Inscribing Poetic Fellowship in the Personal Manuscript of Charles d’Orléans.

The article focuses on the poetic and social dynamics within the personal manuscript (Paris, BnF fr. 25458) of Charles d’Orléans (1394–1465), a Valois duke and poet, highlighting how his lyric poetry and that of his literary circle inscribe poetic fellowship amid introspective and melancholic self-fashioning. It examines key poetic exchanges—such as epistolary complainte poems between Charles and the lesser-known poet Fredet, and a series of rondels debating love and suffering between Charles and his kinsman René d’Anjou—demonstrating how these texts function as dialogic performances that blend personal emotional expression with collaborative virtuosity and courtly sociability. The article further explores a polyphonic cluster of poems centered on the allegorical motif of the “forest de Longue Actente” (“forest of Long Waiting”), showing how this shared metaphor serves as a locus for collective poetic experimentation and the negotiation of individual distress within a literary community. Throughout, Charles’s manuscript is presented as both a workshop and a “poetic diary” that fosters a coterie culture where authors engage in metacommunicative acts, balancing competition and collaboration to produce a living tradition of lyric poetry that simultaneously affirms private subjectivity and public fellowship.