Untitled - Monoskop

RANGE OF INTERESTS: ANALYSIS BY SUBJECT
commentary on the Timaeus of Plato, by Chalcidius, edited by Agostino
Giustiniani, was published 'Cum priuilegio' (CP 1520, 21). Symphorien
Champier published an exposition of Platonism, entitled Periarchon, for which
his publisher obtained a grant (CH 1515, 2). Otherwise there is little reflec-
tion, among privileged books at this period, of the interest being shown by
French men of letters in Platonism and Neoplatonism.
LITERATURE OF ENTERTAINMENT
The literature of entertainment, as one may call poetry, fiction and drama,
chiefly in French, accounts for forty-seven items, or under 10 per cent of the
total. Of living creative writers, those who obtained privileges were those best
able, by the position in society which they occupied, official or unofficial, to
defend their interests. Notable among these were Jean Lemaire de Beiges, the
most celebrated author of the period to write in French, but also historiographer
to the queen (CH 1509, 2 and CH 1512, 2); and also, at a more
popular level, Pierre Gringore, a successful satirist but also a committed
defender of French royal policies (PR 1505, i; PR 1509, 2; PR 1509, 3;
PR 1509, 6; PR 1510, 2; CH 1516, 3; CH 1521, 5). Among the other authors
of the time who were granted privileges were Eloi d'Amerval for his Deablerie
(CH 1508, I ); Laurent Desmoulins for Le cymetiere des malheureux (PR 1511,2);
Guillaume Michel de Tours for Le siecle dore(PR. 1 522, i ) as well as for La forest
de conscience (PR 1516, 2), which has been considered under Religion; and Jean
Bouchet (or rather his publishers) for La deploration de I'eglise militante
(PA 1512, 5), Le temple de bonne renommee (CH 1517, i (3)) and Le labirynth de
Fortune (CH 1522, 6), as well as for his historical works.
If publishers in the first quarter of the sixteenth century showed a relative
lack of interest in procuring new literary works by contemporary authors, this
was no doubt partly because there remained to be printed a considerable -
though necessarily a dwindling - quantity of texts inherited from the past
which could still be enjoyed, or which needed only adaptation for sixteenth-
century readers to enjoy.
Outstanding among such texts was the poetry of Duke Charles of Orleans,
who died in 1465. And indeed this poetry, or most of it, featured in one of the
earliest books to be published by Antoine Verard under his personal royal
work which he
privilege (CH 1507, i (9)), which evidently covered any
should be the first to have printed. It was, however, a very strange publi-
cation. It was entitled La chasse et le depart d'Amours, and was published in 1509
under the name of Octavien de Saint-Gelais, bishop of Angouleme, a
well-known man of letters recently dead, and of Blaise d'Auriol. 1 Not only was
1 Charles d'Orleans, Poesies, ed. P. Champion, CFMA, 2 vols. (1923), Introduction, pp. viii-xxii.
Octavien de Saint-Gelais (attrib.), La Chasse d'Amours, ed. M. B. Winn, TLF (1984), Intro-
duction, pp. x xi and xxxi.
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