| Medieval marriage has been presented by some historians as contractual, characterized by brutal, domineering husbands and unhappy wives; in that view, courtly love in medieval literature represents the opposite of the married state, and not until the Renaissance were love and marriage associated. This study investigates two sources of marriage discourse that were heard by the common people in medieval France: sermons and fabliaux. Using the tools of cultural history to discern how people thought about their marriages, we see marriage discourses having three different features: companionate marriage, marital sexual relations and unhappy or adulterous marriages. Despite their differences in intention and detail, sermons and fabliaux present common aspects of marriage that probably represent the gamut of the medieval marriage experience. |
