BRETON LAYS: MEDIEVAL ORALJTY AND MORALITY
bv
Nadine T. d'Entremont
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia December, 1996
Copyright by Nadine T. d'Entremont, 1996 Acquisitions and Acquisitions et Bibliographie SeMces seMces bibliographiques 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Ottawa ON K1A ON4 Canada Canada
The author has granted a non- L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive licence allowing the exclusive permettant a la National Libmy of Canada to Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduce, loan, distriiute or sell reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou copies of this thesis in microform, vendre des copies de cette thèse sous paper or electronic formats. la forme de microfiche/nlm, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique.
The author retains ownership of the L'auteur conserve la propriété du copyright in this thesis. Neither the droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels may be printed or otherwise de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés reproduced without the author's ou autrement reproduits sans son permission. autorisation. Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter One: The Breton Lay in French: Marie de France
Chapter Two: The Later Breton Lay in French: After Marie
Chapter Three: The Breton Lay in English
Chapter Four: Chaucer's Franklin's Tale
Works Cited Abstract The Breton lay, a type of short narrative poem which often though not always deals with subjects such as extramarital love and/or the supernatural, was written in French by Marie de France during the twelfth century, and was subsequently copied by various authors in both French and English until the fourteenth century. Although less than fifty examples of the form survive, few examinations of the entire genre have been attempted. The genre studies which do exist tend to measure the later Breton lays against the twelve pieces composed by Marie de France, and often conclude that Marie's versions of the form are the only true Breton lays. My thesis is a genre study of the Breton lay which traces the development of the form to show why later lay writers have to move away from the essence of Marie's Lais. In Chapter One, I demonstrate that Marie de France relies on the context of her Lais as a compilation to provide a framework which allows for sympathetic portrayals of certain women who turn to adultery for love. In Chapter Two, I examine other French Breton lay writers who, in choosing to write individual pieces rather than a collection of stories exploring diverse viewpoints. shy away from sympathizing with adulteresses and instead treat them only as weak or shameful individuals. In Chapter Three, I study English Breton lays, which are also written as separate pieces rather than as cornplimenting pieces in a compilation; i show that the English lays move away from the theme of extramarital intrigue in favour of a far safer subject, the happily married couple. Finally, in Chapter Four, I consider Chaucer's Franklin's Tale. My conclusion is that Chaucer, even within the context of the Canterburv Tales collection, avoids the risque approach to adultery such as that found in Marie de France's Lais because his better understanding of literacy makes him doubt the stability of an authorrs textual organization. Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the people who helped to get me through this thesis: Dr. Melissa Furrow, for her kindness and her wisdom; my parents, for their support throughout my years at Dalhousie; and, of course, Tim, for his love, his encouragement and his patience (although he wouldn't allow me to work on the thesis during our honeymoon). Introduction
Scholars interested in the Breton lay have often founded their research
on the collection known as Marie de France's Lais-twelve pieces as found in
British Library MS. Harley 978, ff. 118a-160a.' This compilation is
ostensibly the first written example of that curious style of short rnedieval
poem dating from the late twelfth century and attributed to Breton sources.
If we simply accept Marie as the creator and therefore the sole authority on
what constitutes a Breton lay, we will undoubtedly find that later adaptations of the form- fall short of expectations, as Mortimer J. Donovan does in The Breton Law A Guide to ~arieties.~Of the anonymous French versions of the
genre, Donovan writes, "Although the Breton lay, modeled on the twelve
poems of Marie de France, continued to be written through the year 1270,
her imitators because of a lack of skill more often than not failedn (65).
Quoting Lucien Foulet, he adds that "the closest imitators reveal only a 'pâle
reflet' of their model and a fatal preoccupation with favorite motifs, phrases
and such externals as the prologue and epilogue of the Breton lay" (66).
Donovan's opinion of the later English adaptations is no better:
Almost from the very start adventure in the sense in which W.P. Ker uses the word supersedes love as its Ieading motive . . . . But this adventure is not the action co/lective of the chanson de geste in which warriors fight out of love for God
' Glyn S. Burgess, Marie de France: An Analvtical Biblioara~hv,Research Bibliographies and Checklists 21 (London: Grant and Cutler, 1977) 11.
The Breton Lav: A Guide to Varieties (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969). and country . . . . Rather, it is the adventure of twelfth-century romance unaccompanied by the usually inseparable element of love; risks are taken by the hero as an individual, both for their own sake and for the advantage of a good story. In the history of the Breton lay this change of emphasis amounts to a retrogression and tends to reduce the lay to a folktale. (122)
Such judgments, echoed by countless others, have led those scholars
who have chosen to work primarily with the anonymous lays to defend and
explain their position. As Harry F. Williams writes,
mhe anonymous Breton narrative lays, suffering from the light cast by [Marie's] talent, are cinderellas of mediaeval literature, often neglected and scorned, and the subject of much controversy. I believe the time has now corne when this emphasis can and should be shifted; these anonymous lays rnay be considered on their own merit as artistic representatives of the genre?
To be sure, we can agree with Donovan when he says that Marie's
work on the Breton lay "can be considered the first and set the standard"
(Donovan 7). According to Marie's claims in her general Prologue and in the
prologues to individual lays, she is repeating tales she has heard told by
Bretons. Since no earlier examples exist to corroborate this detail, we can
do no better than to assume that Marie's sources are oral and that the
poems she developed set off an interest in the genre. But to determine that
a work motivated others to write does not necessarily entail direct influence.
Even if Marie originated the primary form of Breton lay which gave rise to
subsequent varieties, her accomplishment did more than merely provoke
slavishly trendy imitations: it established a tradition which endured through
- "The Anonymous Breton Lays," Research Studie~32 (1964): 76. 3
several generations. In the centuries after Marie wrote her Lais, this tradition
was undoubtedly transformed according to the diverse social and textual
circumstances of various eras. During the fourteenth century, for example,
either a Benedictine or a Dominican order of Chester had in its possession a
thirteenth-century manuscript of the Shrewsbury School containing the titles
of si*-seven lays, including seven Breton lays by Marie de rance.^
Although the manuscript does not actually include any of the lays it
catalogues, Georgine Brereton suggests that it is possible that the list was
copied from the table of contents of another large manuscript of lays (40).
(Unfortunately, if such a manuscript ever existed, it is now lost, and we
have no access to the many lays which we know only by title from the list.
What we can learn from this inventory, however, is that a number of Breton
lays probably did exist beyond those which survive today, and that they
were still in vogue well after Marie wrote hers.) Marie's Old French imitators
wrote in the thirteenth century: over ten (the exact nurnber is debatable)
anonymous Breton lays in French survive, and at least two have titles which
appear on the Shrewsbury list--Doun (no. 12) and Tidore/ (no. 27).'
Moreover, as Donovan explains, the Breton lay did not develop in English
" Georgine E. Brereton, "A Thirteenth-Century List of French Lays and Other Narrative Poems," Modern Languaae Review 45 (1950): 40. ' AS for Marie's titles, we must .consider some uncertainties: Does "Beu desire" (no. 10) refer to the anonymous French lay Desire? Might "Eygnorn (no. 13) be the lay which we now know as Lai d'lgnaur67 And could "Vygamer" be, instead of Marie's Guigernar, the anonymous lay Guingamor (Brereton 4-47 4
until the thirteenth century, and continued to be in vogue throughout the
fourteenth century, a period which coincides with the evolution of the long
romance (122).
Any attempt at defining the Breton lay, then, should take these factors
into consideration. No given manifestation of the forrn should be designated
as a superior one; each sample should rather be seen as one of a number of
equally valid yet differing representations of the same product. For diverse
medieval audiences, diverse themes and motifs were evoked by the term
"Breton lay." Similarly, different storytellers who set out to recount adventures from Britanny held different notions concerning the genre. In order to address these issues, I intend to study the anonymous Breton lays-- in French and in English--along with the collection of Marie de France. Of course, like the work of many others before me, I will indeed begin with a focus on Marie de France. What particularly interests me, however, is how the genre developed after Marie. One should not automatically assume that al1 subsequent examples of the form fall short of Marie's standard. Though many have found something wanting in the anonymous lays, the assertion that later writers lacked Marie's skill is arguable, considering that certain of the anonymous lays have passed for Marie's work: "[OJnly in this past generation have scholars generally agreed on the number of lays Marie wrote" (Williams 76). Publishing the "Lais ln6dits de Tyolet, de Guingamor, de Doon, du Lecheor et de Tydorei" in 1879, Gaston Paris apparently perceives therein no salient variance from the art of Marie. since he
comments that a careful investigation would be required to either prove or
disprove her authorship of any of these lays Save the crude Lecheor: "Faut-il
les attribuer a Marie de France? La question ne saurait être r6solue que par
un examen approfondi de tous les lais, par la determination des caracteres
linguistiques et littéraires de ceux qui lui appartiennent indubitablement. et
par l'examen subséquent de ceux qu'on peut être tente de lui attrib~er."~
After further study. Paris determines in La Litterature francaise au moven EL-
that Espine. Tydorel. and Guingamor are likely part of Marie's production.'
Williams points out that Marie's first editor, B. de Roquefort. added both
Espine and Graeient to her collection, while another editor. Karl Warnke.
published two editions of Marie's lays containing only the twelve poems
found in Harley 978 before issuing a third edition which also included
Guingarnor (76). Today. it is generally agreed that just the lays of Harley
978 ought to be ascribed to Marie: "Considering the long and often
passionate debate on which lays she wrote. anyone now inclined to attribute
to her more than the 12 found in MS B.M. Harley 978 would belong to a
small minority" (Williams 77). As with the output of many an artist, some of
these lays demonstrate less skill than others. For example, more than one
critic has commented on the inferior calibre of Equitan: according to Glyn S.
Romania 8 (1879): 37. ' 5th edition (Paris: Hachette. 1914). 6
Burgess (who is careful to temper his evaluation with the qualification that
Equitan is "by no means devoid of thematic interest and not worthy of the
scorn heaped upon it by some readersn), the tale "has al1 the signs of an
early work: poor structure, stylistic obscurities, an uninspired treatment of a
somewhat tedious theme, an unsatisfactory ending."' Burgess also remarks
on Chaitivers substandard quality, claiming that it is the only lay other than
Equitan which has "a rather tedious plot, stylistic obscurities, poor
motivation for the actions of the characters and for certain details, and a
generally mediocre level of composition" (15). It is unlikely that, taken out
of context, a given French Breton lay could be conclusively recognized as an
example of the superior craft of Marie rather than as one of the surmisedly
pale copies generated by her imitators.
What, then, distinguishes the selections of Harley 978 (hereafter
identified as H) from other short poems calling themselves Breton lays? Let
me point to the obvious, which perhaps merits closer examination: the dozen
examples of the Breton lay contained in H are intentionally and expressiy
part of a collection, unlike the pieces produced by Marie's successors. This
distinction certainly affects Our reading of the lays; I will argue that it also
influences the artist's conception and production of his or her text.
Doubtless, it is not inconceivable that some of the anonymous lays were
written by the same person, or were composed to be included with other
* The Lais gf Marie de France: Text and Contex1 (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987) 12. lays. A study of the explicit indications of compilation which Marie takes
pains to incorporate into the Lais. however, suggests a reading of her work
as a special recueil of parts which synthesize to form a distinctive whole.
These individual parts. of course. take on different meanings when isolated
from the rest of the conglomeration. When separate lays are not only
presented out of context, but also copied and adapted as independent texts,
as is the case with the anonymous lays. one can certainly expect a
modification of the genre's focus.
To gain a better grasp of how Marie's collection operated. it is useful
to study medieval ideas about compilations. In Medieval Theorv of
Authorshio. A.J. Minnis explores the subject while analyzing how medieval
writers defined and justified their writings by modelling their work on
scholastic literary theory.' To attempt any kind of synopsis of Minnis's book
here would result in gross oversimplification; let it suffice to explain that I
will not be applying the whole of Minnis's study to the genre of Breton lays.
Rather, I am interested in taking off from a point he makes in regard to
Chaucer and the Canterburv Tales. Minnis States:
When reading the prologue to any major compilation, one is immediately struck by the care with which the writer defines his special literary activity and his distinctive literary role or function as cornpifator. Whereas an auctor was regarded as someone whose works had considerable authority and who bore full responsibility for what he had written, the cornpifator firmly denied any personal authority and accepted responsibility only for the manner in which he had arranged the statements of
2nd edition (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). other men . . . . The auctoritas involved belongs to the auctoritates themselves, while the credit for the ordinatio partium, the organisation and structuring of the diverse extracts, goes to the compiler. (191-92)
By directing the reader to an authority beyond the compiler himself (or
herself, in the case of Marie de France), the writer is able to take more
liberties in the subject matter that he or she presents to the audience.
Minnis reminds us of Chaucer's disclaimer in the General Prologue
But first I pray yow, of youre curteisye, That ye n'arette it nat my vileynye, Thogh that I pleynly speke in this mateere, To telle yow hir wordes and hir cheere, Ne thogh I speke hir wordes proprely. For this ye knowen al so wel as 1, Whoso shal telle a tale after a man, He rnoot reherce as ny as evere he kan Everich a word, if it be in his charge . . .10
One must not suppose that every component of Chaucer's rhetoric of
compilation holds true for other collections: there are a number of factors
which separate Chaucer's form of compilatio from that of Marie de France.
For one thing, as the passage just quoted indicates, Chaucer expressly
mentions that the material he is relating may not be acceptable to some. For
another, Chaucer "seems to have transferred the compiler's technique of
authenticating sources to his 'sources,' the Canterbury pilgrims" (Minnis
202). But the consequence of emphasizing one's role as mere compiler
'O The Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987) Canterburv Tales GP lines 725-33. Subsequent references to Chaucer's work are to this edition. remains the same: accountability gets shifted to an authority one cannot
reproach because he or she is out of reach.
Of course, deference to one's sources is a common feature of even
the anonymous Breton lays. Graelent, one of the anonymous French
adaptations of Marie's Lanval story, contains a fairly typical epilogue
describing the Breton sources of the tale:
L'aventure du bon destrier, l'aventure du cevalier, corn il s'en ala O s'amie, fu par tote Bretaigne oie. Un lai en firent Ii Breton, Graalent Mor I'apela on."
(The mawel of the good steed, The knight's adventure, How he went off with his mistress, Were heard throughout al1 of Britanny. The Bretons made a lay about it; They called it Graelent ~uer.)'~
Often, care is taken to inform the reader that the original auctor of the lay
was recounting a true story:
Cest conte tienent a verai li Breton qui firent le lai. (Tydoref 489-90)
(This story is held to be true
" Le Lai de Graelent, Les Lais anonvmes des Xlle et Xllle siècles: Édition critiaue de auelaues lais bretons, ed. Prudence Mary O'Hara Tobin, Publications Romanes et Françaises CXLll (Genève: Librairie Droz, 1976) 11. 727-32. Unless otherwise indicated, al1 citations of anonymous French lays are from this edition.
'* Translation of Graelent by Russell Weingartner, in The Romance of Arthur II, ed. James JI Wilhelm (New York: Garland, 1986) 63-80. 10
by the Bretons who made the lai.)I3
This doubly deflects authority: in addition to transferring responsibility for
the narrative to the Bretons, the statement even absolves those who first
developed the lay from charges of sinful fabrication, by stating that the
Breton auctores merely recorded an adventure that actually took place.
Nevertheless, directing attention to the fact of compilation serves
another purpose in the collection of Marie de France than it does in the
anonymous lays, that of framing any narrative assertion or account in the
larger context of the collection as a whole. If we return to the Canterburv
Tales for an illustration, we find that whatever Chaucer's Wife of Bath,
Clerk, Merchant, or Franklin may say about marriage, for exarnple, is to be
understood not only as the opinion of a particular character with a special
kind of auctoritas (that cannot be disputed because it is actually fictional),
but also as one opinion out of several that must be weighed against each
other. What do the Canterbury Tales tell us about marriage? Any response
to the question requires reading a number of tales. It is here that the
responsibilities of ordinatio partiurn corne into play: the compiler is indeed
responsible for selecting certain of the auctor's statements to repeat, and for
determining their order. Unfortunately, the care taken by a compiler in
shaping a work does not necessarily pay off. As anyone who has studied
Chaucer knows, readers are not always aware of choices made by the
l3 Translation mine. Unless otherwise indicated, I have used my own translations of the anonyrnous French lays. compiler, and do not always respect these choices even when they are conscious of them.
It is doubtless because of unpredictable audience response that
Chaucer finally cannot rest on the compiler's defense. Minnis comments on
Chaucer's seeming about-face in the Retraction which follows the Parson's
Tale:
Although Chaucer had exploited several aspects of the theory of compifatio in several works, in his 'retracciouns' he was not prepared to assume the role of the 'lewd compilator' to whom no blame could accrue. On the contrary, he takes the blame for the sinful material that he wrote--the fact that some of it was 'rehearsed' is now irrelevant--and hopes that Christ in his mercy will forgive his sins. The 'shield and defence' of the compiler has slipped, and for once we see Chaucer as a writer who holds himself morally responsible for his writings. (208)
Chaucer is clear that he rneant well when he wrote: "For oure book seith, 'Al that is writen is writen for oure doctrine,' and that is myn entente"
(Retraction 1083). It appears, however, that even the best intent is not good enough: "The 'entente' of a writer can be good, he may write with the cornrnendable purpose of providing doctrine, but it is up to the reader to 'doo after the good and leve the evyl'" (Minnis 208). An author has no control over his material once it leaves his pen or his lips.
lnterestingly enough, although Chaucer specifically names certain works which he revokes (such as The Book of the Duchess, The House of
rFame and Troilus and Criseyde), he apparently leaves it up to the reader to decide which of the Canterbury Tales "sownen into synne" (Retraction 1086). The task is not a simple one. If we take the Parson's view, for instance, any of the Tales but his own "vertuous mateeren (ParsPro 38) are subject to reproof:
Thou getest fable noon ytoold for me, For Paul, that writeth unto Thymothee, Repreveth hem that weyven soothfastnesse And tellen fables and swich wrecchednesse. Why sholde I sowen draf out of my fest, Whan I may sowen whete, if that me lest? (ParsPro 31-36)
Why can't the Parson tell a Christian story, such as a saint's life, in the rnanner of The Second Nun's Tale? He evidently chooses to deliver a much more direct message than that. What would he think of the philosophical
Knight's Tale, with Theseus's idealistic speech on order in the universe?
Lacking the bawdiness of, Say, the Miller's Tale, the Knight's story is perhaps one of the most problematic of the Canterburv Tales. since it develops a pre-Christian world with its very own ideals and principles which could be seen as a substitute for the Christian faith.
It is tales of this type, 1 believe, that Marie de France has to offer. As
I will discuss in my first chapter, Marie's tales--with the exception of Eliduc and Yonec-are usually devoid of Christian themes. The one concept which seems to run throughout the lays, and which seems to motivate al1 action, is connected to romance (in both the medieval as well as Our twentieth-century sense of the word): "The idea varies with the individual lay, but always relates to man's love for womann (Donovan 34). What I consider to be
Marie's distinct focus on romance (that is, what I see as the impression 13
which results from her compilation) will become clearer as we compare her
art with that of the mostly anonymous authors who panicipated in the
Breton lay tradition. In any form, however, it appears that the treatment of
love between men and women was a dubious topic: "Another highly
controversial subject [besides that of pagan practicesl was human love: like
judicial astrology, it was supposed to be potentially dangerous and
conducive to sin, and many of its acknowledged auctores were pagans"
(Minnis 197). A look at the various extant examples of the Breton lay will
show how and why the central idea of the genre changed. presenting
readers with a sornewhat different focus on love; we will explore more
thoroughly why Donovan States that Marie's "original intent is ignored or
misunderstood" (122). Are later writers simply interested in creating a work
which "retains such elements of the original as would appeal to a new
audience" (12311 Sometimes. care not to offend takes precedence over concern to appeal. Chapter One:
The Breton Lay in French: Marie de France
Mortimer Donovan remarks that "modern research has until recently
lingered understandably over individual poems to the neglect of the Breton
lay as a form" (6). Indeed. Donovan's genre study, tracing the developrnent
of the Breton lay from its earliest extant appearance, in French at the hands
of Marie de France in twelfth-century England, to later manifestations, in
English by rnostly anonymous authors, stands virtually alone in attempting to
define the corpus of the Breton lay. This is strange enough, considering that
here is a genre which can be entirely encompassed in a study of some
length: the mere forty or so examples surviving in French and in English
demonstrate that concision is a standard feature of the form. which rarely
offers narratives of over 1000 lines. Donovan daims that critics shy away
from comprehensive studies because the acknowledgement of a Breton
origin is practically the only common characte ristic of the eclectic examples
of the genre (6)-aside from their brevity, of course.
