Poet Heroines in Medieval French Narrative

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiv

   PDF

2. Introduction Authors, Writers, Singers, and Women: Gendering Literary Creation in Medieval French Culture

   1. Introduction Authors, Writers, Singers, and Women: Gendering Literary Creation in Medieval French Culture

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 1-25

3. From Minstrel Heroine to Poet Heroine: The Thirteenth Century and Beyond

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

      PDF

   2. Singing From a Woman’s Body: Minstrel Heroines as Performers and Texts

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 29-60

   3. The Parrot and the Swan: Performance and Composition in Sone De Nansay

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 61-79

4. Dangerous Muses: Toute Belle and Her Sisters in the Fourteenth-Century Dit

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 81-81

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   2. Competing Perspectives: Guillaume De Machaut’s Voir Dit

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 83-115

   3. A Contemporary Reaction to the Voir Dit: Deadly Words and Captive Imaginations in Jean Froissart’s Prison Amoureuse

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 117-135

5. Women at the Origins: Fifteenth-Century Prose Romance

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 137-137

      PDF

   2. Verbal Prowess: Women’s Artistry and Men’s Chivalry In Perceforest

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 139-165

   3. Women Writers and the Monstrous Author in Ysaÿe Le Triste

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 167-191

   4. Conclusion: What About Christine?

      • Brooke Heidenreich Findley

      Pages 193-201

6. Back Matter

   Pages 203-267

   PDF

Examining French literature from the medieval period, Findley revises our understanding of medieval literary composition as a largely masculine activity, suggesting instead that writing is seen in these texts as problematically gendered and often feminizing.

• Dit
• fiction
• Medieval Literature
• nation
• poet

"Findley's study not only does exactly what she claims it will, but, via its combination of close readings and feminist theory, it also produces important new insights into medieval narrative, its depictions of gender, and its conception of literary creation In short, this is a volume that deserves to be widely read by medieval literary scholars, and feminist scholars of French literature more broadly as it offers much not only to scholars of the medieval French texts it studies, but also to those concerned with the intersection of women and medieval literary production more broadly. Indeed it can likely be read with much profit by scholars concerned with issues of female literary creation in other periods, for it offers innovative, insightful analysis that has application and implications well beyond the corpus of texts it studies." - The Medieval Review

Brooke Heidenreich Findley is Assistant Professor of French and Women's Studies at Penn State Altoona, USA.

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