Diviser, choisir et condenser: rubriques et illustrations du règne d'Uter et Pandragon dans le Merlin de Robert de Boron

La sélection opérée par les rubriques et les enluminures, formes contraintes qui échappent dans une certaine mesure à la linéarité du développement textuel, détermine la réception de l'œuvre. Les manuscrits comprenant des miniatures synthétiques (comme celles qui représentent l'enfance de Merlin) ou des séries iconographiques (comme celles qui rendent compte des amours d'Uterpandragon et Ygerne et de leurs conséquences) présentent donc un caractère exceptionnel, orientant la lecture du texte et son interprétation.

Entre histoire et fiction: la représentation du règne d'Arthur dans le manuscrit enluminé du Brut en prose, Londres, Lambeth Palace 6 (c. 1480)

The manuscript London, Lambeth Palace 6, contains the Middle English prose Brut, a text which benefited from a great popularity throughout the fifteenth century. It was copied by an English scribe and richly illuminated by the Master of Edward IV and his assistants at Bruges around 1480. This article studies the representation and integration of the reign of Arthur in the historical framework of the Brut or Chronicles of England, including its fictional aspects: Arthur emerges as a historical character but also as a chivalric and mythical figure. The analysis covers the miniatures ranging from the plot leading to the conception of Arthur to the end of his reign (fols. 36-66). The textual and iconographic choices of the prose Bruts are highlighted by comparisons with Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, Wace’s Brut, and later prose rewritings in the Lancelot-Grail romance cycle, especially Merlin and its Vulgate Sequel. They show the continuous interest raised by Arthur in the aristocratic and royal circles of late fifteenth century England and the relationship be¬tween continental and insular historiographical, literary and artistic traditions.

The printed page

In the year 1702 two books were published, in Oxford and Paris, that can now be seen as defining the presses that produced them. In Paris, the Imprimerie Royale issued the Médailles sur les principaux évènements du règne de Louis le Grand, a large folio of text and plates intended to glorify the regime of Louis XIV. In Oxford, the first, large format volume of Clarendon’s The history of the rebellion appeared; painstakingly edited at Christ Church, it brought prestige and profit to the University. Both were considerable statements of publishing intent in graphic form: both were sumptuous, and both used types and decorations reserved to their respective presses. But the French book points the way to future developments in typography, particularly in the design of type, while the Oxford book is a summation of the past, and its types and page design would be abandoned by the Oxford press in little more than thirty years. Tracing the printed pages of Oxford books from the late sixteenth to the mid-eighteenth century shows changes that parallel wider developments in English and European typography, but from a distinctly Oxford perspective.