillier son logis, Et ont fait tendre ses tappis De fleurs et verdure tissus. (R 101, 1–4)

And here and there in these short verses one finds lyrical gems of striking precision: En regardant ces belles fleurs Que le temps nouveau d’amours prie, Chascune d’elles s’ajolie Et farde de plaisans couleurs. [T]ant enbasmees sont de odeurs Qu’il n’est cueur qui ne rajeunie En regardant etc. Lez oiseaus deviennent danseurs Dessuz mainte branche flourie Et font joyeuse chanterie De contres, deschans et teneurs En regardant etc. (R 109)

However, such curt verbal explosions are frequently psychologically-oriented metaphors appropriated by the poet in order to explore and analyse the inner self. In short, Charles continues to use the poetic vision as an exercise in selfscrutiny. Indeed, he repeatedly speaks of his need to withdraw so as to investigate what is within himself: ‘Ne hurtez plus a l’uis de ma pensee’ (R 4). What is worth noting in passing, however, is that at the same time he greatly fears the pain of too much reflection: 116

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Penser, qui te fait si hardy De mectre en ton hostellerie La tresdiverse compaignie D’Anuy, Desplaisir et Soussy?

(R 44, 1–4)

Introspection becomes both unavoidable and disturbing: Dedens mon livre de pensee J’ay trouvé escripvant mon cueur La vraye histoire de douleur, De larmes toute enluminee. (R 107, 1–4)

In any case, in this new phase of poetic creation, Charles appears to find less and less of interest in the world around him: Le monde est ennuyé de moy, Et moy pareillement de lui; Je ne congnois riens au jourd’uy Dont il me chaille que bien poy. (R 120, 1–4)

Descriptive pieces that set out to paint a verbal picture are rare. Their affective genesis may not always be immediately apparent, but the physical world is in fact nearly always a pretext for the exploration of some psychological subtext. This is essentially the same poet, with the same internalizing vision. Charles has merely expanded his metaphoric language. Let us look at a few key examples. Rondeau 190 cleverly joins the twin themes of love and pilgrimage: A qui vendez vous voz coquilles? Entre vous, amans pelerins? Vous cuidez bien par vos engins A tous pertuis trouver chevilles Sont ce coups d’esteufs ou de billes Que ferez, tesmoing voz voisins? A qui etc.? On congnoist tous vos tours d’estrilles Et bien clerement voz latins; Trotés, reprenés vos patins Et troussés vos sacs et voz quilles! A qui etc.? (R 190)

It is a picturesque enough scene, and it offers evidence that Charles is not indifferent to his surroundings. But why, one needs to ask, the sexual buffoonery and comic double meanings? The personalizing comes from another place; the halfserious mockery has more to do with the poet’s own life than with that of the youthful lovers. Mixed in with his erotic facetiousness is more than a little bitterness about the passage of time and the unrelenting approach of death. In Rondeau 253, the poet makes use of the time-worn theme of May and the coming of spring. He looks at his garden and weeps at its destruction at the hands of ‘une fâcheuse gelée’. He bemoans the death of ‘fleurs et arbres’. But lest 117

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there be any misunderstanding of his poetic intentions, from the very start of the poem he identifies this as his ‘jardin de pensee’. But explicit or not, the subjective goals of the poetic act deprive the poem of its realism. Charles tends to refer to things in order to say something about what he is thinking and feeling. More frequently than not, the inspiration of the moment is a pretext for self-definition. In Rondeau 43 the prince is travelling along the Loire. Time seems endless: Aux champs, par hayes et buissons Perdriz et lyevres nous prendrons Et yrons pescher sur rivieres, Puis que par deça etc. Vivres, tabliers, cartes aurons, Ou souvent estudirons Vin, mangers de plusieurs manieres; Galerons sans faire prieres Et de dormir ne nous faindrons, Puis que par deça etc. (6–15)

At first one is taken in by the poem’s captivating and beguiling literalness. The senses are activated and the imagery conjures up a persuasive canvas of bucolic hedonism. But the real background of the poem comes from the creator’s inner life. The poet clings to an idyllic dream which may at any moment vanish. Azincourt haunts his memory and lurking in the shadows is the omnipresent ‘Merencolye’.16 There is more here than meets the eye! But what of the wonderful descriptions of his faithful dog? Is this not a poem unmistakably written to celebrate the merits of a favorite pet? (R 84). A closer look shows that, aside from the animal’s ‘pendantes oreilles’, not much about the dog’s appearance is revealed. Instead the poet takes pains to put into words what a good hunting dog should be: he should relish the hunt, encouraged by the thought of reward; he must work as part of a cooperative pack; he must be diligent, faithful, and dependable. In brief, Charles’s love of his pet is true and real, but this is not a physical description of a dog; the animal is a metaphor for loyalty and devotion. Through sad experience Charles has learned disappointment and disillusionment, and the dog metaphor allows him to express his fervent search for unbending allegiance.17 It is once again psychological context that motivates the poet. The most famous examples of whatever descriptive tendencies appear in Charles’s verse are those dealing with the changes of season. The familiar Rondeau 37 begins,

16 Mühlethaler cites five examples of this personification in the ballades, but lists nearly

thirty cases in the later rondeaux (Ballades et rondeaux, pp. 775–82). 17 ‘The superficial banter of the courtly poet does not hide a strong note of disillusion-

ment’ (Fox, Lyric Poetry, p. 149).

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Yver, vous n’estes q’un villain! Esté est plaisant et gentil, En tesmoing de May et d’Avril Qui l’acompaignent soir et main.

(1–4)

The poem’s objective, however, is contrast between villanous winter and comforting spring, between cold and warmth, between wickedness and kindness, between a good world and a bad one:18 Esté revest champs, bois et fleurs De sa livree de verdure Et de maintes autres couleurs Par l’ordonnance de Nature. (5–8)

The poem’s metaphoric intent becomes clear in the final phrases: Mais vous, Yver, trop estes plain De nege, vent pluye et grezil; On vous deust banir en essil! Sans point flater je parle plain. (9–13)

What constitues the worst punishment for the enemy ‘Yver’, is banishment, the very punishment that was meted out to Charles for twenty-five traumatic years. There is much that is deceptive in these seemingly festive later poems. And if we did not know of the prince/poet’s other, inner world of pain and regret, we might almost be fooled by his ardent enthusiasm for the quotidian.19 But a superficial reaction to these giddy, fast-paced pieces that bubble like champagne leads to false interpretation. Each of these texts has an immediate context, but each passes as well through a prism of uneasiness that ineluctably colors the poet’s zestful participation. While his eyes take in the objective world, voices from within challenge the too-rosy view of the life he conjures up. Two observations are in order concerning Charles’s second period of poetic activity. (1) The rondeau form by its very nature cannot sustain detailed description. (2) Aside from a few striking exceptions, Charles continues to internalize the outside world; he continues to rework metaphor and prosopopeia in order to express what is within himself.20

18 ‘Above all, he is fascinated by the seasonal cycle and its effects upon the psyche . . .

Nature itself does little more than set the mood’ (Fein, p. 119). 19 ‘Le spectacle de la gaîté d’autrui provoque, en retour, une aggravation du mal, au

point que le rire déclenche comme mécaniquement les larmes du patient’ (Planche, p. 152). 20 Examples of the withdrawal theme in the texts of the rondeaux are plentiful. See R 67, R 69, R 70, R 144, R 158, R 427. In this regard, see chapter 3 in my Deflection/Reflection in the Lyric Poetry of Charles d’Orléans (Potomac, Maryland, 1985).

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[Dis]Solving the Problem French school children who for years have been made to memorize ‘Yver, vous n’estes q’un villain’ have been given an erroneous impression of this fifteenthcentury poet not much concerned with the world of people and objects. Neither during nor after his captivity did Charles indulge extensively in physical descriptions for their own sake.21 It is not Charles’s poetic vision but his environment that alters dramatically after 1440. The erstwhile prisoner whose world has been radically circumscribed during years of anxious confinement and sobering isolation suddenly emerges, as from a dark mist, into the light. He sees more because there is more to see. But in nearly every instance, the concrete is subordinated to the abstract. Nothing is fundamentally altered in the way the poet relates to the physical universe. His poetic vision remains essentially subjective. In defining love, for example, he uses analogies of music (R 21), tournaments (R 51), drowning (R 196), food (R 277) and feudal relations (R 305). Charles himself summarizes this creative process in Ballade 35.22 The captured soldier/poet speaks of having purchased last year from ‘Amour’ a ‘mirouer’ where he is able to see ‘la plus belle de France’.23 But since the mirror is kept in the ‘tresor de . . . pensee’, the poet has to look first within himself: Ne mon cueur n’a jamais santé, Fors quant il y peut regarder Des yeulx de joyeuse plaisance. Il s’y esbat pour temps passer En attendant bonne esperance. (14–18)

He redundantly underscores this visual internalization by announcing that he will put the mirror ‘Ou coffre de ma souvenance’, where, of course, it was located from the start. Absence poetically invents memory, but the metaphor has a more general signification because it shows that the external world owes its meaning to the viewer’s psychic state. That principle links everything Charles composed, both before and after his English exile. No one can argue for the presence of poets who were true nature-lovers before the Renaissance, and no one will deny that every form of artistic expression passes through the emotional prism of the individual creator.24 But the issue here is to challenge the idea of any categoric change in Charles’s poetic manner. The consistent characteristic of his poetry is in fact an unchanging introspection.

21 ‘Toutefois les poèmes purement descriptifs restent rares’ (Poirion, Le poète et le prince, p.

489). 22 See Fein for a somewhat different reading of this poem (pp. 29–30). 23 The reference to ‘l’annee passee’ indicates that Charles was probably in his second year

of captivity (1416) when this poem was conceived. 24 ‘Entre la sensation vécue et l’image poétique s’interpose cependant – c’est là un trait

essentiel du lyrisme – le sentiment’ (Poirion, Le poète et le prince, p. 500).

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Everything is ultimately subordinated to the consuming, self-reflective ‘je’.25 A panoply of objects, animate and inanimate, whole (metaphoric) and partial, (metonymic) are brought into the sphere of personal sensibility. Things and persons are deprived of their physicality and ‘objectness’ in order to express sentiments. More significant than what divides the poet of captivity from the poet of liberation is what emphatically joins the two – the essential inwardness of all of Charles’s poetry. The truth of the matter is that Charles was never much interested in describing his surroundings. He was always far more involved with his emotions; and what he saw was significant only in so far as it could be related to the interior landscape. Gratuitous depictions of the physical universe were the exception and not the rule in Charles’s poetic output. And that may be the reason why his astonishing departures from the norm have caught the attention of those who read this elegant, frequently witty, but rarely graphic poet.

25 This, I believe, is what is implied in Calin’s use of the word ‘density’ (William Calin,

‘The Density of the Text: Charles d’Orléans’, in Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Alice Planche, Annales de la faculté des lettres et sciences humaines de Nice, no. 48 [Nice, 1984], pp. 97–104).

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Dreams in The Kingis Quair and the Duke’s Book A. C. SPEARING

I

F Mary-Jo Arn had not already devised the appropriate title of Fortunes tStabilnes1 for the sequence of English poems in MS Harley 682, attributed to Charles, duke of Orléans, I would have liked to call the collection The Duke’s Book for the sake of the parallel with The Kingis Quair, the contemporary poem attributed to King James I of Scotland. These two fifteenth-century books have many similarities. John Burrow has discussed both as products of that period just before the introduction of printing, ‘when the production of manuscript books had reached its highest degree of organisation and efficiency’, and as instances of what he calls ‘bookness’, works that significantly depend for their effect ‘upon their own material existence as books – as volumes of paper or parchment, . . . held in a reader’s hand or lying on his desk’.2 Conscious textuality is certainly an important feature of both works: the writing of its component parts, many of them fictive letters or documents, is a recurrent theme of Fortunes Stabilnes, while The Kingis Quair purports to tell the story of its own composition, and Burrow notes the striking effect of the cross written in line 91 beside ‘and thus begouth my buke’ to mark the author’s decision to begin writing this very book about his own experiences.3 Both are first-person compositions associated with documented historical events, yet the authorship of both has been persistently questioned.4 (Since, however, nobody doubts that each makes at least the fictional

1

Fortunes Stabilnes, ed. Arn, from which I quote Charles’s English poems. (Here and in other quotations from Middle English, I substitute modern characters for yogh and thorn.) Like all students of Charles’s English poetry, I am much indebted to Arn’s work, and especially, for my account of his second dream, to ‘The English Poetry of Charles of Orleans’, Dutch Quarterly Review 8 (1978), 108–21. 2 ‘The Poet and the Book’, in Genres, Themes and Images in English Literature, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Tübingen, 1988), pp. 230–45 (pp. 244, 230). See also Cholakian, ‘Charles d’Orleans: the Challenge of the Printed Text’. 3 ‘The Poet and the Book’, p. 241. The Kingis Quair is quoted from the edition of John Norton-Smith (Oxford, 1971). On writing as a theme in Charles’s work, see my ‘Prison, Writing, Absence’. 4 For a lucid survey of the authorship controversy concerning The Kingis Quair, see Alessandra Petrina, ‘The Kingis Quair of James I of Scotland’ (diss. Università di Venezia, n.d.), pp. 46–50. (I am grateful to Dr Petrina for providing me with a copy of her dissertation.) On the controversy about the authorship of the English poems attributed to Charles, see Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 32–37.

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claim to be both by and about its alleged writer, I shall set aside questions of actual authorship and simply refer to the writers and first persons of the two books by their attributed names of Charles and James.5) Both of the supposed writers were princely foreigners who would probably not have become English poets at all if they had not been long-term Lancastrian prisoners. Both books take imprisonment, literal and metaphorical, as a theme, and they have been interestingly compared as ‘poems from prison’.6 Both poets draw deeply on a tradition of English courtly poetry which Chaucer derived from his French predecessors and contemporaries and to which he added a Boethian philosophical dimension; but both bring to the tradition a sprezzatura permitting them to write selfmockingly without risk to the high rank that entitles them to write as lovers – as servants of Love rather than, like Chaucer and most of his other followers, servants of Love’s servants. Both poems, in the guise of what has been called ‘erotic pseudo-autobiography’,7 reflect or refract moments of understanding and choice appropriate to their authors’ elevated social status. Both poets – and this is the topic of my present discussion – include in their narratives allegorical dreams featuring Venus and Fortune that refashion elements drawn from the Chaucerian tradition of dream-poetry. In both cases the general insights of allegory are not sufficient in themselves but are adapted to the dreamers’ individual situations, so that the dreams become at once symbols and causes of turning-points in their waking lives. The poems thus illustrate an important general development in late-medieval culture: the universal truths conveyed by allegory and myth come to be reprocessed through inward experience into the histories of individual lives. In The Kingis Quair, as we shall see, the transformation in the dreamer’s waking life marked and produced by the dream derives from what it has to teach him about opportunity and the possibilities of choice. The Quair is a tightly organized and sharply focused narrative directed towards its dreamer’s shaping of his public

5

This is a makeshift device, but a more exact account of the ways in which subjectivity inhabits these texts would require lengthy analysis. Such an account would, I believe, lead away from rather than towards binary distinctions such as those between poet and persona or poet and lover. For discussion of what is involved in such distinctions, see my articles ‘Poetic Identity’, in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 35–51, and ‘A Ricardian ‘‘I’’: the Narrator of Troilus and Criseyde’, in Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow, ed. A. J. Minnis et al. (Oxford, 1997), pp. 1–22. 6 Marks, ‘Poems from Prison’. See also Göller, ‘The Metaphorical Prison’, and Julia Boffey, ‘Chaucerian Prisoners: the Context of The Kingis Quair’, in Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen (London, 1991), pp. 84–102. For other discussion of similarities between the poems, including their treatment of dreams, see Boffey, ‘Charles of Orleans Reading’, especially pp. 56–57 and bibliography in n. 33. 7 G. B. Gybbon-Monypenny, ‘Guillaume de Machaut’s Erotic ‘‘Autobiography’’: Precedents for the Form of the Voir-Dit’, in Studies in Medieval Literature and Languages in Memory of Frederick Whitehead, ed. W. Rothwell et al. (Manchester, 1973), pp. 133–52 (p. 133).

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role. ‘The Duke’s book’ is a more diffuse and ambiguous poetic sequence in which the relations of narrative and lyric are shifting and sometimes uncertain, and here the transformation does not extend beyond private life, and may leave us unsure how well the textual ‘I’ has learned from his dream-encounters with universal forces. These are the issues that will emerge from examination and comparison of the ways in which dreams function within two fifteenth-century books. The comparison can best begin from a sketch of the courtly tradition of literary dreams as it developed in late-medieval England and became known to the two princely poets through their enforced stays there. The courtly dream-poem, originating with French poets from Guillaume de Lorris to Jean Froissart, had been reshaped in English by Chaucer in his four poems in that genre, along with his translation of the Roman de la Rose. From these examples, often preserved together in manuscript anthologies, fifteenth-century readers would have been able to construct a single ideal type of dream-poem, a type most fully realized in The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls.8 It may be described as follows. The dream is prefaced by a substantial introductory section, which establishes psychological and/or physiological links between the poet’s waking life and what he dreams about. The commonest link is the reading of a book; the dream then echoes the book’s themes, not directly, but in ways involving thought-provoking transformations. (In The Book of the Duchess and The Parliament of Fowls the books read before dreaming – respectively the Ceyx and Alcyone story from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis – themselves concern a dream and its relation to waking life, and therefore provoke especially intriguing complications when they give rise to dreams in their turn.) The dream concerns love, and ends abruptly when the dreamer is awakened by some physical disturbance originating inside it; and once it is over, the poem ends too, with a rapidity underlining the analogy between poems and dreams, both products of the imagination working creatively in a realm of engaging freedom but uncertain validity. The dream comes, as in The House of Fame, as a reward for the poet’s ‘labour and devocion’ (666) in writing in praise of Love, yet not so as to provide him with any personal love-experience, only, as Scipio Africanus suggests in The Parliament of Fowls, to give him more ‘mater of to wryte’ (168).9 The poet’s reading, transformed by the dream-work into the symbolic expression of an enigmatic truth bearing in some way on love, becomes in turn

8

The likelihood that such a construction occurred is argued by Julia Boffey, ‘English Dream Poems of the Fifteenth Century and their French Connections’, in Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture, ed. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 113–21. She notes that ‘Early readers quite possibly understood the dream visions [of Chaucer] to form some kind of generically connected body of writing, since the surviving manuscripts . . . tend to preserve them together, in anthologies where similarities and perhaps shared debts would be easily perceived’ (p. 114). In ‘Charles of Orleans Reading’ Boffey considers the means by which Charles might have encountered this body of writing. 9 Chaucer is quoted from The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston, 1987).

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the subject-matter of a new poem, a process put at its simplest in the closing lines of The Book of the Duchess: Thoghte I, ‘Thys ys so queynt a sweven That I wol, be processe of tyme, Fonde to put this sweven in ryme As I kan best, and that anoon.’ This was my sweven; now hit ys doon. (1330–34)

There is no sign that the dream has any other effect on Chaucer’s waking life, for the obvious reason that, as he appears in these poems, he has no life as a lover but only as a writer, occupied in making ‘bookys, songes, dytees’ (House of Fame 622) in praise of Love and his servants. James and Charles, as we shall see, represent themselves differently: they both figure as poets, but they also have lives that are changed by their dreams in other respects.10 The Kingis Quair explicitly declares its allegiance to the Chaucerian tradition – the final stanza, imitating the close of Troilus and Criseyde, dedicates the book not to Gower and Strode but to Gower and Chaucer himself – and it has much in common with the group of dream-poems I have been discussing. But if the Quair was intended as an adaptation of the Chaucerian dream-poem, it seems oddly confused or half-hearted, for the dream occupies only half the poetic text (99 of its 197 stanzas). In an earlier attempt to assess the Quair, I read it as an unsuccessful Chaucerian dream-poem. I expressed some doubt as to whether it might not be better seen, like Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid, as ‘a narrative which includes a dream as an important episode’, but I added, ‘I suspect that James himself had not seen any need to make up his mind about this’, and went on to state, ‘In all this there is a certain confusion: James is by no means merely imitating earlier dream-poets, but he is not sufficiently the master of the conventions of dream-poetry to re-shape them radically.’11 I repeat these remarks because I now believe that I was mistaken both to read The Kingis Quair as a dream-poem and to see James as having an uncertain grasp of the dream-poem conventions established by Chaucer, and I hope the misunderstanding may prove instructive. He does indeed depend on these conventions but, far from lacking mastery over them, he adapts them creatively to a somewhat different purpose. The Quair certainly begins in accordance with the Chaucerian paradigm: James lies in bed, troubled by his thoughts, so that

10 I use the term ‘poet’ here to mean a composer of fictions in verse, not in the more

restricted and elevated sense indicated by Glending Olson, ‘Making and Poetry in the Age of Chaucer’, Comparative Literature 31 (1979), 272–90, or Kevin Brownlee, Poetic Identity in Guillaume de Machaut (Madison, 1984). In such terms, James is closer to seeing himself as a poet, Charles to seeing himself as a maker. 11 A. C. Spearing, Medieval Dream-Poetry (Cambridge, 1976), pp. 182–83.

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. . . slepe for craft in erth myght I no more. For quhich, as tho, coude I no better wyle Bot toke a boke to rede apon a quhile. (12–14)

The book is Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and James recalls that it tells how Fortune brought Boethius from estate to ‘pouert in exile’ (20–21), and how ‘this worthy lord and clerk’ (22) wrote with ‘flourit pen’ (24) of the comfort he received from philosophy. Medieval illuminated manuscripts of the Consolation often depict Lady Philosophy appearing to Boethius in his bedchamber, as if he were dreaming, so we can make a good guess what will come next. James will fall asleep over his book about Boethius’s dream, and will have a dream of his own influenced by it – probably one in which Philosophy will visit him in his exile and provide him with edifying matter for his ‘flourit pen’. James evidently knows that this is what his readers are likely to expect, but he chooses to diverge from the expectations he has aroused. He writes: For quhich (thogh I in purpose at my boke To borowe a slepe at thilke tyme began), Or euer I stent, my best was more to loke Vpon the writing of this noble man, That in himself the full recouer wan Of his infortune, pouert and distresse, And in tham set his verray sekernesse. (29–35)

There is no sign of confusion here: James refers to his intention to send himself to sleep in the Chaucerian manner by reading a book, but explains that in fact he found the book so engrossing that he preferred to go on reading. He summarizes what he sees as the significance of Boethius’s life – how by abandoning ‘vnsekir warldis appetitis’ (40) he overcame his misfortune, and how he made a book out of this moral victory – and then once more it seems that he is about to follow the Chaucerian convention: The long[e] night beholding (as I saide), My ey[e]n gan to smert for studying. My buke I schet and at my hede it laide, And doun I lay bot ony tarying, This mater new[e] in my mynd rolling . . .

(50–54)

Now, surely, must be the moment for a Boethian dream to come to him! But once more James turns aside, passing from thoughts of Fortune to recollections of his own ‘fortune and vre’ (65) and of how, like Boethius, he too ‘gat recure/ Of my distresse’ (66–67). James, then, twice teases his readers with feints towards the Chaucerian model but twice swerves away to take a different path. He knows well enough what he is doing; and it turns out eventually that his plan is to insert a dream modelled on the Chaucerian dream-poem into a much fuller account than Chaucer ever gives of the dreamer’s waking life as a lover, thus showing how the dream brought about a fundamental change in that life. Unlike the Chaucer of Chaucer’s dream-poems, James has a significant life outside his dreams and the poems he makes from them. 127

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Before the dream come another 65 stanzas of narrative. First there is the famous moment at which James hears the matins bell ringing, imagines that it says, ‘tell on, man, quhat thee befell’ (77), determines ‘Sum new[e] thing to write’ (89), makes a cross, and begins – thus beginning his book ninety lines after he has begun it. Next comes a section in which his account of the literal sea voyage that led to his capture by the English mingles dazzlingly with an allegorical sea voyage that is his present poetic enterprise. Here, in a proem to the poem of his life, James is ingeniously reworking Chaucer’s proem to Book II of Troilus and Criseyde, using the same apostrophic rhetoric (including an invocation of Clio12) and the same master metaphor of the poem as a ship voyaging over dangerous seas and in need of the steersman’s connyng13 if it is to reach port. This is followed by a transitional chronographia (134–47), parallel to the one that succeeds the Troilus proem (II 50–56) and using the same images of spring, opening flowers, and Apollo spreading his beams; and this in turn leads into the narrative proper.14 From the past moment at which his imprisonment began James moves through questionings of God’s providence to a later moment at which, like Chaucer’s Palamon and Arcite, he looked through his cell window into the garden below. There he heard the nightingale singing in praise of love, and this shifted his speculations about liberty and bondage from God to Cupid: Can I noght elles fynd, bot gif that he Be lord, and as a god may lyue and regne, To bynd and louse and maken thrallis free . . .

(267–69)

Once more like Palamon and Arcite, he saw a beautiful lady in the garden and fell instantly in love with her, ‘That sudaynly my hert became hir thrall/ For euer, of free wyll’ (285–86). He describes her admiringly, prays to Venus for help, urges the nightingale to continue singing, and when it has done so, prays to the lady (who still knows nothing of his existence) for mercy. The lady goes in and James laments, kneeling in the window with his head bent on ‘the cold[e] stone’ (508); and now at last, not in bed with a book but in this miserable posture, ‘Half sleping and half suoun’ (510), he has his dream. It begins as a prisoner’s dream of freedom: a light shines through the window, a voice says, ‘I bring thee confort and hele, be noght affrayde’ (518), and he is carried through his cell door unhindered. He is borne up through the heavenly 12 Troilus II 8; Quair 128. 13 Troilus II 4; Quair 126. Unlike the editors of The Riverside Chaucer, I read Troilus II 3–4 as

James apparently did, to mean ‘For the boat [i.e. the poem] is so belaboured in this sea that I can scarcely steer it with my skill’. 14 Comparison of James’s proem with this Chaucerian model (not, I think, previously recognized, though the parallels with Troilus I 400–20 have often been noted) brings out one striking difference. Chaucer apologizes profusely for not writing out of his own sentement or experience (II 12–21), whereas for James his own experience, ‘quhat thee befell’, is his theme and excuse for writing, for, as he says, ‘euery wicht his awin suete or sore/ Has maist in mynde’ (1273–74). Chaucer presents himself as lacking experience of love, James as lacking poetic skill to write about his experience of love.

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spheres to the realm of Venus, and henceforth the dream becomes a means by which James is explicitly taught wisdom. In this it differs from Chaucer’s dream-poems and also from the dreams that are episodes in longer narratives such as Troilus and Criseyde and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale. Chaucerian dreams are typically ambiguous in status and enigmatic in content. It is uncertain whether they originate inside or outside their dreamers’ minds, and though they may include informative or encyclopaedic elements, such as the exposition of the physics of sound in The House of Fame and the catalogues of birds and trees in The Parliament of Fowls, the complete dream remains open to a bewildering variety of interpretations. The characteristic Chaucerian conclusion is found in The Parliament of Fowls: Chaucer wakes, not to state and put into practice what he has learned from his dream, but to go on reading more books, in the hope that on some future day he will ‘mete som thyng for to fare/ The bet’ (698–99). James is a more practical dreamer; and since dreams in the courtly tradition inevitably purport to bear on love, we can connect this with the fact that, in terms of the ideology of courtliness, his kingly rank entitles him to be a lover and thus a poet who can write about love from experience, whereas Chaucer dreams and writes from a social level at which love must always remain a mystery. Initially it seems that the teaching James gains from his dream has no connection with the book from which the poem originates.15 Boethian doctrine has no place for eros; love is one of the passions from which Philosophy would have us detach ourselves so that we may escape bondage to Fortune. The realm of Venus, on the other hand, James naturally finds to be full of lovers of every kind. When at last he sees the goddess herself, this Venus, like Chaucer’s in the Parliament, is reclining on a bed in a secret place, but, as scholars have noted, unlike the goddess of the Parliament who is ‘naked from the brest unto the hed’ (269) and is otherwise covered enticingly only with ‘a subtyl coverchef of Valence’ (272), the Venus of James’s dream has ‘A mantill cast ouer hir schuldris quhite’ (671). The enigmatic effect of the dream in the Parliament has to do with the difficulty of defining the relationship between the cult of erotic passion associated with Venus and the conception of sexuality as a divinely ordained procreative instinct associated with Nature, God’s deputy. The mantle worn by James’s Venus, accommodating erotic love to decency and order, already suggests that there will be no such difficulty in his dream. He prays for her pity, addressing her as ‘blisfull havin and sure’ to those ‘in the huge weltering wawis fell/ Of lufis rage’ (696–97), imagery that elegantly recalls the earlier accounts of literal and allegorical sea-voyages while placing the goddess on the shore rather than amidst the waves from which she was born. He begs her to guide his heart to the lady he saw in the garden; she assures him that, as inspirer of his love, she wishes him well, but explains that she does not have sole control over the course of events – otherwise he would not be in prison. James must seek ‘The help of othir mo tha[t]

15 On the many studies of Boethian elements in the Quair, see Petrina, The Kingis Quair of

James I of Scotland, pp. 62–71.

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bene goddes’ (775). Venus’s tears fall as rain when she sees how human beings fail to obey her laws, but the rain, instead of making the ground slippery so that an Arcite can more easily be toppled at the moment of his triumph,16 causes flowers to spring that ‘preyen men . . ./ Be trew of lufe and worschip my seruise’ (818–19). Only if human beings completely abandon the service of love will she, Saturn, and ‘oure hevinly alliance’ (849) turn malevolent; if men repent of their neglect, she will of her grace receive their souls ‘To lyue with me as goddis in this place’ (861). This might seem a blasphemous parody of religious truth, but in the context of the whole poem it reads rather as a poetic way of envisaging a world that ultimately tends towards order and happiness on earth and in heaven. Thus Boethian material is being used, but for quite unBoethian ends. In The Kingis Quair we find an explicit de-ascetizing of religious values. Even Chaucer could not find a way of defining ultimate good without an eventual monastic rejection of sexual love as ‘blynde lust’ and indeed of all earthly concerns as ‘false worldes brotelnesse’,17 but in the Quair the many recollections of the ChaucerianBoethian tradition tend to mark departures from this constraint. James needs the help of others besides Venus, so she sends him to receive the ‘rype and gude auise’ (794) of Minerva. Minerva, goddess of wisdom, is here associated with patience: that is her gatekeeper’s name (870), and she is herself ‘the pacient goddesse’ (877). So wisdom is a matter of waiting – waiting for the right moment – and Minerva’s advice focuses on careful choice of opportunity, ‘The place, the hour, the maner, and the wise’ (923), for ‘ ’’All thing has tyme’’, thus sais Ecclesiaste’ (925). ‘Abyde thy tyme’ (927), she tells James; and, having waited, he is to seize his opportunity when it comes, for ‘oft gud fortune flourith with gude wit’ (929). Ecclesiastes 3, to which line 925 refers, makes it clear that abiding the time means not just patiently accepting whatever comes but taking action at the right time – planting and plucking up that which is planted, killing and healing, and so on. An important meaning of the word ‘time’ itself, from Old English onwards, is opportunity.18 What Minerva has to teach James is not passive acceptance of his imprisonment but the need to judge and seize the right moment for action. It is teaching that may now seem less Boethian than Machiavellian, for, as Machiavelli was to write about the founders of earthly kingdoms, ‘The opportunities given them enabled these men to succeed, and their own exceptional prowess enabled them to seize their opportunities.’19 For Boethius true wisdom could lead only to rejection of earthly desires, but James’s dream reveals the possibility of reconciliation between the earthly and the divine. If his love is ‘sett all-uterly/ Of nyce lust’ (898–99), says Minerva, it

16 Knight’s Tale I 2663ff. 17 Troilus and Criseyde V 1824, 1831. 18 See Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn, sense 16: ‘A or the favourable, convenient, or

fitting point of time for doing something; the right moment or occasion; opportunity’. This is the sense under which OED lists ‘time’ in the Wycliffite translation of Ecclesiastes 3. 19 The Prince, trans. George Bull (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1961), ch. VI, p. 51.

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will lead to ‘payne and repentance’ (901); but it is possible for human love to be grounded in God, that unfailing cornerstone and foundation. ‘Ground thy werk therfore vpon the stone’ (916) – advice that gives a more hopeful spin to the cold stone of James’s prison, and perhaps of ‘this foule prisoun of this lyf’.20 Minerva has plenty to say about the ‘feynit treuth’ (937) and the ‘lust and bestly appetite’ (947) that are all too common in earthly affections, but, unlike Chaucer in the conclusion of Troilus and Criseyde (of which there are many recollections in this part of the Quair), she can also envisage the possibility of a stable and reliable human love. Chaucer at best could only lament the fading of the world’s ‘floures faire’ (Troilus V 1841), in lines that may ‘poignantly enhance the very thing that he is repudiating’21 but that also repudiate the very thing he is enhancing. The Kingis Quair envisages a human love based on divine law and therefore receiving its reward on earth.22 Narrowly catechized by Minerva, James assures her that his love is faithful and unchanging and that he would in no way blemish his lady’s reputation, but admits that ‘desire my wittis dooth compace’ (986). The goddess answers firmly and reassuringly, implicitly repudiating the long tradition of Christian rejection of bodily pleasure: ‘Desire’, quod sche, ‘I nyl it noght deny So thou it ground and set in Cristin wise.’

(988–89)

James affirms that he wishes no more than in due course, ‘Hir worschip sauf’, to ‘stond in grace’ with the lady (998–99), and this evidently amounts in Minerva’s eyes to a Christian grounding for his desire, for she now promises to do what she can to ensure that Fortune does not oppose his enterprise. She proceeds to explain the relation of earthly creatures to Fortune, beginning from Boethius’s discussion in Book V of the Consolation. Some clerkis (1023) hold that what human beings perceive as Fortune is in fact heavenly necessity, others that man has the power to ‘cause his awin fortune’ (1025) by his own free choice. God has foreknowledge of all things, and is therefore not subject to Fortune; similarly, the more foreknowledge a man can gain, the less he is at Fortune’s mercy. With this doctryne (1052), Minerva sends James down to earth to seek Fortune’s help, ‘for mich vnlikly thing/ Full oft about sche sodeynly dooth bring’ (1049–50). Though the doctrine has its origin in Boethius, it is developed in a way quite contrary to

20 Knight’s Tale I 3061. 21 E. T. Donaldson, ed., Chaucer’s Poetry: An Anthology for the Modern Reader, 2nd edn

(New York, 1975), p. 1144. 22 The contrast with Chaucer was noted by J. A. W. Bennett, ‘A King’s Quire’, in his The

Humane Medievalist and Other Essays, ed. Piero Boitani (Rome, 1982), pp. 67–88: ‘James does not deal in Chaucer’s antitheses. He is not turning ‘‘yonge folke’’ from the world to Christ, merely preparing them to ground their love in Christin wise (st. 142)’ (p. 83). Göller’s statement that the earthly love with which James begins is ultimately ‘sublimated . . . to love of God, according to the usual well-known patristic-exegetical scheme’ (‘The Metaphorical Prison’, p. 128), seems to me quite misleading.

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Boethius’s rejection of earthly values and especially to his explanation that God’s foreknowledge involves seeing future events not as future but as present, and is therefore fundamentally different from human prudence. Here the dream transforms the book that provoked it even more thoroughly than in Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess. James’s dream transforms not only Boethius but the Chaucerian tradition through which Boethius was evidently transmitted to him. In Book IV of Troilus and Criseyde, Troilus, in his soliloquy on predestination and freewill closely based on Philosophy’s argument in the Consolation, Book V, prosae 2 and 3, arrives at an unBoethian conclusion. He denies the reality of freewill, and he does so not only as a pagan fatalist23 but because he is a character in a story that has already been told. His own future is indeed predestined; in a sense it has already occurred, as part of the documented history of Troy, and neither he nor Chaucer can change it. In The Kingis Quair this is not so. James has no written narrative source, only the story of his own life, and correspondingly he learns from the dream set within that life the reality of his own freedom of will. By the exercise of prudence, a political virtue and a kingly duty, he can escape from the imprisonment of predestination. His escape is also from imprisonment by literary tradition. Julia Boffey writes that Chaucer’s followers ‘are in a sense ‘‘imprisoned’’ in his models’.24 This is generally true, but less so of James than of, say, Lydgate. James is able to appropriate the Chaucerian-Boethian tradition, taking his literaryphilosophical models to pieces so as to rearrange them for his own purposes, and retaining the freedom to choose between Arcite’s outcome and Palamon’s for his own story as an imprisoned lover. His poetic freedom corresponds to the freedom he discovers in the life-story he recounts, that a man by his own prudent choices can gain Fortune’s favour – the discovery, as Stephen Hawes was to put it early in the next century, that human beings make Fortune by their own actions: ‘The man is fortune in the propre dede.’25 In the poem James learns this from a dream; in his real life he may have learned it from observation of Lancastrian rule during his imprisonment – that a prudent ruler can acquire the power to change things, to be ‘in the place of the master of fate, rather than that of the helpless victim of fortune’.26 Minerva beams James down from her ‘contree dyvine’ (1055) to the earthly domain over which Fortune rules, and, after an encyclopaedic account of the earth’s natural plenitude, James encounters this third goddess. Fortune is thus placed where we might expect Nature to reign, another feature of the poem that in my earlier account I regarded as a sign of the poet’s confusion, with the paradisal earthly landscape included only because it was ‘taken over inertly’ from The 23 See A. J. Minnis, Chaucer and Pagan Antiquity (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 94–99. 24 ‘Chaucerian Prisoners: the Context of the Kingis Quair’, p. 84. 25 The Pastime of Pleasure, ed. William Edward Mead, EETS o.s. 173 (London, 1928), line

3212. 26 Louise Olga Fradenburg, City, Marriage, Tournament: Arts of Rule in Late Medieval Scot-

land (Madison, Wisc., 1992), p. 134.

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Parliament of Fowls.27 This part of the Quair is indeed heavily indebted to the Parliament, but I would now argue that the substitution of Fortune for Chaucer’s Nature as ruler over the earthly realm is quite deliberate, and is part of the poem’s optimism about the prudent man’s ability to shape his own destiny. Nature is a fixed system, but Fortune can be altered. Her expression constantly changes, and she turns a wheel on which ‘A multitude of folk’ (1113) are clambering, some rising and others falling down. At last she addresses James by name28 and orders him to tell her what he wants. He does so, and she promises that, though his present situation is desperate, if he plucks up courage he will overcome his enemies.29 She helps him on to her wheel, urging him to ‘lere to clymbe’ (1192) and to seize his opportunity while he can, for ‘To count the hole, the half is nere away’ (1196). James probably wrote the poem at or after the time of his release in 1424, when he was twenty-nine – nearly halfway through a likely medieval life, and as it turned out more than two-thirds of the way to his death by murder in 1437.30 She warns him to learn from what he has seen of the precariousness of existence on her wheel, bids him farewell, and (presumably to ensure that he will remember what he has learned) pulls his ear so ernestly (1204) that he wakes from his dream. As is common with dream-poems in the Chaucerian tradition, James expresses uncertainty about the dream’s status and validity, asking himself whether it was a visioun from heaven or merely the impressioun of his own waking thoughts (1224–25),31 but then, in yet another divergence from this tradition, he prays to the gods for certainty, and his prayer is answered. A white turtle-dove with gillyflowers in its beak alights on his hand, and the flowers are inscribed with a message assuring him that the heavens have decreed his future happiness. The dream has provided James with certain teaching. If we take the fiction literally, we shall say that sources of a higher wisdom outside his own mind have been revealed to him; if we interpret it as symbolizing a psychological transformation, we shall perhaps say that it represents the moment at which, nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita, he reaches an understanding of his power, limited but still

27 Medieval Dream-Poetry, p. 186. 28 On the failure actually to mention the poet’s name at this point, see my article ‘The

Poetic Subject from Chaucer to Spenser’, in Subjects of the World’s Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. David G. Allen and Robert A. White (Newark, Del., and London, 1995), pp. 13–37 (p. 21 and n. 24). 29 Stanza 170 contains a notorious crux, but I believe most readers understand it in this general sense. 30 J. A. Burrow, The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought (Oxford, 1986), p. 56 and n. 3, proposes a different calculation. 31 Cf. House of Fame 1–58 and Parliament of Fowls 99–108, and see also the similarly indecisive discussion of the validity of dreams in Piers Plowman B VII 149ff, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt (London, 1978). Alessandra Petrina, ‘Some Dream-Related Images in The Kingis Quair’, Studi Medievali, 3rd ser., 35 (1994), 307–16, is mistaken, at least in regard to the tradition deriving from Chaucer, to state that ‘in vision-poems the validity of a dream is usually taken for granted’ (p. 309).

