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This dissertation examines how female characters in medieval French literature from the twelfth to the fourteenth century represent different forms of environmental critique. Through a methodology I term “exegetical ecofeminism,” the project combines medieval biblical exegesis with modern ecofeminist theory, drawing specifically on the frameworks established by Val Plumwood and Karen Warren. Their work provides the critical foundation for analyzing how medieval texts construct gender relationships to landscape and challenge patriarchal systems of misogyny and environmental domination.
Ecofeminist scholarship has become increasingly visible in studies of medieval English literature, yet it remains under studied in medieval French literary criticism. This project addresses that lacuna by focusing on vernacular texts where natural spaces such as forests function as a vital terrain shaped by literal and symbolic meaning, gendered power and material necessity. Female characters inhabiting, emerging from, or symbolically represented by the forest occupy liminal positions in both medieval society and its literary representations. However, their association with natural settings facilitates resistance to the structures of courtly authority, enabling alternative expressions of knowledge, autonomy, and social interaction.
By examining works such as Marie de France’s lais, Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian romances, and the Roman de Silence, I analyze how characters like the fée, grieving mothers and allegorical personifications of nature used retreat, concealment or refusal to disrupt systems of feudal inheritance, chivalric performance and theological authority. Their actions highlight and critique anthropocentric and patriarchal paradigms. I also read these literary gestures alongside the material conditions of the medieval period, including subsistence economies, seasonal vulnerability, and dependence on the environment, showing how ecological pressures shaped and were shaped by gendered experience.
Ultimately, this dissertation argues that medieval French literature encodes subtle critiques of environmental and gender domination through the embodied presence of female characters in forest spaces. Exegetical ecofeminism offers a method for interpreting these texts that foregrounds the ethical and political implications of human and nonhuman relationships. In centering figures who resist domination and assert relational models of being, these narratives offer a premodern model and environmental consciousness that remains urgent in the context of contemporary ecological crisis.