A Second Flowering of the Old French Lais

Notes

• See Horst Baader, Die Lais. Zür Geschichte einer Gattung der altfranzösischen Kurzerzählungen (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1966); John Beston, The Breton Lay and Lay le Freine, Diss. (Harvard University, 1967); Mortimer Donovan, The Breton Lay: A Guide to Varieties (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969); Jean Charles Payen, Le Lai narratif (Turnhout: Brepols, 1975); Prudence Tobin, Les Lais anonymes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Geneva: Droz, 1976); and Renate Kroll, Die narrative Lais als eigenständige Gattung in der Literatur des Mittelalters (Tübingen: Niemayer, 1984).
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• Albert Barth, in his edition of the Lai du Conseil in Romanische Forschungen 31 (1911): 799–872, noted its resemblance to Ombre (812). Leslie Brook also comments on the resemblance in ‘Omnia vincit rhetorica: the Lai du Conseil,’ Studi francesi 44 (2000): 69–76.
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• The editions of the three lais that I quote from are as follows: for Ombre, the edition by Félix Lecoy (Paris: Champion, 1983); for Conseil, the edition by Albert Barth (see note 2); and for Amours, the edition by Gaston Paris in Romania 7 (1878): 407–15. All translations in this essay from old and modern French, German, and Italian are my own.
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• Most scholars of the last forty years or so date Marie’s Lais in the last third of the twelfth century. Jean Rychner in his edition of Marie’s Lais (1968) suggests 1165 as the time of her presentation of her Lais to Henry II, a relatively untroubled time for Henry, before the murder of Becket and the deterioration in his domestic life. The lack of any influence of Chrétien de Troyes, he points out, increases the likelihood of the 1160s as the time of Marie’s Lais (xii). Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby in the Introduction to their Penguin edition of The Lais of Marie de France (London: Penguin, 1986) place them in the 1160s for the same reasons (11–14). Matilda Bruckner in her entry on Marie de France in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William Kibler (New York: Garland, 1995), also dates the Lais between 1160 and 1170 (589). Most recently, Nathalie Koble and Mireille Séguy in their Lais bretons, XIIe–XIIIe siècles (Paris: Champion, 2011) also place Marie’s Lais in the last third of the twelfth century: ‘les Lais attestent la connaissance de récits composés dans les années 50 et 60 (le Brut de Wace, le Roman de Thèbes, le Roman d’Enéas), mais ne font aucune allusion aux romans de Chrétien de Troyes, dont on place la composition après 1170. En appuyant sur ces deux conclusions, on peut supposer que Marie fréquentait la cour des Plantagenêt, l’un des milieux les plus brillants du siècle’ [The Lais show acquaintance with stories composed in the 50s and 60s (the Brut of Wace, the Roman de Thèbes, the Roman d’Enéas), but do not make any reference to the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, whose work we date after 1170. Relying upon this evidence, we can assume that Marie frequented the court of the Plantagenets, one of the most brilliant cultural centres of the century] (47).
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• Gustav Gröber, Grundriss der romanischen Philologie (Strassburg: Trübner, 1902), II (593–603).
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• John Beston discusses the influence of Ombre upon Conseil in ‘The Psychological Art of the Lai du Conseil,’ French Studies Bulletin 33 (2012): 26–28.
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• Renate Kroll (Die narrative Lais) refers to him as a ‘Geschäftsmann’ [businessman] (18). He seems to be older and less spontaneous than the knights in Ombre and Conseil, for he is more established in his way of life: ‘Die Geschäfte und die Entfernung zur Geliebten erschweren die Realisierung des Liebesverhältnisses’ [Business concerns and distance from the loved one interfere with the resolution of the relationship] (19).
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• See John F. Benton, ‘The Court of Champagne as a Literary Center,’ Speculum 36 (1961): 551–91.
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• Felix Schlösser in his Andreas Capellanus: seine Minnelehre und das christliche Weltbild um 1200 (Bonn: Bouvier, 1960) points out that ‘fast alle Frauen, die Andreas Capellanus in seiner Liebeslehre nennt, mehr oder weniger unabhängig ihrem Herrschaftsbereich vorgestanden haben’ [nearly all the women that Andreas Capellanus names in his doctrines of love have achieved control in their sphere more or less through their own efforts] (355). See also Patrick G. Walsh, Andreas Capellanus on Love (London: Duckworth, 1982).
