Marie De France: the Subversive Poet Of

MARIE DE FRANCE: THE SUBVERSIVE POET OF

ANGLO-NORMAN ENGLAND

______

A Thesis

Presented

to the Faculty of

California State University Dominguez Hills

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

English: Literature

______

Melissa L. Williams

Summer 2016

MELISSA L. WILLIAMS

2016

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... iii

ABSTRACT ...... iv

CHAPTER

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. MARIE’S FEMINIZED HYBRID FORM: SETTING THE LATIN COMMENTARY TRADITION TO THE MUSIC OF THE VERNACULAR ROMANTIC POEM ...... 7

3. “LE FRESNE”: FEUDAL MARRIAGE AND THE FEMINIZED FAIR UNKNOWN ...... 20

4. “LANVAL”: PRIMOGENITURE AND PATRONAGE IN A FEMINIZED FANTASY SPACE ...... 33

5. CONCLUSION ...... 47

WORKS CITED ...... 52

iii

ABSTRACT

Marie de France was a poet who most likely wrote her works during the twelfth century in Anglo-Norman England. Her lais are a collection of twelve short, lyrical romances that she claims to have translated from Breton stories that originally circulated orally. Marie uses the themes and structure of the prologue to her lais to position herself as a critic and commentator of her texts in the predominantly masculine Latin commentary tradition. She applies this critical frame to common romance tropes and motifs that often served to affirm masculine ideals and political structures.

The lais “Le Fresne” and “Lanval” both depict motifs that were familiar to medieval readers, but Marie subverts to motifs to comment on the plight of women in

Anglo-Norman England. Marie uses her status as critical narrator to establish feminized spaces in her stories and give voices to women who are normally silent subjects to feudal politics.

1 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Modern readers are accustomed to reading original texts written by authors whose names are prominently displayed on flashy book covers. In medieval England, readers had no such expectations. Authority and identity were far less important to the vernacular literary culture, and medieval writers were valued for their ability to translate and reimagine existing stories rather than their ability to invent new ones. During the Anglo-

Norman period in the late twelfth to fourteenth centuries, English society was influenced by a multitude of languages and cultures. Old French vernacular literature emerged in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries “as a literature of transcription and translation”

(Kinoshita and McCracken 7). Existing alongside the vernacular culture was an academic, scholarly culture that drew heavily on the ancient Latin tradition of glossing and analyzing important texts. The Latin tradition focused on scholarly, often scriptural or classical texts that were regarded as truth, while the vernacular tradition encompassed works of fiction like lyrics, folk tales, fables and lais.

Marie de France was a well-known literary figure who most likely wrote during the twelfth century in Anglo-Norman England. Among other texts, Marie is believed to have composed a collection of lais, which are brief courtly narratives that she claims to have translated from Breton, the Celtic native language of Brittany. While the lais themselves are clearly situated in the romantic, anonymous, oral tradition of vernacular fiction, Marie uses the prologue to her lais to position herself as a literary critic and

2 commentator in the Latin tradition of glossing and analyzing important texts. She then applies this critical frame to familiar romantic tropes and motifs to create a subversive feminized space that speaks to the concerns of women who lived in Anglo-Norman

England.

Critical readings of Marie’s work vary widely. R. Howard Bloch discusses the characterization of Marie by other critics as “simple, naïve, natural, spontaneous, delicate, modest, clear, sincere, comforting, [and] Christian” (19), noting that these qualities are often aligned with femininity, and argues instead that “Marie is among the most self-conscious, sophisticated, complicated, obscure, tricky, and disturbing figures of her time—the Joyce of the twelfth century…Marie was not only a woman but she was also a poet” (19). Bloch rejects a feminized reading of her works, and fails to take her gender into account for his analysis of her texts. Instead, he focuses on Marie’s use of language, her consciousness of the transformative effect of translation, and the interpretive role of the reader. Although he begins his text by quoting Virginia Woolf, a female modernist writer who was arguably as sophisticated, complicated and disturbing as her male contemporary James Joyce, his comparison of Marie with Joyce and his de- emphasis of what he calls Marie’s feminized qualities characterize Bloch’s reading as distinctly masculine.

Feminist scholars, too, have turned their attention to Marie’s work. In their text,

Marie de France: A Critical Companion, Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken are interested in the cultural and linguistic intersectionality of Marie’s texts, and they emphasize a gendered reading. Their approach is situated in the context of social and

3 political changes taking place in England during the twelfth century, noting “our guiding principle is not the search for authorial intention, but the identification of textual effects that may or may not reflect a gendered perspective on the part of the author”(11). They go on to argue that, “the Lais imagine ways in which women can manipulate and exploit feudal social structures, and they imagine the ways in which those structures may be changed through women’s desires and even women’s agency”(11). Since Marie is often regarded and celebrated as the first female English writer, it is necessary and appropriate to read her texts through the lens of gender while also acknowledging her sophistication and linguistic skill. Gender is especially relevant for readings of medieval romance literature, as the romances often served as models of ideal courtly behavior for knights who were more used to the battlefield than the court, and for the ladies who would become their wives and lovers.1 If the male-authored romances represent idealized courtly behavior from a masculine point of view, then Marie’s translations and adaptations can be seen as a subversion of this patriarchal point of view situated within familiar critical and poetic structures.

The structure and content of the prologue to the lais is modeled after the prologues to prose texts written in the Latin commentary tradition, which heavily influenced the medieval educational system. Scriptural texts were valued above all others, while classical Latin texts also enjoyed elevated esteem among medieval scholars.

The Latin tradition demanded that texts be heavily analyzed, or glossed, by scholars who

1 This idea will be explored in depth later. For a full discussion of how romance literature functioned in Anglo-Norman feudal society, see Georges Duby’s chapter, “On Courtly Love” in his text Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages.

4 sought to uncover deeper spiritual truths in them. In order to be valued within this tradition, texts had to have an identifiable author (or auctor) and conform to Christian values.2 In addition to the classical and scriptural manuscripts that were preserved and circulated throughout the medieval period, vernacular folk tales and romances circulated orally and were preserved in manuscripts. These texts were vastly different than the ones that were valued by the clerks and scholars engaged in the Latin tradition; they still mostly conformed to Christian values, but their main functions were to affirm sociopolitical values and instruct citizens connected to the court about appropriate roles and behavior. Like the scholarly texts, the vernacular texts were produced and circulated in a patriarchal system that mainly served the interests and concerns of medieval men.

Marie’s lais are a hybrid of these two traditions; she uses her prologue to position herself as a literary critic in the Latin tradition and then applies that scholarly, critical stance to her translations of the non-scholarly Breton lais to subvert the tropes and motifs of the vernacular texts and speak for the interests and concerns of Anglo-Norman women.

The lai “Le Fresne” presents the common motif of the fair unknown, in which a child, typically male, is born to a noble father but must be secretly raised apart from his family, with both father and son unaware of his noble origins. These stories typically end with the revelation of the main character’s identity, usually as the result of a series of coincidences. Fair unknown stories commonly address issues of masculine identity formation and paternal lineage, and serve to reaffirm the relationship between noble

2 For an extended explanation of the scholarly Latin tradition see Alastair Minnis’ Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages.

5 paternity and natural superiority, but Marie takes the familiar trope of the fair unknown and manipulates it in a uniquely feminized way. Michelle Freeman notes “Marie's inclusion of what is female within this tradition allows it to encompass a new perspective and experience while, like her colleagues, she continues to utilize familiar materials and literary idioms” (“Sisterhood” 5). In “Le Fresne” the fair unknown character is female, and the story is focused on the formation of her identity. Like the male fair unknowns,

Fresne displays natural superiority and courtly behavior, but unlike male fair unknowns, who display their superiority through feats of martial strength, Fresne’s superiority is evidenced by her feminine beauty and refinement. Marie’s fair unknown story is focused on a female protagonist and is told in a distinctly feminine voice.

In “Lanval,” Marie exposes the paradoxes faced by young knights who were subject to the feudal systems of primogeniture and patronage by subverting the familiar trope of the courtly love triangle. Stories that depict courtly love often contain love triangles where a married lady carries on a love affair with a knight. Many critics have noted the parallels between the relationships of the knight and the lady and the feudal relationship a knight enters with his lord. Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman discuss this link extensively, and in their discussion of “Lanval” they argue that within the feudal system that depended on service and patronage, women acted as mediators between their husbands and their husbands’ vassals. However, in “Lanval,” Marie subverts this relationship and exposes the extent to which the society that depends on it is corrupt. This corruption allows Marie to introduce a feminized fantasy space in the form of Lanval’s

6 faerie lover who can participate in the male-dominated systems as a wealthy and powerful patron without the support of a husband or male guardian.

