Authoring the Author: Innovation and Enigma in Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr.146 the Livre de Fauvel

This paper will discuss the issue of authorial naming in Medieval French musica, with particular reference to the early fourteenth-century manuscript Bibliothèque Nationale MS fr.146, the Livre de Fauvel. I will be considering its place in the development of the author figure from the near-anonymity of Chrétien de Troyes in the twelfth century to the development of Machaut's author corpus in the late fourteenth. In a time when secular works were circulated with very little reference to any kind of author figure (in this I include writer, composer, or artist), the targeted recipient was often called upon to decipher the author from his work, often with the use of an enigma such as the anagram. In this way, each reception of each text by a new individual was a site of play, open to negotiation and interpretation, and each work displays its own discursive trail. Here I would like to offer my new interpretation of the authorial naming in the satirical Livre de Fauvel, which may implicate a senior member of the Capetian royal family, Charles de Valois, uncle to the reigning king Philip V.