Whilst French romances of the 12th and 13th centuries enjoy a privileged place in the literary history of France, romances from the later middle ages have been neglected by modern scholars. In particular, although this genre has been seen as providing a forum within which contemporary ideas about masculine and feminine roles were debated, little work has been done on the gender ideology of 14th- and 15th-century texts. This book's aims is to fill this gap in the scholarship by analysing how the views of gender found in earlier romances were reshaped in the texts produced in the moralising inte ... More

Whilst French romances of the 12th and 13th centuries enjoy a privileged place in the literary history of France, romances from the later middle ages have been neglected by modern scholars. In particular, although this genre has been seen as providing a forum within which contemporary ideas about masculine and feminine roles were debated, little work has been done on the gender ideology of 14th- and 15th-century texts. This book's aims is to fill this gap in the scholarship by analysing how the views of gender found in earlier romances were reshaped in the texts produced in the moralising intellectual environment of the later medieval period. In order to explore these topics, the book discusses sixteen historico-realist prose romances written between 1390 and 1480, many of which were commissioned at the court of Burgundy. It addresses key issues in recent studies of gender in medieval culture including the construction of chivalric masculinity, the representation of adolescent desire, and the social and sexual roles of husbands and wives. In addition to offering close readings of these texts, it shows how the romances of the period were informed by ideas about gender which circulated in contemporary works such as manuals of chivalry, moral treatises, and marriage sermons. It aims to question the critical consensus on the role of gender in medieval romance that has arisen from an exclusive focus on earlier works in the genre.