ABSTRACT
A reading of the 'official' documents in which the laws and customs concerning marriage were explicated provides an entirely different understanding of matrimony, and it is against this backdrop that one must read the cuckold tales of the Cent nouvelles nouvelles. The transcription of these stories participated in complex intertextual procedures in which men of one generation passed on masculinist knowledge to men of the following generation, which is one of the primary acts in the performance of normative masculinity. The would-be normative masculinity in the Renaissance might be identified with this constant quest for different narrative variations on the theme of gendered bodies situated and functioning 'properly' within space as comprehensible only when it is laid out topographically such that gendered bodies are legible within it. Moreover, the being of gendered subjects as such requires precisely the activation or performance of diverse discourse types, which are continuously elaborated and structured within the intertext, that structure intersubjective relations.