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real, to shape his own future – a power which is at the same time his ability as a poet to shape the literary tradition he has inherited. The waking conclusion hints that James achieved freedom and happiness with the lady he saw from his window. The dream has not simply given access to a general wisdom applicable to all (Venus, Minerva, Fortune) but has foretold James’s own future – radically different, after all, from that of Boethius – and at the same time has taught him that foreknowledge will enable him to influence that future for himself. It changes his life, with the realization that he need not be simply a victim of what was done to him in his youth; he can seize political opportunity and thus gain Fortune’s favour, changing his bondage into freedom, and becoming the steersman of his own ship. The tact with which the poem conceals exactly how, is itself a sign of political prudence, a recognition that, as Ecclesiastes says, there is a time to keep silence as well as a time to speak. In ‘The Duke’s Book’ also, dreams (in this case two of them) bring about the transformations they symbolize by means of the effect they have on the dreamer; if they foretell the future, it is because they affect the choices he makes, and in this respect, like James’s dream, they diverge from the Chaucerian model to which they are indebted. Now, though, their structural function is more obvious than in The Kingis Quair: Charles’s two dreams shape the poetic sequence as well as his life, dividing it into its three sections. In the first Charles figures as an imprisoned lover, whose lady dies in his absence; in the second, after renouncing love and obtaining his release from service to Cupid, he composes a Iewbile (3104) or fest (3135) of miscellaneous lyrics for the use or entertainment of others; in the third he becomes a lover again, and woos a second lady. The first dream, then, symbolizes but also brings about Charles’s renunciation of love. In it he meets ‘a man with lokkis gray,/ Which y not knew – and yet y had him say’ (2551–52). The man introduces himself as Age, and we have to grasp that by this is meant the ageing process, which works through all earthly lives; Charles has seen it affecting others without recognizing that he too is affected by it. At Nature’s command, Age had once transferred Charles from the care of Childhood to that of Youth (an event recounted in a French poem to which no English equivalent survives); and now, at this later stage in life, he comes to give Charles instruction. Reason has laid a complaint against Charles before Nature, and ‘Yelde, the modir of vnweldynes’ (2569) (that is, the state of old age), now plans to make his acquaintance.32 It is time for him to take leave of Love, ‘For Loue and Elde are falle at gret debate’ (2576); and now that Death has taken his lady, he can do so honourably, without being suspected of impotence. He should gratefully request Love to release him from his service, ‘To thi worship, as yet in 32 The distinction between ‘Age’ and ‘Yelde’ corresponds to that between Aage and Vieil-

lesse in Charles’s French: see Poésies, ed. Champion, I, 99–100. For valuable discussion, see Burrow, The Ages of Man, pp. 182–86. Burrow suggests that in England Charles might have encountered Gower’s Confessio Amantis, with its similar treatment of the poet’s farewell to love in old age; Bennett, ‘A King’s Quire’, argues that James too was strongly influenced by Gower.

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myddil age’ (2603). He should not trust Fortune, even though she promises to make good the wrongs done him in the past, for in the end she always brings unhappiness. ‘Wher this be trewe, y putt in thi iugement’ (2635) – and with these words from Elde Charles wakes, with trembling heart. He finds himself in a dilemma: the prospect that he should no longer ‘vpon fayre folkis loke’ (2641) is unwelcome, yet he recognizes that Age has spoken truly: he can no longer expect comfort from Youth, and, if he gains release from Love, Elde will surely look more kindly on him when she comes. He resolves to follow Age’s advice, and to ‘Prysone his eyen’ (2670) so that they do not incite him to pursue ‘sum fayre lady’ (2675). He has learned that Love brings happiness and honour to his servants, but now he knows from experience how painful this service can be; so he will petition to be released from it and to reclaim his heart. His petition granted, he returns to dwell in ‘the Castell of No Care’, an ancient manor ‘Wherin long y had in childhod lay’ (2940–41). This dream belongs to a distinct medieval category. It is an oraculum, the type defined by Macrobius in his commentary on Cicero’s Somnium Scipionis as one in which ‘a parent, or a pious or revered man, or a priest, or even a god’ appears and gives information or advice.33 The source of authority in such a dream is a father-figure, generally represented as an aged man. In Charles’s book, by a kind of reflexive allegorical wit, the father-figure is Age himself, the ageing process that is part of Charles’s experience though not till this moment of his conscious knowledge. His message is about ageing and constitutes the wisdom that age should bring. Charles’s indecisiveness about acting on this unwelcome advice is amusingly and painfully true to life. So too is the argument from reputation that persuades him: a medieval nobleman would care deeply about his worship, and one of ‘myddil age’ would surely cut a better figure in the eyes of others as a genial and detached host, always willing to dash off a roundell for a younger friend, than as the melancholy lover of a dead lady, whose physical capacity for love of the living might be questioned behind his back. We have here a characteristically fifteenth-century fusion of allegory with a kind of realism; but the truth to life conveyed is general rather than individual, and what underlies the existential choice is a piece of proverbial wisdom, that ‘Loue and Elde are falle at gret debate’. Unlike James’s midlife dream, the scope of this one is social rather than political: love and its abandonment are issues that concern only Charles and his circle of acquaintances, and have no evident bearing on rule or the ruler’s selffashioning.34

33 Commentary on the Dream of Scipio by Macrobius, trans. William Harris Stahl (New York,

1952), p. 90. For discussion of this type of dream and some uses made of it in medieval poetry, see my Medieval Dream-Poetry, pp. 10–11, 82, 92, 125, 188–89. It was a type still current in late medieval thought about dreams: see the definitions by Vincent of Beauvais and Raoul de Longchamps quoted by Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 114, 117. 34 Perhaps, as Thomas E. Vesce suggests in ‘The Pose of Love’, ‘once the diplomatic mantle of these songs is put aside’, we may be able to recognize ‘more fundamental

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The second dream, which has no French original, is longer, more complicated, and more amusing than the first; it was probably a later composition, reflecting Charles’s fuller acquaintance with Chaucerian poetry and a new development in his plan for an English poetic sequence. Its setting in waking life is manifestly symbolic. Charles, idle and bored, with nothing to occupy his mind but obsessive recollections of the past, has been asked by a friend to compose a ballade bewailing not the expected instability but the stability of Fortune. He agrees, wanders out alone by the sea, and sits down to write. His seat is a soft mossy bench set upon a huge shining rock, which projects from the cliff and overlooks ‘the see, where that the roryng wawes/ Did ouyrcast the gravell here and there’ (4757–58) – the position of one suspended comfortably above the perils of earthly existence. Having completed the ballade, a lover’s complaint that Fortune is unchangingly hostile to his attempts to please his lady, he falls asleep and dreams. The dream turns out to be about love and Fortune, so it can be understood as being, to borrow James’s words, ‘of my forethoght impressioun’ (Kingis Quair 1224), and at the same time as a witty variant on the Chaucerian convention of the dream influenced by a book: Charles’s dream is influenced not by what he has been reading but by what he has been writing. On the other hand the dream’s content contradicts the symbolism of the dreamer’s position; Charles learns from it that his formal renunciation of love has not really set him above earthly cares. It is preceded by one of those discussions of the validity of dreams that, since Guillaume de Lorris, had also formed part of the convention of the dream-poem. Against the view that ‘To truste on dremys nys but trifill play’ (4740), Charles quotes, probably from the Roman de la Rose, Macrobius’s account of the Somnium Scipionis in support of the view ‘That hit doth to the body signyfy/ What aftirward as shulde vnto him falle’ (4750–51). ‘The body’ here no doubt means ‘a person’ or ‘somebody’, but, like the Wife of Bath’s ‘my joly body’ or the Lady’s ‘my cors’ in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, it also has more specifically somatic connotations.35 Recent studies have shown that, under the influence of Aristotelianism, late medieval dream-theory moved towards an emphasis on bodily causation, and have argued that this move is reflected in poetic dreams of the later Middle Ages.36 That is surely the case here: Charles’s dream may be prophetic and it may bring him into contact with powers outside himself, but at the same time it is open to interpretation as a bodily symptom

information’ that underlies their treatment of love (p. 450), but the case remains to be made, and the nature of this dream does not support it. 35 ‘Man of Law’s Epilogue’ II 1185; Sir Gawain, line 1237. For discussion of the latter, see J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1965), pp. 80–82. 36 See Alison M. Peden, ‘Macrobius and Medieval Dream Literature’, and C. H. L. Bodenham, ‘The Nature of the Dream in Late Medieval French Literature’, Medium Ævum 54 (1985), 21–45 and 74–86; and, for a more comprehensive and balanced view, Steven F. Kruger, Dreaming in the Middle Ages, ch. 5, and ‘Medical and Moral Authority in the Late Medieval Dream’, in Reading Dreams: The Interpretation of Dreams from Chaucer to Shakespeare, ed. Peter Brown (Oxford, 1999).

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signifying what his body demands. Chauntecleer’s dream in The Nun’s Priest’s Tale is a comic Chaucerian precedent. In the dream he sees, so vividly that ‘verily it semyd me wakyng’ (4768), a lady ‘fletyng’ (4767) towards him over the sea, naked but for the crown on her head and a ‘kercher of plesaunce’ (4764) about her waist, with many white doves fluttering above her and an owl on her hand. He goes down to the shore to meet her, but this iconography means nothing to him. (The owl has baffled Charles’s modern commentators too.) He is eager to chat up the lady, alludes archly to her ‘streight sidis tayne’ (4772), and attempts to kiss her by way of greeting; she brushes him aside, blushing, and is offended that he does not recognize her. He is embarrassed, ‘For sene y had hir [t]how y nyste not where’ (4786); thus, as with Age earlier, the dream is to bring awareness of a force experienced but not previously identified or understood. She addresses him sharply as ‘Charlis’ (4788) and thanks him ironically for his service. ‘When that y herde hir calle me bi my name’ (4792) and has had a closer look at her face, he realizes that she is Venus, and apologizes profusely for having forgotten her. Both of his dreams bring Charles into visionary contact with the universals of allegory, yet he is too little qualified as a visionary, too merely human, to recognize them. At the same time, the amusingly realistic moment of social tension with Venus has an allegorical significance itself: his ‘forgetfulness’ corresponds to the long period during which he has been free from Love’s service. At once the tension eases; she says no apology is needed, and cordially enquires, ‘But how lede ye yowre lijf? Good, lete vs se’ (4801). He explains that he lives as an anchorite, dressed in black, waiting for death. ‘ ’’Whi so?’’ quod she, ‘‘dwelle ye not in No Care?’’ ’ (4813). Charles’s answer borrows an account of the human condition from Boethius’s Lady Philosophy (a passage that he would have seen adapted to a specific human situation in The Knight’s Tale37), and applies it to the state of the lover who has renounced love: Soth, dwelle y so lijk as a masid man That hath a bidyng and wot not where, For though y whilom fer from Sorow ran, Yet wol he lo for ought that evyr y kan, Be with me, to and to, wil y or no, And as my frend thus cherisshe y my fo! (4814–19)

The strong final line redirects the ‘Petrarchan’ paradox to apply not to the lover but to the man who has given up love. The argument reverses the Boethian polarity: true happiness is lost, not gained, by the attempt to renounce earthly 37 See Consolation III, pr. 2; Knight’s Tale I 1260ff. The Boethian source for Charles’s lines

does not appear to have been noticed by earlier commentators. Charles was a learned man who owned ‘at least seven copies, in Latin and French’, of the Consolation, ‘of which he had two with him in England’ (Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 49), but for him as for James Boethian thought must also have been transmitted through the tradition of Chaucerian poetry, where it is not just expounded in general terms but applied to individual situations.

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desires. In his dream Charles arrives at a realization that has escaped him in waking life: ‘No Care’ is not really where he has been dwelling. That not just Boethius but also Chaucer’s Boethianism is in the background is suggested by the following stanzas, listing the places that torment him with memories of his dead lady; these are closely based on Troilus’s soliloquy as he wanders through Troy after Criseyde’s departure.38 (There the absent lady was not dead but on the brink of faithlessness.) Charles is more erotically outspoken than Troilus – ‘In yondir bayne so se y hir all nakid . . .’ (4827), ‘And here y baste hir fayre, round pappis white . . . ‘ (4840) – but then this is a dream, and he is speaking to Venus. His final memory transforms the bed from the scene of love to that of death: ‘How in that bed the lijf eek from hir past’ (4843). He is left with nothing to do but pray for the lady’s soul and to kiss the bare walls ‘Or ellis a glove or smokke y from hir stale’ (4853). The passage movingly evokes the emptiness and boredom of ‘this paynfull, ded professioun’ (4855), a pointless yet irresistible preoccupation with the past. Charles’s second wife, Bonne d’Armagnac, really did die while he was in England, but the feeling here may also have been fed by the long-term prisoner’s sense that everything of importance has already happened. His way of life, ‘Withouten chaunge or newe opynyoun’ (4857), may be nobly dedicated but it is also self-destructive, as Venus tells him: ‘Ye do yowre silf confound’ (4865). He must remember that ‘ye ar a man,39/ And haue of nature als yowre lymys goode’ (4869–70), and ‘Ye may as wel chese yow a lady newe’ (4876). Venus may speak as a kind of Pandarus, but then, to adapt the memorable words of Mandy Rice-Davies, she would, wouldn’t she?40 This goddess, lacking the modest ‘mantill cast ouer hir schuldris quhite’ worn by James’s Venus, has entered into no alliance with Minerva: she is simply the universal sexual instinct at work in and on Charles. What she offers is the sort of friendly advice that might be given to any widow or widower as a private person; it involves an acquiescence in normal human desires, far removed from what James learns about the possibility of changing his political situation by the prudent grasp of opportunity. There follows an argument between Charles and Venus which is less a matter of rational persuasion than of bringing him to contemplate in practical terms what he has conditioned himself to reject as out of the question. He claims that he must remain true to his promise to serve his dead lady for ever, and that, in any case, no living lady would fancy the ‘forfadid’ (4893) wretch he has become. Venus responds that he casts shame on her and also on his dead lady, for ‘all the world’ (4905) will think that if the lady had really been so delightful he would not

38 Troilus V 561ff. 39 Again a Boethian recollection, from Consolation I, pr. 6, as Arn notes (Fortunes Stabilnes,

p. 512). 40 See The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 4th edn, ed. Angela Partington (Oxford, 1992),

p. 540.

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hesitate to look for a successor.41 Like Age, she knows that the natural force she represents will stand most chance with a nobleman if cloaked as an argument from reputation. His answer is that if he should choose another lady – ‘As well y wot that shal me not bitide’ (4919) – it would only depress him to think how likely she too would be to die; moreover, being out of touch with the dating scene, he would have no idea how to ‘get the favour of my lady newe’ (4927). The my unobtrusively indicates that he is now a stage nearer to envisaging the impossible as a practical possibility. What pleases one lady is disagreeable to another, and, For, all knew y my lady verry wel, Anothir newe, y knowe hir neuyr a del.

(4937–38)

Venus dismisses this as cowardice: Parde, noon wol bicome yowre foo For yowre good will, this ben ye sewre; Hit were tomoche ageyne nature. (4943–45)

(This argument is as powerful as that from reputation: it was Nature in the first dream who led Charles from childhood through youth towards old age, and it is nature that keeps affection and desire alive in both man and woman.) All he needs to do is to observe the behaviour of someone already in favour with the lady, and to behave likewise; and, as for the fear of his new lady’s death, some people live to ‘iiij score and twelfe’ (4956), by when it would certainly be time for him to think of his own grave! He may have vowed to renounce love, but ‘when ye se that that ye nevir saw/ It may wel happe yow thynke ye neuyr thought’ (4962–63). The adaptation in these final words of Venus’s of a remark made by Criseyde to Diomede42 is a further indication of the reversal of Chaucerian polarities, for Criseyde’s words are a form of conscienceless flirtation, not a persuasion to return from death to life. What Charles actually sees is a gold four-wheeled chariot descending from the heavens, drawn by two white steeds but also by ‘full many on/ That did hir payne to put it forth and shove’ (4971–72). In it is a crowned queen, dressed in garments of changing colours, the surcoat decorated with laughing and weeping eyes, the mantle with rain and sunbeams and changing moons, and the collar with dice – all obvious symbols of change or fickleness, and thus indicating just the opposite of the stableness attributed to Fortune in Charles’s ballade. (If this dream is to be seen as influenced by writing rather than reading, perhaps the Fortune of the ballade is to be understood as having undergone the kind of oneiric reversal that in The Book of the Duchess turns the written story of a dead husband and mourning wife into a dream of a dead wife and mourning husband.

41 Arn (Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 513) calls this ‘an odd sort of argument’, and so it would be,

coming from any source but his own sexual instinct. 42 Troilus V 992–93.

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But whether Fortune will prove to be stable or unstable for Charles in his waking life remains to be seen.) The queen’s expression varies between frowns and smiles – utterly different from her ‘stedfast face’ (4728) in the ballade – and she carries a turning wheel on which many people are trying to climb, and which has written on it ‘ ’’I shal rayne’’ ‘‘Y rayne’’ ‘‘Y haue raynyd’’/ And ‘‘Y owt rayne’’ ’ (5044–45). It is one of Charles’s many self-mocking ironies that he, who gives this exceptionally elaborate description, some eighty-five lines long, is unable to interpret the iconography as indicating Fortune, just as before he was unable to recognize Venus from her long-haired nakedness, her doves, and her emergence from the sea. But now perhaps the point may be that, having previously defined Fortune as stable, he is unprepared to recognize her traditional instability. Among those at the top of the wheel is a lady ‘so full of goodlynes’ (5051) that Charles imagines her to be his own dead lady, ‘And ay the more, the more she came me nere’ (5055). In dreams the dead can be met again, and this moment may remind us of the first appearance of the dead maiden in the dream in Pearl: On lenghe I loked to hyr there; The lenger, I knew hyr more and more.43

If so, the situation is reversed: in this more light-hearted dream, the lady turns out not to be the one from whom the dreamer is separated by death. Charles stands ‘masid and formad’ (5058) – again like the Pearl dreamer confronting the maiden ‘Wyth yyen open and mouth ful clos’ (183) – till Venus shakes him. He begs her help in recovering ‘my lady hie on yondir whel’ (5070), but she has failed even to notice Fortune’s arrival (a telling difference from the cooperation of the three goddesses in The Kingis Quair). He must have ‘tane sum sodeyne sweuene’ (5073), says Venus (thus, in a dream, the dreamer is told, ‘You must be dreaming!’); and she asks who he is gazing at. When she sees who it is she blushes and wishes there were some bush to hide behind, For trowe ye that they wol not thynke amys That fynde as this – no more but ye and y? . . . For though ye men in such case litill care, It sittith welle we wymmen to be ware! (5093–94, 5098–99)

There is something truly absurd about Venus, of all goddesses, blushing to be found chatting alone with a man, and also about her ready identification with ‘we wymmen’. The double standard evidently applies even to goddesses, who have to take just as much care as mortal females to guard their reputations. She quickly identifies the queen on the wheel as Fortune, and Charles recognizes that it was she who ‘stale with deth my lady’ (5103). It is left to Venus, though, to point out that the woman who has so attracted Charles is not his dead lady. Her former warning that

43 Pearl, ed. E. V. Gordon (Oxford, 1953), lines 167–68. I do not mean to imply that Charles

would have known Pearl.

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When ye had sene, parcas, ye neuyr saw It myght wel happe yow fynde a bon to gnaw

(5133–34, cf. 4962–63)

has now come true. Charles humbly begs Venus’s assistance, explaining that if the new lady were not so much like the old he would never have fallen for her (5142–43). Venus refrains from pointing out how well this illusion of similarity illustrates her own working as the sexual instinct, and kindly tells Charles that, as an old servant of hers, he is forgiven. She suggests that he should cling on to her ‘kercher of plesaunce’ (5170) and she will carry him up to the top of the wheel. He grasps the kerchief, and she carries him up so high that he trembles and begs for mercy, calling out so loudly that he wakes from his dream. It is evidently one of those dreams of flying that are often thought to be symptoms of sexual arousal,44 and this makes a realistic ending of a kind common enough in dreams and also in late-medieval dream-poems. Like James, he wakes just at the moment of stepping on to Fortune’s wheel, and in both poems Fortune’s operation is continued in waking life. Charles finds himself in the place where he fell asleep, but still with ‘a gret pese of plesaunce’ (5191) in his hand. Almost at once he meets the lady of the dream, and is encouraged by Venus’s promise of help to begin a highly literary love-affair with her. One of the most interesting features of both Charles’s and James’s dreams is their correlation of the abstract and the personal: the large, general meanings of allegory are related so closely to the individual life that they bring not only wisdom but change. Or, to put it the other way round, the dreams are full of humorous details belonging to the social sphere – deceptions, jokes, embarrassments – yet at the same time they convey larger meanings appropriate to their functions as turning-points in their dreamer’s waking lives. Charles’s ‘pese of plesaunce’ neatly exemplifies this double signification: it is the absurdly inadequate garment with which the goddess of love preserves her modesty, and the still more inadequate means by which she hauls Charles up towards the lady who has attracted him, yet it also has an allegorical meaning as transparent as the material from which it is made. It symbolizes the role of the natural desire for sexual pleasure (appropriately wrapped round Venus’s middle) in turning Charles away from devotion to the dead and back to the attractions of a living lady. We have here a kind of secular equivalent to what Panofsky called spiritualia sub metaphoris corporalium in late-medieval religious art;45 and the effect seems characteristic of the fifteenth century, when there was a growing interest in representing the material world in all its detail yet still a sense that meanings of the most universal kind could be recognized near and indeed in its intriguing surface. In religious art it can be argued that the move towards a kind of realism

44 E.g., Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey (London, 1954),

p. 394. 45 Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting: Its Origins and Character, vol. I (Cam-

bridge, Mass., 1953), ch. V.

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that still retains the potential for larger, theological significations originates (as Elizabeth Salter put it, discussing the ‘realism’ of Shepherd Plays) ‘in a perfectly orthodox devotional ‘‘realignment’’ ’ deriving from an increased emphasis upon Christ’s humanity;46 but the same process takes place in the secular sphere without any such devotional impetus, and is widely evident by about 1400. Realism and allegory, whether religious or courtly, are not, as we tend to assume, mutually exclusive; rather, in the later Middle Ages, they habitually coexist, though in constantly shifting relationships. The dreams in The Kingis Quair and Fortunes Stabilnes illustrate this larger process most strikingly. James’s only dream and Charles’s second are both abruptly ended by a bodily disturbance that occurs in connection with Fortune: James has his ear pinched by her, and Charles shouts in fear as he is pulled up on to her wheel. And in both the dreamer, after waking, is left with a material token of the truth of his dream, the gillyflowers with their message in James’s case and the ‘gret pese of plesaunce’ in Charles’s. But there are also important differences in nature and function between the two dreams. These will emerge more clearly if we return to what happens when Charles wakes. He immediately encounters the lady he saw in his dream. He explains that he would not have dared to approach her Nad be the dreem that y did of hir mete That Venus had hir helpe to me bihight, (5215–16)

so in this respect he is like James in learning from his dream how to take the initiative in his waking life. The lady is one of a company of ‘gentil folkis’ (5204) playing a game of ‘Post and Piler’ (5203). One of her companions is someone who knows Charles, and, apparently in his surprise at seeing him, he falls down and tears his hose, ‘at which full many of hem lough’ (5222). He drops out of the game, and Charles takes his place. Thus Fortune does indeed assist Charles to fulfil the demands of Venus, and it is not long before he seizes this opportunity to accost the lady, and finds her initially very willing to engage in flirtatious conversation with him. The dream, then, is prophetic of the future, but it also shapes the future by giving Charles the impulse and courage to begin a new relationship, though one that eventually seems to confirm Age’s warning in his first dream that Fortune is not to be trusted and even perhaps his own statement in his ballade that she is steadfastly hostile. Compare this with what follows the dream in The Kingis Quair. For one thing, the consequences of Charles’s dream are narrower and more trivial: they relate (like those of his first dream) only to his private life, concerning a love affair that is highly literary in nature, and that indeed turns out to be little more than an excuse for composing more lovepoems. It is as though, during the captivity that dominates the first of the

46 Elizabeth Salter, ‘The Annunciation to the Shepherds in Later Medieval Art and

Drama’, in her English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England, ed. Derek Pearsall and Nicolette Zeeman (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 272–92 (p. 280).

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sequence’s three sections, he has become habituated to separation and to writing itself as the medium for relationship. Many of the lyrics of which the third section is composed are individually accomplished and moving. They are so arranged as to be capable of interpretation as phases in an up-and-down relationship that includes parting, absence, joyful reunion, slanderous tongues, rejection, renunciation of love, repentance for that renunciation, and other conventional themes of the courtly poetry of love, but this underlying narrative, if we take the trouble to reconstruct it, has ceased to be of more than passing interest. The relationship that theoretically motivates the lyrics has little depth and was probably meant to have little – far less than that between the aged Machaut and the youthful TouteBelle in the former’s Voir-Dit, which may have been a French model for Charles’s English conclusion to his sequence. One way of reading this section is indicated by one of its lyrics, a ballade bewailing the lady’s cruelty. ‘The gret kerver, the prince Pigmalioun’ so loved the lifelike statue he sculpted that his prayers converted it into ‘a flesschely creature’, But ye – the whiche seme flesshely of nature – For ought y pray, y fynde yow but a stoon! (5508–15)

The lady addressed is stony not just in being cruel but, Charles is well aware, in existing only as the figment of his own art. Unlike the princely sculptor, the princely poet is left, and leaves his readers, only with what he can shape out of words. If it is hard to take seriously this affair of the middle-aged poet and the frivolous and somewhat heartless young lady, Charles himself did not intend it to be taken very seriously; on the contrary, I think, his aim was to confront the truth that poems mark the absence of the feelings they express. Charles tells us in much more exact detail than James what followed from his dream of Fortune and the token that witnessed its truth, and he can do so precisely because he attributes no public significance to it: it is a literary fiction of private life, unrelated to Charles’s actual responsibilities as a leading figure in the power-struggles of France, Burgundy and England. The last seventeen stanzas of The Kingis Quair are notoriously vague in their account of James’s waking life. He rejoices that Fortune has fulfilled her promise, so that ‘To my larges . . . I am cumin agayn/ To blisse with hir that is my souirane’ (1266–67), but precisely how that happened and even who that hir was, he never explains. The directly autobiographical interpretations of the Quair, deriving from Lewis’s Allegory of Love, as ‘not allegorical, . . . but the literal story of a passion felt by the author for a real woman’, and as a manifestation of ‘the poetry of marriage’,47 meet their most obvious objection in James’s failure to specify that he did marry his lady. Paradoxically, perhaps, James’s vagueness is a token of the serious content and public scope of his dream and his poem. If courtliness originated as an aestheticization of power-relations, then his conclusion is a tactfully blurred reflection in the glass of courtly allegory of whatever really happened in the negotiations by which, 47 C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love (Oxford, 1936), pp. 235, 237.

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after Henry V’s death, the imprisoned king of Scotland was released and enabled to regain his throne in connection with his marriage to the English princess, Joan Beaufort. I have suggested that what James learns from his dream is a doctrine of opportunity that was eventually to be formulated as a political philosophy, in harsher, more cynical, less benevolent terms, by Machiavelli. This is what Minerva has to teach, as mediatrix between Venus and Fortune, and the absence of any figure corresponding to Minerva from Charles’s second dream may be the most telling feature to emerge from comparison of the two works. But I do not mean to imply that this absence of the dimension of political prudence from the third section of Fortunes Stabilnes is a fault in Charles’s poem as compared with The Kingis Quair. His book is a somewhat loosely organized sequence, perhaps put together over a period of years and incorporating changes of mind and circumstance, and Arn is surely right to remind us that the sequence as we have it (unlike The Kingis Quair) is not ‘a completely polished work, sent . . . out into the world in its final form’.48 Yet it seems clear that Charles intended it to move into a more playful and consciously artificial mode as it proceeded, and he judged well what kind of dream would make this possible. The Duke’s Book may be a less fully finished achievement than The Kingis Quair, but the duke remains one of the most gifted and fascinating English poets of his time.

48 Fortunes Stabilnes, p. 11, n. 16.

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The Literary Milieu of Charles of Orléans and the Duke of Suffolk, and the Authorship of the Fairfax Sequence DEREK PEARSALL

T

HE lives of Charles de Valois, duke of Orléans (1394–1465), and of William de la Pole, 4th earl and 1st duke of Suffolk (1396–1450), were closely intertwined, and some understanding of the circumstances of those lives is necessary to any account of their possible shared literary interests.1

I William de la Pole served in the 1415 French campaign, but was invalided home after the siege of Harfleur. The death of his father at Harfleur and of his elder brother, briefly the 3rd earl, at Agincourt (where Charles of Orléans was taken prisoner) brought him young to one of England’s premier earldoms. He returned to France in 1417 and was an energetic captain in Henry V’s wars. After Henry V’s death, he continued to serve in France under the command of Thomas Montague, earl of Salisbury, and after Salisbury’s death in 1428 he was appointed to chief military command under John, duke of Bedford, regent in France. He prosecuted the siege of Orléans with vigour, so that by February 1429 the city seemed doomed, but the appearance of Joan of Arc led to the raising of the siege in May. Suffolk himself was captured on 12 June 1429 and was briefly a prisoner of Jean de Dunois, bastard of Orléans (Charles of Orléans’s half-brother), with whom he struck up a friendship, before being ransomed. He was reappointed to military command in the Cotentin, but by 1431 he was back in England after nearly seventeen years in France, ready to embark on his political career. He had been admitted to membership of the royal council on 30 November

1

The account that follows is derived from C. L. Kingsford, ‘The Policy and Fall of Suffolk’, Prejudice and Promise in the XVth Century (Oxford, 1925), pp. 146–76 (Kingsford also did the entry in the Dictionary of National Biography); Ralph A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI: The Exercise of Royal Authority, 1422–61 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1981); John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, 1996); and, for Orléans, Champion, Vie; Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 12–27.

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1430, and his marriage about this time (the licence was granted on 11 November 1430) to the widowed countess of Salisbury (Alice, 1404–75, daughter of Thomas Chaucer) extended his estates and power-base, already well-established in Suffolk and Norfolk, to Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Suffolk’s political goal, apart from power, was to secure peace with France, in which he was influenced by Charles of Orléans, who was assigned to his custody, at Suffolk’s own request, after previously being in the care of a variety of trusted Lancastrian lieutenants, on 21 July 1432. In 1433, when Suffolk had been made steward of the royal household, he brought Orléans to his London house to meet with Hue de Lannoy, the ambassador of Philip, duke of Burgundy, and discuss the terms of a possible peace.2 Orléans was actually taken to Calais in 1435 to be ready if needed to be called, as broker or bargaining-counter, at the congress of Arras, where Suffolk was chief representative under Cardinal Beaufort.3 But the congress was a failure; the duke of Burgundy was subsequently reconciled with Charles VII and Bedford died soon after. The peace policy was in tatters and Suffolk had to go along for a while with the more aggressive policies of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, who as heir to the throne saw himself as the guardian of Henry V’s conquests in France. Briefly appointed to a command at the siege of Calais (1436), Suffolk was soon back in England, acquiring various offices of influence and strengthening his position vis-à-vis Gloucester. He supported but played no direct role in the peace negotiations of 1437–39. Orléans was involved, and took part as a mediator in the peace-conference at Oye, near Calais, which opened on 26 June 1439, his departure to France with his custodian, Sir John Stourton, having been authorised on 26 May. The conference achieved nothing, but negotiations for Orléans’s release continued, and on 28 October 1440 he gave solemn undertakings to Henry VI and his Council in Westminster Abbey that, once back in France, he would work for peace and raise his huge ransom; Gloucester stalked out in high displeasure. Gloucester wanted Henry to marry a daughter of the count of Armagnac, which would strengthen England’s position in France: it would be an aggressive anti-French marriage. But Gloucester’s power was waning, and Suffolk’s plan that the king should marry Margaret of Anjou (1430–82), which Orléans supported and may have suggested, appealed more to Henry. Margaret’s inheritance from her father René, one-time ‘king’ of Naples, was shadowy, and the match was not offensive to either France or Burgundy. Suffolk was the chief ambassador at the negotiations, a position he accepted with some show of reluctance, since he knew that his friendships with Orléans and Dunois, and the fact that he was persona grata with the French king, might make the war-party suspi2

There is a very detailed account of this meeting, from French sources, in Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the English in France during the reign of Henry the Sixth, ed. Joseph Stevenson, 2 vols., Rolls Series, 22 (London, 1861), II, i. 218–49. 3 For a detailed account of the parts played by Orléans and Suffolk on this occasion, see Joycelyne Gledhill Dickinson, The Congress of Arras, 1435 (Oxford, 1955), pp. 12, 23, 42–43, 50–52.

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cious of a sell-out.4 He secured a formal indemnity from parliament on 20 February 1444 and was at Vendôme on 8 April for preliminary discussions. A week later he and his colleagues joined Orléans at the ducal court at Blois and from there sailed down the Loire to be received by Charles VII at Tours on 17 April. Truces were arranged, and Margaret was betrothed, with Suffolk as proxy, on 24 May. Suffolk returned home the king’s firm favourite, and was raised to marquess, a rare honour, on 14 September. Now he had to fetch Margaret. He took with him 5 barons, 17 knights, 65 squires and 204 valets,5 as well as his wife, as principal lady of Margaret’s escort, and his trusted supporter Adam Moleyns, recently appointed keeper of the privy seal (the main instrument of conciliar government). It was the most expensive enterprise since the Paris coronation of 1431, and crippled the royal finances for the year. Suffolk left London on 5 November 1444, and joined the French court at Nancy, where the final touches were put to the marriage-agreement, including the surrender of the English title to Maine. Under Suffolk’s escort, Margaret landed at Portsmouth on 9 April 1445, and Suffolk, as the faithful servant of what Henry VI perceived to be his interests, was undisputedly the most powerful man in England. So he remained, despite the suspicion that fell on him after the death of Gloucester at the Bury parliament in 1447, and he was made duke on 2 July 1448, but in 1449, things began to unravel. The French took advantage of an English breach of the truce to declare open war and soon drove the English army, poorly commanded by Edmund Beaufort, duke of Somerset, a Suffolk adherent, from its last strongholds in Normandy, Rouen falling on 29 October 1449. It was not Suffolk’s fault, but he was held responsible: when parliament met on 6 November 1449, Moleyns was forced to resign the privy seal (and was murdered a few weeks later); William Tailboys, one of Suffolk’s enforcers, was accused of an attempt on the life of Ralph, lord Cromwell, a prominent opponent of Suffolk, as they entered parliament; and in the new year Suffolk was arraigned before parliament and committed to the Tower. Smouldering resentment broke out in accusations that it was he who had sold off the English realm in France, and Henry, conscious that Suffolk had done no more than carry out royal policy, nevertheless accepted to have him banished for five years. His boat was intercepted off Calais by Yorkist sympathisers, he was taken off, summarily condemned as a traitor, and given a day and a night to make his shrift before having his head hacked off. His death was greeted in England with a chorus of glee and execration.6 Suffolk has not been well treated by history, nor by Shakespeare (which often amounts to the same thing), and there are reasons for this. Recent historians of 4

For his friendship with Dunois, see G. du Fresne de Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, 6 vols. (Paris, 1891), IV, 100. 5 For the expenses of the trip, see Stevenson, Letters and Papers, I, 443–60. 6 See V. J. Scattergood, Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London, 1971), pp. 157–65.

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the reign of Henry VI have made it clear that the king, before his breakdown in 1453, played a substantial role in the conduct of government.7 The myth of the pious simpleton was to a large extent a fabrication of his Yorkist successors, designed to explain how the son of the great conqueror came to be deposed, and to shift responsibility from Henry for policies, especially of peace with France, they judged to be mistaken. Suffolk meanwhile became the scapegoat, many of the accusations brought against him in parliament at his impeachment in 1450 being read back by the chronicles into his biography, with the later addition of the ridiculous slander (familiar from Shakespeare) that he was the lover of Margaret of Anjou, before and after her marriage.

II In the context of such a sketch of his life, one can see the opportunities open to Suffolk for involvement in literary activities, even though he shows none of Gloucester’s ambition to be thought of as a literary patron. His long service in France, his friendships with Dunois and Orléans, indicate that he was bilingual in English and French, as Orléans was in French and English. As a noble gentleman, in both England and France, he would also expect to engage in amorous activities, and their literary accompaniments, which were all part of the ‘game of love’. A little story told by Guillaume Benoit, Suffolk’s servant in France, in testimony of 1427 relating to a supposed English plot to murder the duke of Burgundy in 1425, gives a vivid picture of this world.8 He tells how Suffolk, pining for love of some unnamed lady, had Guillaume read some love-poems to him. The servant then summoned one ‘Binchoiz’ (the poet Gilles Binchois), who there and then composed a rondel, ‘Ainsi que a la foiz my souvient’, which so pleased the earl that he gave him a handsome present. This shows Suffolk not as a poet, but as someone who appreciated love-poetry, or at least as someone who was appropriately perceived in that role. His closeness to Orléans during the period of his custodianship (1432–36), and again at the time of the first marriage-embassy to France (1444), gave him a model of the learned courtier-poet, accomplished in two languages. He would perhaps know also of the ventures of Richard Beauchamp, earl of Warwick (1382–1439), into verse;9 of the interest in Chaucer displayed by Jean d’Angoulême, younger brother of Charles, who had been a hostage in England since

7

See Bertram Wolffe, Henry VI (London, 1981), especially his chapter ‘The Myth of the Royal Saint’, pp. 3–21; Griffiths, Henry VI; Watts, Henry VI, especially pp. 158–66. 8 See Julia Boffey, English Courtly Love Lyrics, pp. 99–100. 9 See Boffey, English Courtly Love Lyrics, pp. 16, 83. For the attribution of a love-poem to a certain ‘Ducem Eboracensem’, see Boffey, pp. 83, 90. Other poets among the higher and lesser nobility in late medieval England are listed in Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto, 1980), pp. 65, 109–10.

