Reviewed by:

• Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages by Glenn D. Burger
• Mary-Rose McLaren

This book is a challenging and important contribution to the understanding of ‘thinking’ in the later Middle Ages. Analysing the purpose of texts that focus on the behaviour of women and men is fraught with difficulty in the context of twenty-first-century feminism. Frequently, I found myself rising to challenge Glenn D. Burger’s paradigms, only to have him add another, richer layer of interpretation.

The book is logically constructed. Burger lays the foundations of the study by identifying the significance of texts that move the ‘good wife front and center’ (p. 2) to become a model; the negotiation of new social responsibilities that this opens up; and the fusion of new and old ideologies that can be observed in the texts. One implication of such texts is the transformation of morality to ethics.

Burger sets the scene for the analysis and examination of specific texts with a discussion of embodied reading, where the action of reading itself helps to bring about the sought-after behaviour. He argues several ideas that build on each other: that an affective contract lies at the core of medieval developments in thinking about marriage as a sacrament; that conduct literature for women ‘mainstreamed’ thinking about married relations and households and transmitted this across Europe and across social classes during the fourteenth century; that literature aimed at the good wife provides the context for ‘a new model of heterosexuality’ (p. 24); that love of the marrying kind constituted an affective, rather than an erotic or feudal, contract, and that this kind of love ‘empowered new forms of social activity’ (p. 24).

Burger further argues that conduct texts had the capacity to reconfigure female identity, which, in turn, created a space for a new authority for men as husbands and fathers, creating new patterns of social recognition and engagement. Consequently, this literature provides ‘a powerful medium for such a rethinking of gender and sexual relations’ (p. 25). He presents this conduct literature as a hinge, or turning point, between marriage as it had been known and developed during the medieval period, and the beginning of a new understanding of heterosexuality that can be seen emerging during the early modern period. Central to this notion is the transformative power of the ‘revisioning of female embodiment’ (p. 26) and the tension which this generates within the social context.

Burger then analyses specific texts, each of which adds a further layer to his interpretation of the role of conduct literature as determining functions and [End Page 184] behaviours within both the family and wider society. Such texts as the Journées chrétiennes provide a recognized role for women beyond that of an enclosed religious life (Chapter 1). Les Enseignements de Saint Louis à sa fille Isabelle, the Speculum dominarum, and Le Miroir des bonne femmes present a new belief in the capacity of women’s nature for improvement, just as men are capable of improvement. They reflect changing marital relations and authorize the aristocratic household as ‘a new model for the social’ (p. 31; Chapter 2). Burger then uses Le Menagier de Paris, a household book, to examine what happens when the newly understood social function of marriage, as constructed via conduct literature, is played out in an urban merchant’s household. The bedchamber becomes the rehearsal space for the more public playing out of the couple’s marriage, which centres on the good conduct of the wife under the authority of her husband (Chapter 3). The final layer added by Burger is a discussion of the earliest iterations of the Griselda story. Boccaccio and Petrarch’s versions are examined, as well as Philippe de Mézière’s French translation, and the inclusion of this into Le Livre de la vertu du sacrament de mariage and Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale. In these texts, shaping narratives of...

审核人：

• 行为成为：中世纪后期的好妻子和丈夫Glenn D. Burger
• 玛丽·罗斯·麦克拉伦

这本书对理解中世纪后期的“思想”具有挑战性和重要意义。在二十一世纪的女权主义背景下，分析侧重于男女行为的文本的目的充满了困难。通常，我发现自己开始挑战格伦·伯格的范式，只是让他添加了另一个更丰富的解释层。

这本书是逻辑构建的。伯格通过确定使“好妻子的前锋和中心”（第2页）成为榜样的文本的重要性，为研究奠定了基础。这开启了新的社会责任的谈判；以及在文本中可以看到的新旧意识形态的融合。这样的文本的一个含义是道德向伦理的转变。

伯格通过具体化阅读的讨论为特定文本的分析和检查奠定了基础，在阅读中，阅读本身的作用有助于带来人们所追捧的行为。他提出了相互依存的几种观点：在将婚姻视为圣礼的过程中，情感契约是中世纪发展的核心。该书为妇女提供关于婚姻关系和家庭的“主流”思想的文学作品，并在十四世纪将其传播到整个欧洲和整个社会阶层；针对好妻子的文献为“新的异性恋模式”提供了背景（第24页）；结婚的爱情构成了一种情感的契约，而不是一种色情或封建的契约，并且这种爱情“赋予了社会活动的新形式力量”（第24页）。

伯格进一步指出，行为文本具有重新配置女性身份的能力，从而为男性作为丈夫和父亲的新权威创造了空间，创造了新的社会认可和参与模式。因此，该文献为“这种对性别和性关系的重新思考提供了有力的媒介”（第25页）。他将这种行为文学作为中世纪时期已知和发展的婚姻与现代早期对异性恋的新认识开始之间的枢纽或转折。这一观念的核心是“女性形象的改变”（第26页）的变革力量以及这种转变在社会环境中产生的张力。

汉堡然后分析特定的文本，其中的每一个增加了一个另外的层，以他的行为文献的作用的解释，作为确定函数和[尾页184]家庭和更广泛的社会两者内的行为。《圣经》（Journéeschrétiennes）等文本为妇女提供了公认的角色，超越了封闭的宗教生活（第1章）。莱斯Enseignements德圣路易斯阿SA，并祝伊莎贝尔的窥器dominarum，和乐德之镜博讷FEMMES就像男人有能力改善一样，人们对妇女天性的改善能力提出了新的信念。它们反映了不断变化的婚姻关系，并授权贵族家庭成为“社会的新典范”（第31页；第2章）。汉堡随后使用了勒梅纳吉耶巴黎（一本家庭用书），研究在行为商人的家庭中播放通过行为文学构建的新近理解的婚姻社会功能时会发生什么情况。寝室成为夫妻婚礼上更多公众玩耍的彩排空间，其重点在于妻子在丈夫的授权下的良好品行（第3章）。Burger添加的最后一层是对Griselda故事的最早迭代的讨论。检查了Boccaccio和Petrarch的版本，以及Philippe deMézière的法语翻译，并将其包括在Le Livre de la vertu du sacrament de mariage和Chaucer的Clerk's Tale中。在这些文本中，塑造...的叙述