Project: To research and write the final phases of a study on the French poet and administrator Eustache Deschamps (ca. 1340-1406). The first volume provides an analysis of Deschamps' poetics within the context of the development of first-person narration in French poetry. Deschamps chose the French vernacular over Latin, appropriating for himself the traditional authority of the Classical auctores while expanding the literary canon of the liberal arts. Deschamps reinvented and redefined vernacular poetry by adding elements from his own life experience. He is the first poet to articulate specific and poetically meaningful links between his administrative duties, his physical and emotional self and his poetic craft.

The second volume of this project examines Deschamps' poetics through the manuscripts and early printed editions which preserve his work. During the period of the Camargo fellowship, a manuscript in Aix-en-Provence provided important information on how codices were compiled in the late Middle Ages. Part of a "manuscript family," this codex contains several eulogistic poems by Deschamps on Bertrand du Guesclin, hero of the Hundred Years' War, along with the latter's prose biography. A succinct grouping, the poems add variety to the codex and complement the prose account, each poem naming mourners of Du Guesclin: French notables, geographic regions, historical figures and even the mythic knights of the Round Table. The association of Deschamps' work with other prominent texts in such manuscripts increases his authorial prestige while establishing new meaning for his work within the larger codicological context This project has significant implications for future scholarship on the figure of the author as well as on the processes involved in late medieval codicology and early printing.