While “Le Fresne” and “Lanval” address different aspects of love and marriage, both do so from a distinctly feminized point of view. Rather than affirming and supporting the male dominated social structures of Anglo-Norman England, these stories speak to the concerns of the women who are a part of these systems, but wield very little agency within them. Viewed through the lens of Marie writing as a feminized narrator and critic, the lais give female characters, including Marie herself as the narrator, voices to express their interests and to subvert the social structures that have been imposed on them.

7 CHAPTER 2

MARIE’S FEMINIZED HYBRID FORM: SETTING THE LATIN COMMENTARY TRADITION TO THE MUSIC OF THE VERNACULAR ROMANTIC POEM

Marie’s prologue to the lais positions her as both critical commentator and performer of the stories she has adapted and translated from Breton tales. She closely aligns the themes and structure of her prologue with the Latin commentary tradition while undermining and reimagining that tradition by applying it to the anonymous, vernacular Breton stories that lack verifiable auctors. In a direct subversion of the Latin tradition’s emphasis on authority and identity, she coyly identifies herself as “Marie” not in her prologue, but in the intro to her first lai, thus establishing herself as a female- voiced performer and critic of the text. The lais represent a blending of scholarly tradition with poetic tropes and motifs that would have been familiar to Marie’s Anglo-Norman readers. Marie is able to use her position as literary critic to manipulate and subvert romantic themes and motifs normally meant to affirm and uphold male-dominated feudal society to speak for the concerns of the women who lived within that society.

Marie asserts herself as the performer and narrator of her text in the oral tradition of the poets who came before her and simultaneously positions herself as a commentator and critic of the text in the Latin tradition, producing a uniquely hybridized text. Critics like Marilyn Desmond have noted the traditional divide in the Anglo-Saxon period between scholarly prose manuscripts and the anonymous oral poetic tradition:

8 [The] secular, vernacular poetry of early medieval England contrasts

markedly with the authoritative tradition of the monastery and the

commentary. The Anglo-Saxon poetry preserved in manuscripts represents

a performative, rhetorical poetics that brackets the authority of the poet's

signature...and emphasizes the presence of the nameless scop who

assumes responsibility for the poetic text. (Desmond 581)

Although Marie names Breton, not Anglo-Saxon, sources for her translations, she was likely aware of England’s oral, vernacular culture immediately preceding the Anglo-

Norman invasion. If we view Marie as a sort of scop who performs and narrates the lais for an Anglo-Norman audience, we can gain some insight as to why she excluded any discussion of identity or authority in her prologue. The absence of an auctor for her stories connects them to an anonymous, oral tradition, but she also links them to the ancient Latin manuscript tradition with her prologue. Although critics cannot reach a consensus on the exact definition of a lai as opposed to other romance genres, most agree that lais were lyrical texts meant to be sung or performed orally. Bloch explains, “In spite of the etymological murkiness surrounding the origin of the word lai, of this there can be no doubt: the lai is linked to sound, to music, to song, and to poetry, words with song”

(30). Marie also constantly refers to the oral tradition her stories arose from in her prologue and throughout the text:3

Then I thought of the lais I’d heard

I did not doubt...

3 Underlined words are for emphasis

9 those who first began them…

composed them in order to preserve

adventures they had heard.

I have heard many told

and I don’t want to neglect or forget them.

To put them into word and rhyme

I’ve often stayed awake. (33-42)

Hanning and Ferrante explain that the original Anglo-Norman word ditié, translated as

“word” in line 41, can also be glossed as a “moral saying or song” (29), which further suggests an oral/musical emphasis in the lais. Marie evokes the oral nature of the lais elsewhere; in the introduction to the first lai Marie says, “Listen, my lords, to the words of Marie” (Guigemar 3). Throughout the text she repeatedly refers to lais she has heard, to the readers who enjoy listening to them, and to her own act of committing the oral stories to writing.

By highlighting the oral, performative nature of her sources, Marie positions herself as a performer of the lais, much like one of Desmond’s anonymous Anglo-Saxon scops. Desmond argues that the anonymous, oral nature of Anglo-Saxon poetry can have feminist implications:

The anonymity of the Anglo-Saxon elegy thus emphasizes the voice

represented by the text as an index to the possibilities for production and

recuperation of poetic meaning. Whereas the gender of the author

10 becomes insignificant in such a context, the gender of the speaker

becomes all-important. (583)

Similarly, Marie’s gender becomes important to her textual performance of the lais, and her status as narrator asserts that the lais can represent a space for the concerns of twelfth-century women to be (literally) voiced by a female narrator. Jerry Root affirms these feminist implications:

Marie, as female narrator, is breaking into the space of the speaking

subject...By having renounced the project of translating stories from Latin

into Romance, Marie places herself somewhat outside of the traditional

canon. Although this gesture does not necessarily create a new space to

speak, it frees her from the constraints and limitations of whatever female

space might have existed in a more traditional narrative. (18)

Root discusses the limited spaces for women to speak in legal proceedings, as described in a thirteenth century legal text, the Coutumes de Beauvaisis of Philippe de Beaumanoir, and describes how Marie adapts and subverts those spaces in her lais. However, if we view Marie’s speech in terms of the masculine-dominated Latin prologue tradition, and

Marie’s position as a commentator of the text, we can see that she has created a new space for a woman’s voice to be heard—the critical, didactic space formerly occupied only by male lecturers.

In the prologue to her lais, Marie appropriates the themes and structure of the

Latin commentary tradition, a familiar medieval scholarly form, in an attempt to endow her translations of the Breton lais with scholarly Christian value. Marie was surely aware

11 of the subversive nature of her application of the Latin tradition to the anonymous, secular Breton tales; even if her lais could have educational potential, her anonymous sources were in direct conflict with the values of the Latin tradition and the importance of auctoritas. The “Medieval theory of authorship,” according to Alastair Minnis, demanded that texts were analyzed, or glossed, in terms of the Latin auctores tradition, thereby providing “the basis of the medieval educational system” (13). This analysis typically occurred in lecture courses centered around a Latin writer or a scriptural text, and the opening lecture served as a prologue to the manuscript when the lectures were prepared for publication (Minnis 2). Minnis defines the Medieval auctor as, “someone who was at once a writer and an authority, someone not merely to be read but also to be respected and believed” (10), and goes on to explain that texts were valued for their degree of auctoritas:

To be 'authentic', a saying or a piece of writing had to be the genuine

production of a named auctor. Works of unknown or uncertain authorship

were regarded as 'apocryphal' and believed to possess an auctoritas far

inferior to that of works which circulated under the names of auctores.

(11)

Older, classical texts and scriptural texts were valued above all others in the scholarly tradition of the medieval period to the point that “No 'modern' writer could decently be called an auctor in a period in which men saw themselves as dwarfs standing on the shoulders of giants, i.e. the 'ancients'” (Minnis 12). In this sense, the Latin tradition aligns with the values of vernacular literature. Vernacular writers were not engaged in the

12 creation of new stories; rather, they translated and reworked stories that had been handed down from previous cultures, such as the Bretons. In the Latin tradition, texts were valued hierarchically based on their “intrinsic worth,” or the extent to which they conformed to a Christian truth:

The Bible was the authoritative book par excellence. At the other end of

the scale came the fables of the poets, employed in the teaching of

grammar. As fictional narrative, fable could be dismissed by its critics as

lying; many medieval writers expressed their distrust of such

fabrication...The usual defence was that fables, rightly understood,

provided philosophical and ethical doctrine: after all, Priscian had said that

fable teaches and delights, and had commended the fables of Aesop.

(Minnis 11)

Into this complex set of textual relationships, Marie enters with a work that subverts the customary dynamics by applying the scholarly frame of the Latin prose tradition to vernacular, fictional poetry. She opens her lais’ prologue by acknowledging her eloquence as a gift from God, immediately aligning the text with Christian ideals in a maneuver to establish intrinsic worth: “Whoever has received knowledge/and eloquence in speech from God/should not be silent or secretive/but demonstrate it willingly”

(Prologue 1-4). She continues with a reference to Priscian, a celebrated Latin auctor, and acknowledges the skilled reader’s act of glossing a text:

The custom among the ancients--

as Priscian testifies--

13 was to speak quite obscurely

in the books they wrote,

so that those who were to come after

and study them

might gloss the letter

and supply its significance from their own wisdom. (10-15)

She shows further concern with establishing the intrinsic worth of the lais by asserting that studying such texts to discover the deeper meanings hidden in obscurity can help readers avoid vice, implicitly bolstering the value of the text as an expression of Christian belief:

He who would guard himself from vice

should study and understand

and begin a weighty work

by which he might keep vice at a distance

and free himself from great sorrow. (Prologue 23-27)

The “weighty work” of glossing the stories endows them with the Christian ideal of avoiding vice, both for Marie as commentator/narrator and for her readers. Marie repeatedly refers to the unnamed, pagan Bretons as the source of her lais, which, like fables, were fictional narratives that had the potential to teach and delight.4 Marie’s assertion that texts perceived as not fully living up to the ideals of intrinsic Christian worth are in fact infused with such values both conforms to and subverts the Latin

4 Scholars have not been able to definitively identify sources, Breton/Celtic or otherwise, for many of Marie’s lais. It is possible that Marie invented many of the lais using Celtic themes and motifs.

