(fl c1310–20). French reviser and perhaps author and/or composer. He was apparently responsible for the radical reworking (c1317–18) of Gerves du Bus's Roman de Fauvel that survives uniquely in the manuscript F-Pn fr.146. He was almost certainly active in the political and administrative circles surrounding the court of King Philippe V of France and the French princes, the milieu from which that manuscript probably originated. His identity is obscure, perhaps intentionally in view of the biting satire embodied in the interpolated Fauvel. He is unlikely to have been either Raoul Chaillou, successively bailli of the Auvergne (1313–16) and Caux (1317–19), or the Jean Chaillou who became clerc-secretaire of Charles V in 1347. Most likely, though still not certain, is that Chaillou de Pesstain was Geoffrey Engelor, a Breton from Pesscaign (Morbihan) who was a royal notaire (1303–34), and who routinely signed himself ‘Chalop’ at the foot of official acts. He succeeded Pierre de Bourges as notaire of the Paris Parlement in 1314. In this position he doubtless enjoyed close contact with the other notaires of the French royal chancery, including Gerves de Bus and Jean Maillart.
On f.23v of Pn fr.146 appear the words ‘ci s'ensivent les addicions que messire Chaillou de Pesstain ha mises en ce livre, oultre les choses dessus dites qui sont en chant’ (‘here follow the additions that messire Chaillou de Pesstain has put in this book, apart from the musical pieces found above’). It is not clear whether the literary interpolations to the first book of the Roman (ending on f.11) were also Chaillou's work, but those for which he was responsible in the second book following this rubric almost double the length of the ‘original’ text. The 3000 or so lines added to book II substantially enlarge the wedding and tournament scenes, and also incorporate passages from the Roman du Comte d'Anjou completed in 1316 by Jean Maillart. Chaillou also manipulated conventions of ‘authorial presence’ in what constitute a prologue and epilogue to his interpolations in Pn fr.146, and modelled his own relationship with the author of the ‘original’ Fauvel on that created between Jean de Meun and Guillaume de Lorris in the Roman de la Rose. He may possibly have composed some of the 169 musical interpolations in Pn fr.146, but many were drawn from earlier and contemporaneous repertories. The direct testimony of this manuscript discloses only his role as an interpolator or editor working in conjunction with others.
P. Aubry, ed.: Le Roman de Fauvel (Paris 1907).
C.-V. Langlois: La vie en France au moyen âge d'après quelques moralistes du temps (Paris, 1908, 2/1925/R as La vie en France au moyen âge, de la fin du XIIe au milieu du XIVe siecle, ii), 288ff
A. Långfors ed.: Le Roman de Fauvel (Paris, 1914–19), appx, 133–96
C.-V. Langlois: ‘Gefroi des Nés ou de Paris’, Histoire littéraire de la France, xxxv (Paris, 1921), 345
R.-H. Bautier: ‘Le personnel de la chancellerie royale sous les derniers Capetiéns’, Prosopographie et genèse de l'état moderne: Paris 1984, ed. F. Autrand (Paris, 1986), 91–115.
E.H. Roesner, F. Avril and N.F. Regalado, eds.: Le Roman de Fauvel in the Edition of Messire Chaillou de Pesstain (New York, 1990), 3–53
G. Hasenohr and M. Zink, eds.: Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, i: Le Moyen Age (Paris, 2/1992), 236–8
E. Lalou: ‘Le Roman de Fauvel à la chancellerie royale’, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des chartes, clii (1994), 503–9
K. Brownlee: ‘Authorial Self-Representation and Literary Models in the Roman de Fauvel’, Fauvel Studies: Allegory, Chronicle, Music and Image in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, MS français 146, ed. M. Bent and A. Wathey (Oxford, 1998), 73–103
E. Lalou: ‘La chancellerie royale à la fin du règne de Philippe IV le Bel’, ibid., 307–19
ANDREW WATHEY