The Hunchback of Notre-Dame Essay

The Lais of Marie de France is a collection of poems that tell enchanting stories of handsome knights, kings, queens, and romance. Although the lais varied in content; the subject of romantic love is the common theme. Since romantic love is the central theme of the lais it is important to define the term. According to the article, The Social Psychology of Love and Attraction romantic love is defined as, “a love that is supposed to stand the test of time, enduring all hardship. Romantic love emphasizes being in love with a certain individual” (Braxton-Davis 1). In the lais Bisclavret, Equitan, Laustic there is a conflict between love and moral responsibility. Many of the characters experience love and tragedy; yet, Marie de France provides a witty insight into loves immoral issues. In the lais loneliness, greed, excitement, and lust are the motivations for many of the characters reckless actions. Marie de France demonstrates how these characteristics combined with romantic infatuation, passion, and a yearning desire; influences corrupt behavior. This behavior then manifested into character traits such as betrayal, adultery, and cruelty that are revealed throughout the lais.

While many works of fiction portray love through a utopian perspective where true love is easy to achieve, the story of Cyrano follows a failed quest for intimacy, where Cyrano’s own tragic flaws stop him from achieving the romance he dreams of. It is these same tragic flaws that help to define Cyrano as a tragic hero in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, and it is these same flaws that eventually lead to Cyrano’s tragic fall. However, some of these flaws are also the admirable traits of the large-nosed hero’s character that also help to define him as hero. Due to this fact, Cyrano is able to gain respect from others, but never truly reaches his ultimate goal of having Roxane’s love. While Cyrano never truly experiences Roxane’s

The admiration of courtly love is no more prevalent theme in Marie's lais than on “Yonec” and “Lanval”. These two lais are showing very aristocratic views on socially states; love of nobility. A love that cannot be explained by a commoner or peasant that cannot show status has nothing to offer, for courtly love because a peasant has no chivalry. This courtly love is often secret in that a knight and a lady are not married to one another but to a different partner making the story adulterous. That secret at the end makes the story ecstatic and tragic; the adhesive of the story is the passion of love that is displayed making the store ecstatic and the secret is the tragedy that love cannot be acknowledged. The principal argument of this essay is to understand courtly love in Marie de France’s lais.

According to American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, “The greatest love was during the Medieval Ages, when noble hearts produced a romantic love that transcended lust” (Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers [2001]). The Lais of Marie de France are primarily concerned with this idea of love--specifically, courtly love--between a man and a woman. Courtly love, a union modeled after the feudal relationship between a knight and his liege lord, became a popular convention in the 12th century (“Backgrounds to Romance: ‘Courtly Love’”). Instead of proving loyalty to a lord, the man would have to prove his love to a woman. Marie de France, however, focuses not just on the idea of love, but also on the differing kinds of love that existed in medieval society. She recognizes love as a force that cannot be avoided and that can be executed correctly or incorrectly; not all love is equal. Marie begins her collection of lais with the stor y of Guigemar, a noble knight who is cursed with the task of finding true love to heal a physical injury.

that Huck and Jim had run a thousand miles down the river and ended up

Abelard, completely focused on his studies, had no intention of falling in love until he met someone just as academically advance as himself. Heloise captured Abelard’s heart and they started their love affair. Abelard feels guilty for having sexual affairs with Heloise before marriage and “during the days of Our Lord’s Passion” (147). And although God blesses sex in a marriage, the church regulates when a couple can be together. The affair lasts until Heloise’s uncle, Fulbert, a Church official, finds out and puts an end to it. However, being the witty, clever man he is, Abelard convinces Heloise to dress up as a nun and practice the nun life so that their affair will remain a secret. Unfortunately, this secret plan lasts until Fulbert finds out and thinks that Abelard’s intentions are to only get rid of Heloise and with that in mind

The Lais of Marie de France serves as a collection of stories that independently convey different romantic tales, each having their own unique presence that come together to create a successful romantic work of literature. The collection’s tales encompass many aspects that can be found throughout the romance genre as a whole and represent some of what make romance a diverse and utterly distinctive genre. In her different accounts of love stories, de France showcases tales that have a range of different themes and common elements of typical romantic literature, many of which stand as some of the most important and necessary parts of a successful romance. De France shows multiple sides of the same elements throughout her tales and in doing so, reveals a variety of commonalities in aspects of romantic works of literature. Through her different tales, de France utilizes variations of elements such as recognition, infidelity, the supernatural, and reunion in her lais in order to make a collection

