Marie De France Essay

Marie de France was known for being the, “Best French Poet” of all time. Although many did not know her personally, many knew of her and her works of literature. She can be described as a romantic person for the way she chose to author her works. However, since she was never really officially known, she remains very mysterious. Marie de France was known for being the author of, “Lais of Marie de France.” A “lay” can also be described as a short narrative poem. Her lais focused mainly on glorifying

THE RESEARCH TOPIC The topic of my research is how courtly love applied the Lais of “Equitan” and “Bisclavret” written by Marie De France. THE RESEARCH CONTEXT Research Questions: 1. What are the effects of courtly love on the situation of women in the middle ages? 2. Can it be between a knight and an unmarried lady? 3. How courtly love seen by society? 4. Is courtly love sinful? 5. What are the reasons behind courtly love? Hebert Moller states that first, the female love object is, as a rule,

modern concepts and beliefs tend to lead to the inaccurate portrayal of the past. The two books, The Lais of Marie de France, by Marie de France and The Wolf Hunt by Gillian Bradshaw are prime examples of how our modern beliefs cause this distortion. The modern version of the novel, which is The Wolf Hunt, portrays the story differently than the Medieval novel, The Lais of Marie de France. The Wolf Hunt has modern themes in it, while the Lais has genuinely medieval themes. These stories are quite

Stories of true love have been told throughout history. In “The Lias of Marie de France”, translated by Robert Hannign and Joan Ferrante, Marie tells stories of true love. In the two stories of Lanval and Yonec, there are many things that point to the love being a figment of the character’s imagination. In both stories, the characters are depressed and lonely. This leads them to make up someone to love. Both imagined lovers to have many traits that make them seem to real to be true. Additionally

Masculinity is represented in various ways within The Lais of Marie de France. Masculinity is sometimes depicted in untraditional ways through animal representation, the dominance of women, and in negative a light through the prideful and selfish acts of the male characters. The qualities, which are often seen as manly, are quite apparent in an animalistic form of masculinity in the deer in “Guigemar,” in comparison to the female lover. The women in “Lanval” show a sense of manhood in their authority

Marie de France uses Yonec and Bisclavret to express the animal/human boundary in the medieval period. In Bisclavret, Marie used the werewolf to show how animals lack reason. In Yonec, Marie uses the hawk man to show how animal natures are correlated with the lower passions. Also in the medieval period animals were thought to not have souls. The soul is defined as a person’s moral or emotional nature or sense of identity. This point is interesting because the body encapsulates the soul, in a way

The wife’s actions often villainize her in this story in comparison to a vulnerable man who has his choices literally stripped from him and who outwardly behaves nobly, even in werewolf form he “...never touched anyone/ nor shown any wickedness” (245-246). At first glance, it appears that Bisclavret has been done a terrible wrong by his wife. She committed the most violent of acts by trapping Bisclavret in a half-animal body, isolating him from society, and taking away his ability to speak of his

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

During the medieval times, Marie de France, unlike the male writers of her time, wrote courtly stories that depicted women who were predominantly featured in the primary roles with empathy and questioned the sexist predicaments women were often subjected to. Women often times struggled to find their voice, but her stories told the perseverance and progress within those constraints. Instead, she wrote of men idealizing wealthy, powerful, independent, beautiful women. She inserts the thoughts and feelings

Marie de France wrote a collection of poems during the high middle ages that reflect the contemporary code of chivalry. Her poetry was classified as courtly love because it mostly involved knights in adulterous relationships with noble ladies. Her collection of twelve poems have themes of love, loyalty, etc. and how they relate to the codes of chivalry that serves as a guide for how a knight should act in order to be honorable. The code of chivalry was created to make warfare among European knights