In this ground-breaking book, Jane
H. M. Taylor explores some late-medieval lyric anthologies. Taking
a cue from the French sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu, she sets poetic
creation in the context of an understanding of the structures of
court society, and sketches the range of social, intellectual and
aesthetic positions available to the poet and the patron. Her
primary focus is on a series of manuscripts which, she argues,
reveal much about the socioliterary dynamics of particular poems,
and about the way in which they are vessels for the participation
by individuals in a common culture of literary exchange: Charles
d'Orléans's personal manuscript, BNF français 25458,
in which, she argues, the poets leave implicit or explicit traces
of their social interactions; his duchess Marie's album, Carpentras
375, which is interestingly different from the Duke's; BNF fr. 9223
and n.a.f. 15771, 'coterie' manuscripts which allow us to see how
social milieu determines shared literary forms and conventions;
Marguerite d'Autriche's Album poétique, Brussels BR
10572, an anthology which is a cultural commodity allowing a
princely court to recognise stylistic expertise and control of
form. She finishes by examining the first great French poetic
anthology, Antoine Vérard's Jardin de Plaisance
(1501), which seeks to recreate, knowingly and imaginatively, via
rubrics, illustrations, and choice of texts, the elite sociability
for which the other anthologies are evidence.
“Taylor does great service to the medieval lyric and to
manuscript studies by bringing Bourdieu's insights, coupled with
rigorous textual scholarship, into medieval France. Her book should
prove valuable to medievalists and early modernists from a number
of disciplines.” (Christopher Callahan, in: The Medieval
Review)
"Par la richesse de son information, par la rigueur de
l'argumentation, par l'utilisation raisonnée de notions
empruntées à la sociologie (notamment à
Bourdieu), le livre de J. T[aylor] est non seulement indispensable
à tous les spécialistes de lyrique tardive, mais il
constituera plus généralement une leçon de
méthode pour l'analyse des textes conservés dans des
recueils." (F. Duval dans Le Moyen Âge, CXIV, 2008,
p. 401)
"The making of Poetry is, in a sum, a landmark book,
characterized by the kind of assurance and mastery of its subject
that only prolonged of experience in the field can bring." (K.
Busby in: Encomia, vol. 29-30, p. 53)