Marguerite de Navarre. Marguerites (1547)
Les marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses
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Marguerites de la Marguerite des princesses tresillustres royne de Nauarre.
A Lyon : Par Iean de Tournes, 1547.
Description: 2 v. in 1: ill.; 18 cm. (octavo)
Published in Lyon by Jean de Tournes in 1547, this first edition of the Marguerites provides a beautiful example of the italic type designed by Robert Granjon. One of the most influential of the Lyonnese printers, Jean de Tournes used Granjon's types with the illustrations and ornaments by Bernard Salomon to produce some of the most beautiful books of the French Renaissance. Salomon's woodcuts illustrate "La Coche" and he designed the arabesque ornaments that grace many pages of the Marguerites and lend elegance and originality to this and other works published by Jean de Tournes.
Le miroir de l'âme pécheresse
The presence of embellished initial letters in print was a carryover from the era of illuminated manuscripts. The first letter in each of the poems of this edition of the Marguerites is treated in this way. For a discussion of the initial and its symbolism in the poetry of Marguerite de Navarre, see pages 99-103 in The Grammar of Silence (Catholic U of America P, 1986) by Robert Cottrell
The marginal annotations here and elsewhere were added by the editor and printer. The notes on this page indicate the text's allusions to the letters of St. Paul.
La coche
The woodcut illustrations were the work of Bernard Salomon. When making the woodcuts, Salomon reportedly followed the captions provided by Marguerite herself in the unillustrated manuscript copies of the text to indicate what she wanted represented in the illustrations that were to be added later. (For more on this, see Marichal's critical edition of La Coche and Robert Cottrell's discussion of the interplay between text and "graphic encodement" in the Grammar of Silence (Catholic U of America Press, 1986), p. 234-241.
