Les Vœux du Paon

Les Vœux du Paon (The Vows of the Peacock) is a fourteenth-century French courtly poem that portrayed chivalrous love. In this folio from the Morgan manuscript, the text sets out the ideal essence and behaviour of love in a manual-like manner. In the margin, an unclothed jester obscenely inserts his genitalia into an ewer, emphasizing his hyper-virility and uncontrolled lust. His unexplained presence, in opposition to the text, helps to illustrate the normative behaviours prescribed therein.