An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France

The fifteenth century literary debates in France focused on two polemical works: Le Roman de la Rose by thirteenth-century poets Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun and La Belle Dame sans Mercy by fifteenth-century royal secretary and poet Alain Chartier. Launched through a series of letters exchanged in chancery circles, the controversial issues were taken up by a wider breadth of society to include churchmen, lawyers of the Parlement, and members of the royal court. At issue was the proto-feminist challenge to the traditional status and reputation of ladies, especially in matters of love but also in society. Christine de Pizan, in the debate of the Rose, led the way in insisting that an author has a responsibility to offer the reader moral and useful exempla, not misogyny. Yet when Alain Chartier’s Belle Dame questioned the traditional love rhetoric of her lover as duplicitous, her actions were reckoned as injurious to ladies and courtiers alike. The proliferation of proto-feminine poetic responses inspired by the Belle Dame Quarrel sought to reinterpret and rewrite his poem as pro-lady or pro-lover. The rights of a woman in love and her power to accept or deny a lover’s request evolved into broader considerations in the subsequent Querelle des femmes, in which women demanded greater power in relationships, in education, in society, and in politics.