Dr Sophie Marnette

Dr Sophie Marnette

Balliol College

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Women and Medieval French Literature

Description

This course will study women in twelfth and thirteenth-century medieval French literature. It will envisage literature written by medieval women, i.e. women troubadours (poets) and Marie de France, and it will also focus on male-authored texts that form the bulk of medieval literature, looking at the inscription of women as potential readers in these texts, at their role and image as characters within the narratives, at the link between the literary heroines and the position of women in the real medieval society, and more broadly at the way particular medieval literary genres build their own specific gender ideology (i.e. lyric poetry, chansons de geste, romances and fabliaux).[1]

Organisation

5 seminars 1h1/2

2 essays (2000-3000 words each) + 1 book review (500 words)

Useful Websites

• Studying medieval French at Oxford,
• Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender,
• Medieval Women: An interactive exploration,
• Internet Medieval Sourcebook,
• The Labyrinth,
• Lexique d'ancien français,
• Ménestrel Un portail pour les médiévistes,
• Netserf,
• ORB,
• Also see Dr Marnette’s ressources on weblearn (undergraduate site, paper 6), powerpoint lecture presentations on Women and Medieval Literature

References

Shortlist:

Bruckner, Matilda. 1995. “The Trobairitz." In F.R.P. Akehurst & Judith Davis (eds). A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley: University of California Press. 201-233.

Burns, E. Jane. 1993. Bodytalk: when women speak in Old French literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Burns, E. Jane. 2001. "Courtly Love: Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 27(1):23-57. (available for downloading on Dr Marnette’s weblearn site)

Burns, Jane & Roberta L. Krueger (eds.). 1985. "Courtly Ideology and Woman's Place in Medieval French Literature." Special issue of Romance-Notes, Chapel Hill, NC. 25:3.

Gaunt, Simon. 1995. Gender and genre in medieval French literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Gaunt, Simon. 2001. Retelling the tale : an introduction to medieval French literature. London : Duckworth. Chapter on Marie de France.

Kay, Sarah. 1995. The "Chansons de Geste’ in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Krueger, Roberta L. 1993. Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krueger, Roberta L. and E. J. Burns. 1985. "A Selective Bibliography of Criticism: Women in Medieval French Literature." Romance Notes. 25.3: 379-85.

Lacy, Norris J. 1985. "Fabliau Women." in Roberta Krueger and E. J. Burns (eds.). "Courtly Ideology and Woman's Place in Medieval French Literature." Special Issue of Romance Notes. 25.3:318-27.

Lejeune, Rita. 1977. "La femme dans les littératures française et occitane du XIe au XIIIe siècles." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. 20:201-17.

Paden, William D. (ed.) 1989. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours. Philadelphia: Univ. of Philadelphia Press.

Pernoud, Régine. 2001. La Femme au temps des Cathédrales.

Other Interesting Things to Read

Blamires, Alcuin. 1997. The Case for Women in Medieval Culture. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Bloch, R. Howard. 1991. Medieval Misogyny and the invention of Western romantic love. Chicago :University of Chicago Press.

Brzezinski Potkay, Monica & Regula Meyer Evitt. Minding the Body: Women and Literature in the Middle Ages, 800-1500 (Twayne's Women and Literature Series).

Campbell, Emma & Robert Mills. 2004. Troubled Vision: Gender, Sexuality, and Sight in Medieval Text and Image (The New Middle Ages).

Carpenter, Jennifer & Sally-Beth MacLean. 1995. Power of the weak: studies on medieval women. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

Cerquiglini, Bernard. 1974. "The Syntax of Discursive Authority: the Example of Feminine Discourse", French Studies, 51:183-98.

Chance, Jane. 2007. The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women (The New Middle Ages).

Dronke, Peter. 1984. Women Writers of the Middle Ages: A Critical Study of Texts from Perpetua to Marguerite Porete. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Erler, Mary & Maryanne Kowaleski. 2003. Gendering the Master Narrative: Women and Power in the Middle Ages

Evergates, Theodore (ed.) Aristocratic Women in Medieval France (Middle Ages Series).

Farmer, Sharon & Carol Braun Pasternack. 2003. Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. (Medieval Cultures, No. 32).

Fenster, Thelma & Clare A. Lees. 2002. Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance (The New Middle Ages).

