Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Having presented Clément Marot as an “artiste et artisan du livre” in his recent two-volume critical edition of the poet’s Œuvres complètes (Paris: Flammarion, 2007; I: 24), eminent seiziémiste François Rigolot, in the act of editing Marot, was nonetheless forced to assess and decide between the various sixteenth-century editions—some authorized, others not, and many with posthumous additions and corrections, all claiming to be authoritative—of the self-advertising and constantly self-editing poet. The daunting task of establishing a definitive edition of a poetic figure for whom the principe d’ajout and the act of literary grafting were such common practices could very well lead one to long for a decisively authorized and official edition of his works. Enter Marot’s Recueil inédit offert au connétable de Montmorency en mars 1538, lauded as the “fameux recueil manuscrit de Chantilly” by Rigolot’s predecessor in editing Marot’s complete works, Gérard Defaux (Paris: Bordas [Classiques Garnier], 1990 and 1993). This is the one manuscript composed by Marot himself, offered to a high-ranking public official and, therefore, guaranteed to follow the order and structure desired by the poet. The authority and lyrical coherency of the manuscript text, along with its thirteen unpublished poems (which existed only in manuscript form through the sixteenth century), render the Chantilly manuscript a veritable treasure trove to scholars of Marot, royal patronage of the arts, and the structural composition of the sixteenth-century poetic recueil. With Rigolot’s facsimile/critical edition, this otherwise largely inaccessible manuscript is now available in its entirety to the academic public. [End Page 227]

Much more, however, than merely a rare and authoritative manuscript, the text offered to Anne de Montmorency, the newly-appointed Constable of France (as of 10 February 1538), is likewise revelatory of Marot’s desire to (at least appear to have) put his dubious past behind him and to appease the devoutly Catholic second most powerful man in France. Formerly imprisoned and only recently readmitted from exile into France after an abjuration of his “Reformist” tendencies of the past (December 1536), finally restored to his position as royal poet laureate and valet de chambre du roy, with a magisterial volume of his complete works in preparation in Lyon (anticipated for Summer 1538), Marot more than realized the gravity of this watershed moment in his life as both a poet and a French royal subject. His desire to both please and dispel all remaining doubts in the mind of this influential figure is reflected through the omissions, variations and sequencing of the volume. To help situate the reader in the historical moment of the creation of this manuscript, Rigolot steps in to offer an exceptionally rich 20-page essay outlining the political factors at play and sampling the thematic highlights from Marot’s ceremonial lyrical appeal to the powers that be. In fact, this essay from a distinguished expert on the subject, which separates the facsimile from the annotated critical edition, constitutes a central referential focal point for an already remarkably rich volume.

To say a word or two of the physical qualities of the edition, the first 148 pages of the text contain the black-and-white, grayscale digital facsimile of the Chantilly manuscript (Bibliothèque de Condé, MS no. 524), the reproductions of which are very close in scale to the original in-folio document (268 x 190 mm for the original, 260 x 171 mm for the reproduction) and whose characters are clearly and expertly captured and transferred, resulting in a very high quality facsimile. As mentioned above, between the facsimile and the annotated critical edition are the editorial notices and Rigolot’s introductory essay, which are followed by 173 pages containing the following: 1) all manuscript poems rendered in a modern typeset and annotated in footnotes by Rigolot; 2) a publishing history (indicating first print publications) of all poems included in the...