382 REVIEWSFS, LIX.

3, 2005

vivant, a felicitous phrase adopted as the devise of the 2000 Glasgow conference
Christine de Pizan: Contexts and Continuities (see FS, LVI (2002), 223 24),
whose proceedings are edited by Kennedy among others. The task of the bibli-
ographer faced with this ever-expanding volume of material seems almost
Sisyphean, as Kennedy himself acknowledges. The publication of this second
supplement, containing 1225 items as compared to 391 for the decade 1984
94, will no doubt lead perversely to a redoubling of critics efforts over the
next decade, a la Edith Nesbits Princess Melisande, rendering the bibliographers
climb even steeper than before come 2014. Kennedys task, though, is not so
hopeless or fruitless. Here he lays the groundwork for collaborative

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bibliographical projects that might, in future, cope better with the rapidly multi-
plying number of publications and languages in the field. The vast increase in the
number of publications over the last decade has not necessarily gone hand in hand
with a decline in quality, though. Many real achievements have been made in
Christine studies over this period, as Kennedy affirms, not least among them
the current availability of editions of all of her works (the Livre de prudence and
Heures de contemplation are forthcoming). Supplement 2 is divided into six
chapters drawn up along bibliographical lines established in the original guide.
In Kennedys Chapter III , modifications to the list of specific topics include the
creation of Musical settings as a new category, and the introduction of
Spain to sub-section (b): Christine de Pizan, England and Portugal. Other
topics covered here range, as before, from Manuscripts, Miniatures and Manu-
script Illumination to Political, Social, and Educational Themes. The sub-
section that unsurprisingly secures most entries in this chapter is Feminism
and related topics; entries here have increased by a factor of approximately six
since 1984. Changes introduced in the organization of this second supplement
also include the division of Chapter IV into two separate sections in order to
manage the new phenomenon of collected works devoted wholly or in part
to Christine. Helpful cumulative indexes of manuscripts; authors, translators,
artists and titles, pre-1630; and scholars are to be found at the back of the
supplement. Still an invaluable resource for scholars, Kennedys mammoth
undertaking sets the highest standard for any bibliographical project in the
future.

EMMA CAYLEY
doi:10.1093/fs/kni146 UNIVERSITY OF EXETER

ALAIN CHARTIER , BAUDET HERENC , ACHILLE CAULIER : Le Cycle de La Belle

Dame sans Mercy. Edition bilingue etablie, traduite, presentee et annotee
par DAVID F. HULT et JOAN E. MC RAE . (Champion Classiques, Moyen
Age, 8). Paris, Champion, 2003. lxxxi 611 pp. Pb E17.00.
Alain Chartiers Belle Dame sans Mercy was widely read in late-medieval France;
however, as the editors of this much-needed volume observe, it was normally
read as part of a cycle of poems which rapidly accrued around it. To reproduce
this reading experience, Hult and McRae edit Chartiers poem alongside the
texts with which it forms a coherent sequence in a single manuscript, BnF ms.
fr. 1131: these include not only the pieces constituting what scholars generally
 REVIEWSFS, LIX.3, 2005 383
term the querelle de la Belle Dame, but also Chartiers own Complainte and Debat de
Reveille Matin, and Achille Cauliers Hopital dAmour. The editors selection not
only conveys the realities of fifteenth-century poetic transmission; it also high-
lights the significant thematic and narrative affinities between the Belle Dame
and its continuations on the one hand, and the more loosely related poems on
the other. The final continuation, the Erreurs du Jugement, is absent from the
base manuscript. Accordingly, it is supplied only in the form of key extracts,
in a dossier of complementary materials; an appropriate fate, in view of its lack
of popularity with contemporary audiences. Similarly, the editors supply only
the most significant variants from a limited number of witnesses: they seek to

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provide a snapshot of the poems reception, not a fully critical edition of each
text. Yet they are no bedieriste fundamentalists: various readings from BnF fr.
1131 are rejected in favour of those from other key witnesses, particularly in
the case of Baudet Herencs Accusation contre la Belle Dame sans Mercy, previously
known to scholars as the Parlement dAmour (a title much less in keeping with the
manuscript tradition). The accompanying translations into modern French, while
as practical and literal as one might expect of such reading aids, are reliable and
sensitive: only one rendering, mamene ici for me maine (p. 92, v. 5), occasions
significant doubts (why not me tourmente?). A glossary of well-judged scope
complements the translation effectively, while the index of proper names
includes personifications. Notes on the texts literary aspects are sparing, and
focus primarily on stylistic issues or intertextual allusions. The substantial intro-
duction begins by outlining the transmission and reception of Chartiers work,
and suggesting that the Belle Dame was composed more or less simultaneously
with the Complainte: the claim is perhaps questionable, resting as it does upon
thematic and narrative parallels alone, but this is certainly the reading encouraged
by many manuscript anthologies. The Belle Dame itself is persuasively read against
Chartiers more explicitly didactic output: the lady, far from being simply adver-
sarial, recommends self-love and self-respect to her suitor, who in turn comes to
exemplify chivalric incompetence. The continuations distort the original poems
moral stance in various ways: their authors, distanced from the political and
ethical realities surrounding the royal court, adopt a more ludic approach,
focusing on the Belle Dames guilt in the familiar terms of misogynistic satire.
This astute analysis completes an admirably reliable and useful volume, which
should ensure that the poems at last receive the attention they deserve.

ADRIAN ARMSTRONG
doi:10.1093/fs/kni147 UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER

Jean de Saintre: une carrie`re chevaleresque au XV e sie`cle. By MICHELLE SZKILNIK .

(Publications romanes et francaises, 232). Geneva, Droz, 2003. 168 pp.
This short book has a single objective: that of establishing how knighthood in the
prose fiction of the fifteenth century becomes une chevalerie mondaine through
comparison with chivalric biographies, notably those of Jacques de Lalain and
Boucicaut. Szkilnik takes as her key text Antoine de La Sales complex and
seductive romance, usually entitled Jehan de Saintre, with reference to texts that