The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (Burgundy-Luxembourg-France, 1458 - c. 1550) : text and paratext, codex and context. A collaborative study

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. Introduction. Graeme Small 13 Chapter 1. Les Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. The physical fabric of the fables. Richard Gameson 25 Chapter 2. MS Hunter 252: precursors, date and patronage. Hanno Wijsman 61 Chapter 3. Printing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Anthoine Vérard’s 1486 edition and its sixteenth-century successors. Mary Beth Winn 81 Chapter 4. Opening and closing the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Paratext, context and reception, 1469- c. 1550. Graeme Small 135 Chapter 5. Storytelling through architecture. The miniatures of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Maud Pérez-Simon 167 Chapter 6. Narratological readings of the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles (CNN3, 21, 27). Text and image in MS Hunter 252. Alexandra Velissariou † 187 Chapter 7. Toward a scriptology of Middle French. The case of MS Hunter 252. Geoffrey Roger 203 Chapter 8. Stylistic implications of linguistic archaism and contemporaneity in MS Hunter 252. Peter V. Davies † 225 Chapter 9. Locating storytelling in time and space (Hainaut-Brussels, 1458-59). A Decameronian moment. Edgar de Blieck & Graeme Small 249 Chapter 10. Tales from the chamber. The Cent Nouvelles nouvelles between Burgundy and Luxembourg. Graeme Small 267 Conclusions. Graeme Small 291 Index 297 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.00The 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.00These 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