Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature

Wide-ranging study of gender and the underlying ideologies of Old French and Occitan literature.

Simon Gaunt (Author)

9780521022606, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 November 2005

384 pages
21.7 x 14.1 x 2.7 cm, 0.499 kg

'… a fine study of five genres and one gender: masculinity … Gaunt offers a wealth of penetrating and balanced analyses, well-informed digests of earlier scholarship, unobtrusive plot outlines, and copious quotations with English translations.' The French Review

This wide-ranging study explores the ideological framework of genre in Old French and Occitan literature by charting the relationship between ideology and gender in five key genres: the chansons de geste, courtly romance, the Occitan canso, hagiography, and the fabliaux. Simon Gaunt offers new readings of canonical Old French and medieval Occitan texts such as the Chanson de Roland, Chrétien de Troyes's Chevalier de la charrette, and lyrics by Bernart de Ventadorn, and in addition he considers many less well-known works and less familiar genres such as hagiography and the fabliaux. Drawing on contemporary feminist theory, he examines how masculinity, as well as femininity, is constructed in medieval French and Occitan texts, and shows that gender is a crucial element in the formation of the ideologies that underpin medieval literary genres.

1. Monologic masculinity: the chanson de geste
2. The knight meets his match: romance
3. Troubadours, ladies and language: the canso
4. Saints, sex and community: hagiography
5. Genitals, gender and mobility: the fabliaux.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]