ABSTRACT
From the earliest writings of Jean Bouchet, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, to his death in the late 1550s, questions of publication loom large. Bouchet himself writes of the outrage he felt when, as a young writer, he saw some of his work printed in Paris, without his consent and falsely attributed.1 Thereafter, he involved himself fairly closely in the publication of both fi rst and revised editions of his copious didactic output, which were generally printed in his home town of Poitiers, although Parisian printers continued to produce unauthorized editions.2 Even this cursory sketch reveals how crucial a role the relationship between literature and publication, text and book, plays in Bouchet’s work. Particularly fascinating is a collection whose versions and editions span almost the whole of the sixteenth century: a small verse anthology, initially entitled L’Amoureux transi sans espoir. Under this title, Anthoine Vérard published an unauthorized collection of poems, which various other printers were to reproduce.3
