Zuleika e Melusina: donne violate / donne violente nel Medioevo letterario latino e d’oïl

Abstract

The article examines some Medieval French and Latin literary texts that present simultaneously the type-figures of Zuleika, better known as Potiphar’s wife, and Melusine; both linked, in a complex and articulated way, to sexuality. In the related episodes that involve them, the violence of the male on the female seems to turn over into violence of the female on the male, and viceversa. In the meantime the erotic initiation of the young knight is staged.