Marie De France Prologue Analysis

Marie de France, supposed author of the series of Lais, recounts her stories through short texts, which are centered on women and their place in the 12th century. There are several supernatural elements throughout her work, which are mainly and explicitly present in ‘Guigemar’ and ‘Yonec’. This can be defined as ‘events or things that cannot be explained by nature or science and that are assumed to come from beyond or to originate from otherworldly forces.’ It is not however the only narrative device she has used in her written pieces. It is with the combination of the supernatural with the self-propelled ship or the transformation of the hawk into a knight, and the natural, the symoblisation of the stick and the rossignol, that Marie de France explores human relations between her characters.

Throughout history males have been perceived as the dominant sex. This notion had been strong in Europe and most of the Western World. The colony of New France, however, was able to break this way of thinking and began to regard their women as an equal. Women’s roles in New France could be described as small but very important as day to day life would not be as efficient without the help of the women of New France. Both European women and Aboriginal women had jobs that were essential to everyday life, women helped contribute to the fur trade, Catholic nuns had major roles in education and health, and the women of New France went against the norm of the modern European woman.

Throughout history, women have constantly been objectified and forced into submission by the male dominated society. Simone de Beauvoir’s philosophical work, The Second Sex, echoes the intense oppression of women and reflects the first wave feminist movement. Her existentialist decoding of genders resulted in the idea of the Other, which explores the phenomenon of women forced into the role of an object, while men are the subject. In the second chapter, “The Girl”, Beauvoir further studies the idea of this oppression during one’s transition from a girl into a woman. Beauvoir states that no matter how much freedom and sense of self a girl holds, she is always forced into the role of the Other in society. Beauvoir 's idea of the Other held

In this section, Jeannette Walls starts off, in the present time by telling the readers about her seeing her mom on the street, that she hasn’t seen in a long time. Jeannette uses emotional words like blustering and fretted to show that seeing her mom was an emotional time. Later in the section, she goes way back into her life to when she was three years old and when her family and her was living in the desert. She started off telling a story of when she was on fire. This story was intense, it was really dramatic on her parents part, her dad was screaming at her and the doctor a lot. Then she talked about when they moved to Las Vegas, her family lived in a motel room, which didn’t last long, they had to leave Vegas in a rush, because her dad was cheating in blackjack and the dealer found out. The last story in the section is where her family drove to San Francisco and stayed in another motel. One night her dad was at the bar, across the street. He left Jeannette and her three other siblings in the room. Jeannette got bored so she decided to play with fire and that let to a big disaster resulting in the whole hotel burning down.

“He [Jeannette’s father, Rex] will not keep me out of harm’s way, he will put me in harm’s way and I have to find a way to remove myself from the situation.” (Diversity Connection). I feel like this quote, from Jeannette, came t directly from the situation where Rex took her out to the bar to help him earn money for alcohol, but yet she still doesn’t see herself as a victim. Even though Jeannette Walls was the victim of sexual abuse at a very young age, she tries to recreate the freedom from her childhood into her adult life, But in her younger years where she has no occupational activities, no nurturing, no money and no friends to turn to, it proves to be very hard to maintain.

Werewolves a very well-known fantasy creature, who have been depicted as vicious beasts who will turn on their best friends. In the lay “Bisclavret” the stereotypes of werewolves is no different. Marie de France redefines the werewolf in a very courageous tale of a man and his loyalty. Bisclavret was a very loyal man regardless being werewolf or not. This was shown in multiple scenarios, such as the interaction with his and wife and with the King. The O.E.D. defines loyalty as “Faithful adherence to one's promise, oath, word of honor” (def.1). Throughout the entire story Bisclavret is faithful to everyone he made an oath too. Others have to break

The Virgin of Jeanne d’Evreux was commissioned by Queen Jeanne d’Evreux, wife of King Charles IV, sometime between 1324 and 1339, and donated to the royal abbey church of Saint-Denis in 1339 according to the inscription on the pedestal (Barbier). French royals in the 13th and 14th centuries often had luxury works of metal and enamel commissioned for churches, palaces, or their private homes (Kleiner).

Marie de France wrote a story about the theme of a “Great love” even though the “love” displayed in the story cannot co-exist in the real world. Lanval is an outcast in his life, despite his loyalty to King Arthur, his generosity to the people he is not accepted in his world.

Another comparison and contrast between Charles Dickens, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Fanny Trollope is how they managed and experienced life within the newly found Americas. Charles Dickens, Alexis De Tocqueville, and Fanny Trollope traveled to the United States to experience what America had to offer and they all experienced something different and new. America is well known for its immigrants and migration to America, this dates all the way back to the 1820’s throughout the Nineteenth Century. Alexis De Tocqueville and his traveling companion Beaumont traveled for nine months by steamboat, by stagecoach, on horseback and in canoes, visiting America’s penitentiaries and experiencing the newly found Americas. Tocqueville spent time interviewing

There were many early expeditions from Europe to North America, most in search of a

Boom! The door flies open and a handsome knight runs into the room and yells, “Come my lady we must go now, for he is on his way”. The lady jumps to her feet and says “My love whom is on their way?” he responds, “your husband is on the way and he has heard of our romance”. The couple joins hands and quickly runs through the castle hoping that they are not seen. Suddenly the king jumps from a dark shadow, stops the couple in a sudden halt, and says, “Where do you think you are going?” With no response from the lady, the king reaches to his side and pulls a rope that releases a large bucket of acid onto the queen and her secret lover, which eats their bodies flesh within minutes only leaving the two skeletons holding each other’s hands. This

When analyzing the French Revolution, the idea of political transformation and citizen involvement play a huge role in actually understanding how the revolution altered from enlightened conversations in salons to its completion, resulting from the French “voice” uniting to halt The Terror that Paris had become. Reflecting back on this event, historians still debate on the specific moment this aristocratic revolution of 1789 turned into the blood-bath radical revolution due to the momentum and contingency that each event has on the overall Revolution. The two authors, Jeremy Popkin, and Timothy Tackett, explain their historical opinion on this period of French history, in which both share a similar

In the short story, The Old Chevalier by Isak Dinsen, the male protagonist, Baron von Brackel reflects on his past sexual encounters with two women whose personalities are extremely different from one another. In many novels, short stories and comics authors would create two women as “polar opposites” for a man’s sexual and/or possessive gaze, which is evident in the text. In order to understand, why a man may be attracted to different character traits in women, I will examine The Baron’s attraction to Nathalie and The Mistress by looking at how literary works men portray women, what they find attractive and the fulfilment that men seek from a woman.

Marie de France incorporates understatement into The Nightingale, to allow the audience interaction with the story and enhance the drama. The most noticeable understatement in Laustic is the lack of conversation that Marie incorporates in the story. According to the author of “Marie de France, Ethicist: Questioning Courtly Love in Laustic,” K. Sarah-Jane Murray simply stated that, “Marie felt that verbal expression of emotion would slow down the actions of her drama and would dilute the intensity of the suggested reactions which are all the more powerful for being left to the imagination of the nightingale.” Furthermore, Marie only includes three external dialogues in the whole story and all of the conversations revolve around the main symbol,

   Though more than two hundred years have separated Sei Shonagon and Marie de France, the scene is much the same. A courtly lady sits in a candle-lit room, with her writing hand poised above a book of parchment. Her face brightens in an instant of inspiration and she scribbles furiously onto the paper. This woman is closely associated with the royal court and is something of an anachronism, a woman author in a male-dominated world. The scene pictured here could have taken place in either Shonagon's late tenth century Japan or the twelfth century France of Marie de France. The differences that exist between these two authors are a result of their differing cultures and personalities.