Women readers and the ideology of gender in old French verse romance

the long version

This study focusses on the relationship between Old French verse romances and the women who formed a part of their audience, and challenges the commonly held view that all courtly literature promoted the social welfare of the noblewomen to whom romances were dedicated or addressed. Using reader-response theory, feminist criticism, and recent historical studies, Roberta Krueger provides close readings of a selection of texts, both well-known and less well-known, to show an intriguing variety of portrayals of women: misogynistic, idealizing, and didactic. She suggests that romances not only taught their audiences idealized models of masculine and feminine behavior, but also invited their readers to criticize and to resist gender roles