The Lais of Marie de France

Summary

The Lais of Marie de France are twelve short narrative poems in octosyllabic rhyming couplets, preserved together in one manuscript (British Library, Harley 978) with a general prologue in which Marie dedicates them to a 'noble king', probably Henry II. She says she has heard Breton lais, songs commemorating adventures, and has put them into verse so they will not be forgotten. The tales mix courtly love, magic and Celtic folklore, and many concern lovers trapped in unhappy marriages or separated by social barriers. In 'Guigemar', a young knight indifferent to love shoots a white hind; the arrow rebounds and wounds him in the thigh, and the dying hind declares that he will be healed only by a woman who will suffer for love of him. A magic ship carries him to a lady imprisoned by her jealous old husband; they fall in love, are separated, and are reunited after tests of fidelity. 'Equitan' tells of a king and his seneschal's wife who plot to kill the husband in a scalding bath but die in it themselves. 'Le Fresne' concerns a twin girl abandoned in an ash tree, raised in an abbey, whose patience is rewarded when her identity is revealed on her lover's wedding day. 'Bisclavret' is the story of a baron who becomes a werewolf three days a week; his wife steals his clothes so he cannot return to human form, but the king's kindness and the wolf's gentle nature reveal the truth. 'Lanval', a neglected knight of Arthur's court, is loved by a fairy mistress on condition of secrecy; he breaks it when Guinevere accuses him, and is saved at his trial when the fairy appears. In 'Les Deus Amanz' a king will marry his daughter only to a man who can carry her up a mountain without resting; her lover refuses a strengthening potion and dies at the top, and she dies beside him. In 'Yonec' an imprisoned wife is visited by a knight in the form of a hawk; her husband sets spikes at the window, and the bird-knight is mortally wounded, but their son later avenges him. 'Laüstic' tells of lovers who talk at their windows at night until the husband kills the nightingale she claims to be listening to. 'Milun' follows lovers who communicate for twenty years by a swan carrying letters. In 'Chaitivel' a lady's four suitors fight in a tournament; three are killed and the fourth is wounded in a way that leaves him alive but unable to love. 'Chevrefoil' is a brief episode of Tristan and Iseult. 'Eliduc', the longest, concerns a knight torn between his wife and a princess; when the princess falls into a deathlike swoon, the wife revives her with a flower and retires to a convent so the lovers can marry.

Top Lessons

• Love against confinement

  Many lais feature wives imprisoned by jealous husbands. Marie sympathizes with the lovers and shows love as a force that resists control.

• Humanity in the beast

  In 'Bisclavret' the werewolf behaves more nobly than his human wife. Animals across the lais, hind, hawk, nightingale, swan, weasel, carry meaning and moral weight.

• Preserving stories

  Marie presents herself as rescuing oral tales from oblivion and asserts her own authority as a woman writer. The lais are early meditations on authorship and memory.

Verified Quotes

Medical Lens

The lais reflect twelfth-century medical ideas within a magical frame. In 'Les Deus Amanz' the young man obtains a strengthening potion from a learned relative at Salerno, the most famous medical school of the age, but proudly refuses to drink it and dies of exhaustion, which makes the poem a rare literary allusion to Salernitan medicine. Guigemar's thigh wound, which no physician can heal, joins love-sickness and physical injury, and the thigh wound in 'Chaitivel' is generally read as leaving the knight unable to love physically. In 'Eliduc' Guilliadun's deathlike swoon, apparently from grief and shock, lasts for days without decay before she is revived with a red flower used by a weasel to revive its mate, a striking resuscitation motif. 'Bisclavret' belongs to the history of lycanthropy, which medieval physicians also discussed as a melancholic disease, though Marie presents it as a literal transformation.

• 'Guigemar'

  The rebounding arrow wounds Guigemar in the thigh; the hind prophesies that only a woman's love can heal him.

• 'Bisclavret'

  The baron's periodic transformation into a werewolf and his confession to his wife.

• 'Les Deus Amanz'

  A strengthening potion from a relative at Salerno; the lover refuses it and dies of exhaustion at the summit.

• 'Yonec'

  The hawk-knight is impaled on the spikes at the window and bleeds to death.

• 'Chaitivel'

  The surviving suitor is wounded in the thigh, alive but unable to enjoy love.

• 'Eliduc'

  Guilliadun falls into a deathlike swoon and is revived with a red flower used by a weasel to restore its mate.