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This study focuses on the relationship between Old French verse romances and the women who formed a part of their audience, and challenges the commonly-held view that all courtly literature promoted the social welfare of the noblewomen to whom romances were dedicated or addressed. Using reader-response theory, feminist criticism and recent historical studies, Roberta Krueger provides close readings of a selection of texts, both well-known and less well-known, to show an intriguing variety of portrayals of women: misogynistic, idealizing and didactic. She suggests that romances not only taught their audiences idealized models of masculine and feminine behaviour (including a sophisticated underpinning of medieval women's loss of autonomy in the family, education and society during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries), but that many romances also invited their readers to criticise and to resist gender roles.

Poetry --- Old French literature --- Rôle selon le sexe dans la littérature --- Seksuele rolpatronen in de literatuur --- Sex role in literature --- 82:396 --- 840-1 "-/14" --- French poetry --- -Women --- -Women and literature --- -Romances --- -Sex role in literature --- Women --- -Human females --- Wimmin --- Woman --- Womon --- Womyn --- Females --- Human beings --- Femininity --- Chivalric romances --- Chivalry --- Courtly romances --- French romances --- Medieval romances --- Romances, French --- Romans courtois --- French literature --- Literature, Medieval --- Literature --- Literatuur en feminisme --- Franse literatuur: poëzie--?"-/14" --- History and criticism --- History --- -History --- Books and reading --- Romances --- Sex role in literature. --- Women and literature --- History and criticism. --- -Literatuur en feminisme --- 840-1 "-/14" Franse literatuur: poëzie--?"-/14" --- 82:396 Literatuur en feminisme --- -82:396 Literatuur en feminisme --- Human females --- To 1500 --- France --- Middle Ages, 500-1500 --- Women - France - History - Middle Ages, 500-1500. --- Women - France - Books and reading - History. --- Women and literature - France - History. --- Ecrivains et lecteurs --- Roman courtois français --- Poésie française --- Rôle selon le sexe --- Femmes --- Femmes et littérature --- Roman courtois --- Sexualité --- Dans la littérature --- Thèmes, motifs --- Avant 1500 --- Histoire et critique --- Livres et lecture --- Moyen-Age

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This new Companion provides a broad and perceptive overview of the most important vernacular literary genre of the Middle Ages. Freshly commissioned, original chapters from seventeen leading scholars introduce students and general readers to the form's poetics, narrative voice and manuscript contexts, as well as its relationship to the Mediterranean world, race, gender and the emotions, among many other topics. Providing fresh perspectives on the first pan-European literary movement, essays range across a broad geographical area, including England, France, Italy, Germany and the Iberian Peninsula, as well as a varied linguistic spectrum, including Arabic, Hebrew and Yiddish. Exploring the celebration of chivalric ideals and courtly refinements, the volume excavates the tensions and traumas lying beneath decorous surface appearances. An introduction, bibliography of texts and translations as well as chapter-by-chapter reading lists complete this essential guide.

Literature, Medieval --- Romances --- History and criticism.

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Thematology --- French literature --- Performance art --- Littérature française --- Art de performance --- History and criticism. --- Histoire et critique --- Performance in literature

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This collection of essays pays tribute to Nancy Freeman Regalado, a ground-breaking scholar in the field of medieval French literature whose research has always pushed beyond disciplinary boundaries. The articles in the volume reflect the depth and diversity of her scholarship, as well as her collaborations with literary critics, philologists, historians, art historians, musicologists, and vocalists - in France, England, and the United States. Inspired by her most recent work, these twenty-four essays are tied together by a single question, rich in ramifications: how does performance shape our understanding of medieval and pre-modern literature and culture, whether the nature of that performance is visual, linguistic, theatrical, musical, religious, didactic, socio-political, or editorial? The studies presented here invite us to look afresh at the interrelationship of audience, author, text, and artifact, to imagine new ways of conceptualizing the creation, transmission, and reception of medieval literature, music, and art.

EGLAL DOSS-QUINBY is Professor of French at Smith College; ROBERTA L. KRUEGER is Professor of French at Hamilton College; E. JANE BURNS is Professor of Women's Studies and Adjunct Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Contributors: ANNE AZÉMA, RENATE BLUMENFELD-KOSINSKI, CYNTHIA J. BROWN, ELIZABETH A. R. BROWN, MATILDA TOMARYN BRUCKNER, E. JANE BURNS, ARDIS BUTTERFIELD, KIMBERLEE CAMPBELL, ROBERT L. A. CLARK, MARK CRUSE, KATHRYN A. DUYS, ELIZABETH EMERY, SYLVIA HUOT, MARILYN LAWRENCE, KATHLEEN A. LOYSEN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, EDWARD H. ROESNER, SAMUEL N. ROSENBERG, LUCY FREEMAN SANDLER, PAMELA SHEINGORN, HELEN SOLTERER, JANE H. M. TAYLOR, EVELYN BIRGE VITZ, LORI J. WALTERS, AND MICHEL ZINK.

French literature --- Performance in literature. --- History and criticism. --- French literature - To 1500 - History and criticism --- Performance in literature --- Performance art --- Littérature française --- Art de performance --- Histoire et critique