SOURCE: Caillaud, Anne. “The Search for Power: A Female Quest in Antoine de la Sale's Petit Jehan de Saintré.” In Fifteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 24, edited by William C. McDonald, pp. 74-83. Columbia, S.C.: Camden House, 1998.

In the essay below, Caillaud analyzes the relationship between Belle Cousine and Saintré, demonstrating the ways in which the lady fails to adhere to the guidelines of courtly love as codified in Andreas Capellanus's twelfth-century treatise De amore.

Courtly love is disturbing … it justifies and legitimizes adultery. It also places women in a position of supreme power. There are two unbearable transgressions of the masculine order and its morals … In the courtly world, the lady is granted these two privileges: freedom and power.¹

If courtly love rests partly on the notion of power, its complexity lies in the relationship between a literary genre and the real social structure of the feudal society. While...