Lectures des “Cent Nouvelles nouvelles” à travers quelques images du manuscrit Hunter 252 et de l’édition “princeps” de Vérard

Manuscript Hunter 252 of the Glasgow University Library is the only surviving medieval manuscript of the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. The fact that it contains one hundred miniatures, placed at the beginning of each tale, also increases its special status. Indeed, these images do not just fulfil a decorative purpose, they also influence the way one reads the novellas, and provide an efficient summary of the main episodes of each narrative. When comparing the miniatures with the woodcuts illustrating Antoine Vérard’s editio princeps (1486), we can remark many similarities but also differences in the way each iconographic program visually renders the tales. The two cycles of images show different readings of the compendium. Placed at the head of the tales both in the manuscript and in the printed edition, the images play with the reader’s expectations, thus deceiving and surprising him or her. This paper aims to compare text/image relations in both Hunter 252 and Vérard’s first edition and the way they enable different readings of the novellas.