Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France by Jane H.M. Taylor (review)

Jane H.M. Taylor, Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France. Gallica 33. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 294. isbn: 978-1-8438-4365-8. £60.00.Rewriting Arthurian Romance in Renaissance France is a much-needed study of the reception of Arthurian material in France at the onset of the printing age and through the sixteenth century. Building on the few articles devoted to that topic, Taylor analyzes at length editorial and publishing strategies to promote Arthurian romances despite the reservation that this sort of literature aroused in Renaissance France. Even though few original romances were produced in the fifteenth century, stories about Lancelot, Tristan, and other famous knights as well as about the Grail were copied and treasured by book lovers and certainly had a large readership. This success was enduring when booksellers such as Antoine Verard ventured into what would prove the very lucrative business of publishing fiction. Yet around 1540 French readers turned away from Arthurian matters, forcing authors, translators, editors and publishers to adapt old stories to new tastes. Taylor describes how book producers first accompanied and even strengthened the persistent Arthurian craze and later tried to resist its demise by reconfiguring Arthurian material in ways that would appeal to a changed audience. She chooses not to write a global history of Arthurian romances in the Renaissance, but to focus on a series of specific publishing endeavors as examples of the varied ways in which book producers took into account new cultural environments, but also largely contributed to changes in literary tastes. Two concepts are at the heart of her study: 'poaching,' a term borrowed from Michel de Certeau, that designates the process by which old material is transformed into a new creation fitting new cultural practices; and 'taste': relying on Bourdieu's theory about culture-making, Taylor examines how 'producers of a work of literature' (by which she means writers and publishers [162]) manipulate readers-consumers in order to promote a cultural product.Divided into seven chapters, the book first chronicles the successful transformation and adaptation ofArthurian material: Pierre Sala's seemingly anachronistic rewritings of Chretien de Troyes' Yvain and of the Tristan story; and the highly skillful manner in which Verard and other publishers, assisted by teams of anonymous scribe-editors, negotiated the passage from a manuscript culture to the age of printing. Taylor scrutinizes what might look like 'cosmetic' changes: a new and 'modern' mise en page, the commission of specific woodcut illustrations, and the systematization of the table of rubrics, that assured the publishing success of two huge romances, Lancelot and Tristan. …