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even before Agincourt;10 and of the translation of Alain Chartier’s La Belle Dame sans Merci by Sir Richard Roos, nearest brother of the Sir Robert Roos who went with Suffolk and Moleyns to France in 1444 to negotiate the marriage-peace.11 Adam Moleyns, Suffolk’s closest adherent, has often been associated with The Libel of English Policy (Libel means ‘little book’), a long poem in rhyme royal written in 1436 to advocate the keeping of the seas and the preservation of the Calais staple. This was not a policy directly supportive of Gloucester’s desire for continued war with France, and since Gloucester was at this time in the ascendant, and Moleyns was clerk of the king’s council (1436–41), he had to be tactful: what he does, without mentioning the question of war with France, is to present his argument as a matter of independently urgent national interest.12 It is worth noting, in connection with Adam Moleyns, that there is an acrostic poem to ‘Anne Molins’ among the English poems copied into BN MS fr. 25458 which have been attributed, as we shall see, to Suffolk.13 Then there was Suffolk’s marriage, which brought him into contact with the household and circle of friends of Alice’s father, Thomas Chaucer (d. 1434), the most important commoner in English politics in the early decades of the century.14 The generous hospitality of Thomas Chaucer’s household at Ewelme, near Oxford, had been celebrated at an earlier date by Lydgate, in his ‘Balade at the Departing of Thomas Chaucer’.15 Suffolk spent a good deal of time at Ewelme after his marriage, and Orléans was there with him, presumably, on occasions during his years with Suffolk (1432–36). It would have been impolite of him not to have paid attention to the countess of Suffolk, and perhaps address some poems to her: René d’Anjou, in his Livre du Cuer d’amours espris, tells how

10 See M. M. Crow, ‘John of Angoulême and his Chaucer Manuscripts’, Speculum 17

11

12

13

14

15

(1942), 86–99; Paul Strohm, ‘John of Angoulême: a Fifteenth-Century Reader of Chaucer’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971), 69–76. See Ethel Seaton, Sir Richard Roos, c.1410–1482: Lancastrian Poet (London, 1961), pp. 42–49. The attribution of La Belle Dame to Roos is made in a colophon in BL MS Harley 372, fol. 61r. See Sir George Warner, ed., The Libelle of Englyshe Polycye (Oxford, 1926), pp. xxxix–xlvi. Suffolk is one of the addressees in some copies of the poem’s epilogue (Warner, p. 103), along with Ralph, Lord Cromwell, and (possibly) Cardinal Beaufort. See Eleanor Prescott Hammond, ‘Charles of Orléans and Anne Molyneux’, Modern Philology 22 (1924–25), 215–16. Adam Moleyns (Molyneux) had a sister and a niece called Anne: see Eleanor Prescott Hammond, English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham, North Carolina, 1927), p. 469. Amongst the prominent local men who thus became part of Suffolk’s affinity was Edmund Rede of Boarstall (see Griffiths, Henry VI, p. 337), who owned a fine copy of Gower’s Confessio Amantis (BL MS Harley 3490), made probably in the 1440s. Edition by John Norton-Smith, in John Lydgate: Poems (Oxford, 1966), pp. 4–6, 119–22. See Martin B. Ruud, Thomas Chaucer, Research Publications of the University of Minnesota, Studies in Language and Literature, no. 9 (Minneapolis, 1926), pp. 12–13; Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate: a Bio-bibliography, English Literary Studies, no. 71 (Victoria, B.C., 1997), pp. 20–21. Sir William Moleyns is mentioned as a close friend of the Chaucers in the poem; he was a distant relation of Adam Moleyns (see DNB, 13. 574–75).

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Orléans fell in love with a ‘dame belle et saige’ while he was in England, and if, as Champion thought, this was the countess, the polite fiction of ‘falling in love’ would be no more than an appropriate compliment to her and to her husband (and not a suggestion of any kind of clandestine affair).16 Alice is further known as a patron of Lydgate: according to a rubric in Oxford, St. John’s College MS 56, The Virtues of the Mass was made at her request,17 and BL MS Arundel 119, a fine early copy of Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes, has the Suffolk coat of arms; a copy of Lydgate’s Pilgrimage of the Life of Man is recorded in an inventory taken at Ewelme in 1466.18 Alice was not the only source for Suffolk’s knowledge of Lydgate: Suffolk was frequently at the monastery of Bury St. Edmunds, was admitted to the fraternity there, and was directly instrumental in securing Lydgate the renewed grant of his annuity.19

III More detail could be painted into this picture, but it is sufficient to provide a context for the discussion of the poems attributed to Suffolk in the early and influential article by MacCracken.20 They fall into four categories. The first consists of six poems in French copied down by John Shirley, who ascribes five of them to Suffolk, in the large anthology of Chaucerian and other poems now Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.20, pp. 25, 32–33, 35–36 (the volume is paginated, not foliated).21 Shirley was a well-known collector of courtly and other pieces, and responsible for several other miscellanies, some of which survive in the original and some in later copies.22 Poem I in MacCracken’s edition is a ‘roundell’, said by Shirley to have been made by Suffolk ‘affter his comyng oute of prysoune’; Poems II, III, and VI are ‘roundells’ made by Suffolk

16 See Pierre Champion, ‘La dame anglaise de Charles d’Orléans’, Romania 49 (1923),

580–84. 17 See H. N. MacCracken, ed., The Minor Poems of John Lydgate, vol. I (EETS e.s. 107, 1911),

p. 87. 18 See H. A. Napier, Historical Notices of the Parishes of Swyncombe and Ewelme in the Parish

19 20

21 22

of Oxford (Oxford, 1858), p. 128. One would expect that Alice also had copies of Geoffrey Chaucer’s poems, but there is a puzzling absence of reference, in the documents relating to Thomas and Alice, to their illustrious ancestor, and Geoffrey’s arms do not figure in Alice’s magnificently heraldic tomb at Ewelme: see Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography (Oxford, 1992), pp. 276–82. Pearsall, Lydgate: Bio-bibliography, pp. 22, 28–29. H. N. MacCracken, ‘An English Friend of Charles of Orleans’, PMLA 26 (1911), 142–80. For a full discussion of MacCracken’s attributions of the Fairfax poems, see Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems. The poems are printed by MacCracken, ‘An English Friend’, pp. 151–55. For a summary account of Shirley, with references to recent scholarship, see Pearsall, Lydgate: Bio-bibliography, pp. 17–18; there is an up-to-date list of Shirley and Shirleian manuscripts in Jeremy Griffiths, ‘A Newly Identified Manuscript Inscribed by John Shirley’, The Library, 6th series, 14 (1992), 83–93.

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‘whylest he was prisonnier in Fraunce’; Poem V is a ‘balade’ in three octosyllabic 8–line stanzas without envoy, with a rubric to the same effect, but in French; Poem IV has no rubric. These six poems are conventional poems of love and love-complaint. A seventh poem immediately following in the manuscript (pp. 36–37) is headed ‘Here filowethe a Balade made in Fraunce which my lord of Suffolk th’eorlle mich allowethe in his witt’. It is a ballade with envoy, a rather elegant mutability poem in decasyllabic 8–line stanzas, with the refrain ‘Il n’est home que ait point de demain’. Shirley presumably found it among the batch of papers that had come into his hands containing French poems ascribed to Orléans (which he also copied into the manuscript) and Suffolk, and thought its inclusion a sufficient witness to Suffolk’s admiration for it. Shirley could be careless in his attributions, and he had a tendency to gossipy demonstrations of his intimacy with noble persons, but he was well-informed on many matters, and there is no strong reason to disbelieve what he says about the authorship of the five poems. They are Suffolk’s ‘prison-poems’ to set beside Orléans’s French collection called ‘Poème de la Prison’. Poems II, III, IV, and V also appear in BL MS Add. 34360 (fols. 22v–23v), a Shirleian miscellany derived from Trinity R.3.20, with II, III, and V attributed likewise to Suffolk.23 Poem II appears in Grenoble, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 874, in a collection of poems otherwise entirely ascribed to Alain Chartier, and is attributed to Chartier by his editor, J. C. Laidlaw.24 Poem VII appears in BN MS nouv. acq. fr. 6221 (fol. 13rb), with no attribution, in the midst of a large number of poems by Machaut and Deschamps.25 There were clearly lots of poems, and little flotillas of poems, drifting about in the seas of anonymity, waiting to be moored to some larger vessel. The second group of poems, attributed to Suffolk by MacCracken alone, appear variously in various manuscripts of the French poems of Charles of Orléans, most notably in Paris, BN MS fr. 25458, called by Pierre Champion, Orléans’s biographer and bibliographer, the verse-album of the court of Blois.26 It was compiled over a period of time, and contains scribal copies of French poems composed by Orléans in England (the ‘fonds primitif’), with author’s correc-

23 See Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, p. 18. There is also a French poem attributed to ‘the duc

of orlience’ in BL MS Harley 7333, another Shirley-derived manuscript (fol. 32v): see MacCracken, ‘An English Friend’, p. 145. 24 J. C. Laidlaw, ed., The Poetical Works of Alain Chartier (Cambridge, 1974), p. 385 (see also pp. 140, 142, 372); see Boffey, English Courtly Love Lyrics, p. 65. 25 See Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, p. 18. 26 For descriptions of BN MS fr. 25458, see Champion, Le manuscrit autographe, pp. xviii–xx; Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 7–12. Of the nine English poems that appear in MS fr. 25458, the two copied by Orléans himself (the first two in Hammond) appear also in two manuscripts copied from MS fr. 25458 during his lifetime: Bibliothèque de Carpentras MS 375 (the manuscript of the duke’s wife, Marie, pp. 39–40) and BN MS fr. 1104 (p. 73); see Champion, ed., Poésies, I, xvi–xx. Champion attributes these two poems, which he prints on pp. 256–57, to Orléans; the other seven he prints among his notes (pp. 569–72) as possibly by Suffolk.

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tions; later poems, some by Orléans, some copied by him; and poems inserted in the upper halves of pages previously left blank when poems were copied in the bottom half. There are nine English poems in the manuscript: eight are lovepoems and love-complaints in the form of rondeaux, and the ninth is a ballade complaining against Fortune; none of them is ascribed to any author. They are printed by Hammond and Arn27 from MS 25458, and by MacCracken,28 as he thought, from another manuscript of Orléans’s poems, Grenoble, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 873.29 With poems of this kind, with so many commonplaces of sentiment and diction, it is hard to speak of internal evidence of authorship, though the personifications of hope, the heart, mercy, and the little dramas in which they participate are entirely characteristic of Orléans (and his models and his imitators, it must be said). If Orléans is not the author, Suffolk is a possible claimant, because of his long and extensive acquaintance with Orléans. The acrostic poem to ‘Anne Molins’ (Hammond’s Poem VI) could plausibly be his, given his familiarity with Adam Moleyns, who was probably her brother or uncle. BL MS Royal 16 F. ii is a manuscript of Orléans’s French poems, a large and handsome volume made for prince Arthur around 1500. It includes, scattered among the French, three English rondeaux, one of which is a bad text of one of those in MS 25458 (Hammond’s Poem IV B, p. 222). The other two, one of which is defective, seem to be spoken in the voice of a woman. The three poems are printed by Hammond (pp. 222–23), Arn (pp. 388–89), and MacCracken (pp. 178–79). Finally, Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, a famous collection of Chaucer and Chaucerian poems (c. 1450), includes one of the nine poems from BN MS fr. 25458, the ballade complaining against Fortune, in the midst of a sequence of twenty poems, all in ballade form (fols. 318r–329r). All are printed by MacCracken (‘An English Friend’, pp. 155–74) and attributed to Suffolk; they are newly edited, with excellent apparatus, by Jansen, who points out (pp. 5–7) that Fairfax Poem XIV also appears in Lambeth Palace Library MS 306 (fol. 137), a large miscellany of c. 1500. Jansen, like Hammond, is sceptical of the attribution to Suffolk, but does not exclude the possibility: there is not enough evidence either way. Most of the Fairfax poems are love-complaints and love-epistles, and the regular mention of ‘the lovere’ in the titles given to the first nineteen poems in the contemporary table of contents (fol. 2v) suggests that they were regarded as

27 Eleanor Prescott Hammond, English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham, North

Carolina, and London), 1927, pp. 221–23; Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 381–88. 28 MacCracken, ‘An English Friend’, 174–78. 29 In fact, the source of MacCracken’s text is an early edition of Orléans from the

Grenoble manuscript by A. Champollion-Figeac (1842), in which the English poems, not present in the Grenoble manuscript, were inserted in the form of a text poorly transcribed from MS fr. 25458; see Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, p. 11, and earlier, his ‘French Manuscripts’.

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forming a sequence, on the model of the sequences in the French manuscripts of Orléans and in the English poems, including translations of Orléans, in BL MS Harley 682.30 Poem XIX, ‘How the lovere is sett to serve the floure’, is an imitation of the praise of the daisy in Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women, with praise of Chaucer and reproof of Lydgate for speaking slightingly of women. The reproof is extended, witty, amusing, urbane, and shows verbal knowledge of Lydgate’s poetry as well as Chaucer’s.31 The last poem in the Fairfax sequence, Poem XX, runs to 116 lines and tells of a parliament held by Cupid at his palace of ‘Secret Pense’ on 22 February to receive the complaints of lovers. Their bills are presented, their spokesman promises Cupid seven years of maintenance if he views them with favour, and Cupid adjourns the parliament to meet at ‘Vivre-enJoye’ on 29 April. The echoes of Lydgate’s Temple of Glass and the anticipations of the anonymous Assembly of Ladies are evident.

IV An assessment of the genuineness of Suffolk’s claim to the authorship of these poems must rest upon a number of criteria, none of them firm. It can at least be said that he lived in a cultural environment in which it would be more likely than not that he tried his hand at versifying, whether in French or English or both. Men of this class, as we know from the better documented case of Orléans, or from the sporadic evidence of poetry-writing by other members of the class, lived and breathed poetry, especially the poetry of love-complaint. It was an international currency, or contagion. Within this cultural environment, the attribution of the French poems seems secure enough. There is no evidence that Shirley went in for wholesale fabrication in such matters, and we can at least accept that he thought that what he was saying was true on the basis of the evidence that he had. For the rest, the evidence is thin, and it must be said that MacCracken does not make the best of what case there is. He fails to discriminate between evidence of different kinds, and his own conviction that he is forging a relentless chain of logic becomes less and less one that we feel inclined to share. His account of the historical circumstances which he believes will support his case is often careless. ‘At Arras in 1436,’ he says, ‘and at Calais in 1437, the two men [Orléans and Suffolk] represented their nations in negotiations’ (p. 144). No part of this sentence is historically accurate. Suffolk was at the congress of Arras, which was held in 1435, but Orléans only got as far as Calais, where he was held but not summoned. There were no peace-negotiations at Calais in 1437. Plans were made for Orléans to visit Cherbourg in 1437 to be present at a conference at Vannes, in 30 See Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, p. 5. 31 It is printed by Hammond as a separate poem, ‘A Reproof to Lydgate’, in Chaucer to

Surrey, pp. 198–201; allusions are traced by Hammond, Chaucer to Surrey, pp. 461–62, and Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 66–67.

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Brittany, but the whole thing fell through. Suffolk was not involved. Orléans did play a part in the peace-conference held at Oye, near Calais, in 1439, but Suffolk was not there. McCracken always exaggerates the closeness of Orléans and Suffolk as friends, when all that can be determined from the records is that they found a political use for each other. MacCracken, of course, has his eye on his final argument, in which Suffolk is put forward as the author of the English poems of Harley 682, including the translations from Orléans, on the flimsiest possible evidence (p. 150).32 The desire here so evident to attach anonymous poems to a named author, which encourages him elsewhere to insert ‘Wallingford’ (the name of Suffolk’s castle) in a space left for indication of place or date in Fairfax Poem XVII, and which concludes with the printing of two poems ‘in Suffolk’s manner’ (pp. 179–80) garnered from two completely unrelated manuscripts, is reminiscent of the extravagance of Ethel Seaton in attributing vast masses of English poetry, anonymous or otherwise, from the end of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the sixteenth, to Sir Richard Roos.33 The external evidence of Suffolk’s authorship of any of the English poems is merely circumstantial, and derives from the linkage of his name with that of Orléans and from cross-affiliations between manuscripts which illustrate no more than the tendency of such poems to circulate freely and to crop up in different places. None of the English poems is attributed to him, not even in the ‘court-album’, MS 25458, where it is Orléans’s quite regular practice to insert in his own hand the names of authors other than himself, if he knows who they are.34 It might be argued that the name of the author has been lost in the cropping of the manuscript by the binder, or that it was unnecessary for him to write in Suffolk’s name since everyone would know that the poems must be by Suffolk if they were in English, but this begs the question. Other Englishmen visited the court of Blois, including Adam Moleyns, Sir Robert Roos and others on the occasion of the 1444 embassy.35 It is important too to remember that the English poems in MS 25458 appear in the post-1440 ‘Blois’ portion of the manuscript, and not as part of the ‘fonds primitif’ which seems to have been copied in England by a French scribe and brought over in 1440, and which might more plausibly have contained English poems by Suffolk.36

32 Jansen concludes that there is no internal evidence (e.g., of vocabulary) that the poems

33 34 35 36

of Harley 682 and those of the Fairfax sequence are by the same person (The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, p. 28). See also his fuller study, ‘Charles d’Orléans and the Fairfax Poems’. Seaton, Sir Richard Roos (see n. 11 above). See Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 24–27. See Beaucourt, Histoire de Charles VII, III, 269; Champion, Vie de Charles d’Orléans, p. 341. The first two poems printed by Hammond from MS fr. 25458 (the last two in MacCracken) were copied at a late stage into the manuscript by Orléans himself on a page (p. 346) originally blank (the first poem is a free reworking of one of Orléans’s own French poems, Chanson LXI, p. 240 in Champion’s edition), while the remainder (pp. 310–13) are late additions to an intercalated quire in the later part of the volume. See Champion, Le manuscrit autographe, pp. 46, 48.

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As to internal evidence, there is none, strictly speaking. Since no English poems are attributed by a contemporary or near-contemporary scribe or witness to Suffolk, there is therefore no body of writing to form a basis for linguistic, metrical or stylistic comparison. MacCracken (‘An English Friend’, p. 148) attempts to use the famous letter that Suffolk wrote to his son on the eve of exile (it appears among the Paston letters)37 as a basis for identifying Suffolk’s poetic style, finding in it a ‘couplet’, ‘Wreten of myn hand,/ The day of my departyng fro this land’, which he claims to be ‘precisely the habit’ of the Orléans-translator of Harley 682 and the poet of the Fairfax sequence. It is an argument that no observer could find convincing. In fact, the near-preposterousness of some of MacCracken’s claims has jeopardised the case for identifying a limited number of the shorter lyrics as Suffolk’s. Also, the attempt to read Suffolk’s life into the Fairfax sequence – Poem XVIII as covertly referring to Suffolk’s miserable circumstances in the late February of 1450,38 or Poem XIX, with its praise of the flower (identified by MacCracken as the marguerite) as alluding to Margaret of Anjou – has distracted attention from the extraordinary importance of the Fairfax poems as a carefully composed sequence, concluding in a parliament. The sequence is inspired by the example of Machaut and Orléans, but independently conceived, with a strong affinity to a specifically English moral tradition of lovecomplaint and love-epistle – an emphasis on love as imposing duties and responsibilities as well as, or rather than, conferring pleasure – which perhaps derives from Lydgate’s Temple of Glass39 and is well evidenced in the poetic love-epistles and even the ordinary love-letters included among the Paston letters and in the love-complaints presented before Lady Loyalty in The Assembly of Ladies.40 The latter poem provides a parallel too for the extensive, skilful and fluent poetic use of a legal phraseology of love derived from the language of bills and petitions.41 The poems are, in fact, when one gets to them, quite fine. The mood and manner is of a muted, monotone plangency, effortless, transparent, facile; the language and metre are handled with unostentatious ease. Few medieval English poets can so comfortably enfold the syntax of speech in the rhythms of rhyme

37 James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters, 6 vols. (1872; London, 1904), II, 142. 38 The dating of Poem XVIII is, it must be admitted, uncannily apt (note also the date of

the ‘parlement’ in Poem XX), as is the total absence from the poem of language referring unambiguously to love (see Scattergood, Politics and Poetry, pp. 163–64). A Suffolk connection has also been inferred from the fact that the Fairfax MS was owned at some point by John Stanley, to whose custody Suffolk was committed from January to March 1450: see John Norton-Smith, Introduction to Bodleian Library MS Fairfax 16, facsimile (London, 1979), p. xiii. 39 See Derek Pearsall, John Lydgate (London, 1970), pp. 109–10. 40 See Norman Davis, ed., Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, in 2 parts (Oxford, 1971–76), e.g., nos. 373 (prose), 351, 415 (verse); see Norman Davis, ‘The Litera Troili and English Letters’, Review of English Studies, n.s. 16 (1965), 233–44; Jansen, The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 60–63. For The Assembly of Ladies, see Derek Pearsall, ed., The Floure and the Leafe and the Assembly of Ladies (London and Edinburgh, 1962). 41 See Pearsall, The Floure and the Leafe, pp. 161–62.

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royal. The poems, individually no more than sighs or ripples of feeling, build up as a sequence so that we read them, as we read the sonnet-sequences of Petrarch or the Elizabethans, with the sense that they compose a story (it is we, of course, who are invited to do the composing). Whether they can be attributed to Suffolk or to any other named author is, in the end, not very important. What is important is that they are by the same author and exist as a continuous sequence, which I hope may in the future be called ‘the Fairfax sequence’. And if the pains and hardships of love’s service seem sometimes to be a metaphor for the spurns and humiliations of court and public office, then that would be no more than we have become accustomed to find in Wyatt and other poets of love. The value of the Suffolk debate is not in proving or disproving attributions of authorship. It would perhaps be an advance in understanding if scholarship could free itself from the irritable (though natural) preoccupation with authorship, the idea that a poem somehow lacks identity if it cannot be attached to a named author.42 It would help too if acrostic references to ladies’ names were recognised as the entertainment of an afternoon and not the clue to some lifedevouring passion (there is an acrostic to ‘Katherin’ in the first stanza of Fairfax Poem V, but it would be hard to make much of the fact that this was the name of the wife of John Stanley, Suffolk’s keeper in 1450). More valuable is the attempt, through the study of the documents and poems in the case, to evoke the literary environment of a past age, the circumstances under which poems were composed, circulated, and read, the culture in which they were important.

42 See the comments on this subject by Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author?’ Modern

Criticism and Theory, ed. David Lodge (London, 1988), pp. 196–210 (p. 203).

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Charles of Orléans Illuminated JANET BACKHOUSE

W

IDELY famed for its bird’s-eye view of the Tower of London, which is endlessly reproduced in both scholarly and popular contexts, Royal MS 16 F. ii in the British Library is of major interest to all students of the work of Charles of Orléans because it is the only medieval manuscript copy of his work to have been supplied with major illustrations. His poems take up rather more than half of the volume’s 248 leaves and the associated miniatures account for three of the six fully illuminated pages in the book. It has always been clear from copious internal heraldic evidence that the manuscript once belonged to Henry VII, first of the Tudor kings, who came to the throne in August 1485 after his victory over Richard III at Bosworth. Only recently was it recognised that this lavish commission was originally intended for his Yorkist predecessor, Edward IV, who died in April 1483.1 The manuscript is designed on a grand scale, fit indeed for its intended royal recipient. It consists of 248 leaves of stout, good quality, well prepared vellum, each measuring approximately 14½ by 10½ inches (370 by 270 mm), written 22 lines to the page within a ruled space of 8¾ by 6¼ inches. In addition to the selection from Charles’s poetry (fols. 1r–136v), it contains fictitious letters of the abbess Heloise on the theme of love (fols. 137r–187v), ‘Les demandes damours’ (fols. 188r–210r) and a treatise for the instruction of a prince (fols. 210v–248v). This last was wrongly identified by the authors of the catalogue of Royal manuscripts, who attributed it to Bernard André, tutor to Henry VII’s eldest son, and took at face value a somewhat tortuous form of words which apparently date it to 1500, with implications for the dating of the entire volume.2 It is in fact a fourteenth-century work in its original French form, though copies of an English translation were circulating during the fifteenth century.3 1

See Janet Backhouse, ‘Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts’, England in the Fifteenth Century (Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium), ed. Daniel Williams (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987), pp. 23–41. The three illustrations to Charles of Orléans’s poems are reproduced as plates 15–17. 2 This now reads ‘lan de septante & trente quatorze cens de sente’ over an erasure. The original form of words indicates the date 1347. 3 See Jean-Philippe Genet, Four English Political Tracts of the Later Middle Ages, Camden Fourth Series xviii (1977), pp. 174–219.

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The entire text, with the exception of a handful of individual leaves which were apparently replaced for practical reasons when the illustrations to the three latter sections were provided in Henry VII’s time, was written out as a single campaign by a small team of scribes working in one coherent style of script. The same campaign also embraced the provision of text initials and, in the first two quires after the first miniature and for a single quire after the second, a lavish series of line-endings in dull red, blue, and gold, with occasional touches of silver. This original subsidiary decoration does not extend beyond the poems of Charles of Orléans. Initials in the second half of the manuscript are clearly a later, and inferior, addition. However, many of the pages throughout the book are enhanced by lively and imaginative calligraphic cadels, often incorporating grotesque faces and touched with yellow, and headings in the text are given in bright blue or red letters, elaborately flourished. The overall impression is one of considerable richness, though somewhat ponderous and overbold, in distinct contrast to the restrained professionalism of the manuscripts ordered by Edward IV from the commercial scribes and illuminators of Flanders during the late 1470s. The work here is in many subtle ways more akin to that of the scriveners responsible for writing out documents and records than to that associated with texts for a library. Elsewhere I have already drawn attention to the close relationship between one of the hands in Royal MS 16 F. ii and the work of Hugues de Lembourg, clerk to Sir Thomas Thwaytes, Treasurer of Calais in the late 1480s, who was commissioned by his master to produce an immense anthology of French chronicles which was to have been offered to Henry VII. Close examination of the original initials and line-endings does offer a certain amount of evidence for the book’s royal destination. The authors of the Royal catalogue drew attention to the frequent use of a lion motif. In a number of places the royal arms are incorporated into initials, sometimes simply in linear gold on a red or blue ground but elsewhere (fols. 21, 56, 59) in full colour. On fol. 80 a fully coloured version is surrounded by the Garter. Of specific Yorkist significance is the small rose en soleil that appears on fol. 78b. The clearest evidence of Edward IV’s intended ownership is however provided by analysis of the heraldic border elements of the first two Charles of Orléans illustrations, the only two fully illuminated pages that can be associated with the original campaign of work on the manuscript.4 On fol. 1, now adapted to the use of Henry VII, we see a combination of shields of a type already familiar from Edward’s books.5 The two upper-

4

Backhouse, ‘Founders’, plates 15–17. The remaining three miniatures in Royal MS 16 F. ii may be seen in Janet Backhouse, ‘A Salute to the Tudor Rose’, Miscellanea Martin Wittek, ed. Anny Raman and Eugène Manning (Louvain, 1993), figure 4 (fol. 137); idem, The Illuminated Page (London 1997), plate 189 (fol. 188), and idem, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family’, The Reign of Henry VII, ed. Benjamin Thompson (Harlaxton Medieval Studies V) (Stamford, Lincs., 1995), plate 43 (fol. 210v). 5 See Backhouse, ‘Founders’, especially plates 3 and 7; also idem, The Illuminated Page, plate 177 and frontispiece.

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most contain the charges traditionally associated with St. Edward the Confessor (left) and St. George (right). Also in the right-hand margin are the crowned royal arms of England (appropriate to either king) and a second royal shield, surmounted by a coronet, for Henry’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales. On the left are the crowned arms of Henry’s queen, Elizabeth of York, and an uncrowned shield for a second son. The queen’s arms are painted over an erasure and almost certainly replaced the three crowns of St. Edmund. The shields of both princes are now differenced as appropriate to Henry’s sons, Arthur of Wales (born 1486) and Henry, duke of York (born 1491), but their appearance on the page here exactly parallels the arrangement in a number of Edward’s books, where his own two sons, Edward and Richard, are thus represented. At the the foot of the page an entire marginal panel has been overpainted to contain the red and white roses ot Henry VII’s marriage alliance with the house of York and his heraldic supporters, the white greyhound and the red dragon. It is unfortunately impossible to discern what originally lay beneath the very dense paint layer here, but there can be no doubt that this is an alteration to the original scheme. The repeated motif of the white rose en soleil, placed between the shields, is however a direct reference to the house of York and was one of Edward’s favourite badges. On the second picture page, the crowned royal arms occupy a central position in the lower margin, directly below the image of the Tower of London. Here the Yorkist reference is unambiguous, for the shield is supported by a pair of white (or possibly silver) lions, now much darkened by oxidisation of the original pigment. These were Edward’s personal supporters and entirely inappropriate to his Tudor successor. Charles of Orléans is represented in this manuscript by a selection of some 166 individual poems relating to the period of his long captivity in England.6 Each of the three miniatures (which punctuate this collection) is closely linked to one specific poem. Each is by a different artist and, in the absence of any guidance from an earlier pictorial tradition associated with this text, each takes its own individual approach to the challenge of producing a suitably rich and elaborate image for incorporation into what was obviously conceived as a costly and attention-seeking project, likely to have been intended as a gift. The first of three miniatures (fol. 1) introduces the poem ‘Ou temps passé’. The figure of the young prince is seen ushered into the court of Love by his preceptress, Jennesse, and there presented to Bel Acueil and Plaisance. The scene is set in an enclosed garden with a large golden fountain. The ‘cast’ includes musicians and the darker side of life is represented by an ill-favoured fool. The costumes of both men and women are clearly of the fifteenth century. The ladies’ headdresses are particularly indicative of the 1480s and can be paralleled in other manuscript

6

Few of Charles’s poems can be precisely dated, but see Pierre Champion, Les Poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Les Classiques français du moyen âge 34 (1923), II, xxii–vi for some groupings.

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works.7 This artist’s approach to his subject seems to owe much to the tradition of illustration associated with the Roman de la rose. One is irresistibly reminded of the famous garden scenes in BL MS Harley 4425, made for Engelbert of Nassau only a little later than the date suggested for the present book and in the workshop credited with its Henry VII additions. There too the central character is ushered into an enclosed garden by his mentor and there too a gilded fountain and a procession of courtly musicians are central to the compositions.8 The second miniature (fol. 73) is the widely famed image of Charles within the Tower of London (Plate 1) and introduces ‘Des nouvelles d’Albyon’. This illuminator has turned for inspiration not to a parallel literary tradition but to something that is rather a cartographical technique. The topographical bird’s-eye view was a device frequently adopted for military or naval purposes and the technique had been substantially refined in Italy during the fifteenth century.9 Here a remarkably detailed view of the Tower, taken from its river frontage, with a background of the old Custom House, London Bridge, and the skyline of the city, is used as a framework for the creation of the poem. This takes the form of a letter addressed to Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, during the optimistic period of the negotiations for the poet’s release late in 1439. Charles is first seen writing his letter inside the White Tower, watched over by men-at-arms wearing the English badge of St. George’s cross. He then hands his letter to a messenger who mounts his waiting horse and rides away, passing through the gate of the fortress in the direction of the river crossing, the Old Kent Road and, ultimately, the channel ports. Meanwhile Charles watches from a window, no doubt in happy anticipation of a similar journey which will take him home to France after his twentyfive-year exile. The last of the three pictures, preceding ‘France jadis on te souloit nommé’, was not painted as part of the original campaign but is the first of the four miniatures supplied when the manuscript was adapted for the use of the Tudors. Nonetheless, it follows the same approach as the two earlier subjects, taking the text of the poem as a very literal basis. France is represented by a fine and detailed view of Paris to parallel the previous view of London (though not this time from a bird’s-eye view), and a group of men drawn from her population kneels at the feet of the Virgin, who intercedes on their behalf with the crucified Christ. In the sky we are shown the proud symbols of France’s former glory – the fleurs de lys, the ampoule of Holy Oil and the oriflamme. It should be noted that this illustration, together with its border decoration symbolic of the Tudors, is painted onto a page which forms part of the original structure of the manuscript

7

For example, the illustrations of the ceremonial for the Order of the Bath in Writhe’s Garter Book, reproduced in Richard Mark and Ann Payne, British Heraldry from its Origins to c. 1800 (British Museum/British Library, 1978), no. 262. 8 See Renaissance Painting in Manuscripts: Treasures from the British Library, ed. Thomas Kren (New York, 1983), no. 6. The entry includes an extensive bibliography. 9 Ann Payne, Views of the Past (British Library, 1987), p. 11.

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and includes (notably on its verso) decorated text initials which are also a coherent part of the original campaign. The remaining three miniatures, also the work of this artist, are painted onto substitute leaves, replacing pages of the original which they are painstakingly written out to resemble. This could indicate that relevant parts of the book were sent out for decoration during the second campaign. The painter of the third miniature, alone of the three concerned with the illustration of Charles’s poems, can be recognised and placed in a wider context. His style, somewhat cumbersomely identified as that of the Master of the Prayerbooks of circa 1500 because no proper name has been recovered, also appears in the miniatures of Engelbert of Nassau’s Roman de la rose, mentioned above, and in those of the Imaginacion de vraye noblesse (BL MS Royal 19 C. viii), made specifically for Henry VII by his librarian, Quintin Poulet, in 1496.10 What overall can we deduce from available evidence about this very striking manuscript, which enjoys such a special place among the surviving sources for the poetry of Charles of Orléans? The heraldic content of its first two miniature pages seems to connect it quite clearly with Edward IV before it came into the hands of Henry VII and his family. The arrangement of the heraldry on the first page of all does suggest that whoever commissioned the work was familiar with the way in which other manuscripts destined for Edward’s royal library had been personalised with a dynastic statement. However, the general appearance of the book visibly distances it from the sophisticated professional work which is to be seen in the Flemish manuscripts which were ordered for his use. If the perceived relationship between the script of this volume and that of Sir Thomas Thwaytes’s French chronicles is accepted, then it is perhaps to Calais and its personnel that we should look for the origins of the book. This is an attractive notion but unlikely ever to be supported by more than circumstantial evidence. During the later years of Edward’s reign he was represented in Calais, England’s vital bridgehead to the continent, by several men who were personally close to him. The treasurer, Sir Thomas Thwaytes, had held a succession of important crown appointments and became a member of the royal council in June 1482.11 More significantly, the king’s bosom friend, William Lord Hastings, was lieutenant of Calais throughout the reign and his own brother-in-law, Sir John Donne, served there under him. All three of these men are known bibliophiles. The choice of main text for the volume could also reflect Calais interest. It was there that Charles embarked for England and exile in 1415, in the train of the victorious Henry V, and there too he resided for three months in the autumn of 1439, to be available to the Anglo-Burgundian conference taking place near Gravelines, at the Chateau d’Oye. His meeting at that time with Duchess Isabella led directly to his release in the following year. It has already been suggested that a source for the poems may have been available in the Burgundian ducal

10 Reproduced in Backhouse, ‘Founders’, plate 11. 11 Backhouse, ‘Founders’, pp. 30, 34–35.

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library.12 Manuscripts of Charles’s work appear to fall into two main groups where standards of execution are concerned. On the one hand there are the purely practical copies (what a modern bookseller might characterise as ‘good reading copies’) and on the other the more lavishly produced manuscripts which usually have some fairly direct association with the poet and his wife.13 Given that Charles and his Burgundian ducal cousin were corresponding in verse during the final months of his captivity, it seems natural to suppose that he might have seen to it that a collected ‘edition’ of his work, covering the English period, was provided for the famous library or his benefactor. And this is roughly the material that apparently appears in 16 F. ii, insofar as the poems can be dated. Given that Henry VII’s librarian, Quintin Poulet, was almost certainly responsible for seeing that the decoration of the manuscript was completed, it is also worth noting his recorded connections with Calais. A native of Lille who had received training in book production in Bruges during the 1470s, he was appointed English royal librarian in or shortly before April 1492.14 Documentation of his subsequent career reveals sustained exchanges with the continent, particularly with France, and a small amount of correspondence with a colleague in Calais itself has actually survived. The last published reference to him records a payment of 40 shillings to go to Calais ‘upon the King’s business’ in 1506. It is at least possible that the unfinished manuscript was brought into England by him, if Calais was indeed its place of origin, long after Edward’s death and the subsequent years of political turmoil were history. The dramatic fall of Hastings in the summer of 1483 was not shared by his immediate colleagues in Calais, but they must nonetheless have felt it wise to play down their close association with the previous regime. Projects linked with Edward and his heir would have attracted an unwelcome type of attention immediately after 1483. Indeed, for students of English history, the famous image of the Tower of London has a poignancy quite unconnected with the long captivity of Charles of Orléans, which it was designed to represent. Most of the time that he spent in England was passed elsewhere, in the strongholds of his custodians at such places as Fotheringay, Ampthill, or Wingfield. The Tower, which was the principal royal residence in London as well as a suitably secure yet dignified place of residence for outstanding noble prisoners, is simply being used pictorially to represent Charles’s status as a royal hostage. However, within weeks of Edward’s death on 9 April 1483, the Tower was to become notoriously the setting for two of the great tragedies of the reign of his brother, Richard III. On 13 June it witnessed the summary execution, without trial, of William Lord Hastings, by direct order of the king. Thereafter it was apparently the scene of the mysterious disappearance of Edward’s two young sons, the ill-starred ‘Princes in the Tower’. 12 Robert Steele, The English Poems of Charles of Orleans, EETS o.s. 215 (1941), p. xx. 13 Manuscripts are listed by Champion, ed., pp. viii–xxi. 14 For Poulet’s career, see Backhouse, ‘Founders’, pp. 32–33; idem, ‘Salute to the Tudor

Rose’, pp. 7–9; and idem, ‘Illuminated Manuscripts Associated with Henry VII’, pp. 125–26.

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It is a major irony that their arms should have been placed alongside those of their father, perhaps for the last time, on the opening page of this book which also offers an exactly contemporary and fully detailed view of the royal fortress synonymous with their tragic fate.

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Charles d’Orléans, une prison en porte-à-faux. Co-texte courtois et ancrage référentiel: les ballades de la captivité dans l’édition d’Antoine Vérard (1509) JEAN-CLAUDE MÜHLETHALER

Carmina captivi principis ista lego – Antonio d’Asti

A

U passage du Moyen Age à la Renaissance, la prison et l’exil sont – faut-il le trappeler? – une expérience vécue pour bien des poètes:1 Jean de Garencières, Jean Regnier, Charles d’Orléans, François Villon, l’anonyme prisonnier du château de Loches,2 Clément Marot et François Ier sont parmi les exemples les plus célèbres. Malgré le poids des événements – la guerre surtout, puis les conflits religieux – et l’émergence, parallèle, d’une subjectivité susceptible d’exprimer une expérience individuelle,3 la prison reste un lieu emblématique de la littérature amoureuse et didactique. Le vécu s’y mêle avec l’allégorie dans des rapports, des proportions, qui changent d’un texte à l’autre; déconcerté par l’ambiguïté du discours lyrique, le critique perçoit la possibilité de lectures divergentes, voire contradictoires. De l’effet référentiel ou de l’enjeu allégorique, lequel lui faut-il privilégier, quand l’expérience de la captivité est préparée et éclairée par un fait de culture?4 – comment reconnaître sous le voile de la fiction courtoise des implications biographiques que les auteurs, fidèles aux conventions du registre choisi, tendent à gommer? – les variations des effets, sensibles au sein d’un même recueil, permettent-elles d’appliquer une seule grille de lecture à l’ensemble des pièces?

1

Cf. Poirion, Le Poète et le prince, pp. 133–39. Cf. K. Kaspryk, ‘L’expérience de la prison et de l’exil’ (l’article parle de Charles d’Orléans, François Villon, Clément Marot). 2 Cf. R. Ménage, ‘Deux poètes en prison: Maître Jean Regnier et le prisonnier de Loches’, Senefiance 5 (1978: Exclus et systèmes d’exclusion dans la littérature et la civilisation médiévales), 239–49. 3 Classen, Die autobiographische Lyrik, a tenté de donner une vue d’ensemble du phénomène. Le chapitre 5 est consacré à Charles d’Orléans. 4 La formule est d’Alice Planche, Charles d’Orléans ou la recherche d’un langage (Paris, 1975), pp. 233–41: ‘L’inspecteur des prisons’.

