Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles - History of The Book

History of The Book

It was first translated into English in 1899 by Robert B. Douglas, though an edition was edited in French by an English scholar Thomas Wright in 1858. It can hardly have been the coarseness of some of the stories that prevented the Nouvelles from being presented to English readers when there were by that time half a dozen versions of the Heptameron, which is as coarse as the Nouvelles.

In addition to this, there is the history of the book itself, and its connection with one of the most important personages in French history — Louis XI. Indeed, in many older French and English works of reference, the authorship of the Nouvelles has been attributed to him, and though in recent years, the writer is now believed — and no doubt correctly — to have been Antoine de la Salle, it is tolerably certain that Prince Louis heard all the stories related, and very possibly contributed several of them.

The circumstances under which these stories came to be narrated revolve the period from 1456-1461, when Louis was estranged from his father, Charles VII of France, and was being kept by Philip III, Duke of Burgundy. It was during these five years that these stories were told to amuse his leisure. Probably there were many more than a hundred narrated — perhaps several hundreds — but the literary man who afterwards "edited" the stories only selected those he deemed best, or, perhaps, those he heard recounted. The narrators were the nobles who formed the Dauphin's Court. Much ink has been spilled over the question whether Louis himself had any share in the production. In nearly every case the author's name is given, and ten of them (Nos. 2, 4, 7, 9, 11, 29, 33, 69, 70 and 71) are described in the original edition as being by "Monseigneur." Publishers of subsequent editions brought out at the close of the 15th, or the beginning of the 16th, Century, jumped to the conclusion that "Monseigneur" was really the Dauphin, who not only contributed largely to the book, but after he became King personally supervised the publication of the collected stories.

For four centuries Louis XI was credited with the authorship of the tales mentioned. The first person to throw any doubt on his claim was Thomas Wright, who edited an edition of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, published by Jannet, Paris, 1858. He maintained, with some show of reason, that as the stories were told in Burgundy, by Burgundians, and the collected tales were "edited" by de la Salle, it was more probable that "Monseigneur" would mean the Duke than the Dauphin, and he therefore ascribed the stories to Philippe le Bel. Later French scholars, however, appear to be of opinion that "Monseigneur" was the Comte de Charolais, who afterwards became famous as Charles le Téméraire, the last Duke of Burgundy.

Some thirty-two noblemen or squires contributed the other stories, with some 14 or 15 taken from Giovanni Boccaccio, and as many more from Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini or other Italian writers, or French fabliaux, but about 70 of them appear to be original.