The compilation Fortunes Stabilnes, the English poetry Charles d'Orléans wrote in the course of his twenty-five year captivity in England after Agincourt, requires a larger lens than that of Chaucerianism, through which ithas most often been viewed. A fresh view from another perspective, one that attends to form and style, as well as to the poet's French traditions, reveals a more conceptually complex and innovative kind of poetry than we have seenuntil now.
The essays collected here reassess him in the light of recent work in Middle English studies. They detail those qualities that make his text one of the most accomplished and moving of the late Middle Ages: Charles's use of English, his metrical play, his felicity with formes fixes lyrics, his innovative use of the dits structure and lyric sequences, and finally, above all, his ability to write beautiful poetry. Overall, theybring out the underappreciated contribution made by Charles to the canon of English poetry.
MARY-JO ARN is an independent scholar, and editor of Fortunes Stabilnes; R.D. PERRY is Assistant Professor of English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver.
Contributors: B.S.W. Barootes, J.A. Burrow, Andrea Denny-Brown, Simon Horobin, Richard Ingham, Philip Knox, Jenni Nuttall, Ad Putter, Jeremy J. Smith, Elizaveta Strakhov, Eric Weiskott.
