Comme on fait son lit, on se couche. Matérialité et symbolique genrées d’un lieu de vies en Italie (XIVe‑XVIe siècle)

This article brings together practical and literary sources to analyze the bed in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance from a gender perspective. In practice, the bed was a predominantly masculine piece of furniture, owned and handed down by men, mainly in Florence, which put women who were deprived of a bed—particularly when they were widowed—in a delicate position, by denying them access to a piece of furniture that was nevertheless used on a daily basis. In fact, it is in the bed that all the stages in the lives of men and women take place: it is a place that is shared, mutualised and highly symbolic, as shown in the novelle. The short stories re‑establish the gender issues at stake in and around the bed, by showing how its occupants used it.