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New Titles

On the Inconstancy of Witches: Pierre de Lancre's Tableau de l'inconstance des mauvais anges et demons (1612)
General Editor: Gerhild Scholz Williams; Translators: Harriet Stone and Gerhild Scholz Williams; Associate Editors: Michaela Giesenkirchen and John Morris
The demonology Tableau de l’inconstance des mauvais anges et demons (1612) is an important text in the history of the early modern European witch persecutions (16th and 17th centuries). It is a report of the author’s four-months stay in the Labourd (Basque) region of France, which is situated in the extreme southwest corner bordering Spain and Navarre. De Lancre was there as a member of a royal commission empowered to cleanse the region of witches. The narrative of his activities is based not only on his own experiences but also on the original trial records, which were destroyed in the 18th century. This text thus has assumed the authority of witness to the prosecution. Furthermore, this text contains one of the most detailed accounts of the witches’ Sabbath that survives, as well as an equally precise account of a giant celebration of punishment and forgiveness for various sins of witchcraft and heresy at the city of Logrono by members of the Spanish Inquisition on 7 and 8 November 1610. An ethnologist before his time, de Lancre gives an expert and meticulous account of the Basque people, their lives, their culture, and their alleged easy commerce with Satan and “bad angels.” The text was translated into German in a truncated version in 1630, but has never until now been rendered into English.
2006 / liv + 586 pages / ISBN-10: 0-86698-352-X, ISBN-13: 978-0-86698-352-5 / MR 307 / $62, £47

This is a copublication with Brepols Publishers (ASMAR vol. 16)
and can be purchased in North America through Cornell University Press Services
and outside of North America through Brepols.

The Soundscape of Early French Literature
by Brigitte Cazelles†
This book is a study of how sound is employed in a variety of Latin and early French works. In five chapters, titled to reflect the author’s attention to and interest in sound (“The Big Bang,” “The Blares of Power,” “The White Noise of Perfection,” “Parasitic Homophones,” and “Sonus Mortis”), plus a substantial introduction (“Noise as Gloss”) and conclusion (“The Ambivalence of Noise”), Cazelles shows that sound plays a much more crucial role in literature than we may have realized and that noise has a textuality. She adopts a methodology that combines the technique of sensorial anthropology with that of textual analysis and focuses on the culture of literate orality in premodern Europe as she analyzes a variety of textually-transcribed sounds in an attempt to disclose their significance in enriching our understanding of literature and, in parallel, in an attempt to assess the value of literature in enriching our understanding of aural and oral phenomena.
2005 / 186 pages / ISBN-10: 0-86698-339-2, ISBN-13: 978-0-86698-339-6 / MR 295 / $42, £32, €50

This is a copublication with Brepols Publishers (ASMAR vol. 17)
and can be purchased in North America through Cornell University Press Services
and outside of North America through Brepols.

Narrative Worlds: Essays on the Nouvelle in 15th- and 16th-Century France
Edited by Gary Ferguson (University of Delaware) and David LaGuardia (Dartmouth College)
Narrative Worlds is a volume of essays devoted to the nouvelle, one of the most representative genres of the French Renaissance. Contributors examine the ways in which the nouvelle’s narrative procedures produce imaginary “worlds,” defined as much by fantasy, phantasm, and unreality as by realism. The purpose of the volume is thus to analyze this important literary form in terms of its own rhetorical procedures, and not merely as a realistic “window” that opens onto 15th- and 16th-century France. As such, it marks a significant departure from much of the scholarly literature that has been devoted to this less-studied genre to date. The volume will be of interest to scholars and students of French medieval and Renaissance literature, and in particular to those concerned with early narrative fiction.
2005 / 205 pages / 86698-328-7 / MR285 / $35, £26

Medieval Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Dialogue: The Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun of Honorat Bovet
A Critical Edition with English Translation by Michael Hanly (Washington State University)
In Honorat Bovet's reformist dream vision (1398), the shade of Jean de Meun leads a panel of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish speakers in castigating European chivalry and clergy for their dereliction during a time of war and schism. In a rare gambit, Bovet boldly gives voice to a "Saracen" nobleman, who offers the most stinging reproaches of the group. This critical edition restores the author's seventy-five Latin marginalia, an indispensable interpretive tool largely overlooked in previous published versions, and presents the French text accompanied by a page-facing English translation and extensive notes.
2005 / 285 pages / 86698-326-0 / MR283 / $40, £30

Recent Titles

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The Romance of the Rose Illuminated: Manuscripts in the National Library of Wales
edited by Alcuin Blamires (University of Wales) & Gail C. Holian (Georgian Court College)
A central work in medieval culture and modern scholarship, the Romance of the Rose was among the most consistently illustrated of medieval secular texts. Consequently, interpretation of the visual evidence has played a significant part in elucidating the poem and its derivatives. This volume reproduces in color, with commentary and full contextual discussion, all the miniatures from five unpublished illuminated manuscripts of Le Roman de la Rose in the National Library of Wales. This book is a "must" for those who teach and study medieval literature in most European languages and especially for those who study Chaucer — a poet who absorbed the Romance of the Rose to the core by translating it.
2002 / 137 pages / 86698-265-5 / MR223 / $48, £42

