Des hommes asservis par leurs sens ou « embabouinés » par les femmes ? Amour, désir et pouvoir dans quelques succès éditoriaux de la Querelle des femmes au XVIe siècle

• Main Author: Tatiana Clavier
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institut du Monde Anglophone 2019-02-01
• Series: Etudes Epistémè
• Subjects: Renaissance; printed texts; Controversy about women; love; desire; power relations
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/episteme/2901

The encounter between the sexes in the field of love and desire is a topic explored by several authors whose works, in the French vernacular, were largely circulated in the sixteenth century. Some take part in the gender controversy. Others simply echo the debate in educational texts for the aristocracy. They support or dismiss arguments suggesting that women are temptresses luring men into lust, and that love for women is enslavement to the senses, a dangerous sickness both for men’s physical and mental health. They also variedly define “true” love and “mad” love, the attribution of responsibility for rape, the “love war” and its various weapons (including female connections with occult powers). The domination of one sex over the other is the crux of the matter, for enamoured men, who surrender to desire, are often blamed for adopting beastly or feminine behaviours. Finally, some consider male impotence as the consequence of women’s insatiable lust, others as the reason why those who cannot satisfy female desire attack the female sex.