Female instruction is the principal aim of two late 14th-century treatises. The Livre du
chevalier de la Tour Landry (1371–72), written for his daughters by a knight of
considerable standing who fought for France in the Hundred Years’ War, contains 128
chapters that warn against impropriety and extol courtesy, modesty in dress, and
especially chastity and marital fidelity. The Knight offers a frank depiction of sexual
temptations and of the violent punishments—beatings, death—that follow women’s
disobedience. His examples, which the narrator says have been supplied by two priests
and two clerics, are drawn from stock biblical and historical sources, fabliaux, and
contemporary life. In a lengthy debate with her husband near the work’s conclusion, the
Knight’s wife condemns courtly love as a dangerous trap for women. The Knight claims
to have written a similar book for his sons, but only this one to his daughters has
survived, in at least twenty-one French manuscripts, two English translations (one by
Caxton in 1484), and a German printed edition.
In the Menagier de Paris (1392–94), a wealthy elderly bourgeois of Paris sets forth a
compendium of moral wisdom and household management for his young wife, providing
exhaustive details about housekeeping, gardening, cooking, the training of servants,
horses, and hawking. As staunchly moral as the Chevalier de la Tour-Landry, the
Menagier tries to show compassion for his wife’s youth, insisting that he would never
attempt to test her as Griselda had been tried. The Knight’s and the Menagier’s books
paint a somber picture of the constraints placed on young women and offer revealing
portraits of male attitudes about female instruction in late-medieval society.
Christine de Pizan was the first woman to write a courtesy book for other women. Her
Trésor de la cité des dames ou Le livre des trois vertus (1405) was written for Marguerite
of Burgundy, wife of the dauphin, Louis of Guyenne. The book defines the moral virtues
and duties of women of all conditions and ranks: unmarried and married women, widows,
princesses, women of rank, nuns, bourgeois and peasant wives, even prostitutes.
Christine’s message to women is no less conservative than that of her male predecessors,
although her style is more refined. Like the Chevalier de la Tour Landry, she sternly
condemns amorous intrigues and lauds chastity, marital fidelity, and obedience. She
advocates that women of all classes aid their husbands in their duties, however exalted or
humble they may be. Christine also sets forth principles for the instruction of princes,
knights, and men of all classes in the Livre du corps de policie (1407). A century later,
Anne de Bourbonnois adapted Christine’s precepts for noble-women, along with those of
St. Louis, in her book of instruction for her daughter, Susanne de Bourbon, in the
Enseignements d’Anne de France (ca. 1504–05).
Medieval courtesy books continued to be read in the Renaissance, when several
appeared in printed editions and served as sources for Renaissance treatises on gentility.
Their popularity attests to the tensions and anxieties that surround the transformation of
social roles. Far from being always predictable compendia of stereotypes, these diverse
works offer historians and literary critics complex views of daily life and customs and
sexual and social mores, as well as ironic commentary about human nature.
Roberta L.Krueger
[See also: CHRISTINE DE PIZAN; DIDACTIC LITERATURE (OCCITAN);
ÉTIENNE DE FOUGÈRES; GILES OF ROME; LA TOUR LANDRY, GEOFFROI DE;
MENAGIER DE PARIS; RAOUL DE HOUDENC; ROBERT DE BLOIS]
Anne de France. Les enseignements d’Anne de France, duchesse de Bourbon et d’Auvergne à sa
fille Susanne de Bourbon, ed. Alphonse Martiel Chazaud. Moulins: Desrosiers, 1878.
The Encyclopedia 507