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OGER-BLANCHET
449
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VIDEL, Louis - Le Melante du Sieur Videl, secretaire de Mons…
See original version (French)
449
-
VIDEL, Louis - Le Melante du Sieur Videl, secretaire de Mons…
See original version (French)
Estimate €300
Voluntary lot
Description
VIDEL, Louis - Le Melante du Sieur Videl, secretaire de Monseigneur le Connestable. Amoureuses avantures du temps. Paris, Samuel Thiboust, 1624. pet. in-8, (12) ff. (incl. frontispiece), 1015 pp. trimmed short at head with occasional damage to running title, missing upper part of frontispiece about 5 mm, paper a little yellowed, some russets, fawn calf a little post, supralibros St PORT on boards in gilt, spine ribbed ornamented, lion at tail, small tears at upper head.
BRUNET V, 1183 (''rare''). LEVER 262. First edition, dedicated to Marshal de Créquy. Videl was born in Serres in the Hautes-Alpes, around 1598. He was secretary to the Duc de Lesdiguières (from 1628 until the duke's death in 1638), whose history he published in 1638. The very demanding secretariat he complained about did not prevent him from living happily and lavishly. His biographer Chorier (Vita Boessatii, p. 188) reports that he played the lute, enjoyed dancing and appearing in ballets, dined well and paraded through the towns of the province, following in his master's footsteps, mounted on a magnificently harnessed horse, covered with sumptuous covers.
For Coulet (p.153), the Mélante is a pastoral novel inspired to the point of copying the Astrée. In Crete, and especially in Cyprus, in an eternal springtime, shepherds venerate honest love, and are scandalised by the mockery of the incredulous Mélante and the light-hearted Célymon, who are copied from Hylas. But the fact remains that Videl's novel is, before Clélie, the text that best demonstrates his analytical effort to grasp the different causes of love (p. 72), in which he distinguishes between love born of beauty and love born of inclination or obligation, or gentleness, or kindness, or "accortise", or pity. It is the forerunner of the famous carte du Tendre (Magendie, p. 317). The frontispiece, which shows the characters following the various episodes of the novel like an itinerary on a pictorial map, prefigures the sentimental geography made fashionable by Clélie. Possibly supralibros of Jean-Baptiste Gluck (1674-1748) baron de Saint-Port. Ex-libris Rob. de Billy.
See original version (French)
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