Les Œuvres poétiques d’Amadis Jamyn
Definitive edition of the Works of Amadis Jamyn preserved in its charming contemporary vellum binding.
12mo of (4) ff., 309 ff., (11) ff. tables, italic type. Full ivory vellum overlapping binding, smooth spine, marbled edges. Contemporary binding.
141 x 82 mm.
Jamyn, Amadis (1538-1593). The Poetic Works of Amadis Jamyn reviewed, corrected, and enlarged in this latest edition. To the King of France and Poland.Paris, Mamert Patisson, Printer to the King, at the residence of Robert Estienne, 1579.
“Definitive edition,” partly original, of the Poetic Works of Amadis Jamyn, published during his lifetime, enlarged with several works compared to the first edition of 1575 and the second of 1577. It would be reprinted in 1582.
“Although I value Jamyn's poetry more than Ronsard's, and although I find the disciple much more natural, less affected, and less bombastic than the master, there is no reason to believe that these poems were sought after with enough eagerness to require three editions in less than eight years” (Abbé Goujet).
“This judgment results from the great esteem the abbot had for Desportes, with whom Jamyn had rivaled, not without success, in imitating the neo-Petrarchan Italian poets, when Madame de Retz and other précieuses presided over the literary jousts illuminating the happy days of the final years of the reign of Charles IX” (J. P. Barbier).
Jamyn, the favored disciple of Ronsard who had him appointed as secretary of the king's chamber, studied classical languages with Dorat and Turnèbe. A learned scholar, he resumed the translation of the Iliad begun by Hugues Salel, and put into verse the last thirteen books of the Homeric poem; then he undertook the translation of the Odyssey, which he abandoned at the third book. This translation demonstrates a certain poetic mastery and shows great rigor in versification. Jamyn’s own works include elegies, sonnets—some grouped under a common title: Artemis, Oriane—and several major poems such as “The Poem of the Hunt.”
This 1579 edition is very rarely found preserved in its first and attractive contemporary vellum binding. Jacques Guérin owned a fine copy of Jamyn’s “Poetic Works” printed in Paris in 1575, also bound in contemporary vellum, sold for €24,500 by Maître Tajan on June 7, 1990, twenty-six years ago (Exceptional Books, no. 28).
