Synopsis
The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of his twenty-five year captivity in England after Agincourt, requires a larger lens than that of Chaucerianism, through which it has most often been viewed. A fresh view from another perspective, one that attends to form and style, as well as to the poet's French traditions, reveals a more conceptually complex and innovative kind of poetry than we have seen until now.
The essays collected here reassess him in the light of recent work in Middle English studies. They detail those qualities that make his text one of the most accomplished and moving of the late Middle Ages: Charles's use of English, his metrical play, his felicity with formes fixes lyrics, his innovative use of the dits structure and lyric sequences, and finally, above all, his ability to write beautiful poetry. Overall, they bring out the underappreciated contribution made by Charles to the canon of English poetry.
Table of Contents
Introduction - R.D. Perry
The Two Dreams of Charles d'Orleans and the Structure of His English Book - John A. Burrow
Charles d'Orleans' Cross-Channel Poetics: The Choice of Ballade Form in Fortunes Stabilnes - Elizaveta Strakhov
The English Roundel, Charles's Jubilee, and Mimetic Form - Jenni Nuttall
A Grieving Lover: The Work of Mourning in Charles' First Ballade Sequence - B. S. W. Barootes
Charles d'Orleans' English Metrical Phonology - Eric Weiskott
The English Poetry of a Frenchman: Stress and Idiomacy in Charles d'Orleans - Ad Putter
Verb Use in Charles d'Orleans' English - Richard Ingham
Charles d'Orleans and His Finding of English - Jeremy J Smith
Aureation as Agon: Charles d'Orleans versus John Lydgate - Andrea Denny-Brown
Charles d'Orleans, Harley 682, and the London Booktrade - Simon Horobin
The Form of the Whole - Philip Knox
Select Bibliography
About the Authors
R.D. PERRY is Assistant Professor of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver.
The late MARY-JO ARN was an independent scholar, and editor of Fortunes Stabilnes.
Ad Putter is Professor of Medieval English at the University of Bristol, UK, co-director of Bristol's Centre for Medieval Studies, and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the author and editor of numerous books, with a particular interest in Medieval Romance texts and the works of the Gawain poet. He is currently leading a research project on the literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations.
Jenni Nuttall is Lecturer in English at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She has written books on Lancastrian literature and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, as well as articles on Middle English literary language and poetic forms.
Jeremy Smith was professor of English philology at Glasgow, where he remains a senior research fellow and emeritus professor, and an honorary professor at St Andrews. His specialisms include English historical linguistics, medieval studies, and book history, combined recently in Transforming Early English (2020).
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