14 commentary tradition. Furthermore, her suggestion that the unnamed Bretons are the auctors of the stories (thus endowing the lais with a degree of auctoritas) is subversive by suggesting that the anonymous Bretons were worthy of auctoritas, since, according to the Latin tradition, the lais would have inferior auctoritas because of their uncertain authorship. Furthermore, her choice to translate from Breton rather than Latin texts aligns the Bretons, a pagan culture that preceded the Norman presence in England, with the value of the ancient Latin thinkers.

The structure of Marie’s prologue mimics that of the Latin tradition, adding another layer to her appropriation of the form. Medieval prologues conformed to structural paradigms established by the classical thinkers, and were arranged around a series of common headings:

The most popular series of headings employed in twelfth century

commentaries on auctores was as follows: the title of the work, the name

of the author, the intention of the author, the material or subject-matter of

the work, its mode of literary procedure, its order or arrangement, its

usefulness, and the branch of learning to which it belonged. (Minnis 4)

In the prologue to the lais, Marie explicitly discusses her intentions in translating the lais, and the usefulness of studying her translations: to avoid vice by undertaking the work of study and translation (Prologue 1-27). She identifies the subject matter of her text, and the materials from which it was composed as the Breton lais she had heard, and she explains her literary procedure of translation from Breton into vernacular, metrical

Romance; however, she fails to identify herself, or any sort of authentic auctor for her

15 text. In fact, she does not give us her name until the first few lines of the first lai,

“Guigemar,” and even then she only identifies herself as “Marie.” Throughout the text of the lais she fails to give readers any other identifying information about herself, and only refers to the original sources for her stories as “Bretons.” By using the elements and structure of the Latin tradition for her own prologue to the Breton lais, Marie combines and subverts two distinct traditions in order to create a unique space for voices and concerns that were traditionally excluded. Without a familiar and recognizable frame, she would have risked her highly subversive work being critically rejected by the patriarchal

Anglo-Norman society.

While Marie’s prologue to the lais is modeled on the Latin commentary tradition, the stories themselves follow familiar tropes and themes associated with medieval romance literature, which allows her to comment on the social structure of Anglo-

Norman culture, especially the conditions women faced within that culture. In the lais

“Le Fresne” and “Lanval,” Marie subverts familiar romance tropes such as the fair unknown and the courtly love triangle to comment on the problems and paradoxes presented by the feudal system of Anglo-Norman England. Although Bloch prioritizes what he defines as Marie’s consciousness of language and the sophisticated ways in which she uses it over her gender, he also acknowledges the feminist implications of her work:

Underneath our analysis lie, of course, the questions and tools of feminist

analysis, a consciousness of Marie’s subject position, of the difference of a

feminine voice against a background of a social, political, and cultural

16 world that was overwhelmingly male. Her works induce a constant

awareness of the dynamic of power relations between the sexes, especially

the ways in which a secular, aristocratic model of marriage worked to the

detriment of women. (Bloch 318)

Marie’s application of elements of the masculine Latin commentary tradition to stories that contain familiar tropes from the romance literature of the time further emphasizes the significance of her gender. The commentary tradition is decidedly masculine: the church fathers controlled the creation of didactic manuscripts. The romance tradition is also decidedly masculine. French vernacular romance literature served as an instructional paradigm of feudal culture, whose values it modeled and affirmed. Its purpose was to both entertain and instruct readers. Even though female characters are important to the stories as objects that inspire chivalric behavior in the knights, the stories are still typically centered on the male protagonists. Marie’s stories, in contrast, feature female protagonists, and the stories frequently privilege their experiences and desires over those of the male characters. Roberta Krueger explains the paradoxical portrayal of women in romance literature: “they were both privileged centers of attention, and marginal players in a game whose rules were written by men” (137).

Krueger attributes to Marie “the origins of femino-centric romance” and notes that “her aesthetic choices and her narrative voice establish her feminine difference within masculine courtly discourse” (138). Marie uses her newly created feminized, critical space to comment on the social conditions of England after the Norman Conquest and concerns of Anglo-Norman women living within those social conditions.

17 Marie’s lais speak for the plight of women living within the Anglo-Norman feudal system. “Lanval” and “Le Fresne” both address how specific aspects of feudal politics limited the agency of some members of Anglo-Norman society. “Lanval” addresses the paradoxes that the corrupt feudal system created for both young knights and their female counterparts. In “Le Fresne” Marie highlights the way that Anglo-Norman marriage practices affected women in particular. In reading both texts, the socio-political frame must be treated as a constitutive element.

In the feudal system of Anglo-Norman England, all land and property legally belonged to the king and were distributed via a system of vassalage and patronage.

Knights would pledge themselves as vassals to the king, who would reward them with land and property. In exchange the knights promised military support and a share of the profits from their land to the king. The knights, in turn, were patrons to vassals of their own, who also pledged military service to the king as part of their lord’s retinue. The right of primogeniture, the idea that the exclusive right of inheritance belongs to the oldest male heir, was another important element of the feudal system. With some legal exceptions, most notably in the case of widows, women were excluded from land and property ownership; in fact, lords often gave wives to their vassals as property.5 These marriages often also served to forge alliances between powerful lords. Sharon Kinoshita explains the importance of marriage within the feudal system: “In the middle ages,

5 Cecily Clark notes: “Widows enjoyed the greatest freedom [among Anglo-Norman women]. With a marriage portion of her own, plus a third of her late husband’s property, a widowed noblewoman needed only to pay her overlord the requisite fee for self-determination”(157). For a complete discussion on the legal status of Anglo-Norman women, married or otherwise, see Women in Anglo-Saxon England and the Impact of 1066.

18 marriage was not only the institution through which the feudal aristocracy reproduced itself, it was the practice through which it conducted its politics, legitimized its ambitions, and expressed its desires” (Kinoshita, “Two for the Price of One” 50). Medieval romance literature served to establish and affirm the values of the feudal system.

Marriages in romance literature often manifested as courtly love narratives. The trope of courtly love was a literary construct that typically involved an unmarried knight carrying on an affair with a married lady, usually the wife of his lord. Georges Duby has famously argued, “Courtly love was a game, an educational game. It was the exact counterpart of a tournament” (Duby 57). Duby explains the adulterous nature of courtly love by arguing that the lady served as a surrogate for her husband’s patronage of the young knight. Kinoshita and McCracken elaborate on Duby’s assertion:

In this perspective, courtly love does not so much challenge the

hierarchical relationship between lord and vassal as graft itself onto it. The

lover’s profession of obedience and devotion simply substitutes the lady in

the place normally reserved for her husband, maintaining or even

intensifying the central values of homage. (Critical Companion 54)

In this context it may seem as though women were afforded an unusual amount of agency in courtly love narratives, but Duby goes on to argue that courtly love “was a man’s game” in which “the woman is a lure, like those mannequins which the new knight threw himself at during the athletic displays which followed his dubbing ceremonies” (Duby

58). So while women did enjoy a degree of agency in the game of courtly love, the game was a man’s game, and the women could only act on behalf of their husbands in order to

19 further the social education of young knights.6 The stories also served to model ideal female behavior within the feudal system. Jerry Root explains, “The narration that addresses or describes women tends to be both prescriptive and proscriptive; it imposes an image of women as the ideal object of male desire. Beyond this image lies only domesticity or transgression” (15). However, Marie’s feminized space depicts a different treatment of the courtly love trope. She neither prescribes nor proscribes behavior for her characters. Kinoshita and McCracken observe that, “In the Lais, however, the relationship between vassalic and marital or erotic love is never as straightforward as

Duby’s model suggests” (55). They describe the variations on the model in the lais: “a cast of adulterous lovers who are outsiders (Guigemar, Yonec), with no connection to their lady’s husband, and unmarried maids (Les dous amanz, Milun), who choose lovers in defiance of paternal strictures” (55). In the same way that Marie uses and subverts familiar and identifiable elements of the Latin prologue tradition, she also uses and subverts the courtly love trope to create a space to speak to the various ways in which the feudal treatment of marriage affected Anglo-Norman women.

