This bilingual edition of three French poems dating from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries contains two poems that assail the vices of women and a third that lists women's virtues. The lively and amusing verses, translated into English for the first time, are prefaced by essays that set the poems into their linguistic, historical, and literary contexts. Together, the poems and essays provide significant insights into the role of women in the Middle Ages as well as into medieval social history and the history of misogyny.
The pairing of one pro-female poem and two...