Lanval written by Marie de France has many different themes, but the main theme is the story is love; more in terms is a prime example of courtly love. Courtly love coming from the medieval time period of love that emphasizes nobility and chivalry. Marie uses the symbols of colors and undertone to expose the events and emotions in the story. The lady damsels wore purple “…in tunics of dark purple… (59)”. Purple is a symbol for wealth and power as well as romantic qualities. As well as letting the reader know the social class of the ladies. On a deeper note, the color purple is considered artificial due to it being super rare in nature. Although the lady is very high class and rich you began to realize that her love is different. When Lanval
meets her, she is cloaked only in “…white ermine, covered with purple Alexandrian …” (102-103). Again, this is a display of her wealth and importance. The author Marie also uses an eagle to represents the lady’s status and strength as to her love toward Lanval and their love. On the tent there was a golden eagle on the top. In medieval times, the eagle was seen as a representation of Christ, as well as being able to look up toward the heavens at God. As God represents holiness as to their love is sacred. Marie de France’s “Lanval,” is an amusing and entertaining story of courtly love and the dramatic encounters of ladies and knights. She uses symbols and double meanings to create many levels for the reader to understand and analyze. “Lanval” is a perfect example of the intensity and exaggeration of many cases of “love” in the medieval times.
As is custom with Marie De France, her lai “Lanval” presents the idea of a romance in which the power of fairies and/or magic is present and works to aid or hurt the romance in question. In the case of “Lanval” magic and fairies come to the aid of our protagonist Lanval, and ultimately lead to the formation of a romantic relationship in his life. However, Lanval faces a dilemma as he talks of his love to the fairy woman while rejecting the Queen’s love, and thus realizes he will never be able to see his beloved again, as she had told him never to speak of their romance or he would lose her. Luck turns in his favor though, as even after having spoken of their love, his beloved returns and they leave together. Many may speculate as to why Marie
Dozens of horses are charging through the fair grounds, each hoof vibrating the ground, which causes chaos to erupt. Some horses are white as for a person of royalty, and others a mysterious brown. Through all this chaos, Rosa Bonheur paints what is before her. Her painting is called The Horse Fair. The painting itself is 8 feet tall by 16 feet wide.1 The Horse Fair is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.1 Bonheur uses a panoramic view in her painting.2 The Horse Fair was inspired by the horse market that Rosa Bonheur use to visit on Boulevard De l’Ho ̂pital.1 The building in the upper far left of the painting is called Asylum on Salpetriere, which is located in Paris.3 The people on the hill in the upper right corner of the painting are potential customers evaluating the horses to see which horse to purchase.1 Through this painting, Bonheur shows the power and magnificence of the horses as the owners of these horses are using all of their strength to control them.3 Bonheur included a self portrait of herself on a horse in her painting, which can be located next to the black and white horses that are rearing up.4 The audience can notice the shadows that are coming off each of the horses. The shadows are through the use of chiaroscuro. The shadows make the horses look more real, as if they are actually moving through the fair ground. The author will prove Bonheur’s use of naturalism in her painting The Horse Fair by analyzing Bonheur in terms of historical context, anatomical accuracy, and structural elements.
...’s Lanval and Laustic, were subservient to men in three different ways: by being considered temptresses, by needing men’s protection, and by obeying men’s orders. The lady of Laustic conforms to all these types, and the Queen in Lanval as well, with the exception that as the Queen she has some power. Lanval’s lover breaks some of these trends, but we later learn that she is a lady of Avalon, the mythical land where King Arthur is buried and whence he will come again, and therefore it is not surprising that she does not conform to the standard status of women.
The Ladies Paradise by Émile Zola Zola's portrayal of men and their attitudes towards women may be the relation between that of, the controller and the controlled. One is made to believe that it is the men who control the women, and although this is the case in most instances of the Ladies Paradise, there are two people who ensue in resisting against all odds, at being run over by the machine that captivated and engulfed the late nineteenth century bourgeois household unit. They are the elegant Mademoiselle Boudu and the brushy eye-bowed Monsieur Bourras. One of the main characters, Monsieur Mouret ("governor" of the Ladies Paradise), spectacularly uses the lower classes as a tool to increase the perception of happenings in his store. So as to invoke middle class ladies of France not only to enter his palatial trap set for the nineteenth century consumer, but as well to create their desire of acquiring greater material possessions than they may actually need.
When all the courtly love elements that flow through The Knight of the Cart are composed, in addition to a tale of love affair between Queen Guinevere and Lancelot of the Lake, a document revealing the enchanting history of the Twelfth Century Renaissance is created. Troyes, our powerful storyteller, was able to do this by taking us on a journey with Lancelot, not only though his exciting battles to Guinevere but, through his passionate and enamored thoughts and behaviors that yearns for his beloved.
