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5 - The Medieval Marriage Market and Human Suffering: The Man of Law's Tale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2013

Cathy Hume
Cathy Hume
Affiliation:
Northwestern University
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Summary

Christine de pizan's Livre des trois vertus opens (after the allegorical prefatory matter) with a description of the luxurious temptations of a princess's life:

Quant la princepce ou haulte dame sera en son lit au matin veilliee de somme et elle se verra couchiee en son lit entre souefs draps, avironnee de riches paremens et de toutes choses pour aise de corps, dames et damoiselles entour elle qui l'ueil n'ont a aultre chose fors a avisier que riens ne lui faille de tous delices […] les genoulx flechis pour lui administrer tout service et obeir a tous ses commandements, adonc souventes fois avendra que temptacion l'assauldra, qui lui chantera tel leçon:

Beaulx Sire Dieux! est il en ce monde plus grant maistresse de toy, ne plus auctorisiee? […] Il n'est si grant dont tu ne venisses bien a chief. […] Toutevoyes tielx et tieulx, ou telles et telles, ont eu arogance contre toy et ont cuidié par leur oultrecuidance pouoir a toy, et ont fait tieulx et tieulx choses a ton desplaisir et prejudice. Si t'en vengeras bien, un temps venra.

(Book I, ch. 3, p. 12)

Surrounded by the pleasures of the world, the princess sinks into depravity, develops far too great a sense of her own importance and becomes arrogant and vengeful. A greater contrast with Constance, the pious, suffering heroine of Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale, is hard to imagine.

Type
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Chaucer and the Cultures of Love and Marriage , pp. 107 - 126
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2012

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