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• Glyn Burgess discusses the knight’s gesture in these terms in ‘Sens & cortoisie in the Lai de l’Ombre,’ in Contemporary Readings of Medieval Literature, ed. Guy Merimier (Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Romance Studies, 1989), 71–91.
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• Anna Tonazzi discussed the role of the well and magic in her article ‘Dal Mondo magico al mondo cortese,’ Francia 17 (1976): 5–11: ‘non sarebbe assurdo pensare alla donna come in preda a una suggestione magica e vederla cattatura dall’incantesimo operato su quella parte vulnerabile che è la sua immagine. E il pozzo costituirebbe il cerchio magico entro cui si compie la fascinazione. Gli elementi del pozzo, in verità (acqua, profondità, circolarità), sono dotati tutti di grande forza cosmica … Non solo dunque la schermaglia verbale, il torneo di parole, la tenzone di acutezze, insomma un’abile tecnica di corteggiamento, avviarebbe la storia alla sua conclusione, ma una certa parte del successo sarebbe da attribuire a questa forza arcana che ha affascinato la donna’ [it would not be absurd to think of the lady as prey to the influence of magic and to see her as under a spell cast upon her vulnerable self, her image. And the well would constitute the magic circle within which the magic is accomplished. The elements of the well in truth (water, depth, roundness) are all endowed with great cosmic power … And so not only the verbal skirmish, the tournament of words, the sharp dispute—a clever technique of courting—would bring the story to its conclusion, but a certain part of the successful resolution would also be attributable to this mysterious force that has captured the lady in its spell] (9). Renart does not directly make this point, but both he and his audience would be quite aware of that age-old association.
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• The nobleman is never called a ‘chevalier’ in Amours; he is referred to as ‘un haut home.’ Renate Kroll (Die narrative Lais) considers him to be ‘ein “hochgestellter” Herr, der wohlhabend und gebildet, nicht aber höfisch ist’ [a socially eminent man who is well-to-do and educated, but not of high birth] (61).
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• Elizabeth Poe, in her Introduction to the Lai d’Amours in The Old French Lays of ‘Ignaure,’ ‘Oiselet’ and ‘Amours,’ ed. Glyn Burgess and Leslie Brook (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), assumes that the relationship becomes physical (209), but that is never made explicit. We are told that ‘la dame ot, je n’en dout mie,/Joie d’ami et cil d’amie’ [the lady had great happiness from her lover and he from her, I am sure] (83–84), but that is not explicit, and does not accord well with the nobleman’s difficulty after that in acknowledging his love for her (100–01).
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• This is an actual instance of la bée—the ineffectual timidity about declaring one’s love—that the knight in Conseil warns the lady against at some length (399–495). Here in Amours we have a self-doubting man who has succumbed to la bée, another instance of the primacy of women in these lais. The young lady advised against la bée in Conseil hardly needed the advice.
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• Sarah Kay comments on Renart’s ambiguities in ‘Two Readings of Jean Renart’s Lai de l’Ombre,’ Modern Language Review 75 (1980): 515–27.
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• The lady’s reference to ‘toute autre rien’ among the knight’s physical endowments has of course sexual implications.
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• John Beston discusses the various sexual moves between the knight and the lady in ‘Sex and Other Games in the Lai de l’Ombre,’ AUMLA 115 (2011): 21–35.
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• See H. Tiemann, ‘Bemerkungen zur Entstehungsgeschichte der Fabliaux,’ Romanische Forschungen 72 (1960): 406–22. Tiemann dates Marie’s Lais between 1165 and 1170 (410), and points out that ‘Schon in der Lais der Marie de France, der Schöpferin oder ersten Meisterin dieses Genre, sind vielfältigen Elemente angelegt’ [Even throughout the lais of Marie de France, the creator or first master of the genre, there are many different strands]. He finds a casuistic approach to love in Chaitivel and asks if it is meant to be taken seriously; he also sees elements in Equitan that to him bring it close to a joke (413).
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• Gröber dates Ignaure at the end of the twelfth century and Lecheor in the first half of the thirteenth century (601); while Baader sets Ignaure a little later, at the beginning of the thirteenth century (263).
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• The edition of Lecheor from which I quote is that of Prudence Tobin, Les Lais anonymes des XIIe et XIIIe siécles (Geneva: Droz, 1976).
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• I quote from the edition by Rita Lejeune, Le Lai d’Ignaure ou Lai du Prisonnier (Brussels: Palais des Académies, 1938).
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