In The Lais of Marie de France, the theme of love is conceivably of the utmost importance. Particularly in the story of Guigemar, the love between a knight and a queen brings them seemingly true happiness. The lovers commit to each other an endless devotion and timeless affection. They are tested by distance and are in turn utterly depressed set apart from their better halves. Prior to their coupling the knight established a belief to never have interest in romantic love while the queen was set in a marriage that left her trapped and unhappy. Guigemar is cursed to have a wound only cured by a woman’s love; he is then sent by an apparent fate to the queen of a city across the shores. The attraction between them sparks quickly and is purely based on desire, but desire within romantic love is the selfishness of it. True love rests on a foundation that is above mere desire for another person. In truth, the selfishness of desire is the
...tion of both methods can be used to show France’s idea of what love is. Patrick John Ireland argued that France’s idea of love “is a human force controlled by man with great difficulty; it is a spontaneous, natural, and all-consuming power, the experience of which leads to an almost blind passion at times” (133). To be in love, one must be entirely devoted and passionate to one another to the point of blind passion. This is so for Yonec (the Princess jumps out of the tower) and Lanval (Lanval’s complete rejection of the human world until he is brought into the world of his lover). Not only does France portray love as natural and all-consuming, but also shows the private and unearthly nature of love that cannot be contained to the realm of the human world. Rather, love transcends the boundaries of the human world and enters into a world where love reigns supreme.
A Love Affair in The Storm by Kate Chopin Kate Chopin's "The Storm" is a short story about a brief love affair that takes place during a storm that has separated Calixta from her husband and son. The title "The Storm" is an obvious reference to the storm outside, but more importantly to the love affair that takes place. The title refers to nature, which is symbolically used again and again in the story. Chopin uses words like "somber clouds", "threatening roar", and "sinister intentions" to describe the approaching storm. Later in the story those same words in reference to the storm outside, will also be represented symbolically to the storm brewing inside with the love affair.
In an era of frequent violence between knights and kingdoms, there had to be an order for which the sword-wielders could follow so that there would not be uncontrollable bloodshed. In order for there to be a set of laws established for the knights of the Anglo-Saxon era, the law of chevalrie was created. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has some insight into the rules of chivalry concerning one specifically: courtly love. The rules of “courtly love” require wit and deceit with an intention of good behind it. The chivalric rules in this aspect require a good and clever battle with words rather than swords.
In Kleist’s novella The Marquise of O, the narrative depicts the account of the Marquise of O’s, a young Italian window and a “lady of unblemished reputation”(Kleist 68), sudden impregnation and her subsequent attempts to solve the question of the paternity of her child. Through the contrasting interactions between the characters from the Marquise’s estrangement with her family to her eventual reconciliation, Kleist utilizes the search for her unborn child’s father to provide a social commentary on how tensions of uncertainty complicate the search for truth and identity within established gender relationships and traditional social constructs.
According to Capellanus, “Good character alone makes any man worthy of love”. In Lanval, the fairy lover chooses Lanval because he is “worthy and courtly” (Lawall 1319). Lanval gladly accepts the fairy’s love. He promises to “abandon all others for [her]” (Lawall 1319). Capellanus also says that “a true lover does not desire to embrace in love anyone except his beloved”. Therefore, Lanval loves his fairy lover solely. When the Queen offers her love to Lanval, he rejects her because his heart is devoted to his fairy lover. His beloved is one whom he “prized above all others” (Lawall 1320). Lanval desires no one more than his fairy lover. She provides him with “great joy and pleasure” that he can forego the other pleasures of the world (Lawall 1320). The claim she has on him is like that of a king’s.
The tales of King Arthur and many of their numerous characters are well known in literature. The Arthurian world is one of the great myths of modern times. Those great pieces of literature have many common themes, one of them being courtly love “L’amour Courtois”. This paper talks of courtly love as seen in King Arthur’s world especially examining “Yvain or the Knight with the Lion” and “Lancelot: or the Knight of the Cart”. Furthermore, one of the goals is to show how that courtly love could be seen in today in our world.
Love has many definitions and can be interpreted in many different ways. William Maxwell demonstrates this in his story “Love”. Maxwell opens up his story with a positive outlook on “Love” by saying, “Miss Vera Brown, she wrote on the blackboard, letter by letter in flawlessly oval palmer method. Our teacher for fifth grade. The name might as well have been graven in stone” (1). By the end of the story, the students “love” for their teachers no longer has a positive meaning, because of a turn in events that leads to a tragic ending. One could claim that throughout the story, Maxwell uses short descriptive sentences with added details that foreshadow the tragic ending.
Simone de Beauvoir, the author of the novel The Second Sex, was a writer and a philosopher as well as a political activist and feminist. She was born in 1908 in Paris, France to an upper-middle class family. Although as a child Beauvoir was extremely religious, mostly due to training from her mother as well as from her education, at the age of fourteen she decided that there was no God, and remained an atheist until she died. While attending her postgraduate school she met Jean Paul Sartre who encouraged her to write a book. In 1949 she wrote her most popular book, The Second Sex. This book would become a powerful guide for modern feminism. Before writing this book de Beauvoir did not believe herself to be a feminist. Originally she believed that “women were largely responsible for much of their own situation”. Eventually her views changed and she began to believe that people were in fact products of their upbringing. Simone de Beauvoir died in Paris in 1986 at the age of 78.
Heroic love has a unique structure. Within this structure holds the elements of this form of love. Many elements make up heroic love, however an element of heroic love is that the lovers are mostly in two different life situations that causes there love to be forbidden. However, the male figure has to better himself in any way, shape, or form to gain the love and sexual privilege of his lover. Within Andreas Capellanus book “De amore” he gives a guide of on heroic/courtly love. The text clearly demonstrates and explains the reasons behind why courtly love permitted intense emotional and romantic attachment but prevented marital affection. Within the medieval and renaissance era’s writers began to place the theme of heroic love within their works. For example, Chretien de Troyes wrote “The Knight of the cart”. Within the pome there