6 This trope appears in “Lanval” when Queen Guinevere courts the knight Lanval, but Lanval’s rejection of Guinevere subverts the trope and makes space for Lanval’s faerie lover to serve as a patron.

20 CHAPTER 3

“LE FRESNE”: FEUDAL MARRIAGE AND THE FEMINIZED FAIR UNKNOWN

The trope of the fair unknown is one romance trope that Marie subverts and manipulates to address the concerns and limitations of Anglo-Norman women. In fair unknown stories a child, typically male, is born to noble parents, but must be secretly raised apart from his family, with both father and son unaware of his noble origins. These stories typically end with the revelation of the main character’s identity, usually as the result of a series of coincidences. Marie conforms the familiarly masculine motif of the fair unknown to a female-centric plot voiced by a female narrator, subverting feudal patriarchal values rather than affirming them.

“Le Fresne” contains all of the traditional elements of the fair unknown motif:

“Le Fresne” begins with two knights, “both were rich men,/brave and worthy knights”

(73), who lived near each other. The wife of one knight becomes pregnant and gives birth to twin sons. The lord sends word to his neighbor that “he would send one to him to raise,/ and name the child after him” (73). The wife of the neighboring lord, who is described as “deceitful and proud, /evil-tongued and envious” (27-28), claims that a woman can only conceive twins by lying with two men, but her words end up condemning herself when she gives birth to twin daughters. In order to avoid shame, the lady’s attendant abandons one of the girls at a convent and the abbess, who names her

“Fresne” after the ash tree in which she is abandoned, raises the baby as her niece. The girl grows up to be remarkably noble and refined, attracting the attention of a noble lord

21 named Gurun. The two become lovers, and eventually Fresne leaves the convent to live with Gurun as his concubine. At the encouragement of his vassals, Gurun eventually agrees to be married to a more suitable bride, who just happens to be Fresne’s twin sister,

Codre. Fresne’s true identity and lineage are revealed on the wedding night, and the marriage is annulled so that Gurun and Fresne can be married. Fair unknown stories typically served to affirm male-dominated feudalistic values, but, similar to the way she subverts the masculine Latin commentary tradition to assert her position as a female narrator and commentator of the lais, Marie uses the familiar fair unknown motif to represent a rare female voice that speaks for the concerns and interests of Anglo-Norman women.

In order to emphasize the subversive nature of her lais that manipulate recognizable male-centered romance tropes, Marie presents the world of “Le Fresne” as a distinctly feminine space. One way that she signals this feminine space is through her defiance of common attitudes about women in the Anglo-Norman period. These attitudes were informed by medieval assumptions about women’s “natural depravity”(Duby 9), and as feudalism spread such attitudes endured:

[The] anti-feminist mood persisted–and in this area both lay and clerical

thought converged once more–and was now transferred to the couple; it

was motivated by fear of the wife and by the threefold anxiety that–as

people felt and knew–she was at once inconstant, lustful and a witch.

(Duby 20)

22 The wife’s deceitfulness and her accusation against the other woman in the beginning of the story make “Le Fresne” seem as misogynous as the male-authored romances, but

Marie subverts this familiar romance motif and brings it into her feminized space to serve her gynocentric narrative. The evil, dishonest woman is something of a stock character in romance literature. She is often a flat character who experiences very little character development through her narrative, but Marie’s dishonest woman must suffer the consequences of her actions, consequences which drive the gradual repentance and growth of her character throughout the lai.

Marie subverts and manipulates feudal values by using “Le Fresne” to highlight the tensions between the Christian church and the feudal system, and in the process, to open a feminized space that constantly negotiates between the two. Both institutions struggled to assert their control over Anglo-Norman society, and their priorities and ideals often opposed each other, though both demanded the obedience of women to patriarchal dictates. Several elements of “Le Fresne” address the tension between

Christian and feudal values and view such tension through a feminized lens. The first conflict arises when the deceitful wife decides to kill one of her twin girls before her attendant convinces her to abandon the baby instead. In Christian terms, murder is a far greater sin than infidelity, but the wife states that she would “rather make that up to

God/than live in shame and dishonor” (93-94). The wife feels the pressure of her gender role in the feudal system to the extent that she is willing to risk eternal spiritual punishment to avoid social shame. Because the feudal system was based on a distribution of wealth through paternal lineage and primogeniture, it was crucial that an heir’s

23 paternity was clearly defined. An unfaithful wife would disrupt the values of primogeniture and male-centric inheritance since the paternity of her children could not be verified.

The reformation and growth of the deceitful wife is triggered when she gives birth to twin girls. The wife immediately realizes the damage she has done, and remarks,

“Whoever slanders another/never knows when it will rebound on him;/ he may speak badly about someone who’s more deserving of praise than he” (87-90). Although the wife in the lai makes this comment, it is hard to not also view it as Marie’s narratorial commentary, in which Marie asserts her ability as a moral, Christian woman to comment on the moral conduct of the characters in the story. Once the twin daughters are born, the story enters a distinctly feminized space. Fair unknown stories typically focus on the exploits of the unknown knight as he seeks out chivalric adventures in order to affirm and earn his noble lineage. “Le Fresne” subverts this tradition. After Fresne and her twin are born, male characters and male voices all but disappear from the story. The baby girl passes from her mother to the female attendant, who then leaves her in the female community of the abbey. A male porter finds her, but he quickly passes her on to his widowed daughter. Finally, the abbess adopts her and gives her a name. Not only does this transfer from woman to woman signal the story’s feminized space, it also parallels the male characters’ original desires:

The abbess's act of charity, her adopting, baptizing, naming, and raising

the daughter of another, reminds us of the original plan of the neighbor

who wished to have one of his sons sent to his childless friend to be

24 named and educated. A similar plan has been implemented, but in secret,

and within the confines of the hidden feminine world. (Freeman,

“Sisterhood” 16)

The abbey presents an interesting intersection of feudal and Christian values since joining an abbey was one of the few respectable options for unmarried medieval women. By presenting female characters who inhabit a variety of roles outside of marriage, the feminized space in “Le Fresne” rejects the idea that an Anglo-Norman woman’s only option was to wait for her father or lord to match her with a suitable husband.

The feudal system enables another subversion of Christian values in “Le Fresne” when Gurun decides to become a patron of the abbey to gain access to Fresne:

To be a member of that community

he gave generously of his goods--

but he had a motive

other than receiving pardon for his sins. (267-270)

Gurun’s dishonest patronage violates Christian values, and this violation is enabled by the feudal system. Both systems prohibit Gurun’s access to Fresne, but he is able to manipulate the feudal structure to gain sinful access to his lover. Interestingly, Gurun’s desire to commit the sin of fornication with Fresne does not threaten his moral reputation.

Because Fresne is a woman, their fornication only puts her reputation at risk because of the possibility of her becoming pregnant out of wedlock. Gurun’s sin is framed as a dishonest application of patronage. Furthermore, Fresne must remain Gurun’s concubine and threaten her own spiritual purity and feudal reputation, which illustrates the conflict

25 between the marriages based on mutual choice supported by the Church and marriages as political alliances promoted by feudal values. If Gurun and Fresne had been able to marry according to their wishes when they first met, Gurun’s sin of dishonest patronage and

Fresne’s sin of fornication could have both been avoided.

One way that the conflict between the values of the church and the values of feudalism played out, according to some critics, was in the disagreement over appropriate marriage arrangements. During the late eleventh century and throughout the twelfth, the

Church increased its influence over marriage practices (Duby 16). These changes came about partially through the same commentary tradition that Marie relies on in her prologue. Among the “various aspects” that led to the “spiritualization of marriage” were

“the relentless examination of texts and their glosses, in order to establish marriage as one of the seven sacraments. In the process, the work of both the cannonists and commentators on the divine page (divina pagina) resulted in basing marriage on mutual consent” (Duby 17). Marriage based on consent was in direct conflict with the values of feudalism, since, as a rule, feudal marriages were arranged based on politics and strategic alliances; the wishes of the couple were irrelevant. The trope of courtly love frequently addressed this tension between marriage based on love and choice and marriage based on politics. As Duby explains, “The love based on choice which courtly lyrics described also claimed to unite first and foremost two beings rather than two families, two legacies, two networks of interest”(19). Courtly romances illustrate how feudal politics can interfere with consensual love, and prevent lovers, especially women, from marrying a mate of their choosing rather than one chosen for political or social advancement.