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Les textes résistent le plus souvent à une lecture univoque. Ils oscillent entre l’expérience vécue, suggérée par l’ancrage référentiel, souvent fugitif, et le recours au sensus allegoricus qui, transcendant le cas particulier, invite à y reconnaître un récit exemplaire, riche d’enseignements. La structure en miroirs de La Fontaine amoureuse de Guillaume de Machaut5 illustre bien ce balancement déconcertant. Le narrateur-témoin y crée un premier effet de distanciation lorsqu’il cède la parole à un autre énonciateur, prince et amant. Au cours de sa complainte, celui-ci évoque le mythe de Céyx et Alcyoné, dans lequel se reflète sa propre situation, celle d’un amant que la fatalité a séparé de sa dame. Le va-etvient que le prince instaure entre le mythe et son expérience personnelle la dote d’une aura mythologique qui lui confère, semble-t-il, un statut d’exemplarité. Le parallélisme est pourtant loin d’être parfait, car le rapprochement pèche à la base: le récit de Céyx et Alcyoné contredit, par le passage d’un statut d’euphorie (le couple réuni) à un statut de dysphorie (la mort du mari), le mouvement de la complainte – et celui de La Fontaine en général! – qui aboutit à une maîtrise de la tristesse initiale du prince. Comment interpréter d’autre part le contraste entre un mouvement général de consolatio et l’insertion, dans la seconde partie du texte, du rêve d’Hécube annonçant la destruction de Troyes, et du rêve, apocalyptique celui-là, des cent sénateurs romains? Ces rêves prémonitoires, dont le message néfaste va s’inscrire tragiquement dans l’histoire, peuvent-ils servir de preuve à la ‘réalité’ d’un rêve6 (celui du prince et du poète) qui, justement, n’est pas prémonitoire puisqu’il permet de résoudre sur-le-champ un problème d’ordre privé, la rencontre entre la dame et l’amant? La subjectivité amoureuse s’oppose aux implications politiques, la conquête privée de la joie au cours inquiétant de l’histoire: le contraste entre les registres courtois et politique ouvre des failles dans le texte, et le lecteur, interpellé par l’art subtil de Machaut, s’interroge sur l’intentionnalité de La Fontaine amoureuse. L’emblème de l’œuvre, la fontaine (vv. 1313–40), ne reflète-t-elle pas cette même ambiguïté en opposant les sculptures à l’extérieur et celles à l’intérieur? Sur le marbre de la fontaine le spectateur n’aperçoit que la séduction d’Hélène par Pâris, tandis que la guerre de Troie échappe à son regard: la disposition des scènes occulte les conséquences politiques du rapt de la princesse, de sorte que la fontaine apparaît, en un premier temps, comme une célé5

Guillaume de Machaut, La Fontaine amoureuse, éd. et trad. par Jacqueline Cerquiglini (Paris, 1993). Sur la prison, voir les remarques aux pp. 14–15 de l’introduction. 6 Si Richard Trachsler, ‘Cent sénateurs, neuf soleils et un songe. Encore sur Machaut, la sibylle et le chaînon manquant’, Romania 116 (1998), 188–214, peut répondre par l’affirmative, c’est qu’il nie l’importance du contenu des différents rêves (p. 208), évacuant le problème posé par les oppositions entre éléments englobés et éléments englobants dans La Fontaine amoureuse. Chez notre poète le choix de figurativités contrastantes n’est pas innocent (un tel choix n’est d’ailleurs jamais aléatoire en littérature), car Machaut est bien plus subtil que ne le suggère le critique, quand il lui reproche d’avoir pillé (ce qui est vrai) l’Ovide moralisé (p. 194). L’originalité du poète champenois est à chercher ailleurs, dans l’utilisation et la récriture signifiantes qu’il fait d’un matériau préexistant.

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bration de la passion amoureuse vécue sous l’égide de Vénus . . . pourtant qualifiée de ‘masquerelle’ (v. 1320). Envers et endroit, être et paraître sont au centre de la subtile réflexion que Machaut mène sur la courtoisie et sa justification possible. On a néanmoins pu lire cette œuvre comme un texte univoque et ancré dans le référentiel: il s’agirait d’une consolation adressée au duc Jean de Berry, au moment où celui-ci, victime des vicissitudes du conflit avec l’Angleterre, allait partir en exil. Seulement, les substantifs d’‘ostage’ (v. 398) et ‘cage’ (v. 402), bien présents dans la complainte, sont employés dans une logique amoureuse, fidèle à la poétique des troubadours et des trouvères, chez qui l’acte d’écrire présuppose l’absence de la dame. Dans le dit de Machaut, placé sous l’égide de Morpheus (autre titre de l’œuvre!), l’ancrage référentiel est d’autant plus difficile à saisir qu’il s’agit d’un songe. D’un songe qui finit par un clin d’œil au public: ‘dites moy, fu ce bien songié?’ (v. 2848) crée un effet de distance ironique en focalisant l’intérêt sur l’aspect esthétique plutôt que sur le contenu de l’œuvre. L’énonciateur suggère que la littérature, comparable en cela aux messages envoyés par le dieu du Sommeil, génère l’illusion de la réalité par sa perfection formelle. Mythe, songe, fiction et ironie! Les pistes se brouillent, le statut de l’exil vacille, et l’exemplarité du je lyrique se perd7 au fil des glissements successifs; son identité, reflétée dans des miroirs déformants, devient floue et risque de nous échapper. Quelle valeur attribuera-t-on à l’aventure de l’amant, placée sous des éclairages qui changent au fil de l’œuvre? Selon Guillaume de Machaut la littérature est évasion, une parenthèse de rêve. La Fontaine amoureuse propose un discours travaillé, aux miroitements déroutants, dans lequel le ‘vécu’ est contaminé par le songe et se trouve pris dans un double projet à la fois éthique et esthétique. Au contraire de Machaut, Jean Froissart distingue soigneusement le récit et la glose, le sens littéral et le sens allégorique dans La Prison amoureuse. Il raconte et interprète aussi bien les récits mythologiques intégrés à l’œuvre que l’expérience de la captivité, laquelle justifie le recours à l’écriture. L’écriture est l’unique réponse possible à la distance et à la séparation: Rose (le prisonnier) et Flos (le délégué du narrateur) n’échangent-ils pas ‘lettres, epistles, escriptions, traitiés amoureus, balades, virelais, complaintes’?8 L’exil et la prison sont liés à la création poétique au point de devenir l’emblème de l’œuvre. Le titre, alliant un substantif concret et un adjectif abstrait, annonce la récupération symbolique d’une expérience qui, à la base, n’était pas nécessairement porteuse d’un sens amoureux. Une nouvelle pertinence sémantique s’élabore sur les ruines du sens littéral: sous une figurativité toute médiévale, La Prison amoureuse illustre le processus créateur qui, selon Paul Ricœur,9 est à la base de tout discours lyrique. A la fin du texte Flos, magister 7

Même si certaines conclusions semblent abusives, M. J. Ehrhardt, ‘Machaut’s Dit de la Fontaine amoureuse, the Choice of Paris, and the Duties of Rulers’, Philological Quarterly 59 (1980), 119–39, a bien mis en évidence le malaise que génère le texte de Machaut. 8 La Prison amoureuse, éd. par Anthime Fourrier (Paris, 1974), p. 170. 9 La Métaphore vive (Paris, 1975), notamment p. 209.

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amoris et nouvel Ovide,10 justifie le processus de ‘métaphorisation’,11 grâce auquel la réalité a pu être maîtrisée, invitant Rose à prendre conscience du parcours effectué, à reconnaître que son expérience devait nécessairement aboutir à une œuvre littéraire, celle qui s’achève sous nos yeux: coers jolis et amoureus, qui aimme en fourme et maniere comme vous fetes, ne poet vivre ne resgner sans estre emprisonnés. (p. 171)

La captivité de Wenceslas de Luxembourg après la bataille de Baesweiler (1371), arrière-fond suggéré par la présence de noms propres et d’emblèmes politiques dans le texte,12 est interprétée et récupérée à travers l’idéal courtois. Le prince répète, à sa manière, l’expérience d’Yvain dans Le Chevalier au Lion,13 quand le héros de Chrétien de Troyes, enfermé dans le château de Laudine, se découvre une vocation, celle du prisonnier d’amour (heureux). Intériorisée, la prison devient métaphorique, et le sensus allegoricus qui, jusqu’alors, était resté lettre morte, se libère et réoriente le parcours du chevalier: Yvain a enfin compris avec le cœur, ainsi que Calogrenant l’exigeait de ses auditeurs. La conformité au modèle littéraire (romanesque et lyrique) garantit le caractère exemplaire de l’expérience du prince dans La Prison amoureuse. Dans le domaine amoureux, Froissart procède comme le fera Christine de Pizan14 dans une intention morale lorsque, pour consoler Marie de Berry, elle lui rappellera à la suite de Bernard de Clairvaux que ‘ceste vie mortele puet estre a ung chascun figuree a la prison’ (p. 6). Chez Froissart comme chez Christine la glose permet de déceler le général dans l’individuel, de donner un sens et une dignité à la solitude du captif ou à la douleur de la princesse. Grâce au commentaire l’expérience individuelle est sublimée, et le clerc – expert en amour et maître d’éthique – s’érige en conseiller des grands. A travers l’écriture il conquiert la dignité du præceptor principis. Chez Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart et Christine de Pizan, l’expérience de la prison est toujours l’expérience d’un autre, jamais elle n’est celle du locuteur. Charles d’Orléans, au contraire, est à la fois le prisonnier d’Angleterre et l’auteur des ballades, chansons et complaintes. Que reste-t-il chez lui de la distance critique qui permet au clerc d’interpréter et de sublimer une expérience? 10 Cf. Kevin Brownlee, ‘Ovide et le Moi poétique ‘moderne’ à la fin du Moyen Âge: Jean

11

12 13 14

Froissart et Christine de Pizan’, dans Modernité du Moyen Âge. Le défi du passé, éd. par Brigitte Cazelles et Charles Méla (Genève, 1990), pp. 154–61. Karl-Heinz Göller rattache ce processus de métaphorisation à la pensée exégétique médiévale, montrant avec quelle facilité les textes glissent du sensus litteralis aux différents sens allégoriques (‘The Metaphorical Prison as Exegetical Image of Man’, Fifteenth-Century Studies 17 [1991], 121–45). Cf. Claude Thiry, ‘Allégorie et histoire dans la Prison amoureuse de Froissart’, Studi Francesi 21 (1977), 15–29. Le Chevalier au Lion ou le Roman d’Yvain, éd. et trad. par David F. Hult (Paris, 1994), vv. 1511–79. The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life, éd. et trad. par Josette A. Wisman (New York et London, 1984).

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On a remarqué à quel point le thème de la prison perd, sinon en importance, du moins en implications référentielles dans les rondeaux écrits à Blois.15 Le jeu littéraire l’emporte sur le souvenir de la captivité, et la prison se présente désormais comme un espace allégorique et intériorisé: voici les ‘prisons de Pensee’ (rondeau 31416 [CCCLXXXIII]) ou la ‘prison Dedalus’ (rondeau 331 [CCCCXI]), qui n’évoquent plus un espace perçu comme ‘réel’, mais traduisent l’enfermement du sujet dans la mélancolie. Charles d’Orléans renoue avec les conventions figuratives du lyrisme courtois quand, dans le sillage des rondeaux de Simonnet Caillau et de Thignonville, il prolonge la métaphore qu’il a lancée au rondeau 314, exhortant Reconfort et Espoir à faire ‘l’aumosne aux prisonniers’ (rondeau 315 [CCCLXXXXVII]). Le refrain fait écho à un refrain d’Alain Chartier,17 de sorte que le rondeau se présente à la fois comme un jeu littéraire et un jeu de société. L’instance d’énonciation reste implicite dans le texte, instaurant ainsi une distance – ironique? – du locuteur à l’égard des pauvres cœurs amoureux, pour lesquels il n’éprouve aucune pitié: [I]lz n’ont ne vivres ne deniers, Crians de fain; il est ainsy. (rondeau 315, vv. 5–6)

Cette fois la distance n’exprime pas, comme chez Froissart, la supériorité cognitive du clerc, car il n’y a pas de place dans le rondeau pour un faire interprétatif – moral ou courtois. Il s’agit d’un désengagement au niveau du thymique, car celui qui évoque la prison ne se sent pas concerné: le locuteur constate un état de fait, voilà tout! Il évite même de parler explicitement d’amour, se démarquant de son modèle, ce rondeau d’Alain Chartier dans lequel un amant implore la dame d’avoir pitié de lui. Chez Charles d’Orléans le ludique l’emporte sur l’expression du sentiment, et l’émotion que font naître les ‘prisons de Pensee’ (rondeau 314), dans lesquelles est enfermé son cœur, s’effiloche au fil des rondeaux échangés avec les amis.18 Le lecteur a beau voir s’ébaucher l’aveu d’un malaise, cette voix personnelle s’évanouit trop vite pour que le je soit saisissable19 dans le co-texte20

15 Cf. Paul Zumthor, ‘Charles d’Orléans et le langage de l’allégorie’, dans Langue, texte,

16

17

18

19 20

énigme (Paris, 1975), pp. 203 et 210. Nous ne saurions suivre Alice Planche, ‘Présence et absence’, pp. 400–1, qui lit aussi les rondeaux à la lumière de la captivité anglaise. Les chiffres arabes renvoient à notre édition des Ballades et rondeaux; les chiffres romains entre parenthèses sont ceux des éd. par Champion, quand la numérotation ne correspond pas. La Belle Dame sans mercy et les poésies lyriques, éd. par Arthur Piaget (Lille and Genève, 1949), p. 57: ‘Au povre prisonnier, ma dame,/ Donnez l’aumosne de liesce’ (vv. 1–2). Cf. Alice Planche, Charles d’Orléans ou la Recherche d’un langage, p. 233. Voir aussi les rondeaux de Fredet (no. V) et de Blosseville (no. LXXXIV) dans l’édition de Gaston Raynaud, Rondeaux et autres poésies du XVe siècle (Paris, 1889; New York, 1968). Sur Charles d’Orléans, je insaisissable, voir les contributions récentes de F.-M. Notz, ‘Le regard et l’exil’; J.-C. Mühlethaler, ‘ ‘‘J’ayme qui m’ayme’’ ’. Sur la différence entre co-texte (liens intertextuels in præsentia) et contexte (liens inter-

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que représente la suite des pièces lyriques; des liens se tissent entre les rondeaux, qui conditionnent notre lecture, notre perception de l’’aveu’. Plutôt que de Froissart, le Charles d’Orléans de Blois paraît proche de Guillaume de Machaut, du brouillage des pistes qui caractérise l’écriture dans La Fontaine amoureuse. Le poids du vécu serait-il plus présent dans les ballades, françaises ou anglaises, de l’exil? Le choix d’une forme fixe qui s’inscrit dans la tradition courtoise interdit pourtant de les lire comme une confession où la figurativité amoureuse, voile transparent, renverrait nécessairement à la réalité quotidienne de la prison. Toutefois, malgré l’objectivation du sujet à travers les procédés de l’écriture lyrique, le voile semble se déchirer à certains moments et, en passant d’une ballade à l’autre, le lecteur a parfois l’impression de voir le sens littéral l’emporter sur le sens métaphorique.21 Le flottement que font naître ces changements d’éclairage pourrait inciter aussi bien à lire le tout en clé biographique qu’à décoder chaque occurrence de la prison dans une logique courtoise. Une telle démarche était possible dans La Prison amoureuse, dont la cohérence et le double niveau de lecture sont explicitement revendiqués. La suite des ballades par contre propose un discours lyrique disséminé dans des unités qui, se suffisant (aussi) à elles-mêmes, jouissent d’une certaine autonomie face à l’ensemble. Le recueil se prête mal à une grille de lecture immuable dans la mesure où le rapport entre les sens littéral et allégorique change d’une pièce à l’autre: certaines ballades résistent à l’interprétation biographique, d’autres rentrent difficilement dans le schéma courtois. La critique a parfois cédé au mirage d’une confession sincère, lorsqu’elle a lu les ballades du prince comme le reflet des hauts et des bas psychologiques par lesquels le captif aurait passé – et ceci au point que Daniel Poirion22 a pu voir en Dangier, figure d’opposant héritée du Roman de la Rose, une personnification des Anglais. Mais aucun spécialiste n’a jamais nié les difficultés que posent les ballades de la captivité, oscillant entre le code courtois et une émotion qui traduirait l’expérience de l’exil. Les critiques ne cèdent pas sans autre à la tentation de voir en Charles d’Orléans un poète maudit, comme l’avait fait jadis Théodore de Banville.23 Face au risque de s’approprier le poète par une lecture (post-) romantique, ne serait-il pas judicieux de se demander comment les contemporains du prince de mélancolie ont perçu ses poésies? Ont-ils éprouvé les mêmes hésitations, le même malaise que la critique moderne? A notre connaissance, la textuels in absentia), voir notre article ‘ ‘‘Gardez vous bien de ce Fauveau!’’: Co-textualisation et symbolique animale dans un rondeau de Pierre d’Anché’, Reinardus 11 (1998), 131–48, qui porte également sur le recueil de Vérard. 21 Cf. A. C. Spearing, ‘Prison, Writing, Absence’; A. E. B. Coldiron, ‘Translatio, Translation’, notamment pp. 184–92: ‘The Prisoner Paroled: Discontinuity and Lyric Authorship’. 22 Le Poète et le prince, p. 285. Pour un bref survol de cette tendance dans la critique, voir le début de notre article, déjà cité, ‘ ‘‘J’ayme qui m’ayme’’ ’. A la bibliographie indiquée, on ajoutera l’ouvrage de vulgarisation de Jean-Marc Varaut, Poètes en prison, chap. I: ‘Charles d’Orléans, le livre des heures captives’. 23 Cf. notre édition des Ballades et rondeaux, introduction, p. 19.

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démarche n’a pas été tentée à ce jour, alors que des indices existent, qui permettent de retracer au moins une certaine réception de l’œuvre. Aux yeux des contemporains le lien entre la captivité du duc et son activité poétique était bien établi. Dans le prologue qu’il place en tête de sa traduction latine des poésies de Charles d’Orléans, Antonio d’Asti compare le prince à Ovide exilé dans la région Pontique. Pour Martin Le Franc, qui évoque le ‘livre qu’il fit en Inglant’,24 ou René d’Anjou la prison représente un cadre favorable à l’éclosion d’une lyrique amoureuse digne d’admiration: Car prins fu des Anglois et mené en servaige, Et tant y demouray qu’en aprins le langaige, Par lequel fus acoint de dame belle et saige et d’elle si espris qu’a Amours fis hommaige, Dont mains beaux dictz dictié bien prisez davantage.25

Par le choix des mots, l’avant-dernier vers fait directement écho au titre de l’œuvre, Le Cuer d’amours espris: l’épitaphe du duc d’Orléans témoigne d’une expérience comparable à celle que vit le Cœur dans le roman de René d’Anjou. Comme chez Froissart, la prison n’intéresse pas en tant que telle, et les implications politiques de l’exil sont passées sous silence. On lit les ballades, chansons et rondeaux avec l’horizon d’attente créé par des siècles de lyrisme d’amour, de sorte que l’ensemble des textes écrits pendant la période anglaise paraît récupérable dans une perspective courtoise: le seul présupposé biographique postulé est l’amour que le prisonnier aurait éprouvé pour une dame d’outre-Manche. L’indifférence des auteurs, contemporains de Charles d’Orléans, face à la réalité quotidienne de la prison est flagrante. Mais le public en général y était-il aussi insensible? Les Fortunes et adversitez de Jean Regnier,26 si riches en effets référentiels, détails concrets et indications temporelles, suggèrent que des précisions biographiques pouvaient susciter à l’époque un certain intérêt, avoir peut-être une valeur en soi – même si la captivité, placée sous le signe de la patience, s’y érige en expérience exemplaire, comparable à celle de Job. Du point de vue de la réception ‘courtoise’ de Charles d’Orléans, La Chasse 24 Le Champion des dames, éd. par Robert Deschaux (Paris, 1999), vol. III, v. 11914. Cf.

Pierre Champion, ‘Du succès de l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans et de ses imitateurs jusqu’au XVIe siècle’, dans Mélanges Emile Picot (Paris, 1913), I, 409–20, qui cite les textes de Martin Le Franc (p. 412) et d’Antonio d’Asti (pp. 413–14), secrétaire du duc entre 1450 et 1453. 25 Le Livre du cuer d’amours espris, éd. par Susan Wharton (Paris, 1980), p. 136. 26 Les Fortunes et adversitez de Jean Regnier, éd. par Eugénie Droz (Paris, 1923). Cf. Patrizio Tucci, ‘La poesia di Jean Regnier, I. Orientamenti critici’ (Padova, 1979), chap. III, 2 (‘Il Livre de la Prison’), qui relève à quel point Jean Regnier est conscient du caractère déroutant de son œuvre, sachant bien qu’il lui faut l’adapter à l’attente d’un public habitué aux conventions courtoises (p. 121). Récemment, Claude Thiry est revenu sur les implications référentielles et politiques de ce texte (‘ ‘‘Que mes maistres soient contens’’: Jean Regnier, prisonnier, au carrefour de Bourgogne et de France’, ‘L’Heure encore de mon escrire’: aspects de la littérature de Bourgogne sous Philippe le Bon et Charles le Téméraire, éd. par C. Thiry [Louvain, 1997], pp. 183–205).

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d’Amours et Le Depart d’Amours, édités par Antoine Vérard en 1509,27 sont d’un intérêt particulier. Les deux récits allégoriques, l’un attribué à Octovien de SaintGelais, l’autre à Blaise d’Auriol de Toulouse (fol. aaiii), se complètent en retraçant les étapes d’un amour, de l’éclosion du sentiment à la mort de la dame, puis au retrait de l’Amant Parfait dans le manoir de Nonchaloir. Tout lecteur de Charles d’Orléans y reconnaît le mouvement qui, dans le manuscrit personnel du duc (BN MS fr. 25458), conduit de La Retenue d’Amours au Songe en Complainte. Les emprunts à ces textes sont multiples, et le recueil de Vérard contient un bon nombre de ballades et de rondeaux du prince (cf. infra), de sorte qu’Arthur Piaget28 a pu parler d’une ‘édition gothique’ de Charles d’Orléans. L’imprimé propose une anthologie lyrique, que sous-tend une structure narrative, même si celle-ci s’efface de plus en plus dans la seconde partie du recueil. L’ensemble se présente à la fois comme un manuel de comportement courtois et un répertoire des multiples possibilités offertes par l’écriture lyrique. Ethique et esthétique se complètent pour en faire un art de seconde rhétorique amoureuse: Comment, apres que l’Amant Parfait et sa dame, l’ung au verger d’Amour et l’aultre en sa maison de Lyesse, ont fait plusieurs rondeaulx et ballades d’autres amoureux et amoureuses, l’Amant Parfait, apres son repos et esbat prins, se remect plus fort que devant a faire plusieurs rondeaulx et ballades de luy mesme. (fol. R2)

La rubrique évoque deux caractéristiques fondamentales de l’écriture d’amour à la fin du Moyen Age: l’absence de l’être aimé et l’imprécision référentielle du je lyrique, pronom qui peut prendre en charge aussi bien les sentiments d’autrui que ceux éprouvés par l’auteur au moment où il écrit. La poésie naît d’une absence qu’elle cherche à combler, et la prison apparaît comme un espace privilégié, à travers lequel s’exprime la souffrance de la séparation. De même que la tradition rhétorique connaît les lieux de la commiseratio, dont celui d’être éloigné d’une personne qui nous est chère,29 une série de huitains évoque les épreuves topiques du parcours amoureux à la suite du Depart d’Amours. La prison (fol. cc4v) y figure à même titre que l’oubli, l’absence, la maladie, la folie ou la mort: Si l’ung des deux estoit emprisonné, Que de l’autre en eust perdu la veue, L’en dit qu’il a son per habandonné Par sa malle et longue detenue. Mais n’est pas vray, car il actend l’yssue. Puis luy sera ung jeu d’Amours donné, 27 La Chasse et le Depart d’Amours (Paris, 1509) (BN MS Rés. Vélins 583). Description chez

Mary Beth Winn, éd., La Chasse d’Amours attribuée à Octovien de Saint-Gelais (Paris et Genève, 1984), introduction, pp. ix–xi. 28 Arthur Piaget, ‘Une édition gothique de Charles d’Orléans’, Romania 21 (1982), 581–96. 29 Cf. Cicéron, De inventione, I, lv: ‘Duodecimus per quem disiunctio deploratur ab aliquo’ (Dans le douzième, on déplore une séparation . . .). Sur la persistance des loci tout au long du Moyen Age, cf. Jean Lecointe, L’Idéal et la différence. La perception de la personnalité littéraire à la Renaissance (Genève, 1993), pp. 407–8.

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Et si la court leans se perpetue, L’aymer du cueur ne luy aura pas osté.

Conformément à la logique allégorique qui marque le recueil de son sceau, la prison est perçue dans son exemplarité, comme l’était la chasse au cerf amoureux dans la partie attribuée à Octovien de Saint-Gelais. Loin d’être l’instrument d’une confession, la poésie sert à exprimer des sentiments codifiés qui, attribués à l’Amant Parfait, reflètent l’idéal courtois. Dans le recueil la valeur référentielle du je s’estompe, et il paraît difficile d’accorder à la prison le statut d’expérience vécue ou de déceler, sous le voile du désir amoureux, la nostalgie de l’exilé politique, comme l’avait suggéré Daniel Poirion30 en lisant les poésies du duc d’Orléans dans son manuscrit personnel. Si l’on parcourt le seul imprimé, on y reconnaîtra de préférence un élément figuratif conventionnel, une métaphore héritée du lyrisme d’amour médiéval. La ballade 2 de Charles d’Orléans, qui suit la rubrique au folio R2, offre un bel exemple de la prison utilisée au sens figuré, dans un language courtois qui évacue la possibilité du sensus litteralis. En voici le début avec les variantes graphiques que présente la version imprimée:31 Vueillez voz yeulx emprisonner Et sur moy plus ne les gectez! (ballade 2, vv. 1–2)

C’est la première ballade du prince qu’on rencontre dans le recueil de Vérard. Elle ouvre une série d’emprunts lyriques qui assurent la transition entre La Chasse et La Départie d’Amours. En tournant les pages à partir du folio R2, le lecteur reconnaît: — les ballades 2 à 6, 74, 7 et 8; — les ballades 36 (fol. R3v) à 54; — les ballades 9 (fol. S2) à 35; — après un choix de rondeaux, chansons et caroles, les ballades 100 à 103, 105, 106, 115, juste avant le début du Depart d’Amours, au folio aa2; — les ballades 57 (fol. cc5v) à 59, 61, 63, 69 et 70, après la fin du Depart d’Amours (fol. cc4v); — à la suite du Songe en Complainte, les ballades 72 et 73 (fol. ee1) précèdent une série de rondeaux de Charles d’Orléans. L’ordre des pièces, par rapport au manuscrit personnel de Charles d’Orléans, est profondément perturbé, et les ballades sont disséminées à différents endroits du recueil. Mais – et ceci importe plus à notre propos – le choix se limite au fonds primitif des ballades du prince, celles qu’il a rapportées d’Angleterre en 1440. Des ballades 75 à 97, plus tardives, aucune n’est présente à l’appel, comme si Vérard avait pillé l’un des manuscrits conservés actuellement au British Museum (les MSS C et L), dans lesquels les textes de Blois n’ont pas été transcrits. La 30 ‘Charles d’Orléans et l’Angleterre: un secret désir’, dans Mélanges de philologie et de

littérature romanes offerts à Jeanne Wathelet-Willem. Marche Romane (1978), 505–27. 31 Sauf indication contraire, nous citons les textes de Charles d’Orléans d’après l’édition

de Vérard.

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présence de presque la moitié des rondeaux dans l’anthologie, genre que Charles d’Orléans n’a pratiqué qu’après son retour en France, contredit toutefois une telle hypothèse. Le choix des ballades obéit, semble-t-il, à une logique co-textuelle, c’est-à-dire qu’il a été fait en fonction de La Chasse et du Depart: les pièces lyriques doivent être compatibles avec le cadre allégorique et amoureux dans lequel elles viennent s’insérer. Ainsi, les ballades échangées entre le duc d’Orléans et le duc de Bourgogne au sujet de sa libération (nos 110–12 et 116–17) ont été écartées, de même que disparaît la célèbre ballade de l’exil, écrite en 1433 – ‘En regardant vers le païs de France’ (ballade 98 [LXXV]) – et où la patrie se substitue à la femme aimée. L’intrusion d’un vécu non courtois y était-elle trop marquée? En plaçant les poésies de Charles d’Orléans sous un éclairage inédit, le recueil d’Antoine Vérard invite à une relecture qui conduit à s’interroger sur certains traits fondamentaux de l’écriture du prince. Les ballades adressées à Philippe le Bon en vue de la libération imminente du prisonnier se démarquent, dans l’ensemble de l’œuvre, par leur caractère diplomatique. Explicitement ancrées dans l’histoire, liées à l’occasion qui les a vu naître, elles paraissent avoir dérangé le responsable de l’anthologie publiée par Vérard.32 La ballade 106 (LXXXIII), destinée au duc de Bourbon sur le point de retourner en France, figure pourtant dans l’anthologie. Seulement, le nom du destinataire a été remplacé par une personnification, ‘Gentil Honneur’ (fol. aa1v). Dans l’envoi, le nom du secrétaire disparaît également: ‘Sy ay chargié a Guillaume Cadier’ se transforme en ‘Si ay chargé a mon desir trescher’. Le désir à la place du nom propre! On ne saurait mieux illustrer la tentative d’effacer l’effet référentiel au nom de la logique courtoise,33 exprimer combien le vécu peut déranger dans un co-texte allégorique. Le quotidien ne fait pas toujours bon ménage avec la sublimation amoureuse. Une impression de malaise se dégage de l’anthologie de Vérard, à laquelle font écho les doutes des critiques (cf. supra), quand ils se demandent s’il est licite de lire les poésies de Charles d’Orléans en clé biographique. Ce malaise nous intéresse dans la mesure où le traitement du thème de la prison, au croisement du symbolique et du référentiel, doit nécessairement s’en ressentir. Par ses réticences, certaines altérations aussi, l’édition de Vérard suggère quels textes, trop marqués par le poids du vécu, ont résisté à une récupération courtoise, et ceci dès la fin du Moyen Age. Elle nous offre, sinon une grille de lecture, du moins des indices pour identifier, parmi les ballades, celles qui aux yeux des contemporains de Charles d’Orléans étaient les poésies d’un captif plutôt que d’un amoureux. Le corpus retenu sont les ballades 25 (XXVII), 26 (XXV), 40, 42, 103 (LXXX), 105 (LXXXII), 106 (LXXXIII) et – voilà qui est fait pour nous interpeller! – la ballade 104 (LXXXI), absente du recueil de Vérard. 32 Vérard lui-même? Sur ses improbables relations avec Octovien de Saint-Gelais, cf.

Mary Beth Winn, Antoine Vérard. Parisian Publisher, 1485–1512: Prologues, Poems and Presentation (Genève, 1997), pp. 92–94. 33 Le souci de cohérence allégorique s’effiloche toutefois au fil de l’anthologie. A la fin du recueil, au fol. ee2, le nom de Fredet est conservé dans le rondeau 61 (xviii).

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Dans l’imprimé les ballades 40 et 42 apparaissent avant les autres pièces, aux folios R4v et R5. Elles sont précédées et suivies des mêmes ballades que dans le manuscrit personnel du duc, dont l’ordre est respecté à l’intérieur de la série qui va de la ballade 36 à la ballade 54. Comme le suggéraient René d’Anjou ou Martin Le Franc, la prison y apparaît comme le lieu privilégié de l’écriture amoureuse et poétique: De balader j’ay beau loisir, Autres desduictz me sont cassez. Prisonnier suis, d’Amours martir. Helas! Et n’est-ce pas assez? (ballade 40, vv. 31–34)

Il suffit d’enlever la virgule ou de la déplacer après ‘Amours’ pour prendre conscience à quel point la syntaxe est ambiguë, à quel point aussi le sens de ‘prisonnier’ peut varier selon la lecture qu’on propose de l’envoi: le je est-il à la fois captif et amant malheureux, ou prisonnier d’Amour, martyr de surcroît? Au début de la ballade, le locuteur interpelle Fortune, afin qu’elle cesse de le persécuter. Les deux premières strophes pourraient exprimer le désespoir du prisonnier d’Angleterre, à ceci près que la terre d’exil n’est pas précisée et que l’évocation de Fortune souligne la portée générale de l’expérience individuelle. Aucun lien amoureux n’est évoqué pour justifier l’état de dysphorie dans lequel se trouve le locuteur: sa douleur semble intéresser en tant que telle. Mais voici la strophe III qui introduit l’éloignement de la dame, mal suprême dont souffre le prisonnier, invitant à relire la ballade tout entière en clé courtoise. Ce mouvement de récupération, proche de celui observé dans La Prison amoureuse de Froissart, assure la dominance de l’optique courtoise dans la ballade. Le processus de métaphorisation s’amorce dès la seconde strophe, dans laquelle le vers 12, sensiblement différent dans le manuscrit et l’imprimé, invite à prolonger notre réflexion: Plus ne puis en ce point durer Et a Mercy mercy je crie.

Plus ne puis en ce point durer Aa! mercy je vous en crye. (ballade 40, vv. 11–12)

L’idée, poétiquement suggestive, de demander pitié à Pitié disparaît dans le recueil, de même qu’elle n’apparaît pas la ballade anglaise correspondante: ‘A, a, Fortune! Mercy, y cry, mercy!’ (v. 1421).34 En prenant sa place, Fortune apparaît à la fois sous les traits d’une suzeraine toute-puissante et d’une belle dame sans merci. Le cri de désespoir du locuteur porte en lui l’illusion que la déesse pourrait être perméable au sentiment, qu’elle pourrait être sensible à la loi du don/contredon qui régit les rapports amoureux. La variante imprimée étend non seulement la perception courtoise à l’univers tout entier, mais tisse en même temps un lien co-textuel fort avec la ballade 41 qui suit. Selon l’envoi Fortune n’est pas insensible à l’amour, du moins aux yeux d’un locuteur dont le désir

34 Fortunes Stabilnes, éd. Arn, p. 187.

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façonne la perception du monde. Chez Charles d’Orléans affleure le souvenir de la Fortuna meretrix, aguichante, dont la Renaissance fera une dame galante.35 Les mêmes vers n’éveillent sans doute pas les mêmes associations en Angleterre36 ou en France vers le milieu du XVe siècle, et dans le Paris de Vérard au début du XVIe: Amour, s’il vous plaist a mander* *mns.: commander A Fortune de me cherir, Je pense joye recouvrer. (ballade 41, vv. 25–27)

Selon un procédé habituel à Charles d’Orléans, la ballade 42 reprend la problématique soulevée par la ballade 41 pour la placer sous un éclairage différent. A l’occasion du premier mai, tout accord entre Amour et Fortune paraît impossible. Ce sont des forces antagonistes, l’une source de biens, l’autre de maux: aux dons d’Amour, qu’évoque la première strophe, la seconde oppose la guerre que Fortune a toujours menée contre le je. L’antithèse initiale débouche sur la solution de la troisième strophe, quand le locuteur, incapable de partager la joie générale, décide finalement de ne pas participer à la fête et se replie sur soi: Pource reclus me tiendray en penser, Treshumblement, de toute ma puissance.

(ballade 42, vv. 32–33)

Il ne s’agit plus d’une prison imposée par autrui, mais d’une réclusion volontaire, d’un choix réfléchi – celui de l’hermitage! A l’instar de la relation entre Fortune et Amour, le thème de la prison est placé sous un éclairage changeant. La démarche est à la fois récurrente dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans et un trait caractéristique de l’édition de Vérard: ne s’agissait-il pas, entre autres, de proposer une anthologie variée et contrastée (cf. supra) de la poésie courtoise et, soit dit en passant, aussi grivoise?37 Prison ou hermitage, peu importe! L’un et l’autre intéressent dans la mesure où ce sont des lieux, à travers lesquels le discours amoureux fait entendre ses différentes voix. Le lyrisme de Charles d’Orléans se prêtait admirablement bien à une telle lecture. A la page S5 du recueil de Vérard, la ballade 25 (XXVII) confirme les enjeux symboliques de ‘la prison de desplaisance’ (refrain). L’alliance d’un substantif concret et d’un substantif abstrait, déterminant la nature du lieu (pourquoi donc l’écrire avec majuscule?), n’en est pas le seul indice. La prison est mise en parallèle avec le ‘desert’ du vers 10 et le ‘patis’ du vers 11, dans lesquels on reconnaît – à condition d’admettre le sens de maigre pâturage38 – deux autres lieux de l’exclusion. En plus, le prisonnier n’est pas le je lyrique, mais le cœur. C’est lui qui, dans l’envoi, charge le locuteur de faire connaître ses souffrances à la dame: 35 Cf. Yves Giraud, ‘La Fortune dame galante’, dans L’Imaginaire du changement en France

au XVIe siècle, éd. par C.-G. Dubois (Bordeaux, 1984), pp. 19–37. 36 Cf. Fortunes Stabilnes, éd. Arn, vv. 1468–72. 37 Cf. notre article, déjà cité, ‘ ‘‘Gardez vous bien de ce Fauveau!’’ ’ 38 A moins de voir en ‘patis’ (<pactis) un pacte, comme dans le texte anglais. Dans son

glossaire Arn propose pour ‘in patise’ (v. 1014): ‘according to the terms of a bargain’.

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Et m’a chargé de vous rescripre* *mns: escrire Qu’il n’a pas tout ce qu’il desire En la prison de desplaisance. (ballade 25, vv. 31–33)

Une distance s’instaure: le sujet de l’énonciation et le sujet souffrant ne sont pas identiques. L’écriture de la douleur, amoureuse ou non, n’est pas un cri spontané. Elle n’en est même pas le prolongement ou l’écho:39 substitut de la vive voix, elle transforme le cri à travers l’élaboration rhétorique, lui donnant forme et sens. Alors que certains auteurs ont cherché à camoufler cette (inévitable) distance esthétique, qu’ils ont voulu créer l’illusion d’une émotion à fleur de peau, d’autres ont mis en évidence le dépassement de la douleur par l’écriture. Au chevet de Boèce, les muses lui dictent ‘paroles a mes pleurs’;40 après les avoir chassées, Philosophie proposera au prisonnier un discours plus efficace, plus apte à le conduire vers une distance salutaire, grâce à laquelle il reconnaîtra (et le lecteur avec lui!) le caractère exemplaire de sa captivité. Même en l’absence d’un tel souci didactique, la maîtrise de la douleur passe par la maîtrise de la parole. De son exil, Ovide soulignait à quel point le travail rhétorique atténue la souffrance en imposant son exigence et son enthousiasme à l’esprit du poète: Scribentem iuuat ipse labor minuitque laborem cumque suo crescens pectore feuet opus (Ex Ponto III, 9, vv. 21–22)41

Le poète ne peut exprimer la souffrance qu’après-coup. Lorsqu’il inscrit la douleur dans la forme de l’épître ou, au XVe siècle, de la ballade, du rondeau et de la chanson, il en offre une image nécessairement condensée,42 car la souffrance ne saurait être rendue dans sa plénitude. Héritier de Boèce et d’Ovide, Charles d’Orléans considère qu’on ne saurait dire l’émotion sans la réfléchir, sans que – selon la conception aristotélicienne (cf. Ethique à Nicomaque I, 13) – le sensus appetitivus soit contrôlé par la raison: les soupirs (ballade 25, v. 26) du cœur doivent être traduits, objectivés dans l’écriture. Il faut freiner la hâte, l’impatience du cœur (ballade 21, vv. 21–25) pour dire le désir: alors le lyrisme apportera ‘confort’

39 La poésie lyrique serait le ‘développement d’un cri’: la formule, appliquée par Michel

Zink, La Subjectivité littéraire (Paris, 1985), p. 67, à la littérature médiévale, nous semble problématique dans la mesure où ‘prolongement’, terme flou, permet de récupérer la spontanéité et la sincérité de la voix dans l’écrit sans s’interroger sur l’effet de distanciation, pourtant recherché par des auteurs comme Charles d’Orléans. 40 V. L. Dedeck-Héry, éd., ‘Boethius’ De Consolatione by Jean de Meun’, Mediæval Studies 14 (1952), 173 [= livre I, prose I]. 41 Pontiques, éd. et trad. par Jaques André (Paris, 1977), p. 111: ‘Pendant qu’on écrit, la peine même qu’on prend soulage et diminue la peine, et l’œuvre, en progressant, s’échauffe par l’enthousiasme qui la crée’. Cf. Ex Ponto IV, 2, vv. 27–34 et, pour l’écriture qui se substitue à la voix, remplaçant une discussion rendue impossible par la distance, le début des épîtres II, 6; III, 5; IV, 9. 42 Cf. ballade 20 (XIX), vv. 21–24: ‘Se vouloye raconter plainnement/ En cest escript mon ennuieux martire,/ Trop long seroit; pour ce certainement/ J’aymasse mieulx de bouche le vous dire’.

