Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct
Files
Document Type
Book Chapter
Description
Chapter in The Ideology of Conduct.
As many historians have pointed out, the late Middle Ages was an era obsessed with codified and externalized behaviors. For aristocrats, such codes promised to maintain social identities at a time of blurring boundaries between upper and "middle" classes. However, the wealthy bourgeoisie and other upwardly mobile groups subverted the boundaries as they increasingly adopted aristocratic codes to define their new sense of worth and place in medieval society. Although the flourishing of courtesy literature during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was connected to both these impulses, I will be concerned here primarily with conduct books addressed to non-aristocratic women and their influence on the French and English cycle plays.
ISBN
9781315794372
Publication Date
1987
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
City
Abingdon
Disciplines
English Language and Literature
Recommended Citation
Ashley, Kathleen. “Medieval Courtesy Literature and Dramatic Mirrors of Female Conduct,” in The Ideology of Conduct: Studies in Literature and the History of Sexuality Ed. Nancy Armstrong and Leonard Tennenhouse (Methuen, 1987), pp. 25-38.