26 “Le Fresne” illustrates the way in which the feudal system prevented the companionate marriages endorsed by the Church. Even though “the knight who took her away/loved and cherished her greatly,/and so did all his men and servants”(307-09),

Fresne cannot be Gurun’s wife. Kinoshita explains how feudal politics prevent their union:

However irregular its origin, Gurun's love for Fresne in no way

compromises the feudal politics of lineage. Gurun installs Fresne as his

concubine, and though she is loved and honored by all...no one ever

suggests she might be a suitable bride for her lord...Even the swaddling

cloth and gold ring her mother had given her to show 'that she came from

a noble family’...fail to signify: without an identifiable lineage she is

nothing more than a foundling with no value on the marriage market.

(Kinoshita, “Two for the Price of One” 36)

Furthermore, even if Fresne’s lineage could be confirmed, she and Gurun would not be able to enter into a marriage contract on their own. Duby explains, “It is clear that in this social milieu all marriages were arranged. It was men that spoke to one another, either fathers or men in paternal positions, such as the lord of the domain in the case of widows or the orphaned daughters of a dead vassal” (25). Fresne does not have a father or lord to arrange marriage for her, and she cannot enter into a marriage contract by herself, so she is relegated to the position of concubine, in spite of the love she and Gurun have for each other.

27 “Le Fresne” also highlights the double standards for women created by both

Christian and feudal ideals. Fresne can live openly with Gurun as his concubine, but their relationship must be conducted in secret at the abbey, highlighting yet another double standard for medieval men and women. In the feminized, Christian environment of the abbey, the female virtue of sexual purity is valued above all else. If Fresne were to become pregnant, her sin of fornication would be revealed, and the abbess would condemn her sinful actions, but in the masculine, feudal environment, men like Gurun could conduct affairs fairly openly, and take lovers out of wedlock without sullying their chivalrous reputations. Once the couple is removed from the convent the possibility that

Fresne may become pregnant no longer threatens her Christian reputation. The only conflict is that Fresne cannot bear an appropriate heir to Gurun within the feudal system’s dictates.

The structures of feudalism disrupt the story once again when Gurun’s men demand that he find a suitable wife who can bear a legitimate heir. The men depend on

Gurun’s patronage. If he were to die without an heir to inherit his wealth and property, his men would be without a lord and patron to support them. Gurun is bound by the expectations of the feudal system; his men threaten that “They would no longer consider him their lord/or willingly serve him/If he didn’t do what they wanted”(325-327).

Coincidentally, the wife chosen for Gurun is Fresne’s twin sister, Codre. Her name, which means “hazel tree,” presents an interesting point of comparison between the sisters: “The hazel tree bears nuts and thus gives pleasure;/the ash bears no fruit” (339-

340). The focus is on Codre’s ability to produce a proper feudal heir, and not on the

28 wishes of Gurun or either of the women.7 Gurun’s marriage to Fresne’s sister further emphasizes Fresne’s natural courtliness and humility–qualities that conform to both

Christian and feudal ideals for female behavior even as they contrast Codre’s strictly reproductive value. Even though Fresne is losing the man she loves, she conforms to the dictates of the feudal system and accepts her situation with goodness and humility, and even helps with the wedding preparations and waits on the bride-to-be, a circumstance that affirms her intrinsic worth as a virtuous woman.

Marie subverts the familiar trope of the fair unknown to make various assertions about female identity and identity formation. Fair unknown characters are always secretly the sons of nobles and are usually naturally endowed with superior chivalric qualities, raising issues of masculine identity formation and paternal lineage that inevitably reaffirm the relationship between noble paternity and natural superiority.8 When Fresne’s mother sends the infant to be abandoned at the abbey, she ties a valuable ruby ring around her arm with a silk cloth, and wraps her in an embroidered silk robe so that

“Wherever the little girl might be found/everyone would know beyond doubt/that she came from a noble family”(132-134). The inclusion of valuable objects to indicate the baby’s noble lineage, an important element of male fair unknown stories, suggests that

Fresne’s noble heritage is equally important as a male fair unknown’s; like them, Fresne is naturally endowed with superior courtly qualities. However, whereas a male fair

7 In order to eliminate the threat of her son-in-law’s concubine, whom he obviously cares for, Fresne’s mother suggests that her son-in-law should “marry her off to some good man” (371). This suggestion places Gurun in the position of Fresne’s lord, and allows him to arrange a marriage for her to another man. 8 For a survey of well-known fair unknown stories and a discussion of how they treat issues of naming and identity, see Naming and Namelessness in Medieval Romance by Jane Bliss.

29 unknown lives up to his noble lineage by performing superior martial feats, the feminized fair unknown Fresne lives up to hers because she is “beautiful” and “refined,” “noble and cultivated/ in appearance and speech” (237-240). Although Fresne accepts her place within the feudal system, Freeman reads a subversion of feudal values in Fresne’s selfless behavior:

This ideal woman's actions which restore harmony are portrayed in a

fashion that is diametrically opposed to the lesson of the proper use of

male power in a feudal society. The fact that we have some difficulty in

comprehending Le Fresne's motivation while we have an easier time

understanding her mother's abuse of power...might well be Marie's way of

commenting upon, and eliciting her readers' response to, this kind of

power and its ordering of society. (“Sisterhood” 20)

Fresne’s behavior upon Gurun’s engagement to her sister attracts the attention of her mother who “began to love and admire her” (384):

She said to herself that if she’d known

what kind of person Fresne was,

she wouldn’t have let her suffer on account of her daughter Codre.

Wouldn’t have taken Fresne’s lord away from her. (385-388)

Of course, even if she wanted to, Fresne’s mother could not have prevented the marriage, which was arranged by men according to feudal values. However, the situation is resolved naturally when Fresne, in her selflessness, replaces the coverlet of the bridal bed with the silk robe she was wrapped in when she was abandoned as a baby. The mother

30 recognizes the cloth, and after confirming the story of Fresne’s origins, she confesses the truth to her husband. Now that Fresne’s lineage has been uncovered, she is eligible to be a legitimate wife to Gurun, and the story reaches its happy conclusion:

Next morning, the marriage was annulled

and the knight married his beloved;

she was given to him by her father,

who was well disposed toward her;

he divided his inheritance with her. (505-508)

These lines reflect Marie’s adherence to and subversion of feudal values. On the one hand, Fresne is given to Gurun by her father, as was appropriate, but he also splits his inheritance with her, which is a direct subversion of the values of primogeniture which dictated that only the eldest son was eligible to be an heir. Marie continues to comment on feudal values by setting the resolution of the story in the marriage bedchamber: male fair unknowns typically have their identities restored in the masculine environment of a tournament, but the bedchamber where Fresne’s true identity is discovered is another distinctly feminine space where female attendants prepare and beautify the bed in anticipation of the consummation of the marriage. The marriage bed, traditionally excluded from the public spaces where fair unknowns are celebrated, becomes in Marie’s hands an important symbol of feudal politics: it is where legitimate heirs will be conceived.

The story’s conclusion, too, subverts both Christian and feudal values in subtle ways. Once the archbishop annuls the marriage between Codre and Gurun, a highly

31 unorthodox practice for the Church at that time, he disappears, and Fresne’s father arranges her marriage to Gurun. Although Fresne’s father arranging her marriage seems to align with feudal values, they are also subtly subverted. In many romances the marriage of a female character signals her acceptance of a proper feudal gender role, but

Freeman notes how Fresne is different:

[She] is not identified by Marie's text in terms of the men to whom she

ostensibly belongs. Her marriage ceremony is barely mentioned,

indicating that it is an event of little significance within the context of her

adventures. In fact, the public and masculine signs of acceptance into

society are lost to us, erased from this history. (Freeman, “Sisterhood” 20-

21)

Furthermore, the conclusion tells us that Fresne’s father “was well disposed toward her;/he divided his inheritance with her” (507-8). While it was customary for a father to provide a dowry upon the marriage of his daughter, primogeniture dictated that only eldest sons were eligible to share inheritance. The lai does not specify whether the lord ended up sending one of his twin sons to Fresne’s father to assume the position of heir, but even if he had not, in the absence of a male heir, a lord’s wealth would revert to the king upon the lord’s death. The king would support the orphaned daughter until he could arrange a marriage to support her. Either way, it was highly unusual for a lord to split his inheritance with his daughter.

