CLOTHING "DAME HELISENNE": THE STAGING OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE 1538 ANGOYSSES DOULOUREUSES QUI PROCEDENT D'AMOURS

3. For a comprehensive list of editions and their variations, and for locations of the 1538 version, see de Buzon's introduction to her edition, 44-69.

4. For examples of two important twentieth-century publications of the Angoysses Douloureuses, which nevertheless only reproduce the first part of the three-part story, see the editions edited by Paule Demats (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1968) and Jerome Verycrusse (Paris: Lettres Modernes Minard, 1968). For a discussion of the categorical function of the authorial identity, see Roger Chartier, L'ordre des livres: Lecteurs, auteurs, bibliotheques en Europe entre XIV et XVIIIe siecle, (Aix-en-Provence: Alinea, 1992) Chapter 2.

5. For a critical discussion of these various identities see Diane S. Wood's presentation of Helisenne's multi-faceted persona in "The Evolution of Helisenne de Crenne's Persona," Symposium (Summer 1991) 140-151.

6. For the typographical aspects of title pages and colophons of the first Parisian edition, I am working principally with the copy housed in the Bibliotheque Nationale (Res. p Z2013). Due to the fragility of this copy, I have had to limit reproductions to the four images included in this article. The 1538 edition was printed in -8°. In his "Denis Janot, Parisian Printer and Bookseller (fl. 1529-1544): A bibliographical study in two volumes" (Thesis: University of Warwick, Department of French Studies,1976), Stephen Philip John Rawles lists measurements for the text on an average page of the Angoysses Douloureuses as 121 by 70 mm. The binding of the BN copy is post-sixteenth century. Denys Janot was an early pioneer in the use of the woodblock and illustrated frontispiece, and his 1538 version of the Angoysses Douloureuses contains over sixty woodcuts that loosely illustrate the plot; on Janot as a trend-setter in this field, see Nina Catach, L'orthographe francaise a l'epoque de la Renaissance (Geneve: Droz, 1968) 248. It is the presence of multiple title pages in the 1538 Angoysses Douloureuses, complete with woodcut frames, that particularly interests me in this article, and that distinguishes Janot's work from that of other printers. Janot appears to have been fond of using title pages to separate different parts of a single work. For example, he uses them to distinguish the two parts of the 1539 Epitres Familieres et Invectives, also authored by "Dame Helisenne"; his Oeuvres de M.T. Cicero, published the same year, also uses a simple title page - printed on its own leaf, but this time without decorative frames - to divide different parts of the work. As I discuss in the second half of this article, it is the way in which the title pages, together with the narrative of the Angoysses Douloureuses, play with and construct the authorial figure that is particularly important to this study. Helisenne's white cloak in the story offers a way to conceptualize these dynamics, for it too explores the meaning of material form in the construction of a persona.

7. There are other moments in the story when Dame Helisenne tells us she dresses in fine clothing, but unlike the episode with the white cloak, those scenes never reveal details such as the type of clothing or the color of the garments.