Yet numerous medieval forms are hard ta define. Writing on "The
Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce," Paul Strohm finally
decides that the label "geste." for example, "justifies itself as a classificatory
term by affording ME authors a way of emphasizing the predominance of
event or action (as opposed to sentiment or reflection) in their poems."" His
l4Genre 10 (1977): 23. 15
classification is based on the terrn's etyrnology: "ME geste has its own
distinctive background and literary meaning, derived from its association
with both Lat. gesta and OF geste" (Strohm, Orinin 21). However, an earlier
article by Strohm, "Storie, Spelle, Geste, Romaunce, Tragedie: Generic
Distinctions in the Middie English Troy Narratives" recognizes that the
definition of "geste" he offers is hardly precise, since it encornpasses
everything from history to fiction, from secular tales to sacred narratives."
The term often appears in reference to works which seem no different from
what we would normally cal1 "romance," such as the narratives of Guv of
Warwick, Sir Tristrem, and Kvna Alisaundre (Oriain 21). (Of course,
"romance" itself is another complex term. Strohm finds that "a romans is
not only written in French, but is iikely to focus on the deeds of a member or group of recognized heroes-often though not invariably of the court of
Arthur" [Orioin 71; this description is meant to apply to texts as varied as a
Gawain and the Green Kniaht, The Romance of the Rose and Troilus and
Crisevde.) A definition in the Promptorium Parvulururn verifies that "geste" and "romance" were often synonyms: "Geeste or romawnce: Gestio" (Oriain
21 ).
To make the issue even more complicated, Strohm notes that in
Chaucer's Leaend of Good Women, we find another term that could be equated with "geste" (Strohm, Storie 354): For myn entent is, or I fro yow fare, The naked text in English to declare Of many a story, or elles of many a geste, As autours seyn; leveth hem if yow leste. (LGW Text G: 85-88)
Here, "geste" is a synonyrn of "story," and serves to indicate antiquity of theme. Indeed, for Chaucer, "geste" often betokens a historical subject
(Storie 354) and, in The Canterburv Tales, it is frequently qualified by the adjective "old" :
In the olde Romayn geestes may men fynde Maurices lyf; I bere it noght in mynde. (MLT 1126-27)
Or elles it was the Grekes hors Synon, That broghte Troie to destruccion, As men in thise olde geestes rede. (SqT 209-1 1).
Ultimately, the label is useful, but definitely not conclusive: "[G'ste might be classed with spelle as informative, but more inclusive than terms which we ordinarily regard as genericn (Storie 354). Certainly, medievalists often have to work with problernatic terminology for describing genres.
In fact, when scholars study Marie de France's Lais and make various attempts to define the form as she creates it, they must deal with perplexing generic issues. Remember that Marie apparently chooses her stories because they are less common than tales translated from Latin ("ltant s'en sunt altre entremis!" [32]),but that they do resemble the romance in a number of details, including the range of themes which might be encompassed by the genre. In spite of the variation in subject matter within
Marie's Lais, however, scholars have not neglected the task of classifying that branch of Breton material. In order to gain a better understanding of the
primary themes and motifs of the Breton lay, critics frequently rearrange
Marie's collection into smaller groupings. As Glyn S. Burgess points out,
these include S. Foster Damonrs differentiation between supernatural and
realistic lays, Ernest Hoepffnerrs distinction between the patterns of "les lais
fderiques," "l'amour conjugal," "parents et enfants," "l'amour tragique," and
"la femme coupable," and Paula Clifford's discrimination between those lays
which treat "the force of destiny," "the dilemrna of choice," "obstacles to
love," "love and the supernatural," or "aspects of fatal ove."'^ To the list
we can perhaps add other analyses which offer definitely modern reflections
on the twelfth-century poet, such as John A. Frey's "Linguistic and
Psychological Couplings in the Lays of Marie de Francen and Edgar
Sienaert's Les lais de Marie de France: Du conte me~eilteux8 la nouvelle
psvcholooiaue." The findings of these scholars may reveal recurring
patterns, such as problems in love, fatal consequences, and supernatural
strains, but they also demonstrate that Marie's Lais are a multifarious
assortment which lend themselves to assorted academic agendas. Although
'' See Burgess's The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context; S. Foster Daman, "Marie de France: Psychologist of Courtly Love," Publications of PeAssociation of America 44 (1929): 968-96; Ernest Hoepffner, Les Lais de Marie de France (Paris: Boivin, 1935); Paula Clifford, Marie de France: Lais (London: Grant and Cutler, 1982).
17 John A. Frey, "Linguistic and Psychological Couplings in the Lays of Marie de France," Studies in Philology 61 (1964): 3-1 8; Edgar Sienaert, Les lais de Marie de France: Du conte merveilleux a la nouvelle osvcholoaipllg (Paris: Champion, 1978). merely twelve stories are included in the aggiegation. it can by no means be
termed a homogeneous collection. hdeed, writing on "The Origin and
Meaning of Middle English Romance," Strohm argues that "one or more lais
invariably offer exceptions to the strongest arguments for the cohesiveness
of the group" (24). If we accept that the Lais are "normally built upon one
episode, often touching on love and usually treated in a manner sympathetic
to the lovers; they are occasionally realistic in style, but often have a fantasy
component; they are aimed at a cultivated audience." for example, we must
then deal with lays such as Equitan. which is decidedly hostile towards the
lovers, or Laustic. which lacks any magical details (Strohm 24-25). In spite
of these points of divergence, however, most critics are content to use
whatever unified theme they can find in Marie's lays as the definition of the
Breton form.
The tendency to find a unified theme in Marie de France's work is
probably influenced by certain remarks in the Lais which indicate that we are
here dealing with a unit. In the Prologue, for instance, Marie declares:
M'entremis des lais assembler Par rime faire e reconter.
(1 undertook to assemble these lais to compose and recount them in rhyme.)''
l8Prologue vv.47-48. All quotations from the Lais are taken from Jean Rychner's edition. Les Lais de Marie de France, Classiques français du moyen age, no. 93, 2nd ed. (Paris: Champion, 1980). Translations are from the Ferrante-Hanning edition. lntroductory statements in individual lays echo this announcement (Burgess.
Tes 2); Bisclavret, for exemple, begins by stressing the importance of including that lay in the compilation:
Quant des lais faire m'entremet, Ne voil ublier Bisclavret. (1-2)
(Since I am undertaking to compose lais. I don't want to forget Bisclavret.)
Later, in the introduction to Yonec, the author lets her audience know that her project is indeed quite ambitious:
Puis que des lais ai comencie, Ja n'iert pur mun travail laissi6; Les aventures que j'en sai, Tut par rime les cunterai. (1-4)
(Now that I've begun these lais the effort will not stop me; every adventure that I know I shall relate in rhyme.)
Guigemar vv. 19-21, Equitan vv. 5-7, and Milun W. 1-2 (see below) also refer to the lays as a series.
Marie not only stresses the cumulative nature of her work, but also reveals a consideration for audience response to her compilation; Mifun, for example, begins with:
Ki divers cuntes vuelt traitier, diversement deit comencier e parler si raisnablement que il seit plaisible a la gent. (1-4)
(Whoever wants to tell a variety of stories ought to have a variety of beginnings, and speak so intelligently that people will enjoy listening .)
As Burgess points out, "More than one of the short prologues which serve to
introduce the lays make it apparent the author was a conscious artist
concerned about the quality of craftsmanship and the reception of the
poems" (Te* 2). In fact, the first Iines of the first lay in the collection deal
with artistry and reception:
Ki de bone mateire traite, mult li peise, si bien n'est faite. Oez, seignurs, ke dit Marie, Ki en Sun tens pas ne s'oblie. (Guigemar 1-4).
(Whoever deals with good material feels pain if it's treated improperly. Listen, my lords, to the words of Marie, who does not forget her responsibilities when her turn cornes. 1
Such an artist--conscious of her responsibilities towards bath the
material she treats as well as the public who receives it--would doubtless be
pleased to see how modern readers scrutinize the tales she so carefully
assembled. As Evelyn Birge Vitz cornments, it is by suweying one story
after another that we gain a sense of Marie's proficiency: "Her literary
quality, as such, emerges most clearly frorn the recueil taken as a whole,
where her distinctive handling of such themes as love faithfulness and
adultery emerges slow~y."'~The meticulous classifications and sub-
classifications which constitute criticsr sense of Marie's Breton lay are
'' "Orality, Literacy, and the Early Tristan Material: Beroul, Thomas, Marie de France," Romanic Review 78 (1987): 308-09. established by the contrasts between one lay and the next in the collection
as a whole; we end up with the impression that Marie is exploring different
concerns and problems of love.
Before we bestow too much significance on the idea of a collection,
we must remember that though Marie's Breton lays survive in five
manuscripts, only one-H, Harley 978-contains al1 twelve of the pieces we
now read as The Lais of Marie de France, along with their Prologue. As
Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante point out in the introduction to their
translation of the Lais, however, this manuscript dates from the mid-
thirteenth century, and "therefore may not reflect the author's plan."" It is
the earliest extant version we have, though, and by far the most complete
(Ferrante 11 ). In light of the care that was taken to include evidence of
compilation within texts other than the opening prologue of the Lais, and
considering that only one other manuscript contains more than three of
Marie's lays, it seems that working with H is our best option. Any attempt
to ascertain a "truer" order for the lays, after all, is apt to run into countless
problems. Burgess, for example, prefers to study Marie's lays according to
an arrangement which rnight be the chronological order of composition--but
which, then again, might not. In reviewing R.N. Illingworth's revision of
Ernest Hoepffner's chronology, Burgess considers elements such as
geographical setting, sirnilarity of theme and "quality of writingw (Text 16) to
Joan Ferrante and Robert Hanning, introduction, The Lais of Marie de France, by Marie de France (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978) 1-27. 22
corne up with Equitan, Chaitivel, Bisclavret, Le Fresne, Deus Amanz, and
Laustic as the arrangement of a group written earlier than a second set
comprising Lanval, Yonec, Guigemar, Mifun, Chevrefuif, and ~liduc.~'But
quality of writing does not always improve with the passage of tirne--
consider Wordsworth's work over the course of his life. And even if the
exact sequence of the lays' composition could be determined, we cannot be
sure that the public received them one by one as they were written. Perhaps
certain stories were composed before the Breton theme was envisioned, just
as some of the Canterbury Tales, such as The Second Nun's Tale and The
Knight's Tale, were written prior to the inception of the pilgrimage-to-
Canterbury model.
Florence McCulloch offers an interesting theory on the issue in an
article entitied "Length, Recitation and Meaning of the Lais of Marie de
rance."^^ Beginning with the prernise that Marie would have written for
people who heard rather than read her tales, McCulloch suggests that the
arrangement of lays in H is part of Marie's strategy to maintain transmission
In Text and Context, Burgess pieces together Hoepffner's work on Marie's probable sources in "Pour la chronologie des Lais de Marie de France," Rornania 59 (1933): 351-70 and 60 (1934): 36-66, to suggest Bisclavret, Laustic, Le Fresne, Deus Amanz, Chevrefuil, Lanval, Yonec, Guigernar, Hiduc, Milun, Chaitivel, Equitan as the latter's chronology. Burgess's own findings, however, corne much closer to R.N. Illingworth, "La chronologie des Lais de Marie de France," Romania 87 (1966): 433-75. lllingworth concludes that a first group of lays (Bisclavret, Le Fresne, Laustic, Chaitivef, Deus Amanz, Equitan) takes place on the continent and contains few personal names, and contrasts these with the second group composed of Lanval, Yonec, Milun, Che vrefoil, Guigemar, Eliduc.
22 Kentucky Romance Quarterlv 25 (1978). 23
of her work in chunks of several lays at a time, in spite of a cultural
tendency towards recitation of units detached from their sources. According
to McCulloch, it would require roughly one hour to read a thousand lines of
text.'= To read al1 5786 lines of the Lais at once, then, would require an
impractical five- or six-hour session (McCulloch 258). To read just one lay
per session, however, would be just as impractical, because the shortest
lays could probably be recited in ten minutes or so: "Were Marie's lais read
aloud one at a time, hardly would the recitant have his audience's ear before
the end of the /ai was reached" (McCulloch 259). Maybe Marie wrote short
little pieces expressly so that listeners would always have the chance to hear
more than one. After comparing the length and position of each lay in the
Harley manuscript, McCulloch ascertains that if the lays are read in groups of
two beginning with Guigemar and Equitan, one ends up with six neat pairs
made up of one long lay and one short lay (259). The longer lay always
precedes the shoner lay, except in the last pair of stories. where "the
shortest lai of the collection occurs just before the longest" (McCulloch
259). McCulloch shows us in two charts that each tidy pair of tales runs to
about a thousand lines; at a thousand lines per hour, we end up with
practical one-hour sessions (259). It is also possible that the Lais were
'3 '3 This figure is based in part on Jean Rychner's calculation that 2000 lines of a chanson de geste would take about two hours to recite. McCulloch finds that a work in octosyllables. though perhaps a bit easier to recite than the chanson de geste, would move at approximately the same pace: "According to the tempo of the reader the number of lines read aloud in an hou? could probably Vary from 1000 to 1200" (267). 24
meant to be read in three groups of four or in two groups of six (so that
listening to a group of lays took about as long as Our trips to the movie
theatre). Whatever the case, McCulloch argues that the lays do not fall into
a pattern by length for nothing: the stories are arranged to cornplement one
another, and to be read in groups.
It is Iikely, then, that the collection we have in H is one assembled by
Marie for an immediate audience who could benefit from the cumulative
effect which we enjoy in modern editions of the Lais, where, in proper order
or not, the texts from Guigemar to Eiiduc are available in a single tidy
volume. This ideal situation implies a degree of control over one's material
common in book-based cultures where stories can be "owned" by their
author and where copyright and publication laws regulate texts. Though this
was obviously not the case during the twelfth century, it is true that the Lais
exhibit some trends of literate rather than oral circumstances. According to
Walter J. Ong in n,one
of the dominant characteristics of an oral culture is a tendency to reshuffle
the themes and storylines of various (apparently authorless) ~tories.~~
Marie's specific inclusion of her own name in the Lais, her references to her
work in terms of the whole, and her apparent organization of the whole,
resist this oral approach. This is not to say that Marie's Lais were not meant
to be performed orally. Ong rerninds us that literate and oral attributes were
24 (London and New York: Methuen, 1982) 41-42. 25 frequently intermingled: even "strictly written compositions which came into being as texts only (rather than being transcriptions of speeches) were often listened to rather than silently read" (10). It is to Say, however, that Marie's conception of her craft did not necessarily rely on oral performance; in fact, her work seerns to be better suited to the framework of a text.
Evelyn Vitz reveals a number of factors which separate Marie from orality-dependent composers by studying the early Tristan material as treated by various authors in French and making use of Walter Ong's delineation of the characteristics of a work shaped by orality. She concludes that whereas
BBroul's version of the Tristan and Iseut story nconforms in virtually every respect to Ong's definition . . . of the typical orally composed work" (300)'
Marie's text seems to move away from the oral tradition (308). BBroul's world, Vitz rnaintains, presents the oral universe's black and whites, where we can identify characters as either good or bad without worrying much that we are missing subtle psychologizing (300). Ong calls this the "agonistically toned" work, which invites the audience to take sides, to cheer for the good and boo at the bad. This clear-cut classification is absent from Marie's world: "[lit is far from clear to the reader, in some stories, whose side he is even to be onn (Vitz 308). The Lais are al1 about average (1 use this word with caution, considering that the characters we find in the Lais are ladies, knights, queens and kings) people who hover somewhere between good and bad. Consider the wife in Biscfavret, for instance, who ultimately gets her nose ripped off her face for the betrayal of her husband. lnstead of
portraying a wholly wicked woman, Marie seems to show an understanding
of the character's consternation at discovering that her husband is part
beast:
La dame oi cele merveille, De pour fu tute vermeille. De l'aventure s'esfrea. (97-99)
(The lady heard this wonder and turned scarlet from fear; she was terrified of the whole adventure.)
Vitz determines that there is even a difference in the literate characters who are portrayed in Marie's work as opposed to that of Béroul
(301, 306). In Béroul's text, Tristan and lseut communicate with Mark by having the hermit Ogrin write a letter. which Mark's chaplain reads to al1 the court, and which lacks any epistolary rhetoric (Vitz 302). Aside from the clergy, the only character who cmwrite is "the nasty and very learned dwarf Frocin" (302). It is certainly significant that neither the letters of
Ogrin nor of Frocin tell the truth; as Vitz speculates, "we see here some fascination with literacy, but one wonders if BBroul has a very clear understanding of it" (302). In Marie's text, on the other hand, Tristan and lseut need no one to write letters for them: they are capable of composing their own messages (306). Elsewhere in the Lais, other couples are also literate: the lovers in Milun, for example, keep their romance going for twenty years by using a Swan as a courier for their letters (Vitz 308). What 27 these narrative details point to is that Marie and Béroul were surrounded by very different societies in terms of literacy: the circles which Marie frequented and entertained were evidently far more farniliar with the written text than the community in which Béroul practiced his craft.
Ong would have us believe that as cultures accept literate features, they gradually reject contextual dynamics: that is, since there is "no way directly to refute a textn because the author is generally not present for exchange, Ong daims that writing is a passive medium which creates
"context-free language" (78). It is certainly true that written works are not revised with each narration according to the temperament of the audience.
Nevertheless, it is misleading to suggest that script is context-free: my argument thus far has centred on this very point. It is better to say that more literate cultures provide texts with a different kind of framework than the interactive setting of oral cultures; the context which script provides depends on its very fixity. Marie's art, for example, favours the static context of a compilation. Like Chaucer in the Canterburv Tales, Marie in her
Lais can set up different dialogues or exchanges on the same subject, which must be weighed against each other. In essence, the fixity of script allows
Marie to make use of the compiler's defense.
Marie alludes to both the issue of literacy and the matter of compilation in the opening Prologue to the Lais. Because it is quite short, and because it is integral to Our conception of Marie's attitude toward her art, allow me to quote a substantial portion of it:
Ki Deus ad duné escience E de parler bone eloquence Ne s'en deit taisir ne celer, Ainz se deit voluntiers mustrer. Quant uns granz biens est mult oiz, Dunc a primes est il fluriz, E quant loez est de plusurs, Dunc ad espandues ses Rurs. Custume fu as anciens, Ceo testimoine Preciens, Es livres ke jadis feseient. Assez oscurement diseient Pur ceus ki a venir esteient E ki aprendre les devaient, K'i peussent gloser la lettre E de lur sen le surplus mettre...... Des lais pensai, k'oiz aveie. Ne dutai pas, bien le saveie, Ke pur remambrance les firent Des aventures k'il oirent Cil ki primes les comencierent E ki avant les enveierent. Plusurs en ai oi conter, Nes voil laissier ne oblier. Rimé en ai e fait ditie, Soventes fiez en ai veilliél (1-1 6; 33-42)
(Whoever has received knowledge / and eloquence in speech from God / should not be silent or secretive / but demonstrate it willingly. 1 When a great good is widely heard of, / then, and only then, does it bloom, / and when that good is praised by many, 1 it has spread its blossoms. 1 The custom among the ancients- / as Priscian testifies-- / was to speak quite obscurely 1 in the books they wrote, / so that those who were ta come after / and study them / might gloss the letter / and supply its significance from their own wisdorn. 1 ...... I Then I thought of the lais I'd heard. / I did not doubt, indeed I knew well, / that those who first began them / and sent them forth 1 composed them in order to preserve / adventures they had heard. / I have heard many told; / and I don? want to neglect or forget them. / To put them into word and rhyme / I've often stayed awake.)
In this passage. with extensive references to learning and letters.
