LIT 231
Prof. G. Steinberg

 

Response Paper:  Marie de France

We skip quite a bit of time now.  The Roman Empire has fallen.  The "barbarians" have swept over Europe.  By the second half of the twelfth century (the 1100s), people are beginning to write stories in the languages that developed out of Latin after Rome's fall (French, Spanish, Italian, Provençal, etc.).  Many of these stories had been passed on orally first, sung by minstrels at the courts of kings and nobles, but more and more were beginning to be written down.  A women named Marie, who was apparently a lady at the court of King Henry II of England (who was also Duke of Normandy in northern France), wrote down a group of stories that she called lais and that she claimed came from Brittany (a region in France west of Normandy – there's a nice map at http://www.bugbog.com/maps/europe/france_map.html).  For this reason, her stories (and others like them) have come to be called Breton lais.

So, what we're going to be interested in (as we look forward to Dante, who is the pivotal focus of our class) is how early medieval culture differed from the Roman culture of Virgil and Ovid.  Marie is writing in a language that developed from Rome's Latin.  Do her values and ideas and images of life develop from Rome's culture?

Choose one of the following areas as the focus of your response paper:

  1. Marie's lais are all about love.  What does Marie seem to mean by the word "love"?  It's easy to say that she means lust or some kind of physical attraction, but I think there's more to it than that.  So, given the stories you've read, what seem to be the characteristics of love according to Marie?  How does Marie understand love?  How do people fall in love?  Why do they fall in love with the person that they fall in love with?  What does love require of them?  Is love a good thing?  Why do some people who are in love fare badly?  Are there different kinds of love?  Are some kinds of love good and other kinds bad or not as good?  Does love last forever, or can it decline?  What kills or destroys love or causes it to decline?  Does Marie's concept of love remind you of Virgil or Ovid at all?
  2. How does Marie view women?  Has the perception and protrayal of women changed since the time of Virgil and Ovid?  How?  In what ways is the portrayal of women similar to or different from that in Roman times?  Do Marie's female characters remind you of those in Virgil or Ovid at all?
  3. What are Marie's values?  Certain characters are clearly meant to be viewed positively, and others are clearly meant to be viewed negatively.  Sometimes, the positive characters are not necessarily the characters that we would view positively today.  What can we tell about what Marie valued from her characters?  What are the elements that make up a good person?  What are the elements that make up a bad person?  Who seems to be Marie's audience?  Who does she seem to be writing for?  Whose values is she reinforcing?  Whose values is she questioning?  How do Marie's values compare to Virgil's or Ovid's?

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