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This thesis examines literary images of masculinity and femininity, their function and depiction in marriage roles and homo-social relationships in the context of crisis: wifely adultery. The study is heavily reliant upon vernacular texts, especially Old French works from the twelfth and thirteenth century including works from the genres of romance, lais, fables, and fabliaux. Latin works including historia and prescriptive texts such as customaries, penitentials, etiquette texts and medical and canon law treatises are also used to contextualise themes in the Old French literature. The introduction summarises modern literary and historical criticism concerning sexuality in the Middle Ages. It then discusses the influences of the Church, philosophy, medicine, natural theory and society on medieval definitions of sexuality to contextualise the literature which is focal to this thesis. The following four chapters each consider a single character in the adulterous affair: the adulteress, the husband, the lover and the accuser. The literary images of each character are analysed in detail revealing the diversity of depictions between and also within genres. This enables the identification of medieval sexual constructs, challenging some previous critiques of representations of sexuality in the Middle Ages. The final chapter explores the language by which the sexual act is presented. Furthermore, it shows how language is used and occasionally abused in committing, prosecuting and evading punishment for adultery and how it can be wielded as a weapon of women. Through the focus of a body of literature rich in depictions of sexuality, this thesis questions the misogynist overtones often attributed to medieval literature. The diversity of images shows that the literature illustrates a wide range of opinions and ideas reflective of the complexity of sexuality in medieval society.

This thesis aims at defining the argumentative terms and strategies of the rhetoric of praise in printed collected eulogies of women of the first half of the XVIth Century, both in collections of famous women (which celebrate exceptional feminine figures) and apologies of the female sex (which defend womankind through praise). The inquiry starts with the first French printed translation of Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, entitled De la louenge et vertu des nobles et cleres dames (1493), and ends with the Fort inexpugnable de l'honneur du sexe foeminin (1555) by Francois de Billon, who provides the first historic panorama of the encomiastic tradition. Its specificity lies in the combination of two types of collective eulogy, which up to now have been separately analyzed but which in fact deserve to be taken up in a single interpretative gesture. Our approach, that of rhetoric, is founded in composition manuals and treatises on ancient eloquence, as well as recent theory on argumentation. Unlike other studies which take the rhetorical approach, this thesis deals with a relatively short time span, about fifty years, which allows a reading of the texts in their historical and literary contexts. Through the vantage points of inventio and dispositio, this thesis shows how a discourse praising women collectively was built, at a time when women formed the crux of contradicting discourses and the centre of a topics that crystallized those tensions. Beyond this uncertain discursive situation, this thesis also claims to bring to light a neglected aspect of eulogy: its function as definition of object praised. It offers, therefore, a reflection on epideictic rhetoric from a perspective of the poetics of literary genre. This is seen as a space that is propitious to the exploration of ethical stakes, such as the valorization of individual feminine figures, the fashioning of the author's persona or the introduction of secondary objectives which bear new values.

This study examines six texts o f the 12[sup th] and 13[sup th] centuries for the fantastic mode. It first refutes the critical assertion that the fantastic could not exist in medieval literature, but also establishes that most of the casually denominated "fantastic" is not. For the genuine fantastic, both in general and in its medieval appearances, questions of reality are at most peripheral. Rather the fantastic mode encodes itself in the narrative structure, creating ambiguity and openness. The structural approach frees the discussion o f the fantastic from theories predicated upon issues of thematics, reality-based analysis, and didactic categorizations o f supernatural objects. The first two chapters synthesize those elements from modern works of fantastic theory, (re)deflning the fantastic based upon a semiotic approach. The introduction concentrates on the need to reexamine the corpus of critical works addressing the fantastic. Chapter 1 summarizes the theoretical discussion in order to adjust the definition of "fantastic" as a critical term according to a more pre-Renaissance view of reality. Chapter 2 proposes the parallel worlds model as a structural model for the identification of the fantastic mode in texts where the supernatural is evident, with an emphasis on fantastic space as an intermediary locale between worlds. The last four chapters apply the parallel worlds model to a selected corpus of six narratives. While the structures of these texts vary in length, the fantastic is consistently manifested in a pattern that alternates between the real world, fantastic space and the otherworld. The open-ended structure of five narratives indicates that journeys to the otherworld are rarely accomplished with a high degree of completion, and therefore the narrative program remains incomplete. The conclusion is a defense of the fantastic within medieval French literature, concentrating on how the supernatural creates /otherness/, fantastic space and openness in the narrative program. The fantastic as a powerful but elusive force within Old French romance narratives often shifts to the merveilleioc in the end. The parallel worlds model, when used in conjunction with other theories for identifying the fantastic, is a structural method that emphasizes openness as a characteristic of the fantastic within medieval romance narratives.

This study examines six texts o f the 12[sup th] and 13[sup th] centuries for the fantastic mode. It first refutes the critical assertion that the fantastic could not exist in medieval literature, but also establishes that most of the casually denominated "fantastic" is not. For the genuine fantastic, both in general and in its medieval appearances, questions of reality are at most peripheral. Rather the fantastic mode encodes itself in the narrative structure, creating ambiguity and openness. The structural approach frees the discussion o f the fantastic from theories predicated upon issues of thematics, reality-based analysis, and didactic categorizations o f supernatural objects. The first two chapters synthesize those elements from modern works of fantastic theory, (re)deflning the fantastic based upon a semiotic approach. The introduction concentrates on the need to reexamine the corpus of critical works addressing the fantastic. Chapter 1 summarizes the theoretical discussion in order to adjust the definition of "fantastic" as a critical term according to a more pre-Renaissance view of reality. Chapter 2 proposes the parallel worlds model as a structural model for the identification of the fantastic mode in texts where the supernatural is evident, with an emphasis on fantastic space as an intermediary locale between worlds. The last four chapters apply the parallel worlds model to a selected corpus of six narratives. While the structures of these texts vary in length, the fantastic is consistently manifested in a pattern that alternates between the real world, fantastic space and the otherworld. The open-ended structure of five narratives indicates that journeys to the otherworld are rarely accomplished with a high degree of completion, and therefore the narrative program remains incomplete. The conclusion is a defense of the fantastic within medieval French literature, concentrating on how the supernatural creates /otherness/, fantastic space and openness in the narrative program. The fantastic as a powerful but elusive force within Old French romance narratives often shifts to the merveilleioc in the end. The parallel worlds model, when used in conjunction with other theories for identifying the fantastic, is a structural method that emphasizes openness as a characteristic of the fantastic within medieval romance narratives. / Arts, Faculty of / French, Hispanic, and Italian Studies, Department of / Graduate

by Wilma Waggoner Mayo / English, French and Old French text / The text of / Typescript / M.A. Florida State College for Women 1932 / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 153-155)

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Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished