Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Can words do damage? For medieval culture, the answer was unambiguously yes. And as Helen Solterer contends, in French medieval culture the representation of women exemplified the use of injurious language.
Solterer investigates the debates over women between masters and their disciples. Across a broad range of Old French literature to the early modern Querelle des femmes, she shows how the figure of the female respondent became an instrument for disputing the dominant models of representing women. The female respondent exploited the criterion of injurious language that so preoccupied medieval masters, and she charged master poets ethically and legally with libel. Solterer's work thus illuminates an early, decisive chapter in the history of defamation.
Solterer investigates the debates over women between masters and their disciples. Across a broad range of Old French literature to the early modern Querelle des femmes, she shows how the figure of the female respondent became an instrument for disputing the dominant models of representing women. The female respondent exploited the criterion of injurious language that so preoccupied medieval masters, and she charged master poets ethically and legally with libel. Solterer's work thus illuminates an early, decisive chapter in the history of defamation.
Price: $30.95
Pages: 325
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
22 March 1995
Trim Size: 9.21 X 6.14 in
ISBN: 9780520088351
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
Helen Solterer is Associate Professor of French at Duke University.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1 PROFILES IN MASTERY
1 Ovidian and Aristotelian Figures
2 The Trials of Discipleship: Le Roman de la poire and Le Dit de la pan there d' amours
3 The Master at Work: Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour
PART 2 PROLIFERATING RESPONSES
4 Contrary to What Is Said: The Response au Bestiaire d'amour and the Case for a Woman's Response
5 Defamation and the Livre de leesce:The Problem of a Sycophantic Response
6 Christine's Way: The Querelle du Roman de la rose and the Ethics of a Political Response
7 A Libelous Affair: The Querelle de la Belle Dame sans merci and the Prospects for a Legal Response
Coda: Clotilde de Surville and the Latter-Day History of the Woman's Response
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART 1 PROFILES IN MASTERY
1 Ovidian and Aristotelian Figures
2 The Trials of Discipleship: Le Roman de la poire and Le Dit de la pan there d' amours
3 The Master at Work: Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour
PART 2 PROLIFERATING RESPONSES
4 Contrary to What Is Said: The Response au Bestiaire d'amour and the Case for a Woman's Response
5 Defamation and the Livre de leesce:The Problem of a Sycophantic Response
6 Christine's Way: The Querelle du Roman de la rose and the Ethics of a Political Response
7 A Libelous Affair: The Querelle de la Belle Dame sans merci and the Prospects for a Legal Response
Coda: Clotilde de Surville and the Latter-Day History of the Woman's Response
Notes
Bibliography
Index