Les éloges collectifs de femmes, qui regroupent les recueils de femmes illustres et les apologies du sexe féminin, ont souvent été versés au compte de la « Querelle des femmes » vue comme un ensemble discursif stable, partageant et réitérant une topique commune. Cependant, les contextes variés dans lesquels ces textes s’inscrivent suggèrent d’en réexaminer les spécificités et d’en préciser les enjeux ; plus spécifiquement, ils invitent à se pencher sur les publics qui, au cours des siècles...

Guillaume de Machaut (1300-1377) was the master poet of fourteenth-century France. He established models for much of the vernacular poetry written by subsequent generations, and he was instrumental in institutionalizing the lay reader. In particular, his longest and most important work, the Voir dit, calls attention to the coexistence of public and private reading practices through its intensely hybrid form: sixty-three poems and ten songs invite an oral performance, while forty-s...

Sarah Kay is one of the most influential medievalists of the past fifty years, making vital, theoretically informed interventions on material from early medieval chansons de geste, through troubadour lyric, to late medieval philosophy and poetry, in French, Occitan, Latin, and Italian. This volume in her honour is organised around her six major monographs, published between 1990 and 2017. Its essays engage in critical, constructive dialogue with different aspects of Kay's work, and envisag...

Christine de Pizan wrote voluminously, commenting on various aspects of the late-medieval society in which she lived. Considered by many to be the first French woman of letters, Christine and her writing have been difficult to place ever since she began putting her thoughts on the page. Although her work was neglected in the eighteenth and nineteenth century, there has been a eruption of Christine studies in recent decades, making her the perfect subject for a casebook. This volume serves ...