An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France

How medieval poems sparked discussions on women’s
agency, love, marriage, and honor that prefigured modern feminism

 This
volume immerses readers in a debate tradition that flourished in France during the
late Middle Ages, focusing on two works that were both popular and
controversial in their time: Le Roman de la Rose by thirteenth-century
poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and La Belle Dame sans Mercy by fifteenth-century royal secretary and
poet Alain Chartier. This is the first comparative volume on these important
works and the discussions they sparked.  

Engaging with questions of women’s agency, love,
marriage, and honor, these two poems prompted responses that circulated via treatises,
letters, and sermons among officials, clerics, and poets. Joan McRae provides commentary
on the two texts, a timeline and summary of the resulting debates, and biographical
sketches of the leading intellectuals who matched wits over different ways of
reading the texts, including pioneering writer Christine de Pizan. McRae shows
that these works and the debates, read together, consider a range of social
issues that raise questions of gender, the place of power and hierarchy in societal
relationships, and the responsibility of writers for the effect of their works
on readers.

An Introduction to
Literary Debate in Late Medieval France is a helpful overview of these weighty arguments
for both students and scholars. McRae provides a compact, comprehensive, and
up-to-date study, spotlighting influential literary expressions that evolved
into the “querelle des femmes,” the “woman question,” which in turn paved the
way for modern feminism.



A volume in the series New Perspectives on Medieval
Literature: Authors and Traditions, edited by R. Barton Palmer and Tison Pugh