Ferrante, Joan M. 1975. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ferrante, Joan M. 1984. "Male Fantasy and Female Reality in Courtly Literature." Women's Studies. 11:67-97.

Ferrante, Joan M. 1988. "Public Postures and Private Maneuvers: Roles Medieval Women Play." in Mary Erler & Maryanne Kowaleski (eds.). Women and Power in the Middle Ages. Athens, Ga.: University of Georgia Press. pp 213-29.

Ferrante, Joan M. 1997. To the glory of her sex: women's roles in the composition of medieval texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Fiero, Gloria. Pfeffer, Wendy & Mathe Allain (eds. & tr.). 1989. Three Medieval Views of Women. New Haven : Yale UP.

Gold, Penny Schine. 1985. The Lady and the Virgin: Image, Attitude, and Experience in Twelfth-Century France. University of Chicago Press.

Gradval, Kathryn. 1991. Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Griffiths, Fiona J. 2006. The Garden of Delights: Reform and Renaissance for Women in the Twelfth Century. (The Middle Ages Series).

Krueger, Roberta L. 2000. "Female voices in convents, courts and households: the French Middle Ages." in Sonya Stephens (ed.) A History of Women's Writing in France. Cambridge University Press. p. 10-40.

Larrington, Carolyn. 1995. Women and Writing in Medieval Europe. London/New York: Routledge.

Lejeune, Rita. 1977. "La femme dans les littératures française et occitane du XIe au XIIIe siècles." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. 20:201-17.

Leupin, Alexandre. 1989. Barbarolexis: Medieval Writing and Sexuality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Marchello-Nizia, Christiane. 1981. "Amour courtois, société masculine, et figures du pouvoir." Annales. ESC 36, 969-82.

Mirrer, Louise. 1999. "Women's Representation in Male-Authored Works of the Middle Ages", in Linda F. Mitchell (ed.), Women in Medieval Western European Culture. New York. Garland. pp. 315-330.

Olson, Linda & Kathryn Kerby-Fulton. 2005. Voices In Dialogue: Reading Women In The Middle Ages.

Partner, Nancy F. 1993. Studying Medieval Women Sex Gender Feminism.

Schaus, Margaret (ed.). Women and Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia. Routledge Encyclopedias of the Middle Ages.

Szkilnik, Michelle. 1998. "The Grammar of the Sexes in Medieval French Romance." In Karen J. Taylor (ed.) 1998. Gender Transgressions: Crossing the Normative Boundary in Old French Literature. Garland, New York, NY.

Smith, Susan L. 1995. The power of women: a topos in medieval art and literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Taylor, Karen J. (ed.) 1998. Gender Transgressions: Crossing the Normative Boundary in Old French Literature. Garland, New York, NY.

Thibaut, Françoise. 1998. La femme au moyen âge.

Wheeler, Bonnie. 1995. Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Feminea Medievalia)

Wilson, Katharina M. & Nadia Margolis (eds.). Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia.

Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn (ed.). Voicing Medieval Women: An Anthology of Texts By, About, and For Women in the Middle Ages.

Wolfzettel, Friedrich (ed.) 1995. Arthurian Romance and Gender/Masculin/Féminin dans le roman arthurien médiéval. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Zaddy, Z. P. 1980. "Chrétien Misogyne." Marche Romane. 30: 301-07.

Thematic Bibliography

Women and Lyric Poetry

Courtly love

Allen, Peter L. 1992. The art of love : amatory fiction from Ovid to the Romance of the rose. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.

Burns, E. Jane. 2002. Courtly love undressed : reading through clothes in medieval French culture. Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press.

Burns, Jane E. "Courtly Love: Who Needs It? Recent Feminist Work in the Medieval French Tradition". Signs. 27. 1. p 23-57.

Duby, Georges. 1988. Mâle moyen âge: de l'amour et autres essais. Paris: Flammarion.

Frappier, Jean. 1973. Amour courtois et table ronde. Geneva: Droz.

Hult, David F. 1995. "Courtly Love". in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia. London: Garland. p 267-9.

Hult, David F. 1996. "Gaston Paris and the Invention of Courtly Love". In R. Howard Bloch and Stephen G. Nichols (eds.) Medievalism and the Modernist Temper. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press.

Kay, Sarah. 2000. "Courts, Clerks, and Courtly Love". In Roberta Krueger (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.

