Margaret Bryant

“ Gaston Paris (Revue de Paris, Dec. 1897) expressed an opinion that to find anything like the malicious penetration by which La Sale divines the most intimate details of married life, and the painful exactness of the description, it is necessary to travel as far as Balzac. The theme itself was common enough in the middle ages in France, but the dialogue of the Quinze Joyes is unusually natural and pregnant. Each of the fifteen vignettes is perfect in its kind. There is no redundance. The diffuseness of romance is replaced by the methods of the writers of the fabliaux. ”

“ She materially advances his career until Saintré becomes an accomplished knight, the fame of whose prowess spreads throughout Europe. This section of the romance—apparently didactic in intention—fits in with the author’s other works of edification. But in the second part this virtuous lady falls a victim to a vulgar intrigue with Damp Abbé. One of La Sale’s commentators, M. Joseph Nève, ingeniously maintains that the last section is simply to show how the hero, after passing through the other grades of education, learns at last by experience to arm himself against coquetry. ”

“ Some light is thrown on the romance by the circumstances of the duc de Calabre, to whom it was dedicated. His wife, Marie de Bourbon, was one of the “Belles-Cousines” who contended for the favour of Jacques or Jacquet de Lalaing in the Livre des faits de Jacques Lalaing which forms the chief source of the early exploits of Petit Jehan.
The incongruities of La Sale’s aims appear in his method of construction. The hero is not imaginary. ”