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et ‘alegement’ (vv. 3 et 7) aux amants malheureux, justifiant la louange de celui ‘qui trouva premier la maniere d’escrire’ (vv. 1–2).43 Si l’on n’est pas en mesure de maîtriser sa tristesse, si l’on reste pris dans les lacs de la mélancolie, englué dans le présent de la douleur, la parole poétique ne parvient pas à éclore, le pathos à toucher le destinataire du message. Dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans, ce refus de l’effusion spontanée, cette esthétique de la maîtrise, s’accentue au fil des textes. A la fin de l’édition de 1509, aux feuillets ccc3–ccc4, rondeaux et chansons se font écho pour le dire. Si ego est en mesure d’écrire un livre entier – remarquons la surenchère ironique! – sur le martyre d’amour, c’est qu’il en a, jadis, fait l’expérience (chanson LXXVIII). Il peut désormais se proposer en exemple, invitant les autres à ne pas suivre, voire à rire d’une telle folie. La douleur, par contre, plonge le cœur dans un état second: il est ‘en transes’ (chanson LXXX, v. 2) et parle d’une voix brisée. Il profère des propos incohérents, mélangeant les dialectes de France et les langues d’Europe en une ‘galimafree’ (v. 9) à travers laquelle s’exprime une souffrance immédiate et indicible. La douleur à l’état brut ne se communique pas, et le rondeau 79 (CLXIII) prolonge la réflexion en renversant le point de vue: le locuteur ne s’y moque-t-il pas de ceux qui n’ont pas de ‘langaige’ (v. 8) pour exprimer leur désir? Et de les inviter à chercher un ‘truchement’ (v. 10) lucide, capable de trouver et agencer les mots en un message cohérent – c’est-à-dire le poète, maître de la parole! Le poète traduit les sentiments, ceux de son cœur ou ceux d’autrui. Dès le moment qu’elles sont mises en langage, les expériences de l’amour et de la prison sont objectivées, de sorte qu’il paraît difficile de remonter aux sources de l’inspiration, aux racines de la douleur. En plus, le projet allégorique de La Chasse et du Depart d’Amours met en évidence et accentue l’effet de distanciation au détriment de l’illusion autobiographique. Çà et là, l’image triomphe de l’effet référentiel, car l’association métaphorique est déterminante dans l’enchaînement des ballades. De la ‘prison de desplaisance’ (ballade 25), dont le cœur cherche à s’évader en demandant à ses proches et à ses amis de le soutenir, on passe à la guerre menée contre Dueil et Mélancolie (ballade 26) qui ‘tiennent Joye prisonnier[e]’ (v. 6). La prison sert non seulement de lien thématique entre les deux ballades, mais le conseil de guerre précède l’affrontement, créant un parcours narratif qui fonde la cohérence des textes en filant la métaphore. La prison sert également de fil conducteur aux ballades 103 (LXXX), 104 (LXXXI) et 105 (LXXXII). Là encore, l’unité thématique est renforcée par la logique narrative qui sous-tend la séquence. La première poésie (‘Je fuz en fleur ou temps passé d’enfance’) est un regard jeté en arrière, sur les causes premières de la captivité. Après le passé, le présent: le second texte (‘Cueur, trop es plain de folie’) saisit la réalité quotidienne de la prison, lieu de la souffrance et du repli mélancolique, dans lequel s’abolit toute ouverture vers le futur,44 tout espoir de 43 La louange de l’inventeur d’un art est un véritable topos littéraire à la fin du Moyen

Âge: cf. Jacqueline Cerquiglini, La Couleur de la mélancolie. La fréquentation des livres au XIVe siècle, 1300–1415 (Paris, 1993), pp. 103–6. 44 Cf. Jean Starobinski, ‘L’encre de la mélancolie’, Nouvelle Revue Française 123 (1963), 421.

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changement. La dernière ballade (‘Nouvelles ont couru en France’) nie cet espace de mort, revendiquant un avenir et un ailleurs possibles: ‘encore est vive la souris’! Le refrain invite à jeter sur le je-prisonnier le même regard de sympathie auquel ce petit rongeur45 a eu droit tout au long du Moyen Âge. Les liens affectifs battent en brèche l’enfermement mélancolique, car ils promettent des lendemains qui chantent. La présence de ces ballades dans le recueil d’Antoine Vérard étonne dans la mesure où la captivité n’y est pas associée au sentiment amoureux. Le désir de paix (ballade 103, v. 17) est celui du prisonnier politique qui désire retrouver le ‘soleil de France’ (v. 19), et la France évoquée au début de la ballade 105 est le pays des amis, de ceux qui n’ont pas oublié le captif. Mais voici la ballade 106 qui amorce la récupération courtoise! En France, Gentil Honneur est chargé de recommander l’exilé à sa dame, de sorte que la patrie redevient ce qu’elle était dans les toutes premières compositions du prince ou dans La Chasse d’Amours: l’espace de référence du public et de l’auteur, celui où souffre le plus malheureux et se réjouit le plus comblé des amants, celui aussi où vit la ‘belle, non pareille de France’ (ballade 25, v. 3046). Ce mouvement de récupération aboutit à la ballade 115 qui, dans l’édition d’Antoine Vérard, clôt la séquence et précède la rubrique marquant le début du Depart d’Amours: Amour, qui tant a de puissance Qu’il fait vieilles gens rassoter Et jeunes plains d’oultrecuidance

(ballade 115, vv. 1–3, fol. aaiv)

L’opposition entre la jeunesse et la vieillesse, l’âge mûr et l’âge de la folie, rattache la ballade 115 aux ballades 103 et 105, dans lesquelles apparaît la même opposition, créant chaque fois l’impression du temps qui a fui, d’une vie écoulée. Le lien étroit invite à une relecture du passage en clé amoureuse, de sorte que la ballade 103 résiste à la lecture biographique qu’on en a proposée. Quand Folie abat ego de ‘l’arbre de plaisance’ (v. 2), cela peut difficilement évoquer, dans l’imprimé, la bataille d’Azincourt et le début de la captivité. Il ne s’agit pas de peindre, sous le voile allégorique, les péripéties de la vie de l’exilé.47 Pour les lecteurs de Vérard, l’exemplaire l’emportait sur l’individuel, car la ballade retrace le parcours de toute vie humaine, de l’amour à une sagesse difficilement conquise. La vieillesse remplace la jeunesse, et la prison, dans laquelle Raison enferme ego ‘pour meurir’ (refrain), s’oppose à l’arbre de plaisance qui, dans un

45 Attitude qui diffère sensiblement de la nôtre et que Gabriel Bianciotto a bien mise en

évidence lors de sa conférence à l’Université de Genève, le 24 avril 1998, Rats et souris dans la littérature médiévale. 46 Edition de Vérard, p. S . Pour l’amant malheureux, ‘autant que nul qui soit en France’, v cf. ballade 22, v. 7 (éd. Vérard, p. Sivv), pour l’amant comblé, cf. La Chasse d’Amours, éd. cit., vv. 5378–80. 47 Cf. Poirion, Le Poète et le prince, p. 283; Alice Planche, ‘Charles d’Orléans. L’exclusion et ses métaphores’, Senefiance 5 (1978: Exclus et systèmes d’exclusion dans la littérature et la civilisation médiévales), 409–11.

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Moyen Âge chrétien, ne manque pas d’évoquer le péché originel.48 Comme Adam et Eve, ego est victime de sa folie, comme eux il est exclu du paradis: l’exil n’est-il pas l’image même de la condition humaine? Métaphore de la prise de conscience après la chute, la prison de Raison prépare la conclusion de la ballade 115, dans laquelle le locuteur affirme, non sans regrets, le rejet définitif de l’amour, péché de jeunesse: ‘Ce n’est fors que plaisant follye’ (refrain)! L’heure du Depart a sonné. L’évacuation de l’autobiographie a pourtant ses limites. La lecture courtoise ne paraît pas toujours possible, ainsi pour la ballade 104 qui est absente dans l’édition de Vérard. Que la captivité n’y soit pas associée à l’amour, n’était pas une raison suffisante pour l’écarter: les ballades 103 et 105 figurent bien dans l’anthologie. Et, encore une fois, l’expérience de la prison se présente comme un cas-type: Pource nous ne te faisons Nul tort se te gouvernons Ainsi que communement Sont prisonniers pris en guerre, Dont es l’un presentement Ou royaume d’Angleterre. (ballade 104, vv. 17–22)

Selon Soing et Ennuy, qui visent à justifier leur conduite à l’égard du cœur, sa situation n’a rien d’exceptionnel. Son sort est celui de tout prisonnier de guerre, ses souffrances ne sont pas pires que celles des autres; représentatif d’une catégorie de personnes, le cœur, métonymie d’un je qui reste absent de la ballade,49 se réduit à un type. Mais, traité ‘communement’, il n’est pas érigé en modèle dans le discours dénigrant de Soing et Ennuy: il n’y a ni émulation avec ses compagnons d’infortune, ni affirmation d’une différence – au contraire du chevalier de la Table Ronde, qui s’élève au-dessus des rivaux en pratiquant au mieux les vertus chevaleresques, ou de l’amant qui souffre et jouit plus que tout autre. L’exaltation de l’individu par le dépassement des valeurs du groupe,50 la tentation de l’absolu, sont absentes d’un texte où le je du poète, rabroué et rabaissé, se fond dans la foule anonyme des prisonniers. L’ironie de Soing et Ennuy, qui offrent au cœur une consolatio parodique en se moquant, pour finir, de son impuissance à briser 48 Sur cette tendance ‘philosophique’ d’envisager la prison, qui rapproche Charles

d’Orléans de Boèce et Christine de Pizan, cf. Nadia Margolis, ‘The Human Prison: The Metamorphoses of Misery in the Poetry of Christine de Pizan, Charles d’Orléans, and François Villon’, Fifteenth-Century Studies 1 (1978), 188. Les exemples signalés par Peter von Moos, Consolatio. Studien zur mittellateinischen Trostliteratur über den Tod und zum Problem der christlichen Trauer. Testimonienband (München, 1972), T826–29, suffisent à mesurer l’importance des métaphores du carcer animæ et de l’ergastulum sæculi au Moyen Âge. 49 . . . et observe ainsi une distance face à l’investissement affectif dans un texte qui illustre, une fois de plus, ce refus de se laisser aller, cette poétique de la maîtrise recherchée par Charles d’Orléans. 50 Cf. Evelyn Birge-Vitz, ‘Type et individu dans l’‘‘autobiographie’’ médiévale’, Poétique 24 (1975), 426–45.

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les chaînes, est incompatible avec l’intentionnalité de La Chasse et du Depart d’Amours. Dans sa quête et sa souffrance, l’Amant Parfait – son nom le dit bien! – reste toujours exemplaire. Comment aurait-il pu faire l’objet d’un discours dévaluant? La ballade 104 s’oppose à une récupération courtoise aussi bien par son registre d’expression que par l’importance des effets référentiels. La guerre n’y est pas, comme dans d’autres ballades, la guerre amoureuse,51 mais bien le conflit qui oppose la France au ‘royaume d’Angleterre’ (refrain), explicitement ancré dans l’actualité historique par l’adverbe ‘presentement’. L’Angleterre, pays de l’exil politique, est encore évoqué dans une ballade, une seule, adressée au duc de Bourgogne: Des nouvelles d’Albïon S’il vous en plaist escouter

(ballade 112 (LXXXXIX), v. 1–2)

Le choix d’un mètre plutôt rare, le vers de sept syllabes, lie étroitement les deux ballades qui, l’une et l’autre, ont été écartées par Antoine Vérard. Un tel lien laisse entrevoir à quel point les implications autobiographiques et politiques de ces textes ont dû peser lourd dans la décision. La ballade 104 a beau placer le discours dans la bouche de personnifications, Soing et Ennuy, évoquer Fortune (v. 9), et faire du cœur un captif type, rien n’y fait: malgré l’absence de détails concrets, de realia, la fonction référentielle résiste ici au processus de transposition métaphorique, tel qu’il se manifeste dans les ‘fers de soussy et pensement’ (v. 30) qui enchaînent le cœur. La prison est, certes, une prison de l’esprit, mais c’est une prison au quotidien, et l’impression de vécu naît de la banalité même de la situation. Le cœur nous offre l’actualisation individuelle d’une expérience collective: l’effet biographique est perçu dans la mesure où sa situation est bien celle d’un captif politique, telle que le public se l’imagine. Il y a respect de l’horizon d’attente et recours à des indications spatiales et temporelles précises, de sorte que la description fait vrai; elle fait vrai par le refus de transfigurer la ‘réalité’ dans le sens de l’idéal – au contraire de ce qui se passait chez Froissart. Une présence humaine se dégage de la ballade 104, celle du ‘most woofull caytijf of Fraunce’52 qui s’introduit, subrepticement, dans la version anglaise de la ballade 17. Présence illusoire peut-être, mais le mirage référentiel s’avère assez puissant pour empêcher l’insertion de la pièce dans La Chasse et Le Depart d’Amours. La vie au quotidien, même intériorisée, est incompatible avec la sublimation courtoise. Comme la critique moderne, le responsable de l’anthologie publiée par Antoine Vérard en 1509 a été sensible aux contrastes dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans. Mais, au contraire des érudits, qui lisent les poésies à la lumière de la biographie,

51 Cf. Poirion, Le Lexique, entrée: ‘guerre’. 52 Fortunes Stabilnes, éd. Arn, v. 715. La précision est d’autant plus intéressante que l’idée

de la captivité est absente de la ballade française.

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il les lit avec les lunettes de la courtoisie, et c’est la présence trop flagrante du vécu qui le dérange. Plus fin que certains critiques, l’éditeur a résisté à la tentation de plier chaque texte à la logique imposée par le recueil, respectant la démultiplication et la fragmentation du discours lyrique dans la suite des ballades. Selon la pièce, la prison est vue différemment, et elle n’est pas toujours récupérable au nom de l’amour courtois. L’éditeur a distingué: — les ballades dans lesquelles l’évocation de la prison se réduit à une métaphore amoureuse. Elles ne posent aucun problème puisqu’elles s’insèrent parfaitement dans un recueil qui prolonge le lyrisme courtois du Moyen Âge finissant; — les ballades qui, sans être explicitement amoureuses, limitent ou gomment l’ancrage référentiel par le recours à l’allégorie. Ces pièces sont récupérables, même si certains changements s’imposent parfois, comme la substitution des noms propres par une personnification, afin d’éviter l’intrusion trop flagrante du vécu dans le discours allégorique; — les ballades, dans lesquelles il paraît impossible de sublimer le réel. Ces pièces ont été éliminées dans la mesure où la prison au quotidien est sans intérêt dans la perspective de l’idéalisation courtoise. La présence du vécu dans une œuvre marquée par la tradition du lyrisme courtois n’est pas une invention du XXe siècle. Dès l’aube des temps modernes, on a été sensible aux effets autobiographiques dans les poésies du prince captif. Loin de nier la présence de l’homme dans l’œuvre, Antoine Vérard ne l’a que trop bien perçue: n’a-t-il pas cherché à en gommer les traces les plus évidentes? Cette présence, même furtive, le dérangeait, tandis qu’elle émeut le lecteur moderne, fasciné par la trace possible du vécu dans la poésie: n’est-elle pas à nos yeux de romantiques impénitents une marque d’authenticité? Mais voilà: quand la réalité pèse trop lourd, la sublimation courtoise de la joie ou de la tristesse s’avère impossible. Le vécu englue. Il entrave l’envol lyrique, s’oppose à la célébration, par l’allégorie, d’un univers idéal. Quand la prison, insuffisamment transfigurée, renvoie d’abord à elle-même, orientant le lecteur vers le sens littéral plutôt que vers le sens allégorique, elle représente une expérience incompatible avec la tradition lyrique qu’Antoine Vérard propose en modèle encore à l’époque de Louis XII – le fils de Charles d’Orléans et de Marie de Clèves. L’anthologie résiste à l’illusion du vécu, car elle est perçue comme un élément en porte-à-faux dans l’architecture de l’ensemble. Source de malaise, le contraste fonctionne comme un catalyseur: au XVIe siècle, l’évocation du prince captif conduit l’éditeur à écarter une ballade du recueil; de nos jours, elle incite la critique à s’interroger sur la fonction et les finalités du lyrisme au passage du Moyen Âge à la Renaissance. Et à interroger sa propre démarche, exercice ô combien salutaire! . . .

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Translation, Canons, and Cultural Capital: Manuscripts and Reception of Charles d’Orléans’s English Poetry A. E. B. COLDIRON

I

N the autumn of 1415, in the bloody aftermath of Agincourt field, Charles, duc td’Orléans, was pulled from beneath a heap of bodies and armor into a twenty-five-year English captivity. The historical import of this fact is considerable: this Prince of the house of Valois, later to become father of Louis XII and uncle of François I, would figure largely in the settlements ending the Hundred Years’ War. However, the literary results of Charles’s long imprisonment have not been much studied, given their significance and interest.1 Captive in several prominent English households, Charles composed more than 13,000 lines of verse in both French and English, in carefully constructed lyric sequences that are broadly (but not entirely) parallel in content.2 The English side of the parallel œuvre, found in BL MS Harley 682, is in fact the first one-author love-lyric sequence in English. Not only is it the first, it is remarkable for reasons both theoretical and literary-historical. The bilingual œuvre appears at a crucial moment, that of final separation between two nations that had been as one since 1066 and between which powerful connections and tensions persist even today. Yet given its significance and size, Charles’s work has gone relatively uncanonized in English literary history. In an effort to understand better the factors at work in this instance of marginalization (and thus better to understand the workings of literary canons), the essay sketches a comparative rezeptiongeschichte. It also attempts a recovery of Charles’s literary corpus, pulling it into the English

1

These literary results are the general subject of my Canon, Period, and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans: Found in Translation, forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press. The present essay, copyright A. E. B. Coldiron, is an earlier version of Chapter 4 of that book. 2 The French poems can be found in BN fr. 25458, the autograph manuscript. Some of the French poems were written after Charles’s repatriation in 1440. There is also a parallel French-Latin lyric sequence, Grenoble MS 873, containing many of the poems that appear in French and English. Only two editions previous to Arn’s exist: Steele and Day, ed., English Poems, and G. Watson Taylor, ed., Poems Written in English by Charles, Duke of Orleans During his Captivity in England After the Battle of Azincourt (London, 1827).

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canon much as his physical body was recovered for England that day at Agincourt. One way to begin such a recovery is to ask: what cultural support was there for remembering Charles’s poetry after 1440? How have we subsequently remembered or forgotten these texts, or, to put it another way, what value, what canonical weight has been attached to these texts over the course of five and a half centuries? Pierre Bourdieu’s term ‘cultural capital’ describes the socially constructed value or attractiveness or canonical weight of texts; John Guillory, borrowing Bourdieu’s term, locates in the school and in the syllabus the institutionalized power to include or exclude texts in canons.3 My analysis of this telling case of canonical marginalization locates that power instead in the hands of anonymous scribes, early modern printers, and eighteenth-century editors in particular (with the added agencies of early modern book collectors and antiquarians, nineteenth-century critics, and modern anthology-builders). What makes this case particularly provocative is that it revises some of our recently formed understandings of the workings of the literary canon. If we accept, for example, that hegemonic processes of canon formation have favored dead white male aristocrats (and in New Critical or post-Romantic canons, the dead white male lyric poets), then we have to wonder why this dead white male aristocratic lyric poet has been so systematically marginalized. If we think of class, race, gender, and genre as chief ‘canon-shaping categories’, then Charles d’Orléans would seem to have been a nearly perfect candidate for high canonicity. Along other lines, too, if we think that the shape of late-medieval literary canons is irregular because of the period’s irregular manuscript survivals – we can only canonize the extant, after all – then this large body of work, which survives in three languages in at least eleven manuscripts, would seem to have been ideal canon-fodder. Yet, especially considering the overwhelming size of his extant corpus relative to other fully canonized fifteenth-century authors, Charles’s work has hardly made an appearance in our literary lists. It is remarkable that a poet with all the right tickets has not been admitted. This case leads us to question what factors in addition to class, race, gender, and genre might affect the cultural capital and canonicity of literary texts. The following pages contain a necessarily preliminary set of answers to this question. The present article tries to assess the presence and valuation, devaluations, and re-valuations of this poet and his texts by tracking specific mentions of him and copies of his work over the course of five and a half centuries in both French and English literary canons. First, Julia Boffey is not exaggerating to call the relative manuscript presence of these poems ‘vast’. Certainly, much work remains to be done on Charles’s

3

Guillory, Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation (Chicago, 1993). For Bourdieu’s further discussion of the intersections of the aesthetic with the sociocultural, see Les Règles de l’art (Paris, 1992).

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manuscripts, and it is not my purpose here to do that work. But a reinterpretation of the manuscript evidence we already do have reveals that Charles’s poetry was read by a much broader early modern readership and over a much longer period of time than has usually been assumed to be the case. These were not just private texts read in localized manuscript circles. Furthermore, despite the initial spread of the poetry into a relatively broad readership, early modern attitudes toward Charles-the-person seem to have impeded the literary reception of Charles-thepoet. Although Charles persists in the English literary imagination as an historical figure, some residual anti-French sentiment may have attached itself to the poetry, reducing its cultural capital and impeding its acceptance into canons of literature. Finally, I trace here, in material Charles’s bibliographers have not noted, some specific fluctuations in English opinions of the poetry. A brief review of Charles’s many appearances in French canons provides background for the lengthier examination of his fewer appearances in English canons in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This bicultural review of the editorial and critical fortunes of the poetry shows how, over the course of several centuries, matters historical, social, political, aesthetic, and technological impinged on this poetry, marginalized it, shaped and repositioned it in the developing English canons.

Manuscript Presence in England: fifteenth through seventeenth centuries Of course, as Neil Ker points out, ‘the fallacious test of surviving books’4 can only lead to a tentative set of inferences, and what follows pretends to no more authority than any other such interpretive reconstruction. That said, what we can infer from the presence of his surviving manuscripts in England indicates that Charles d’Orléans’s poetry (both English and French) was read in England more widely and for a longer time than is usually thought. As Julia Boffey notes, latemedieval lyrics appeared incidentally, almost haphazardly in miscellanies, often filling an empty page between two treatises or appearing singly and in small groups scattered through generically mixed anthologies.5 By contrast, ‘the surviving body of English poems connected with Charles is, in comparison with all other English lyric œuvres, vast: a complete collection in BL MS Harley 682, and eleven later copies . . .’.6 Charles is also the only major poet writing English lyric before what we usually mark as the Renaissance who carefully collects and arranges his poems by genre and language, who earns a reputation as a lyric author, and whose authorial acts foster a subjectivity new in English

4 5 6

Medieval Libraries of Great Britain: A List of Surviving Books (London, 1964), p. xi. English Courtly Love Lyrics, pp. 6–7, 11, 19–27. Page 74.

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lyric.7 Boffey reminds us that ‘the available evidence suggests that no English authors prepared or polished their courtly lyrics in this way’.8 But was this relatively vast, generically selected, carefully authored œuvre read in England outside a coterie readership before the first known printing of it, the Roxburghe club edition of 1827? We have generally assumed not. We have known of these manuscripts, have studied them individually,9 but have not yet interpreted the whole of the material evidence to assess the poetry’s felt presence in England. The material evidence of the manuscripts leads me to conclude that the texts enjoyed a much wider readership in England than has been previously thought. In fact, manuscript studies reveal that Charles’s poetry was read well into the Renaissance, and that it was owned not only by the very most powerful people in England but also by a middle-class or commercial readership. This extension of what is usually thought of as rarefied coterie poetry into classes other than the aristocratic warrants further investigation, for even what evidence we have runs counter to some critical thinking about early modern lyric poetics as necessarily restrictive and restricted.10 Charles’s poems were owned by the top household in sixteenth-century England, the Tudors. This is no real surprise – the interconnected English and French royal family trees and the continuing English royal taste for French cultural artifacts would explain it well enough, even without the particular evidence in this case. British Library MS Royal 16 F. ii, a luxurious illuminated

7

Gower writes his Cinkante Balades in French, without an individuated lyric subjectivity to speak of; the work appears in one manuscript, the Trentham manuscript. See Macaulay’s edition, I, lxxix–lxxxiii. The poems are on pp. 335–78. John Quixley’s translation into English of Gower’s Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz, c. 1402, also appears in only one manuscript. See Henry Noble MacCracken, ‘Quixley’s Ballades Royal (?1402)’, Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 20 (1909), 33–50. Quixley likely translated the poems for his daughter’s marriage – an instructive, occasional work rather than the sort of literary project at issue here. 8 Page 63. Charles’s contemporaries knew him as a poet; a manuscript illumination in BL MS Royal F 16. ii shows him writing at a desk; he refers to himself as the author and subject of his poetry in lines 5–6, 2720, 3044, and 4788 of the English poems. ‘The only situation in which self-referential detail might be fitting is in a cycle of lyrics . . . and the single surviving example of such a cycle in English, the poems . . . in BL MS Harley 682, indeed contains several such autobiographical hints’ (Boffey, p. 62, emphasis mine). 9 Champion, Le Manuscrit autographe. Jansen, ‘Charles d’Orléans and the Fairfax Poems’, and ‘The French Manuscripts’. R. H. Robbins, ‘Some Charles d’Orléans Fragments’, Modern Language Notes 66 (1951), 501–5. See also Nelson, An Analytical Bibliography; Edith Yenal, Charles d’Orléans: a Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources (New York, 1984); and Galderisi, Une Lecture bibliographique (Bari, 1994). 10 Carol M. Meale, ‘Patrons, Buyers, and Owners: Book Production and Social Status’, in Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 201–38, points out that ‘the major difference between the book-trade in England and that abroad (for instance in fourteenth- and earlyfifteenth-century France and later-fifteenth-century Burgundy) is that it draws from a broader social base and is not reliant exclusively upon court patronage systems’ (p. 202).

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manuscript containing French and English poems, may have been prepared as late as 1501–1502, as a gift for Prince Arthur.11 Janet Backhouse dates the manuscript earlier but has pointed out several specific connections between the Tudors and this copy of Charles’s poetry (for example, the appearance of the Tudor greyhound and the Beaufort portcullis among its margin illustrations).12 Bernard André, orator regis to Henry VII and tutor to Prince Arthur and to Prince Henry (later Henry VIII), was involved in creating this manuscript.13 Later in the century this vellum manuscript appears in Henry VIII’s Richmond library, as does another early printed collection including Charles’s lyrics.14 The poems evidently retained their appeal for the very most influential readers of the early to mid sixteenth century. But lesser mortals found Charles’s verse appealing as well, judging from the margin markings in Harley 682, the primary complete manuscript in English. This major manuscript was read at least until the early seventeenth century, since six names in three different sixteenth-century hands permit us to trace if not the certain ownership of the manuscript, at least some of the people who may have borrowed it or known its owners.15 These are not famous folk; the names – Elizabethe Gelle, Tomas Wyssedune, John Halesby, Thomas Pryor, Rycardus Holt, and Yohanne Tredecrofft – do not appear in the DNB nor in county histories, and evidence from wills and parish registers has so far been inconclusive. More needs

11 British Museum, Department of Manuscripts, Illuminated Manuscripts in the British

12 13

14

15

Museum, with notes by George F. Warner (London, 1899), treats it fully. For a recent study, see Backhouse, ‘Founders of the Royal Library’. Backhouse revises Warner’s dating of this manuscript, for she thinks that it may have been commissioned earlier than 1501, by Edward IV in fact, but that the Tudor librarian kept the project alive. Backhouse, pp. 34–39 and plates 15–19. For more on Bernard André and the early Tudor courts, see three articles by David R. Carlson, ‘King Arthur and Court Poems for the Birth of Arthur Tudor in 1486’, Humanistica Lovaniensa: Journal of NeoLatin Studies 36 (1987), 147–83; ‘Politicizing Tudor Court Literature: Gaguin’s Embassy and Henry VII’s Humanists’ Response’, Studies in Philology 85 (Summer 1988), 279–304; and ‘Reputation and Duplicity: The Texts and Context of Thomas More’s Epigram on Bernard André’, ELH 58 (Summer 1991), 261–80. The Jardin de Plaisance (Paris, 1501). H. Ormont, ‘Les Manuscrits des rois d’Angleterre au château de Richmond’, Études Romanes dédiées à Gaston Paris par ses élèves français (Paris, 1891), pp. 1–13. While Private Libraries in Renaissance England (ed. R. J. Fehrenbach and E. Leedham-Green, 5 vols. [Binghamton, New York, 1992– ]) so far does not note any direct ownership of entire copies, the many unidentifiable lyric entries (‘a litel boke of poems’, etc.) substantiate Boffey’s point that the tastes of the court ran to Charles-like lyrics, and extend that point to apply to Tudor courts as well. See essays by A. Marotti, S. May, and others in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghamton, New York, 1993). C. E. Wright, Fontes Harleiani (London, 1972). But see Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 115–19, for a more thorough explanation. Wright names Peter Ody; Arn points this out as a misreading and finds Thomas Pryor’s name in the manuscript, missed by Wright. Arn also includes the English, Latin, and macaronic verses and other marks added in the margins.

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to be done on the names written in Harley MS 682, but it seems reasonable to assume that none of these was a particularly prominent family name in early Renaissance England.16 By the seventeenth century a collector of material very different from courtly literature, Edward Stillingfleet (1635–1699), bishop of Winchester, owned the 1440 parchment manuscript. Another major manuscript, Fairfax 16, indicates a broad and enduring fifteenth-, sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century readership for at least one, and possibly more, of the English poems of Charles d’Orléans. Fairfax 16, an anthology which is also an important Chaucer manuscript, contains as its fifth quire a set of twenty ballades. One of these is certainly by Charles,17 and the other nineteen, although of unknown authorship, resemble Charles’s lyrics to a fair degree.18 The provenance of Fairfax 16, like that of Royal 16 F. ii and Harley 682, can be traced well into the sixteenth century and proves it a text sought after in circles beyond the royal. Fairfax 16, a manuscript dated c. 1450, ten years after Charles’s return to France, was owned and probably commissioned by John Stanley, MP (Surrey) in 1445–1446.19 The Stanley family had close connections to

16 Research results for the name ‘Gelle’ are representative of the others: Burke’s

Commoners: A Genealogical History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland, vols. 1–4 (1834–38, rpt. Baltimore, 1977), notes the 1634 marriage of Elizabeth Gell, daughter of Leonard Gell, esq., of Norton, and an Elizabeth, sister of the Rev. Robert Sanderson, Bp. of Lincoln. There are also Gell families of Derbyshire: Philip Gell, MD, father of Honor Gell, in Wirksworth, and William Gell, esq., of Darley, who married an Anne Hussey of Lincolnshire, daughter of Elizabethan courtier Sir William Hussey. R. Sims’s Index to the Pedigrees and Arms Contained in the Heralds’ Visitations, and other genealogical manuscripts in the British Museum (London, 1849) notes five manuscripts relating to the Gell family of Hopton (BL Harley MS 1093, fol. 83b; MS 6104, fol. 87; MS 6592, fols. 8.93b and 32b, MS 1537, fol. 1; Egerton MS 996, fol. 69b; I have not seen these). Some Gells turn up in Lancashire: Sir John Gell of Hopton, slain in 1627; earlier, a Ralph Gell of Hopton, Lancashire, whose daughter Helena maried John Wigley of Middleton, Derbyshire, some time before 1601 (Burke’s Commoners). A John Gelle is listed in the subsidy rolls of Yorkshire (Yorkshire Archaeological Society Records series 16, 21, 74; 1894–1929). F. K. and S. Hitching’s References to English Surnames 1601 (Walton-onThames, 1910) lists Gell in two parish registers, St. Helen’s and Worcester. The other names lead to similarly labyrinthine dead-ends. 17 ‘O thou fortune which hast the gouvernaunce’, fol. 321, also appears in BN fr. 25458, Charles’s autograph manuscript. Though it was once thought that there were English poems in Grenoble 873, Jansen in ‘The French Manuscripts’ has pointed out that there are none; I found no English poems there. 18 I cannot prove Charles’s authorship of these nineteen poems; although some are impressionistically very Charles-like to the ear and mind, none appears in BN fr. 25458, the autograph manuscript. Norton-Smith (see note 19) suggests that several other poems in that section of Fairfax 16 may be by Charles (xxix). Yet Jansen argues instead for Suffolk’s authorship of the Fairfax lyrics (The ‘Suffolk’ Poems, pp. 21–28 and 30). Without further evidence, any claims about the authorship of these poems are speculative. 19 For an extended discussion of this manuscript and its history, see John Norton-Smith’s introduction to the Bodleian Library facsimile (London, 1979) and the work of J. P. M. Jansen (see bibliography). John Stanley, who died in 1469, was not part of the famous

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Westminster abbey in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and Fairfax 16 may have been bequeathed to the abbey during this time.20 We also know that John Stowe used the manuscript either around 1560 to make his Chaucer edition of 1561 or for later work in the 1590s. Collector Joseph Holland (fl. 1580) saw and perhaps owned Fairfax 16. In 1650, bibliophile Charles Fairfax purchased the volume at Gloucester and in 1671 sold it to the Bodleian Library. At first glance, then, it would seem that by mid-Renaissance, the Fairfax 16 manuscript had gained a certain literary status; its ownership by Stowe and Holland and its purchase and sale by Fairfax seem to cast it as an antiquarian curiosity of sorts rather than as a popular, current set of poems, perhaps just as Stillingfleet’s ownership of Harley 682 indicates its status as ‘dead’ collectible. The material bibliography, however, shows that this interpretation of provenance may be incomplete and misleading. What is especially notable about Fairfax 16 – what helps correct and complete the interpretation of provenance – is its medium-quality, booklet production. Not a vellum treasure like Royal 16 F. ii and several other Charles d’Orléans copies,21 nor a smaller parchment thoroughbred like Harley 682 – with the exception of the opening full-page illumination of Venus and Mars (which further supports the generic distinctions implied here), the manuscript is in fact quite plain.22 The manuscript was likely created from sample copies – ‘a nearly perfectly preserved example of a manuscript produced to order by a commercial scriptorium or bookseller’.23 The poems in quire V ‘may have been selected by a purchaser from a choice of small units’.24 Not unread, stale, late-courtly leftovers of interest only to collectors and royals, this poetry was in enough demand to be marketable to a relatively wide audience of lesser nobility, and probably to middle-class readers. As manuscript commodities, if Royal 16 F. ii and Harley 682 are designer originals, Fairfax 16 is upscale department-store prêt-à-porter.

20

21

22 23

24

Stanley family; he had lived in Cheshire and may have had contact with Suffolk in early 1450. Since Suffolk maintained his friendship with Charles d’Orléans even after 1440, Stanley could possibly have known Charles, although I have not found evidence for it. It may have been via Suffolk that Stanley knew of Charles. Another sixteenth-century owner, Thomas Moyelle, was possibly connected by marriage to the Stanley family, and may be the same Sir Thomas Moyle who was influential at the courts of Henry VII and Edward IV. See Norton-Smith’s introduction. Including BN fr. 25458, Grenoble 873, BN fr. 1104 (Catherine de Medici’s copy), Carpentras 375 (Marie de Clèves’s copy), BN fr. 9223, and Arsenal 3457. Nelson (An Analytical Bibliography) and Champion, ed., provide details. Boffey, p. 41. Norton-Smith, p. vii. For general background on this point, see G. S. Ivy, ‘The Bibliography of the Manuscript Book’, The English Library before 1700, ed. Francis Wormald and C. E. Wright (London, 1958), and H. S. Bennett, ‘The Production and Dissemination of Vernacular Manuscripts in the Fifteenth Century’, Library, 5th series 1 (1946–47), 167–78. Recent work has called the commercial scriptorium theory into some doubt; see for example Robert Adams, ‘Langland’s Ordinatio: The Viso and the Vita Once More’, Yearbook of Langland Studies 8 (1995), 51–84 (55–56). Boffey, p. 10.

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The widespread and variable boutique chic of the scattered copies falls elsewhere: Lansdowne 380, and Harley 7333, Cambridge University Library Addit. 2585, the ‘Hearne fragment’, and Harley 6916. These copies contain selections of both the French and English poems. Harley 6916 is something of a mystery manuscript, for while it is listed in the 1808 Catalogus,25 its provenance in England is uncertain and it is not noted in the Fontes Harleiani. Made of paper, it is thought to be a sixteenth-century copy of Charles’s autograph manuscript, BN fr. 25458, or some lost copy of it.26 Even in the sixteenth century the poetry was being copied and dispersed according to the anthologizing habits of the previous century, habits that did not disappear with the advent of print. Lansdowne 380, similarly, was ‘transcribed by some person at the beginning of the sixteenth century’.27 Part II (folios 147–217) contains ‘Balades plaisans et joyeuses’ by Charles d’Orléans, though his name is not given, indicating the greater continuing interest during this period in copying the poems than in naming the poet qua poet – which may signal a tension between Renaissance England’s anti-French sentiments and its enthusiastic, enduring interest in French lyrics. This Part II of the Lansdowne 380 manuscript was owned by Sir Julius Caesar, Queen Elizabeth I’s Judge of the Admiralty and James I’s and Charles I’s Chancellor of the Exchequer and Master of Rolls. Also owned by a later Master of Rolls, Sir Joseph Jekyll (1633–1738),28 and perhaps by Archbishop Warham, was Harley 7333, but this manuscript is a bit different in that it is a ‘large vernacular manuscript begun in the mid-fifteenth century . . . [that] includes texts showing the influence of John Shirley . . . [and] was written in a house of Augustinian canons at Leicester’,29 the abbey of St. Mary de Pratis. But fragments of Charles’s poems (unattributed) show up in the sixteenth century in Cardinal de Rohan’s songbook and in English Royal songbooks,30 indicating a popularity and spread of the poems independent of their connection with a Valois prince. Harley 7333’s clerical provenance and origin, its fragmented popularity, and especially its uneven

25 Catalogus librorum lansdowniae (A Catalogue of the Lansdowne Manuscripts in the British

Museum, London, 1819), III, 448. 26 See Nelson’s bibliography and Champion’s edition, I, xxi. The Catalogus entry notes

27

28

29 30

that ‘At the beginning, in a modern but probably a foreign hand is written ‘‘Poesies [sic] de Charles d’Orléans, père de Louis XII, et de plusieurs autres auteurs’’ ’. Aimé Champollion-Figeac, Poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans . . . (Paris, 1842), pp. 456ff, says it is a miscellany and that Abbé de la Rue wrote about it. Catalogus librorum lansdowniae, III, 110. Champion says the scribe was Thomas Kendell and that this manuscript was in England in the early sixteenth century (I, xxi, n. 3). Champollion-Figeac, again, says that only forty-two ballades by Charles are here and that it resembles the manuscript at St.-Germain-des-Prés (I assume he means what we now call BN fr. 19139). I have not seen it. Whose collection habits were influenced by his brother-in-law, Lord Chancellor John Somers (1st Baron Somers, 1651–1716). At least some seventeenth-century collectors found the ballades pleasing or curious. Ivy, p. 65, n. 76; Boffey, p. 128. Boffey, pp. 76, 108–11.

