Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgement
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Pierre sala, Poacher
- 2 ‘Books Printed Here’: The Business of the Print Shop
- 3 ‘A condition of survival’: Lancelot and Tristan
- 4 ‘Skimble-Skamble Stuff’: Meliadus, Merlin, Greaal
- 5 ‘Imperious Seductions’: Giglan and Perceval
- 6 ‘Satyric Scenes in Landscape style’: Amadis de Gaule
- 7 ‘Fruitlesse Historie’: Maugin's Tristan, Rigaud's Lancelot
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 Rough chronology of Publication
- Appendix 2 Sainct Greaal (1516) v. Vulgate Queste
- Appendix 3 Structure of the Roman de Giglan
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
4 - ‘Skimble-Skamble Stuff’: Meliadus, Merlin, Greaal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 March 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of illustrations
- Acknowledgement
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- 1 Pierre sala, Poacher
- 2 ‘Books Printed Here’: The Business of the Print Shop
- 3 ‘A condition of survival’: Lancelot and Tristan
- 4 ‘Skimble-Skamble Stuff’: Meliadus, Merlin, Greaal
- 5 ‘Imperious Seductions’: Giglan and Perceval
- 6 ‘Satyric Scenes in Landscape style’: Amadis de Gaule
- 7 ‘Fruitlesse Historie’: Maugin's Tristan, Rigaud's Lancelot
- Afterword
- Appendix 1 Rough chronology of Publication
- Appendix 2 Sainct Greaal (1516) v. Vulgate Queste
- Appendix 3 Structure of the Roman de Giglan
- Bibliography
- Index
- Already Published
Summary
Sometimes he angers me
With telling me of the moldwarp and the ant,
Of the dreamer Merlin and his prophecies,
And of a dragon and a finless fish […]
And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff
As puts me from my faith.
(Shakespeare, 1 Henry IV, 3.1.144–51)In the measured, calculated prologue which Jean Le Bourgeois and Jean du Pré – perhaps with Vérard's collaboration – had made for their editio princeps of the Lancelot in 1488, and which we explored in part in the previous chapter, the two marchands—libraires produce something like a profession of faith. The pagans, they say with an edge of disdain, chose, absurdly and because of their folles et imparfaictes credences [insane and imperfect beliefs], to think of their hommes vertueux as gods; Christians, they say, being so much more rational, consider it decent et raisonnable [appropriate and reasonable] to record the glorieux faiz des excellentz hommes [glorious deeds of excellent men] so that their memory will live on, and so that they can become examples to later generations. Those two adjectives, decent, ‘appropriate’, and raisonnable, ‘fitting’, are recycled by Vérard for his 1494 re-edition of the Lancelot – and they are surely chosen to convey seriousness of purpose: the Lancelot is a well-judged product for a discriminating reader, and the publishers can be confident of a positive reception for a romance already well known to what was therefore already a receptive readership.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance FrancePublishing from Manuscript to Book, pp. 91 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014