Cantate sur la maladie et la convalescence de Monseigneur Le Dauphin

by Antoine-Joseph-Louis de Degardein de Ville-Maire

[Paris]: François Montalant, [1752 or 1753?]

4 p. | 4to | [A]^2 | 253 x 195 mm

First and only edition of this poem written on the occasion of the Dauphin's battle with smallpox in 1752. The author presumes to speak for all of France. "These people think only of blessing the monarch / Whose paternal love assures their rest" (p. 2). Louis, the Dauphin, was pious, devoted to his wife, and took a genuine interest in the welfare of the poor. All to say, there's good reason to believe the French people would have grieved the possibility of his passing. He did beat the pox, but nonetheless died of tuberculosis before having the chance to ascend the throne. ¶ While our poem may not soon finds its way to any university syllabus, it’s an emblematic example of the once ubiquitous genre of occasional poetry. While modern readers might “characterize these poetic efforts as workman-like and largely devoid of intense personal feeling, it is important not to overlook the important role these poets and their poetry played in early modern society. Few personal or public events of any significance among the more educated or well-to-do classes—births, deaths, marriages, christenings, name days, etc.—passed without being celebrated in verse” (Paas). Based on surviving imprints, Degardein de Ville-Maire appears to have specialized in slight poetic publications like this. And they might even have provided a decent return. "Practically the only literary men to earn money from their writing," Albert Ward wrote of Goethe's Germany, "were the occasional poets; turning out poems to celebrate festive occasions at court, and later in bourgeois circles too, was amongst students quite a common method of financing one's studies." ¶ WorldCat locates a single copy (Bibliothèque nationale de France).

CONDITION: A single bifolium without a cover; old sewing holes suggest it was removed from a larger Sammelband. ¶ Edges dusty and some small stains; old crease across both dimensions.

REFERENCES: John Roger Paas, “Johann Georg Schleder (1597-1685), Journalist, Chronicler, and Broadsheet Author,” Broadsheets: Single-Sheet Publishing in the First Age of Print (Brill, 2017), p. 317 (cited above); Albert Ward, Book Production, Fiction, and the German Reading Public (1974), p. 26 (cited above); Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics (Univ of Mich, 1997), p. 194 (“Demonstrating one’s learning and cleverness, rather than celebrating the occasion in question,” on an occasional poem by Johannes Kepler, “was after all the object of such exercises”)

Item #777