Lire le moyen français aux débuts de l’imprimerie : quelques réflexions sur le corpus d’une transition complexe

Starting from the observation that the chronological hinge between Middle French and the Renaissance escapes an unambiguous periodization which takes into account criteria as varied as the emergence of humanism and linguistic change, we will concentrate on the study of the first printed materials and on the characteristics of a bibliographic directory which is capable of illuminating this period of transition. We will highlight the question of delimiting a chronologically and linguistically relevant corpus, and the usefulness of relating the bibliographic description of the editio princeps to the perspective of the transmission of the text, from its earlier manuscript tradition to its possible later printed tradition.