Marie establishes her literacy. More importantly, though, she refers to the auctors who came before her in order to stress her function as a mere compiler. Donovan disagrees: he believes that Marie means to highlight her own important rote in the transmission of tales (23-24). Marie, however. is in fact careful to disclaim responsibility for the original conception of the
Lais. We must not forget that the Prologue to the Lais also includes an account of how Marie went about her duty which emphasizes the all- important genesis of the lays in the minds of the auctors, not in her own imagination. No explicit mention is made of Marie's reinterpretation of the sensus; al1 she has done is to regarb the tales she has heard in the trappings of literacy ("To put them into word and rhyme 1 I've often stayed awaken
[41-421). The conclusion of the Prologue, which dedicates the collection to the King. further describes Marie's work: "M'entremis des lais assembler. 1
Par rime faire e reconter" (47-48). Ferrante and Hanning translate these lines as "1 undertook to assemble these lais 1 to compose and recount them in rhyme." Note Marie's first task in line 47: to assemble lays. A better translation of line 48 might avoid the term "compose." since "Par rime fairen could refer as much to Marie's form (to make in rhymes) as to the simple fact of making or composing stories. Marie carefully avoids explicitly claiming that the Lais are her own perspective on life. The Prologue also underscores moral value. If Marie is working on
Breton material to "supply its significance" (16), it is with the same goal as the philosophers she speaks of in lines 17 ff:
Li philesophe le saveient, Par eus rneismes entendeient, Cum plus trespassereit li tens, Plus serreient sutil de sens E plus se savreient garder De ceo k'i en a trespasser. Ki de vice se voelt defendre Estudier deit e entendre A grevose ovre comencier: Par ceo s'en puet plus esloignier E de grant dolur delivrer. (17-27)
(Philosophers knew this, they understood among themselves that the more time they spent, the more subtle their minds would become and the better they would know how to keep themselves frorn whatever was to be avoided. 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.)
Nowhere does Marie imply that the text in question will become more sophisticated as a result of her work on it. Moreover, any knowledge that
Marie may use in first reshaping the lays and then presenting them cornes from Gad, the original and ultirnate auctor: see 11. 1-8.
If we are to trust the ordering of Harley 978, we find that the Lais not only begin on a moral note, but that they also end with a moral message.
Eliduc, by far the longest of the lays (with 1184 lines), is often read as the 31
"summit" of perfect love to which Marie leads her audience.26 It should be
noted, however, that although this work shows up in HI it does not appear
in any other manuscript. Neither is it included in the Strengleikar, an Old
Norse translation dating from about a half century after Marie wrote, which
contains the eleven other lays from the Harley manuscript, as well as six
other Old French lays, and three lays which no longer exist in French
(Donovan 5, Tobin 16-17). Burgess places it last in his chronological study,
with the comment that "[allthough perhaps occasionally rather dull, it is a
mature poem which stands out from the rest" (Tes 30).
In spite of MBnard's judgrnent that "[eh fin de compte, le lai d'Eliduc
tente de concilier les aspirations de I'amour et les exigences de la religion et
ne nous présente ni une religion de l'amour ardente et absolue ni un amour
de la religion allant jusqu'au sacrifice complet des inclinations humaines"
(14748). it surely presents a more pious message than the rest of the
collection, where sexual relations outside of marriage regularly take place
without concern for the laws of the Church. Be it love between two
unrnarried parties (as in Le Fresne), love involving a woman unhappily
married to an old jealous husband (as in Yonec), or even love involving an
individual who apparently should be happy in marriage and who finally gets
punished for an extramarital affair (as in Equitan), explicitly religious
considerations are not usually at issue (Ménard 145). In Yonec, of course,
26 For example, see Florence McCulloch's article, p. 266. the bird-knight must prove that he is Christian before the lady will begin her
relationship with him, but after that. conformity with Church regulations is
forgotten. In fact, it is through prayer that the lady receives a lover:
Chevalier trovoent puceles A lur talent, gentes e beles, E dames truvoent amanz Beaus e curteis. pruz e vaillanz, Si que blasmees n'en esteient Ne nul fors eles nes veeient. Si ceo peot estre e ceo fu, Si unc a nul est avenu, Deus, ki de tut ad poesté, II en face ma volentét (95-104)
(Knights might find young girls to their desire, noble and lovely; and ladies find lovers so handsome, courtly. brave and valiant that they could not be blamed and no one else would see them. If that might be or ever was, if that has ever happened to anyone, God, who has power over everything. grant me my wish in this.)
I am disinclined to accept Constance B. Hieatt's opinion that Eliduc is
an ironic tale about yet another "idiotic and heedless" man in the Lais whose
wife's decision to devote herself to God is actually "the best choice left open
ta herOn2' Hieatt's interpretation of the Lais depends on a bipolar distinction
between good women and bad men. She asserts confidently that "[tlhe
most typical characters in [Marie's] lays are women victimized by men,
either oppressive and cruel men or weaklings like Eliduc, and women whose
28 "Elduc Revisited: John Fowles and Marie de France," Enalish Studies in Canada 3 (1977): 356. 33 native intelligence and/or humane compassion saves the day-or would. if the men would only listen to themn (356). Yet men are not always at fault in
Marie's work, as even Hieatt notes: "The other side of the picture is Marie's severity with women who break their faith with decent men (and other women). She sees that these traitors to the standards of their sex are soundly punished in such lays as Le Fresne, Bisclavret, and, more subtly,
Chaitivel" (356). €quitan also belongs to this category. althoug h Hieatt leans towards acquitting the "thoroughly wicked womann (356-57) of the tale in order to condemn a male: "it is a fool of a man who is basically to blame for what happens" (357). Additionally. in spite of the "husband's revolting behavior" (Hieatt 356) in murdering the nightingale at the end of
Laustic, the lady in the tale is not an entirely sympathetic individual. Her husband is apparently as respectable a baron as the knight with whom she has an affair (see lines 11-12); according to Ferrante and Hanning, the love portrayed in the story "has no apparent reason for beginning or continuing, except for the amusement of the two lovers. The lady accepts the man's love as much because he is her next-door neighbor as because he has a good reputationn (159). Overall, it is hard to tell if either the husband, the wife, or the lover receives Marie's support. Finally, in Chevrefoil, the mere
118 lines of text do not include a judgment of any character; Hieatt can only speculate that Marie "could have expected her audience to recognize the situation as another in which a young woman has been forced into a loveless marriage" (356).
Hieatt sees El'duc as one last anti-male tirade, which crowns the Lais.
Of course, in Eliduc, the title character-a male-does behave absolutely
indecently, especially in contrast to the women he deceives. Not only does
he betray their trust, but he also deceives his lord, and he then goes so far
as to murder the sailor who undertakes to interrupt his ignoble plans. My
point, however, is that the Lais do not necessarily lead up to the categorical
verdict that men are bad and women are good.
This brings me to my second, more important point: one must not
necessarily conclude that a religious conclusion to a secular work is ironic.
Hieatt cannot accept that Guildeluec, Eliduc's wife, is the model of Christian
charity who will go so far as to give up her husband so that he can licitly
love another, as a straight reading of the lay seems to indicate:
Ensemble od mei vus enmerrai E a vostre ami vus rendrai; Del tut le voil quite clamer E si ferai mun chief veler. (1099-1 1 02)
(I shall take you with me and give you back to your love. I want to leave him completely free, and I shall take the veil.)
Disagreeing with Emanuel J. Mickel's interpretation of Eliduc as an
illustration of "faith and loyalty," 27 Hieatt argues instead that "Marie's
denouement . . . does not take the supine view that the wife is nobly
" E.J. Mickel, "A Reconsideration of the Lais of Marie de France," S~eculum46 (1971 ): 39-65, as cited by Hieatt, 358. 3s sacrificing herself for the cause of another's love. That is just not the point.
She has nothing left to sacrifice . . . " (356). It seems to me, however, that faith and loyalty are in fact integral to the resolution of Marie's last lay.
Again, Hieatt herself acknowledges a detail in the lays which counters her interpretation: she correctly observes that a Christian theme runs throughout
Eliduc: "it [the Christian context] is always strongly in the backgroundn
(355). For example, Eliduc himself is shown to consider the laws of
Christianity:
S'a m'amie esteie espusez, Nel sufferreit crestientez. De tutes parz va malement. (601-03)
(If I were to marry my love, Christianity would not allow it. This is bad in evew way.)
These sentiments doubtless demonstrate no more idiocy and certainly more orthodoxy than the prayer of the Ionely lady in Yonec. If, later, Eliduc's betrayal of his wife and of God "contributes a good deal of . . . irony" to the tale (Hieatt 355). we cannot necessarily conclude that Marie means to ironize al1 religious sentiment, or al1 men. Hieatt seems to believe that these events are meant to warn women to place their faith in other females rather than in men or God:
When [Eliduc] takes over the helm we may see this action as syrnbolizing his absolute, and unChristian, determination to steer his own course, no rnatter who or what may stand in his way. The subsequent behavior of the wronged wife provides a striking contrasta She is a preserver of life rather than a murderer, who may be seen as exemplifying the Christian virtue of loving one's enemy, for the Iife she preserves, or restores. is that of a rival for the affections of the husband she loves. She remains calm and reasonable in circumstances which are a good deal worse than simply trying. . . . She is no doormat but an intelligent human being who acts in the light of reason rather than falling prey to self-pity as her husband has done again and again. She does not blame the girl but feels sympathy for her, with ample cause. The two women have a great deal in common: they have both been deceived and mistreated by the same self-indulgent man. . . . They should have enjoyed themselves in that reunion as good neighbors who, unlike lords, can be trusted in their love. (355)
Whether or not Guildeluec is making the best choice left open to her, she is
still, as Hieatt says, "exemplifying the Christian virtue of loving one's
enemy." No matter how untrustworthy and selfish her husband may have
been, it is most peculiar that a wife should remain calm and undisturbed
when she loses hirn to someone else. 1s Guildeluec's level-headed behavior
to be attributed mainly to her intelligence and reason, as Hieatt's article
suggests? Can we not also credit her faith for her calm response to the situation?
We know of other medieval authors who are concerned to leave their
readers with a Christian focus at the end of a work which might be interpreted as presenting dubious morals: Chaucer gives us The Parson's
Tale at the conclusion of The Canterbuw Tales, for example, and numerous fabliaux end with didactic lessons. Moreover, according to Ferrante and
Hanning, we can perhaps learn something from Marie's other works, which also reveal a writer solicitous about moral messages: This didactic purpose is not absent from any of Marie's material. She has translated the Faibles, she tells us in the epilogue. from English into French as Alfred had translated them from Latin into English, and as Aesop did from Greek into Latin (a popular belief). They are short tales with a moral lesson at the end, using, for the most part, animals as the principal actors, in the Aesopic tradition. The lessons are conventional: the dangers of greed and pride. the oppression of the weak by the strong, the superiority of a simple life over a luxurious one lived in servitude or terror. . . . In Saint Patrick's Purgatory, the hero makes a spiritual journey to another land, from which he returns a better Christian. This work, which Marie translated from Latin, has a religious as well as a moral purpose: it was intended not only to help others to improve thernselves, but also to teach thern to fear and serve God. (8-9)
I am not about to suggest that the Lais, in the end, are entirely about
didacticisrn and religion. To say that Marie's collection is framed by a
straightforward consideration for moral matters is not to Say that its bulk- fraught with dangerous non-Christian themes-should be taken any less seriously. What I see as Marie's sincere acknowledgrnent of concern for a
righteousness transcending gender issues actually makes possible a profound re-examination of morals, perhaps even with a nascent feminist twist, in the compilation as a whole. Although I do not support Constance Hieatt's view that Marie de France specializes in the wrongs of men and the wisdom of women, I believe that she does specialize in touchy predicaments which raise tough questions about what is right and what is wrong. Sometimes, women behave wisely; sometimes, they are at fault. The same is true of men. At al1 times, we must be on guard not to jump to hasty conclusions based on our own biases, because "even-handed" Marie (to use Vitz's term) is almost sure to give us something else to think about in another lay. The risque situations presented in Marie's assorted stories are precisely the point of the compilation, and can work only within the compilation.
How risqué were the Lais? I have already suggested in my introduction that any treatment of sexual love, especially as a motivating force in one's life, posed a threat to medieval Christian standards of virtuous living. Love has the power to change a man-witness Guigemarrs amazing transformation in the lay named after him. Just one arrow, rebounded from the hind of love, makes the brave knight (who has previously renounced al1 love) turn into a distraught and confused wretch:
Li chevaliers fu remés suls. Pensis esteit e anguissus; Ne seit uncore que ceo deit, Mes nepurquant bien s'aperceit, Si par la dame n'est gariz, De la mort est seurs e fit. (393-98)
(The knight was alone now, preoccupied and in distress. He didn't yet know what was wrong, but this much he could tell: if the lady didn't cure him, he was sure to die.)
Love can last years and overcome the greatest distances, as in Milun:
Vint anz menerent cele vie Milun entre lui e s'amie.
o...... m.... Ensemble viendrent plusurs feiz. Nuls ne poet estre si destreiz Ne si tenuz estreiternent Que il ne truisse liu sovent. (277-78; 285-88) (For twenty years they lived like this, Milun and his mistress. . - ...... They met together several times. [No one can be so constrained or so closely guarded that he can't find a way out.]) (279-80; 287-90)
In spite of the common practice of reading 1 Corinthians 13 at modern wedding ceremonies in the spirit of romantic love (verse 13: "And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is iovew),
Christian charity is a concept far removed from amorous passion, and theologically cannot be supplanted by it as the cornerstone of one's existence. Even more dangerous than the idea of love's power, however, is outright depiction and advocation of sin, such as sexual relations outside of marriage. Almost al1 the Lais hint at extra-marital lave of some kind.
In spite of Church laws, it is hardly uncommon to find medieval works which espouse the merits of love and passion. I would venture to say that what made the Lais especially risque-that territory which Marie dared explore only within the context of her collection, and which others did not copy-was the writer's frank depiction of the factors which drive people to marital unfaithfulness. In at least a quarter of the twelve lays, Marie sympathetically examines the psychology of adultery, and makes her audience reflect on what they would do in similar circumstances.
Interestingly, the collection starts off with such a story--although our attention is at first fixed on an unmarried protagonist's resistance to love, and his inevitable submission to its powers. Guigemar, we have seen, is a man who suffers keenly from the wound of love. The one woman who can cure him, we find out, is married to a very jealous man:
II ne la guardat mie a gas: En un vergier, suz le dongun, La out un clos tut envirun; De vert marbre fu li muralz, Mult par esteit espes e halz N'i out fors une sule entree: Cele fu noit e jur guardee. (218-24)
(The watch he kept over her was no joke. The grove beneath the tower was enclosed al1 around with walls of green marble, van/ high and thick. There was only one entrance, and it was guarded day and night.)
Marie does not merely tell us that the lady's husband is over-protective: she offers a lengthy description (11. 209-260) of al1 the unfair precautions the old man has taken to guard against his wife's falseness. Later in the collection, when Marie writes about another husband who keeps his wife locked up (in
Yonec), she chooses to focus directly on the feelings of the imprisoned wife:
Mut se pleineit e suspirot E en plurant se dementot: "Lasse, fait ele, mar fui nee! Mut est dure ma destineel En ceste tur sui en prisun, Ja n'en ai istrai si par mort nun. . . Jeo ne puis al mustier venir Ne te servise Deu oir. . . Maleeit seient mi parent E li autre communalment Ki a cest gelus me donerent E de Sun cors me marierent! (65-70; 75-76; 81-84) (She grieved and sighed and wept and raged: "1 should never have been bornl My fate is very harsh. I'm imprisoned in this tower And 1'11 never leave it unless 1 die. I can't even go to church or hear God's service. . . A curse on my family, and on al1 the others who gave me to this jealous man. who married me to his body.")
Marie takes care to show the wife's reasons for being frustrated: surely it is an irrationaf man who denies his wife even the chance to attend church services. Finally, in Milun, as in Guigemar and Yonec. Marie does not just depict an adulterous relationship $7 media res, but rather makes sure that we have background information about the affair. The romance which develops between the unmarried Milun and a yet-unwed baron's daughter appears to be a fitting match. and when the girl is forced to become another man's wife, we are already prepared to accept that the arranged marriage is unfair.
That is not to say that the line between good and bad, right and wrong, or fair and unfair is always clear. In Milun. for example, we are not given any details about the husband chosen by the baron for his daughter.
AH we know is that he is "[uJn mut riche humme del pais, I Mut esforcible e de grant prisw (125-26: "a rich lord of the region, / a powerful man of great repute"). It does not appear that he is a terribly mean or unreasonable man.
Has the baron made that bad a choice? If so, why does Milun leave his country and the mother of his child without even considering that the girl's 42 family might intewene in her affairs? According to Ferrante and Hanning's assessrnent of the situation, Milun is too passive to assert his devotion to the girl early in their relationship (179). It takes his reunion with the couple's son to elicit a cal1 for the whole family to get together again, after twenty years of swan-delivered messages. Ferrante and Hanning write:
Theson's] resolution and vigor imply Marie's criticism of Milun's dilatoriness in his own cause" (179). As Vitz says, it is at times difficult to determine Marie's opinion of a particular character. On the whole, though, we find that at least three of the Lais suggest that Marie is very sympathetic towards a spouse led to break her marital vows. Of course it is significant that al1 three examples involve a female who commits adultery! Hieatt would assert that Marie is blatantly and consistently suppartive of female causes. I believe, however, that her generally even-handed tone in her stories, along with her tacit condernnation of certain female characters. gives her greater freedorn to take quite a sympathetic view of the wornen in
Guigemar, Yonec, and Milun.
It would perhaps be useful to return to the article by Florence
McCulloch I discussed earlier. Central to "Length, Recitation and Meaning of the Lais of Marie de France" is the proposal that Marie's lays are organised in such a way as to ensure recitation of more than just one story at a time.
Working from this proposal, McCulloch attempts to find correspondences in the pairs of lays that form hour-long units. I believe that she is on the right track when she States that
[elven a cursory reading of the lais with no attempt to impose thematic coupling reveals that the outcome of the first of two consecutive lais portrays the ultimate triumph of love with . . . the union of those who, according to Marie's view of what is both natural and right in love, should be together. . . . In contrast, the second and the shorter of each couplet ttreats of love perverted, frustrated, or inexplicably ill-fated. . . . The point counterpoint composition of Marie's collection is instantly apparent in the first pair of lais where the recital of Guigemar's ultimately happy and fitting love must still have been present in the listenerfs memory while the doom-filled verses of Equitan's treacherous passion leading to the loversf death were being pronounced. (260)
Marie condones the action in Guigemar, but condemns that in Equitan.
Although such an absolute bipolar distinction doubtless cannot be made for the other units of lays containing stories about wives who seem to be justified in cheating on their husbands, I suspect we will at least find that the tales which follow both Yonec and Milun are ones which are decidedly cooler towards their female protagonists. After Yonec cornes Laustic, which might not present us with a perfect husband. but which certainly does not depict a perfect wife, either. It seems that Marie. having just empathized with an adulteress, subsequently refrains from over-romanticizing another woman who desires a man other than her spouse. Are we to deduce that whereas the locked-up wife in Yonec was alone in her prison when she yearned for a lover, the lady in Laustic must leave her husband's bed to carry on her illicit intrigue, and so is not entirely endorsed? It is hard to tell;
Marie seems to remain aloof. She is also detached from the central female 44 character in the second Iay of the next pair: after Milun cornes Char'tivef.
which contrasts unending love for only one person with the coquetteries of a
wornan who cannot choose between four suitors: "Ne volt les treis perdre
pur l'un: / Bel semblant feseit a chescun" (55-56: "She didn't want to lose
three in order to have one, / so she was nice to each of them"). Marie's
point counterpoint method consists mainly of subtle juxtapositions. All in all.
Marie deals with adultery-or at least the prospect of it-in eight of her twelve
lays. In three of these lays, she appears to endorse the action. In three
other lays (E~uitan,Biscfavret, and Efiduc). she censures those who indulge
in extra-marital affairs. Finally, in the remaining two tales which depict adultery (Laustic, Chevrefoil). it is hard to tell where Marie stands. Even if she did not conceive of her collection as one ta be read in pairs. she surely arranged her stories so that lays which sanctioned adultery uitimately got counterbalanced by other tales which presented different situations leading ta diverse judgments. Chapter Two:
The Later Breton Lay in French: After Marie
Evelyn Vitz reminds us that "not al1 messages sent are messages received, either in life or in literature" (309). Marie de France may have taken precautions to keep the Lais from becorning fragmented, and she may have relied on the layout of her collection to provide a foundation for subjects of special concern to her, but those who heard her stories may not have been aware of this. What happened once the Lais reached their audience?
We can assume that Marie's collection initially profited from tight author-audience interaction: if Marie was writing stories to be iecited, she probably had a specific audience in mind. Indeed, her Prologue dedicates the collection to a king who is usually identified as Henry II, the English monarch from 1154 to 1189 (Ferrante 7):
En I'honur de vus, nobles reis, Ki tant estes pruz e curteis, A ki tute joie s'encline E en ki quoer tuz biens racine, M'entremis des lais assembler. . . . (43-47)
(In your honor, noble King, who are so brave and courteous, repository of al1 joys in whose heart al1 goodness takes root, I undertook to assemble these /ais. . . .)
