Reappraisal of a literary topos: the medieval found manuscript. The case of Marie-Jeanne L'Héritier de Villandon and the Gallaup de Chasteuil brothers

Résumé :

From the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century, over three generations, the Gallaup de Chasteuil family built an important private library that gives keys to understand the reception of medieval texts during the Ancien Régime, in a provincial French literate milieu, in Aix. Those bibliophilic jurists collected an impressive amount of medieval printed books and manuscripts that they read, annotated and recomposed. The scrutiny of this library and the analysis of some books it contained (that had never been identified as such until now) is an extremely valuable tool for the understanding of the reception and the reading of medieval texts. This article sheds light on this library, on the Gallaup de Chasteuil Family and on the specific way that they considered the medieval literary fact.