Lazar, Moshé. 1964. Amour courtois et fin'amors dans la littérature du XIIe siècle. Paris : Librairie C. Klincksieck.

Lewis, C. S. 1936. The Allegory of Love. Oxford: Clarendon.

Moi, Toril. 1986. "Desire in Language: Andreas Capellanus and the Controversy of Courtly Love". In David Aers (ed.) Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology and History. Brighton: Harvester.

Newman, Francis X (ed). 1968. The Meaning of Courtly Love. Albany: State University of New York Press. See especially article by D. W. Robertson.

Paris, Gaston. 1881 & 1883. "Etudes sur les romans de la table ronde: Lancelot du Lac". Romania 10 & 12, p 465-96 & p 459-534.

Lyric Poetry

Akehurst, F.R.P. and Judith M. Davis. 1995. A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley ; London : University of California Press. See chapter 3 Fin' Amor

Baumgartner, Emmanuèle & Françoise Ferrand. 1983. Poèmes d'amour des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris : Union Générale d'Éditions, 1983.

Bec, Pierre. 1977-1978. La lyrique française au Moyen Age, XIIe-XIIIe siècles : contribution à une typologie des genres poétiques médiévaux : études et textes. Paris : A. & J. Picard.

Bloch,R. Howard. 1991. "The Love lyric and the paradox of perfection", in Medieval misogyny and the invention of Western romantic love, Chicago ; London : University of Chicago Press. p 143-64.

Cholakian, Rouben C. The Troubadour Lyric: a Psychocritical Reading. Manchester : Manchester University Press.

Cluzel, I.M. & L. Pressouyre. 1962. Les origines de la poésie lyrique d'oïl et les premiers trouvères : textes. Paris : A.G. Nizet.

Dragonetti,Roger. 1979. La technique poetique des trouvères dans la chanson courtoise : Contribution à l'étude de la rhétorique médiévale. Genève : Slatkine Reprints.

Frappier,Jean. 1954. La poésie lyrique en France aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Paris : Centre de documentation universitaire.

Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay (eds). 1999. The Troubadours : an Introduction. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999. See chapters 1 and 2.

Gaunt, Simon. 1995. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Cambridge : CUP. See chapter 3: Troubadours, Ladies and Language: The Canso.

Huchet, Jean-Charles.1987. L'amour discourtois : la "fin'amors" chez les premiers troubadours . Toulouse: Privat.

Kay, Sarah. 1990. Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry. Cambridge : CUP. See chapter 3: Gender and Status.

Kölher, Eric. 1964. "Observations historiques et sociologiques sur la poésie des troubadours". Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale. 7. p 27-51.

Monin,Emmanuel-Yves. Le grand chant d'amour : des Troubadours, Trouvères, et autres fidèles. Paris, 1999.

Nelli,René. Troubadours et trouvères. Paris : Hachette, 1979.

Rosenberg, S. N. & H. Tischler. 1995. Chansons des trouvères, chanter m'estuet. Paris : Livre de Poche, collection Lettres gothiques.

Wilkins, Nigel 1989. The lyric art of medieval France. Fulbourn : New Press

Zink, Michel. 1995. Medieval French literature : an introduction. Binghamton, N.Y : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies.

Zumthor, Paul. 1963. Langue et techniques poétiques a l'époque romane (XIe- XIIIe siècles). Paris : L. C. Klincksieck.

Zumthor, Paul. 1984. La poésie et la voix dans la civilisation médiévale. Paris : Presses universitaires de France.

Zumthor, Paul. 2000. Essai de poétique médiévale. Paris : Éditions du Seuil, 2000.

Zumthor, Paul. La lettre et la voix : de la "littérature" médiévale. Paris : Éditions du Seuil, 1987.

Trobairitz

Akehurst, F.R.P. and Judith M. Davis. 1995. A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley ; London : University of California Press. See chapter 8 The trobairitz.

Anderson, Patricia. 1987. "Na Carenza al bel cors avinen: A Test Case for Recovering the Fictive Element in the Poetry of the Women Troubadours." Tenso 7(2):55-64.

Bec, Pierre. 1979. "Trobairitz et chansons de femme. Contribution à la connaissance du lyrisme féminin au moyen âge". Cahiers de civilisation médiévale 22:235-62.

