The Lais of Marie de France

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1100

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Lai 1

Lai 2

Lai 3

Lai 4

Lai 5

Lai 6

Lai 7

Lai 8

Lai 9

Lai 10

Lai 11

Lai 12

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Rings

Rings are a recurring motif throughout the Lais. They were the most popular type of jewelry in the Middle Ages amongst both sexes and could adorn multiple fingers or be worn on a cord around the neck or arms. The looping shape of a ring, which has no beginning or end, symbolizes eternity. Both historically and in the Lais, they were a symbol of a person’s identity and could be exchanged amongst lovers and family members as tokens of fidelity.

Knights give their rings to the ladies they love, even outside marriage, as a symbol of their intention to return. For example, Eliduc and Guilliadun exchange rings on parting so that they will each carry a piece of the other until they are reunited. Given that Eliduc is already married and has exchanged rings before with his wife, such an act indicates a transference of loyalties from Guildelüec to Guilliadun. Although a ring symbolizes eternity, the act of ring-giving can reflect changes in the giver’s psyche, and in this case, the act reinforces that Eliduc, both in terms of his identity and his affections, is changed. In this particular lay, the changing nature of Eliduc’s romantic devotion and the act of ring-giving that accompanies it contrasts with the more steadfast nature of the protagonists’ devotion to God.

Rings also feature in the Lais as a means of identifying babies who were given away to protect the mother’s reputation. For example, in Le Fresne, the baby who shames her mother by virtue of being a twin and seeming to be the product an adulterous relationship is abandoned with a fine cloth of brocade and a large ring. The ring is attached to the child’s arm with a ribbon signifying that she is of noble birth. The lady’s plan works, and Le Fresne grows up as an orphan who knows her noble roots. When Le Fresne runs off with her beloved without being married to him, she shuns her adopted mother and the abbess’s Christian values, while she takes “her brocade and ring, for that might yet turn out to her advantage” (64). Her certainty that she “did not want to leave or forget” this part of her identity accompanies her until her beloved enters a dynastic marriage, and she casts the brocade over her beloved’s nuptial bed (65). The act of parting with the brocade cements her loyalty to her beloved and identifies her to her mother. This item, along with the ring, restore Le Fresne to her rightful position and prove she is of high enough birth to marry her beloved.

In Milun, the baby that is the product of Milun and his lady’s premarital affair is given away to a sister in Northumberland, with the promise that he will receive his father’s ring and a letter when he comes of age. As in Le Fresne, the child will be commanded to keep the objects “until it has been able to find its father” (98). The sealing of this promise with a ring gives it the sanctity of a marriage vow, binding together the family that formed out of wedlock. The protagonists use the ring to make their own secret covenant until they can be reunited and publicize their love to the world.

The Prison Tower

The tower, where ladies married to old, jealous husbands are imprisoned to ensure their fidelity, is a recurrent motif throughout the Lais. In Guigemar, the lady’s tower is a permanently guarded “enclosure” at the foot of the castle keep behind a wall of green marble. The marble, an expensive stone, is symbolic of the old man’s wealth, while its green color represents his envy. Inside the enclosure, the lady’s chamber features a didactic mural where Venus, the Roman goddess of love burns a book by Ovid, the Roman poet of amorous adventures. Thus, the old man tries to imprison the lady mentally as well as physically—not even her thoughts should stray from the marriage. While the lady is allowed to take chaperoned walks, the only unguarded point of entry is the sea, making it seem that it is impossible to escape. The alleged impossibility of escape builds drama and suspense for the audience, even before Guigemar enters the scene. However, when Guigemar enters the enclosure via the sea, the lay shows how the natural love of two young people prevails over the strictures of the prison.

In keeping with the Lais’ promotion of active femininity, the lady is instrumental in escaping the tower and ensuring the lovers’ reunification. While she initially intends to drown herself and put an end to her misery, she chances to land on the ship that eventually takes her to Guigemar. Thus the miraculous and the narrator’s sense of the lady’s righteousness, combine to ensure that she can escape the tower.

In other lays, like Yonec, readers learn that the prison tower stands 20 feet in the air. The unnaturalness of the young woman’s imprisonment and the delusion of the old man who loved his young wife “greatly on account of her beauty”, is reflected in the lofty tower, which floats in the air rather than being grounded in reality (86). Whereas in Guigemar, where the knight must enter the enclosure via the sea, in Yonec the knight must fly in as a hawk. A hawk transforming into a knight is a miraculous feat; however, taken metaphorically, it is a symbol of the lady’s will and right to escape the prison of her marriage. As the narrator writes how “no one can be so imprisoned or so tightly guarded that he cannot find a way out from time to time”, the hawk is testament to the ingenuity of young people who will escape a corrupt old order to be free and unite with each other (101).

The “marvellously high mountain” in Les Deus Amants, is a variation on the tower (82). While it is not an enclosure, this mountain, which any successful suitor of the lady must climb, represents the cruel extremity of a father’s demands. When both the suitor and the lady die after fulfilling of the father’s terms, the unnatural nature of an old man’s obstructions to youthful love are exposed. The mountain, named after the two lovers, thus honors them and shames him.

The Lay as Consolation Song

The lay form encompasses all of the stories in the collection and is also a recurrent motif at the beginning and the end of each individual lay. All stories begin with the narrator announcing that she is about to recite a lay, and they end with a statement attesting to the fact that “the Bretons composed a lay on this subject” (60). The recurrence of this narrative motif, alerts the modern reader to the autonomy of each of the Lais and to the fact that they are about to hear a story that has been repeated many times. Still, in the Prologue, the narrator attests to the efforts she put into making the lays refined enough to be presented to a king as a gift, as she worked “late into the night” putting the story into octosyllabic rhyming couplets (41). She periodically refers to the musical nature of the lay, as in Guigemar which she attests was first performed on harp with a pleasing melody. Here, readers are reminded that the lay was intended to be a source of aesthetic pleasure as well as instruction.

In Chaitivel and Chevrefoil, characters express the intention to compose their own lay at the end of the narrative, as a consolation for loss in love. Following his separation from his married beloved, Tristam, a skilled harpist, fashions a lay to accompany a metaphor he already wrote about the hazel and honeysuckle’s interdependence: “Sweet love, so it is with us: without me you cannot survive, nor I without you” (110). Contrary to Tristam’s fatalistic statement, in the narrative of Marie de France’s lay both Tristam and the queen accept that they must be separated and survive. Arguably, the deathly pain they experience is eased by the composition of a new lay which will immortalize their love. Another composer of lais is the indecisive lady in Chaitivel who wants to memorialize her grief after the loss of her suitors to death and injury. The lady, who does not permit herself the joy of giving her love to a single man, can better utilize the torment of loss, as she applies her creative energy to an activity that immortalizes the woe both she and her knights endured. This female composer, much like the narrator herself, prefers to engage in storytelling over love, as she would rather dedicate a lay to her wounded, surviving suitor than love him. The lay is thus a symbol of memory and survival, as it can outlast the love of perishable bodies.

The dead nightingale in Laüstic, which the unlucky lovers make into a relic, becomes a variation on the lay. The gesture of making something beautiful out of a loss and carrying it on one’s travels is similar to the construction of a lay. Once the “adventure was related and could not long be concealed,” the nightingale—laüstic” in Breton—gives its name to the lay which the narrator hears and records. Thus, the relic, which was in a single man’s sealed casket, is transported more widely after it is translated into a human song.