The changing discourse on female fickleness from the Old French Yvain to the Old Norse Ívens saga
Abstract
In Chrétien de Troyes’s romance Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion women have an important, generally positive status. Nevertheless, some statements of the work, dealing with the stereotype of female fickleness, led critics to postulate a misogynistic temper of the author. This paper will analyse these statements, considering them in the medieval and literary context and comparing them with their possible source, Ovid’s Ars amatoria. In a second step, the paper will focus on the elaboration of the stereotype in medieval translations of Yvain, particularly the Old Norse Ívens saga.