Sampling the Book: Renaissance Prologues and the French Conteurs

This is the first comprehensive study of the prefaces of the major French Renaissance writers of short narrative form. The recent renewal of interest in the art of printing, in the performative aspects of prefatory discourse, and in reader response has stimulated research in liminary forms. Sampling the Book sets the prologues of better-known storytellers - such as Rabelais, Bonaventure Des Periers, and Marguerite de Navarre - in the context of the prologues of both major and minor conteurs: Philippe de Vigneulles, Noel du Fail, Jacques Yver, le Seigneur de Cholieres, Nicholas de Troyes, Beroalde de Verville, and others.
Renaissance printing practices had a profound effect on the development of the prologue. As printed works began to reach an increasingly expanded public, writers began to use the liminary space of their works not only to announce the title and contents of the work to follow but to try to influence the reception of the text by offering guidelines to the reader.
This study begins with a discussion of how the Renaissance storyteller carries on the Medieval tradition of grounding the text in authoritative sources while taking credit for innovations in narrative technique. The unique voice of the author assumes an expanding role in the prefatory pages as we progress from the early prologue of Philippe de Vigneulles to the prologues of Bonaventure Des Periers, Noel du Fail, Jacques Yver, and le Seigneur de Cholieres. Deborah N. Losse goes on to explore the relationship between history and fiction in the prologues of the storytellers and describes the fictional contract between writer and reader as it comes into play in the liminary pages of the work.
Metaphors used to illustrate the generating circumstances of the work to follow occupy a central place in the prefaces of Renaissance storytellers. Developing Paul Ricoeur's description of metaphor as a decoding tool, Losse describes how the conteurs use prefatory metaphors to set up a "good reading" of the text. There follows an extensive analysis of the prefatory functions as applied to the prologues of storytellers ranging from Marguerite de Navarre to Beroalde de Verville. Reference is also made to the typology set up by Gerard Genette, but efforts are made to indicate how the Renaissance prologues chart their own prefatory course.
Also treated are the prefatory remarks of women writers such as Helisenne de Crenne, Jeanne Flore, and Louise Labe, which depart in several important ways from the liminary discourse of their male contemporaries. These writers - on occasion - subvert prefatory convention to criticize the male sex or exclude the male voice entirely from the prefatory pages of their works. Losse shows that issues of gender and social standing have exerted a lasting influence on prefatory forms.