My working hypothesis in this book is that in medieval French and Occitan literature gender and genre are inextricably linked. My intention in seeking to combine the study of gender and genre is not simply to map a trendy critical term onto one with a more venerable pedigree. I shall argue that genres in medieval French and Occitan literature inscribe competing ideologies, that the construction of gender is a crucial element in any ideology, and that the distinct ideologies of medieval genres are predicated in part at least upon distinct constructions of gender. This hypothesis regarding gender and genre is based upon two premises: firstly, that every genre is an ideological formation; secondly, that a crucial component of every ideology is its engagement with the sex/gender system of the society in which it is produced. By ideology I mean a discourse which is used (not necessarily consciously) by a society, culture or section of a society or culture to naturalize or undermine, for itself and/or others, power structures and inequalities within it; by sex/gender system I mean the way in which power and authority are distributed according to ‘genderic’ criteria in any given historical context.