Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance (PDF)
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into UK education collection to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
- This book studies the relationship between Old French verse romance and the women who formed a part of its reading and listening audience. The author challenges the notion that courtly literature promoted the social welfare of the noblewomen to whom romances were dedicated or addressed. She shows how many romances effected a sophisticated mystification of medieval women's loss of autonomy in the family and society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. At the same time, however, Krueger argues that many romances also portrayed the tensions inherent in courtly gender ideology in a way that invited the reader's critique or resistance. Taking as its point of departure the problematic inscription of women as readers within selected individual romances and drawing upon feminist and reader-response theory as well as recent historical studies, Krueger provides close readings of well-known and lesser-known texts from Chretien de Troyes' Yvain to J akemes' Le Roman du Castelain de Couci et de la dame de Faye!. Romances studied include misogynistic or "uncourtly" romances, romances that idealize the heroine, didactic romances, as well as romances that cast the woman reader as an object of desire. A final chapter on Christine de Pizan studies one historical woman's response to romance in the late Middle Ages. The representation of women readers in romance suggests that women's reception of gender ideology was conflicted. If some historical women were complicitous with courtly values, others may have questioned or even resisted traditional gender roles. The intriguing inscription of women as dedicatees, readers, listeners, and spectators catalyzed a critique of courtly ideology and opened a discursive space for the medieval audience's debate about gender issues as it continues to do for readers today.
- Copyright:
- 1994
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- ISBN-13:
- 9780521432672
- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Date of Addition:
- 11/02/18
- Copyrighted By:
- Cambridge University Press
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- Poetry, Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- Debbie Morton
- Proofread By:
- N/A
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.