SOURCE: Cholakian, Patricia Francis. “The Two Narrative Styles of A. de La Sale.” Romance Notes 10, no. 2 (spring 1969): 362-72.

In the essay below, Cholakian, emphasizing the lack of unity in Little John of Saintré, and investigates La Sale's incorporation of the elements of two distinct genres—the novel and the didactic treatise—in the work.

I

Every reader of Antoine de la Sale's Petit Jehan de Saintré must grapple with the lack of unity within the work. The second half of the novel, in which Belles Cousines makes love to a lusty abbot, seems a complete departure from the first, in which she has taken care to instruct her protégé Jehan in the theory and practices of courtly love.¹ Indeed, the obvious gusto with which La Sale narrates her fall calls into question the entire structure of chivalric and courtly ideals which thus far have dominated the plot...