Champ Fleury (French Edition)

Ostensibly a formal treatise on letters and letterforms, Geofroy Tory’s Champ Fleury is a marvelously personal work that reveals much about the experiences, perceptions, and attitudes of the prototypical Renaissance man. Taken literally, champ fleury means "flowery fields"; written as a single word, it is an old French idiom for "paradise." Tory clearly chose the title to connote the variety of ideas rooted in his everyday experience as a scholar, editor, scribe, illuminator, and bookseller. Tory’s analysis of letters, for instance, was not limited to their construction and visual presentation, but also included larger issues of language and literature. This Octavo Edition includes a commentary, bibliographical notes, and complete images of the original 1529 work and of the 1927 translation designed by Bruce Rogers. Commentary by Kay Amert.