Acceptable Lessons, Radical Truths: Mélusine as Literature for Medieval Youth

Abstract

Although many works enjoyed by medieval youth may have lacked moral complexity, such is not the case with Jean d'Arras Mélusine , a fourteenth-century French romance with a rare mother-heroine. Even as the work reinforces the aristocratic patriarchal values that sustain it, Mélusine 's meta-narrative offers a radical critique of male dominance.