At another point, Marie addresses the lords who apparently were her listenersq2* No mention is made of a female audience. I would assume,
however, that women could be counted as some of Marie's most
sympathetic listeners. Florence McCulloch reminds us-as does Evie
~rimes~'-ofan external reference to Marie's audience, in Denis Piramus's Lê
Vie seint Edmund le rei:
E Dame Marie altresi ki en rime fist e basti e compassa les vers des Lais ke ne sunt pas de tut verais: e si en est el mult loée e la rime par tut amee, kar mult l'aiment, si I'unt mu(t chier cunt, baron e chevalier; e si en aiment mult I'escrit e lire '1 funt, si unt delit e si le funt sovent retreire. Les Lais suelent as dames pleire; les oient de joie et de gré qu'il sunt sulum lur volent&"
(And Dame Marie also, who in rhyme made and assembled and composed the verses of the Lais. which are not at al1 true: she is praised by many for them and their rhyrne is loved everywhere, because many love it, and hold it in high esteem- counts, barons, and knights; they also love the stories of the Lais and have them read, and take delight in them and so they have them narrated often.
28 Guigemar, 1. 3: see pp. 19-20 above.
29 In her introduction ta The Lavs of Desir& Graelent and Melion (New York: n.p., 1928) 12.
30 Ed. Hilding Kjellman (Goteborg, 1935): vv. 35-48, as cited by McCulloch. The Lais especially please the ladies; they hear them with joy and pleasure because they are according to their will.)
Piramus records that counts, barons, and knights enjoyed Marie's lays-but that female members of the nobility especially liked the stories.
The passage from Piramus, of course, refers to the Lais as a collection. Since not al1 medieval audiences, male or female, would have read--or heard-Marie first hand, however, we cannot be sure that they received the Lais as a whole, to be grouped, regrouped and otherwise examined as twentieth-century critics do today. Consequently, in studying later medieval authors who were inspired by Marie's work, we must remember that they were not necessarily familiar with the Lais as we know them. Such a circumstance is an advantage of Our literate, writing-based society. While Marie may have been moving towards such a culture, and while she perhaps worked best within that framework, conditions within her own culture were to result in a recasting of her material. I am certainly not the first to daim that Marie's work displays features of literacy which were not yet generally accepted in her oral culture. Vitz, for example, determines that "Marie may well have been, as we Say, ahead of her time. Her message and her ambitions were, 1 believe, substantially more literary than what the audience she had available could handle" (309).
It is therefore important to examine Marie's Lais not just as we read them, but also as they were likely transmitted eight hundred years ago. An 48
examination of manuscripts--other than Harley 978--which contain Marie de
France's lays reveals that certain lays probably circulated more than others.
Manuscript S (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, nouv. aqu. fr. 1104, ff.la-45d)
contains al1 of Guigemar, Lanval, Yonec, Chevrefoil, Man, Le Fresne and
Equitan, and fragments of Deus Amanz and Bisclavret (Burgess. Biblioaraohv
11 ). Manuscript C (British Library, Cott. Vesp. B. XIV, ff. 1-8) contains only
Lanval, while manuscript Q (BibliothBque Nationale, fr. 24432, ff.241 b-245a)
contains only Yonec; manuscript P (Bibliotheque Nationale. fr. 21 68, ff.47a-
58b) includes both Lanva/ and a fragment of Yonec, as well as Guigemar
(Burgess, Bibliorira~h~11). The Shrewsbury manuscript lists on f.200 of
MS. VI1 the titles of sixty-seven lays and narrative poems, including at least
seven wt-iich match Marie's titles: Bisclaueret (no. 9), Frene (no. 14),
Laumuai (no. 22),ElHuc (no. 33), Cheuerefoil (no. 56), Milun (no. 57) and
Yonech (no. 61).
Bearing in mind that surviving manuscripts do not offer a complete
representation of medieval distribution, it is nonetheless significant
to note that Lanval and Yonec each appear in four of the five extant
manuscripts of Marie's work: both of these well-liked lays feature
supernatural figures. Many modern interpreters of the Breton lay, however,
are inclined to downplay supernatural motifs. Philippe MBnard, for example, ends his list of variations on the theme of separated lovers in the Lais with the reminder that "aucun de ces motifs n'est vraiment spécifique des lais, 49
hormis peut-être l'amour d'un étre surnaturel pour un mortel.
Malheureusement, ce dernier sujet n'emplit pas les contes de ~arie."~'He
later points out that in relation to others who treat the same material, Marie
actually reduces the number of marvellous elements: "Si l'on compare le lai
d'Yonec et le conte de l'Oiseau bleu, on decouvre que le texte le plus
humain. le moins rempli de merveilleux, c'est le lai de Marie de France.
Comment expliquer cette limitation du merveilleux? Marie se montre bien
plus discrète que les auteurs des Mabinogion ou de maints contes celtiques"
(183). Mary Ferguson uses the Stith Thompson classification to bring us
exact percentages in a "systematic examination of the motifs and [folk] tale
types" in the ~ays.~'A cornparison of supernatural and natural motifs
determines that marvellous themes are actually much less common than
"natural" ones (ranging from love to animals to tests): Ferguson calculates
the ratio as 44:111 (4-5). To judge from the rnanuscripts, however, the
mawellous themes were much more popular than any other aspect of the
Lais. In fact, according to Ferguson, twenty of the forty-four fantastic
elements in Marie's tales appear in Lanval(6). Four more appear in Yonec.
lnterestingly enough, the other lays containing marvellous motifs are
Guigemar (with eight), Bisclavret (seven), Eliduc (three), and Les Deus
31 Les Lais de Marie de France: Contes d'amour et d'aventure du moven gae, LitttSratures Modernes 19 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979) 94.
32 "Folklore in the Lais of Marie de France," The Romanic Review 57 (1966): 4- 5. 50
Amanz (two); every one of these tales Save €//duc appears in the second- largest collection of Marie's work.
The supernatural, then, was a favourite component of Marie de
France's Lais, and one which commonly found its way into the work of those who sought to copy her. More remarkable than the particulars of
Marie's craft which are copied, however, are those elements which are ignored by Marie's imitators: it is surely notable that not one of the extant
Breton lays modelled after Marie is about what I cal1 "justifiable adultery."
Of course, one can hardly offer a single sweeping generalisation to interpret the designs of over twenty authors-most of them anonymous--who wrote
Breton lays after Marie. Moreover, even if a certain amount of generalising is in order, one must acknowledge some distinction between trends in the
French Breton lay tradition and the English one. Nevertheless, it is interesting and worthwhile to study lays outside of Marie's collection which are related to the Breton form in order to appreciate what the genre came to signify as it became dissociated from the organised structure of the original compilation.
The French Breton lays as a whole are problematic because we must first determine exactly which texts we classify under that title. In Prudence
Mary O'Hara Tobin's critical edition of certain Breton lays in French (Les Lais
Anonvmes des Xlle et Xllle Siècles], we find eleven lays divided into five categories: 1. les lais féeriques dans le cadre breton: a. Grae/ent, Guingamor, Desire, où parart une f4e-maitresse; b. Tydorel, Tyolet, Espine, où il s'agit d'un chevalier venu de l'autre monde par une rivihre ou un lac; 2. les lais plus realistes dans le cadre breton qui contiennent toujours un dlement surnaturel: Melion, Doon; 3. le lai didactique dans le cadre breton, toujours avec son Blement de mysthre: Trot; 4. un lai burlesque à la mise en scène bretonne: Lecheor; 5. un lai dans le cadre breton sans dément surnaturel, qui paraît dans le Strengleikar: Nabaret. (10)
Unfortunately, Tobin does not specify why she chooses to exclude certain
stories which might have been included with the anonymous French Breton
lays. When she describes the eight manuscripts in which the anonymous
lays are found, one has the impression that to cul1 the Breton lays from
miscellaneous collections is a clear-cut task-yet the assignment has sparked
numerous disagreements arnong those interested in the genre.
Certainly, there are some works which are easily identified as Breton
lays because of their obvious dependence on Marie's narratives. Guingamor,
Graelent, and Desird, for example, are al1 based on a story similar to that of
Lanval, while Melion compares to Marie's Bisclavret and its treatment of
lycanthropy. Additionally, the second part of Doon recalls the father-son
combat of c il un.^^ Most of these contain either Marie's typical reference to
the Bretons who originally composed the lay, or a setting in Brittany for at
33 For further comment on the werewolf story of Melion and Bisclavret see Evie M. Grimes, ed., The Lavs of DesirB. Graelent and Melion (New York: n.p., 1928); for a cornparison of Doon and Milun see Gaston Paris, ed., "Lais inedits de Tyolet, de Guingamor, de Doon, du Lecheor et de Tydorel," 59-61. Mortimer Donovan mentions both these studies in his book. 52
least part of the tale. Other pieces have no specific counterpart in Marie's
collection, but develop various themes found in the Lais. Tydorel, Tyoiet,
and Espine fall under this category: while dismissed by some scholars as
inauthentic, they are usually recognized as Breton lays because they are, like
the five lays discussed above, connected to Breton compositions and
locations (Williams 80). Tydorel recalls Marie's lays which tell of the
romance between a human and a supernatural figure. The story opens by
introducing the childless king and queen of Brittany, and quickly shifts
attention to the queen's affair with a mysterious knight, who is not of the
natural world and who wilf father her two children; the rest of the tale
centres on Tydorel, the first fruit of this union, who is unlike mere mortals in
that he never goes to sleep. Tyolet combines the idea of the hunt as a
prelude to love (as in Guigemar) with the test motif (such as that found in
Deus Amanz), as well as some supernatural elements: it recounts the story
of a widow's son, Tyolet, who spends his time hunting for wild animals by
whistling to attract them (a method he has learned from a fairy). One day,
he encounters a stag which magically transforms into a knight. Tyolet then
receives his deceased father's arrns from his mother, and becomes one of
Arthur's knights. He subsequently undertakes a near-impossible task: to get the leg of a white stag in order to make the proud princess of Logres his
wife. Tyolet takes along the princess's hound and achieves his goal, though
he nearly loses it al1 when another knight runs off with the stag's leg which 53 the wounded Tyolet has handed over to him. In the end, Tyolet marries the princess and becomes king of Logres. Finally, Espine adds a few supernatural ingredients to the story of lovers separated by controlling parents (which we also find, for example, in Deus Arnanz): the son of the king of Brittany grows up with the daughter (by a previous rnarriage) of the queen of Brittany. The two children fall in love and are caught together one day by the queen; they are subsequently separated. Years later, the girl is magically reunited with the boy during one of his knightly adventures at the
"gu6 de I'Espine" (the "Perilous Ford" [Donovan 761). The son overcomes other knights and gains a supernatural horse, which will vanish if its bridle is removed. The two children are then married. The story ends when the girl takes the bridle off the horse, which of course disappears.
These eight items make up the whole of what Donovan accepts as the corpus of anonymous French Breton lays. A number of other medieval works in French, however, have been associated with the Breton tradition.
These texts are scattered in seven different manuscripts, two of which also include lays by Marie:
--MS. S contains, intermingled with the nine pieces by Marie listed above
(see pp.46-7) fifteen other short poems; the order is Guimar, Lanval, Desir&
Tyoulet, O yonet (Yonec), Guingamor, Espine, Espervier, Chievre fueil, Doon,
Deux Amanz, Bisclavret, Milon, Fresne, Lecheor, A quitan, Tydorel, Cort
Mantef, Ombre, Conseil, Amours, Aristote, Graalent, Oiselet (Tobin 1 1 ) . It is this manuscript which perhaps causes the most difficulties for anyone attempting to make a list of Breton lays composed after Marie: although it is labelled 'lais de Breteigne," MS. S contains lays which seem to have nothing ta do with that title. End of thirteenth or beginning of founeenth century.
-MS. P (also mentioned above) contains twenty-one varied pieces, ranging from a romance of the Round Table (I'Atre perileus) to a life of
Charlemagne. Three of these texts corne from Marie: Yonec, Guigemar and
Lanval. They are, like the lays of MS. SI mixed with other texts, in the order l'A tre perilleus, du Vilain de Farbu, le lais d'Eudemaret (Yonec), li lais de
Gugemer, lai de Lanval, li lai de Narciso, lai de Graelent, c'est d'Aucasin e de
Nicolete, /i Fauvliaus d'ln fer, Il Faveliaus de Caresmes et de Carnage, ci commence du Secretain, /'/mage du Monde, vie de Charlemagne et comment ala en Espagne, chi commenche /iBestiaires Ifables), les 15 Signes, li drois
Bestiaires de la jeune Escrip ture, du Bouchier d'Abevile, du Tort contre le
Tort, a page of Latin prose, Lucidaires en Roumans, de la vielle Truande
(Tobin 12). As we have seen, Graelent is a text which is immediately recognizable as Breton material: even Donovan agrees. End of thirteenth century.
--MS. B (Paris B.N. fr. 1553) consists of over fifty texts in verse and in prose; Tobin lists the best-known of the collection, including the Roman de
Troie, des sept Sages, le lais de Espine and lays drYnaures (13). Along with Espine, we should perhaps consider the Breton connection of lays d'Ynaures (or d'lgnaure), a work which Donavan categorises somewhere
between the didactic lay and the fabliau (93). Ignaure, after all, follows
closely after Espine in the manuscript, and is set in ancient Britanny. End of
thirteenth century.
-MS. C-2" (Paris, Ars, fr. 351 6) contains mostly religious and didactic
works: "Des 6pisodes pris dans la Sainte Bible en forment la première partie,
suivis par des Vies de Saints, des Miracles de Notre Dame, des traites
didactiques et religieux" (Tobin 14). Near the end of the manuscript,
though, there are three lays: /ai de Melion, lay de Trot, and lai d'Aristote
(Tobin 14). If we identify Melion as a Breton lay, we should probably
explore possible Breton affiliations in the other two lays as well. Probably
copied around 1267-68.
--MS. P-2 (Cologny-Genéve, Bibliotheca Bodmeriana. ms. Phillips 3713) is
made up of Haveloc, Desire, Nabarez, Roman des Hes, and Donnez des
Amants (Tobin 15). As we have seen, Desird tells a story close to that of
Lanval, and thus warrants inclusion in the Donovan canon. Haveloc and
Nabaret are less obviously based on Marie de France. They do cal!
themselves Breton lays, however, and deserve to at least be examined as
possible members of the canon. End of thirteenth or beginning of fourteenth
34 Since I have chosen to follow Burgess's identifications of the manuscripts containing Marie's lays, and Tobin's classifications of the manuscripts containing anonymous lays, I have opted to distinguish with nurnbers those manuscript identifications which overlap in order to avoid confusion. Therefore, I differentiate between C and C-2, as well as P and P-2. century.
-MS. T (Turin. Bibliotheque de 18Universit6. L. iv 33) has unfortunately been
"so badly destroyed by fire and water that it is impossible to decipher it"
(Grimes 46). Along with "romans d'aventure" such as Meraugis de
Portlesguez, G/igois, and l'Histoire de Tlrébes, it contained the lay of Melion
(Tobin 15). Beginning of fifteenth century.
--MS. L (Paris. Ars. fr. 2770) includes Viain de Farbu, lilay de Eudemares
(Yunec), lais de Gugemer, c'est de Lanval, De Narciso /i lais, l'aventure de
Graalent, c'est d8Aucassr'net Nicdete, and a few fabliaux (Tobin 15). Note that this manuscript is copied from MS. P; it is a much later work, probably from the eighteenth century (Tobin 15).
The lays which warrant study along with the more "obvious" Breton lays, then, are Espervier, Lecheor, Gort Mantel, Ombre, Conseil, Amours,
Aristote and Oiselet from MS. S (because someone, though not necessarily an author, has chosen to identify them al1 as part of the genre), as well as
Ignaure, Trot, Haveloc, and Nabaret frorn other manuscripts (either because the authors have given them designative labels or because manuscript compilers have assigned them to suggestive locations.) To be fair to
Donovan, we must acknowledge that he does devote attention to each of these texts: he denies their status as true Breton lays in favor of reclassifying them as either didactic lays, elevated fabliau, or (in the case of
Haveloc) Germanic material. He does not, however, explain why some of these works are associated with the Breton lay at all. As I have noted, some of the lays in question even adopt Marie's opening and closing rhetoric, labelling themselves as Breton lays. Should we dismiss pieces which were ostensibly conceived of as Breton lays?
Harry Williams certainly does not believe SOr and thus creates a generic canon which extends Donovan's corpus by making sure to accept any text in which the author indicates that his work is meant to be a Breton lay. Williams, who fixes the nurnber of anonyrnous French Breton lays at thirteen, cautiously selects "authentic" pieces from the manuscripts according ta well-defined standards:
The present conclusion to be drawn is that the guide lines to use in identifying a Breton lay are these: when a poem is short (i.e. under about 1000 W.), treats of love and an unusual event, and when the author daims, explicitly or implicitly, to be writing a (Breton narrative) lay or is inspired by a Breton musical lay, and when the author places his lay's theater of action in or near Great or Little Britain, such lays are to be considered of the Breton variety. (79)
Williams argues that if the author of a work identifies it as part of a certain genre, we should not presume to know more than he or she did about the form by rejecting that identification:
I believe it a mistake to term, merely on the basis of content or tone, as fab/iau or conte or nouve//e in verse, any work a mediaeval author chose to cal1 a lay. To reclassify thus is an application of modern classifications, convenient yes, but accurate no, implying that mediaeval writers really did not know what kind of work they were producing or, as Bédier has said, were capitalizing on the vogue of one genre (the lay) to elevate another (the fabliau). (81) 58
Based on that premise, Williams insists on the authentic Breton status of not only Lecheor and Corî Mantel from MS. S, but also Trot, Nabaret, Le
Cor and Haveloc from other manuscripts. In spite of his willingness to accede to medieval designation of genre by an author, however, Williams distrusts other medieval classifications. Therefore, in MS. S. we can safely label non-Breton those works lacking obvious links with the Breton lay, if they contain no authorial indication of genre. Some lays, for example, could have been incorporated into MS. S by a scribe who imposed his own classification on the pieces. Williams warns: "Only in the case of scribal designation of genre should we hesitate to accept the mediaeval classification proposed. . ." (81). In this instance, apparently, modern scholarship is able to propose classifications which are more accurate than that provided by the medieval manuscript compiler: "If an author does not claim a connection with Breton Song and does not place the action in or near
Britain, large or small, his lay is to be classed as a different kind (i.e. classic, humorous, courtly, as Narcisse, Aristote, Ombre)" (79).
For Williams, then, authorial indication of Breton connection is all- important in determining the canon of the Breton lay. Donovan, on the other hand, distrusts any authorial indications or labels Save those of Marie; he seems to believe that those who wrote "Breton laysn after Marie merely advertised themselves as such without really living up to the label:
"Although in the thirteenth century these borrowed advantages [that is, favorite motifs, phrases and such externals as the prologue and epilogue]
must have done much to insure an audience, they poorly make up for the
story of love unified by a predominant idea" (66). He holds this opinion even
for those lays which he is willing (albeit reluctantly) to categorise as Breton.
Evidently, Donovan identifies Breton lays according to strict guidelines. I
agree with Williams, however, that we cannot simply disregard medieval
classifications on the grounds that we do not find them suitable: there must
be something of the Breton lay even in the poorest irnitators. If the genre
was that popular, after all, I assume that the audience had expectations
beyond just the initial labeL3'
The elements which Donovan terms "borrowed advantages" are worth
studying. Specifically, I wish to examine the prologues and epilogues of the
lays, which Donovan frequently quotes before explaining how a given lay
fails to live up to Marie's standard. See Guingamor 11. 1-5, for example:
D'un lay vos dirai l'aventure: ne1 tenez pas a troveure, veritez est ce que dirai, Guingamor apele on le lai. En Bretaingne ot .leroi jadis . . .
(1 will tell you the adventure of a lay: do not suppose it is merely a fabrication; what I will tell you is the truth.
36 Imagine a new television show hoping to cash in on the success of the popular X-Files: after ads indicating (either explicitly or implicitly) that the series will appeal to X-Files fans, the storyline of the show is likely to include at least some of the components which made the X-Files popular. One would not expect a sitcom, Say, or a soap opera-and one would not be satisfied, under those circumstances, with a sitcom or a soap opera. The lay is called Guingamor. In Brittany there was once a king . . .)
Or consider the prologue to Graelent (11. 1-61:
L'aventure de Graalent vos dirai si que je l'entent; bon en son li lai a oir, e les notes a retenir. Graelens fu de Bretons nes, gentix e bien enparentes.
