Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature (review)

Book Reviews Simon Gaunt. Gender and Genre in Medieval French Literature. Cambridge Studies in French, vol. 53. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995. Simon Gaunt draws upon Marxist and feminist theory to establish a solid critical framework (Introduction, 1-21). His triple hypothesis, "that genres in medieval French and Occitan literature inscribe competing ideologies, that the construction of gender is a crucial element in any ideology , and that the distinct ideologies of medieval genres are predicated in part at least upon distinct constructions of gender," is based on twin premises: "every genre is an ideological formation" and "a crucial component of every ideology is its engagement with the sex/gender system of the society in which it is produced" (1). Sex marks biological distinctions between men and women; gender is a historical and social construct that "designates the meaning given these differences in culture" (10). In five chapters Gaunt anatomizes bodies of generically-related texts: the chanson de geste, which idealizes male homosocial bonding (22-70); romance, which both grants women the power to limit male bonding and undercuts that power (71-121); the canso, which silences woman and entraps her in an idealized construct projected by the male troubadour—a status poignantly confirmed by the trobairitz (122-79); hagiography, which "inscribes a particularly complex configuration of communal . . . , institutional . . . and individual positions" (183) and where, through a transcendent femininity, women overcome male domination (180-233); and the fabliau, where both women and men in sexual relationships manipulate perceptions of gender to advance their own interests (234-85). Each analysis is well organized, subtly argued, insightful, richly informed. This important, seminal book will influence scholarship for years to come. Yet I yearn for the book Gaunt might have written. Tantalizingly absent is Marie de France, whose work is germane to the fabliau as well as romance. Moreover, while Gaunt appreciates the implications of generic and inter-generic transformation, he all too unquestioningly embraces a wholly conventional taxonomy. He never adequately examines his terms; he assumes the canso to be autonomous, for example, not recognizing that it is defined in reference to vers, sirventes, tenso, etc. He marginalizes Bemart de Ventadorn's predecessors (122-23) and thus ignores William IX, who most expressly confronts homosocial bonding, courtly idealization, and gender issues that re-emerge in the fabliau. That other book's seeds, scattered in early chapters, begin to grow and bloom in Gaunt's fabliau chapter and Conclusion (286-89); it might have explored in depth how genre and gender relate to the essential "mobility" of vernacular textuality. Gaunt demonstrates competence as a reader of variance when he compares versions of the Roland, to show the effacement of difference between Roland and Oliver (38-44), and provides a context for Amis andAmile (44-52, cf. 286). But he never admits the relevance of mouvance to courtly lyric and the saint's life—genres just as "mobile" as the chanson de geste and the fabliau. In chap. 5 Gaunt sensitively reads the variance of two fabliaux (275-85): in Berengier conflict between the woman and her husband is based in gender (her dominance of him) rather than class (277-80), in La Damoisele qui ne pooit oÃ-r parler de foutre different versions actualize conflicting gender issues (a woman takes control of her sex life; in a variant she loses control and makes a fool of herself) (280-84). Significantly, Gaunt discovers in fabliau textuality a mobility reflecting the genre's gender constructs: "Since the fabliaux do not endorse the interests of any one class and seem primarily interested in mobility, it is entirely fitting that the texts themselves should be unstable" (280, cf. 286). This is heady stuff. Gaunt's assertions must be tested throughout the fabliau corpus, but they 118 Summer 1998 Book Review are full of promise for more than one genre: they have the potential to clarify the generation of variance across the genres. Rupert T. Pickens University of Kentucky Harriet Stone. The Classical Model: Literature and Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1996. Pp. xviii + 234. $39.95. Harriet Stone's provocative study of the French seventeenth century's literary organization of knowledge brings to...