New investigations into Charles d'Orléans' under-rated poem, its properties and its qualities.

The compilationFortunes 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 withformes fixes lyrics, his innovative use of thedits 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 ofFortunes 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.

Introduction - R.D. Perry
The Two Dreams of Charles d'Orleans and the Structure of His English Book - John A. Burrow
Charles d'Orleans' Cross-Channel Poetics: The Choice of Ballade Form inFortunes Stabilnes - Elizaveta Strakhov
The English Roundel, Charles's Jubilee, and Mimetic Form - Jenni Nuttall
A Grieving Lover: The Work of Mourning in Charles' First Ballade Sequence - B. S. W. Barootes
Charles d'Orleans' English Metrical Phonology - Eric Weiskott
The English Poetry of a Frenchman: Stress and Idiomacy in Charles d'Orleans - Ad Putter
Verb Use in Charles d'Orleans' English - Richard Ingham
Charles d'Orleans and His Finding of English - Jeremy J Smith
Aureation as Agon: Charles d'Orleans versus John Lydgate - Andrea Denny-Brown
Charles d'Orleans, Harley 682, and the London Booktrade - Simon Horobin
The Form of the Whole - Philip Knox
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