Clandestine Marriage and Amadis de Gaule: The Text, the World, and the Reader

Abstract

This is a case study of the change in reception of Amadis de Gaule, admired 1540-55, and condemned as a source of moral corruption in the last third of the century. One cause of this was a change in the status of clandestine marriage in France. From the late 1550s, both canon and civil law declared specific sanctions against marriages performed without clergy or the knowledge of the couple's parents. The disappearance of the earlier practice of truly private, secret marriages left readers unable to recognize that couples having exchanged such vows were, by that means alone, legitimately and indissolubly married. Readers then interpreted the actions of such couples (frequent in Amadis) as immoral and scandalous. This change, instructive in itself, is perhaps more important still as a model of the degree to which the world is inscribed in literary tests, and to which the act of reading completes a text.