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quality set it apart: it is large, and vellum, but Boffey calls it ‘workmanlike’, a manuscript in which ‘modest ornament is the norm’ (43). Entirely without ornament, however, are the two most fascinating, elusive pieces of evidence for the rise and fall of Charles’s textual presence in England, CUL Addit. 2585 and Bodleian Rawlinson K 38/42 (the Hearne fragment).31 CUL Addit. 2585’s two leaves contain four poems32 evidently copied in the fifteenth century from Harley 682 or a lost exemplar. The Hearne fragment, c. 1440, has four other poems,33 again evidently copied from 682 or a lost copy of it, and glosses in a later hand, indicating that Charles’s English poems were in some demand from the start. The Hearne fragment helps date the fall of Charles’s popularity, because it shows up as endpapers in a seventeenth-century book. By this time, in other words, these texts seem to have been tired hand-me-downs, ready to be recycled as pastedowns. Although Charles receives continuing mention as an historical figure in English literature, his poetry’s material presence had clearly waned in England by the later Renaissance. Even in the absence of critical mention before 1740, we can intuitively reconstruct the trajectory of Charles’s popularity: it makes sense that after the Elizabethan age, with whose poetry Charles’s shares striking affinities, the popularity of these poems should fade. To summarize what can be gleaned from a review of the complex (and admittedly incomplete) manuscript evidence currently available: Charles d’Orléans’s poetry is exceptional not just in surviving quantity, though there is certainly that, but because it is the first English sequence gathered on principles of genre, authorship, and language that continued to be read in England across two centuries of surprisingly broad readership. The material evidence reminds us that early Renaissance English readers still had a healthy appetite for reading, copying, and collecting what Charles’s poetry offered, both in French and in English versions, although they did not name him, or claim him, as their own. There is a discernable tension, furthermore, between responses to the poems and to the person, a tension that persists across several centuries of reception in England. This tension derives in part, I believe, from historical contexts beyond the immediate social and manuscript origins of the poetry.

31 First studied and printed by R. H. Robbins, ‘Some Charles d’Orléans Fragments’. See

Arn, ed., Fortunes Stabilnes, pp. 122–23. 32 Ballades 59 and 60 and Roundels 5 and 6; Arn explains that the poems are laid out just

as in Harley 682, and that the poems occupy recto-verso in the same way as in Harley 682 and the other fragment. 33 Roundels 9, 10, 15, 16 (9–10 on a verso and 15–16 on a recto); imagine the page layout of these: missing poems 11–12 and 13–14 would have appeared on a lost leaf between the others.

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Reception: England’s historical responses to Charles Despite the favorable initial climate of noble houses like Waterton’s and Suffolk’s, despite a manuscript presence that was wider and more lasting than we have thought, the French Prince and his English poetry faced considerable hostility in fifteenth-century England. Powerful voices spoke out against France, against the French, and specifically against Charles d’Orléans. Anti-French sentiment, it seems, came to have long-lasting consequences for these translations’ fortunes in England. Although Charles had been the prize catch at Agincourt, as early as 1417 Henry V was warning Englishmen about him as a spy, as a potential escapee, and as an ally of the treacherous Scots: Furthemore I wole . . . that ye set a gode ordinance for my north marches and specialy for the Duc of Orlians. and for alle the remnant of my prisoners of france. and also for the king of Scotelond. for as I am secrely enfourmed by a man of ryght notable estate in this lond that there hath ben a man of the Ducs of Orliance in scotland and accorded with the Duc of albany. that this next somer he shal bryng in the mamnet of Scotland to sturre what he may, and also that ther schold be founden weys to the havyng awey specialy of the Duc of Orlians. and also of the king as welle as of the remnant of my forsayd prysoners that god do defende. wherfor I wolle that the Duc of Orliance be kept stille withyn the castil of pontfret with owte goyng to robertis place or to any othre disport for it is bettre he lak his disport then we were deceyued . . .34

And in 1419, Henry signed this reminder: And ferthermore we wol and also charge you that ye ordeyne that that be effectuelly done as in dede. that we wrote unto you as touching the Duc of Orliens as oure trust is to you. for the cas is so grete that ye ne couthe not ymagyn hit gretter . . .35

Henry V even included in his 1421 will a proviso that Charles not be released until the conquest of France was complete and asked on his deathbed (according to one chronicler, Monstrelet) that Charles not be released until Henry VI came of age.36 Charles’s most powerful enemy in England, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, reminded Henry VI of his father’s concern, and warned of Charles’s

34 ‘Robert’ is Robert Waterton, Charles’s keeper at Pontefract castle, Yorkshire during

1416. BL MS Cotton Vesp. F. III, fol. 8; more easily available in electronic text in An Anthology of Chancery English (1384–1462), John H. Fisher, Malcolm Richardson, and Jane L. Fisher (Knoxville, Tenn., 1984), courtesy of the University of Virginia E-text Center (N70, lines 1–9). I know of no historical evidence of such spying, but see McLeod, Prince and Poet, ch. 11, pp. 195–98 on surreptitious arm-squeezing during the visits of Burgundian Hugues de Lannoy. 35 Chancery English e-text; N72, lines 2–3. 36 McLeod, pp. 158, 237, and 375, n. 63.

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‘grete Subtilitie and Cauteleux disposition’.37 (The attitude of Humphrey, a grand bibliophile and founder of libraries, toward Charles could not have helped the spread and preservation of Charles’s poetry.) A black mark at Suffolk’s famous 1450 treason trial was his long, friendly association with Charles.38 Anti-Charles sentiment pursuant to anti-French sentiment should not strike us as unreasonable. It was, after all, with Charles’s family, the Valois, that English kings had struggled for the rule of France and England; it was at Harfleur, at Agincourt, at Orléans itself, that so much English blood had been shed. England and France in the fifteenth century were in the nasty process of splitting a political and cultural marriage that had endured across four centuries, and Charles d’Orléans figured prominently in the final settlements.39 Fine poet or not, generous and sociable translations into English notwithstanding, Charles could hardly have been lionized in England in quite the same way as native poets Chaucer, Lydgate, or Gower could, considering the historical and political contexts. We might well expect the literary-critical reception of the poetry to have been guided by these historical contexts, as was the case in France, and thus might also expect a much-diminished, chilly reception for the poems in England. Two marginalizing factors may have accrued from these unfavorable early political contexts – and interacted: (1) Charles continued to be better known in England as historical figure than as poet, and (2) the complete English poems did not appear in print in England until 1827, as far as we know.

Telling Absence from Print: lyric forms, historical contexts, and the English cultural imagination Nationalistic, Tudor-supported anti-French sentiment is too vague a notion and too gross a stereotype to account fully for the poems’ long absence from print. After all, as Carol Meale has shown, French manuscripts continued to be in demand in England,40 and the early English presses did put out a huge number of French titles, translated and not. One of the first things Caxton printed was a French phrasebook, and while language patterns were changing and are hard to define, French material was not suddenly inaccessible to English readers of printed matter – quite the contrary. More verse translations from French were made between 1476 and 1500 than from Italian: six times as many lines from 37 McLeod, p. 237, citing Joseph Stevenson, Letters and Papers Illustrative of the Wars of the

English in France during the reign of King Henry the Sixth, King of England (London, 1861–64), II, ii. 40–51. Cauteleux translates roughly as ‘subtle’, ‘slippery’, ‘mischievous’, or ‘potentially sneaky and clever’. 38 McLeod, pp. 324–25, citing Rotuli parliamentorum, V, 176–83. 39 Especially between 1436 and 1440. Champion, Vie; McLeod, pp. 198–99, 202–3, 206, 218–20, 225–30, 235, 237–38, 240–44; Rymer’s Foedera (Acta Regis . . ., vol. 1 [London, 1731]); also Rymer’s Syllabus in English of the Documents . . ., vol. 2 (Public Record Office, Great Britain, 3 vols.; New York, 1973). 40 Meale, ‘Patrons, Buyers, and Owners’, pp. 202–9, especially 207–9.

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French, in fact.41 However, notable for its absence in print from the long lists of French and French-born prayers, calendars, romances, treatises, and so on is French lyric. I could not find a single STC entry between 1476 and 1558 that admits itself to be translated French lyric (although a few poems translated from French are nestled in the prose romances and shepherd’s calendars). Perhaps generic vogue as much as nationalistic sentiment, or the two combined, kept Charles from print. Alain Chartier provides a useful parallel example: his Curial and Breviaire des Nobles, for example, came to England in 1483 and 1508 respectively, but the lyrics attributed to him, the Pleasaunt and delectable demaundes, were not printed in England until 1566. The Tudors did not dislike French lyric, as the Richmond castle list amply demonstrates, nor did they eschew French translations. But the early-sixteenth-century English printers (unlike their French counterparts)42 evidently left lyric to thrive in the manuscripts43 and even after mid-century turned their efforts not to lyric sequences but to lyrics in miscellanies. The competition between script and print, the volatile politics of the early Tudor courts, increased trade, affluence, and social mobility, the rise of vernaculars: all these probably exerted tremendous pressure on lyric as a genre within the English literary system. Poetic trends in the Renaissance would deal badly with older courtly forms in general – think of the lai and virelai, the villanelle and canzone – and with a French writer of ballades and roundels like Charles d’Orléans in particular. By mid-sixteenth century, Wyatt’s mutations of Petrarch had proven themselves highly adaptable to the new environments of print and court. A verdant new form was flourishing: sonnets, and after 1582, sonnet sequences. The extinction of older forms was not, of course, immediate; ballades and roundels competed successfully in miscellanies through and after 1600. Luckily for Wyatt’s fame, he wisely did not restrict himself to roundels and ballades but also wrote enough sonnets (and enough of these were picked up in early print venues like Tottel’s Songes and Sonettes) to ensure his later survival in the canon. Unfortunate Charles, on the contrary, who seems to have suffered all his life from bad timing, did not write sonnets. Because the roundel, ballade, chançon, and so on (song forms), were ultimately displaced in the ecosystem of Renaissance literary preferences by sonnet, epigram, and elegy (inscribed forms), Charles’s poems lost what we might think of as a Darwinian struggle for generic survival. Tottel’s miscellany (an opening suggestion, really, for English lyric-inprint) and the other print miscellanies (explorations of that suggestion) are also arenas of generic, formal, and perhaps linguistic competition in which translation played a decisive part. But although detachable fragments of Harley 682 would have fit in perfectly well with the styles and forms and flavors of the early 41 William A. Ringler, Jr., Bibliography and Index to English Printed Verse 1476–1558

(London and New York, 1988), introduction, especially p. 6. 42 See Pearsall, p. 6, who notes the ‘scattered and limited nature of book production in

England’ as opposed to that in France. 43 On which see Arthur Marotti, Manuscript, Print, and the English Renaissance Lyric

(Ithaca, 1995).

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printed miscellanies, none appeared there, as far as I have found. By the 1590s, formally unified collections (sonnet sequences) dominated lyric print production, leaving Charles’s ballade sequence behind in splendid vellum isolation. The crucial fact that his English poetry was not printed shapes several centuries’ cultural cognizance of Charles d’Orléans. He is known in print not as a poet but as a figure of history. The historical Charles is the one who persists, if unevenly, in English cultural perceptions over the centuries. A few samples of Charles’s primarily historical presence in English literature will illustrate. Shakespeare gives Charles d’Orléans a cameo in Henry V in which he does make a lettered (though anachronistic) gesture – ‘I have heard a sonnet begin so to one’s mistress’, Charles wittily replies to the praises of a horse.44 But ‘Orléans’ in the Shakespearean vision is much more likely to be a historical feature than a literary one. Henry VI, Part I, opens with Henry V’s funeral; much of the play is set in Orléans and concerns the sieges, though Shakespeare, probably for his own purposes in the play, gets the history of Charles’s ransom quite wrong.45 Henry VI, Part 2, opens with Suffolk’s importation of Queen Margaret and mentions the Orléans presence, but not the poetry. A century later, John Oldmixon’s Amores Britannici mentions Charles’s marriage to Isabella, widow of Richard II (as an ‘affront’).46 By 1862, Sir Henry Taylor’s play St. Clement’s Eve47 dramatizes the assassination of Charles’s father. But Taylor uses Charles’s family story to speak not of literature but of cultural values: ‘whilst the Duke of Orléans represented the chivalry of the time . . ., the new Duke of Burgundy [he means Jean Sans Peur] was an equally genuine representative of its cruelty and pride’.48 Sir Thomas Park’s sonnet on Charles, quoted later in this essay, likewise creates a primarily historical, idealizing picture of loss, but adds mention of Charles as a poet. In the late nineteenth century, on the other hand, Oscar Wilde focuses on Charles’s elaborately embroidered clothing.49 Charles and his histories thus seem to act in the English cultural imagination as mirrors (the way all histories, legends, interpretations, translations, perhaps act) – each age sees in the Valois Prince’s image what it wishes to emphasize. Early English writers, even dramatic ones like Shakespeare, concern themselves with his political, martial, and marital connections to England; an early Romantic, Thomas Park, uses him as a focus of historical landscape meditation; a 44 III.vii.44–66, 87–120, 128–52 and IV.ii.1–5; see also IV.v.10ff; IV.viii.70. Shakespeare’s

Charles stays scrupulously away from low humor in that scene. III.iii.69–73, Joan’s persuasive speech to Burgundy. London, 1703, p. 100, line 32 and note. Works (London, 1877–78), III, 137–272. Preface, pp. 138–39. However, Taylor’s notes do discuss Charles d’Orléans’s imprisonment and poetry, and he prints a French stanza, pp. 270–71. 49 ‘. . . and the coat that Charles of Orleans wore, on the sleeves of which were embroidered the verses of a song beginning ‘‘Madame, je suis tout joyeux’’, the musical accompaniment of the words being wrought in gold thread, and each note, of square shape in those days, formed with four pearls’ (The Picture of Dorian Gray [New York, 1962], p. 170). 45 46 47 48

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Decadent writer like Wilde steers us to the luxurious surfaces of a perceived medieval courtliness. Charles’s unpublished poetry, though better known in pre-1650 England than we have thought, was still less well-known over time in England than his well-documented, oft-rehearsed historical and national actions. His image and life story seem to have been readily appropriable to varying tastes. An important biographical or historical origin, then, cannot assure the naturalization of poetic translations, any more than unfavorable historical contexts like Henry V’s nationalism can eradicate them. But political hostility (these days, ask Solzhenytsyn or Rushdie) and the book-buying public’s preferences in genre (these days, for paperback romances vs. academic criticism) can determine whether or not, where, and in what quantities an author’s work is read. In Charles’s case the two factors together favored the translations’ early fortunes as a splendid dead-end.

Charles’s Poetry in Literary Canons: critical reception in France The English canon-founders of the eighteenth century had an opportunity to do for Charles’s poetry what early printers had not done: bring it to public notice and put it on the formative literary lists. The issues just touched upon – biography, nationalism or political history, literary trends, and print availability – will also dominate the eighteenth-century English reception of these poems. These issues remain important for nineteenth-century English critics, but are refocused by Romanticism, by the French Revolution, and by Burckhardt’s thesis. But first, a brief look at the French reception of the French poems will provide contrastive background for the English reception. Perhaps the nations’ separate reception histories can explain what first appears to be a clear demonstration of a canon’s power to marginalize a poet. The reception histories may also illustrate what is required in a new culture for translations merely to survive, what it takes for them to gain acceptance, and what it would take for them to flourish as canonical centerpieces and agents of literary change. In the reception history of Charles d’Orléans, there is, quite naturally, a distinct division at the English channel. Charles never disappeared from the French literary canon. A bibliophile, musician, and patron of poetry, young Charles was probably influenced by Eustache Deschamps,50 Alain Chartier, Christine de Pizan and Jean de Garencières. After his release in 1440, Charles conducted puys at Blois, gave young poets like François Villon an encouraging forum, and generally marched along in the unbroken parade of late-medievalearly-Renaissance French poetry. In fact he was imitated and plagiarized well into the sixteenth century. A favorable factor in the French reception – in clear

50 Maître d’hôtel at the court of Charles’s parents, Louis d’Orléans and Valentine

(Visconti) de Milan.

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contrast with the English reception – is his early print début. Seven of his poems appear anonymously in Antoine Vérard’s enormously popular 1501 Jardin de Plaisance, and seven in Lemaire de Belges’s 1531 Le Triomphe de l’amant vert. Two hundred sixty-three poems by Charles appear in Vérard’s 1509 La Chasse et le départ d’amours.51 Almost a century after its composition, the poetry was sufficiently fashionable not to require the enhancement of titling under the Valois name. These early printings assured the poems’ continued availability, and they show us that for the early French readership the poems stood on their own merits even when independent of attribution to Charles d’Orléans. But by the time literary tastes had swung to neo-classicism and the French literary-critical industry had organized itself in the eighteenth century, the poems’ position in the new French canon seemed to require the support of politics and biography. The titles of several key works reveal the scholars’ conscious attempts to write French literary history, to construct the French canon – and the founding lists include Charles d’Orléans.52 But he is not included for his popularity. By the time poems have made it to such canon-lists, people are not reading them much any more, or so the truism goes. In this case it seems so: by 1740, large collections of anonymous poems like those so popular in the sixteenth century were not enough to assure a publication. These eighteenth-century literary historians noted Charles as much for his lineage as for his poetry. And it is a lineage worth note: grandson of Charles V, nephew of Charles VI, father of Louis XII, uncle of François I, Charles d’Orléans barely missed wearing the French crown, and was a prominent member of a most prominent family. Sallier, Goujet, and Imbert, for example, all place the poems in the context of historical biography.53 In these accounts his historical stature and lineage are prominent; his birth, not his poetry itself, seemed to guarantee his place in the early French canon. Even despite the eighteenth century’s very new literary values, Charles’s blood lines

51 Wrongly attributed to Octavien de St.-Gelais. The earliest critical notice of this was

Goujet’s in 1745 (Bibliothèque françoise ou histoire de la littérature françoise, vol. 9, pp. 314–28); for later discussions see Arthur Piaget, ‘Une Édition gothique de Charles d’Orléans’, Romania 21 (1892), 581–96, and Pierre Champion, ‘Du Succès de l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans et de ses imitateurs jusqu’au XVIe siècle’, Mélanges offerts à M. Emile Picot, 2 vols. (Geneva, 1969), I, 409–20. Each century’s critical comment has been to denounce the 1509 Chasse as plagiarism and to note Charles’s sixteenth-century popularity. 52 L’Abbé Sallier praises Charles’s poetry in his 1740 Mémoires de l’Académie Royale des inscriptions et belles lettres (XIII, 580–92), and l’Abbé Goujet follows suit in his 1745 Bibliothèque. Twenty-five poems of Charles d’Orléans appear in Barthélémy Imbert’s 1778 Annales Poétiques ou Almanach des Muses. Mlle de Keralio includes eight French and two English poems in her Collection des meilleurs ouvrages françois . . . (Paris, 1787), III, 139–78. Neither Nelson (An Analytical Bibliography) nor Edith Yenal (Charles d’Orléans: A Bibliography of Primary and Secondary Sources [New York, 1984]) mentions Keralio. 53 Keralio is the most interested in the literary, saying that Charles, as much as Villon, should be seen as France’s first great poet (although she also emphasizes the biography).

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were evidently strong enough to excuse any distaste for his poetic lines. Any real evaluation of Charles’s poetry according to eighteenth-century-French standards of balance, clarity, neo-classical gravity or a fine-tuned alexandrin would likely not be favorable to the poetry itself. However, early French critics grant him a secure, stable place in the new literary canon as a sort of national treasure, effectively diverting discussion away from literary values. Beyond a steady historical interest in matters Orléaniste,54 nineteenth-century France saw a specific revival of interest in the poetry of Charles. Four major editions in France55 kept the poetry in front of the reading public and also stimulated critical discussion of it. In fact, the editions of 1842 led to quite a critical skirmish, a ‘bitter dispute between two scholars’.56 Evidently by this time the poetry of Charles d’Orléans was critical territory worth seizing and worth defending. Yet the nineteenth century’s praise of Charles would prove no less consistently connected with his lineage than the preceding century’s had been, and in fact seems to have produced an even more focused interest in biographical detail. Chalvet’s edition foregrounds this interest in its very title: Poésies de Charles d’Orléans, . . . père de Louis XII et oncle de François Ier, rois de France. An important biography (Deschères’s) and no fewer than twenty-four critical articles appear, most of which include a strong biographical slant.57 Perhaps as an early manifestation of cults-of-personality, but certainly for historical reasons and because of the growing literary-history industry, Charles d’Orléans’s place in the French canon was secure. In our century in France this has been no less true. With the explosion of literary studies came numerous editions, articles, anthologies, and selections treating Charles. One scholar, Pierre Champion, led French publications on Charles in the twentieth century. His 1923 edition of Charles’s French poetry is still generally thought to be ‘definitive’.58 Champion studies the manuscripts, the handwriting,

54 The secure if not always stable place of the Orléans family in French political history

55

56

57 58

no doubt contributed to the continuous interest in Charles’s poetry. From Charles’s association with Jeanne d’Arc, to the 1560 États-Généraux meeting at Orléans, to the duc d’Orléans’s part in the French Revolution, to the Orléans party’s involvement in the 1830 upheavals, a sustained interest in writing French history kept the d’Orléans name and its bearers in public discussion. Vincent Chalvet, ed., Poésies de Charles d’Orléans, père de Louis XII et oncle de François Ier, rois de France (Grenoble, 1803); Aimé Champollion-Figeac, ed., Les Poésies du duc Charles d’Orléans . . . (Paris, 1842); J.-Marie Guichard, ed., Poésies de Charles d’Orléans . . . (Paris, 1842); and Charles d’Héricault, ed., Poésies complètes de Charles d’Orléans . . . , 2 vols. (Paris, 1874; rpt. Paris, 1896). See Nelson, pp. 19–20, for citations of and note on these disputes, which concerned critical standards, fame, and one-up-manship. Most everyone praises Charles’s lineage and poetry; Constant Beaufils (Étude sur la vie et les poésies de Charles d’Orléans [Paris, 1861]) is the exception. See Nelson for annotated citations (An Annotated Bibliography, pp. 17–26); Théodore Deschères, ‘Charles d’Orléans’, in Le Plutarque français (Paris, 1838), II, 1–12. Not everyone agrees; Gerard Defaux writes at some length of the problems in Champion’s addition of punctuation, for example: ‘Le poétique du secret: à propos du rondeau

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the metaphors, the life, the household documents, the rhyme schemes, and more, in at least a dozen articles, books, and monographs published between 1906 and 1927. The metacritical response to Champion’s authoritative work has been steady and respectful, with few disputes.59 But although Champion towers over our century’s landscape of Charles-reception, two other points of editorial interest deserve mention. In 1944 in German-occupied France, one of Charles’s poems found renewed political relevance with the samizdat wartime publication of his famous, patriotic ‘Complainte de France’.60 And in 1950 an astonishing lithograph edition of poems handwritten and illustrated by Henri Matisse appeared. Nelson notes that each of the 1230 copies was signed by the artist.61 Charles is so frequently anthologized and collected in France that it would be nearly impossible to list all the editions; the most recent collection I have found at the time of this writing is Mühlethaler’s 1992 Livre de Poche edition of the Ballades et Rondeaux. Even this brief look at French reception history indicates that for political, biographical, and also aesthetic reasons, the poetry of Charles d’Orléans has always retained a secure place in the French canon.

Charles’s Poetry in Literary Canons: critical reception in England At first glance, the general patterns of reception across the centuries look fairly similar on both sides of the channel: a strong manuscript presence and anthology popularity into the sixteenth century, a period of decline in the seventeenth century, a literary-historical revival in the eighteenth, an antiquarian and biographical frenzy in the nineteenth, and the concomitant seizure of Charles d’Orléans as literary turf worth a battle or two. But any graph of such patterns would show the English lines to have been fewer and fainter. In England his poetry was never as well known as it was in France; critics and historians have been reluctant to award him the place in the English canon that this poetry would XXXIII de l’édition Champion’, Romania 93 (1972), 194–243. I object to Champion’s reordering of the main French manuscript and think we need a good critical facsimile of it; Medieval Renaissance Texts and Studies promises a bi- lingual edition early in the twenty-first century, to be edited jointly by John Fox and Mary-Jo Arn. Arn is at this writing completing a study of the order of composition of BN fr. 25458 (private correspondence, November 1998). But Champion’s work is foundational, and like any Charles scholar I am greatly indebted to it. 59 Daniel Poirion, in his chapter on Charles (Le Poète et le prince, pp. 271–310, and also pp. 133–40, 348–60, 391–98, 422–26), and Alice Planche, in her Charles d’Orléans ou la recherche d’un langage (Paris, 1972) are two other important twentieth-century scholars in France, as is Gilbert Ouy, whose works on primary materials place him with Champion as a central figure. 60 Paris, 1944; The Hague, 1944. One hundred copies, ‘published secretly during German occupation’, according to Nelson (p. 37). This poem’s original contexts are treated in my forthcoming book (see bibliography). 61 Page 39. Poèmes de Charles d’Orléans, manuscrits et illustrés par Henri Matisse (Paris, 1950).

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merit on its own, were the poet, say, anonymous. There are notable exceptions, of course, but the early English scholar-critics’ selections, their comments about the poems and the poet, and even their arranging of critical material in various canon-building works help us understand better why England has not duly welcomed such a skillful, prolific poet, and further, may help us subtilize our current views of canon-formation.

Critical Reception in England: eighteenth century Eighteenth-century English criticism seems to have lagged a few decades behind that of the French. I can find no English critical mention of Charles d’Orléans before 1790, a full half-century after Sallier’s 1740 Mémoires; Nelson’s bibliography mentions none before 1823 (Yenal’s, none before 1827). Poetic tastes had of course changed dramatically in both countries, but unlike France, England seems to have had no historical reasons to keep Charles d’Orléans in critical favor (and good historical reasons to dismiss him). Yet at least four major eighteenth-century critics do discuss him: Joseph Ritson, George Ellis, Horace Walpole, and Thomas Park.62 All four discuss to varying degrees the unusual problems of reception that Charles d’Orléans poses: the problem of his nationality, the problem of viewing his historical era, the problem of his bilingualism (or the fact that we have both French and English poems), and the problem of his royal lineage. A web of critical-editorial problems thus forms itself across the cruxes of Charles’s dual (national) and liminal (literary period) status. First, his lineage makes him both a leader of the evil empire of France and a borderline English Royal: the Other is Us. Next, he wrote both French and English poems, and critics sometimes reconfigure the nationality-lineage problem as a language issue. Like Charles’s dual-status lineage, the existence of the poems in two languages irritates the critical organ that wants to create neat categories (an active organ in any age but perhaps especially important to the eighteenth century). And his era itself was foreign to the sensibilities of the eighteenth century, although one early critic, as we shall see, does in fact try to account for what Barbara Herrnstein Smith calls Contingencies of Value.63 Furthermore, the few eighteenth-century critics who approach Charles as an English poet do so ‘pre-Roxburghe’, that is, with no printed edition and with extremely limited access to manuscripts. To be included in the formative eighteenth-century canon, then, involved more than just writing poetry, even a great deal of very accomplished poetry, in English. Ritson, Ellis, Walpole, and Park respond to the prob62 I place Park in the eighteenth century despite his early-nineteenth-century date,

because he edits Walpole, is pre-Roxburghe, and represents, I believe, a latesteighteenth-century moment or even a turning point of sorts between the very different critical sensibilities of the two centuries. 63 Cambridge, Mass., 1988.

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lems of language, nation, and history differently (but generally without the additional barrier of periodization between ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’ literature that the post-Burckhardtians would erect). Joseph Ritson is the one among these critics who does not take his initial cue regarding Charles from contemporaneous French criticism. Ritson goes straight to Charles’s English-only manuscript, Harley 682, and perhaps for that reason has less trouble dealing with Charles’s Frenchness than with his antiquity. Ritson attempts a literary historian’s usual scholarly interventions: he lists manuscripts, divides texts by dates, adds punctuation, and so on, but he also evaluates. In 1790, he prints ‘Lende me yowre praty mouth madame’ straight from Harley 682, with commentary. Like any critical judgment, Ritson’s commentary necessarily reflects his own century’s poetic preferences: Among the Harleian manuscripts in the British Museum (no. 682) is a collection of love poems, roundels, and songs, made by Charles duke of Orléans while a prisoner in England, in Henry the fifths time. It is not to be expected that the poetry of a foreigner (and a prince of the blood too) should have much merit in an age in which that of the natives had so little . . . 64

His main quibble is with fifteenth-century English poetry’s lack of native merit. Charles is seen, worse for him, as representative of his devalued era; Ritson excuses Charles’s foreigner status by our native poetry’s (de)fault. Unlike the earliest critics across the channel, Goujet and Sallier, Ritson gives little or no weight to Charles’s lineage, placing his discussion of Charles in the prefatory section of the Ancient Songs and Ballads in order to illustrate ‘the progress of Song-writing during the fifteenth century’.65 He thus transmits the connection with music Charles’s poems have always enjoyed.66 Although Ritson did not deem Charles an English poet worthy of inclusion in his 1793 English Anthology, his Ancient Songs and Ballads, with its prefatory remarks including Charles, came out in at least three subsequent editions – 1792, 1829, and 1877 – this last with W. Carew Hazlitt as editor. Hazlitt adds a note (p. xlvii) citing the 1827 Roxburghe Club edition of Harley 682, but otherwise lets stand Ritson’s implied judgment of Charles as a typically weak ancient songster and Ritson’s exclusion of Charles from the English literary lists. Ritson’s contemporary, George Ellis, on the other hand, reveals a concern for larger issues of literary change. Ellis seems aware of the index of difference in 64 Ancient Songs and Ballads from the Time of King Henry the Third to the Revolution (London,

1790; 1792; 1829; ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, London, 1877). This quotation is attributed by Ellis in the 1803 Specimens to Ritson’s 1792 edition, p. lxvii. I have not seen the 1792 edition, nor the editions of 1790 and 1829; I found Ritson’s discussion of Charles in Hazlitt’s 1877 edition, pp. lviii–lix. 65 1877 ed., pp. lvii–lviii. 66 Charles’s verse in both languages seems to exemplify Eustache Deschamps’s 1412 dictum that poetry should be ‘musique naturele’ and ‘paroules metrifiez’; five centuries later, musical settings of Charles’s poetry abound. For a concise review and further references, see Mühlethaler, ed., Ballades et Rondeaux, pp. 21–22.

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which his own opinions inscribe themselves and actually includes Charles’s poetry in his narrative of changing literary value. In fact Ellis himself undergoes a change of heart regarding Charles between his initial 1790 publication of Specimens of the Early English Poets67 and its 1803 reappearance, in which he adds specific discussion of our poet. In the edition of 1790, Ellis takes a longer view and tries to explain opinions like Ritson’s in terms of style, method, and even typography: The regularity and harmony of style, and the minute attention to the artifice of composition which were introduced by the authors of Queen Anne’s reign, produced in the public such a delicacy and even fastidiousness of taste, as could not be gratified by the irregular compositions of our early poets, who therefore soon fell into disrepute, and were in a little time consigned to oblivion. The disuse of the black letter contributed, perhaps, to this revolution in taste . . . (p. iii)

Ellis has both seen through the ‘institutions of evaluative authority’68 and is one himself. Unlike Ritson, Ellis views Charles’s era not as a problem but as an explicable phenomenon. He goes on to say that rare remaining copies of such ‘irregular compositions’ are now in private cabinets, ‘secure . . . but inaccessible’ (p. iii), anticipating by two hundred years the rare-book librarian’s dilemma and the editorial critic’s power to bring poems to public notice (or not). Ellis wants to understand why ‘our early poets’ are ignored and is at least willing to discuss the possibility that the eye of the beholder and the material facts of possession, printing, and use can contribute to perceived literary value. Furthermore, the phrase ‘our early poets’ does not yet distinguish between medieval and Renaissance poets; the canon-builders may have poured as their foundations the barriers of language and of nationalism, but they had not yet seen the plans for the post-Burckhardtian wall of periodization. Ellis also tries to redress what he considers Samuel Johnson’s misuse (in slighting ancient writers) of a critic’s canonizing power. It has been lamented by many lovers of poetry, that, when a general and uniform edition of our poets was published under the auspices of Dr. Johnson, no effort was made in favor of these antiquated writers. It should seem, that the director of that literary apotheosis might have recommended to public notice the works of Surrey, Wyat, Raleigh, and the several contributors to our earlier miscellanies, as justly and as successfully as those of Blackmore, Sprat, and Yalden . . . (pp. ii–iii)

Inclusive Ellis in 1790 laments Johnson’s canon’s exclusion of poets we make

67 Ellis’s Specimens of the Early English Poets (London, 1790) contains no discussion of

Charles, but the 1803 (3rd) edition does, on pp. 311–13, as does the (2nd) edition of 1801, in vol. I, pp. 308–9. The presentation copy of the 1801 edition that Ellis gave to Thomas Park, another critic who prints and discusses Charles’s poetry, is discussed in greater detail below. 68 Barbara Herrnstein Smith’s term (Contingencies of Value, p. 40).

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central today; by 1803 Ellis has done what much of our current canon-expanding theory tries to do – perceive the unexamined lenses of taste through which we read and the unexamined assumptions about language and nation by which we shape our canon – and he extends his inclusive impulse back in time and across the channel to Charles d’Orléans. Ellis’s second and third editions of Specimens devote several pages to Charles and print three English poems, ‘Go forth myn hert’, ‘My hertly love’, and ‘Ne ware my trewe and innocent hert’. He links the poems critically not to music, as Ritson had done, but to the prison-poems of James I of Scotland.69 The nationalized purity of the English canon was evidently not as much an issue for Ellis as were the historical circumstances of poetic composition. On the other hand there is a certain subliminal nationalism implied here: to stress the imprisonment is perhaps to stress English power over the composition of the poems rather than the non-Englishness of the poets. The choice of poems printed here would also reinforce an emphasis on English national power over these foreign-engendered texts, since they appear in BL MS Royal 16 F. ii, the luxurious vellum manuscript given in 1501 to Prince Arthur and retained in the Tudor dynastic library at Richmond. Subliminal English nationalism may lurk beneath Ellis’s very odd treatment of the language issue as well. Charles’s English poetry, says Ellis, is ‘proof that our language had at this time acquired some estimation in the eyes of foreigners’ (p. 313). That is an unusual claim; in the eyes of one foreign prince, a bilingual poet with a penchant for macaronic and experimental verse, imprisoned in England and thus surrounded by everyday English, perhaps so. But while English was becoming a more widespread and standard language in fifteenthcentury England, French was still the higher-status language, probably second only to Latin in terms of pan-European prestige. Yet we know that the fifteenth century was a great cauldron of linguistic change. It would be useful to document how much and what kinds of poetry foreigners wrote in English during this period; without such a record, Charles’s poetry, given its unusual genesis, does not seem to me sufficient grounds for Ellis’s claim of an international esteem for English in the fifteenth century. However, Ellis’s interpretation shows to what lengths one can go when trying to place translated or foreign-born works in a canon. Other than Ellis’s, the most important (and amusing) eighteenth-century critical mention of Charles d’Orléans I can find shows a much more open concern for the English nation and language, but also shows, from early to later editions, a substantive progress of opinion toward inclusiveness. Horace Walpole’s 1759 edition of Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors of England does not include

69 Pages 311–12. Critics of the English poems still do this: see Diane Marks, ‘Poems from

Prison: James I of Scotland and Charles of Orleans’, Fifteenth-Century Studies 15 (1989), 245–58, and A. C. Spearing in this volume.

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Charles d’Orléans, nor does the edition of 1796.70 Charles does, however, gain back-door admittance to Walpole’s Works in 1798 in an appendix to the section which reprints the Catalogue of the Royal and Noble Authors.71 Walpole calls Charles ‘a little eccentric addition’ to his appendix of aristocrats, says he is ‘a curiosity’ and a ‘long-neglected prince’, but then claims to include him ‘on the merit of [his] poetry’ (p. 562). Walpole reveals his French connection when he points out Keralio’s printings of some English poems in her Meilleurs Ouvrages (1787), and lifts two of them, with prose back-translations into French, straight from Keralio’s text. Protestant, Whiggish Walpole would seem to have had strong political reasons to disdain the poems of Catholic, royal Charles d’Orléans. In fact Walpole does fret that the Prince in question, I confess, was not of English blood royal; yet as he paid us the singular compliment of attempting to versify in our language, such a pursuivant [sic] of poetic royal personages as I am, feels a sort of duty to enroll him in the college of arms of our mount Parnassus. (p. 562)

Walpole’s dutiful struggles to balance the competing claims of lineage and nationalism, poetry and language, do not abate. Walpole calls Charles the ‘first purifier of French poetry’ (p. 562) but as for English, ‘if the duke of Orléans improved the poetry of his own country, he certainly contributed no graces to ours’ (p. 564). Furthermore, bilingualism is a character issue for Walpole: ‘nor was Charles so far exasperated by involuntary confinement among us, as to disdain to cultivate the language of his jailors – a symptom itself of liberal and noble sentiments’ (p. 563). Writing in two languages proves Charles’s personal virtue, not a growing foreign esteem for the English language (as Ellis had said). Walpole, hardly a francophile, cannot resist this: It grieves me a little to mention, that the fair editor [Mme Keralio] is of opinion that the duke’s English poetry is not inferior to his French, which does not inspire a very advantageous opinion of the latter – though indeed such is the poverty and want of harmony of the French tongue, that one knows how very meagre thousands of couplets are that pass for poetry in France . . . (p. 566)

He goes on to note ‘the unmusical nature of their language’ (not an opinion one often hears), to denounce French poetry (‘as errant prose as ever walked abroad without stepping in cadence’), and to veer off into a discussion of current French drama (p. 566). But his penchant for biography overtakes even his francophobia in a long, fairly sympathetic though inaccurate historical narrative about Charles’s family (pp. 563–64). All this appears without any Ellis-like acknowledge-

70 I have not seen a first (1758) edition, nor editions between 1759 and 1796. Discussion of

Charles does not appear in a 1759 edition (2nd ed., London) nor in the Edinburgh 1796 edition. But other, earlier editions may also include discussion of Charles, for Walpole’s postscript on p. 567 of the Works (quoted below) states that he wrote this ‘little addition’ to his book before 1789. 71 The Works of Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford, 5 vols. (London, 1798), I, 562–67.

