A collaborative investigation of one of the best-known works of late
medieval European literature, the Franco-Burgundian collection of short
stories known as the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles. Modelled loosely on
Boccaccio's Decameron and incorporating elements from Old French
fabliaux as well as Poggio Bracciolini's Liber Facetiarum, the
anonymous collection attributes its morally challenging and frequently
humorous tales to named narrators including Philip the Good, Duke of
Burgundy and Louis of Luxembourg, Count of Saint Pol. The contribution
of this new volume of essays is threefold: - empirical, in that it
brings entirely new interdisciplinary insights into the study of the
genesis and reception of the work; - methodological, in that it
integrates study of the text within a 360-degree evaluation of the
work's manuscript and early printed context; and - conceptual, in that
it seeks to understand the social dimensions of textual production and
consumption. These approaches unite ten principal contributions by
specialists in the fields of art history, book history, court history
and linguistics from France, the Netherlands, the USA and the UK.