‘De voix femmenine’: Self, Voice and Emotive Display in Jean d’Arras’s Mélusine

Abstract

The 14th century French romance Mélusine ou la Noble Histoire de Lusignan focuses on the peculiar founding mother of the house of Lusignan, who, due to a curse imposed by her fairy mother, is forced to transform in secrecy into a half-serpent, half-human figure every Saturday. The romance depicts her life after the curse and her ultimate exile after her husband discovers her in her hybrid form. As the lady flies away fully transformed into a giant serpent, however, marks of her enduring selfhood prevail: first, in a mark embedded in a windowsill in the shape of a foot and later, as a voiced emotional complaint, described as the voice of a woman. The serpent’s emotive display confirms the existence of a stable, yet malleable core selfhood in the character that prevails through her embodied changes. The goal is to establish emotive display as an effective tool to access narrated selfhood in the romance.