Nature and Nurture: "Les Deux Amanz" and Marie de France’s Deconstruction of Aristotelian Rational/Material Binaries

Authors

Kimberly T. Anderson, Virginia Military InstituteFollow

Abstract

This article examines Marie de France’s challenge to traditional Aristotelian hierarchies between men and women and human and earth through her lay Les Deux Amanz. Through a tacit engagement with elemental and Aristotelian philosophy, she challenges the theorized differences between the sexes and between humans and the land they inhabit. While Aristotle constructs a hierarchical binary between the material and the rational and overlays it onto the social binary comprising women and men respectively, the lay rejects this schema through the inclusion of an herbal potion that reminds the reader of the elemental similarity between humans and the earth, and by presenting the female characters as the bearers of reason. The conclusion of the lay critiques the philosophical devaluation of physical matter—and by extension the female—as the lesser corollary to rationality or will. In its insistence on a non-hierarchical continuity among all terrestrial creation, Les Deux Amanz offers a strong caution against the longstanding philosophical and social hierarchies between men, women, and land; to accept this traditional structure means to welcome one’s destruction.

Recommended Citation

Anderson, Kimberly T. (2024) "Nature and Nurture: "Les Deux Amanz" and Marie de France’s Deconstruction of Aristotelian Rational/Material Binaries," Medieval Ecocriticisms: Vol. 3, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/med_ecocriticisms/vol3/iss1/3