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ment of changing literary tastes. Walpole’s conflicted views remain in check until the very end of the passage, when the thought of the recent French revolution sparks this outburst: N.B. This addition was written before the revolution in France in 1789; since when the follies of that nation have soured and plunged into the most execrable barbarity, immorality, injustice, usurpation, and tyranny; have rejected God himself and deified human monsters, and have dared to call this mass of unheard of crimes ‘giving liberty to mankind’ – by atheism and massacres!72

Walpole suddenly wants to disavow any French taint that the inclusion of Charles d’Orléans (however reluctant the praise, however marginally placed) may have given his book. English goodness was so important to Walpole that it is remarkable Charles is in the Works at all. Amazingly enough, considering Walpole’s anti-French retraction, Charles’s odd, liminal position is fully elevated – given English-royal status – in Sir Thomas Park’s 1803 revised edition of the Works73 (fully elevated, but never fully centralized). Park is an audacious editor who takes great liberties with Walpole’s Works and whose strong aristocratic and aesthetic preferences conquer most traces of the nationalist impulse. Park moves Charles from the appendix to the first and most important section of the book, ‘Royal Authors’, which is a chronological series of critical essays about seventeen poetizing monarchs. This prime section boasts Richard II, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, et al., yet at its very end, out of chronological order, just barely making it onto the list of royal English poets, is a discussion of Charles d’Orléans. It is true that Charles, cousin of Henry V, belongs on an outer branch of the English royal family tree, but Park’s inclusion of him in this particular list is a remarkable stretch which awards Charles and his poetry a status that he generally only enjoys in France. Poetry and lineage beat nationality and language here, even after the French Revolution. Park, in an editorial coup that itself indicates the critical differences between him and Walpole, pulls Charles d’Orléans across daunting canonical boundaries into the ‘Royal Authors’ section of this influential volume. Park also considerably expands Walpole’s original material on Charles, as we shall soon see; but it is useful to note that he is an important link in this editorial and critical chain, or at least an important member of this English social and editorial circle circa 1800. Park and Ellis were in long correspondence about literary and editorial matters, and Park borrowed books, and perhaps opinions, from Ellis during the years leading up to his edition of Walpole’s Works. Ellis in fact presented Park with a copy of his Specimens of the Early English Poets; this presentation copy is now held at the Folger Shakespeare Library, as is part of their correspondence.74 In this book are leaves pasted in at Ellis’s discussion of Charles. On 72 Again, note the date problem: he says the material on Charles was written before 1789,

but still continues to include it as late as the edition of 1798. 73 London, 1803; 1806; I, 174–78. 74 London, 1801. Folger shelf numbers PR1205/E385/As. Col. Other editions – 1790, 1803

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these leaves, in Park’s hand, are copied two of Charles’s poems and a few critical notes. One of these notes in particular points obliquely to problems of period, nation, and value in the early modern canon, and, more directly, offers a glimpse of the thinking that informed a set of editorial decisions Park took between 1801 and his revision of Walpole’s Works in 1803. The first fragment copies lines 2716–29 of Charles’s English sequence, the complicated opening stanza of the legal ‘request’ section that helps frame the lyric sequence.75 The second fragment copies lines 5876–91, stanzas two and three of Ballade 100. Park’s choice of these two fragments and his brief, even cryptic comments reveal his early notice of some of the critical issues to which few editors have attended but which are key to positioning this work in a canon. Park’s note above the first fragment reads ‘ascertains the author’ (emphasis Park’s) and the second links the elaborately rhetorical stanzas to George Puttenham, English Renaissance literary critic. Park thus engages with two problems of canonicity – authorship attribution and periodization – as he is in the process of revising and augmenting Walpole’s selections of the poetry, and repositions Charles in the English canon by physically repositioning him in the Works.76 About Park’s expansion of Walpole’s original material on Charles: Park’s stated editorial intentions are consonant with nineteenth-century criticism’s incipient moral, biographical, and aesthetic leanings. He explains that the new edition is intended ‘to accompany a series of portraits suitably engraven’ of the royal and noble figures.77 Park’s inclusive spirit is like Ellis’s, but with a shade more aestheticism and a shade less nationalism. Park has ‘added specimens of [Charles’s] work’, presumably to correct Walpole’s negative judgments and his reliance on Keralio. The literary-critical slant of his 1803 edition is clear: Park adds both primary and secondary material to Walpole’s essays. Some additions are scholarly; he cites the Ellis and Ritson printings and a reference to Charles in

– are held at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library. Thanks to Laetitia Yeandle of the Folger and to the librarians at Alderman’s Rare Book Room for their generous help. Professor Yeandle points out that ‘Park gave the three-volume work to John Bliss . . . it has two different bookplates of William Henry Bliss (1835–1909). In 1871 it belonged to [Sir] J[ohn] D[uke] Coleridge, soon to become Baron Coleridge’ (private correspondence, January 1997). The handwritten notes are at I, 308–9, with Ellis’s discussion of Charles. 75 In Arn’s edition, pp. 223–24 and 356–57; in MS Harley 682, folios 52v and 135r respectively. 76 For full discussion of these notes and their implications, see my ‘Thomas Park’s Copy’ (see bibliography). 77 Page v; the portrait is after p. 174. I have been unable to establish the source of this portrait of a youthful, ermine-clad Charles. Engraved just below it are words hard to read but resembling ‘Gerimia se’ or ‘Genimia je’. Another of Park’s major editorial interventions is irrelevant to Charles except that it indicates Park’s spirit of inclusiveness: he has mixed ‘Peers’ with ‘Peeresses’ in one gender-neutral section, he says, because ‘this seemed to promise a more agreeable diversity in the lives and in the portraits’ (p. vii).

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the Paston letters.78 He also adds historical and biographical background and reminds us that ‘the duke of Orléans is still very imperfectly known to the public’ (p. 175), echoing Ellis’s concern that the security of the manuscripts restricts their availability. Park mentions two manuscripts, Royal 16 F. ii and Harley 682, ‘which contains a copious mass of love poems, composed in the language acquired from England, but in measures more suitable to the poesy of France’ (p. 175). This is some distance from Walpole’s ‘attempted to versify in our language’ and ‘added no graces to [our language]’, but nevertheless indicates that Park, despite his placement of Charles with the Royal Authors, still thinks of the work as distinct from the rest of the English canon. The comment is metrically inaccurate, of course: Charles writes the French ballades in octosyllabes and décasyllabes, the English ones mostly in pentameters. A pentameter is not a décasyllabe, which is one of the things reading these French and English poems together illustrates very well. Even if such a metrically inaccurate comment were impressionistically acceptable, it would simply mark another segment on the index of critical difference. In the dawning age of Wordsworthian blank verse and Tennysonian tetrameter, Park perceived the Middle English ballades as more French than English in character. Not until pre-Raphaelite appropriations of French medievalism would the English canon be comfortable absorbing such verse; Park in 1803 was still in the earlier phase, metrically speaking, though his thematic work with Charles looks ahead to critics like Coleridge. Park offers the opening of Charles’s English sequence, lines 1–8 (p. 176), plus two other poems under titles I have not seen them given elsewhere.79 These are not what late-twentieth-century critics might think of as the best of Charles’s work; maybe the selection, based on Park’s romanticizing early-nineteenthcentury imagination, is part of the reason we in our century have discounted Charles – what tasted sweet now seems saccharine, what felt sublime now seems ridiculous (as Ellis might have thought). If we only get to read Park’s sort of selections, we never see, and thus may never know to seek, the poetry’s full range, which is of course the insoluble problem of any canonical set or selection. Park’s selections show a side of Charles’s work distinct from what Walpole showed: here we have not the princely lover but the singer of reverdies, of a Cupid-letter, of the simplest dimeter couplets imaginable. The selections indicate the values in Charles’s work that Park perceived and chose to transmit, and by extension, the values in fifteenth-century poetry more generally perceived and transmitted. Early nineteenth-century perceptions of ‘quaint’ medieval literature were all about spring-songs, simple lyrics, patent letters to Cupid. What Gaston Paris dubbed ‘courtly’ poetry, what Rossetti and Morris would revive at mid78 Pages 174–75 (citing Paston Letters, I, 4), a letter from Robert Repps to John Paston.

Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Norman Davis (Oxford, 1971). 79 ‘To longe, for shame, and all to longe trewely’, Ballade 48, under the title ‘On May

Morning’; and ‘When that ye goo’, Steele and Day, ed., lines 4505–20, under the title ‘The Lover’s Lament’.

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century, is anticipated in this canon-building edition. Limited in this way, the nostalgic selections seem a little patronizing, given that Harley 682 contains (viewed from the year 2000 at least) some really splendid and complex poems. If Park wanted to print laments, why not display the rhetorical interest of Ballade 60, the wistful, understated resonance of Ballade 31, or the emotional power of Ballade 59? Why not the genre-play evident in anti-reverdies like Ballades 17 and 53? Why not the unusual depiction of Fortune (lines 4964–5050)? Park’s selections evidence the sensibility that shaped and reflected nineteenth-century thinking about medieval culture and may understandably have led twentiethcentury readers who prefer more strength, complexity, and wit in their poetry to dismiss Charles before reading further. Park also wrote, and cites in the 1803 edition of the Works, an idealizing sonnet in which Charles figures prominently. Sonnet XIX. Written near a ruinous Mansion at Groombridge, where Charles Duke of Orléans was many years a Prisoner of War. Heroic chiefs of this once-boasted hall, If e’er your spectred forms at midnight float O’er the fall’n battlement or half-sill’d moat, Like dubious vapors near some charnel wall Which the belated way-farer appal; – Mourn ye those antique times of proud approof, When captur’d banners wave’d beneath your roof, To taunt the royal Troubadour of Gaul? Yet, let your modern sons revere the day, Howe’er in some degenerate changes sunk When hostile arms to civil arts gave way. And moats to rills, and towers to hovels shrunk: While the fierce clarion to the sheep-bell yields, And tented moors to cultivated fields.80

The sonnet marks fallenness, diminution, a georgic domestication of the heroic. It makes Charles the object of his implied Romanticizing ubi sunt. Its gothic landscape captures the imaginative medievalism that would characterize Park’s century. Although Park gets some of the historical facts wrong (Charles’s birthdate and his presence at Groombridge), is not strict about literary-historical definitions (Charles was born some centuries too late to have been a ‘troubadour’), and seems nearly cloyingly nostalgic, his sonnet and his expanded essay on Charles, not to mention his placing Charles with the English royal authors, are remarkably imaginative and sympathetic (if inherently distorting) responses that make their way into a prominent critical vehicle, Walpole’s 1803 Works.

80 The note indicates that the poem was printed 1797 for G. Sael, London. Charles was

not at Groombridge, although the Orléans arms appear over the door. His brother Jean may have been a prisoner there briefly; see Steele and Day, ed., p. xiii, n. 1. Facts aside, the ‘Troubadour of Gaul’ merited a sonnet.

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These English canon-founders – Ritson, Ellis, Walpole, and Park – did worry at the critical problems of nationality, lineage, language, and historicity such a dual-status poet presents, but none was fully able to clarify Charles’s and his translated poetry’s status and position in the young canon. Critical Reception in England: nineteenth century and after By the 1820s, just as in France, editions sprang up and critical discussion ensued. Yet Dr. Johnson’s silence echos long, it seems, for Charles d’Orléans does not appear in the main antiquarian repositories: not in Percy’s Reliques, not in Cibber’s Lives, not in Palgrave. Although Charles is included in several nineteenth-century literary lists,81 critical interest tilts during this period toward the question of the English poems’ authorship – which in this case is really also a question about language and nationality. This deflection of interest away from the poems themselves, paradoxically enough, begins almost immediately after the appearance of the first printed edition of the complete English poems. In 1827 George Watson Taylor edited for the Roxburghe Club the Poems Written in English by Charles, Duke of Orleans During His Captivity in England After the Battle of Azincourt (London).82 In the introduction, Watson Taylor begins by mentioning Charles’s lineage and history and declares that the English version has all the spirit of originality, and evinces a masterly knowledge of that language, which would do credit to the native writers cotemporary [sic] with [Charles] . . . the merit of many other passages will not escape notice, such as these [and he quotes B9 and parts of B21, B17, and fragments of others].83

Almost immediately, in The Retrospective Review, Thomas Croft denies that the translated English poems are by Charles at all, although he concedes that some of the roundels without French analogues may be by Charles.84 The critical dispute 81 Thomas Warton’s History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth

Century, ed. W. Carew Hazlitt, 4 vols. (1871; rpt. Hildesheim, 1968) does include the English poetry of Charles, duke of Orleans, at 1440 in a chronological list of early manuscripts, and notes the Roxburghe Club printing of them (I, 32). W. J. Courthope’s History of English Poetry (3 vols., London, 1840; 6 vols., London, 1895–1910) places Charles in a table of English and European authors under, and only under, France. Courthope also calls Hoccleve ‘the only other considerable English poet in the first half of the fifteenth century’ (p. 133) – other than Lydgate, he means! 82 Note the perhaps deliberately inclusive orthography. It is always ‘d’Orléans’ in France, of course, but some editors and critics in England partially or fully anglicize the name, to Charles of Orléans or Charles of Orleans. 83 Pages i–iii and iv–vii. 84 The Retrospective Review, and Historical and Antiquarian Magazine (London), 2nd series, 1 (1827), 147–56. He also accuses the publisher of ‘literary avarice’ for printing so few copies (Nelson, p. 18). In France Aimé Champollion-Figeac takes it for granted that Charles wrote the English poems, but treats it as a minor endnote point: ‘Leur vrai mérite pour nous est d’être en anglais du XVème siècle, et de donner la preuve que ce

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in England, unlike that simmering among his editors in France at the time, focused on vehement assertions and denials of Charles’s authorship of the English poems. The English authorship disputes went on until 1965, when John Fox weighted opinion towards Charles (a balance confirmed in 1992 with Mary-Jo Arn’s convincing review of evidence in English Studies).85 The long discussion of this point and related matters – whether or not there was a mysterious English translator, which poems came first, and so on – has gnarled critical responses to Charles d’Orléans since the nineteenth century. In an age of ‘unprecedented literary interlingualism’, as Barzun calls the nineteenth century, there is a strangely persistent desire on both sides of the channel to keep the poet as French-only, or at least, to deny that the poetry belongs or could belong to both canons. Literary nationalism is, in this case at least, a powerful force for marginalizing bicultural texts. Nationalism is not the only force at work here, of course. One influential nineteenth-century critic’s pronouncement moves beyond the Englishauthorship dispute into a discussion of poetic values, and it goes badly for Charles. Robert Louis Stevenson’s response to Charles in Familiar Studies of Men and Books86 shows the particular qualities his age sought in vain in Charles’s poetry. In Stevenson’s long essay, the second longest of his book, he doubts that Charles wrote the English poems87 yet devotes much space to his curious defects as an English poet. The essay may help explain why, beyond Charles’s Frenchness, an antiquarian age chose not to embrace these antique poems. The poems derive, complains Stevenson, ‘from the very idleness of the man’s mind and not from intensity of feeling’ (p. 270); Charles is not Shelley, in other words. The poems are ‘autobiographical’, but they are ‘uneventful’ (p. 270), and they so lack ‘definite experience’ that we do not even know who the woman is (p. 271) – not Tennyson’s Maud, Rossetti’s Lizzie Siddal, or even Wordsworth’s Lucy – nothing here, that is, to satisfy the biographical demands of Stevenson’s

prince étudia cette langue pendant sa prison’ (note to p. 270, appears pp. 444–45). One French critic, Francisque Michel, in a literary dog-in-manger act, does assert (without support) that the English poems were done not by Charles but by an anonymous contemporary: Rapports à M. le Ministre de l’instruction publique sur les anciens monuments de l’histoire et de la littérature de la France qui se trouvent dans les bibliothèques de l’Angleterre et de l’Écosse (Paris, 1838), pp. 267–78. The Germans tended to hold similar opinions: Georg Bullrich, in Über Charles d’Orléans und die ihm zugeschreibene englische Übersetzung seiner Gedichte (Berlin, 1893), and Paul Sauerstein, in Charles d’Orléans und die englische Übersetzung seiner Dichtungen (Halle, 1899), echo Michel. One later scholar posited as mysterious ‘translator’ Charles’s friend Suffolk: Henry MacCracken, ‘An English Friend of Charles of Orleans’, PMLA 26 (1911), 142–80. See Yenal, pp. 32–37. 85 Fox, ‘Poète anglais’; Arn, ‘Charles of Orleans and the Poems of B.L. MS Harley 682’; William Calin took up the question again in ‘Will the Real Charles of Orleans Stand!’ but Arn’s evidence and her edition of 1995 will likely have finished this dispute. 86 Of which there have been something like forty editions; I cite here an 1887 (New York) edition, pp. 229–74. 87 Page 249, n. 1.

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Romantic-Victorian imagination. Nor will Charles’s work feed a nineteenthcentury hunger for truth or edificatory opinion. ‘Great writers’, notes Stevenson, are struck with something in nature or society, with which they become pregnant and longing; they are possessed with an idea, and cannot be at peace until they have put it outside of them. . . . But instead of communicating Truth, [Charles] observes the laws of a game. (p. 270)

and ‘these forms are suitable rather for those who wish to make verses, than for those who wish to express opinions’ (pp. 246–47). In bourgeois Stevenson we also find a certain resentful classism. Charles ‘was born a great vassal but conducted himself like a private gentleman’ (p. 268) and ‘his birth . . . was above his merit’ (p. 230). Stevenson’s thinly-veiled anti-aristocratic prejudices88 blend with an unwillingness to take the poetry on its own terms, outside the evaluative criteria of Stevenson’s literary moment. Stevenson is no self-aware, open-minded Ellis. Where eighteenth-century critics discussed the problems of Charles’s language and nationalism, nineteenth-century critics solved both problems by tightening the canonical boundaries. Part of their continuing reluctance to admit Charles’s work to the English canon seems to have been related to an equal reluctance to think of translators as poets or to think of poetic translation as poetry. It should be no surprise that this belief about the relation between source and translated poem – really a belief about poetic originality – is asserted in the early nineteenth century, the age of Romantic poetry in which spontaneity, emotion, and an individual’s responses to sublime nature were prized. Romantic standards for poetic originality attach themselves, in Charles’s case, to English nationalism: since the poems are ‘only’ translations, not ‘original’ in the Coleridgeian sense, and maybe not even written by the prince in question, who was French anyway, nineteenth-century critics could justifiably exclude them. Add Burckhardt’s foundational definitions of ‘Renaissance’, influential ‘medievalist’ notions about the ‘courtly’ and the ‘chivalrous’ from writers like Gaston Paris, and the sum is an end-of-century periodization that places Charles d’Orléans as a medieval poet because of his birthdate; a nationalism that places him as a French poet because of his birthplace; and a literary aesthetic and theory that dismisses even selftranslations as non-original poems. Three strikes, and Charles is out of the English canon. This trebly-liminal figure fared badly, falling outside the threshhold on each count, despite the increased attention he received after coming into print in 1827. It is a measure of the nineteenth century’s enduring influence on today’s literary canons (as if we needed more evidence of it) that each of these positions – that Charles is a medieval poet only, a French-only poet, that he did not write the English poems, that there was a mysterious translator, that for whatever reasons his 6,531 lines of English poetry are not fully part of our

88 Evident also on pp. 232–34, 248, 251–52, 265–66, 268.

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canon – still is sometimes assumed, and each still has occasional adherents in twentieth-century criticism.89 In the twentieth century, most leaders in the movement to reconsider the English poems were medievalist editors, critics, and anthology-gatherers. Before Robert Steele’s landmark Early English Text Society edition of 1941 and Mabel Day’s extension of it (1946), most critics, typified by Chambers and Hammond, relied on extensions of nineteenth-century approaches to this poetry.90 Since Steele and Day there has been increasing tendency to consider Charles an English poet, a tendency evidenced in the criticism of Cecily Clark, John Fox, Diane Marks, A. C. Spearing, and Mary-Jo Arn. Steele’s edition did more to broaden English critical response to this corpus than did two hundred years of sporadic critical mentions, illustrating again that the real canon-shaping power, the longterm power, is in the hands of editors. One hopes that the considerable extensions of our knowledge about the poetry and poet found in Arn’s edition will have still further effects. Also since Steele and Day, the poems have been somewhat more frequently anthologized, generally with qualifications. Selections are still few, considering the relatively large manuscript presence, and are not fully representative of the poetry’s range. Davies, Stevick, and Robbins, typically, still keep Charles outside the center where Langland and Chaucer bide.91 Burrow’s Longman anthology is better proportioned: one lyric each by Lydgate and Hoccleve, five poems from the Sloane manuscript, five Chaucer lyrics, and four Charles lyrics, a sample much more closely in line with the relative numbers of surviving works (though a bit heavy on the Sloane).92 This proportion evidently attempts to reflect the state of what we currently know about the poetry, forming itself less on how we 89 Theo Stemmler, ‘Zur Verfasserfrage der Charles d’Orléans zugeschreibenen englischen

Gedichte’, Anglia 82 (1964), 458–73; Eleanor Prescott Hammond includes Charles in her list but also questions that English authorship: English Verse between Chaucer and Surrey (Durham, 1927); Calin, ‘Will the Real Charles Please Stand!’ 90 Consider the remarks in Chambers and Sidgwick, Early English Lyrics (London, 1937), who anthologize two poems (Ballade 67 and Roundel 174): ‘Modern scholars are disposed to regard the English poems . . . as being translations . . . made by a fifteenth century writer other than Charles himself . . .’ and cite Bullrich, Stevenson, and Champollion-Figeac, who, they write, ‘prints as his some English poems from sources other than Harley 682, which may be genuine’ (emphasis mine) – as if the BN fr. 25458 poems and Royal F 16. ii poems are not ‘genuine’. He means by that, I think, ‘genuinely by an English author’, demanding a biographical certitude that may become less relevant in future criticism as a criterion for canon formation. 91 Rossell Hope Robbins, Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (Oxford, 1952) prints five poems to which he adds trivial titles and a long discussion of authorship that contains a number of errors (pp. 282–83). Robert Stevick’s One Hundred Middle English Lyrics (Indianapolis, Ind., 1964) prints one poem and gets the dates wrong (p. 120). R. T. Davies, Medieval English Lyrics (Evanston, Ill., 1964) prints four poems and equivocates on the authorship question (p. 341). Arn’s edition should improve future anthologizers’ credibility. 92 English Verse 1300–1500 (London, 1977), pp. 289–95. Ballade 6, Roundel 48, Roundel 57, and the ever-reprinted Ballade 97 (‘O sely ankir’).

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currently regard the poet (less, in other words, like Walpole’s or Stevenson’s opinions or Park’s sonnet). Epistemologically speaking, such an anthology implies a canon formation that follows the material rather than the critical, attempts to ground itself in current bibliographical evidence rather than current fashion. Even Burrow, though, still hesitates: ‘the question of the authorship of the Harley poems has been much debated, and is still unresolved’ (p. 289). On the other hand he reads the poems as parallel texts: the English poems generally derive from the French, but they are not translations. They are more varied in mood and style . . . Echoes of Chaucer . . . and of Lydgate . . . alternate with slangy expressions . . . and violent outbursts. (p. 289)

But Charles’s poems still are not on Americans’ high-canon short-list: none appears in the sixth edition of The Norton Anthology of English Literature, despite the desperate paucity and poverty of fifteenth-century lyric there represented.93 It seems entirely understandable that the boundaries of our canon, and the epistemological basis for those boundaries, should change over time, epecially where ambiguously bicultural texts like these are concerned. Perhaps such a corpus presents an ideal opportunity to a critical era that announces its desire to ‘globalize’:94 I for one am trying to use Charles and his curious reception history as a stimulus to a more globalized way of thinking of early-modern poetics. Cross-cultural histories, (inter)nationalisms, changing poetic values, and the actions of editors and critics have affected the reception of Charles’s poems in England and in France more, I would argue, than have the usual canon-forming categories of class, gender, and race. Editors, in conversation with one another across temporal and cultural distances, shape the availability and reception of literature more powerfully than most contemporary critics (especially those who are not themselves editors95) might grant. Particularly for manuscript material, and for any out-of-print books, editions are perhaps the prime locus of canonstruggle. Other factors – fashions in genre and changing aesthetic sensibilities, accidents of friendship, editors’ choices to modernize certain texts and not others, and perhaps even modern readers’ difficulty with Middle English orthography – may have directed the long course of reception in this case. Charles is 93 M. H. Abrams, gen. ed., vol. 1 (New York, 1993). And in a more specialized recent

anthology, From Chaucer to Spenser (Oxford, 1999), where one might expect Charles to figure prominently (by most theories of inclusion), editor Derek Pearsall includes only eight poems. 94 Witness the call for papers in late 1998 for a special issue of PMLA on the topic ‘globalizing literary study’. 95 Bourdieu, for instance, sees canonical exclusions as class-based sociological phenomena, what he calls the ‘sense of distinction’ (p. 142) and the social ability to generalize that sense of distinction to aesthetic works, recognizing them as legitimate or not. Guillory reads for institutional factors; Deleuze and Guattari focus on the oppression and colonization of the Other. Each approach offers valid but limited explanations for the complexities of literary history.

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also a casualty of a strong post-Enlightenment drive to periodize our canons: Charles’s English poetry, it seems to me,96 falls through the chasm that opens up in the nineteenth century between ‘medieval’ and ‘Renaissance’; or rather, the critics and editors who discuss him do not agree about where to place him, so he remains unplaced, lost in translation, or slotted uncomfortably in the English canon as the medieval poet he more clearly is in French. This case, in other words, underscores a few additional factors in literary canon formation and reminds us, I hope, that such factors are inevitably multiple and interactive and fluctuating, and, where early modern literature is concerned, cross-cultural.97

96 Chapter 6, Canon, Period, explores further the problems of periodization. 97 The most canonically-marginalized part of Charles’s work (his several hundred corre-

sponding Latin poems) is effectively invisible to modern readers. It is the side of his œuvre that has most been lost, and paradoxically, it is that side to which he gave his final attentions at the end of his life, seeking the permanent fame of a parallel-text Latin translation by his secretary, Astesano. This work, found in Grenoble 873, is treated in Canon, Period, Chapter 5.

214

Bibliographical Supplement This bibliography updates Deborah Nelson’s 1990 bibliography and includes earlier works omitted from her bibliography as well. I have aimed at completeness (I cannot hope to be exhaustive) in order to help readers searching for substantial or especially insightful information about the duke or his works. Publications in which references are brief, scattered, or largely descriptive are omitted, as are literary histories and most works that focus on Villon. The strength of the bibliography is its inclusiveness: it contains what historical, arthistorical, and bibliographical information I could locate, in addition to work on the two bodies of poetry. I could not have compiled a bibliography of this scope without the expert and patient help of the Reference Department staff of Widener Library, especially Sarah Phillips, Michael Fitzgerald, and Joe Bourneuf. Although I see no reason to catalogue anthologies that contain the duke’s French poetry, I have included Derek Pearsall’s recently published anthology of English poetry because it is all too rare that any of the duke’s poetry is included in such teaching and reading texts. I have omitted fiction relating to the duke, except for the closet drama by Jacques Drillon (simply as a curiosity). The list of dissertations and reviews is likely to be incomplete. Two bibliographies have been published since 1990 (see Galderisi and Kosta-Théfaine, below), but Claudio Galderisi’s is not readily available outside Italy and Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine’s contains a number of errors, as well as entries for works that deal only incidentally with the duke. I am grateful to both for alerting me to a number of references. Allmand, C. T., ed. ‘Documents Relating to the Anglo-French Negotiations of 1439’. In Camden Miscellany: Vol. XXIV, Camden Fourth Series 9, London, 1972, pp. 79–149. Arn, Mary-Jo, ed. Fortunes Stabilnes: Charles of Orleans’s English Book of Love. Binghamton, New York, 1995. J. M. Fyler. Speculum 74 (1999), 397; P. Uhl. Scriptorium (1998), Bulletin codicologique, 27*–28*; M. Hanley. Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997), 211–13; H. Phillips. Journal of the Early Book Society 1 (1997), 158–61; J. Boffey. Medium Ævum 65 (1996), 319–20; A. Classen. Mediaevistik 9 (1996), 453–54; Year’s Work in English Studies 75 (1994), 157.

———. ‘A ‘‘Lost’’ Poem by Charles de Nevers recorded by Charles d’Orléans’. Notes & Queries, 244, n.s. 46 (1999), 185–6. ———. ‘Charles of Orleans and the Poems of BL MS, Harley 682’. English Studies 74 (1993), 222–35. ———. ‘Poetic Form as a Mirror of Meaning in the English Poems of Charles of Orleans’. Philological Quarterly 69 (1990), 13–29. ———. ‘Charles of Orleans: Translator?’ In The Medieval Translator, vol. 4, ed. Roger Ellis and Ruth Evans, Exeter and Binghamton, New York, 1994, pp. 125–35. Avril, François, and Nicole Reynaud, Les manuscrits à peintures en France 1440–1520.

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Paris, 1993. [Published on the occasion of the exhibition: Quand la peinture était dans les livres. Les manuscrits enluminés en France, 1440–1520]. Contains discussion and 2 plates (p. 247) of BN fr. 25528, an MS of Boccaccio’s Roman de Troïlus commissioned by Marie of Clèves in the mid-1450s and apparently painted by one of the artists attached to the court at Blois.

———, and Patricia Danz Stirnemann. Manuscrits enluminés d’origine insulaire VIIe–XXe siècle. Paris, 1987. R. G. Calkins. Speculum 65 (1990), 109–111. Describes a number of the duke’s MSS made in England and now in the BN, incl. BN fr. 25458.

Azzolina, Liborio. ‘Temi tradizionali e allegorie in Charles d’Orléans’. Annali della Facoltà di Filosofia e lettere della R. Università di Cagliari [Anni accademici 1933–34 e 1934–35 (XII e XIII E.F.)] 14 (1936), 123–44. Backhouse, Janet. ‘Illuminated Manuscripts associated with Henry VII and Members of his Immediate Family’. In The Reign of Henry VII: Proceedings of the 1993 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Benjamin Thompson, Harlaxton Medieval Studies, V, Stamford, 1995, pp. 175–87. ———. ‘Founders of the Royal Library: Edward IV and Henry VII as Collectors of Illuminated Manuscripts’. In England in the Fifteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1986 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Daniel Williams, Woodbridge, Suffolk, 1987, pp. 23–41. On Royal 16 F. ii, see esp. pp. 36–39.

Baurmeister, Ursula and Marie-Pierre Laffitte. Des livres et des rois: La bibliothèque royale de Blois. Paris, 1992 [pp. 45–61: ‘L’installation à Blois de la librairie de Charles d’Orléans’]. Catalogue of an exhibition of the same name held at the chateau in 1992 and moved to the Bibl. Nat. in 1992–93.

Bellenger, Yvonne. ‘L’Exil, de Charles d’Orléans à Du Bellay’ [taken from table of contents]. In Le Thème de l’exil de Charles d’Orléans à Saint-John-Perse, Cahiers de l’Association Internationale des études françaises, 43, Paris, 1991, pp. 7–23. Proceedings of the first day of the 42nd conference of the Association. Unfortunately, the first speaker changed her topic to ‘Du Bellay: L’exil et la connaissance de soi’, a detail that eluded the editors of the volume. Contains no discussion of the duke or his work.

Beltran, Vincenç. ‘El cancionero de Charles d’Orléans y Dregz de natura de M. Ermengau’. Romania 115 (1997), 193–206. Section I: Una transposicíon de folios en el ms. fr. 25458 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris [with charts], pp. 193–99. Boffey, Julia. ‘Charles of Orleans Reading Chaucer’s Dream Visions’. In Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages, The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Ninth Series, Perugia, 1995, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, Cambridge, 1996, pp. 43–62. Burrow, John A. ‘The Poet and the Book’. In Genres, Themes and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century, The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1986, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, Tübinger Beiträge zur Anglistik, 11, Tübingen, 1988, pp. 230–45. Calin, William. ‘Will the Real Charles of Orleans Please Stand! or, Who Wrote the English Poems in Harley 682?’ In Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly, ed. Keith Busby and Norris J. Lacy, Amsterdam, 1994, pp. 69–86. Camargo, Martin. The Middle English Verse Love Epistle. Studien zur Englischen Philologie, n. s., 28, Tübingen, 1991.

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H. L. Spencer. RES 45 (1994), 87–88; A. Classen. Mediaevistik 6 (1993), 505–508; C. M. Meale. Archiv 230 (1993), 164–66; D. Pezzini. Aevum 67 (1993), 455–57; H. Hargreaves. Scriptorium (1992), Bulletin codicologique, 77*–78*; H. A. Kelly. Speculum 68 (1993), 482–85; N. F. Blake. English Studies 73 (1992), 559–62; A. Astell. JEGP 91 (1992), 561–63.

Cholakian, Rouben C. ‘Charles d’Orléans: The Challenge of the Printed Text’. Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998), 119–26. ———. ‘The Subtextual Love Message in the Ballades of Charles d’Orléans’. FifteenthCentury Studies 15 (1989), 81–91. Classen, Albrecht. Die autobiographische Lyrik des europäischen Spätmittelalters: Studien zu Hugo von Montfort, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Antonio Pucci, Charles d’Orléans, Thomas Hoccleve, Michel Beheim, Hans Rosenplüt und Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino. Amsterdam, 1991. A. J. Kennedy. Medium Ævum 63 (1994), 155–56; G. Mombello. Studi Francesi 38 (1994), 313–14; C. Thiry. RL 38 (1994), 114–16; G. Roques. RLiR 57 (1993), 325–27; K. Hanson. German Quarterly 66 (1993), 540–41; A. T. Robertshaw. Speculum 68 (1993), 1084–86; H.-J. Behr. Mediaevistik 6 (1993) [1995], 454–57; H. Heinen. Arbitrium 10 (1992), 177–79.

Clin Meyer, Marie Véronique. ‘Mandement de Charles d’Orléans à son trésorier (1414)’. Bulletin de l’Association des amis du Centre Jeanne d’Arc 10 (1986), 31–32. Coldiron, A. E. B. Canon, Period, and the Poetry of Charles of Orleans: Found in Translation. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 2000. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans and Thomas Park’s Copy of the Specimens of the Early English Poets’. Notes and Queries 242 [n.s. 44] (1997), 465–69. ———. ‘Translatio, Translation, and Charles d’Orléans’s Paroled Poetics’. Exemplaria 8 (1996), 169–92. ———. ‘Lyric Translations from French (1440–1591)’. Ph.D. diss. University of Virginia, 1996. Colenbrander, Herman Th. ‘Les Très riches heures de Jean, duc de Berry: un document politique?’ Cahiers d’archéologie et d’histoire du Berry 1996 [no. numéro horssérie, nov], 109–114. [Not seen.] Sketches the political situation that gave rise to the cortège represented in the miniature for the month of May, involving the duke, Jean de France, Bernard, comte d’Armagnac, and Jean, comte de Clermont, and Jean Sans Peur. Suggests that the manuscript was commandée by the duc d’Orléans and offered to Jean de France.

Colombo, Maria, Marina Fumagalli, and Anna Maria Raugei, eds. ‘Il n’est nul si beau passe temps Que se jouer a sa Pensee’ (Charles d’Orléans): Studi de filologia e letteratura francese in onore di Anna Maria Finoli. Pisa [1995]. The title is misleading. Contains no discussion of the duke or his work.

Contamine, Philippe. ‘La piété quotidienne dans la haute noblesse à la fin du Moyen Âge: l’exemple de Charles d’Orléans (1463–1465)’. In Horizons marins, itinéraires spirituels (Ve–XVIIIe siècles), ed. Henry Dubois, Jean-Claude Hocquet, and André Vauchez, Histoire ancienne et médiévale, 20, 2 vols., Paris, 1987, I, 35–42. ———. ‘Les derniers mois de la vie de Charles d’Orléans d’après un document inédit’. Bulletin de l’Association des amis du Centre Jeanne d’Arc 10 (1986), 19–30. This essay and the previous one are also available in De Jeanne d’Arc aux guerres d’Italie: Figures, images et problèmes du XVe siècle, ed. Philippe Contamine, Orléans, 1994, pp. 193–204 [‘Les derniers mois’] and 205–12 [‘La piété quotidienne’].

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Cropp, Glynnis M. ‘Fortune and the Poet in Ballades of Eustache Deschamps, Charles d’Orléans, and François Villon’. Medium Ævum 58 (1989), 125–32. Deschaux, Robert. ‘Charles d’Orléans et la Saint-Valentin’. Recherches et travaux: Université de Grenoble Bulletin 45 (1994), 21–26. Devries, David Neil. ‘The Dream-Vision in Fifteenth Century English Poetry’. Ph.D. diss. New York University, 1991. Deals with Lydgate, James I, Charles d’Orléans, Henryson, and Dunbar.

Doyle, A. I. ‘The European Circulation of Three Latin Spiritual Texts’. In Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. A. J. Minnis, Cambridge, 1989, pp. 129–46. Discusses manuscripts of the Donatus Devocionis owned by the duke and his brother (pp. 138–41).

Drillon, Jacques. Charles d’Orléans ou le génie melancolique: théâtre à lire. Paris, 1993. A drama in five acts and three interludes (the second entitled ‘Le monologue du livre’), in which ‘characters’ such as La marge, Le texte, and La citation speak in the duke’s words (from his poetry) or their own.

DuBruck, Edelgard E. La Passion Isabeau: une édition du manuscrit Fr. 966 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. American University Studies, Series II: Romance Languages and Literature 141, New York and Paris, 1990. A. E. Knight. Speculum 68 (1993), 1105–1107. Edition of a manuscript executed for the duke and his new wife in 1440.

Duby, Georges. ‘Carlo d’Orleans: Il mio regno per un rondò’, trans. Simona Cigliana, La Repubblica, 15–16 december 1991, supplement ‘Cultura’. Epstein, Robert William. ‘ ’’At the Stremes Hed of Grace’’: Representations of Prince and Poet in Late Medieval English Court Poetry’. Ph.D. diss. Princeton University, 1996. Faessler-Caccia, Giuliana. ‘La poésie de circonstance chez Charles d’Orléans’. In Studi Francesi e Provenzali 84/85, ed. Marc-René Jung and Giuseppe Tavani, Romanica Vulgaria Quaderni, nos. 8–9, L’Aquila, 1986, pp. 93–115. Fallows, David. ‘Charles d’Orléans’, A Catalogue of Polyphonic Songs, 1415–1480, Oxford, 1999, pp. 731–32. ———. ‘Two Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Songs’. Early Music Series [supplement], 5 (1977), 108. Fallows, David, ed. ‘Two Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Songs’. Howard Mayer Brown, gen. ed. Oxford University Press Early Music Series, no. 28. London, 1977. Cd’O’s ‘Mi verry joy’ [‘Mon seul plaisir’] set by Fallows to music by John Bedyngham (with editorial note). Complements his 1977 article ‘Words and Music . . .‘ published in Early Music 5 (1977) 38–43. The results can be heard on the recording Mi Verry Joy: Songs of Fifteenth Century Englishmen. Text and notes prepared by David Fallows. Performed by The Medieval Ensemble of London. Editions de l’Oiseau-lyre (Decca): Florilegium series, no. DSDL 714. (London, 1983).

Ferrand, Françoise. ‘Dous Penser, plaisance et espérance chez Guillaume de Machaut et Charles d’Orléans: un nouvel art d’aimer. In ‘Plaist vos oïr bone cançon vallant?’ Mélanges offerts à François Suard, ed. Dominique Boutet, Marie-Madeleine Castellani, François Ferrand and Aimé Petit, Lille, 1999, I, 241–50. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans, Villon: Les Enfants perdus’. Magazine Littéraire 312 (1993), 47–49. Finoli, Anna Maria. ‘Dedans mon jardin de pensée’. In La Letteratura e i giardini, atti del

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Convegno Internazionale di Studi di Verona-Garda 2–5 ottobre 1985, Special issue of Biblioteca dell’ ‘Archivum Romanicum’, Ser. I, Storia, letteratura, paleografia, no. 207, Florence, 1987, pp. 33–44. On rondeau 257. [in Italian]

Frumholtz, Johann, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Charles d’Orléans. Ph.D. diss. University of Jena. Halle, 1914. Galderisi calls this the only work he has seen ‘qui analyse et déscrive de façon systématique l’emploi des voyelles, des consonnes, des diphtongues à l’intérieur du vers aurélien, par rapport à leur position métrique, à savoir à la rime, en syllabe tonique ou atone’.

Gabotto, Ferdinando, Asti e il Piemonte al tempo di Carlo d’Orléans (1407–1422). [Alessandria, 1899]. Galderisi, Claudio. ‘Paroles dégelées et aurores boréales: un incongru linguistique du second degré’. In Une poétique des enfances: fonctions de l’incongru dans la littérature française médiévale, Orléans, 2000, pp. 98–110. ———. ‘Greffe et plurilinguisme dans la littérature médiévale: réflexions sur l’écriture mixtilingue dans les poèmes de Charles d’Orléans’. In Écrire aux confins des langues, ed. Jeanne Bem, Paris, 1999, pp. 106–20. ———. ‘Personnifications, réifications et métaphores créatives dans le système rhétorique de Charles d’Orléans’. Romania 114 (1996), 385–412. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans’. In Dictionnaire médiéval, Paris, 1996. ———. Charles d’Orléans: ‘Plus dire que penser’: une lecture bibliographique. Biblioteca di filologia romanza, no. 37, Bari, [1994]. P. Walter, Perspectives médiévales 21 (1995) 69–70.

