[Chapter 3] My test case will be Maître Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour. This thirteenth-century text is exemplary on two counts. In the framework of a master's address to a woman interlocutor, it casts the narrator in the double role of pedagogue and lover. While he is more intelligent than the disciple figure, he approaches the woman in a similarly amorous way. And this combination of roles raises the question of his masterly control, a question that becomes all the more charged because it is associated with the signature of "Maistre Richard de Fournival." ... These two aspects of Fournival's Bestiaire, structural and biographical, will focus our inquiry on the master's relations with women. Examining how the Fournival master's intellectual authority is established will help chart the dynamic of mastery—what it is that separates and does not separate Richard's master from his alter ego Matheolus. It will also lead to the overarching issue of the symbolic domination of women created by the master's discourse. - [Author]

Language: English