Abstract
In the medieval French epics Raoul de Cambrai, Garin le Loherenc, and Gerbert de Mez, the poets sketch noble women and queens who belittle, berate, and render impotent the ruler and his men. These chansons de geste exploit and invert the topos of woman's legendary rebellious nature, voicing through subversive epic ladies an idealized feudal order predicated on loyal service and just reward. If, in the metafiction of an ideal epic world, land and lady are two sides of the gift the ideal king bestows on the ideal knight, in these works the king's brutal attempts to dominate his men waste both lady and land. Portraying the practices of scorched earth and systematic rape as political tools of royal expansion, these epics deliver powerful images of women exercising a righteous resistance through subversive acts, words, and desires. Like Eve, these epic ladies resist patriarchal dominance corporally through their desires and their mouths, and so, women's resistant tongues and desires work to restore order in political landscapes wasted by their kings' empty words and impotence.
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