Violent women and the blurring of gender in some medieval narratives

This chapter focuses on literary depictions of women's attempts to challenge the phallocentric patriarchal society and resist the masculine established order by displaying violent or even murderous behavior toward men in French medieval literature. I contend that such brutal scenes were often cloaked as comic narratives and were perceived by the readers as nothing more than fiction - literary events that would never be seen in reality. I discuss the blurred boundaries between masculine and feminine behavior as they are dealt with in the twelfth-century romance Cligès by Chrétien de Troyes, Fénice's fausse mort, Lai d'I- guanré, by Renaut, and the Hebrew Tale of Old Bearded Achbor by Yaakov Ben Elazar.