The Subaltern Female Struggle for Power in Courtly Love France and Medieval Spain

In medieval France, much of the written literature was dominated by the system
of courtly love, in which the married noble woman held the position of authority over her
lover or knight. Yet this courtly system was entirely literary and did not change women's
subjugated position in feudal society, and even propagated misogynistic ideals. In John
Beverly's theory of Subalternity, the struggle for power within different systems is shown
as having two main groups, the elite and the subaltern; the former having control over the
representation of the latter, and therefore control over how the subaltern shapes its selfimage.
In medieval, courtly love France, those who manufacture the literary
representations of women are male, and those texts that aided in the re-affirming of
feudal society; though some women, like Christine de Pizan, resisted those
representations. Conversely, in medieval Spain, courtly love does not take hold as a
literary phenomenon due to the different cultural and social environment of Spanish
noble women.