The importance of Lyon in the development of French vernacular poetry is well known thanks to scholars such as Verdun-Louis Saulnier, Marie Madeleine Fontaine, and Richard Cooper; however, most of the scholarship on this topic has focused on individual authors rather than on poetry books as the result of a collective enterprise. “Mais devant tous est le Lyon marchant” takes this scholarly tradition into account while providing new insight into poetry written and printed in Lyon from the late 1530s to the early 1550s by studying the role played by the collaboration between authors, printers, editors, and booksellers. Elise Rajchenbach-Teller examines their biographies, but also shows how their views on poetry shaped and enhanced the role of Lyon in the development of French vernacular poetry.
The study focuses on a period spanning from 1536 to 1551, in which the influence of Lyon was felt throughout the kingdom of France due to the exceptional geographical location of the city. From the 1540s, the city became known for its innovative poetry and the vitality of its book trade, as Lyon became the cradle of new forms of Petrarchism and Neoplatonism. “Mais devant tous” aims to uncover the cultural collaboration behind the success of immensely influential poets of Lyon, such as Clément Marot and Maurice Scève. The book also brings to light the work of less well-known printers and editors. These fifteen years are those in which vernacular literature developed and matured in France, freeing the French language from the tutelage of Latin and Tuscan. Another main theme of this work is the role played collectively by the editors, authors, and printers of Lyon in the vindication of French literature.
“Mais devant tous” is organized into three main sections. The first examines the role played by editors, booksellers, and printers in the development of vernacular poetry in Lyon. This section is dedicated to four figures who played a crucial role in this development. The first of these is the polygraph and editor Etienne Dolet. Rajchenbach-Teller shows how, even when editing or translating Latin literature, he was one of the main promoters to legitimize French as a language of culture. The second figure is François Juste, who promoted French poetry by printing the works of new vernacular poets like Mellin de Saint-Gelais. This brought attention to the life and works of printer Jean de Tournes. According to the Rajchenbach-Teller, Tournes’s business acumen and far-reaching editorial views are what truly allowed French vernacular poetry to gain popularity and credit. Lastly, the author concentrates on Guillaume Rouillé, a major figure in the book trade in Lyon. Although Rouillé specialized in printing Italian books, he contributed to the development of French poetry.
In the second part of the book, the author explores how authors and editors shaped the identity of Lyon as a city, where a specific type of poetry was written and printed, “un champ littéraire à Lyon,” as the author terms it. In this section, Rajchenbach-Teller assesses to what extent the collective identity of poets of Lyon was forged by editors and printers, even though a close-knit but informal sodalitas of poets did in fact exist in the city. In particular, the author examines how printers and editors built on the reputation of Maurice Scève to their own ends. Thus Scève’s poetry was presented as a touchstone for the Lyonnaise school of poetry without the author’s explicit assent. The various editions of Clément Marot’s works are also presented as the result of the strategies of rival editors (Etienne Dolet and François Juste, Jean de Tournes and Guillaume Rouillé). However, these projects of creating a poetic identity specific to Lyon are shown to have been relatively fruitless in the long term. In the third part, the author tries to assess how the printing of poetry books in Lyon relates to the book trade in Italy, but also in other major French cities like Paris and Toulouse, in order to understand why Lyon was so influential in the book industry. Particular attention is paid to the competition between Paris and Lyon and how this influenced typographical choices in poetry books.
“Mais devant tous est le Lyon marchant” is a veritable treasure trove of information on printers and poets in Renaissance Lyon. It contains many detailed case studies accompanied by copious footnotes, a detailed bibliography of books of poetry printed in Lyon between 1530 and 1550, and several appendixes, including a bibliography of the works of the printer Antoine du Moulin. This book sometimes seems almost too detailed and the reader may at times lose sight of the author’s fundamental point, a fairly common flaw in works drawn from doctoral dissertations. However, “Mais devant tous” is an extremely well-documented piece of scholarship and it will undeniably prove useful to scholars in many different fields. Furthermore, though the theoretical posit of the work is built on the long-established critical heritage of French historians of the book like Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin, Rajchenbach-Teller sheds compelling new light on poetry printed in Lyon in the mid-sixteenth century.
