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
Introduction
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
In 1506, the most prominent and successful publisher in Paris, Antoine Verard, published a particularly enchanting book of hours. Books of hours were a staple of early publishing, and provided a nicely stable income-stream at a time when so many publishers, so easily, failed and went out of business. Vérard's book of hours, BnF Rés. Vélins 1638, is a charming octavo volume, printed on vellum: the print is a clear and beautiful Gothic black-letter; initial letters have been coloured red and blue; and every page is expensively illustrated with delicate borders and marginal woodcuts. But I want here to draw attention to the frontispiece (fig.1), which shows a magnificent jewelled and enamelled cup held up by two angels, under a canopy whose curtains are held back by two rather smaller angels: a splendid, expensively prepared image of the Grail.
Arthurian romance — all romance — was an object of some disquiet in Renaissance France. Might it not have a degenerative social effect if read by women, children, maidservants? Might not young men, eagerly devouring tales of violence, fall into a violent bellicosity? Might such lighter kinds of reading have social and psychological effects all the more dangerous because they could not easily be distinguished?
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance FrancePublishing from Manuscript to Book, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014