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CLOTHING "DAME HELISENNE": THE STAGING OF FEMALE AUTHORSHIP AND THE PRODUCTION OF THE 1538 ANGOYSSES DOULOUREUSES QUI PROCEDENT D'AMOURS
Romanic Review, Nov 2001 by Chang, Leah L
This positioning of the two names seems hardly coincidental. I would argue that Janot's presence as a type of finishing touch for each section of the book speaks to the purpose of the "De Crenne" figures. Plastered on the interior title pages, or hovering within the colophons, both Janot and "De Crenne" represent parties whose signatory seals testify to the quality of the aesthetic as well as the creative and stylistic aspects of the book. It is possible to read the relation of these two figures as a type of the increasingly frequent competition between author and publisher that Cynthia Brown has documented in printed texts of the early French Renaissance.35 As the privileged printer and bookseller of the Angoysses Douloureuses,36 Janot reemphasizes his textual control each time he advertises his name, profession, and place of business in the colophons and on the title pages. The huge "De Crenne" figures, however, assert the existence of yet another, if mysterious, producer of the book, different from either printer or Dame Helisenne. Whether or not this "competition" was staged in the liminary texts by the printer, the author, or both, it is tempting to see between Janot and the patronymic "De Crenne" a tension similar to that between Guenelic and the husband in the scene of the white cloak. On the title pages and in the colophons, Janot and the figure of "De Crenne" do seem to vie for the superior position in book production over the nominal authorship of Dame Helisenne, whose death just before the end of the narrative renders her unconvincing as a true producer of the text. One senses that Janot and "De Crenne" are indeed struggling over Dame Helisenne's textual "body," since the symbol of the white cloak that once covered her living body returns after her death in the white silk of the book that she leaves behind in the story, the book that becomes the published Angoysses Douloureuses. And like Dame Helisenne's body, which at the scene of the cloak was at a crossroads between lascivious desire for Guenelic and chaste loyalty to her husband, the book also walks the fine line between warning others away from unchaste thoughts and actions ("O tres cheres dames, quand je considere qu'en voyant comme j'ay este surprinse, vous pourrez evitez les dangereulx laqs d'amours, en y resistant du commencent, sans continuer en amoureuses pensees,"(97)) and relishing those desires through their (re)telling.
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And yet, Janot's textual markers become less representative of the printer as a competitor to the author's textual control, and more indicative of a potential collaboration between author and printer figures, when one considers that print is in fact inscribed in the Angoysses Douloureuses as the climax of the narrative. Much of Quezinstra's final epilogue has to do with the printing of Dame Helisenne's little white book.37 In many ways, this final vignette seems to be the writer's solution to the problem of the protagonist's death and the strain it exerts on the authenticity of Dame Helisenne's authorship. That it is Quezinstra who recounts the deaths of Helisenne and Guenelic in some sense cloaks and dissimulates the obvious fictions of both the death of the protagonist-cum-author and, one suspects, the love affair context that ostensibly drives the composition of the story in the first place. The fourth title page supports his authorship of the epilogue and helps blur the line between fact and fiction since, unlike the case of Guenelic in the second and third titles, it never claims that Dame Helisenne writes in Quezinstra's voice.38 Most importantly, Quezinstra sees to the publication of the book. He decides to publish it for two reasons. First, he promises to obey Guenelic's wish that he "manifest" (manifester) their troubles to the world. Secondly, he hopes the book will warn readers to avoid lascivious love: "... afin que tous lecteurs qui s'occuperont a lire ces angoisses doloreuses, par l'exemple d'icelles se puissent conserver et garder que la sensualite ne domine la raison, pour timeur de succomber en ceste lascivite, dont ne se peult ensuyvre, que peines et travaulx intollerables ... "(506).
