Introduction

Summary

When I began studying the life and work of Charles d'Orléans some twenty years ago, many of the major sources were old. Pierre Champion's biography of the duke and edition of his French poems dated from the early part of the century; Steele and Day's edition of the English work, from the 1940s. Only the work of Daniel Poirion, especially his book Le Poète et le prince: L'Évolution du lyrisme courtois de Guillaume de Machaut à Charles d'Orléans (1965), was relatively recent – but all that has since changed.

On assiste depuis plusieurs années à un renouveau des études auréliennes…

un climat évidemment propice à stimuler l'activité éditoriale …

The growth of interest in the fifteenth century, in translation, in trans-channel culture, and in cultural history have all attracted scholars to begin studying the life and work of the duc d'Orléans. What has attracted them, in addition to the perennial interest in his dramatic life story and his times, is primarily the quality of his poetry and the lure of his library. What is most encouraging is that scholars who had once laid aside work on the duke, in some cases for many years, have dusted off their notebooks and taken up the work with fresh zeal and interest. This volume shows the breadth of the late twentieth-century interest in the duke's poetry, his books, his life, and his times. In the pages that follow the reader will find the work of scholars new to the field as well as that of those who have labored long in it. By laying out new lines of enquiry both groups offer a profusion of new ideas and the promise of more, as well as some new answers to old questions.