Œuvres Polémiques: Rédigées sous le Règne de Louis XII by Pierre Gringore; Cynthia J. BrownReview by: Bernd RennerThe Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), p. 1160Published by: The Sixteenth Century JournalStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20477634 .

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1160 Sixteenth CenturyJournal XXXVI/4 (2005)

her into the spiritually living Beatrice capable of raising her lover to the empyreum, even if he was therefore lost to earthbound mortals. Readers will join me in wishing that whatever part ofThomas Hunkeler was lost in giving body to Le Vif du Sens, there remains much more of him sufficient for fleshing out his future corpus.

CEuvres Polemiques: Redigees sous le Regne de Louis XII. Pierre Gringore. Ed. Cynthia J. Brown. Geneva: Droz, 2003.376 pp. SF 41.25. ISBN 2-600-00836-5.

REVIEWED BY: Bernd Renner, Brooklyn College, CUNY

Cynthia Brown's critical edition of Pierre Gringore's polemical works, composed roughly between 1500 and 1513, contains eight quite short texts that supported the royal propaganda in favor of Louis XII's offensive in Italy: Lettres nouvelles de Milan (39 lines, 326 verses), La Piteuse Complainte de la Terre Sainte (239 verses), L'Entreprise de Venise (238 verses), L'Union des Princes (287 verses), L'Espoir de Paix (360 verses), La Chasse du cerf des cerfz (260 verses), LeJeu du Prince des Sotz et Mere Sotte (1,245 verses), L'Obstination des Suysses (134 verses) .This edition is the first volume of the editor's project of establishing Pierre Gringore's collected works, which comprise some thirty texts, many of which have not been reedited since the sixteenth century and most of which have never benefited from a modern critical edition. The merits of this undertaking are thus self-explanatory, as Gringore is one of the most important authors of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance. His evolution as a writer provides a telling glimpse at the status of literature at this important juncture in the history of French letters.With regard to this first volume, one can, for instance, hope to gain significant insight into the early stages of what will become a main staple of Renaissance lit erature from Clement Marot to Mathurin Regnier: polemical and/or satirical writing. After all, it was plays such as Gringore's that Rabelais or Marot saw performed during their for mative years. His impact on this genre can thus be hardly denied. He is also a showcase for the influence of printing on early modern texts since Gringore is the first vernacular author to have his first works printed and to be granted privileges for his writings from 1504 on, as the editor observes in her comprehensive and well-written introduction.

The choice of a thematic grouping of the texts has some small drawbacks, however, the most obvious one in this first volume being the omission of thefarce from theJeu du Prince des Sotz et Mere Sotte.The text only features the cry, the sottie, and the moralite'; thefarce will be included in a later volume, which unfortunately fragments the text. On the whole this is an excellent edition.The introduction features a detailed yet concise linguistic and philolog ical study (some thirty pages that deal predominantly with early modern grammar: nouns, adjectives, articles-including the demonstrative and possessive categories-possessive, rela tive, and personal pronouns, verbs, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, and other minor cat egories) that will prove very helpful to any student of the period in general. In addition, every single text is preceded by a specific textual, bibliographical, literary, poetic, and histor ical study-complemented by more information on specific verses or stanzas in end notes-as well as a reproduction of the original title page.Variations of the respective texts' other major editions appear in footnotes. At the end of the volume there is a quite complete bibliography of primary and secondary texts, an index of proper names, and a glossary, another invaluable tool, especially in the case of a possible pedagogical use of Gringore's poems. This text will certainly turn out to be the standard modern critical edition for years to come as it will make Gringore's important writings more accessible to researchers, teach ers, and students.

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