(The adventure of Graelent I will tell you as I understand it; the lays are good to hear, and their melodies pleasant to remember. Graelent was born to Breton parents, of a noble and good family.)
Do these anonymous prologues, even as handled by Marie's "closest imitators," merely indicate a pathetic preoccupation with the "externals" of the Breton lay, as Donovan would have us believe? Or can we instead argue that there is actually some substantial link to Marie's Breton lay in the
"internalsn of uther lays? I will acknowledge that the treatment of love in the anonymous Breton lays is not quite the same as the approach to the subject in Marie's Lais. I do not agree, however, that the later Breton lays are al1 inferior to Marie's example, nor that the anonymous authors, for the most part, were less preoccupied with love than Marie was. First of all, it is unclear what exactly Donovan means by a "story of love unified by a predominant idea." Apparently, it is a notion which ought to be easily understood; Donovan gives the outlines of Marie's twelve lays, and merely remarks that from these, one might establish "a principle which unifies each 61
lay, not history or tradition. but, as in some of the long romances, a single
idea. The idea varies with the individual lay, but always relates to man's
love for woman" (34). Donovan's reader is then directed to an Appendix
which lists "unifying ideas" as outlined by Leo ~pitzer.~'Are we to gather
that what makes Marie's collection unique is that each of her stories can be
reduced to a narrowly-defined theme? What about Guigemar, which deals
with resistance to love, adultery, and the jealousies of an old man with a
young wife? Or what about Le Fresne, which is both about the sins of
Fresne's mother and the patience of Fresne herself? Marie. of course,
expertly fuses themes together. For example. Ferrante and Hanning note
that in the character of Fresne, Marie actually blends the theme of the long-
suffering Griselda figure with that of the adopted child of noble rank so that.
with the theme of the falsely accusing mother, there are at least three major
motifs at play in Le Fresne: "Its adroit combination of three durable motifs in
European folktale and fiction pays tribute to Marie's craftsmanship as a
storyteller, for the interaction among the three elements of the plot is as
unforced as it is dramatic" (87). Not al1 of Marie's lays are unified by one
and only one principle. What I believe Donovan discerns in the tales by
Marie, aside f rom her skillf ul synthesis of narrative threads. is actually a kind
of interactive energy: each lay gains its significance by what it conveys in
comparison and in contrast to other lays. To put it another way, there is a
See pp. 235-36 of Donovan's Guide. Spitzer's observations are not transiated (frorn German) into English. 62
unity of theme within individual lays precisely because they are not individual
lays. We concentrate on what Le Fresne says about "the triumph of
protective love over the obstacles of human weakness, social circumstance, and fortune" (Ferrante 91), for instance, instead of what it says about the triumph of moral rectitude over al1 kinds of obstacles, because we read it in the context of other stories about love.
The later Breton lays in French, though at times grouped together, lack this context. If Donovan finds the anonymous lays to be wanting in unifying
principle, it might be because these lays were never meant to illustrate any particular point about love which one might consider in relation to other tricky scenarios. Whereas Marie's design entails presenting various features of love in diverse lays, the anonymous authors' approach is at once more modest and more ambitious than that: they will present various features of the Lais in just one taie. Let us consider for a moment what story we would pick to exernplify the Breton lay. Perhaps, with Glyn Burgess, we might agree that Chevrefoil is a fairly good representation of the genre: "In spite of its brevity Chevrefoil succeeds in summing up many of the quintessential thernes of Marie's lays. The perfect love between Tristram and Iseut . . . withstands obstacles and has to content itself with a few brief but delightful meetings" (Text 28). Or maybe we should look for a lay which explores more aspects of love; Elidoc, for example. combines "the various human emotions of selfless affection, loyalty, romantic love, desire. self-indulgence; 63 the bonds between a man and his wife, a man and his love, and a man and his lord" (Ferrante 229). Of course, because Elid& finally shows that "[tlhe only love that can resolve the conflicts between the others is the love of
God" (Ferrante 229), it is a thoroughly atypical lay. Is there such a thing as a typical lay? How on earth could a writer fashioning himself or herself after
Marie ever hope to satisfy those of us who would try to find al1 of the Lais' traits in a single work? Donovan implies that later writers of Breton lays simply did not get the point of Marie's work. Perhaps, if medieval audiences and authors were only familiar with a few of Marie's pieces, they did have a rnistaken impression of what a typical lay would be, and therefore produced imitations lacking a cornprehensive philosophy of love. Just as we cannot sav for sure that Marie's readers had access to al1 her lays, however, we cannot immediately assume that those who set out to copy her work were unaware of the complete collection. Moreover, it is very difficult to determine, based on a concept such as a "unified idea of love," who did or did not get the point of the lays.
Donovan underestimates Marie's imitators when he alleges that they merely borrow standard references to Breton sources in order to profit from the Lais' popularity, without really understanding the essence of the stories themselves. Similarly, he overestimates the impact of the anonymous lays' prologues and epilogues. Consider the rhetoric framing the story of Desir& for instance, which Donovan considers representative of the anonymous lays ("[Ut has also the typical prologue and epilogue, which should be quoted in full" [67]):
Entente i mettrai e ma cure a recunter un aventure dunt cil qui a ce1 tens vesquirent par remernbrance un lai firent. (1-4)
(1 have devoted painstaking attention to the narration of an adventure: those who lived when the adventure took place made a lay to cornmemorate it.)
Pur remembrer cest aventure en aveient un lai trove, si I'apelerent Desiré. (762-64)
(To preserve this adventure, a lay was composed, which was named Desiré.)
Desire's author never says that Bretons first recorded the story on which he bases his work, although he does claim to be recounting an actual adventure which was initially made into a lay so as not to be forgotten. If the standard prologue was appropriated mainly to make any work more popular, why was
Breton origin not highlighted? Furthermore, the lay opens in Scotland, not
Britanny :
En Escoce a une cuntree ki Calatir est apellee, encoste de la Blanche Lande . . . (7-10)
(In Scotland in an area named Calatir, near the Blanche Lande . . .)
Some of the action, of course, does take place in Britanny: Quant chevaler fu Desirez. hastivement est mer passez; en Normendie conversa e en Bretaine turneia. (69-72)
(When Desird became a knight, he straightaway crossed the sea; he stayed a while in Norrnandy and tourneyed in Brittany.)
An author merely interested in benefitting from the fame of the genre without concern for its "essence" would presumably open the tale with bigger hints that the story about to be told is a Breton lay. It is Desird's resemblance to Land (and Graelent and Guingarnor) which actually fixes it in the Breton tradition: it is an example of the ever-popular fairy-mistress theme. with a hero who breaches the fairy's interdiction against revealing their love. Donovan objects that Desir6 does not satisfactorily achieve what a Breton lay should: "This poem fails to represent human love in the tradition of the Breton lay. The ennobling force noted in the lays of Marie de France is missing from Desire. Though love as an interest remains prominent and certainly unifies the poem. it betrays a poet who nervously awaits the day when the lovers will be united with the full blessings of the Church. . . . "
(68). Perhaps the lay, ending as it does with the marriage of the human and the fairy. does not follow Marie's pattern exactly. Who is to say. however. that the Breton lay cannot admit of a wedding as a conclusion? Desir6 is an authentic Breton lay. drawing on authentic Breton themes.
Like Desiré, Melion lacks a distinct reference to the Breton lays. The 66 work is Arthurian-it takes place "[al1 tans que rois Artus regnoit," (1)-and
involves action in Ireland (see 11. 109-10; 189-581). Surely, if the author meant to profit from a literary legacy, the Arthurian tradition would provide ample material ta utilize. Donovan quotes the lay's ending, which approximates typical epilogues establishing an adventure's faithfulness to fact:
Vrais est li lais de Melion, ce dient bien tot li baron. (591-92)
(The lay of Melion is a true story; al1 the barons say so.)
If this is yet another external preoccupation which Donovan terms a
"borrowed advantage," we may well ask ourselves how much advantage or audience appeal would come from these two lines at the very end of the lay.
Like Desir4, the best indication that Melion ought to be known as a Breton
Iay is its evident correlation to a lay in Marie's collection.
Desiré and Melion are, of course, among the selections which
Donovan considers inferior to Marie's work, and among the pieces which he uses as part of his argument that Breton introductions and conclusions were. subsequent to Marie's Lais, rnisapplied. It is perhaps more profitable, however, to take the lays' daims for themselves at face value, rather than to second-guess the authors' motives. It is not rny intention to redefine the canon of anonymous French Breton lays as delimited by Donovan--or by
Williams. for that matter. 1 merely feel that we are justified in devoting more attention to various works somehow affiliated with the Breton lay (by authorial or scribal designation) in order to improve our conception of medieval notions concerning the genre.
Let us first look at the lays which Williams adds to Donovan's 8-piece canon: Trot, Nabaret, Have/oc, Lecheor, Cor? Mantel, Cor, and Ignaure.
Trot, from MS. C-2, is called a didactic lay by Donovan: "[wlritten to teach courtoisie, it results from stressing the idea or sen of a Breton lay with a proportionate de-emphasis of other elements: its idea is so explicitly stated that the poem becomes primarily didactic" (84). As we have seen, C-2 is made up of mainly moralizing material-4ncluding Melion, which, like Marie's
Bisclavret, not only tells the story of a werewolf, but also teaches a kind of lesson by showing the corruptness of the werewolf's unfaithful wife.
Evidently, for the compiler of MS. C-2 as well as for the author of Trot,
Breton lays could be related to didactic matter. Trot calls itself a Breton lay
(and thus warrants Williams's approval as an authentic representation of the genre):
Un lay en fisent li Breton, le lay del Trot I'apele l'on. (303-04)
(The Bretons made a lay out of this adventure, which they narned the lay of Trot.)
It is the story of a knight named Lorois who goes to the forest to hear the nightingale sing, and who meets two groups of young ladies on horseback: the first set of young women ride joyfully on healthy and powerful white horses, escorted by seemly carnpanions, while the second group of a hundred unhappy ladies endure bumpy rides on weak black horses, and have no companions. Not far behind, Lorois sees a hundred men who are as miserable as the second set of ladies. He is able to question one of the young women, who informs him that the happy ladies are those who, during the course of their life, se~edLove, whereas the unhappy ladies had never loved at all. Lorois returns home and relates his adventure as a warning to young ladies. Trot is, to be sure, much more explicitly didactic than any of
Marie's lays. It seems to have been influenced by the idea of courtly rewards and punishments as expounded by Andreas Capellanus (Tobin 338).
But Tobin finds that the theme has been embellished by certain details: "le decor mysterieux et le héros traditionnel des contes bretons, quelques traits du merveilleux tels les chevaux surnaturels, le curieux changement du temps, et l'oiseau qui attire (ici involontairement) le héros vers son aventure dans l'autre monde, car c'est là que Lorois recontre les dames myst&ieusesU
(338). We can assume that for the author of Trot, these elements were associated with the Breton lay. Trot is indeed didactic, but would perhaps be better known as a didactic Breton lay rather than just as a didactic lay.
Nabaret calls itself a Breton lay, but, as Tobin remarks, it is difficult to pick out any source for Nabaret in the lays, and easy to see its parallels in the fabliau (361). Donovan, in fact, classifies the lay as "elevated fabliau"
(99). Not only does the work daim to be a Breton lay, however, but it is included with other translated examples of the genre in the Old Norse
Strengleikar. Perhaps we should fix Our attention on any possible connection to the Breton lay. Nabaret, in fact, recalls a fairly common theme in Marie's lays, that of the jealous husband. Whereas Marie takes a serious approach to the subject in carefully depicting the lonely life which is the fate of such a husband's wife, though, the author of Nabaret merely pokes fun at the husband's jealousy. Nabaret is a knight whose noble wife is preoccupied with her appearance, especially extravagant clothes. When Nabaret tries to convince her to change her ways, her reply is that he should change his own appearance: he should grow his beard long and braid his whiskers. Tobin explains: "Au moyen Bge ce n'&aient que les patriarches, les veillards qui portaient la barbe longue. La dame dit, en effet, que si son mari n'aimait pas sa façon d'être à la mode, qu'il all& se donner l'air d'un vieillard jalouxn
(362). The ladies who turn to adultery in Marie's lays undergo abuses such as imprisonment under the rule of their stereotypically jealous old husbands; the vain wife in Nabaret endures only her husband's attempts to control her obsession with her appearance, and actually gets the best of hirn by implying that he might as well be an old over-protective husband. Her comments are amusing to those who hear her:
Cil ki Ii respuns unt oi de la dame, se sunt parti. Asez s'en ristrent e gaberent. . . . (41-43)
(Those who heard the response of the wife went away. 70
They laughed and they mocked [Nabaret] quite a bit. . . .)
Another text which Williams is willing to accept as authentically
Breton is Haveloc. This piece is listed under the heading "Breton lay applied to non-Breton material" in Donovan's genre study, along with the obsewation that
we have lays which are plainly Germanic in their matter. The Anglo-Norman Lai d'Haveloc, calling itself a Breton lay, might at one time have been rendered by Breton minstrels. but it is probable that this poem developed first in some other form and was afterwards "convertedu into a narrative Breton lay. . . . mhe Breton lay as a form becarne a conventional means of appealing to a larger audience without necessarily telling a story of Breton origin. (100)
Williams, however, suggests that Haveloc does have links with Breton material: '[Nlothing indicates that the Bretons did not relish biographical epics. rïhe poeml stems directly from Estoire des Engleis by Gaimar who also wrote a lost Estoire des Bretons, both influenced by Geoffrey of
Monmouth, the putative literary disseminator of Celtic material" (83). On the other hand, who is to say that "Breton lays" must needs be of Breton origin?
Many critics even doubt that the genre began at the hands of Breton minstrels. The oral Celtic sources supposedly used by Marie in writing the
Lais, for example, are unavailable for comparison. Henry O. Taylor reminds us that a study of extant material only ascertains that "the growth. the development, the further composition of the 'matiere de Bretaigne' is predominantly ~rench."~'And as William Calin points out, "For a number of
specialists, the narrative Breton lai is Marie's invention, a genre created by
her. Whether or not this extreme formulation is true, Marie did recast Celtic
legend in line with her own, learned reading of ~vid."~~That is, most
scholars agree that even if the original Lais were authentically Breton, Marie
infused them with an Ovidian essence. In light of this, there is no reason
why the discovery of non-Breton sources for a given text should serve as a
reason to disqualify it from the Breton lay canon.
Whether or not Haveloc can be associated with Breton sources in any
way, it deserves serious consideration as a Breton lay. What possible
advantage could there have been in adding the label of Breton lay to a
Germanic biographical epic, after all, if there was not something in the work
itself which recalled the genre? Donovan finds "verbal similarities" between
Haveloc and certain of Marie's lays, such as
La verité t'en cunterai (Le Lai d'Haveloc, 1. 600)~' La verit6 vus conterai (Guigemar, 1.31 3) (l'II tell you the truth) or
Terme lur mist, jor lur noma (Le Lai d'Haveloc, 1. 303)
37 The Mediaevel Mind, 4th ed (London, 1925) 1, 58 1. As quoted by Donovan, p. 7.
38 The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval Enaland (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1994) 40.
39 Le Lai d'Haveloc and Gairnar's Haveloc E~isode,ed. Alexander Bell, Publications of the University of Manchester French Series IV (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925). Terme di dune e nume jur (Elid~c,1. 698) (She gave him a term and named the day)"
I agree with Donovan that these correspondences probably reflect
someone's attempts to make Haveloc "conform to a certain ideal which he
had in mind-the type of lay which Marie de France composedn (103). Just
verbal echoes here and there, however, would likely not satisfy fans; I
believe that medieval audiences expected that a work which called itself a
Breton lay would offer more than the repetition of what might simply be
stock phrases.
Haveloc tells the story of the king of Denmark's son, Haveloc, who is
rescued from the murderous plans of the usurper of his father's kingdom and
who is raised by a retainer in Lincolnshire. His royal status remains
unknown until discerned by his wife, who sees a flame ernanating from his
mouth on their wedding night. Haveloc regains the kingdom of Denmark as well as that of England. I am, evidently, omitting many details of the 1112- line story; what I mean to show, however, is that perhaps there is some importance in the plot twist whereby an unidentified noble regains his or her status. Not only does the heroine of Marie de France's Le Fresne undergo such a process, but so do other well-known romance figures such as Arthur and Perceval.
Indeed, one can discern connections with other Breton lays in the plots of the last two works which Williams includes in his Breton canon,
Ferrante and Hanning's translation of Marie's version. 73
Lecheor and Cort Mantel. Lecheor, from MS. S, is also included in the Old
Norse Strengleikar (Tobin 17), but is often dismissed by modern critics because of its crudeness: "Le Lecheor was for Lot, Grimes, Bruce, and apparently Ahlstrom, only an obscene fabliau, or a cynical joke. . . .n
(Williams 82). The work begins by telling how Breton lays are composed, and then describes a specific occasion when eight Breton adies made a lay about the motivating factor behind knights' courtly deeds: all, in the end, is done "par l'entente du con" (90). As Tobin points out, Le Lecheor is quite unlike any other piece which might be considered a Breton lay. No adventure (related to love or otherwise) takes place. Donovan terms it a parody (112), and Tobin agrees: "C'est une parodie puisque le style et le ton raffines et Blegants sont ceux des lais courtois, ce qui rend plus frappant le contraste du sujet de ce lai avec ceux des autres lais" (353). Crude parody though it might be, Le Lecheor is a good indication of certain elements which were associated with the Breton lay, such as a description of the lays' origins as well as their ernphasis on men's adventures for the sake of wornen.
Cort Mantel, also from MS. S, displays a preoccupation with the faithfulness of women: At Arthur's court, a supernaturai mantle is passed around which determines whether or not a woman has been true to her husband- constancy is ascertained if the mantle is neither too small nor too large--and it is discovered that the cloak fits only one woman, the faithful 74 lady of Caradoc. Williams comments that Cort Mante/ "has been variously labelled a lay, a conte, a fabliau" (83). Mainly because the tale's prologue is similar to those of Marie ("differing essentially only in the lack of reference to a lay"), Williams chooses to add Cort Mante1to his canon of Breton lays
(83).
Finally, Williams admits two lays with known authors into the canon of French Breton lays written after Marie: Le Cor by Robert Biket and lgnaure by Renaud. Le Cor gains admission on account of the close resemblances between that work and Cort Mantel: it deals with a rnagical horn which is passed around to men to determine the faithfulness of their wives. Although neither Cor nor Cort Mantel focuses on the act of adultery itself, both texts cal1 to mind other Breton lays which do depict the deeds of unfaithful spouses, such as Marie's Guigemar, Equitan, Bisclavret, Yonec, Laustic,
Mifun, Chevrefoil, and Elid~c,or the anonymous Tydorel.
Ignaure, from MS. B, does address the issue of marital unfaithfulness.
The author, Renaud, bases his story in Brittany; he will tell
Une aventure molt estraigne Que, jadis, avint en Bretaigne . . . (15-1 6)
(A very strange adventure which happened long ago in Brittany . . .)
The adventure is that of Ignaure, who is engaged in affairs with up to twelve of his neighbors' wives. When the women find out what is going on, they plan to kill the scoundrel, but find themselves unable to do so. Their husbands, however, have no problem murdering lgnaure when they learn
about the situation-and also have no problem feeding Ignaure's heart and
penis to their unfaithfuf wives. Adultery is depicted as a problem faced by
al1 men, cornrnon because weak women al1 fall for gigolos like Ignaure.
On the whole, then, one can find certain story matters which are
cornmon to both the anonyrnous French works clairning to be Breton lays
and the collection of Marie de France: supernatural elements somehow
connected to the idea of love, faithfulness, or the lack thereof; jealous
spouses; men's pursuit of women; and (perhaps a less obvious connection
but still a valid one, I believe), the adopted child of noble rank. These
recurring plot threads, however, are often disregarded by those studying the
Breton lay. Anne Laskaya and Eve Salisbury, editors of a collection of
Breton lays in English, remark on the tendency among many genre scholars
to relegate plot elements to the realm of the trivial:
With much critical attention turned to matters of "form," it is not surprising that other crucial generic features have been overlooked or even subtly discounted. Subject matter and its treatment, for instance, has been cast aside as having "nothing distinctive" to offera4'
That is, most critics conclude that the themes treated in Breton lays can be
neglected in generic analyses because they are no different than the topics
treated in other romances. Paul Strohm, for example, indicates that the use
of the label "Breton layn did not arise because a category distinct from the
41 The Middle English Breton Lav~(Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval lnstitute Publications, 1995) 4. 76 romance had been created, but rather vice versa: a new category ensued because the identification of "Breton lay" was established: "1 am left with the conclusion that the term lai did not originate from any clear necessity, but from Marie's original decision to underscore the freshness of her creations. . . . " (Oriain 25). Unfortunately. this failure to research further the relevance of Breton lay subject matter has resulted in an incomplete understanding of the Breton lay genre. To be sure, some topics found in the
Breton lay do overlap with subject matters commonly associated with the romance. When treated in the Breton lays' shorter format, however, the themes are in fact transformed: they gain an impact which they did not have in the longer narratives. It is my guess that writers who set out to imitate the genre fixed their attention on these themes because, in the condensed context of the Breton lay, plot became a crucial aspect of the form.
