How medieval poems sparked discussions on women's agency, love, marriage, and honor that prefigured modern feminism
This
volume immerses readers in a debate tradition that flourished in France
during the late Middle Ages, focusing on two works that were both
popular and controversial in their time: Le Roman de la Rose by thirteenth-century poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and La Belle Dame sans Mercy
by fifteenth-century royal secretary and poet Alain Chartier. This is
the first comparative volume on these important works and the
discussions they sparked.
Engaging with questions of
women's agency, love, marriage, and honor, these two poems prompted
responses that circulated via treatises, letters, and sermons among
officials, clerics, and poets. Joan McRae provides commentary on the two
texts, a timeline and summary of the resulting debates, and
biographical sketches of the leading intellectuals who matched wits over
different ways of reading the texts, including pioneering writer
Christine de Pizan. McRae shows that these works and the debates, read
together, consider a range of social issues that raise questions of
gender, the place of power and hierarchy in societal relationships, and
the responsibility of writers for the effect of their works on readers.
An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France is
a helpful overview of these weighty arguments for both students and
scholars. McRae provides a compact, comprehensive, and up-to-date study,
spotlighting influential literary expressions that evolved into the
"querelle des femmes," the "woman question," which in turn paved the way
for modern feminism.
A
volume in the series New Perspectives on Medieval Literature: Authors
and Traditions, edited by R. Barton Palmer and Tison Pugh