Peristandre, ou l’illustre captif. Seconde Partie

Second of 2 vols. in 8vo. pp. [ii], f. [1] (plates), pp. 476, [1], [3] (blank). Contemporary calf gilt. Gilt spine on 5 bars. Pages ruled in red. Headpieces, engraved initials. Engraved half-title pages. Volume 2 has half-title only and contains two engraved plates, of Vicomte Le Veneur and of Léon Duchesne de la Sicotière.

First edition of Louis Moreau du Bail’s plagiary of Martin Fumée’s Du vray et parfaict amour (see Bib# 5547630/Fr# 229.1 in this collection). ‘Du vray et parfaict amour’ is now studied as an early novel, ‘un géniale fabrication romanesque [...] dans le genre du roman sentimentale’, adapted (so Fumée claimed, incredibly) from a manuscript of the second-century Greek church father Athenagoras, given him by Guillaume Philandrier (1505-1563), the friend of Rabelais. Moreau Du Bail has changed the names of the four principal characters, from Theogenes and Charide, and Pherecides and Mélangénie to Peristandre and Feliciance, and Filidias and Claristee. The attribution to Moreau Du Bail rests on the dedication, which bears his name on some copies. Du Bail’s plagiarism was exposed in P. D. Huet, Lettre-traité sur les origines des romans (1669; Paris, 1971 ed., p. 81). .

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