———. Le Lexique de Charles d’Orléans dans les ‘Rondeaux’. Geneva, 1993. F. Möhren. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 114 (1998), 769–70; A. Planche and E. J. Brunet. French Review 70 (1996), 154–55; K. Busby. Speculum 70 (1995), 906–907; J. Fox. Medium Ævum 64 (1995), 334; M. J. Freeman. French Studies 49 (1995), 326–27; G. Mombello. Studi francesi 39 (1995), 329–30; B. Frank. Romanische Forschungen 107 (1995), 174–76; G. Roques. Revue de linguistique romane 58 (1994), 215–16.

———. ‘Les rondeaux de Charles d’Orléans: une aurore bauréale de la poésie courtoise’. In Apogée et déclin: Actes du Colloque de l’URA 411, Provins, 1991, ed. Claude Thomasset and Michel Zink, Cultures et Civilisations Médiévales, no. VIII, Paris, 1993, pp. 249–55. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans: une lecture bibliographique’. Micromégas 15:41–42 (1988), 61–83. ——— ‘Sui Rondeaux di Charles d’Orléans: L’Allegoria e il verso’. Micromégas 35 (1986), 79–98. ——— ‘Il Refrain fra musica e ritmo’. Micromégas 35 (1986), 88–98. Garcia Bascuñana. Juan Francisco, ‘Traduccion literaria y civilización medieval: versión castellana de las Poesías completas de Charles d’Orléans’. In Actas del I Coloquio Internacional de Traductología, Valencia, 1991, pp. 109–12. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans et la Loire: le fleuve d’un prince qui était poète’. In Loire – Littérature: Actes du colloque d’Angers du 26 au 29 mai 1988, Angers, 1989, pp. 49–56. ———. ‘Por otra lectura de Charles d’Orléans: el valor de la imagen’ [A Further Reading of Charles d’Orléans: The Importance of Image]. Ph.D. diss. University of Barcelona, 1989. DAI abstract available.

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Geijer, Karl Reinhold, Försök till öfversättning från Charles d’Orléans jemte några iakttagelser vid hans versifikation [An attempt at a translation from Charles d’Orléans together with some observations on his versification]. Ph.D. diss. University of Uppsala. Stockholm, 1872. Giraud, Yves. ‘Charles d’Orléans et François Villon’, chap. 1 of pt. 3: ‘Les Grands Auteurs’. In Littérature Française: 2. De Villon à Ronsard, XVe–XVIe siècles, ed. Enea Balmas and Yves Giraud, Paris, 1986, pp. 227–53. Göller, Karl Heinz. ‘Das metaphorische Gefängnis: Zum Verhältnis von Literatur und Weltbild im Mittelalter’. In Motive und Themen in englischsprachiger Literatur als Indikatoren literaturgeschichtlicher Prozesse: Festschrift zum 65. Geburtstag von Theodor Wolpers, ed. Heinz-Joachim Müllenbrock and Alfons Klein, Tübingen, 1990, pp. 25–53. Deals only briefly with the duke, as does the following article.

———. ‘The Metaphorical Prison as an Exegetical Image of Man’. In The Medieval Text. Methods and Hermeneutics: A Volume of Essays in Honor of Edelgard E. DuBruck, ed. William C. McDonald and Guy R. Mermier, Fifteenth-Century Studies 17 [special issue] (1990), 121–45. Gros, Gérard. ‘L’écriture du prince: étude sur le souci graphique de Charles d’Orléans dans son manuscrit personnel (Paris, Bibl. Nat., fr. 25458)’. In Zink and Bohler, eds., L’Hostellerie de Pensée [see below], pp. 195–204. ———. ‘La ville dont le prince est démuni: le duc Charles dans le Mistère du Siège d’Orléans’. Perspectives médiévales 18 (1992), 67–76. Harrison, Ann Tukey. ‘Reflections of Theater in Charles d’Orléans’. Fifteenth-Century Studies 17 (1990), 147–56. Hodapp, William. ‘Minerva’s Owl in Charles d’Orléans’s English Poems: A Mythographic Note on Line 4765’. American Notes and Queries 9 (1996), 3–7. ———. ‘The Goddess Minerva in Late Medieval English Dream Visions’. Ph.D. diss. University of Iowa, 1994. Holtz, Louis, with Élisabeth Lalou and Claudia Rabel. ‘Dedens mon livre de pensee’: de Grégoire de Tours à Charles d’Orléans, une histoire du livre médiéval en région Centre. Paris, Orléans, and Vendôme, 1997, pp. 124–29. Jansen, J. P. M. The ‘Suffolk’ Poems: An Edition of the Love Lyrics in Fairfax 16 Attributed to William de la Pole. Ph.D. diss. University of Groningen, 1989. Copies available from the author or from M. Arn. ———. ‘Charles d’Orléans and the Fairfax Poems’. English Studies 70 (1989), 206–24. ——— ‘The French Manuscripts of the English Poems of Charles of Orleans. Notes and Queries 35 (1988), 439–40. Johnson, Leonard W. Poets as Players: Theme and Variation in Late Medieval French Poetry (Stanford, Calif., 1990) Pp. 14–25 [on how to print the rondeaux] and 256–59 [on his bawdy]. Jones, Michael K. ‘Henry VII, Lady Margaret Beaufort and the Orléans ransom’. In Kings and Nobles in the Later Middle Ages: A Tribute to Charles Ross, ed. Ralph A. Griffiths and James Sherborne, New York and Gloucester, 1986, pp. 254–73. Kablitz, Andreas. ‘Verwandlung und Auflösung der Poetik des fin’amors bei Petrarca und Charles d’Orléans: Transformationen der spätmittelalterlichen Lyrik diskutiert am Beispiel der Rhetorik des Paradox’. In Musique naturele: Interpretationen zur

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französischen Lyrik des Spätmittelalters, ed. Wolf-Dieter Stempel, Romanistisches Kolloquium, no. 7, Munich, 1995, pp. 261–350. Kasprzyk, Krystyna. ‘L’Experience de la prison et de l’exil chez quelques poètes de la fin du moyen âge’. In La Souffrance au moyen âge (France, XIIe–XVe s.), ed. Nicole Taillade, Actes du colloque organisé par l’Institut d’Études Romanes et le Centre d’Etudes Françaises de l’Université de Varsovie, Oct. 1984, Warsaw, 1988, pp. 165–79. Kosta-Théfaine, Jean-François. ‘La ballade XI (‘‘Seulete suy et seulete vueil estre’’) de Christine de Pizan et la ballade 59 (‘‘Alone am y and wille to be alone’’) des Poésies Anglaises de Charles d’Orléans: Adaptation, traduction ou simple coïncidence?’ Disputatio 3: Translation, Transformation and Transubstantiation in the Late Middle Ages (1998), 51–63. ——— ‘Charles d’Orléans: Bibliographie recente’. Le Moyen Français 38 (1996), 145–50. Kovacs, Éva. ‘L’Ordre du Camail des ducs d’Orléans’. Acta historiae artium (Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae) 27 (1981), 225–31. Reports discovery of the first known representation of the Orléans Order of the Camail or Porcupine in a tryptich of about 1455 by a painter of the circle of Roger van der Weyden at the Fondation Abegg in Berne.

Lançon, Philippe. ‘Les deux nigauds’. L’Infini: Littérature, Philosophie, Art, Science, Politique 37 (1992), 110–20. The ‘deux nigauds’ are of course Charles d’Orléans and Villon.

LeBlanc, Yvonne, ‘Charles d’Orléans and François Villon’. In ‘Va Lettre Va’: The French Verse Epistle (1400–1550), Birmingham, Alabama, 1995, pp. 75–85, 231. Lesueur, Frédéric and Pierre. Le Château de Blois: notice historique et archéologique. Paris, 1914–21 [sic]. Contains brief but valuable remarks on the remains of the chateau as the duke knew it (and rebuilt it): ‘Histoire’ (by P. L.), pp. 17–19; ‘Description’ (by F. L.), pp. 165–76. A different work by F. L. with the same primary title and an ‘Avant- propos’ by Jean Martin-Demézil (Paris, 1970 [sic]) contains a few comments of interest on pp. 40–45.

Marks, Diane R. ‘Food for Thought: The Banquet of Poetry in Dante and Charles of Orleans’. In Medieval Food and Drink, ACTA, no. 21, Binghamton, New York, 1995 (for 1994), pp. 85–97. ———. ‘Poems From Prison: James I of Scotland and Charles of Orleans’. FifteenthCentury Studies 15 (1989), 245–58. Mühlethaler, Jean-Claude. ‘Récrire le Roman de la Rose au XVe siècle: Les commandements d’Amour chez Charles d’Orléans et ses lecteurs’. In Mélanges offerts à Eric Hicks par ses amis et ses anciens élèves, ed. J.-C. Mühlethaler, with Denis Billotte, Geneva, forthcoming 2001. ———, and Patricia Wegmann. ‘Le soupir ineffable: Aux limites de la parole poétique. Réflexions sur l’esthétique de la maîtrise à l’aube des temps moderns: Charles d’Orléans et Maurice Scève’. In Versants, forthcoming 2000. ———. ‘Le drame du poète: quand dire, c’est rêver de faire: Parole subie et parole imposée chez Adam de la Halle, François Villon et Charles d’Orléans’. In Villon at Oxford: The Drama of the Text, ed. Michael Freeman and Jane H.M. Taylor, Amsterdam and Atlanta, Georgia, 1999, pp. 238–81. ———. ‘Disputer de mariage: Débat et subjectivité: des jeux-partis d’Arras à l’échange de ballades et de rondeaux chez Eustache Deschamps et Charles

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d’Orléans’. In Il genere ‘tenzone’ nelle letterature romanze delle Orifini, ed. Matteo Padroni and Antonio Stäuble, Ravenna, 1999, pp. 203–21. ———. ‘ ‘‘J’ayme qui m’ayme’’: Intertextualité, polyphonie et subjectivité dans les rondeaux de Charles d’Orléans. Romania 114 (1996), 413–44. ———, ed. Charles d’Orléans: Ballades et Rondeaux: édition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. 2nd ed., Paris, 1996. Revised and corrected, with a concordance between this edition and that of P. Champion.

———. ‘Arthur Rimbaud et Charles d’Orléans: récriture et rupture dans le Dormeur du val’. In Zink and Bohler, eds., L’Hostellerie de Pensée [see below], pp. 305–13. ———, ed. Charles d’Orléans: Ballades et Rondeaux: édition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris. Paris, 1992. G. Pinkernell. Romanische Forschungen 107 (1995), 472–74; J. H. M. Taylor. Medium Ævum 63 (1994), 151–52; A. T. Harrison. Romanische Forschungen 67 (1993–94), 1062–63; N. Wilkins. French Studies 47 (1993), 436–37; G. Mombello. Studi francesi 37 (1993), 358–59; A. Varvaro. Mediœvo Romanzo 17 (1992), 468–69; G. Roques. Revue de Linguistique Romane 56 (1992), 625–26.

Nelson, Deborah. Charles d’Orléans: An Analytical Bibliography. Research Bibliographies and Checklists, no. 49, London, 1990. J. C Laidlaw. New Zealand Journal of French Studies 14 (1993), 56–57; G. Breuer. Romanische Forschungen 104 (1992), 442–43; N. Wilkins. French Studies 46 (1992), 194; J. Fox. Medium Ævum 61 (1992), 148–49.

Notz, M[arie]-F[rançoise]. ‘Le regard et l’exil: la mesure poétique et l’espace de la représentation dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans’. Perspectives médiévales 18 (1992), 92–98. ———. ‘L’Image de la vieillesse dans la poésie médiévale: exclusion fictive et réalité poétique’. In Vieillesse et vieillissement au Moyen-Âge [Proceedings of a conference on that subject held in Aix in February 1986], Aix-en-Provence, 1987, pp. 227–42 (esp. pp. 236–42). Pearsall, Derek, ed. From Chaucer to Spenser: An Anthology of Writings in English 1375–1575, Oxford, 1999, pp. 378–86. Pinkernell, Gert. ‘La Femme aux côtés de Charles d’Orléans: Marie de Clèves (1426–1487), poète virtuel de talent’. In Italica et Romanica: Festschrift für Max Pfister zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Gunter Holtus, Johannes Kramer, et al., 3 vols., Tübingen, 1997, III, 313–21. ———. ‘Le Povre escolier Françoys à la recherche du prince clement’. In Villon hier et aujourd’hui: Actes du Colloque pour le cinq-centième anniversaire de l’impression du ‘Testament’ de Villon, Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, 15–17 décembre 1989, ed. Jean Dérens, et al., Paris, 1993, pp. 43–52. B. N. Sargent-Baur. Romance Philology 51 (1997), 90–97; J. Fox. Medium Ævum 64 (1995), 335; D. A. Fein. French Studies 48 (1994), 454.

———. François Villon et Charles d’Orléans (1457 à 1461): d’après les ‘Poésies diverses’ de Villon, studia romanica, no. 79, Heidelberg, 1992. About documents linking Villon to the duke. Most of his work is focused on Villon but offers interesting views of the duke. G. Roellenbleck. Romanistisches Jahrbuch 46 (1995), 222–224; G. Roques. Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 111 (1995), 582; P. Brockmeier. Zeitschrift für französiche Sprache und Literatur 105 (1995), 331–33; M. J. Freeman. French Studies 48 (1994), 88–89; P.

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———. ‘La ballade franco-latine Parfont conseil eximium: une satire peu connue de Villon contre Fredet, favori de Charles d’Orléans’. Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie 103 (1987), 300–18. ———. ‘Une réplique haineuse à la ‘‘Ballade des proverbes’’, de François Villon, émanant du cercle de Charles d’Orléans’. Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 224 (1987), 110–16. ———. ‘La Ballade du Concours de Blois, de François Villon, ou les affaires d’un courtisan marginal’. Le Moyen Français 17 (1985), 48–72. Planche, Alice. ‘Larmes du cœur, larmes du corps dans quelques textes français en vers des XIVe et XVe siècles’. In ‘Et c’est la fin pour quoy sommes ensemble’: hommage à Jean Dufournet, littérature, histoire et langue du Moyen Âge, ed. J. C. Aubailly, E. Baumgartner, et al., Nouvelle bibliothèque du Moyen Âge, no. 25, 3 vols., Paris, 1993, III, pp. 1133–42. ———. ‘Présence et absence de l’événement dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans’. In Histoire et littérature au Moyen Âge: Actes du Colloque du Centre d’Études Médiévales de l’Université de Picardie (Amiens, 20–24 mars 1985), ed. D. Buschinger, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, no. 546, Göppingen, 1991, pp. 389–402. ———. ‘Eür, bon eür et bonheur dans un corpus lyrique du Moyen Âge tardif’. In L’Idée de bonheur au Moyen Âge: actes du colloque d’Amiens de mars 1984, ed. Danielle Buschinger, Göppinger Arbeiten zur Germanistik, no. 414, Göppingen, 1990, pp. 355–68. ———. ‘Le ‘‘Livre de pensée’’ de Charles d’Orléans: est-il un journal intime?’ RAZO Biographie et autobiographie 10 (1990), 97–110. ———. ‘En tirant d’Orléans à Blois . . .: la Loire et ses symboles dans l’œuvre de Charles d’Orléans’. In Loire – Littérature: actes du Colloque d’Angers du 26 au 29 mai 1988, Angers, 1989, pp. 35–47. Poirion, Daniel. Écriture poétique et composition romanesque. Medievalia, no. 11, Orléans, 1994. Collection of previously published essays including three on Charles d’Orléans: ‘Création poétique et composition romanesque . . .‘ [1958], 307–37; ‘La nef d’espérance . . .‘ [1970], pp. 339–57; ‘Charles d’Orléans et Angleterre . . .‘ [1978], pp. 359–79.

———. ‘Charles d’Orléans’. In Le Moyen Âge, ed. R. Bossuat, et al. [1964]; rev. ed. Geneviève Hasenohr and Michel Zink (vol. 1 of Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, gen. ed. G. Grente), Paris, 1992, pp. 251–54. Regalado, Nancy. ‘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 Zink and Bohler, eds., L’Hostellerie de Pensée. [see below] pp. 355–72. Ribémont, Bernard. Charles d’Orléans: Prince et Poète, 1394–1465, Orléans [1994]. Booklet of nine of the duke’s lyrics published by the town of Orléans on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of his birth.

Rossi, Luciano. ‘François Villon et son prince redoubté: notes sur deux ballades’. In ‘Romania ingeniosa’: . . . Mélanges offerts à Gerold Hilty à l’occasion de son 60e anniversaire, Bern and New York, 1987, pp. 201–20. Though focused on Villon, some interesting comments about the duke’s poetry.

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Sargent-Baur, Barbara N., ‘Odd Man Out: Villon at Court’. In The Court and Cultural Diversity: Selected Papers from the Eighth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 26 July–1 August 1995, ed. Evelyn Mullally and John Thompson, Cambridge, 1997, pp. 57–65. Scott, Kathleen L. Later Gothic Manuscripts, 1390–1490. 2 vols. of A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in the British Isles, J. J. G. Alexander, gen. ed., London, 1966, II. Catalogue and Indexes, pp. 178–82 (Cat. no. 57) Paris, BN MS lat. 1196; pp. 182–83 (Cat. no. 58), Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61; see also p. 405 (Index of MSS), s.v. Paris, BN fr. 1196 for discussion of related manuscripts and corresponding plates in vol. I: Text and Illustrations: plates 227–28, 232–35, 237–38, 242. P. Binski. TLS (27 March 1998), 30. Discusses the duke’s magnificent prayer book (BN lat. 1196) and identifies a figure dressed in gold (presumably the patron of the book) standing before the ‘pulpit’ from which the Chaucer figure reads in CCC 61 as Charles d’Orléans. (Identifies a line from the duke’s poetry in Oxford, Univ. Coll. MS 85 on II, 319.)

Spearing, A. C. ‘The Poetic Subject from Chaucer to Spenser’. In Subjects on the World’s Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, ed. David G. Allen and Robert A. White, Newark, New Jersey, and London, 1995, pp. 13–37 (esp. 25–28, 36–37). ———. ‘Prison, Writing, Absence: Representing the Subject in the English Poems of Charles d’Orléans’. Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992), pp. 83–99; rpt. in Chaucer to Spenser: A Critical Reader, ed. D. Pearsall, Oxford, 1999, pp. 297–311. Spence, Sarah. ‘The French Chansons of Charles d’Orléans: A Study in the Courtly Mode’. Fifteenth-Century Studies 15 (1989), 283–94. Stakel, Susan L. ‘Allegory and Artistic Production in the Poetry of Charles d’Orléans’. Fifteenth-Century Studies 14 (1988), 161–78. Starobinski, Jean. ‘La tinta de la melancolia’. Pasajes 8 (1987), 57–67. Stierle, Karlheinz. ‘Trauer der Stimme, Melancholie der Schrift: zur lyrischen Struktur des Rondeau bei Charles d’Orléans’. In Musique naturele: Interpretationen zur französischen Lyrik des Spätmittelalters, ed. Wolf-Dieter Stempel, Romanistisches Kolloquium no. 7, Munich, 1995, pp. 141–74. Strubel, A. ‘ ‘‘En la foret de longue actente’’: Reflexions sur le style allegorique de Charles d’Orléans’. In Styles et Valeurs: pour une histoire de l’art littéraire au moyen âge, ed. D[aniel] Poirion, Paris, 1990, pp. 167–86. Süpek, Ottó. ‘Károly herceg Villon-verse’ (The Villon poem of prince Charles). In Társadalomtörténeti tanulmányok a közeli és a régmúltból: Emlékkönyv Székely György 70. születésnapjára, ed. Ilona Sz. Jónás, Budapest, 1994, pp. 116–22. Thibault, Pascale. La Bibliothèque de Charles d’Orléans et de Louis XII au château de Blois. Les Cahiers de la bibliothèque municipale de Blois, no. 4, Blois, 1989. Tomasik, Timothy Joseph. ‘Les Chansons de Charles d’Orléans: des jalons pour une poésie inconvenante?’ Le Moyen Français 35–36 (1994–95), 49–65. Toscano, Gennaro. ‘Les bibliothèques des princes de la Renaissance: à propos de l’exposition ‘‘Des livres et des rois’’ ’. Bulletin du bibliophile 2 (1993), 363–78. Turksma-Heijmann, B. ‘Contribution à une théorie de l’allégorie’. Rapports: Het Franse Boek 46 (1976), 37–48. ‘Reflections’ on the image (Bildfeld) ‘Jardin de pensée’ in rondeau 257 by Charles d’Orléans and in ‘L’Ennemi’ by Baudelaire.

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Vajda, András. ‘Dédicace’. Annales Universitatis Scientiarum Budapestinensis de Rolando Eötvös Nominatae. Sectio Philologica Moderna 19 (1989–90), 179–82. Short article incl. translation of ‘Le temps a laissié son manteau’ into Hungarian.

Varaut, Jean-Marc. Poètes en prison: de Charles d’Orléans à Jean Genet, Paris, 1989, pp. 21–33: ‘Charles d’Orléans: le livre des heures captives’ [notes pp. 269–70]. G. Laffly. Itinéraires: chroniques et documents 334 (1989), 111–13.

Verwey, Gerlof. Charles d’Orléans: de vijftiende-eeuwse dichter-prins. [Houten], 1987. One of four slim paperback books published under the collective title of Door de muzen aangeraakt, and designated ‘De Haan Essay’ (after the name of the publisher).

Vesce, Thomas E. ‘The Pose of Love: The Early English Ballad Cycle of Charles d’Orléans’. Fifteenth-Century Studies 17 (1990), 439–56. Wilkins, Nigel. ‘Charles d’Orléans: avec musique ou non?’ Romania 112 (1991), 268–72. Zink, Michel, and Danielle Bohler, eds. L’Hostellerie de Pensée: études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Âge offertes à Daniel Poirion par ses anciens élèves, Cultures et Civilisations médiévales, no. 12, Paris, 1995.

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Index Names of people are alphabetized according to their titles and without regard to gender; thus Alice Chaucer is to be found under ‘Suffolk, Alice Chaucer, duchess of’, followed by ‘Suffolk, William de la Pole, duke of’. Titles may appear in French or English forms depending on the articles from which they are taken. Consistency in a bilingual book like this one is a chimera. Abstinence de guerre, 14–17, 19–20, 22–23, 24–26 Alecis, Guillaume, 80 d’Alençon, duc, 15, 16 Allegory, see sensus allegoricus Amour, 103, 107, n. 83, 110, 113, 115, 128–29, 166–69, 171–76, 179–80, 182 Ampthill Castle (Beds.), 40–41, 50 André, Bernard (Henry VII’s historiographer), 105, 157, 187 and n. 13 d’Angoulême, Jean, comte (C d’O’s bro.), 19, 35, 148; and Charles 27–28, 31, 40, 42–43, 45, 48–50, 54, 57, 59; books 28, 30, 34, 36, 37–39, 50, 54, 59, 148; Duxworth, John (his scribe) 37, 50–52 Anjou, 20 d’Anjou, Margaret, 146–47, 148, 155, 195 d’Anjou, René, 149–50, 171, 175 Aragon, Yolanda of, 20 Aristotle, 136, 177 d’Armagnac, Bonne (wife of C d’O), 105, 107, 138 d’Armagnac, Jean, comte, 16–17; dau. 146 Arras, Congress of, 18, 26, 146, 153 Arthur, prince of Wales, 105–8, 152, 159, 187 arts de seconde rhétorique, 172 Assembly of Ladies, 153, 155 Astezano, Antonio (d’Asti), 171 Asti, 15, 93, 94 d’Auriol, Blaise, see Vérard Authorship, 65–75, 90, 98–100, 123, 209–10, 211–12, 213; of Fairfax sequence 153–54, 156 B(e)augé, battle of, 13, 50 Beaufort, Cardinal, 12, 30, 40, 42, 43, 44, 146 Beaufort, Joan (m. James I), 144

Bedford, John, duke of (regent in France), 10, 13, 14, 16, 19–20, 21, 24–26 Benoit, Guillaume (servant of Suffolk), 148 Bermondsey (abbey, library) 39, 40 Bernard of Clairvaux, 168 de Berry, Jean, duc, 20, 167 de Berry, Marie, 168 du Bey, Alain (C d’O’s servant), 23 bilingualism (multi-), 62, 76–77, 83–87, 91–98, 148, 178, 183, 200, 203–10 Binchois, Gilles, 148 biography (auto-) 81–83, 97–98, 104–7, 165, 170, 171, 174, 178–80, 181–82 Blaise d’Auriol, see Vérard Blois, 13–14, 17, 26, 84, 147, 169; region, 23 Boccaccio, 36; Decameron 28; De casibus 38, 42, 50; Bucolicum carmen 56–57 Boethius (Consolation), 127, 129–30, 131–34, 137–38, 177 Bolingbroke Castle (Lincs.), 36 de Botiller, Sir Guillaume, 41 Boucicault, Marshall, 31, 35 de Bourbon, Jean, duc, 16, 19, 31, 34, 35, 174 Bracciolini, Poggio, 30, 36 Brittany, duke of 14, 20 Burgundy, Isabella, duchess of, 161 Burgundy, John the Fearless (sans peur), duke of, 12, 195 Burgundy, Philip the Good (le bon), duke of, 14, 21, 24–26, 146, 148, 160, 162, 174, 181; library 161–62 Burton, Sir Thomas, 35–36 Bury St Edmunds, 150 Buzançais, treaty of, 15 Cadier, Guillaume, 174 de Cagny, Perceval, 15 Caillau, Simonet, 169

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Calais, 21, 43; negotiations at, 11–12, 43, 44, 146, 153–54; seige of, 146; book production at, 158, 161–62 Camail, order of, 14, 18 canonical marginalization, 182–84, 193–96, 199–214 Canterbury, 31, 37; cathedral, 37 Carent, William, 44 Carthusian library (London), 39 Ceyx and Alcyone (myth of) 125, 166 Charles VI, 10, 19, 41 Charles VII, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20, 23, 26, 146 Chartier, Alain, 79, 151, 169, 194, 196 Chasse d’Amours, see Vérard Châteaudun, 17 Chaucer, Alice, see Suffolk, duchess of Chaucer, Geoffrey, 30, 124, 125–34, 136–39, 153; Canterbury Tales, 37, 38, 44, 50, 137 Chaucer, Thomas, 146, 149 chivalric convention/code, 9, 10, 13–15, 18–19, 23, 26 Chrétien de Troyes, 168 Christine de Pizan, 43, 168, 196 Clarence, Margaret, duchess of, 36, 39–40, 48–50 Clermont, count of (son of Bourbon), 16 Clifford, Anne (wife of Cobham), 43 Cobham, Sir Reginald (Reynald), 42; books, 43; dau. Eleanor, 43 consolatio, 166–67, 180–81 Constable, Sir Robert and Marguerite, 38 Cornwall, John, Lord Fanhope, hostages, 40–41, 50, 59; books, 41, 42, 50, 59 courtliness/courtoisie, 81, 84, 167–68, 170–73, 174, 175, 179–82 Cousinot, Guillaume (C d’O’s chancellor), 14, 19, 22, 24, 38 critical reception in France, 196–99; in England, 193, 199–214 cultural capital, 184–85 Cumberworth, Sir Thomas, 36–39; books, 37–38; hostages, 50, 75 Damien, Benoit, 96 Deguilleville, Guillaume, 38 Depart d’Amours, see Vérard Deschamps, Eustache 38, 151, 196 distance, 82–84, 103–4, 166–69, 172, 177, 178; see also exile Donne, Sir John, 161 dream (vision), 124–34, 134–44, 166–67 de Dunois, Jean, Bastard of Orléans, 13, 18, 19, 22, n. 68, 145, 146; lands, 14

Edward IV, 157, 158–59, 161–63 Ellis, George, 200, 201–3, 205 Eltham, library at, 30 England, 84, 181 English (language), 83, 84, 85 d’Estouteville, Louis, 18 Eu, Charles, count of, 35 Ewelme (Oxon.), 42, 149, 150 exile, 84, 102, 119–20, 127, 165, 167, 170, 171, 173, 174, 175, 177, 179, 181 Fastolf, Sir John, 24 Fassier, Thomas (Bedford’s councillor), 22 Le Fèvre (chronicler), 20–21 Fleming, Richard (Bp. of Lincoln), 33–34 Fortune, 129, 131–36, 139–44, 175–76, 181 Fotheringay Castle (Northants.), 35 Franciscans (influence), 34, 39, 52, 53, 59–60 Froissart, Jean, 167, 168, 170, 171, 175, 181 de Garencières, Jean, 196 Gerson, Jean (the Chancellor), Testamentum peregrini, 39, 53–54; Pastorium carmen, 54–57; Deploratio, 57–59 Gerson, Jean (Celestine monk), 53, 55–56, 58, 59 Giustiniani, Pancrace, 24 Gloucester, Humphrey, duke of, 10–11, 20, 21–22, 25–26, 32, 42, 146, 147, 192–93 Gower, John, 30, 40, 126, 134, n. 32, 149, n. 14 Gressart, Perrinet, 16 Greyfriars (London) library, 39, 40, 52, 59 Hardyng, John (chronicler), 33 Hastings, William, Lord 161, 162 heart, 81, 86, 171, 177, 178, 180, 181 Heloise (fictitious letters), 157 Henry IV, 19 Henry V, 10–13, 16, 20, 21, 30, 32, 36, 145, 146, 205; books, 30 Henry VI, 10–13, 17, 19, 24, 58, 146–48 Henry VII, 105, 157, 158–59, 161 Henry VIII, 108, 187 Henryson, Robert, 126 Hilton, Johanna (books), 38 Hilton, Walter, 38–39 Holland, John and Elizabeth, 40, 41 Hoccleve, Thomas, 38 Horbling, Thomas of, 37 Hove(n)dene, John of, 34, 39, 52–53 Hundred Years’ War, 183

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Hungerford, Sir Walter, 44 intertextuality, 169–74 irony, 167, 169, 178, 180 James I of Scotland, 30, 91–92, 123, 126, 203 Janville, 9, 22 Jardin de Plaisance, see Vérard la jeunesse et la vieillesse, see Youth and Age Joan of Arc (Jeanne d’Arc), 9, 10, 25, 54, 145 Journal du Siège, 23 Keralio, Mme., 197, n. 52 and 53, 204 de Lannoy, Ghillebert, 40 de Lannoy, Hugh, 19, 21, 146, 192, n. 34 La Trémoille, George, 20 Le Franc, Martin, 171, 175 Lemaire de Belge, Jean (Le Triomphe de l’amant vert), 197 de Lembourg, Hugues, 158 Leo, Lord Welles, 37, 44 Libel of English Policy, 149 Loire region, 14, 22, 23; river, 20, 23 London (travel to) 35, 36–37, 38–39, 40, 42, 43, 50, 74–75, 146 Louis XII, 182 de Luxembourg, Wenceslas, 168 Lydgate, John, 42, 44, 149, 150, 153, 155 lyric, 167–68, 170, 172, 194; sequence, 170, 182, 183 Macaronic verse, 85–86, 89–98; see also bilingualism de Machaut, Guillaume, 143, 151, 155, 166–68, 170 Manuscripts Paris BN fr. 25458 (O), 53, 61–78, 68, 70, 72, 100, 151, 152, 154, 173 fr. 222, 29 fr. 1104, 65, n. 12, 151, n. 26 fr. 1122, 28 fr. 9223, 4, n. 8, 65, n. 12 fr. 19139, 190, n. 27 nouv. acq. fr. 6221, 151 nouv. acq. fr. 15771, 4, n. 8 lat. 431, 34 lat. 543, 34 lat. 930, 52 lat. 1196, 33, 51, 52, 75, n. 23 lat. 1201, 33, 34, 52 lat. 1203, 49, 52

lat. 2049, 33, 54, n. 10, 57 lat. 3319, 29 lat. 3436, 50, n. 6 lat. 3520, 30, 43 lat. 3579, 50, n. 6 lat. 3593, 39 lat. 3594, 39 lat. 3638, 34, 54 lat. 3756, 30 lat. 3757, 39, 52 lat. 6868, 29 lat. 6977, 29 lat. 8389, 29 angl. 28, 39, 50, n. 6 Arsenal 410, 39 Carpentras Bibl. de Carpentras 375, 4, n. 8, 65, n. 12, 151, n. 26 Grenoble Bibl. Municipale 873, 65, n. 12, 152 Bibl. Municipale 874, 151 London BL Harley 682 (H), 61–78, 69, 71, 73, 183, 185, 187–89, 201, 207 Harley 1239, 37 Harley 4425, 160 Harley 6916, 190 Harley 7333, 190–91 Addit. 34360, 151 Arundel 119, 150 Egerton 2863, 44 Lansdowne 380 (L), 173, 190 Royal 16 F. ii (C), frontis., 105, 152, 157–63, 173, 186–87, 203, 207 Royal 19 C. viii, 161 Sloane 1685, 37 Lambeth Palace Lib. 306, 152 Oxford Bodleian Fairfax 16, 66, n. 13, 152, 155, 188–89 Bodley 918, 39 Laud Misc. 559, 66 Rawlinson K 38/42, 191 Lincoln Coll. latin 29, 33 Lincoln Coll. latin 48, 33 Lincoln Coll. latin 57, 34 University Coll. 85, 6, n. 13 St. John’s Coll. 56, 150 Cambridge CUL Addit. 2585, 190–91 DD.4.24, 44 Trinity Coll. B.11.7, 41 Trinity Coll. R.3.20, 150–51

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Manchester John Rylands Lib. Crawford 1, 44 New York NY Public Lib. Spencer 19, 38 Addit. 34360, 151 Rome Vatican Lib. Reg. lat. 623, 59 Master of the Prayerbooks of circa 1500, 161 Maxey Castle (Northants.), 35, 36, 48, 50 melancholy, 98, 118, 169, 170, 178–79 metaphor, 112–16, 119, 168–70, 173, 175, 178, 181–82 Methley Hall (Yorks.), 31–32, 33 Minerva 130–32; absence of, 144 mise-en-page, 65, 66, 76 Mistère du Siège, 14–15, 23 Moleyns, Adam, 147, 149, 154; and ‘Anne Molins’, 149, 152 de Monstrelet, Enguerran, 10, 21–22, 25 Montgomery, Sir Nicholas, 34–35 Mont-St-Michel, 18 narrator, 23–25, 109, 121, 123–44, 166, 167, 176–77, 178, 179–80 Nassau, Engelbert of (Roman de la rose), 160, 161 nationalist sentiment, 194–95, 200, 202–3, 205, 210–11; anti-French, 185, 190, 192–3, 200, 205 Neville, Sir Thomas, 37 nonchaloir/No Care, 10, 82, 137–38, 172 d’Orléans, Charles, duc political role, 9, 11–14, 16–17, 18, 19, 24–26, 146 as historical figure, 191, 193, 195–96, 197–98, 204 Italian, experience of, 93–95, 98; use of Italian, 90, 93–98 as translator, 99 his library, 15–16, 23, 28–31, 33–34, 36, 37–39, 41, 43, 44, 51–52, 58, 59 inventories of books, 15, 16, 48, 52, 59 his character/personality, 10, 13, 18–19, 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28–29, 32, 76, 109–21 Canticum Amoris, 52–53 in Shakespeare, 195 d’Orléans, Marie de Clèves, duchesse, 41, 76 Orléans, siege of, 9, 13, 21–24; region/ duchy, 14, 19, 23, 24–25; city of, 15, 17, 20–22

Ovid, 168, 171, 177; moralized, 166, n. 6 Park, Thomas, 195, 200, 205–8 Passe Temps/time, 79–82, 130 Paston letters, 155, 207 patrie, 174, 179 Perrier, Hugues (C d’O’s councillor), 14 personification, see prosopopeia Peterborough (C d’O visits), 36 Petrarch, 36, 56–57, 156, 194 Philosophy, 129, 137, 177 Pontefract Castle, 31; school, 33 Poulet, Quintin, 105, 162 praeceptor principis, 168 prison, 81, 82–87, 124, 151, 165, 167–82 prosopopeia (personification), 80–82, 110–15, 119, 170, 174, 182 psychology (in life and in art), 81, 82, 111, 116–18, 120–21, 141, 169, 170 ransom, 9, 12–13, 15–16 Regnier, Jean, 79–80, 171 remythisation du temps, 82 de Richmont, Arthur, constable of France, 20, 31, 35 Richard III, 162 Richmond, Arthur of, 35 Richmond Castle and library, 187, 194, 203 Ritson, Joseph, 200–1 de Rochechouart, Jean, seigneur de Mortemart (C d’O’s chamberlain), 14, 16, 23 Rolle, Richard, 34, 39 Roman de la rose, 136, 160, 161, 170 rondel refrains, 100–1 Roos, Sir Richard (translator), 149, 154 Roos, Sir Robert, 149, 154 de Saint-Gelais, Octovien, see Vérard de Saint-Mars, Hugues (C d’O’s councillor), 14 Saint-Saveur-Lendelin, 18 Salisbury, Thomas Montague, earl of, 9, 20–23, 145 Savary, Nevelon (C d’O’s herald), 14 Savoy, duke of, 15 Scheere, Herman, 53, n. 9 Scrope, Stephen, 43 sensus allegoricus/allegory, 82, 124, 141–42, 165–66, 167–69, 170–71, 173–74, 178–79, 182 sensus litteralis, 167, 170, 173, 182 Shirley, John, 150–51, 153, 190 Somerset, Edmund Beaufort, duke of, 147

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sonnet, 98, 194–95, 208 Stanley, John, 156, 188–89 Sterborough Castle (Lingfield, Surrey), 42 Stillingfleet, Edward, Bp. of Winchester, 188, 189 Stourton Castle (Wilts.), 43 Stourton, John, Lord, 43–44, 146; books, 44 Suffolk, Alice, duchess of (widowed countess of Salisbury, dau. Thomas Chaucer), 42, 146, 147, 149–50 Suffolk, William de la Pole, earl [later duke] of, 12, 13, 27, 42, 145–56, 193 Syon Abbey, 30–31, 34

Vendôme, Louis de Bourbon, count of, 40 Venus, 129–30, 137–41, 144, 167 Vérard, Antoine, 171–82, 197 Verneuil, 15 Villebresme, 96–97 Visconti, Barnabo, 50

Tailboys, William, 147 de Taillevent, Michault 80 Talbot, John, 20 de T(h)ignonville, Guillaume, 43, 169 Thwaytes, Sir Thomas (treasurer of Calais), 158, 161 Thynne, Francis, 189 Tower of London, 30, 157, 160, 162 translatio/translation, 84, 85–86, 99, 178, 193–94, 196, 210, 211, 213 Troy, 166 Troyes, Treaty of, 10–11, 13, 16–17, 20, 26 Tudor books, 194, 203 Tutbury Castle (Staff.), 34–35

Wadham, John and Margery, 44 Waller, Richard, 43 Walpole, Horace, 200, 203–5, 206 Warwick, Richard Beauchamp, earl of (as poet), 148; Margaret, 44 Waterton, Robert, 31–35, 37 de Waurin, Jean, 23 Westminster, 17 Wilde, Oscar, 195–96 Willoughby, Robert, Lord, and Maud, 37 Winchester, 43 Wingfield, 27, 42 Wisdom, play of, 42 Wynchelsey, Thomas, 39, 40, 52–53, 58, 59; Instructorium, 54, 57 York(shire), 31–34, 159; devotional authors of, 34 Youth and Age, 82, 87, 134–35, 179

231