Printing Ausiàs March: Material Culture and Renaissance Poetics

"The present book...argues that the interpretation of March's works shifted in the Renaissance with each change made on their materiality. These material changes, which were executed by readers, translators, and editors, will be the primary subject of the following chapters....At the same time, this study aims to illuminate the notoriety of a medieval author in the Spanish Renaissance. While minute attention will be paid to technical issues related to manuscripts copying and book printing, subsequent chapters will also examine the meaning of texts as a socially-constructed phenomenon....Following the example of some of Roger Chartier's later work...this study will combine a consideration of the technical and social conditions of the publication, circulation, and appropriation of March's poetry with an interpretation and commentary on his works....This book is divided into two parts....The first part is devoted to Juan Navarro's edition; the second, to Carles Amorós's. Each part argues that the editorial handling of March's poetry had the effect of conforming March's works to specific poetical qualities. These qualities, which slightly varied from one editorial project to the other, altered the ways in which March's poems could be read."--Introduction, p. 12-13 Focused on two sixteenth-century editions of a medieval Valencian author (Ausis̉ March, 1400-59), this book examines how the material transformations of early modern poetic texts at different stages in their publication process" from the making of the printer" copy, to the typesetting and editing of the book in the printing shop ;entailed thorough changes in the meaning of Marchþs corpus. Printers Juan Navarro in Valencia and, especially, Carles Amors̤ in Barcelona were responsible for widely disseminating Ausis̉ Marchþs verses in Renaissance Spain while, at the same time, assimilating Marchþs works to other distinct poetics of even higher authority and influence. Notwithstanding the discrepancies between both editorial projects";one indebted with cancionero poetry, the other with classical models";the role of Petrarchþs vernacular poetry in the overall shaping of both editions was paramount and reveals the existence of remarkably similar interpretive communities in the intellectual circles of the Duke of Calabria and the Duke of Somma, sponsors of the volumes studied here