Feminine wiles and masculine woes: sexual dynamics in Les Quinze Joies de Mariage

Alison Williams; John Parkin

1. Feminine wiles and masculine woes: sexual dynamics in Les Quinze Joies de Mariage

In: French Humour

Authors:

Alison Williams

Alison Williams University of Wales Swansea French

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John Parkin

John Parkin University of Bristol French

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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 21–37

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004649439_005

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Abstract

The wiles and woes of marriage as depicted in this famous text are re-examined with special reference to female language and female sexuality. These areas of self-expression are prime among the means whereby its shrewish women defeat their male opponents to the consternation of the narrator - if not in fact of the reader or author - as they turn what are traditionally held to be flaws in womankind to their own comic advantage. The moral implications of this process provide an interesting lesson in satiric practice: are we (as women or men) eager to defend the hapless victim, or are we indifferent to him; and by what considerations are we motivated in taking up either option? Do we despise the cuckold in the tradition of Latin societies? Do we protect him by counter-attacking in his name on the viragos who are outsmarting him? Do we regard each participant in the text as equally unfortunate, marriage itself being the problem? Do we see the stories as so distant from reality that no serious comment is relevant to them? Or is there a further choice available to those who feel an instinctive affinity with the victim figure, however low he may fall in the eyes of a hostile society and readership?

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French Humour

Papers based on a Colloquium held in the French Department of the University of Bristol, November 30th 1996

Series: Faux Titre, Volume: 164

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004649439

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 01 Jan 1999

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
  - Literature, Arts & Science
  - French & Francophone

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1. Feminine wiles and masculine woes: sexual dynamics in Les Quinze Joies de Mariage

Abstract

Citation Info

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French Humour

Papers based on a Colloquium held in the French Department of the University of Bristol, November 30th 1996

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