SOURCE: Black, Iris. “The Theatricality of Marriage in Two Late Medieval Narrative Texts.” Dalhousie French Studies 56 (fall 2001): 6-16.

In this essay, Black compares the theatrical and misogynistic aspects of Deschamps's Le Miroir de mariage and the anonymous .XV. joies de Mariage.

The Theatricality of Marriage in Two Late Medieval Narrative Texts

Written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century,¹ the two texts which we will examine in this article both feature scene-like vignettes of married life. The Miroir de mariage of Eustache Deschamps and the anonymous .XV. joies de mariage² provide satirical explorations of marriage in their era, based upon traditional misogynistic ideas and a more temporal misogamy, which often departs from its ascetic and philosophical antecedents in its attempts to dissuade would-be spouses from matrimony through example rather than authority (Wilson and Makowski 9-10).

Although both works are narrative rather than dramatic in form, they expose...