L'écriture éditoriale à la Renaissance

"What does it mean to "read a book," and not just to "read a text," and what are the signs, visible and invisible, verbal and non-verbal, which intervene in the interpretative process of readers? In the narratives in vernacular prose printed in the Renaissance, form created meaning: the printing choices established links between texts, the narrative paragraph took the place of linguistic unity, and division into chapters conditioned reading practices. The printing policies of the publisher-booksellers of the Palace thus participated in the birth and promotion of a new genre: the French récit sentimental. The successive editions of the Angoysses douloureuses qui procèdent d'amours, considered the first récit sentimental composed in the French language, invite us even to think that this tale, far from being the work of a single female author (traditionally thought to be Hélisenne de Crenne), is rather the fruit of intertextual manipulations carried out in the workshop of the printers of Janot's circle in order to give birth to a best-seller regarded above all as a printed item responding to the expectations of a new public." -- Publisher website.