Bogin, Meg. 1976. The Women troubadours. New York: Norton. [very dated edition]

Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. Shepard, Laurie & Sarah White. 1995. Songs of the Women Troubadours. London: Garland. [Edition + English translation]

Bruckner, Matilda. 1985. "Na Castelloza, Trobairitz, and Troubadour Lyric". Romance Notes. 25. 3:239-253.

Bruckner, Matilda. 1992. "Fictions of the Female Voice: The Women Troubadours". Speculum. 67:865-891.

Bruckner, Matilda. 1994. "Debatable Fictions: The Tensos of the Trobairitz". In Donald Maddox & Sarah Sturm-Maddox (eds.). Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture. D. S. Brewer. 19-28.

Bruckner, Matilda. 1995. “The Trobairitz”. In F.R.P. Akehurst & Judith Davis (eds). A Handbook of the Troubadours. Berkeley: University of California Press. 201-233.

Burns, Jane E. 1985. "The Man behind the Lady in Troubadour Lyric". Romance Notes. 25. 3: 254-270.

Dronke, Peter. 1984. “The Provençal Trobairitz Castelloza”. In Katharina Wilson (ed). Medieval Women Writers. Athens: University of georgia Press. 131-152.

Earnshaw, Doris. 1988. The female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric. New York: Peter Lang.

Ferrante, Joan. 1989. "Notes Toward the Study of a Female Rhetoric in the Trobairitz". In Paden 1989a: 63-72.

Gaunt, Simon and Sarah Kay (eds). 1999. The Troubadours : an Introduction. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1999. See chapters on trobairitz.

Gaunt, Simon. 1988. "Sexual Difference and the Metaphor of Language in a Troubadour Poem". Modern Language Review 83. 297-313.

Gaunt, Simon. 1995. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Cambridge : CUP. See chapter 3, p. 158-79.

Huchet, Jean Charles. 1983. "Les femmes troubadours ou la voix critique". Littérature 51:59-90.

Jeanroy, Alfred. 1934. La Poésie lyrique des troubadours. Paris: Privat.

Kay, Sarah. 1989. “Derivation, derived Rhyme, and the Trobairitz”. In Paden 1989a:157-173.

Kay, Sarah. 1990. Subjectivity in Troubadour Poetry. Cambridge : CUP. See chapter 3: Gender and Status.

Marnette, Sophie. 1997. "L'expression féminine dans la littérature médiévale occitane". Romance Philology. 51:2. 170-193.

Paden, William D., 1989b. "Introduction". In Paden 1989a:1-30.

Paden, William D., 1992. "Some Recent Studies of Women in the Middle Ages, Especially in Southern France". Tenso 7(2):93-124.

Paden, William D., ed. 1989a. The Voice of the Trobairitz: Perspectives on the Women Troubadours. Philadelphia: Univ. of Philadelphia Press.

Rosenberg, S. N. & H. Tischler. 1995. Chansons des trouvères, chanter m'estuet. Paris : Livre de Poche, collection Lettres gothiques. [ See chansons de femmes]

Shapiro, Marianne. 1978. "The Provençal Trobairitz and the Limits of Courtly Love". Signs, 3(3). p. 560-571.

Zufferey, François. 1989. "Toward a Delimitation of the Trobairitz Corpus". In Paden 1989b:31-43.

website with songs :

Women and Chansons de geste

Campbell, Kimberlee Ann. 1993. "Fighting back: a survey of patterns of female aggressiveness in the Old French chansons de geste." in Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (eds.) Charlemagne in the north : proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Société Rencesvals, Edinburgh 4-11 August 1991. London : Grant & Cutler. p. 241-51.

Duggan, Joseph J. 1993. "L'épisode d'Aude dans la tradition en rimes de la Chanson de Roland". in Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (eds.) Charlemagne in the north : proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Société Rencesvals, Edinburgh 4-11 August 1991. London : Grant & Cutler. p. 273-9.

Gaunt, Simon. 1995. Gender and genre in medieval French literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kay, Sarah. 1995. The ‘Chansons de Geste’ in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Kay, Sarah. 1993. "La Représentation de la féminité dans les chansons de geste". in Philip E. Bennett, Anne Elizabeth Cobby and Graham A. Runnalls (eds). Charlemagne in the North : proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference of the Société Rencesvals, Edinburgh 4-11 August 1991. Edinburgh : Société Rencesvals, British Branch - London : Grant & Cutler.

