VALENTINIEN Theodose [pseud. de Nicolas DENISOT] Histoire de l’Amant resuscité de la mort d’Amour. Compris en cinq livres.

Gay-Lemonnyer, I, 84 ; see Mac-Carthy, 3387 (Paris, Micard, 1580) ; not in Adams & British Library.

Very rare edition of this “roman singulier, naïf, décent, sentimental et assez intéressant” (Gay-Lemonnyer).

L’histoire de l’Amant resuscité was a highly acclaimed text from its first publication and was reprinted at least seven times until 1626.

“This work, in five books, recounts the unhappy love affairs of a dying Lover (books four and five), embedded in an anonymous narrator’s account to ‘[s]a Marguerite’ of a recent ‘peregrination’ through strange lands and nations (books one, two and three). A vast dissertation on the dangers of passion, the novel, with its unstable generic status, mixes theoretical treatise, genealogical and historical discussion, book summary and translation of Virgil in one vast fricassee. Because of its religious and humanist orientation, L’Amant resuscité de la mort d’amour could be considered an ‘anti-novel’, in other words an antidote to the novel of chivalry then in full vogue” (see Véronique Duché, in: Réforme, Humanisme, Renaissance, 2016, 1-2, p. 207-214).

The title is printed with a decorative woodcut border. All editions of this work – first published in 1555 – are rare. No copy of this 1572 edition is listed by USTC. Top margin a little short, otherwise a fine copy.

Provenance: Right Honorable Charles Viscount Bruce of Ampthill (bookplate).