Lectures de Charles d’Orléans: Les Ballades (review)

The decision to make the ballades of Charles d’Orléans required reading for the prestigious agrégation de lettres modernes in 2010/11 provides a clear indication of the poet’s return to the forefront of literary–critical debate in France and throughout the international academic community. It has also provided the occasion for the publication of this stimulating book of essays. Denis Hüe’s collection brings together contributions from eminent medievalists and younger researchers alike. It provides a valuable sense of the current state of Aurelian studies and will be warmly welcomed by all those with an interest in the poet’s work.

In his Introduction, Hüe warns against the temptation to read Charles’s verse autobiographically, suggesting that scholars should instead analyse the poetry in its material, literary, and social contexts. The collection is divided into sections which address these contexts individually. The first, ‘Le Texte et ses étapes’, includes three contributions which focus on different aspects of the Duke’s personal manuscript, Bibliothèque nationale MS fr. 25458. In a revised version of a previously published essay, Mary-Jo Arn considers this codex alongside the contemporaneously produced book of Charles’s English work, British Library MS Harley 682. Arn’s central argument remains unchanged: similarities between these two manuscripts, she asserts, prove the Duke’s close involvement in the production of both books of poetry. Nevertheless, important additions such as the suggestion that political motives may lie behind the Duke’s self-presentation in his English verse will make this the definitive version of her essay.

Christopher Lucken turns his attention to the structural function of the death of the lady in the first of Charles’s ballade cycles. Although it is generally assumed that the poet intended to record a real fatality in these verses, Lucken reminds us that the death of the love object was a commonplace in late medieval lyric compilations and we are invited to view the deployment of the mourning ballades in MS fr. 25458 as a particularly innovative response to this convention. Gérard Gros’s examination of the position of two of the political ballades in the same manuscript completes this section, casting new light on the Duke’s pacifism and his self-conception as a public figure.

The next section, ‘Thématiques et intertextes’, opens with an essay by Catherine Attwood which explores Charles’s use of the popular late medieval trope of the prison amoureuse. This is a figure that, Attwood argues, permeates the Duke’s writing even in the Retenue d’Amours, a poem which is typically thought to have been written before his capture at Agincourt. There follow contributions by Jean-François Kosta-Théfaine and Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, which Hüe has usefully juxtaposed. For while Kosta-Théfaine’s exploration of the permutations of douleur in Charles’s verse neatly rehearses several classic interpretations of the Duke’s text – Starobinski’s celebrated essay features prominently – Mühlethaler’s exploration of the poet’s deployment of his bed – a particularly loaded sign in late medieval literature – is emblematic of a new approach to the writer which stresses his wittiness and his capacity to engage in increasingly masterful forms of literary play.

The final section, ‘Socialité de la poésie’, highlights an aspect of the poet’s writing that has often been overlooked by critics, who have typically viewed the Duke as an isolated figure. Estelle Doudet demonstrates that while Charles’s decision to record his ballades to Jean de Bourbon without their responses indicates a desire to highlight an important stage in his self-construction as a writer, the texts exchanged with Philippe de Bourgogne provide an excellent example of the duke’s ability to use poetry to further his immediate political aims.

Jane H. M. Taylor focuses on the ballades associated with the so-called concours de Blois and...