Women's Visible Honor in Medieval Romance: The Example of the Old French Roman du Comte de Poitiers  (In Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti)

The Comte de Poitiers  is an unusual two-part story. Part 1, a wager tale, relates the trials and tribulations of a noblewoman unjustly accused of infidelity; part 2 relates the (fictional) Roman king Constantine's search for a suitable bride. To this end, the king requires all eligible young women to come to court, where they are locked in a tower and ordered to strip. In this way, he reasons, he will see whether the woman he likes best is truly a virgin. The two parts of the story are connected by the notion that a woman's honor is, in effect, written on her body and therefore "legible." 

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