The Color of Melancholy: The Uses of Books in the Fourteenth Century

Authorship is a subject that has captivated medievalists for the last two decades. Much of the scholarship on this issue identifies the late-medieval period as a crucial moment in the development of modern concepts of authority. As Sylvia Huot demonstrates, late medieval writers were particularly conscious of their changing status and actively sought to shed their role as lyric entertainers for a more learned authorial identity. ¹ Obviously intended for a student audience, The Color of Melancholy: The Uses of Books in the Fourteenth Century presents an engaging overview of the development of authorship in the late Middle Ages. Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet provides an important service both for students and medieval scholars alike in the detailed analysis she provides of late-medieval literary references to language, authorship, writing, invention, and the book artifact. To develop her argument, she draws on a vast array of primarily French works, especially those of Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and Alain Chartier, with occasional references to Chaucer, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Representing a synthesis of the author’s own scholarship over the last twenty years, the book successfully weaves her earlier material into this broader study of the period.

The Foreword, written specifically for the present translation by the book historian Roger Chartier, places Cerquiglini-Toulet’s study in the larger theoretical arena of Foucauldian scholarship. Chartier identifies the present book as a corrective reading of previous arguments that the notion of authorship emerges first during the Renaissance and is later developed during the eighteenth century. This book, he claims, obligates scholars to recognize the fourteenth century as the moment when “the figure of the author was invented” (xiii).

To set the stage for her study, Cerquiglini-Toulet first introduces the reader to Gilles Li Muisis, a fourteenth-century Benedictine monk, who writes of his own reading experiences. The author paints a provocative picture of the interrelations between society and artistic creation by evoking the plague, war, famine, and revolts that beset the fourteenth century as events that dramatically impacted literature. The fourteenth century “saw itself as the winter of literature, a time of retreat into one’s self and of enclosure, reflection, and old age” (4). In response to social crisis, literature turned in on itself and the result was the transformation of language into a source of power, the book into a coveted object, the court entertainer into a writer, and the writing process into the subject of fictional works.

Chapters 2 and 3 explore the impact of the move to the vernacular on authorship and book production. Charles V’s commissioning of translations from Latin to French, his commitment to maintaining a royal library, and the ever-increasing demand for French books by the nobility raised not only the value of the language but the book and the author as well. Echoing Huot, Cerquiglini-Toulet contends that the fourteenth century witnessed the replacement of the ménestrel with the writer, the oral performance with the book. This shift in authorial representation resulted in a surplus of vernacular terms used to identify the poet, the reader, and the writing process. The author leads the reader through a fascinating etymological labyrinth as she traces the development of terms used to define the writer’s new status, such as, ménestrel, faiseur, dicteur, acteur, écrivain and poète, and the influx of commercial terms to define the value of books. Later in Chapter 5, the reader enjoys yet another journey through the history of the French language with Cerquiglini-Toulet’s discussion of invencion.

Chapters 4 through 7 develop the “crisis of material” that late-medieval writers faced. Cerquiglini-Toulet offers an enlightening study of common fourteenth-century uses of the theme of “nothing new under the sun.” Poets used references to harvesting, collecting treasures, embarking on journeys or pilgrimages, and building cities to describe the writing process as one that demanded a return to and engagement with the respected works of classical and vernacular writers. This tendency to imitate or displace earlier works resulted in the composition of books “to the second degree,” that is, books that establish the writing process as the principle topic, and in epistolary exchanges among the leading literati of the fourteenth century.

Throughout the study, Cerquiglini-Toulet incorporates references to historical events that reflect a nascent appreciation for books. Following the author’s line of argument when she crosses from history to literature and back again is sometimes difficult. For instance, Chapter 3 begins with a discussion of the century’s interest in paternity. After briefly tracing the lives of a series of father/son (and, in Christine de Pizan’s case, father/daughter) relations, she links their stories with the influx of autobiographical writings that marked the century. Cerquiglini-Toulet argues that the century’s interests in genealogy inspired writers to reflect on their literary paternity. As a result, they conceived of their literary predecessors and their patrons as symbolic fathers. Paternity issues also inspired writers to adopt the theme of copulation and birth to explain the writing process. Eventually, writers appropriated the Annunciation and Incarnation paradigm to represent poetic inspiration and composition. Again in Chapter 3, the author’s discussion of the establishment of the Courts of Love is intriguing but problematic in the weak links drawn between the courts and their impact on literature. Through these courts, Cerquiglini-Toulet argues, nobility usurped the role of poets, as they became the champions of courtly literature and behavior. Their concern for maintaining records of court rules, rules of rhetoric, and even the poems submitted in their sponsored competitions contributed to the valorization of the written word. While the examples of links between history and literature are conceivable, the reader must fill several gaps in logic to accept Cerquiglini-Toulet’s conclusions.

Additional material accompanies the book. A chronology demarcates the fourteenth century with the birth of Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300) and the assassination of Jean sans Peur in 1419. The bibliography, although far from exhaustive, provides much of the founding French scholarship on the late Middle Ages. Notes, however, are minimal. Even references to the author’s own writings, except her book-length study of Guillaume de Machaut, are absent. It is unfortunate that Cerquiglini-Toulet remains silent on the work by scholars who have substantially contributed to the subject of authorship. Many of her ideas recall the work of A. J. Minnis, Kevin Brownlee, Seth Lerer, and Huot. A discussion of this Anglo-Saxon scholarship would have unquestionably strengthened many of her arguments and would have modeled the type of dialogue that will hopefully result from translating her work into English. Of course, streamlining of scholarship is usually the result of composing a work intended for students.

One of the stranger aspects of the book is its inclusion of eight tipped-in, glossy color reproductions of miniatures from Books of Hours dating from the fourteenth and the fifteenth century. Although one would never want to complain about beautiful reproductions of any medieval manuscript, this reviewer was more than surprised at their gratuitous role in the book, for the illuminations are never discussed. Returning to the French version of the book, one finds twenty-six color images that detail the visual representation of books and writers in the late-medieval period. Images from manuscripts of Christine de Pizan, Guillaume de Machaut, and Jean Froissart illustrate Cerquiglini-Toulet’s study of the evolving definition of authorship. In contrast, only two images depicting the Virgin holding a book relate, and then only tangentially, to the study by reinforcing the author’s claim that medieval writers adopted the Annunciation as a metaphor for the writing process based on an established iconographic tradition that associated the Virgin with books.

These criticisms aside, The Color of Melancholy provides an excellent introduction to late-medieval French literature. Lydia G. Cochrane provides a worthy translation of both Cerquiglini-Toulet’s ideas and writing style. Presenting the end of the Middle Ages in broad strokes and communicating the material in an engaging manner, the work would serve as an excellent choice for students. This should not, however, dissuade medievalists from delving into a book so rich in insight and material that it transforms a period marred by sadness and self-doubt into one colored with innovation and self-discovery. Thanks to the author’s frequent use of quotations combined with thought-provoking commentary on their significance, the modern reader can explore late-medieval poetry as if she were sitting alongside Gilles Li Muisis. Like the monk, who in response to the Roman de la rose declared, “I have rarely found anything more beautiful,” the modern reader will certainly enjoy a similar pleasure in reading this book.