Gender, Writing, and Performance: Men Defending Women in Late Medieval France (1440–1538) by Helen J. Swift

Abstract

1140 Reviews made byWauquelin in recasting the inheritedmaterial. The very brief conclusion to the study of the sources ofWauquelin's Book i simply draws attention to the technique of interlace used to generate a continuous and homogeneous new work from generically and linguistically disparate sources, which also required very different approaches to harmonize them. The study of the sources of Book 11does not have an explicit conclusion, though both the chapters 'D'une source a fautre' and 'Hypotheses sur lesmanuscrits deWauquelin', which look respectively at the processes of rewriting and at themanuscripts available toWauquelin within the library of Duke Philippe le Bon, serve that purpose to some extent. The study in the second part of the volume, 'Un nouveau roman d'Alexandre', might also be considered a conclusion to all thathas gone before. It is,however, an autonomous studywith littlereference to sources of Wauquelin's processes ofwriting, thegeneric affiliations of his work, and the thorny question ofwhether theFaicts et conquestes should be considered a cyclic work or a compilation. Despite one or two dubious assertions, such as those on theplace ofproverbs in epic discourse, or the adaptation to chronicle rather than an epic discourse instanced by Wauquelin's habit of listing the constituent battalions of an army before a battle, this is undoubtedly the most interesting and important study in the volume for those interested in the wider literary questions raised by Wauquelin's work, and by fifteenth-century Burgundian literature in general. The third part of the volume presents, in almost entirely descriptive terms, the miniatures of themanuscripts BnF fr 9432 and Petit Palais, Dutuit 456, the latterbeing Heriche-Pradeau's base manuscript forher edition. It ismost regrettable thatnone of the forty-three illustrations is in colour. University of Edinburgh Philip E. Bennett Gender, Writing, and Performance: Men Defending Women inLate Medieval France (1440-1538). By Helen J.Swift. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2008. xv+285 pp. ?55. ISBN 978-0-19-923223-9. In this studyHelen Swift examines thehistory of the querelle desfemmes as itdeve loped afterChristine de Pizan: from Martin leFranc's Champion des dames (c. 1440) to JeanBouchet's Jugementpoetic de Vhonneurfemenin (1538). Her study aims to rectify two biases in themodern critical reception of thismaterial. One of these she terms the ethical' bias: thatdefences ofwomen authored bymen cannot be sincere, and that the only authentically pro-feminine voice to emerge from latemedieval French literature is that of Christine de Pizan. The other is the aesthetic' bias, according towhich thefifteenth- and early sixteenth-century texts in this tradition are seen as repetitive,monotonous, and even annoying. Swift brings out the 'liter ariness' of the texts, analysing the strong intertextual networks within which they must be read, and the often subtle and complex ways inwhich a given text engages with a tradition leading back at least as far as theRoman de la Rose. And, making use of contemporary theoretical insights about the performativity of gender, she also shows that?whatever the actual biases and agendas of the historical authors may have been?the texts do interrogate and deconstruct essentialist notions of MLR, 104.4, 2009 1141 gender in various ways. In the firstchapter Swift borrows theDerridean concept of 'spectropolitics' in order to coin the term 'spectropoetics': a text is 'haunted' by anterior texts and discourses that, paradoxically, must be foregrounded and kept alive for the very purpose of refuting them and laying them to rest. Swift's analysis of the Champion des dames, including illustrations and marginal annotations in both manuscripts and early printings, brings out this intertextual dynamics, while also shedding light on its shifting reception by fifteenth-and sixteenth-century readers. The second chapter, on debate poems, examines the textual mise en scene of rhetorical performance, aswell as tracing the literaryappropriation of often very technical aspects of legal terminology and procedures. The third and final chapter focuses on the representation ofwomen and the construction of gender in a series of querelle texts.Exemplary women might be portrayed as overcoming their feminine weakness and achieving amasculine ideal; or theymight be seen as surpassing the norms of either sex through a trulyexceptional greatness. Still others achieve great ness through traits, such as courage and chivalric prowess, thatmight...