Les contes et discours d'Eutrapel [...]

“UN TEXT EN PROSE DE LA FORCE DE VILLON” (SAINTE-BEUVE)
8vo (159x92 mm). [2], 223 [recte 219], [1] leaves. Collation: *2 A-Z8 Aa-Dd8 Ee4. Typographic ornament on the title page. Full burgundy morocco, gilt spine with five raised bands, double blind-ruled fillet on the panels, inside gilt dentelle, gilt edges (Pagnant). A very good copy.
Original edition, second issue (first: 1585) of the author's final collection of stories. This second issue is identical to the first including in the pagination errors, but for the title page that was reset.
Noël Du Fail contributed to what literary historians termed the Golden Age of French Renaissance narrative fiction. In this respect he is part of a trio including Marguerite de Navarre and Bonaventure Des Périers. Du Fail might be regarded as a Renaissance sociologist, then the Contes d'Eutrapel throws considerable light on the manners and general life of the day and there is frequent mention of contemporaries (e.g. Girolamo Cardano's visit to the Paris medical faculty). The fantasies of Rabelais' stories and the psychology of Marguerite's characterizations have been replaced in Du Fail by a kind of Balzacian observation and recording of detail. If one views Du Fail's work as a whole, it is clear that he wanted to unshackle himself from the conventions of narrative fiction, especially the constraints of a sustained plot, in order to criticize more directly contemporary socio-political developments. That he straddles two social backgrounds (as country gentleman and lawyer) gives us an inside to the thematic tensions that characterize his work: past and present, city and country, decadence and utopia, Catholic and Protestant, conservatism and social criticism (cf. M.-C. Bichard-Thomine, Noël Du Fail, conteur, Paris, 2001, pp. 161-184).
Noël Du Fail, born at the Manoir de Chateau-Létard near Rennes in Brittany, studied law in Paris and saw military service in Italy in the army of François I, participating in the battle of Cérisolle in 1544. He then lectures law at various French universities: Angers, Poitiers, Bourges, and others. Beginning in 1547, he published a series of miscellaneous stories, Propos rustiques, some fictional, others drawn from life, incorporating into them wider reflections on society in the manner of Rabelais and Montaigne. Estienne Pasquier, writing to Ronsard in 1555, speaks of him as a ‘singe de Rabelais'. This is a completely uncritical remark, for, though Du Fail is an evident admirer of Rabelais and frequently refers to him in his books, his style is his own and only resembles that of his master in a few peculiarities. His second collection of stories was published in 1548 under the title of Baliverneries. At that time, he started his career as a lawyer, judge and politician. He became councillor to the Parlement de Bretagne but was excluded from it in 1573 for his Protestant faith. Reinstate in 1576 he resumed his career and retired a year after the publication of Eutrapel (cf. A J Krailsheimer, Three sixteenth-century conteurs, Oxford, 1966, pp. 137-49).
That the name of the printer on the title page, Noël Glamet, and the place of printing, Rennes, were fictitious was clearly shown by L. Loviot (L'imprimeur des ‘Contes d'Eutrapel', in: “Revue des livres anciens”, II, 1917, pp. 312-313), who assigned the first and all subsequent sixteenth-century editions of the Contes d'Eutrapel to the Parisian press of Jean Richer.
“Né vers 1520, Noël Du Fail, assez gros gentilhomme terrien, a quelque soixante-cinq ans lorsqu'il donne les Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel. Voilà plus de trente-cinq années qu'il est sagement fixé, après une jeunesse peut-être mouvementée, dans la Haute-Bretagne où il est né. Voilà presque le même temps qu'il est marié; le même, encore, qu'il exerce à Rennes des fonctions de conseiller (d'abord au Présidial, puis au Parlement): en cette année 1585, il est sur le point de prendre sa retraite. Les Contes et Discours d'Eutrapel sont l'œuvre d'un homme qu