Admittedly, I am possibly reducing the lays to the very external details which Donovan scorns, or displaying the "fatal preoccupation with favorite motifs" which he beholds in most interpreters of the genre. Donovan himself, however, seems to overlook the reductiveness of his own efforts to delineate the corpus of Breton lays. His judgment that lays must meet a vague criterion such a "love unified by a predominant idea," for example, is actually an attempt to reduce al1 plots to one neat definition. Rather than letting ourselves get caught up in fastidious enumerations of valid or quasi- valid Breton lay types. I believe that we should allow for a flexible "Breton 77 canon," yet not lose our focus on those matters which seem to constitute the more typical Breton lays. One must remember that, with any generic grouping, diverse patterns might be encompassed within the same genre.
My study shows that in the case of the Breton lay, from Marie onward, matters as manifold as the supernatural. love and faithfulness, jealousy, or even the inevitable return of a noble heir to his or her rightful heritage rnight be considered as appropriate plot threads. Even Williams. who promises to undertake a more liberal evaluation of Breton lays, slights the importance of some of these themes in favour of a classification founded primarily on evidence such as an author's indication of a Breton connection.
In fact, when one examines certain texts which are often neglected by scholars such as Donovan and Williams. one finds that even works which fail
Donovan's "proper treatment of love" test, or works which Williams ignores because they are affiliated with the Breton lay by individuals other than their authors, do have parallels in pieces which are definitely authentic examples of the form. These texts. related to the Breton lay by manuscript location or scribal designation, are Espervier, Ombre, Conseil, Amours, Aristote, and
Oiselet. Undoubtedly, we must be mindful of the possibility that in dealing with these lays. we are reviewing works which were not conceived of as part of the Breton form, but which were simply added to collections of
Breton matter by scribes eager to accumulate new material. Nevertheless, by suweying subject matter, we can frequently account for the incorporation 78 of such texts into Breton lay manuscripts: whether or not the authors of
Espervier and the other works set out to copy Marie's craft, someone else associated them with the genre, and the connections one finds help to shed light on the form as a whole.
Except for Espervier, al1 the stories listed above appear at the very end of MS. S. and might merely have been added to the collection by a scribe unconcerned about actually paying attention to his own title ("lais de
Breteigne") . Certainly, Amours, Aristote and Oiselet--with su bjects ranging from Aristotle's brush with love, to magical birds who teach lessons about courtoisie-perhaps do not precisely conform to a conservative understanding of the Breton lay form. On the other hand, they do not deal with topics so far removed from more typical Breton lays that one cannot possibly imagine any link with them; after all, love and magical creatures frequently appear in various Breton lays. Moreover, the indisputably authentic Breton lay
Graelent is located in the midst of this otherwise segregated group, right between Aristote and Oiselet; it is the penultimate document of the collection. Even at the finish of his project, then, the manuscript's scribe was still interested in the focus he had adopted at the outset of his enterprise. We have no reason to believe that he strayed radically from that focus in copying entirely irrelevant texts.
It is easier to descry the relevancy to the Breton lay genre of the two other pieces which are found at the end of MS. S, even within a rather 79 orthodox conception of what constitutes the form, because some of the plot details of both Ombre and Conseil do have paraltels in works which are unquestionably authentic Breton lays. Ombre, by Jean Renart, relates the story of a knight in love with a married wornan. When the lady refuses the knight's ring, he shows her the extent of his devotion by dropping the ring into a well: the shadow of the lady can be seen in the water of the well, and the knight says that the shadow is his second choice. The lay ends with the lady giving the knight her own ring. Obviously, love which attempts to overcome great barriers, usually the barrier of marriage to another, is a theme we find again and again in the Breton lays. In the Lais, of course,
Marie was not afraid to focus on extramarital romances. In Ombre, however, the narrative stops short of describing an affair: the ring the lady presents to the knight might represent something more, but it is still just a ring. The theme of Conseil--initially manifested in Marie's Chaitivel-4s also a familiar one: how is a woman to choose between different admirers? In
Conseil, a lady who cannot decide between three knightly suitors consequently asks a fourth knight for advice. She falls in love with him, and so resolves her predicament by choosing him as her lover. The resolution to the problem is happier than that seen in Chaitivel, albeit a slightly unrealistic one: it illustrates that Mr. Right is sure to corne along sooner or later.
Espervier, of course, is the only MS. S text which remains to be discussed. Like Ombre, Conseil, Amours, Aristote, and Oiselet, it also 80
contains no interna1 indication of Breton affiliation, but, unlike those works, it
is not pan of the set seerningly appended, with Graelent, to the end of the
manuscript: Espewier is found in the centre of the collection, between
Espine and Chevrefoil. I doubt that the scribe responsible for the manuscript
merely added the fay to the collection as an unrelated work. The subject of
the lay is adultery: a knight in love with his friend's wife devises an
elaborate plan which will allow him to visit the lady; the plan involves hiding
his squire in the lady's chamber so that, on the husband's return, the friend
can explain that he pursued his disobedient squire into the room. Close to
the fabliau, E'pervier is labeled as such by Donovan, but ignored by
Williams, who makes no comment on it. Can we accept the work as a
legitimate addition to a collection of Breton lays? If we assume that the
Breton lay was somehow known as a genre which often dealt with
extramarital intrigues (often though not necessarily in conjunction with
otherworldly events and creatures), then the lay of Espervier fits right into the corpus. Of course, in the lay, adultery is something to be laughed at, a threat only to foolish husbands. It suggests an author who was perhaps not sure how to deal with the topic Save with fabliau's laughter-but, since not al1 medieval audiences were necessarily as sophisticated as Marie's, not all
medieval authors needed to share Marie's sophistication, either.
Notwithstanding the various narrative themes of the Lais which are copied by later writers, it is far more intriguing to note which aspects of Marie's 81 work are disregarded by her imitators. Specifically, in the lays we have studied so far, not one approaches the subject of faithfulness and unfaithfulness in quite the same manner as Marie does. That is, if the La& are remarkable because of Marie's willingness to absolve the adulteress of blame (in certain cases), it is striking that no other Breton lay picks up on that particular focus. As I pointed out earlier, one cannot expect that a single illustration will explain how al1 of Marie's imitators handle this touchy subject: adultery in the later Breton lays is treated in a number of different ways. One can. however, distinguish various authors' strategies for making adultery an unattractive option. For example, it is often a sign of shameful character or of fernale weakness (as in Melion and in Renaud's Ignaure, or as in Graelent and Guingamor, where the queen is rejected). or a trivial, fairly common, and laughable matter (as in Espervier, Cort Mantel and Biket's Le
Cor) .
Another example of how an author avoids explicit approval of adultery occurs in Tydorel. That lay is interesting in that it initially appears comparable to some of Marie's works which rationalize adultery. Indeed, the lay does offer what could be an excuse for the queen's infidelity: she and her husband are unable to have children, even after ten years of marriage.
The author does not dwell on possible defences of unfaithfulness. however.
He makes it clear that the relationship in question is a love match, and that the king is not a jealous man: [Mlolt la chieri e ennora, e ele durement I'ama. Onques ne fu jalous de li eceleonquesnudeservi. (11-14)
(He loved her very much and honoured her, and she loved him a great deal. He was never jealous of her and she never gave him reason to be.)
The queen, then, ought to be happy. One might therefore think that the woman guilty of dishonouring such a relationship would merit some kind of punishrnent, as in Equitan, Bisclavret, and Melion, for example. All in all, though, not much is made of the queen's affair with the mysterious knight.
The liaison goes on for years without a problem. In fact, when the lovers are finally discovered by a wounded knight coming to the queen for aid, there is no big blow-up, as one might expect: the lover returns to his supernatural home, and the king as well as the wounded knight both die, but we hear of no great scandal.
My hypothesis is that the author of Tydorel chose not to elaborate on the queen's reasons for cheating on her husband partly because the topic was too dangerous, and partly because he was more interested in the product of this relationship (Tydorel and an unnamed daughter) than in the relationship itself. Indeed, the Iife of Tydorel-half-man, half-fairy--0ccupies the second part of the Iay. Just as importantly, though, the author lets it be known that the mysterious knight's daughter will marry a count and bear two children who will be the ancestors of the counts Alains and Conains. 83
As Donovan points out, Tydorel seems to be an occasional poem. perhaps one written to "remove a taint from the pages of history" by positing a supernatural being as the offending party in a suspected case of infidelity among the audience's ancestors (78). It is not quite as embarassing, after all, to be cuckolded by a mysterious, enigrnatic knight from the other world as it is to be cuckolded by a real Iive neighbour knight from this world.
Adultery in 7yd0&, then, is reduced to something which occurs only with supernatural beings-intangible creatures. As is the case in other French
Breton lays, we again find a treatment of adultery which denies its existence as a real-life issue. Chapter Three:
The Breton Lay in English
In their introduction to The Middle Enalish Breton Law, Anne Laskaya
and Eve Salisbury remark that the Middle English Breton lays reflect the
experiences and interests of 'a newly literate English audiencen (11). To
understand this point, and to comprehend why Breton lays written in English
differ from those composed in French, one must examine the context in
which English adaptations of the Breton lay originated.
Richard Mortimer writes that early in the thirteenth century, English
began ta regain some status as a "written literary language" in ~ngland.~*
This development was perhaps inevitable: in spite of a general distinction
between the learned, ecclesiastical Latin, the cultured, upper-class French,
and the common, lowly English, the three tongues were bound to overlap in
a land where "lords picked up English from their nurses and their servants,
and English-speakers acquired French in their lord's household" (Mortimer
194). According to Robert McCrum, William Cran and Robert MacNeil
(authors of The Storv of Enalish), intermarriage was so common among the
Norman conquerors and their English subjects that even by the late twelfth
century one could not easily discriminate between the twomU English. then.
42 Anaevin Enaland 1154-1 258 (Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1994) 194. " See Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil, The Sto- of Encilish (London and Boston: Faber and Faber-BBC Books, 1986) 75. The authors quote an unidentified chronicler writing approximately one hundred years after the Conquest: remained widespread as a spoken language along with French, and soon
became used for devotional purposes-in sermons, prayers, and carols, for
example (McCrum 76). It was probably also used in managerial situations,
by overlords who needed to communicate with English subjects (McCrum
76). Overall, it was more practical for priests, landowners, and other leaders
to address their followers in English, to ensure a greater audience for
whatever message they meant to convey. Mortimer explains:
The usefulness of the languages in communicating with a general audience was in inverse proportion to their learnedness: better than a pretentious sermon in Latin, thought abbot Samson of BU^, was one in French or, best of all, English. Each language had its own area of appropriate use, and its speakers were largely defined by the social group to which they belonged; nevertheless twelfth- and thirteenth-century England was a polyglot society. (195)
The comeback of English at the expense of French was of course
linked to political issues. By 1200, Mortimer soggests, "there were signs of
divergence between England and Normandy" (127). Normans needed their
English ruler less and less--the province was managed by a bureaucracy--and
looked to affiliations with France more and more (Mortimer 128). In 1204,
the English under King John lost their French principalities (McCrum 76).
One could no longer serve both France and England. The situation in
Normandy was such that the king's men, feeling no devotion to their
monarch, were generally willing to change sides (Mortimer 132). Other
"mhe two nations have become so mixed that it is scarcely possible today, speaking of free men, to tell who is English and who is of Norman race" (75-76). 86 members of the Norman nobility in England who chose to remain loyal to that country were in a way professing a loyalty to the English language.
French was retained "for the sake of appearances" (McCrum 76), but this
English French, which had evolved separately from Norman French, was seen as a corrupted, less socially acceptable dialect (Mortimer 127, McCrurn
77).
Under the rule of Henry 111 (1216-72), many Englishmen were vexed by the king's French clique, to the extent that even bishop Grosseteste, a
Norman descendant, condemned the court as "the worst enemies of
England" (McCrum 77). The bishop warned, "They strive to tear the fleece and do not even know the faces of the sheep; they do not understand the
English tongue" (McCrum 77). The English people gained pride in their native language, and the French which was maintained as a sign of prestige soon became one which was acquired rather than natural (McCrum 77). The fourteenth century saw universities attempting to uphold the status of
French and Latin in the midst of an overwhelming trend among the population to turn to English (McCrum 77). Later, from 1337 to 1454,
England's Hundred Years War with France evidently heightened anti-French sentiment and pro-English tendencies (McCrum 78).
In Enalish Literature in Histow 1350-1400, Janet Coleman shows that during this period, many members of the nobility were beginning to enjoy 87
literature in English as well as in French or ~atin." Most notably, we al1
know that Chaucer chose to write in English for his audience. Beyond that,
Coleman demonstrates the growing popularity of English as a written
language with evidence from the private collections of the nobility. For
exarnple, she records the case of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, whose library
was confiscated in 1397 by his colleagues who suspected him of treason
(19). Of Gloucester's eighty-three books, most were in French or Latin
(Coleman 19). Along with these, however, Gloucester owned "two English
Gospels and a magnificent English Bible in two volumes" (Coleman 19).
(Unofficial English translations of the Bible were controversial but not yet
prohibited at that time [Coleman 191.) Coleman also reports that at the
death of Lady Alice West in 1395, the gentlewoman's will decreed that her
daughter be left "alle the bokes that I have of Latyn, Englisch and Frensch"
(20)
One factor which contributed significantly to the burgeoning
reputation of English texts was the changing face of the literary class. "The
Black Deathn had decimated the ranks of the working class. and those
members of the proletariat who had been lucky enough to live through the
plague were able to benefit from a heightened social standing because of the
scarcity of workers (McCrurn 78). Grammar schools were instituted which
catered to a growing number of upwardly-mobile individuals outside the
" Enalish Literature in Historv 1350-1400: Medieval Readers and Writers (London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd, 1981). 88
nobility (Coleman 24). In urban areas, a large merchant class was gaining in
power and prosperity, and became associated with courtly circles (Coleman
20). According to Coleman,
[tlhe continuing war with France and the ever-increasing demands for luxuries directly linked Richard's court with this new, expanding and rich merchant class . . . who could afford to rnake financial loans. The urban "middle classes" had increasingly direct and personal contact with the King's person as with the fashion and tastes of the nobility. (20)
One of the tastes which the merchant class acquired from the courtly class
was a fondness for literary entertainment. The middle class's tastes,
however. were not restricted to the nobility's preference for tales in French:
"English vernacular entertainment was becoming at least as significant as the older French romance tradition of the more specifically noble class"
(Coleman 26). Schools for the prosperous middle class could expose that segment of society to French and Latin for reasons of status, but they could not quell the popularity of English literature for purposes of recreation.
Moreover, McCrum, Cran and MacNeil report that in the years following the plague, schools were not always able to find instructors who were competent enough in French and Latin to teach those languages; often, students were taught English grammar (78).
Because of al1 these developments, private collections of texts became a common feoture of middle-class households (Coleman 25). Records pertaining to the insolvency of two London grocers in the 1390s, for example, show that they had in their stocks six books (two of which were in English) as well as a primer (Coleman 26). As a result of this wider
dissemination of manuscripts, more traditional methods of textual
transmission (by the author or a professional minstrel) were gradually
abandoned. In an article entitled "Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages," Ruth
Crosby comments on the phenornenon:
mhrough the later Middle Ages we find references to the reading by one member of a household to the others. . . . The reading of romances by private individuals was probably a later development than the reciting or reading of them by professional story-tellers. As manuscripts became more numerous and more of the laity learned to read, it is natural that the vogue for public recitation by the minstrel should give way somewhat before the private reading by one member of a family to th ers.^'
Naturally, manuscript content began to reflect the exigencies of this new
class of readers; scribes, scriveners, and stationers rose in status as
individuals hired others to write collections which were tailored to their taste
(Coleman 26). According to Coleman, texts belonging to the middle class
exhibit a preoccupation with "what concerned pious men of commerce,
eager to establish law and order, principles of morality, and peacen (71). To
illustrate her point, Coleman refers to the fourteenth-century Auchinleck
manuscript (National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 19.2.1, fols. 299a
The Auchinleck manuscript, comprising romances and other items (c. 1340), is a good example of a production prepared by what has been thought to have been a commercial scriptorium for sale to the growing London bourgeoisie . . . . The
45 eculum 11 (1936): 96-97. Auchinleck English romances mark the rising social status of the urban "middle classwand of the English language, and they indicate a simultaneous interest in religious and didactic material. (41)
It is in middle-class collections such as these that we find the Middle
English Breton lays (Laskaya and Salisbury 11). Specifically, of the
Auchinleck manuscript's forty-four narratives, three can be identified as
Breton lays: Sir Orfeo, Lay le Freine, and Sir Degare. The Breton lays in the
Auchinleck manuscript, of course, make up only a small segment of eighteen
romances in the collection (Laskaya 10). Laskaya and Salisbury remind us,
however, that Auchinleck "reigns first and foremost both in content and
presentation" among the collections containing Breton lays in Middle English
(10). If, as Derek Pearsall suggests, this manuscript--and others like it--were
"the medieval equivalent of a 'coffee-tabler book,w48and if the texts were
meant primarily for the family entertainment of those interested in both
romance and religion, it is interesting to see how Breton lays fit into the
picture. One might guess that, interspersed with other works dealing with
middle-class concerns and morals, the English Breton lay exists as a slightly
risque genre, one which reveals a continuing praclivity for entertaining tales
about the romantic and the supernatural, but which is made acceptable by a
recognition of its subordination to more serious selections. The compilation
belonging to a private owner, after all, is the kind of static framework which
Marie de France would doubtless have found advantageous for her work.
46 Quoted By Laskaya and Salisbury, p. 11. Finally, a collection could be put together which was less likely to be
fragmented; any individual work was more likely to be read within the
context of the whole. The Breton lay might have at last found a suitable
backdrop for its considerations of love outside of marriage, for example.
For the most part, however, the authors of Middle English Breton lays
avoid the topic of adultery, and instead highlight more stable relationships.
Certainly. authors were probably aware of the different themes which the
Breton lay could deal with, including some naughty ones. The Prologue
comrnon to the English Lai le Freine (a translation of Marie's Le Fresne) and
Sir Orfeu, for example. lists popular subject matters:
We redeth oft and findeth ywrite-- And this clerkes wele it wite- Layes that ben in harping Ben yfounde of ferli thing. Surn bethe of were and surn of wo, And sum of joie and rnirthe also, And sum of trecherie and of gile. Of old aventours that fel while; And sum of bourdes and ribaudy, And mani ther beth of fairy. Of al thinges that men seth. Mest O love for sothe thai beth.47
According to the author of the prologue, the work to follow is related to
sundry tales about war and woe. joy and mirth, treachery, guile, various
adventures, lests, ribaldry, fairies and, especially, love; the inventory of
subjects might even relate to the manifold trends noted in the French Breton
47 1 have chosen to work with Laskaya and Salisbury's The Middle Enalish Breton Lavs; subsequent citations of Breton lays in English, unless otherwise indicated, corne from that edition. lays. Both the pieces which accompany the prologue, however, focus on
the same predominant concern, one which Laskaya and Salisbury note in the
Middle English Breton lays as a whole:
These Middle English lays are not the courtly love stories of Marie de France-stories of arranged marriages, and subsequent longing for happiness and fulfillment outside its parameters-but rather stories of lovers whose happy ending resides in marriage. . . . Because of their shorter length they intensify and emphasize the importance of truth in love, both for its stabilizing influence on the family unit and its concornmitant stabilization of a larger cornrnunity. They address both the personal and the social in ways different from Marie de France's Norman, aristocrâtic orientation. (5-6)
The Breton lays in Middle English show a didactic bias: they underscore the
value of fidelity to love. Unlike a French lay such as Trot, however, the
English lays are not explicitly moralizing; they merely tend to highlight the
advantages of a secure relationship by featuring happily married couples in
their concIusions.
