Marie De France Short Stories Analysis

Right off the bat, I found myself entertained and interested in the words that lied within the text of Marie’s first lay of the lais. I was absorbed, one could say, and couldn’t wait to dig deeper into the remaining eleven short stories. Most of Marie’s short stories are easy to read while understanding the dwelling of the knights and their love contingencies. The Lais of Marie de France is the perfect escape of a good medieval read for anyone who enjoys fairytales, like myself. As of right now, I may not know much about medieval poetry or even much about love, but I can definitely see why the mysterious Marie de France is quite the hot commodity among the medieval readers. Each and every one of her short stories uphold typical elements that

I’m assuming fans of this type of genre would recognize and love; from beautiful women trapped in towers, to handsome knights who perform courageous acts of honor to capture their beloved’s attention, and mysterious boats that sail themselves. (Which for some odd reason I find happening quite often in a mid-century tale) One of her stories is even about a king who constitutes a challenge or quest for the hand of his daughter in marriage: “any man who can carry her straight up the nearby mountain without resting can have her.” These stories by a 12th century abbess literally incorporate every ingredient for a fairytale formula; love, treason and a noble betrayed werewolf.
However, I do believe there is some kind of secret catch to all of these stories.

Excluding the antecedent available princess and the lady in Marie’s version of “Lanval”, most of these beautiful women are married, and the knights who come to rescue them are technically adulterers. Marie chastises none of them, surprisingly. The only characters who are punished suffer pain or death not because of their adultery type affairs, but because their secret love provoked them to commit other actions, such as murder. Undeniably, Marie seems to approve of adultery that is composed of the “purest” love. When his lover’s jealous husband kills one of the flamboyant knights, his death is trumpet to a great extent “unjust”, and the son he helped conceive is doomed to avenge the truth. Clearly, Marie’s stories function in their own universe, where women trapped in unhappy marriages have the lawful right to furnish love elsewhere, which is quite different from the church’s view or the act of courtly love. Her writing was popular, popular enough that we are still reading her works a thousand years later. So apparently there was something in common and vibrant enough about this sequence of events that allowed it to appeal to such an expanded audience. Safe to say Marie’s goals have been satisfied and

met.
Marie’s acceptance of these incidental affairs will probably be slightly disconcerting to modern readers as it would be for more of an older style of thinking. However, her analysis makes the situations seem natural and logical enough that the stories can’t be ravage by it. Many of the character’s husbands are all but vanished from the story, making it easy for them to escape the mind entirely. A couple of the tales are so cruel that it creates a guiltily pit inside the stomach of the reader which leaves you wanting to side with the women. Often the one who commits adultery is relatively pure; gazing from a window of course, but it’s easier to be bias when it is not indecent. Despite the circumstances, there will always be something at least a little beautiful and heartfelt about sending a women you cant have a note hidden beneath the feathers of a swan.