The trappings of the feudal system are not traps at all; they simply provide the mechanism by which Fresne achieves her own desires. These mechanisms cannot be fully

32 erased from the story, or Marie would risk alienating her audience, who were accustomed to romances that affirm feudal ideals, but, as Marie demonstrates, they can be questioned and reimagined. The final lines of the story, in Marie’s voice, situate the story firmly in a feminized space that celebrates the identity of the female heroine:

When this adventure became known

just as it happened,

the lai of Fresne was made from it.

it was named after its heroine. (515-518)

Marie’s final comment ensures that the last thing the reader “hears” is the voice of the female narrator asserting that the story was named for the female protagonist, thus fully focusing on the concerns and subversive legacy of the female characters.

33 CHAPTER 4

“LANVAL”: PRIMOGENITURE AND PATRONAGE IN A FEMINIZED FANTASY SPACE

The lai “Lanval” tells the tale of a valiant knight who is taken as a lover by the faerie queen after his patron, King Arthur, fails to support Lanval appropriately as his vassal. He must stand trial when he offends Guinevere by claiming that his lover’s lowest handmaiden is more beautiful than Guinevere herself. Lanval’s faerie mistress saves him from exile when she arrives just in time to prove the truth of his claim. The faerie is beautiful, wealthy, and independent, and she wields agency and power not possible for a woman living within the confines of the Arthurian social system. In “Lanval” Marie de

France exposes the paradoxes that existed in the Arthurian social system, which is built on feudal politics that are similar to those of Anglo-Norman England. By exposing the paradoxes created by feudal politics in matters of patronage, love and marriage, she undermines the male dominated feudal culture and creates a feminized fantasy space that subversively allows women to participate in the social system.

One paradox that Marie criticizes in “Lanval” is the way that the right of primogeniture created an underclass of alienated younger sons who had to depend on more powerful patrons for material support. Since the younger sons of lords had no opportunity to gain land and wealth through inheritance, they were often sent to more powerful and wealthy lords to be fostered and supported. Failure on the part of these lords to support those who depended on them threatened the supremacy of the right of primogeniture, and created a paradox for younger sons of nobility in which they were

34 expected to perpetuate the wealth and status of their families, but they often lacked the means to do so (Finke and Shichtman 481). “Le Fresne” depicts this practice when, faced with the birth of double heirs, the lord plans to send one son be raised by his noble neighbor, presumably as his heir. “Lanval” describes how the knight Lanval, “was the son of a king of high degree and thus of noble lineage,/but he was far from his heritage”

(27-28). Lanval is far from home, which indicates that he must be a younger son who has been sent to King Arthur’s court. He is therefore dependent on King Arthur to provide both land and a wife for him.

The system of patronage sought to mitigate some of the problems created by the right of primogeniture. Finke and Shichtman discuss the consequences of primogeniture and patronage. They explain:

Men deprived of wealth and status by the rigid hierarchies of genealogy

and primogeniture can still attain both women and land from more

powerful men…Lanval has gambled on securing the patronage of a remote

king apparently more powerful than his father. (488)

The first conflict in “Lanval” is that King Arthur fails to act as a good patron to Lanval and give him lands and a wife. Furthermore, the rules of chivalry dictate that Arthur should reward the men who serve him. The narrative emphasizes Lanval’s chivalry and his service to the king. It describes Lanval as: “very noble” (3); “one who had served

[Arthur]” (18); “For his valor, for his generosity,/his beauty and his bravery,/most men envied him” (23-24); and “this knight…who had served the king so long” (39-40).

Clearly, Lanval is chivalrous and worthy of reward, but King Arthur fails to do his kingly

35 duty and reward him for his chivalric actions. Though critical of this failure, Marie also takes the opportunity to inject powerful female desires into an imperfectly structured patriarchal system.

The conventions of courtly love also receive critical treatment in “Lanval.”

Patrick John Ireland describes Lanval as having entered the “Court of Love” when he meets the faerie, but then specifies that Marie “has at best only a peripheral interest in the courtly love tradition. Certainly, the tradition is not fully expressed in her work, and after a fashion seems even to find fault with it” (133). Ireland understates Marie’s interest in courtly love; she does not “fully express” the tradition because she instead deliberately subverts the conventions of courtly love. Many of Marie’s lais focus on how the conventions of Arthurian society created paradoxes for couples in love. Howard Bloch points out that, “the couple is the social unit within the Lais, where the desire for wholeness is expressed in terms of love as a longing for union, a coupling, an appropriate—that is to say equitable, decent, voluntary—love, which may even involve marriage” (52). Bloch describes a love that is in line with the values of the Church in terms of marriage. While “Le Fresne” is a focused critique of the conflict between the feudal values of arranged marriages and the Christian values of companionate marriage,

“Lanval” illustrates how this “appropriate love” was sometimes impossible to realize due to the constraints of the Arthurian social system.

In “Lanval” there are several direct references to and subversions of courtly love.

When Guinevere, a married woman, declares her love for Lanval in the grove, she is clearly evoking the conventions of courtly love with the expectation that Lanval will play

36 his role by courting her in return. If Lanval accepts Guinevere’s offer, he further complicates his position because his commitment to Guinevere would exclude him from finding more appropriate love from an available woman, faerie or otherwise.

Furthermore, since Lanval is not participating in the “game” of courtly love that was meant to affirm patriarchal ideals, Guinevere assumes he is not interested in women, and tells Lanval that she has heard “that you have no interest in women./You have fine- looking boys/with whom you enjoy yourself”(279-282). This assumption suggests that courtly love is the only form of love available to some knights in Arthurian culture, since

Guinevere assumes that a knight not actively participating in courtly love must not be interested in love from women.

Marie depicts yet another paradox by demonstrating the highly problematic way women could participate in the system of patronage. Finke and Shichtman describe how

“the romances that propagated the ideologies of courtly love were primarily a means of articulating the hierarchical relations among men”(486). They conflate the conventions of courtly love with the conventions of patronage, and suggest that courtly love was a way to mitigate some of the confusions about the homosocial nature of patronage relationships and the anxieties about those relationships transforming from homosocial to homosexual. According to Finke and Shichtman, the young knights disenfranchised by primogeniture “were bound together by the affective ties of gift giving—and receiving— which created personal relationships encoded in discourses about ‘love’”(486). Although the presence of adultery in the conventions of courtly love may seem odd, it makes more

37 sense if courtly love is viewed as a symbolic expression of patronage relationships.9

According to Finke and Shichtman “women were required to mediate male-male intercourse; they did so by acting as ‘surrogate’ patrons’”(486). In this sense, Guinevere’s offer of her love to Lanval is really a symbolic offer to restore the patronage owed to him by King Arthur. The paradox is that Lanval only becomes desirable to Guinevere after realizing the benefits of a loyal patron, the fairy mistress, which enable him to become a patron himself. The text describes Lanval’s largess after being endowed with the faerie’s wealth:

Lanval gave rich gifts,

Lanval released prisoners,

Lanval dressed jongleurs,

Lanval offered great honors,

There was no stranger or friend

to whom Lanval did not give. (209-214)

As soon as Lanval has wealth at his disposal, he distributes it generously, showing that he can be a better patron than Arthur. Frederick Hodgson views “Lanval” in terms of

Lanval’s alienation from the Arthurian court and frames Lanval’s largess as a failed attempt to integrate himself into Arthurian culture: “Lanval uses his wealth to help those whose alienated plight reflects his own. The incantation of Lanval’s name underlines his newfound opportunity to establish a deserved identity and foreshadows the attention he

9 This idea is explored in detail in Duby’s Love and Marriage in the Middle Ages (1994). The idea is explored further in terms of Marie’s lais in Kinoshita and McCracken’s Critical Companion (2012) and in Finke and Shichtman’s “Magical Mistress Tour” (2000).

38 will bring on himself”(22). The paradox is that Lanval’s entry into the patronage system, and therefore court culture, attracts the attention of the queen and necessitates that he return to a state of alienation. For Hodgson, the faerie mistress presents an alternative to

Arthurian culture; the existence of a fantastical alternative to Arthurian culture suggests a fantasy space where women can participate in the patronage system as equals to men.

One clear sign of the faerie mistress’s agency is her ability to participate in the patronage system as a wealthy and powerful female patron. Finke and Shichtman argue that “Lanval” depicts a competition for patronage between the fairy mistress and Arthur, via Guinevere as his surrogate patron. Alternately, the faerie mistress can be seen as a foil to Guinevere, and a subversion of the male-dominated patronage system she represents.

