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The Good Wife's Guide (Le Ménagier De Paris)
A Medieval Household Book
Gina L. Greco (Translated by), Christine M. Rose (Translated by)
9780801447389
Hardback, published 15 February 2009
384 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.8 cm, 0.907 kg
A cookbook section contains over 350 recipes, and if many of them are taken from authorities such as the royal chef Taillevent, the author is quite opinionated about what works and what doesn't; he improves some recipes and offers others that seem to be his own. No man before or since has known more about running an affluent household, from keeping vermin out of linen to shopping in the market to caring for hunting hawks. The work has a peculiar tone, bossy yet tender, even elegiac. In their introduction the translators emphasize the husband's firm desire to subordinate his wife, but acknowledge that they found the book more appealing than they had originally expected.
In the closing years of the fourteenth century, an anonymous French writer compiled a book addressed to a fifteen-year-old bride, narrated in the voice of her husband, a wealthy, aging Parisian. The book was designed to teach this young wife the moral attributes, duties, and conduct befitting a woman of her station in society, in the almost certain event of her widowhood and subsequent remarriage. The work also provides a rich assembly of practical materials for the wife's use and for her household, including treatises on gardening and shopping, tips on choosing servants, directions on the medical care of horses and the training of hawks, plus menus for elaborate feasts, and more than 380 recipes. The Good Wife's Guide is the first complete modern English translation of this important medieval text also known as Le MÉnagier de Paris (the Parisian household book), a work long recognized for its unique insights into the domestic life of the bourgeoisie during the later Middle Ages. The Good Wife's Guide, expertly rendered into modern English by Gina L. Greco and Christine M. Rose, is accompanied by an informative critical introduction setting the work in its proper medieval context as a conduct manual. This edition presents the book in its entirety, as it must have existed for its earliest readers. The Guide is now a treasure for the classroom, appealing to anyone studying medieval literature or history or considering the complex lives of medieval women. It illuminates the milieu and composition process of medieval authors and will in turn fascinate cooking or horticulture enthusiasts. The work illustrates how a (perhaps fictional) Parisian householder of the late fourteenth century might well have trained his wife so that her behavior could reflect honorably on him and enhance his reputation.
Introduction. Maid to Order: The Good Wife of Paris
The Book: Backgrounds, Narrator, Genre, Sources
Contexts: Conduct Books and Household Books
Glossing the Tale of Griselda: The Model Wife and Marriage in Le Ménagier de Paris
Translation ProtocolsThe Good Wife's Guide: The English Text of Le Ménagier de Paris
Prologue
Introductory Note to Articles 1.1-1.3
Prayers and Orderly Dress (1.1)
Behavior and Attire in Public (1.2)
The Mass, Confession, the Vices and Virtues (1.3)
On Chastity (1.4)
Devotion to Your Husband (1.5)
Obedience (including the Story of Griselda) (1.6)
The Care of the Husband's Person (1.7)
The Husband's Secrets (1.8)
Introductory Note to Article 1.9
Providing Your Husband with Good Counsel (including the Story of Melibee) (1.9)
Introductory Note to Article 2.1
Le Chemin de povreté et de richesse (2.1)
Horticulture (2.2) 2
Choosing and Caring for Servants and Horses (2.3)
Introductory Note to Article 3.2
Hawking Treatise (3.2)
Menus (2.4)
Recipes (2.5)Glossary of Culinary Terms
Bibliography
Index