Female Homosociality and the Marriage Plot: Women and Marriage Negotiation in Cligés and Le Chevalier au Lion

This article considers marriage negotiation as a point from which to examine women’s access to and use of power in the romance narrative. In Cligés, the foregrounding of female friendship provides an alternative to male-centred marriage narratives and frequently serves to highlight the importance of both consent and loving intention in a harmonious marriage. In Le Chevalier au Lion, female homosociality provides an alternative to the exchange of women between men, but the text also exploits the possibility of manipulation between women. In these two texts, the Chrétien corpus shows a sustained engagement with the potential uses and misuses of friendship between women.