The Writer’s Gift or the Patron’s Pleasure? The Literary Economy in Late Medieval France by Deborah McGrady (review)

Deborah McGrady’s analysis of patronage practices during the last quarter of the four-teenth century and the first quarter of the fifteenth, as evidenced not only by authorial dedications and presentation miniatures but also archival records, texts themselves, and manuscript witnesses, offers keen insight into the politically fraught institution hiding behind the nostalgic idea of medieval mécénat. Tying together the study is McGrady’s focus on ‘the [re]fashioning of Charles V as the quintessential patron’ (p. 252). The author begins by questioning the reality of the book-as-gift, at least between a writer/translator and the commissioner/recipient, seeing instead early manifestations of clientelism wherein ‘the patron initiates exchange through a twofold gesture: [.. .] a promise of favour and the request for a favour’ (p. 15). The first two chapters take up this query, explaining the scope, economics, and implementation of Charles V’s ‘Sapientia project’ (p. 31), comprised in part of commissioned translations and the construction of the library tower of the Louvre, and the ways his commissioned writers, including Denis Foulechat, Raoul de Presles, and Nicole Oresme, attempted to frame their works as an expression of intellectual friendship and community in which the king took part rather than as goods in a capitalistic exchange. The remaining four chapters focus on individual writers whose original vernacular works support McGrady’s nuancing of medieval understandings of patronage. In Chapter 3, on Guillaume de Machaut, McGrady demonstrates that the poet rejected the sort of clientelistic relationship that existed between the king and his commissioned translators as inimical to proper expression of the poet’s divine gifts of inspiration and skill. Chapter 4 addresses Eustache Deschamps’s understanding of poetry’s role in politically troubled times. Through analysis of poems composed during Charles V’s reign and those attempting to educate the young king Charles VI, McGrady shows that Deschamps turns the literary gift on its head, using it to threaten disgrace and oblivion if the new king does not fulfil his financial obligations to the poet. Chapter 5 discusses a number of Christine de Pizan’s writings from the turn of the fifteenth century, wherein Christine tried and failed to get Louis d’Orléans to take up his father’s commissioning practices, after which she shifted tactics regarding production and circulation of her manuscripts in order to find a patron elsewhere in the Valois family. The final chapter considers three further instances — the biography of Charles V commissioned by Philippe le Hardi de Bourgogne; queen Isabeau de Bavière’s manuscript (London, BL, MS Harley 4431); and the Livre de paix dedicated to the dauphin Louis de Guyenne — in which Christine’s hopes for a Valois patron were dashed by unexpected death (Philippe’s) or simple disinterest (Isabeau and Louis). Each chapter’s arguments are complemented by skilled reading of miniatures adorning the manuscripts of the texts under investigation, where McGrady highlights the significance of the illuminations’ deviations from traditional depictions of the subject matter, principally book-presentation scenes. McGrady convincingly calls us to interrogate medieval authors’ accounts of their works’ genesis, production, and presentation in search of the reality of patronage practices at the time.