Selfless Love In Lanval By Marie De France

This story portrays a strong message of selfless love, but also a wickedness that is in our nature as human beings. In this lay, it goes to show how so many women can be self-sacrificing for others such as the maid who undertakes a terrible journey to save her life, the young widow who shares her own breast milk for someone else’s baby, and the abbess who raises Le Fresne on her own. I believe that during this time period women were not depicted as being of importance. There was a heavy emphasis on knights and chivalry, especially in the works of her male contemporaries, who spent most of their time telling stories of the courtly responsibilities of knights. Marie de France switched it up and gave us a sense of modern feminism. One of the

In this story, a knight named Lanval, who possesses qualities of valor and beauty, and is envied by other knights. One day, Lanval decides to go roaming out in the country side when he lets his horse loose and two beautiful damsels approach him, one with a gold dish and the other with a towel. They explain to him that their mistress has sent for him and she awaits in a nearby tent. Lanval leaves his horse and goes with them. Once he gets to the maiden she tells him how she has searched for his love, and if he proves himself worthy she will give him unlimited happiness. Lanval finds the maiden just as beautiful and falls madly in love with her, and he then promises to do whatever she asks of him. The maiden grants him the finest clothes housing in her tent, and unlimited food, but the only requirement that she asks for is that he is to tell no one of their love. They spend some time together when she finally tells him that he must leave and anytime he wants to see her, he must thing of a pure place and she will join him. Later that evening, lanval starts to doubt that she was even real to begin with, until he returns to find his men dressed in nice clothing like him. One evening Gawain is relaxing in the garden with his

The king is extremely protective over the daughter, mainly because of the loss of his wife, years before. One thing that I found surprising was how no matter what, the daughter was always thinking in terms of her father, and what he thought. Marie de France’s most common theme shows through once again in this piece, with love. The tragic ending to the story comes because the young man does not want to be embarrassed by the crowd, by taking a drink of the potion, even though he had gone to great lengths to retrieve it. The boy failed to have self-discipline, resulting in both of their deaths. In this story, Marie de France puts a negative twist on the medieval gender relations. The king makes it apparent that he owns his daughter, and it almost seems like this is something common during this time period. Marie notes that she thinks this type of ownership displayed by the author is unnecessary. It is important to note that the mountain mentioned in the story is in fact, real. Another common theme seen in this story is the use of the supernatural world, in regards to the potion from the aunt. The supernatural can be seen in the story Bisclavret as well, since the story is about how a young knight keeps turning into a werewolf at