Crusade Charters 1138-1270
edited and translated by Corliss Slack (Whitworth College, Washington), English translations by Hugh Bernard Feiss
The Crusade Charters, a collection of thirty-one donation documents from northern France, records gifts to Premonstratensian abbeys founded throughout Europe between 1121 and 1150. The donors are predominantly lower nobility whose families accumulated wealth and prestige during the twelfth century due to the crusades. The theme of the book is imminent departure on crusade, and its primary importance lies in offering material evidence of the lay response to preaching and promotion of the crusades by the Premonstratensians. About a third of these charters are edited from manuscript, and the rest are from various printed, but inaccessible, sources. Each charter is printed both in the original Latin and with a facing-page translation.
2001 / 256 pages / 86698-239-6 / MR197 / $28, £24

Backlist

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Olivier de La Marche, Le Chevalier deliberé (The Resolute Knight)
edited and translated by Carleton W. Carroll & Lois Hawley Wilson

"a basis of understanding the Burgundian court and its literary tastes . . . charming to read . . . a valuable addition to institutions with graduate programs in European history or French literature." -- Renaissance Quarterly

1999 / 368 pages / 86698-241-8 / MR199 / $30, £26

The Song of Girart of Vienne
edited and translated by Michael A. Newth
1999 / 224 pages / 86698-238-8 / MR196 / $24, £21

Preface to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne by his Adoptive Daughter, Marie le Jars de Gournay
translated by Richard Hillman & Colette Quesnel

"The Preface is a culturally significant document not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of 'the problematic of the speaking subject.' … The project of translating Gournay's Preface is highly commendable, the current volume's usefulness being heightened by its bilingual format." -- Sixteenth Century Journal

1998 / 120 pages / 86698-235-3 / MR193 / $18, £16

Maurice Scève: The Entry of Henri II into Lyon, September 1548
edited by Richard Cooper

"Scholarly in content but amusingly written, it provides a valuable addition to the growing corpus of facsimiles of [festivities and triumphal entries]." -- Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance

A Renaissance Triumphs and Magnificences facsimile edition.
1997 / 328 pages / 86698-200-0 / MR160 / $36, £26

Ronsard's Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study
Philip Ford

" a thorough examination of the inspired and elevated poetry of the Hymnes ... an illuminating contribution to studies of the relationship between poetry and the visual arts in Renaissance France." -- French Studies

1997 / 352 pages / illus. / 86698-197-7 / MR157 / $30, £26

Transtextualities: Of Cycles and Cyclicity in Medieval French Literature
edited by Sara Sturm-Maddox and Donald Maddox
Stimulating essays on a range of topics, including the medieval cycle and the process of mapping a trope, the cyclicity and transtextual coherence in Chrétien de Troyes, cyclicity in the Lancelot-Grail cycle and in medieval French drama, and the genealogy of later narrative cycles.
1996 / 216 pages / 86698-189-6 / MR149 / $24, £21 $8, £7

Christine de Pizan: Le Livre du Duc Des Vrais Amans
edited by Thelma S. Fenster
A critical edition of her last courtly narrative, the poem stands out from Christine's corpus as an explicit criticism of the courtly adulterous paradigm, a view she only cautiously expresses in earlier works.
1995 / 272 pages / 86698-129-2 / MR124 / $24, £21 $12, £11

Honoré d'Urfé: Astrea
translated by Steven Rendall
A pivotal work in the history of fiction, a summa of narrative forms, Astrea generated enormous enthusiasm among its first audience and offeres modern readers complex, seventeenth-century views of aristocracy, love, politics, history, geology, and astronomy.
1995; rpt. 1997 / 416 pages / 86698-142-X / MR134 / $30, £26 $10, £9

Michel Zink: Medieval French Literature, An Introduction
translated by Jeff Rider; introduction by David Staines
Zink's book critically reviews and reforges everything that is currently known about medieval French literature and its development. Rider's translation will be useful for students at the undergraduate and graduate levels.
1995 / 184 pages / 86698-163-2 / MR110 / $25, £22 $15, £13

Jean du Tillet and the French Wars of Religion: Five Tracts, 1562-1569
edited by Elizabeth A. R. Brown
As secretary and greffier civil (civil clerk) of the Parlement of Paris (1530-1570), Jean du Tillet reveals himself in these five treatises as a champion of the Catholic faith.
1994 / 248 pages / 86698-155-1 / MR108 / $25, £22 $13, £12

Saint Patrick's Purgatory: A Poem by Marie de France
translated by Michael J. Curley
1993; rpt.1997 / 192 pages / 86698-108-X / MR94 / $20, £18

The Lyrics of Richard De Semilli: Critical Edition and Musical Transcription
edited by Susan M. Johnson
Complete with twelfth-century poetic works with their melodies in a modernized version. With full introduction and critical apparatus.
1992 / 112 pages / 86698-092-X / MR81 / $20, £18 $5, £5

The Christian at Prayer: An Illustrated Prayer Manual Attributed to Peter the Chanter (d. 1197)
Richard C. Trexler
Peter's influence (fl. 1170-1190). Includes text, introduction, seven postures.
1987 / 264 pages / illus. / 86698-027-X / MR44 / $25, £22 $13, £12