Sunday, September 8, 2019

Topic Research: Marie de France


For this segment of my research, I actually decided to include five stories, because I couldn't quite pick between them. I did decide (tentatively) that I think I want to go with the lais of Marie de France, since, as a French major, her work is duly interesting to me. All of them are available at this link (much thanks to Professor Gibbs, who helped me find several English translations!) I haven't decided if this is the version I'll end up going with in the end, but it's currently the version I have saved that included all the texts in one place, so for convenience I've included it here. So without further ado:
  1. Guigemar - The story of Guigemar is very much akin to a classic fairy tale. It includes true love, a beautiful young woman locked away in a tower, and a fair bit of magic. Unlike many fairy tales, however, it also includes (and glorifies) adultery. For so many reasons, I dislike this aspect, so I think it would be interesting to do a take that either cuts the adultery out, or in which the adultery results in negative consequences of some sort, rather than positive reinforcements.
  2. Lanval (or Launfal, depending on the translation) - This lai is especially interesting because it is set in the courts of King Arthur, but told by Marie de France, a French woman living in England. In this story, a noble knight of King Arthur named Lanval falls in love with a beautiful and magical lady, but she tells him that if he ever speaks of her, he will never get to see her again. This is fine until Queen Guinevere tries to seduce him, and to defend his pride and honor he tells her that he already has a lover far more beautiful than her. Guinevere is angry and chaos ensues. This story is just such an interesting take on the court of King Arthur that I think it'd be fun to retell and play that different perspective up even more.
  3. Les Deux Amants (The Two Lovers) - This is one of (I think) the only two lais out of the twelve which Marie de France wrote that does not include adultery. It does, however, have a tragic ending for two young lovers, and again includes many aspects of classical fairy tales - magic, princess locked away in a castle, etc.
  4. Bisclavret - "Bisclavret" roughly translates to "werewolf" in Old French, and that is the topic of the story. Bisclavret, our main character, has a wife, who wants to know why he disappears so frequently for extended amounts of time, thinking perhaps he has a mistress. She gets him to divulge that he is a werewolf, and she gets him to tell her his secret weakness: if he cannot find the clothes he was wearing when he turned into a werewolf, he cannot change back. She betrays him, and he ends up stuck as a werewolf for a few years. In the end, all is well and the treacherous (and adulterous) wife is duly punished.
  5. Le Fresne (The Ash Tree) - This is the only one of these five that I had not previously read, but I ended up being really interested by it. It involves a secret royal twin, true love, and all the makings of a fairy tale.

Photo of an Ash Tree from Wikimedia Commons, taken by Frank Chandler

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