Kay, Sarah. 1990. "Investing the Wild: Women's Beliefs in the Chansons de geste". Paragraph. 13:147-63.

Poor, Sara S. & Jana K. Schulman (ed.). 2006. Women and Medieval Epic: Gender, Genre, and the Limits of Epic Masculinity (The New Middle Ages).

Women and Romances

Bossy, Michel André. "The Elaboration of Female Narrative Functions in Erec and Enide." in K. Busby & E. Kooper (eds.) Courtly Lieterature: Culture and Context. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 22-38.

Burns, Jane E. 2005. Courtly Love Undressed Reading Through Clothes in Medieval French Culture. U. Pennsylvania Press

Burns, E. Jane. 1993. Bodytalk: when women speak in Old French literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Chance, Jane. 2007. The Literary Subversions of Medieval Women (The New Middle Ages).

Cooper, Kate Mason. 1985. "Elle and L: Sexualized Textuality in Le Roman de Silence." Romance Notes. 25 (3): 341-59.

Ferrante, Joan M. 1975. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante. New York: Columbia University Press.

Ferrante, Joan M. 1984. "Male Fantasy and Female Reality in Courtly Literature." Women's Studies. 11: 67-97.

Gaunt, Simon. 1995. Gender and genre in medieval French literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See Chapter 2: "The Knight meets his Match: romance." pp. 71-121.

Gradval, Kathryn. 1991. Ravishing Maidens: Writing Rape in Medieval French Literature and Law. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. See Chapter 2: "The Poetics of Rape Law: Chrétien de Troyes' s Arthurian Romance".

Grimbert, Joan Tasker. 2001. "On Fenice's Vain Attempts to Revise a Romantic Archetype and Chrétien's Fabled Hostility to the Tristan Legend. in Krause, K. (ed.). Reassessing the Heroine in Medieval French Literature. U. P. of Florida.

Jonin, Pierre. 1958. Les personnages féminins dans les romans de Tristan au XIIe siècle: Etudes des influences contemporaines. Aix-en-Provence-Gap: Ophrys.

Kay, Sarah. 1995. The ‘Chansons de Geste’ in the Age of Romance: Political Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Krueger, Roberta L. 2000. “Questions of Gender in Old French Romance”. in Roberta L. Krueger (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. p. 132-49.

Krueger, Roberta L. 1993. Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender in Old French Verse Romance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krueger, Roberta L. 1990. "Misogyny, Manipulation, and the Female Reader in Hue de Rotelande's Ipomedon. in K. Busby & E. Kooper (eds.) Courtly Lieterature: Culture and Context. Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 394-409.

Krueger, Roberta L. 1985. "Love, Honor, and the exchange of Women in Yvain: Some Remarks on the Female Reader". Romance Notes. 25 (3): 302-17.

Lefay-Toury, Marie-Noelle. 1972. "Roman breton et mythes courtois: l'évolution du personnage féminin dans les romans de Chrétien de Troyes." Cahiers de civilisation médiévale. 15:193-204 & 283-93.

Payen, Jean-Charles. 1968. "Figures féminines dans le roman médiéval français." in M. de Gandrillac & E. Jeauneau (eds.). Entretiens sur la renaissance du 12ème siècle. Paris: Mouton. pp 407-36.

Payen, Jean-Charles. 1969. "La destruction des mythes courtois dans le roman arthurien : la femme dans le roman en vers après Chrétien de Troyes". Revue des langues romanes. 78: 213-28.

Perret, Michèle. 1985. "Travesties et transsexuelles: Yde, Silence, Grisandole, Blanchandine." Romance Notes. 25 (3): 328-39.

Wolfzettel, Friedrich (ed.) 1995. Arthurian Romance and Gender/Masculin/Féminin dans le roman arthurien médiéval. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Zaddy, Z. P. 1980. "Chrétien Misogyne." Marche Romane. 30: 301-07.

interesting website:

Marie de France

Editions

Lais de Marie de France. Edited by K. Warnke (Collection Lettres Gothiques)

You can also use editions by Ewert or Micha or Rychner or Walter.

General

Baum, Richard. Recherches sur les oeuvres attribuées à Marie de France. C. Winter. Heidelberg. 1968.