Recovering the Author in Philippe de Remy's Manekine

If, as Roberta Krueger has suggested, "most medieval romances are sophisticated and self-reflective literary creations which invite the educated reader to observe their paradoxes and ambiguities" (Krueger 406), then La Manekine may provide particular insights into the relationship between gender and creativity. This thirteenth-century narrative by Philippe dc Remy is a rare example of a male-authored romance with a female protagonist. It is, in fact, the first recorded vernacular inscription of the archetypal folktale known as "the girl without hands," an initiation story recounting a young girl's tribulations from adolescence, in which she is an apparently powerless victim threatened with an incestuous (or other unacceptable) relationship, through to marriage, motherhood, and an acknowledged place in society.