Marie subverts this system by allowing the faerie to possess a remarkable amount of agency. A client/patron relationship, even one where a woman acts as a surrogate patron, is necessarily patriarchal. It is a system established to ensure the dissemination of wealth among men in a male controlled system. The faerie mistress rejects Arthurian gender roles; she is in complete control of her own wealth and can act as a patron in her own right. The faerie’s fantastic wealth is also a subversion of the patriarchal nature of the patronage system, in which only powerful men can possess such wealth. The text says the mere flap of the faerie’s tent was more than Queen Semiramis or Emperor Octavian could afford (82-86), and “no king on earth” could buy the golden eagle on top of her tent (91).

The faerie’s wealth is otherworldly; Marie places it outside the reach of even the noblest members of Arthurian society. The faerie mistress exists in a fantasy space where a

39 woman can have unlimited wealth, and therefore unlimited ability to be a patron, all in the absence of a male to police or limit her agency.

Marie highlights the contrast between the bond Lanval has with the faerie and his bond to Arthur to demonstrate the paradox created by Guinevere’s participation. James

Wade discusses the common medieval trope of the faerie mistress, and frames her agency in terms of her participation in the gift exchange system of Arthurian culture. He notes that typically women did not participate in the gift exchange system except as objects to be exchanged by men. When a faerie mistress is involved in gift exchange, the system is subverted:

[Fairy] mistresses both construct and constitute total gift systems that

operate independently from any exchange structures existing within the

human worlds of their texts. They create unique systems where the subject

and the object of the gift transaction are one and the same…In such an

‘erotic’ system containing an eroticized giver/gift, therefore, the sexual

gratification given by the fairy mistress creates a unique bond between

giver and receiver that leads to a certain bondage to the gift. (114 original

emphasis)

Lanval’s bond to the fairy as a result of the gift exchange differs from his bond to Arthur in a number of ways. Lanval is obligated to Arthur as his lord by the conventions of chivalry, but Arthur violates those conventions by failing to be a proper patron to Lanval.

Guinevere’s offer, if viewed from the standpoint of Guinevere offering her love as a surrogate for patronage, would restore the bond of gift exchange between Lanval and

40 Arthur, but would paradoxically also require Lanval to violate his chivalric loyalty to

Arthur. In terms of this refusal, Cary Howie quotes Brigitte Cazelles’ notion that “since

[Lanval] rejects the parameters of Arthurian culture, he himself is rejected, and

Guinevere’s admiration turns into mortal hatred”(831). If a woman’s place in the

Arthurian patronage system is to “mediate male-male intercourse” as Finke and

Shichtman argue, then Lanval’s rejection of Guinevere’s surrogate, heterosexual patronage is seen as a rejection of heterosexuality, hence Guinevere’s accusation that

Lanval has “no desire for women”(282). Guinevere’s complaint to Arthur also makes sense in this context; Lanval’s refusal of Guinevere’s offer is seen as a refusal of Arthur’s patronage and lordship, which is why Lanval’s action is perceived as an offense to the king. The paradoxical situation that Marie sets up in Lanval highlights the absurdity of a system that can require a knight to be loyal to his lord by betraying him.10

Marie further defines her feminized fantasy space by giving the faerie mistress full possession of her own body and sexuality. Finke and Shichtman argue”

Marie’s use of the fairy mistress as a female patron able to control and

dispense both her own sexuality and her own fortune, unconstrained by

father, lover or husband, represents a significant departure from routine

marital arrangements of the twelfth-century aristocracy. (495)

10 Marie also comments on the way that system interfered with a knight’s ability to enter into an appropriate marriage based on mutual consent that would have lived up to the values of the Church.

41 The faerie demonstrates her agency through her control over when she is the subject of a gaze and where that gaze will fall. When Lanval first sees the faerie, her near nakedness is emphasized:

dressed only in her shift.

………………………………..

for the heat, she had thrown over herself,

a precious cloak of white ermine

covered with purple alexandrine,

but her whole side was uncovered,

her face, her neck and her bosom. (99-105)

Women in Arthurian society were expected to preserve their purity, or at least the appearance of their purity, in order to be more desirable wives and to ensure the ordered progression of wealth and heritage, but the faerie mistress is concerned with neither modesty nor marriage. In “Le Fresne,” Fresne has to leave the abbey in order to preserve the appearance of her purity, but Lanval’s faerie mistress has no such concerns. Cary

Howie notes that the faerie is “at once ‘covered’ and ‘uncovered,’ she offers a challenge to Lanval’s gaze: see something here that is not a secret to be uncovered, not a layer to be removed”(829). Making the faerie mistress fully nude would risk objectifying her completely, and would remove any control she has over what is and is not revealed.

Marie gives her the cloak and thus a measure of control over her sexuality and Lanval’s gaze.

42 The faerie mistress also displays her agency in her ability to delay the legal proceedings in the court. The arrival of the mistress’s two handmaids and her subsequent arrival disrupt Lanval’s trial at the very moment the verdict is about to be delivered. After

Arthur sends the maidens to their chambers, the text describes how Arthur tells the barons they have “angered him very much/with their long delay,” and the barons reply

“we have decided./Because of the ladies we have just seen/we have made no judgement”

(501-505). The barons are already reluctant to punish Lanval, and the appearance of the faeries troubles them, and causes “noise and strife” (508). The arrival of a second pair of maidens further delays the trial, and this delay angers Guinevere (545-46). When

Lanval’s faerie mistress finally arrives at court, she arrives slowly. The Hanning and

Ferrante translation of “Lanval” describes how “she proceeded at a slow pace” (580), but

Howie quotes a translation that says “she came more slowly than if she were on foot”

(834). In both cases, the faerie’s agency manifests in her ability to disrupt an important procedure in the Arthurian court. Howie says that with her slow arrival, the fairy “gives time, (not just to Lanval, who could be awaiting exile, but to everyone who looks and is abandoned to her spectacle) by taking it” (834 original emphasis). The fairy mistress is taking the time away from the legal proceedings of the court, and thus from Arthur and

Guinevere, and she is giving it to the common people, and the alienated Lanval. The faerie’s actions directly subvert the Arthurian social order, in which only male patrons have the power to give to other (lesser) members of nobility, and are a clear sign of

Marie’s feminized fantasy space where a woman has the wealth and power to act as an equal to male patrons.

43 Not only does the faerie have the agency to give and take time, she also has complete control over when and where she is subjected to the gaze of the court. She arrives slowly to allow herself to be seen, and the sight of her is mesmerizing. As the faerie makes her way through town, “no one, small or big,/old man or child,/failed to come look” (575-78). She also deliberately displays herself to the king and the members of court: “She dismounted before the king,/so that she was seen by all./And she let her cloak fall,/so they could see her better”(603-606). This emphasis on being seen directly contrasts with the expectation of modesty for Arthurian women, who were expected to stay covered. The faerie’s arrival in Arthur’s court at once asserts her agency and rejects

Arthurian gender roles.

One puzzling aspect of “Lanval” is the faerie’s taboo, and that Lanval does not suffer the expected consequence for breaking it. When Lanval first meets the faerie, she tells him “you would lose me for good/if this love were known” (147-48). The faerie is not making a threat out of a desire for control over Lanval; she is warning him of a consequence. One reason for this taboo could be because, for most of the story, Lanval exists as a member of Arthur’s court, but he is loyal to the faerie as a patron. In this sense, Lanval is attempting to be loyal to two lords: King Arthur, his chivalric lord, and the faerie mistress, his patron. Revealing his relationship with the faerie would illuminate this conflict and force his expulsion from court. Lanval’s presence at court is important narratively, since Marie uses the story to criticize elements of court, and the fact that the faerie does not take Lanval to Avalon right away indicates that she has her own reasons for keeping him at court as well.

44 Viewing the taboo as the mitigation of the conflict of Lanval’s loyalty also begins to explain why the faerie forgives him for violating it. Ireland argues that the faerie forgives him because he violates the taboo in an assertion of his love and loyalty towards her:

Lanval’s breach of the taboo so soon after its imposition indicates neither

weakness of character nor poor plotting. The force of Lanval’s love has

carried him beyond the realm of all that is rationally politic…He must

defend [the faerie’s] honor without personal regard for the penalties of the

taboo. (139)

By violating the taboo, Lanval makes a clear choice between his two “lords,” and the faerie forgives him because he has chosen her, in effect endorsing the faerie’s alternate model of patronage. Wade sees Lanval’s violation of the taboo in terms of the gift exchange system. He notes that in typical gift giving systems the impossibility of reciprocity leads to “an imbalance in the exchange system…and in anthropological contexts…the termination of the relationship”(115). Wade explains how humans can never equally reciprocate supernatural gifts, and asserts that the taboo takes the place of reciprocity: “the continuation of [the faerie mistress’s] favors becomes contingent on the binding conditions of the taboo that takes the place of gift-giving reciprocity”(115). If the taboo takes the place of reciprocity, and reciprocity maintains the equality of the giver and receiver, then the imposition of the taboo on Lanval makes Lanval and the faerie equals, another subversion of the patronage system, which was dependent on hierarchy.

