By Joan E. McRae, author of An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France: From “Le Roman de la Rose” to “La Belle Dame sans Mercy.”
This book is available at a discount price through July 31, 2024. Order here and use code ICMS24 at checkout.
Joyeux Anniversaire! 2024 is an exciting year – it is the 600th birthday of La Belle Dame sans Mercy, the explosive little love debate penned by Alain Chartier that set France afire in poetic polemic when it introduced its spicy main character, the Belle Dame sans Mercy. You may have heard of her through the likes of say, John Keats, but this lady is no seductress. In fact, she is quite the opposite, refusing to give herself to be governed by another. She, along with the woman writer who inspired her, Christine de Pizan, launched the feminist movement in the first quarter of the fifteenth century. That’s right, I am claiming that two medieval women, one real and one fictitious, through the process of debate, launched the querelle des femmes (the woman question) and the subsequent feminist movement of our modern world.
Christine de Pizan is not a new name in the women’s movement, not since feminist artist Judy Chicago gave her a seat at The Dinner Party1 (1974-79). Then and now, Chicago credits Christine de Pizan with starting the feminist movement. She reiterated the claim in 2022 in an interview posted on YouTube, “Revisiting The Dinner Party: Why It’s Important Now.” She says, “When people say feminism started in the nineteenth century, it’s historically inaccurate. Feminism actually started with the publication of Christine’s book, The Book of the City of Ladies, which was peopled by 500 great women in history, most of whom we had to re-research for The Dinner Party because they had been erased.” Chicago points out why her artistic installment venerating women in history is still relevant today, perhaps even more so, given the current efforts that are challenging women’s rights, equality, and healthcare. The cycle of repression, reawakening, and rejection of women is ever revolving.
In my book, An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France, I show how Christine de Pizan, poet at the French royal court, is followed up by the Belle Dame sans Mercy, a fictional character inspired by Christine’s poetry. Both the real and the fictional lady used the process of debate to speak for and support women. Leveraging literature, even poetry, to persuade was not a new technique to influence society and it can be particularly effective depending on the targeted audience. Preceding the debate over The Romance of the Rose, Christine pondered the unequal position of women trapped and targeted in a man’s world in The God of Love’s Letter (1399). Why were women slandered so viciously in literature? Why were they depicted as lying, manipulative, sexually voracious daughters of Eve? This was not a mirror in which Christine could recognize herself or other women she knew. It was wrong, but how could women challenge such a representation? Her narrator points to those misogynist literary texts in which the attacker met no defense: “Those who plead their cause in the absence of an opponent can invent to their heart’s content…” (The God of Love’s Letter). Presenting just one side of an argument is nothing less than propaganda, as we know well from today’s social media algorithms. Likewise, taking advantage of a group without power, without voice, as women were in the fifteenth century, promotes a dangerous inequality. Christine determined to level the playing field by presenting herself as an opponent to the misogynists, launching a debate over a popular literary work (The Romance of the Rose) that she found reprehensible for its reckless lies about women and love crafted in virtuoso verse. Her opponents were learned men of the court and church, men superior to her in status and in age. How daring! Moreover, she won the Queen and the court’s support for her position, and then publicized the debate so that society could read and judge for themselves.
Christine leaned into the culture wars of her day, especially the relationship of women and men in courtship and in marriage. She saw that men could school themselves in the art of seduction by reading The Romance of the Rose as an “art of love.” How should women respond? Alain Chartier’s fictional lady, the Belle Dame sans Mercy, embodied Christine’s response. In a pithy love debate, the Belle Dame adroitly sidestepped, with reason and wit, all of the attempts made by her lover to seduce her into giving away her “mercy.” For example, the lover claims it is the lady’s fault that he fell in love because she cast her gaze on him; “well,” retorts the Belle Dame, “eyes were made for looking.” The lover cries that he will die if she does not give him her love; “Such a sweet sickness kills no one,” she dryly quips, “but it serves you well to say so, to get what you want sooner.” Alain Chartier has created, in essence, through the Belle Dame’s rational reposts, a playbook for women, a way to disrupt the strategies put forth in those misogynist “arts of love” like The Romance of the Rose.
Did it work? Yes and no. On the one hand, the Belle Dame’s words were excerpted in manuscripts created for female readers, repeated in subsequent works by authors such as Margarite de Navarre and Anne de Graville, and integrated into proto-feminist rhetoric by male authors such as Martin Le Franc. On the other hand, the Belle Dame’s words were used against her in literary legal trials brought by real courtiers and fictional prosecuting attorneys. Collectively known as the Quarrel of the Belle Dame sans Mercy, this collection of poems includes a series of murder trials before the allegorical court of Love in which ultimately the Belle Dame was condemned as cruel and sentenced to drowning in the well of tears for her lover’s death of heartache. Subsequent lyric interventions featured now a lady, now a lover, in various stages of love, ranging from suffering in the Hospital of Love, to the confessional, to a martyr’s deathbed, to a randy but poor courtier looking to try his luck with a prostitute. Notwithstanding the comedic side of the Quarrel, the dominant themes that were interwoven through the poems highlighted serious questions about the rights of women, in love, in marriage, in memory, and in reputation. These very themes would inspire the widespread issues of the querelle des femmes that would blast the continent from the sixteenth century forward to challenge the dominance of men in every quarter – in love, in law, and in society. The feminist movement has a long fuse that reaches back into the Middle Ages, lit by the very real person of Christine de Pizan, and emboldened by the fiery words of the Belle Dame. The two debates and the controversies they fed are reminders that it is women themselves, real or fictional, who must continue to reinscribe their worth, battling the cycle of repression and erasure that Judy Chicago warns us is still threatening women’s efforts today.
An Introduction to Literary Debate in Late Medieval France is a volume in the series New Perspectives on Medieval Literature: Authors and Traditions, edited by R. Barton Palmer and Tison Pugh. Browse more books in this series here, and use discount code ICMS24 for discount prices through July 31, 2024.
Joan E. McRae, professor of French and humanities at Middle Tennessee State University, is the author of Alain Chartier: The Quarrel of the Belle Dame Sans Mercy.
- The Dinner Party by Judy Chicago, Long-Term Installation, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor ↩︎
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