Floure and the Leafe, The Assembly of Ladies, The Isle of Ladies

An asset to any study of gender in medieval England, this volume contains three late-fifteenth-century allegorical dream visions that thematize the relations between the sexes. The Floure and the Leafe explores the courtly imagery of the flower and leaf, wherein the flower symbolizes the fickle, shallow attraction characteristic of men, compared to the evergreen persistence of the leaf, likened to the long-suffering of women. Meanwhile, The Assembly of Ladies recounts the activities of a group of women while describing the differences between the sexes. Finally, The Isle of Ladies details a male dreamer’s interactions with the ladies of an all-female island. The texts draw on tropes of French love visions, like those of Guillaume de Machaut or the authors of Le Roman de la Rose. Once attributed to Chaucer, all three Middle English texts are now thought to be anonymously authored in a Chaucerian style—as Derek Pearsall recounts.