The Master and Minerva: Disputing Women in French Medieval Culture

Can words do damage? For medieval culture, the answer was unambiguously yes. And as Helen Solterer contends, in French medieval culture the representation of women exemplified the use of injurious language. Solterer investigates the debates over women between masters and their disciples. Across a broad range of Old French literature to the early modern Querelle des femmes, she shows how the figure of the female respondent became an instrument for disputing the dominant models of representing women. The female respondent exploited the criterion of injurious language that so preoccupied medieval masters, and she charged master poets ethically and legally with libel. Solterer's work thus illuminates an early, decisive chapter in the history of defamation. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1996.
Can words do damage? For medieval culture, the answer was unambiguously yes. And as Helen Solterer contends, in French medieval culture the representation of women exemplified the use of injurious language. Solterer investigates the debates ove