FORTUNATUS Lot n° 49

Histoire des avantures heureuses et malheureuses de Fortunatus, qu'il a euë en son voyage. Rouen, Jean Boulley, 1656. In-12 of (4) ff. 258 pp. misfigured 178, without missing, (3) ff. : soft vellum, smooth spine, title in ink, speckled edges (period binding). Rare Rouen edition of Fortunatus. The pretty vignette on the title, engraved in intaglio, depicts the hero on horseback, going hunting "en haste, ayant peur qu'on ne le fait Chapon". Popular novel narrating the adventures of Fortunatus, a simple soldier who became rich thanks to an enchanted hat that gives him the gift of ubiquity and a magic purse that never runs out. The story recounts his tribulations in Flanders, where he attends a tournament, in London, in Ireland, in a Breton forest where he fights wild beasts, in Constantinople, etc., and ends with the adventures of his two sons Ampedo and Andolosia after his death. There are various translations of the novel of Fortunatus in German, Italian, English, Spanish, etc. It was Charles Vion d'Alibray (ca. 1600-1665), a poet of the "illustrious shepherds" group and close to the libertines, including Saint-Amant, who gave the French adaptation, first published in Rouen in 1626: it is the text of this original edition that is reprinted here. A pleasant copy preserved in contemporary vellum. (Jean Serroy, Roman et réalité. Les Histoires comiques au XVIIe siècle, 1981, pp. 62 et seq. Under the pen of Vion d'Alibray, the story of Fortunatus, passed through the Spanish mould of the picaresque novel, tends to become a comic story. It is this aspect which gives it its importance in our novelistic literature.")