
Romance of the Violet and Other Wager Tales from Medieval France
A high-stakes wager placed on a woman''s virtue; men who spy on bathing women; tell-tale birthmarks; cross-dressing; dragons; tournaments; and aristocrats bursting into song--these features and more appear in the three stories translated here, all versions of the folktale known as "the wager tale." Such stories were especially popular in thirteenth-century France, when noblemen fulfilled their ...
A high-stakes wager placed on a woman''s virtue; men who spy on bathing women; tell-tale birthmarks; cross-dressing; dragons; tournaments; and aristocrats bursting into song--these features and more appear in the three stories translated here, all versions of the folktale known as "the wager tale." Such stories were especially popular in thirteenth-century France, when noblemen fulfilled their ...