The direction taken by the English Breton lay, then, is a path which
proceeds somewhere between the fanciful concerns of French romance (love
and adherence to a code of courtly conduct) and the practical interests of
daily English life (marriage, family, and adherence to principles of Christian
living). Indeed, as a whole the manuscripts which contain Middle English
Breton lays also combine romance and religion to a greater extent than do
the largely secular-minded manuscripts which contain French Breton layd8
48 One exception to the rule among French manuscripts is MS. C-2, which, as we have seen, contains religious material such as saintsf lives and miracles. 93
In the Auchinleck manuscript, for example, Laura Hibbard Loomis lists with
the romances "one chronicle and a list of Norman barons, two pious tales of
the miracle type, eight legends of saints and other holy legends. one Visit to
the Otherworld. one humorous tale, two debates, one homily, two monitory
pieces, three works of religious instruction, and three of satire and cornp~aint."~Note the obvious interest in devotional works. This trend is discernible in other manuscripts as well; these include:
-Cambridge University Library MS. Ff. 2.38 (late fifteenth or early sixteenth century). Laskaya and Salisbury catalogue some of that collection's forty- three items: "Bevis of Hampton, Guy of Warwick, Eg/amour of Arcois,
Octavian, Le Bone Florence of Rome, Robert of Sicefy, Syr Tryamoure, Sir
~egard," saints' lives such as those of Margaret, Thomas, and Edmund,
Mirk's Festial, a collection of homilies, devotional works such as The
Assumption of the Virgin, me Seven Sages of Rome, which is a collection of didactic narratives, and other miscellaneous itemsn (11 ).
--British Library MS. Cotton Caligula A.ii (1451-60). which is made up of thirty-eight selections such as Chevaliere Assigne, The Siege of Jerusalem,
Octavian, Libeaus Desconus, Isumbras, Egfamour of Artois, Emar6, Laun fa1
Miles IS/r Launfa), Susannah and the Two Efders, Lydgate's Stans Puer ad
Mensam, The Chode and the Bird, medical remedies, saints' lives, seventeen
AS recorded by Laskaya and Salisbury, p. 10.
Breton lays are indicated in bold. 94 devotional works and divers didactic pieces (Laskaya and Salisbury 111.
-National Library of Scotland MS. Advocates 19.3.1 (late fifteenth century), comprising Stans Puer ad Mensarn, The Life of Our Lady, Sir /sumbras, Sir
Gowher, and Amadace of Gaul (Laskaya 1 1) .
-Bodleian MS. 6922 (Ashmole 61--late fifteenth century), with thirty-nine items: "Sir Cleges (found between Tale of an lncestuous Daughter and The
Founding of the Feasts of Ail Saints and Al/ Soulsl, Erie of Tolous, Mng
Orfew (Sir Orfieo), Lybeaus Desconus, î'sumbras, didactic works such as A
Father's Instructidn fo His Son, A Good Wife lnstructs Her Daughter, Twelve
Points for Purchasers of Land, three of Lydgate's works, Stans Puer ad
Mensam, Rammeshorne, and The Governans of Man (dietary advice), and fourteen devotional items including personal morning and evening prayers"
(11).
Of course, these manuscripts reflect primarily the tastes of the lirnited number of individuals who had a hand in their compilation; because we are dealing with private collections, the works contained therein would have been culled from various sources to entertain and educate a specific audience. One wonders if we are getting an accurate representation of the entire range of the Breton lay in English. Did other examples of the genre once exist, which are no longer extant because they were not copied by the compilers of the aforementioned collections? Although we cannot conclusively answer that question, studies of the surviving Breton lays in English-Sir Olfeo, Lai le Freine, Sir Degart5, €mare, Sir Laun fa/, Sir Go wther,
Erle of Tolous, and Landeval-do suggest different audiences for different
lays, implying that the texts in question spring from at least two separate
traditions. Laskaya and Salisbury summarise the findings of various scholars
on the issue:
Laile Freine, whose dialect is similar to Chaucer's, is placed near London or Middlesex, as is Sir Orfeo. Sir Launfal and Sir Degaré are thought to derive from somewhere in the South Midlands. and Erle of Tolous, Emaré, and Sir Gowther are thought to have originated in the Northeast Midlands. These regional and dialectical (sic) differences, as some scholars suggest, probably identify corresponding differences in audience. . . . John B. Beston posits two separate groups: for the earlier couplet lays a "rather sophisticated audience, familiar with the courtly tradition," and for the tail-rhyme lays "a somewhat crude but robust audience." (9-10)
Indeed, it is generally agreed that the lays in octosyllabic couplets (Lay le
Freine, Sir Orfeo, Sir ~andevaf'and Sir Degart?) are more sophisticated than
those in the popular tail-rhyrne stanza (Sir Launfal, Erle of Tolous, Emaré and
Sir Gowther), and that these two sets of works were meant for two distinct
publics. Certainly, the trend towards an affirmation of the farnily occurs in
both the sophisticated octosyllabic lays and the popular tail-rhyme lays
which are available for study. Unfortunately, since we can do no better than
'' Five examples of this lay actually exist, in two complete versions and three fragments: Sir Landavall (MS. Rawlinson C. 86 in the Bodleian Library, fol. 119b- 128); Sir Lambewell (The Bishop Percy MS., now British Library MS. Additional 27879, fol. 29b-33b); Sir Lamwell (the Halliwell Fragment, in Bodleian Malone 941); Sir Lamwell (the Douce Fragment e.40); and Sir Lamwell (Cambridge University Library MS. Kk.5, 30, f.11) 96 to work with the English Breton lays which do survive (those presewed in middle-class manuscripts). we can perhaps only comment on the Breton lay preferred by bourgeois readers. If two traditions at one time coexisted. which dealt with different types of stories. they were ultimately merged into a single direction.
Not surprisingly, the private manuscript compilers who favoured the less controversial lays in their native tongue also preferred the less liberal
Breton lays in French. For example, the Lenval story is repeated in the octosyllabic lay Sir Landeval as well as in the less sophisticated Launfal versions. Like Lanval, Guingamor. and Graelent, these English translations repudiate adultery (by showing the hero reject the immoral queen) in favour of a happier alliance with the proper woman. Unlike the earlier lays, however, Sir Landeval and the Launfai variants belong with other lays which demonstrate similar concerns: while Lanval is found with narratives which question the validity of the marriage relationship, and while Guihgamor and
Graelent are contemporaries of tales which make light of adultery, Sir
Landeval and Sir Launfal are part of collections which on the whole affirm fidelity.
Another adaptation of a lay in the collection of Marie de France which survives in English is the octosyllabic Laile Fdne. Again. the work in question deals with a rightful marriage match: as in Marie's Fresne, the
English Laile Freine tells of an abandoned heroine. her relationship with a noble knight, her near-loss of this relationship, and the eventual happy
ending (that is, marriage) which occurs when her noble background is
discovered. Doubtless, just as the Lanval legend is appropriated and its
moral subtly modified by various Breton lay traditions, the motif of the long-
suffering, eventually-rewarded fernale is also transformed as it passes from
Marie's collection, this story presents just one alternative among divers
viable life possibilities for fernales. In the consewative context of other
Middle English Breton lays, on the other hand, it emphasizes medieval
women's actual powerlessness. In fact, the theme of the passively suffering
woman is repeated in the form of the Constance saga in another English
Breton lay. the tail-rhyme Emaré which, of course, also validates the worth
of the family unit. Laskaya and Salisbury explain:
mhe conclusion of the Constance narrative is usually an affirmation of love. a reunion of the family, and a reaffirmation of community. . . . [In Emaré] the happy ending is achieved "thorow grace of God in Trinite" (line 944, and it depends, as endings do in many other English lays, on faith or persistence, on the protagonist's restraint. on his or her willingness to wait for the propitious moment, and on his or her willingness to be helped or to help someone else. (147)
€mare is not actually an adaptation of any particular French Breton lay. but it does, I believe, develop the Fresne/Freine plot type.
Yet another English interpretation of a French lay is Sir Orfeo. Like Sir
Landeval and Lai le Freine, it is a lay in octosyllabic couplets. Unlike those works, however, its antecedent does not survive for cornparison; evidence that Sir Orfeo once existed in French cornes from external sources.62
Because the story is a version of the Orpheus myth, though, we can
compare Sir Orfeo to the classical story. In Si' Orfeo, Orfeo's wife,
Heurodis, is abducted by the king of fairies, and Orfeo forsakes his kingdom
and al1 his possessions, with the exception of his harp, in order to [ive alone
in the wilderness. One day, Orfeo sees Heurodis hunting among sixty of the
fairy king's ladies. Following them, Orfeo reaches fairyland, where he is able
to play his harp for the king to obtain whatever reward he desires ("Now
aske of me what it be, / Largelich ichil the pay" [450-511); Orfeo, of course,
asks for his wife, and the two return home. As Laskaya and Salisbury point
out, the lay differs from its classical antecedent-and other medieval forms of
the story--in that Heurodis is not killed and taken to the land of the dead, but
instead abducted and brought to a kind of Celtic Otherworld (17).
Furthermore, when husband and wife finally find each other, "[tlhe fairy king
places no taboo about looking back on Orfeo as he does in the classical
version. Instead of the traditional backward glance which loses Eurydice
forever, the fourteenth-century Breton iay hero leads his Heurodis back
home" (Laskaya 17). The first contrast with the classical legend, the
carrying away of Heurodis to a land of fairy spirits rather than a land of
departed spirits, ties in nicely with the supernatural quality of Breton lays in
52 Donovan, for example, calls attention to a passage in Espine which reports that the king and his court listened to lays such as that "d'Aielisw (178) or "d'Orpheym (183); a similar allusion occurs in Flaire et Blanceflor (Donovan 147). 99 general. The second modification, the happy reunion of the couple instead of an ultimate separation, conforms to the essence of the English Breton lay.
We cannot be sure if this happy ending is precisely the same one which closed the now-lost French Orpheus lay. Whether or not it did, however, it exists in English as another affirmation that. in spite of whatever hardship may occur, domestic order prevails.
As far as we know, none of the other surviving English Breton lays are directly adapted frorn French versions. Wherever they may have originated, though, and whatever their storyline, they al1 end with dornestic harmony.
Sir Degare, the last of the Middle English Breton lays in octosyllabic couplets, depicts, like many other Breton lays, a relationship with a supernatural being. The human in this case, though, is the female, and the fairy is the male. At the beginning of the lay, it does not appear that the union will be a happy one: the daughter of the King of Brittany. forced to remain single because her overprotective father will fight any suitor who might be interested in her, is raped by a fairy knight who foretells the birth of their son. The daughter abandons the baby with a hermit and, in an
Oedipal twist, the child grows to become the first man who defeats the King of Brittany and who therefore gains the hand of the princess. Luckily, true identities are discovered, and the son (Degare) goes off not only to win the hand of another lady, but also to find his true father. The story ends with two unions: that of DegarB's parents, as well as that of Degare and his 100 rightful bride.
Even an event as heinous as sexual violation, then, can be related in bourgeois tales, as long as things are made right in the end. How does one affirm family union and the values of the English middle class, though, in a work which begins by featuring adultery, the familiar if naughty topic from the French Breton lays? Most English Breton lays, after all, avoid explicit mention of the topic. In the tail-rhyme Ede of Tolous, for instance, the author spends most of the story establishing the marital fidelity of the queen who finally marries someone else when her husband dies. The author of Sir
Gowther, however, confronts the issue openly. That text echoes the married lady-fairy lover relationship as seen in Marie's Yonec and the anonymous French Tydorel. Characteristically, Marie is able to show a woman gaining freedom in this type of relationship, while--as we have seen in Chapter Two--the author of Tydorel, like several other writers who attempt to imitate Marie, is not quite sure how to deal with extra-marital intrigue. (By the end of Tydorel, the unfaithful queen's husband has passed away and her fairy lover has left for good. No real resolution takes place.)
Obviously, to get from the story of an adulterous liaison with an otherworldly knight, to an affirmation of bourgeois moral principles, one must engage in considerable rnanoeuvring. The author achieves his purpose by moving from the story of the lovers to the biography of their son. In itself, this change of focus is not peculiar: Yonec, after all, completes the exoneration of the illicit lovers in that story by focussing on a son who gets revenge on his rnother's
husband for having killed his father. Similarly, Tydorel does not end before
the couple's son discovers his supernatural origin and then leaves this world
as his fairy father has done. What is peculiar to Sir Gowher is its definitely
Christian bent: more than one scholar has noted its resemblance to the
saint's life. Scholars such as A. Trounce and Margaret Bradstock, for
example. have explored the religious and hagiographical elements of Sir
~owther.'~Bradstock applies certain aspects of Ojars Kratins's work on the
English Amis and AmiIoun to Sir Gowther, and cames to the conclusion that
the Breton lay should perhaps be labelled as "secular hagiography":
Kratins says of that tale that it is "strongly influenced by the pattern of the saint's legend because it attempts to interpret the story within a framework of faith" and that "although the heroes are pious, they are not saints because their virtue is a bond between men and not between man and God" (p.354). Such a description is applicable to Sir Gowher. (41)
As the title of Bradstock's article suggests, however, others might see the
lay as an example of hagiographical romance--a classification defined by
Hippolyte Delehaye-or as belonging to another genre subdivision not yet
identified .
These analyses belong to a whole class of criticism preoccupied with
studying and labelling works which blend characteristics of two or more
" See A. Trounce, "The English Tail-Rhyme Romances," in Medium Aevum 3 (1934): 30-50, and E. M. Bradstock, "Sir Gowther: Secular Hagiography or Hagiographical Romance or Neither?" in AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universitiesf Language and Literature Association 59 (1983): 26-47. genres. Contributors are especially abundant in the field which concerns Si?
Gowther-the area behnreen romance and the saint's legend? In Sir
Gowther, the main character forsakes his life of chaotic depravity once he is
explicitly identified as a devil's son. Sir Gowther's existence prior to this
point is characterized by seemingly aimless acts of violence; his life
aftennrards is a gradua1 process of enlightenment leading to a sound
conclusion. It is as if labelling Sir Gowther is the only means of controlling
him. Similarly, it is as if labelling the poem named after Sir Gowther is the
only means of understanding it.
But Sir Gowther already has a label, one given to it by its author:
A law of Breyten long y soghht, And owt ther of a tale ybroghht, That lufly is to tell. (28-30)
Critics seem to assume that with this statement, the author is either
purposely or indifferently concealing something. Donovan, typically, belongs
to the school which would disregard the work's status as an authentic
Breton lay:
Since Sir Gowther has the courtly setting, but lacks the treatment of love found in a Breton lay, its claims to a Breton origin may be explained as an appeal to authority. It resembles more closely a saint's life, based on a fictitious character whose reformation, worked by grace, becomes an object lesson in
'' See, for example, Diana TmChildress, "Between Romance and Legend: 'Secular Hagiography' in Middle English Literature," PhiloIoaical Quarterlv 57 (1978): 31 1-22; Margaret Hurley, "Saints' Legends and Romance Again: Secularization of Structure and Motif," Genre 8 (1975): 60-73; and M. Dorninica Legge, "Anglo-Norman Hagiography and the Romances," Medievalia et Humanistica n.s. 6 (1975): 41-9. morality. That grace is always effective, is so emphasized that the poem becomes unmistakably didactic. As has been proposed, Sir Gowther may be said to be, like Emare, religious in nature. . . . (231)
For Donovan, whose guidelines for the Breton lay include a specific
"treatment of love, " Sir Go wther is yet another work which falsel y claims
the label inaugurated in Marie de France's collection. He explains: "It not
only has no known source in Celtic literature, but is found in many countries,
Spain, Portugal, France and England, and in a variety of forms, exemplum,
chronicle, ballad, play, pantomime and opera. It is roughly the same story as
the better known Robert the Devi/. . . . " (225).
If, however, the Breton lay in English had become a vehicle for
exploring rnorals and ethics, there is no reason why the genre could not
admit of a story with ties to hagiography. (Have we not seen, earlier,
religious elements in Marie's Eliduc?) It seerns to me that the author of Sir
Gowther, familiar with the fairies, the fidelities (or infidelities) and the
families in other Breton lays, saw in the legend of Robert the Devil a parallel
to those themes. lnstead of simply imposing the Breton label ont0 the story,
the author takes pains to modify the legend so that it more closely follows
the Breton model. G. V. Smithers points out that the devil who impregnates
the childless lady is unique to Sir Gowther of al1 the Robert the Devil
legends.'= In analogous tales, the wife prays to the devil for a child, but no
G.V. Smithers, "Story Patterns in Soma Breton Lays," Medium Aevum 22 (1953): 78. 104
maculate conception is described. Furthermore, certain religious elements in
the story are downplayed in order to add chivalric ones. In "Sir Gowther:
The Process of a Romance," for example, Shirley Marchalonis shows that
the writer of the lay develops references to knighthood in instances such as
the hero's recognition of his problem: in the Robert legend, Robert hirnself
takes the initiative of questioning his mother about his true father, while in
Sir Gowther it is an old earl, "a character with chivalric associations," who
rnakes an assertion which leads Gowther to rush to his mother for
~onfirmation.'~Other revisions of the French legend include the fact that
Gowther does not heed the Pope's injunction to lay down his sword (Robert
has already left his sword behind by the time he travels to Rome), and the
specification that Gowther's divinely-granted horses and armour are black,
red, and white--colours which were "part of the ceremony of knighthood"--
instead of merely white as in Robertle Diable (Marchalonis 17). Evidently,
the author of Sir Gowther wanted to transform it into a more romantic tale.
These amendments by themselves. of course, do not really prove that
the author of Sir Gowther did anything more than append a few rornantic
details to what might still essentially be a saint's life. It is important to note.
however, that Sir Gowher does not square with most theories concerning
hagiography. Margaret Hurley delineates some features of the Christian
biography while focussing on romance as an evolution from saints' legends.
56 Chaucer Review 6 (1971 172): 16-19. 105
She proposes the theory that romance writers carried on the hagiographer's goal of advancing a model to be emulated by readers and listeners (62). and develops the notion of the romance pattern as the converse of the saint's model: "The romance quest seems to be an inversion of the holy man's flight into hiding" (66). Hurley suggests that the secular genre provides the guide to earthly success, while the sacred story promises a "reward of spiritual prowess" (67). The saint abandons al1 temporal powers and escapes the world; the romance hero gains al1 kinds of worldly benefits as he earns the esteem of his society. Bradstock takes up Hurley's thesis specifically in the context of Sir Gowther, and concentrates on the function of marriage within the text as a useful distinction between hagiography and romance: "Any narrative intended as saints' legend, for example, would not be expected to culminate in human marriage" (32). Following either of these models, Sir
Gowther demonstrates more a romantic outlook than a religious lesson. We have a hero for whom earthly marriage is not a great obstacle, for whom indeed al1 kinds of earthly successes are in order. Gowther, then, has the best of both worlds. As such, he is perhaps the perfect hero for the new
Breton lay audience.
Thus, the Breton lay had become, by the tirne of its adaptation in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century England, a vehicle for the affirmation of the endurance of relationships and families. Marie's original exploration of the rights and wrongs of conventional unions had been al1 but forgotten. 106 That is not to agree with Donovan, though, that later authors are not actually writing Breton lays; we must remernber that certain topics remain constant in the genre. Some are in fact handled in much the same manner over the years: for example, we find over and over again the Lanval story
(which moves from Marie's collection, through later French adaptations, to the English poems in couplets and, finally, to the versions in tail-rhyme stanzas). Other topics, however, are given different treatments according to different audience context. Therefore, adultery is considered a possibility in
Marie's collection, regarded ambiguously by later French authors, and treated as an immorality in English adaptations. Chapter Four:
Chaucer's Franklin's Tale
The various stages of the Breton lay-from Marie de France's Lais, to
her divers French imitators, to the anonymous English adaptations of the
genre-form part of the background leading up to Chaucer's Franklin's Tale.
