Marie de france fables pdf

THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE

BY

ROBERT W. HANNING

The Vision of History in Early Britain: from Gildas to Geoffrey of Monmouth

The Individual in Twelfth Century Romance

BY

JOAN M. FERRANTE

The Conflict of Love and Honor: The medieval Tristan legend in France, Germany, and Italy

(Translator.) Guillaume d'Orange. Four

Twelfth Century Epics

Editor with George Economou.

In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature

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Woman as Image in Medieval Literature, from the Twelfth Century to Dante

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To our students

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Qtontent5 INTRODUCTION s, ' w i

PROLOGUE W W X 28

GUIGEMAR 9 w w 30

EQUITAN ' w w 6o

LE FRESNE w w ' 73

BISCLAVRET W W W 92

LANVAL w w w 105

LES DEUS AMANZ w ' ' 126

YONEC w w w 137

LAUSTIC w w w 155

MILUN w w w 162

CHAITIVEL w w w 181

CHEVREFOIL w w w 1go

ELIDUC w *1 w 196

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY % X X 235

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THE LAIS OF MARIE DE FRANCE

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INTRODUCTION MARIE DE FRANCE was perhaps the greatest woman author of the Middle Ages and certainly the creator of the finest medieval short fiction before Boccaccio and Chaucer. Her best work, the Lais-the collection of short romances and tales translated in this volume-is a major achievement of the first age of French literature and of the "Renaissance of the Twelfth Century," that remarkable efflorescence of Western European culture that signaled the end of the "Dark Ages" and the beginning of many ideas and institutions basic to modern civilization. One of the twelfth century's most significant innovations was its rediscovery of love as a literary subject-a subject that it depicted, anatomized, celebrated, and mocked in a series of masterpieces, almost all of which were written in lucid French verse. Among these pioneering love texts, which would soon be adapted and imitated in all the vernaculars of Europe, none better stands the test of time than Marie's Lais. The combination of variety, virtuosity, and economy of means that characterizes the twelve short stories of fulfilled or frustrated passion -the shortest of which, Chevre f oil, is but 118 lines long, while the longest, Eliduc, requires but 1,184-gives ample and constant evidence of Marie's mastery of plot, characterization, and diction, while the woman's point of view she brings to her material further distinguishes the Lais from the longer narratives of love and adventure composed by her male contemporaries, of whom the best known to modern readers is Chretien de Troyes, the creator of Arthurian romance and the first chronicler of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere.

Unfortunately, we know practically nothing about this superb storyteller, except for her name, her extant works (in addition to the Lais, a collection of animal fables and the moral, supernatural tale, St. Patrick's Purgatory), the approximate period of her literary activities (116o?-1215?), and the fact, derived from her name and comments in her writings, that she was of French birth but wrote at or for the English court, which, as a result of the Norman Conquest, was Frenchspeaking in her days. (See below for further information about Marie's activities and other works.) From the Lais, however, a comprehensive picture of Marie's artistic personality and predilections emerges, several facets of which deserve particular attention.

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Perhaps the most recognizable "signature" of her work is the symbolic creature or artifact around which a lai is organized for maximum intensity and suggestiveness within the least possible narrative duration. The nightingale in Laiistic, the hazel tree wound about with honeysuckle in Chevrefoil, the hungry swan in Milun-all provide valuable insight into the nature of love in their respective narratives, insight that might otherwise require development through thousands of lines of poetry. Marie carefully places her symbols in the context of character revelation and tersely expressed dramatic irony, which prompts the reader to draw separate conclusions about the worth of the lovers and their love in a given lai. Accordingly, symbols and situations frequently parallel each other in two or more lais, yet the denouements, and the judgments we pass on their justice or injustice, will vary widely from one lai to another. The result of this process of "paired contrasts" is that, as we read on, our experience of each narrative is reinforced and complicated by resonances, often ironic, of its predecessors. What emerges is not a unified moral perspective on passion and its consequences: Marie's art avoids easy generalizations such as "married love is wrong, adultery right," or the reverse, but demonstrates instead that character, fortune, and the ability to seize and manipulate opportunities interact in any love relationship. Devotion, loyalty, ingenuity, which transcend marital ties or social norms, provide the grounds for our sympathies with or condemnation of any of Marie's lovers.

In addition to our involvement with the protagonists of the Lais, we respond constantly to the mastery with which Marie presents them. The deft touches of irony (as in the conclusion of Equitan, where the adulterous king, to avoid discovery, leaps into the vat of boiling water he has prepared in order to destroy his mistress's husband), or of homely sentiment (e.g., the description of the early-morning discovery of the abandoned infant heroine of Le Fresne by the porter of a monastery), remind us of the artist's complete control across the entire spectrum of narrative technique. Marie tells us in the Prologue to the Lais that she has undertaken the novel task of translating the body of love tales created by the Bretons, those famous exponents of the art of exotic storytelling. As there are no extant "Breton lais," we cannot substantiate Marie's claim or decide to what extent her plots may follow Breton originals. But it is clear from her use of classical Latin and contemporaneous French material that she was a welleducated and highly trained literary craftsman who wished