45 In Marie’s feminized fantasy space, both the faerie and Lanval are better patrons than

King Arthur.

Typically, the ending of a medieval romance involves a restoration of order, often in the form of a marriage, as in “Le Fresne.” Similar to the way Marie both affirms and subverts the expectations surrounding the marriage of “Le Fresne” and the restoration of order in her world, Marie does provide a restoration of order in “Lanval,” but it manifests as a rejection of Arthurian society and an assertion of female agency. Once Lanval violates the faerie’s taboo, thus revealing that he is loyal to the faerie and not Arthur, he cannot remain in Arthur’s court. Furthermore, the subversion of patronage present in his relationship with the faerie does not fit into the structure of the Arthurian court. Lanval has found a love so fantastic and compelling that he is willing to sacrifice everything for it. The love between Lanval and the faerie seems to fit the companionate ideal based on mutual consent supported by the Church, but the faerie’s complete lack of concern for feminine Christian virtue also undermines the ideals of the Church. Hodgson notes, “the resolution of Lanval reveals a love which transcends the single reality of the Arthurian court whose unjust, restricted nature is demonstrated by the movement of the alienated principal character”(23). By the end of the lai, it is clear that the “appropriate” love as described by Bloch is impossible for Lanval, and knights like Lanval, to realize within the constraints of Arthurian culture, so the only solution is total rejection of that culture.

It is ironic that Lanval’s punishment, had he been found guilty in Arthur’s court, would have been exile. The faerie mistress’ appearance saves Lanval from forced exile, but also makes voluntary exile more appealing. Later versions of Lanval’s story have him return

46 to court periodically to fight in tournaments or participate in other aspects of Arthurian society, but in Marie De France’s version, Lanval jumps onto the back of the faerie’s palfrey, and “there the youth was carried off [to Avalon]./No man heard of him again”(644-45). Lanval’s position behind the faerie on her horse is a reversal of the typical image of the lady riding behind the knight, further signaling Marie’s feminized fantasy space where the female character is in control and the male character cedes to her.

Not only does Lanval permanently leave Arthur’s court, but he is never even “heard of” again, signaling Marie’s complete rejection of Arthurian conventions and culture and

Lanval’s permanent existence in the feminized space inhabited and controlled by the faerie.

The right of primogeniture resulted in a domino effect of paradoxes, particularly for the younger sons of nobility. The success and supremacy of the right of primogeniture depended on the success of the patronage system to mitigate the disenfranchisement of younger sons. In “Lanval” the patronage system is flawed from the top down, resulting in the instability of Arthurian culture, Marie’s analogue for Anglo-Norman culture. Marie de France utilizes the flaws of the Arthurian system to create a feminized fantasy space in which a female character has agency and power superior to the supposedly dominant males. In “Lanval” the Arthurian paradoxes can only be resolved by the complete rejection of the flawed culture and the main character’s movement into the feminized space of the faerie.

47 CHAPTER 5

CONCLUSION

Marie de France was indeed, as Bloch puts it, a “self-conscious, sophisticated, complicated, obscure, tricky, and disturbing” figure of Anglo-Norman England (19). Her lais represent a subversive hybridization of two familiar and influential medieval literary forms. Rather than simply accepting her position as a powerless female subject of Anglo-

Norman culture, Marie exerted her considerable intelligence and skill to create a subversive critique of the flaws of the feudal system. She served as a voice for Anglo-

Norman women that spoke to their concerns, while also aligning herself with accepted forms and values in order for her work to be taken seriously by a larger, mostly male, audience. Marie’s ability to fuse two major textual traditions and to manipulate them for her own purposes is a further testament to the education, sophistication, and skill critics have long celebrated. By applying the Latin commentary tradition, with its emphasis on identity and authority, to anonymous, vernacular poetry, Marie creates an entirely new hybridized literary form.

Marie both maintains and subverts the patriarchy of Anglo-Norman England by positioning herself as a scholarly literary critic in the masculine Latin commentary tradition. She expertly utilizes the familiar themes and structures of the Latin tradition to assert her authority to comment on literary texts, while also subverting the masculine values with her feminized spaces. At the same time, Marie’s lais are firmly rooted in the anonymous, vernacular tradition of medieval romance poetry. This decidedly masculine

48 vernacular tradition often served to circulate and affirm the values of patriarchal feudal culture. Marie’s narratorial voice opens a feminized space that endows her female characters with agency and voices to speak for their own concerns and express their own desires. Notably, her female space is inclusive, as she also speaks for the concerns of men like Lanval, who is alienated by the strictures of the feudal system, and like Gurun, who is blocked by the dictates of feudal politics from marrying the woman he loves. Marie uses her feminized textual space to both affirm and critique the values and dictates of the church, whose views on marriage were often in direct conflict with feudal marriage arrangements.

In the lai “Le Fresne,” Marie uses the familiar romantic trope of the fair unknown, which typically affirmed masculine, feudal ideals, and subverts it create a feminized space, where the desires of the female characters are emphasized and ultimately realized.

The lai highlights the many ways that feudal politics could interfere with and corrupt genuine love. It also emphasizes the feudal and religious double standards that dictated the behavior of Anglo-Norman men and women. Fresne is subject to the constraints of both the church and feudal ideals, while her lover Gurun is constrained by feudalistic pressure to produce a legitimate heir and thus guarantee the orderly progression of patriarchal wealth and power. Marie reimagines both to achieve a feminized and mutually satisfying resolution for both characters.

In “Lanval,” Marie highlights the absurdity of the patronage system by placing her protagonist in a paradoxical situation that requires him to try to maintain loyalty to two competing lords. She offers a corrective to these paradoxes by presenting a female

49 character who possesses fantastic wealth and agency that makes her equal, or even superior to, the powerful males in the story. “Lanval” imagines a feminized fantasy space where a beautiful, powerful woman rides off into the sunset with a chivalrous knight on the back of her horse.

This examination of Marie’s unique narratorial stance and her hybridization of the

Latin prose and vernacular poetry traditions presents readers with a new lens through which to view her lais. Since medieval literature was based on translation and transmission, all of Marie’s lais address common tropes and concerns of the medieval period. This new lens suggests that her other lais could open subversive, feminized spaces that spoke to the concerns of women living in Anglo-Norman England. “Milun,” for instance, offers yet another treatment of the trope of the fair unknown. This story more closely follows the standard format: the fair unknown character, Milun, is male, and he proves his chivalric worth in a tournament where he fights against his father and his identity is revealed. However, rather than privileging the identity formation of the male fair unknown, the arc of the story focuses on the culmination of the forbidden love affair between Milun’s parents, indicating Marie’s sustained interest in telling stories that don’t fall neatly into convention. As in “Le Fresne,” the lais “Equitan,” “Laustic,”

“Chevrefoil,” and “Eliduc” all depict courtly love triangles, and explore the various ways that feudalism disrupted the voluntary, companionate marriage arrangements preferred by the church, demonstrating the consistency of her critique of medieval social structures. In

“Guigemar” and “Yonec” jealous husbands imprison their wives, but both lais contain magical motifs that facilitate the women’s romantic fulfillment. Through the

50 transformative power of magic, Marie’s female characters express and realize their desires in ways that would have otherwise been impossible. “Le Deus Amanz” critiques a noble father for failing to arrange a proper marriage for his daughter. When she finally does love a knight worthy of her position, her father’s failures lead to a tragic ending for both lovers. Finally, “Bisclavret” and “Chaitivel” both depict flawed female characters who fail to fulfill their feudal obligations and suffer tragic consequences. Although these two lais appear to treat their female protagonists critically, the mere fact of their being told through the consciously feminine voice of the female narrator distinguishes them from male-authored texts.

Marie interjects her commentary throughout the lais, positioning herself as the performer and narrator and using that position to subvert the masculine quality of the traditions she manipulates. She emphasizes the oral nature of the lais to encourage readers to hear and be instructed by their subversive female narrator. Marie’s feminine voice distinguishes her work from the masculine tradition, and shifts the meanings and implications of all of her texts. Her subversive hybridization of two well-known masculine literary forms creates a larger feminized fantasy space that exists outside of the lais, a space where a sophisticated female critic can participate in and criticize the patriarchal culture that dominates her world.

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