The question of morality is very prevalent in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Main characters Huck and Jim have different understandings of what is moral compared to what is moral in today’s society. Morality is being able to make the distinction between what is right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Due to Huck’s rather strange and rough upbringing he has a different understanding of what is morally right compared to what others people may think. Hucks understanding of morality depends of his self benefit. Huck bases what is right and what is wrong on if the outcome affects him. For example robbing people doesn 't seem wrong to him because he is the one that benefits at the end. Most people base their morals on the bible, or their religion. People look toward religion to decide what is right and wrong. They pray to their God hoping to receive guidance. When Huck tries this he prays for things he wants and when does not receive what he wants he simply decides this whole “God” thing is a hoax. In Chapter 3 there is a description of the time Huck tried to pray to God, “Then Miss Watson she took me in the closet and prayed, but nothing come of it. She told me to pray every day, and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it warn’t so. I tried it...I must help other people, and do everything I could for other people, and look out for them all the time, and never think about myself. This was including

Families are the backbone of civilization. The culture and worldview of a civilization are transmitted through families. Often, certain idiosyncrasies, many of which would be considered an abomination in today’s culture, become ingrained in a society. In the antebellum period before the American Civil War, one such idiosyncrasy was that persons of African descent were treated as subhuman. In Huckleberry Finn, Huck realizes the absurdity of these beliefs. When Huck leaves for the western territories, he is leaving behind his family and civilization, along with their deformities. In the end, the light, Huck’s pure heart, overcomes the darkness, his deformed conscience by severing his ties with the society in which he was raised.

As seen with the first two lais, “Guigemar” and “Equitan”, Marie uses the lais to express her opinions on righteous and unrighteous love. However, unlike “Guigemar” and “Equitan”, the next two lais in her collection, “Le Fresne” and “Bisclavret”, are not as straightforward in their approaches to righteous and unrighteous love. Whereas in “Equitan” there was the warning that those who resemble the king should take warning of his end, in “Le Fresne” and “Bisclavret” there is not such a didactic lesson on the morality or immorality of love. Instead, Marie utilizes the slightly convoluted natures of the next two lais to surprise the readers with the outcomes of the stories and to further emphasize the complicated nature of love. In order to more easily draw on the comparisons between “Le Fresne” and “Bisclavret”, the lais will be broken up into how the relationships begin, how the lovers face trials, and how the relationships reach their final outcomes.

Abelard and Heloise were lovers who were not supposed to be together. Heloise was the niece of Notre Dame’s Canon Fulbert. She was very intelligent and therefore needed an advanced teacher, who happened to be Abelard. The pair ends up falling in love even though Abelard is twenty years older than Heloise. Their relationship results in Heloise becoming pregnant out of wedlock so they flee to Abelard’s hometown out of Paris. Heloise’s uncle, Canon Fulbert, arranges a secret marriage for them but his ulterior motive is to ruin Abelard’s reputation for marrying a young student. Abelard is then attacked in Paris by muggers. To escape their persecution, Abelard becomes a monk and Heloise becomes a nun. They do not see each other for many years until

“What is love? / Baby don't hurt me / Don't hurt me / No more.” What Is Love by Haddaway. Romantic Love is what gives a story a purpose and sense of emotion. When thinking of Romantic Love, people describe it as two people in a relationship who love each other so much. They can be specific and say it is a relationship between two heterosexual people or it can be between two homosexual people. Romantic Love can be anything and throughout this essay I will be analyzing Romantic Love in Don Quixote and comparing or contrasting it to other texts that we have read throughout the quarter.

Amongst the three love poems examined in this essay, the theme of male or female power in relationships pervades throughout. The views of the speakers are expressed and defined through literary and poetic techniques. This gives the reader an insight into the speaker's problems and dissatisfaction of a relationship, due to an imbalance of power. However there are dissimilarities between the poems - for example where in "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" the female displays supernatural power and dominance over a knight, the Duke in "My Last Duchess" desires psychological power over his Duchess

This term paper will first give a general idea about how adultery was perceived by the civil and ecclesiastical law, then it will remind the reader about the genre of courtly love with a brief overview and finally a literary example of a famous adulterous liaison, the one between Lancelot and Guinevere in Le chevalier de la charrette, will be partially examined.

Well-read authors often write within a framework constructed by their predecessors, either in agreement with, or arguing against prior writers’ values and ideas. Marie de France’s literary access to Ovid’s work provided her with the ability to engage in a dialogue with The Art of Love (2 AD) through her own work. Ovid’s depiction of romance and courtship in The Art of Love provides a moral and romantic framework in which Marie constructs her lais (12th cent.). Her characters counter many of the ideals outlined in Ovid’s work, such as men as dominant actors in their own fates and women as passive receptacles for male action. Specifically, differences in depictions of the predator and prey status of men versus women in Ovid’s The Art of Love directly oppose those in Marie’s Bisclavret, highlighting Marie’s questioning of patriarchal standards for how normative men and women should act in regards to love and romance.