WOMAN-HATING IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S BISCLAVRET1

The men of Bisclavret, down to the last individual, are judicious, steadfast, and loyal to their sworn allies. These traditionally masculine values are reinforced throughout the lay by their actions and rewarded at its end: the knight from the country is not banished, but leaves voluntarily; his male descendants are unharmed; the baron recoups all of his wealth and more; and the king and his men reclaim their commendable comrade. The men, joining together as brothers, form a merry band, while the unfaithful wife's life is destroyed. In sum, it is the men who win in Bisclavret, and by a lot more than a nose.

That Marie, most likely a woman23 and indisputably one of the greatest authors in the French literary canon, should have composed a text in which hatred of the female is, on every level, so pungently and efficiently displayed and ratified is unsettling. Even more troubling for us today is conceiving of this lay being offered to the ears of Marie's original late-12th-century audience, men and woman and perhaps boys and girls who sought from it divertissement and instruction. Bisclavret in its performative form (a spoken text whose inherent value as a Breton intellectual object caused it to be preserved and disseminated24) might well have served, however unintentionally and subtly, as a public exemplum that endorsed and reinforced male control over females in the real world. This chilling possibility, rooted not in folklore but in sociology, is certainly the most monstrous aspect of the lay.

Columbia University

1. My thanks to Margaret Jewett Burland, who read earlier versions of this article and many of whose suggestions I have gratefully incorporated. Shortly after I submitted the final version of this study, I became aware of Kerry Shea's article "Male Bonding, Female Body: The Absenting of Women in "Bisclaretz Ijoo," published in Cold Coun-sel: Women in Old Norse Literature and Mythology: A Collection of Essays, Sarah M. Anderson and Karen Swenson, eds., New York: Routledge, 2002, 245-59. Due to the production timeline, I was not able to include her study in my discussion of existing scholarship.

2. Equitan, Le Fraisne, Bisclavret, Lanval, Les Dous Amanz, Yonec, Laustic, Chaitivel, and Eliduc.

3. Guigemar, Bisclavret, Lanval, Laustic, Milun, Chievrefueil, and Eliduc.

4. Les Dous Amanz.

5. On the etymology of the word bisdavret, see Bailey, Sayers, and Schwerteck. On the werewolf topos, see Bambeck, Quenet, and Bouillot. On the baron's duality, see Bruckner, Gertz, and Dunton-Downer. On the shift of villainy, see Holten, Jorgensen, and Boivin.

6. I will refer to the public receiving Bisclavret as readers. I use this term broadly, des-ignating any person who has accessed the lay, either by reading it himself or herself or by hearing it performed aloud, during the Middle Ages or thereafter.

7. All quotations are taken from Warnke's third edition. All translations are my own and privilege clarity over syntactic fidelity and style. Instances of italicization are mine, not Warnke's.