Branton-Desris, Jenifer. “Puis que ainsi est.” the material and rhetorical effects of book production on French renaissance tales. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/T3PV6HT5
DescriptionCollections of nouvelles were very popular in the sixteenth century, despite their status as an “unworthy” genre. Numerous editions of some of the most popular collections were printed quickly. This study aims to determine the extent to which practices in the French book industry affected the rhetorical status and value of texts printed then; it focuses on Bonaventure Des Périers’ Nouvelles Récréations et Joyeux Devis (1558), Noël Du Fail’s Propos rustiques (1548) and Baliverneries d’Eutrapel (1549), and Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptaméron (1558). Two of the works were published posthumously, but the public response to different editions of each author’s collection ranged from acceptance to disdain. Noël Du Fail was alive when his two collections were initially printed, and was involved in a second edition of each, but counterfeit, interpolated editions actually became dominant. The first Part of this study is an examination of practices in the book industry, and the involvement of several of the booksellers, to determine the material nature and the most likely reasons for the presence of variant editions. Questions of authenticity play an important role in the justification for printing new editions and their reception. In Part II, the focus shifts on differences between the editions themselves. We see how variants and interpolations change the rhetorical substance of a work with respect to both inventio and dispositio. The proposed “contracts” with the reader found in the beginning of the Nouvelles Récréations and the Propos rustiques and the Baliverneries d’Eutrapel are fulfilled in different ways in the alternate editions, whereas the extraordinary differences between the first two printed editions of the Heptaméron allow for a different form of comparison. Ultimately, the industry possesses the power and the incentive to alter the structure and meaning of collections of tales; while the product that contemporary readers might have known and liked best may not have been the text intended by the author, it is important to recognize that these “faulty” versions have a logic of their own and, as such, have a lot to tell us about the history and poetics of the genre.