The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - C. 1550): Text and Paratext, Codex and Context

A collaborative investigation of one of the best-known works of late medieval European literature, the Franco-Burgundian collection of short stories known as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Modelled loosely on Boccaccio's Decameron and incorporating elements from Old French fabliaux as well as Poggio Bracciolini's Liber Facetiarum, the anonymous collection attributes its morally challenging and frequently humorous tales to named narrators including Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Luxembourg, Count of Saint Pol. The contribution of this new volume of essays is threefold: - empirical, in that it brings entirely new interdisciplinary insights into the study of the genesis and reception of the work; - methodological, in that it integrates study of the text within a 360-degree evaluation of the work's manuscript and early printed context; and - conceptual, in that it seeks to understand the social dimensions of textual production and consumption. These approaches unite ten principal contributions by specialists in the fields of art history, book history, court history and linguistics from France, the Netherlands, the USA and the UK.
Read more