Variant Copies in French and Belgian Editions of Medieval French Texts: A Case Study in Nineteenth-Century Fine Printing

摘要

OVER THE COURSE of the nineteenth century, educated Francophones gradually came to appreciate the remarkable body of vernacular literature produced by their twelfth- and thirteenth-century forebears. Only a handful of Old French texts had been printed before 1800; seventy-five years later, hundreds of editions were circulating, alongside numerous editions of previously unpublished Middle French texts.~1 Medieval French literature had become a recognized and even bustling field of study, and virtually nothing important remained accessible exclusively in manuscript. Publishers accorded these texts enormous respect, employing the finest papers and typography; minuscule demand, meanwhile, forced them to print small or even tiny editions-just as major technological advances in both printing and papermaking were making printed matter in general cheaper and vastly more common. With their high level of both craftsmanship and scholarly seriousness, these few hundred editions represent an early and extremely durable attempt to adhere to the artisanal roots of printing and resist mechanization. No one examining a substantial number of these books can mistake them for mass-produced consumer goods, or fail to notice the frequency of bibliographically interesting differences among copies within specific editions. Studying such variations affords enormous insight into this movement in particular, and into nineteenth-century French fine printing in general. While we can attribute, few of these quirks to error, most make perfect sense, and many reflect a celebration of the craft of printing, an exuberant love of experimentation on the part of printers, publishers, collectors, and even scholars.