We are finally brought full circle. back to a Breton lay written by an author
who includes it with other works he or she has created. Chaucer does not,
of course. embed the Franklin's Tale within a whole collection of Breton lays;
he composes only one example of the genre. (Alth~~gh~as Laura Hibbard
Loomis points out, the Wife of Bath's Tale "begins with brief mention of
'th'olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour.' of the Britouns, and the elf-queen and
'hir joly compaignyeIf5' that tale is not an attempt to imitate the genre
established by Marie but rather a romance which furnishes proof that Britain
or Brittany was associated with otherworldly creatures and events.) The
author of the Canterburv Tales does. however. make explicit links with the
Breton lay genre in the Prologue to the Franklin's Tale:
Thise olde gentil Britouns in hir dayes Of diverse aventures rnaden layes, Rymeyed in hir firste Briton tonge. Which layes with hir instrument2 they songe Or elles redden hem for hir plesaunce; And oon of hem have I in remembraunce. Which I shal seyn with good wyl as I kan. (709-15)
If the story that ensues is derived from an actual Breton lay, it is one
67 "Chaucer and the Breton Lays of the Auchinleck Manuscript," Studies in Philolooy 38 (1941 ): 26. which no longer exists. William Henry Schofield attempts to establish such a
lost source in an article which concludes that "Chaucer actually followed a
Breton lay in al1 the essentials of his narrative, a Breton lay, moreover, which
in large part was closely connected with Celtic tradition. "" Schofield's
argument is generally dismissed, however, in favour of the findings of Pio
Rajna and J.S.P. Tatlock, who stress the origin of Chaucer's story in
Boccaccio's Il Fifoco/o or his ~ecameron.~~Germaine Dernpster and Tatlock
outline Chaucer's most likely sources in Sources and Analoaues of Chaucer's
Canterbuw Tales:
It is highly probable that Chaucer used as main source the story of Menedon in Boccaccio's Fifocolo, combined it with elements found in the Historia regum Britanniae of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and gave his tale a Breton background in imitation of the lays. His use of St. Jerome's Adversus Jovinianum in this tale is confined to Dorigen's exempla."
While Schofield argues that a Celtic story once existed which constituted the
foundation of both Chaucer's Breton lay and Geoffrey of Monmouth's text
(413)' most scholars now agree that the correspondences between the two
narratives (including "the name of Arviragus as loving husband of Genuissa
"Chaucer's Franklin's Tale," PMLA 16 (1901 ) 426.
See Pio Rajna, "Le Origini della novella narrata da1 Ffankeleyn nei Canterbury del Chaucer," Romania 32 (1903) 204-67, and J.S.P. Tatlock, The Scene of the Franklin's Tale Visited, Chaucer Society Publications, Second Series 5 1 (London: 19 14).
See the chapter on The Franklin's Tale in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbuw Tales, ed. W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (New York: Humanities Press, 1941 ) 377. or Dorigen and the use of magic or skill in a feat involving rocks and
performed at the request of Aurelius") are a result of Chaucer's appropriation
of elements from the Historia regum Britanniae itself (Dempster 383); these
cornponents are simply integrated into a text based on a story from
Boccaccio's Fl/oco/o. Boccaccio's version of the tale involves a married lady
who hopes to dissuade a suitor by requiring him to produce a garden in
January as a prerequisite to obtaining her affection; Chaucer's adaptation
depicts a worried wife who seeks to protect her husband and discourage an
admirer by promising the latter her love if he removes the dangerous rocks
on the Coast of Brittany which jeopardise her spouse's safe return from
England. Chaucer also adds the notions of gentilesse. troth, and sovereignty in marriage to his tale, in keeping with the character of the
Franklin and with the pilgrims' ongoing debate on matrimony.
One may well question why Chaucer would additionally attach to his story the designation of Breton lay. Laura Hibbard Loomis decides that
Chaucer assigns an example of that genre to the "white-bearded" Franklin because the form was, by the time the Franklin's Tale was written, a rather outmoded one (16). According to Loomis. "only one copy of one lay survives in a manuscript of 1350-1400. [which] suggests, even though it does not prove. that in these years the lays were not in vogue, that they were not being recopied by scribes, and were not. presumably. being discussed by contemporary literati" (16). The Franklin, Loomis asserts, is noble but old-fashioned, and so would have enjoyed the noble but old-
fashioned Breton lays: "If the lays had been currently popular, we should,
indeed, be at a loss to explain why Chaucer so deliberately ernphasized the
ancient air of his own Breton lay" (16- 17). Ironically. Loomis herself
provides another explanation of why Chaucer accentuates the old-
fashionedness of the Franklin's Tale, when she demonstrates that the
prologue cornrnon to Sir Orfeo and Laile Freine in the Auchinleck MS
"accounts for everything that Chaucer actually says" in his own prologue
(24)." The Ortieo/Frene prologue cites "old aventours that fel while" (8)-
that is, old adventures that once happened--among the subjects that one
finds in the lays. More striking than that, however, is a passage which
occurs at the end of the prologue, where Odeo and Freine diverge. The lines
in Lai le Fierire read :
In Breteyne bi hold tirne This layes were wrought, so seith this rime. (13-1 4)
(In Brittany in olden times These lays were made, so says this rhyme.)
In Sir Orfeo, the rendering is:
In Breteyne this layes were wrought, First y-founde and forth y-brought, Of aventours that fel bi dayes, Wherof Bretouns maked her layes. (13-16)
'' The first leaf of Sir OIfeo has been torn out from the Auchinleck MS, but, as Loomis explains. "since the two other extant manuscripts of Orfeo contain the Prologue and al1 three were derived from the same source, there is no reason to doubt that the Auchinleck Orfeo likewise had this Prologue" (22). Laile Freine, which survives only in the Auchinleck, still contains its Prologue. (In Brittany these lays were made, First composed and formulated, From adventures that happened in olden times, Whereof the Bretons made their lays.)
Loomis exclaims and emphasizes:
This fast couplet, peculiar to the OIfeo text, has special importance. For what, we may ask, could be much closer to Chaucer's own couplet?
Thise olde gentil Britouns in hir dayes Of diverse aventures maden layes.
Seven out of these twelve words are identical with those in the earlier prologue, and here, in precisely the same context, he uses precisely the same rime, a rime which by no possibility could he have derived from any French text. (22)
If Loornis's argument here is correct, we are not at a loss to explain why
Chaucer emphasized the ancient air of his tale: Breton lays, whether in
vogue or not, were commonly known to derive frorn old ~tories.'~The
Franklin was not necessarily harking back to an old-fashioned form.
Why, then, would Chaucer fashion the Franklin's Tale as a Breton lay?
82 The idea of Breton lays as old stories originally cornes from Marie; for example: Vos mosterai une aventure Ki en Bretaigne la Menur Avint al tens ancienur. (Guigemar 24-26) (l'II relate an adventure that took place in Brittany, in the old days.) and Jadis suleient par pruesce, Par curteisie e par noblesce, Des aventures qu'il oeient. . . . (Equitan 3-5) (In the old days they were accustomed, out of bravery, courtliness, and nobility, to create lais frorn the adventures they heard. . . .) I would suggest, with Mortimer Donovan and Kathryn urne,'^ that while the
Breton form had perhaps lost some of its popularity when the Franklin's Tale
was written, it had not yet become obsolete. Hume makes two important
points about the Breton lay's status during Chaucer's lifetirne: first, although
manuscript evidence of the genre's existence from 1350 to 1400 is slight,
we know (from the Shrewsbury MS, for example) that "we possess only a
few of the lais which once circulated" (373). Even the Auchinleck MS has
fourteen poems missing: some of these might be missing Breton lays (Hume
373). Secondly, whereas Loornis argues that "something in the nature of a
revivaln took place after Chaucer wrote the Franklin's Tale (16), Hume points
out that Sir Launfal, Emar&, me Erle of Tolous, and Sir Gowther--that is, the
tail-rhyme lays-were written at about the same time as Chaucer's Breton lay
(373). If these lays did not necessarily postdate the Franklin's Tale, their
writers were not necessarily motivated by Chaucer's success; there must
have been another reason why the authors chose to label their works as
Breton lays. Hume therefore argues that the genre was still pertinent to a
fourteenth-century audience:
If Chaucer could not expect his listeners to have any knowledge of the Breton lai, it would have been pointless for him to mention the genre. We must suppose therefore that the term meant something to his contemporaries, aven if we cannot be certain precisely what. . . . [IJfthe name had not been one to conjure with, the authors of Emare?, me Erle of Tolous, and Sir Gowther would not have bothered to advertise their stories by
83 See Donovan's Guidef p.174, and Hume's article, "Why Chaucer Calls the Franklin's Tale a Breton Lai," Philoloaical Quarterlv 51 (1972) 373. labeling them Breton lais. (373)
It is significant that Emare and the other lays more or less contemporary with
Chaucer's Breton lay are the less polished tail-rhyme works which John B.
Beston identifies with "a somewhat crude but robust audiencen (see p. 87 above). In fact. by the time the Franklin's Tale was written, even the more sophisticated octosyllabic lays which antedate the tail-rhyme lays had also been appropriated by readers outside the court. and had become. as I suggested earlier, part of bourgeois collections. It would perhaps be more accurate, then, instead of postulating a slump and then a rise in the popularity of the Breton lay, to suppose that by the time Chaucer identified the Franklin's narrative as a story from the "olde gentil Britouns in hir dayes," the genre had lost some of its favour among a more courtly audience, but still retained its appeal among the newly-literate classes who sought to emulate upper-class entertainment.
Consequently, it would be entirely appropriate that a bourgeois character such as the Franklin should entertain his travelling cornpanions with a story representative of those which often appeared in bourgeois compilations. Of course. debating the Franklin's social status inevitably entails sparking some controversy. Although few critics would disagree with
Derek Pearsall's statement that "[tlhe Franklin himself is at an important bridging-point in the new society. where land, wealth and power have 114
achieved or almost achieved the transition to 'gentle' status,"" the argument
continues over just how much "gentility" had been attained by wealthy
property-owners when Chaucer wrote the Canterburv Tales. Most scholars
accept the conclusions of Nigel Saul, who uses records such as poll taxes
and military documents to dernonstrate that during the Canterburv Tales
period, franklins were stiil excluded from the gentry: "Franklin was a word
applied in a civilian, usually a rural. context to the wealthy freeholders--those
proud of their freedom, but inferior to the noble blood of the knights and
lords."e6 Nevertheless, some commentators such as Paul Strohm accept this
premise only to contend that Chaucer's Franklin is so proud of his freedom
and of his status that he cannot be labelled a snob who aspires to climb the
social ladder even further: "mhe argument that the Franklin is not a social
clirnber makes good sense. For his views on gentillesse are fully and genially
appropriate to the social situation he already enjoy~."~~Indisputably, the
Franklin is an influential individual, as a review of his General Prologue
portrait shows. Although it would be easy to overlook the significance of
the list of public offices held by the Franklin, especially after reading twenty-
84 The Life of Geoffrev Chaucer: A Critical Bioaraohv (Oxford UK and Cambridge Massachusetts: Blackwell. 1992) 246.
"The Social Status of Chaucer's Franklin: A Reconsideration," Medium Aevum 52 (1983): 13. For an opposing viewpoint, see Henrik Specht, Chaucer's Franklin in the Canterburv Tales (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1981).
'' Social Chaucer (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1989) 107. one lines describing his hospitality and the abundance of gastronornic delights to be found in his household (in an introductory sketch only thirty lines long), anyone who examines the inventory of the Franklin's occupations cannot remain unimpressed by the various roles he plays: he presides at court sessions, he is a member of Parliament, he has been a sheriff and an auditor, and, to top it al1 off, he is a feudal landowner whose equal is not easily found.
It seems peculiar, though, that the Franklin should be so preoccupied with appropriating the concept of gentilesse if he were indeed cornfortable with his current social status, as Strohrn implies. Saul fixes his attention on the Franklin's awareness of his uneasy social position:
Both his remarks and the subject he chooses for his tale indicate the Franklin's acute sensitivity to notions of gentilesse. He praises the Squire for having told his tale 'gentilly,' and he laments his son's refusal to 'lerne gentillesse arightmnHis patronizing attitude to the Knight's son surely suggests a man unsure of his status in the world; one whose material prosperity is not matched by a recognition of gentle birth. He is after all only a franklin, inferior in quality to those of noble and gentle birth. For that reason his remarks in the tale are concerned to emphasize that gentillesse is dependent not on a man's birth or ancestry but on his own manners and behaviour. . . . Even so, the Franklin's insecurity was betrayed by his earlier lament to the Squire that his own son was less interested in acquiring the manner of life appropriate to those of gentle birth than in playing dice and talking to a page. (21-22)
The Franklin kidnaps the noble quality of gentillesse and attempts to define it according to his own terme precisely because it is the one aspect of higher- class living he does not possess. Indeed, the Franklin is a middle-class character; the individual we meet in the General Prologue is undoubtedly a man who has benefited from numerous opportunities because of changing social structures. Thus, rny understanding of Chaucer's assignation of a Breton lay to the Franklin is perhaps in direct opposition ta Loomis's explanation that the old (and therefore old-fashioned) narrator offers an antiquated story. Chaucer's landowner is, I believe, not an old-fashioned but rather a new-fashioned individual, and he tells a tale in a new genre-or at least one which had recently been recast to fit the tastes of a new class.
As Pearsall cautions, of course, one should be wary of placing too much emphasis on the correlation between a tale and its teller (240). In fact, Pearsall points out that, at times, Chaucer's assignation of certain tales to certain tellers has little to do with actuality (238). Chaucer's designation of narrators for the fabliau in particular, says Pearsall, is not based on fact:
mhe attribution of the fabliaux to the 'cherles', which seems, like The Canterburv Tales as a whole, so 'natural' a representation of observed reality, is in fact a highly original dramatic innovation. In social reality, fabliaux in French, ltalian and Latin were traditionally the entertainment of upper-class and clerical audiences. Chaucer, in associating the fabliaux with the churls, fin& a place for thern in English poetry by making the familiar equation between social class and moral behaviour and also by refusing responsibility either for the equation or for the portrayal of the bad behaviour. (238)
While Chaucer may have falsified the connection between some narrators and their Canterbury tale, I believe that it is quite likely that a character such as the Franklin might have recited a 8reton lay; here at least, Chaucer's portrayal seems to reflect reality.
My hypothesis is that the reason why Chaucer makes it cfear that the
middle class Franklin's story is a Breton lay is the same reason why he
stresses the false link between the lower class and the fabliau. By
identifying the Franklin's contribution to the tale-telling contest as a member
of a specific genre, Chaucer is able to reject some responsibility for the
actions depicted in the story by deferring to the conventions of a Iiterary
form. Just as readers and listeners are asked to accept the ribaldry of the
fabliau as part of lower-class coarseness which ought not to be taken too
seriously, they are expected to excuse certain questionable details in the
Franklin's Tale as elements introduced by the "olde gentil Britouns" whose
judgment ought to be trusted. Kathryn Hume explains:
As a number of recent critics have shown, [the Franklin's Tale] is, by some medieval standards, open to severe condemnation on religious and moral grounds. . . . I suspect that Chaucer was no less aware of these problems than some of these critics. and that by invoking the sanction of lai conventions he was doing his best to anticipate and nullify such criticisrn. (374)
To be sure, it is sirnpler for Chaucer to dissociate hirnself from the
lower-class pilgrims who narrate fabliaux. than it is for him to distance
himself from someone like the Franklin. The tellers of fabliaux are usually
portrayed as unsophisticated boors who are ignorantly unconcerned about
the "harlotriew (MilPro 3184) they depict in their taled7 The Miller, for
87 AS Derek Pearsall observes, this is not always the case: mhe Merchant's Tale, a story with a fabliau-ending told by a non- example, describes a lecherous priest, a conniving clerk, a cuckolded
husband and his unfaithful wife, al1 of whom warrant only laughter:
They seyde, 'The man is wood, my leeve brother"; And every wight gan laughen at this stryf. Thus swyved was this carpenteris wyf, For al his kepyng and his jalousye, And Absolon hath kist hir nether ye, And Nicholas is scalded in the towte. This tale is doon, and God Save al the rowtel (MiIT 3848-54)
It is Chaucer himself who apologizes for the Miller's story, with a defence
similar to that which he employs in the General Prologue:
And therfore every gentil wight I preye, For Goddes love, demeth nat that I seye Of yvel entente, but for I moot reherce Hir tales alle, be they bettre or werse, Or elles falsen Som of my mateere. And therfore, whoso list it nat yheere, Turne over the leef and chese another tale; For he shal fynde ynowe, grete and smale, Of storial thyng that toucheth gentillesse, And eek moralitee and hoolynesse. Blemeth nat me if that ye chese amys. The Millere is a cherl; ye knowe wel this. churl, offers its own apology for bad language (IV. 2350-1) at the coarse climax of the story, on the same basis as Chaucer's, though with a vile prurience al1 its own. Chaucer's awareness of the English poet's role is more subtly present in the Manciple's pretended apology for using the low word "lemmann (IX. 205). (See Pearsall, p. 238.) Neither the Merchant nor the Manciple, however, is sincerely remorseful, and their affected repentance serves only to highlight the lewdness which inevitably follows. The Merchant, for example, beseeches ladies to "be nat wrooth" (2350). just as he is about to triumphantly announce that "sodeynly anon this Damyan / Gan pullen up the smok, and in he throngw (2352-53). Moreover, though they are perhaps not churls, neither character cornes close to attaining the degree of nobility acquired by the Franklin. (The Manciple, for example, is termed "gentil" [GP 5671 only ironically.) So was the Reve eek and othere mo, And harlotrie they tolden bothe two. (MilPro 3171-31 84)
Chaucer explains that he is merely carrying out his duties as reporter of ail tales told on the Canterbury pilgrimage, be they vulgar or not; if any reader deems any particular story offensive, he or she can surely find a more
"gentil," moral, or holy story elsewhere in the collection.
Chaucer must highlight the anxiety which plagues the narrator of his
Breton lay, however, because the Franklin is not a churlish tale-teller who delights in certain indelicate elements in his story. Indeed, unlike the narrators of the fabliaux, the Franklin is not so easygoing about the material he treats: he is clearly uncornfortable with certain parts of his ston/. When he describes the "rnagyk natureel" which effectuates the "remaval" of the rocks that distress Dorigen so, for example, he distances himself from the magical manoeuvrings in question by explaining that they are but
swich folye As in oure dayes is nat worth a flye-- For hooly chirches feith in oure bileve Ne suffreth noon illusioun us to greve. (1131 -34)
Later, when he reaches that part of his tale where it appears that Dorigen will have to gram her love to Aurelius, he feels compelled to interrupt the narrative to assure readers that the situation is not as bad as it seerns:
Paraventure an heep of yow, ywis, Wol holden hym a lewed man in this That he wol putte his wyf in jupartie. Herkneth the tale er ye upon hire crie. She may have bettre fortune than yow semeth; And whan that ye han herd the tale, demeth. (1493-98) Perchance Chaucer must emphasize the Franklin's uneasiness about his tale because he is the Canterbury pilgrim whose social standing most closely compares to Chaucer's own social position. I cornmented earlier on the dangers of fixing too much attention on the relationship of a storyteller to his creative output, and I would add that this admonition holds for hypercritical examinations of connections between the real-life Chaucer and each of his creations. Yet one might argue that there is some significance in the similar status held by Chaucer's family and Chaucer's Franklin. Indeed, whereas Geoffrey Chaucer's early biographers 'would have much preferred an aristocratie pedigree for the father of English poetryn and therefore tended to "disguise the unpalatable fact of Chaucer's bourgeois origin," we are now certain that the Chaucer family was made up of bourgeois wine dealers
(Pearsall 16). The Chaucers were prosperous and rather powerful members of the middle class, however: they were, like the Franklin, at that "bridging pointn to gentle status described by Pearsall:
It is wonh stressing that Chaucer was not only exceptionally fortunate in having a settled home when he was young and in having parents who survived until he was well into manhood, but he also had the advantage of a father who was in one of the most prestigious forms of trade, who was extremely well- off and quite influential, and who had been in the king's service in both military and civil capacities. (Pearsall 16)
It is hardly surprising to find that Derek S. Brewer's depiction of Chaucer corresponds to Our description of the Franklin in stressing his "in-between" status: He was the new man, the literate layman who was not a clerk, the courtier who was not a knight; he was not poor (like Langland) but not rich; a salaried man, not landed gentry (like Gower); he was not even a merchant like his father and grandfather?
Both Geoffrey and the Franklin were able to move beyond their families'
roots to approximate the privileges of the nobility (Pearsall 16).
Nonetheless, for al1 their work, they both remained apart from that class.
It seems that the Franklin's Tale is sornewhat of an experiment for
Chaucer, in which he explores the possibility of handling risque material
within the context of a more "gentil" narrative-a narrative which might be
identified with the new man of the fourteenth century. Interestingly, as
opposed to the Miller's Tale, the Reeve's Tale, the Merchant's Tale, the
Shipman's Tale, and the Manciplers Tale, the act of adultery never actually
cornes to pass in the Franklin's Tale: although Arveragus will apparently
yield his wife to Aurelius, the latter relinquishes the recompense he has
earned. Similarly, readers expecting genuine fairy magic in the Franklin's
Tale are bound to be disappointed, for the power we behold therein proves
to be far less romantic than that:
Chaucer's use of the magic is not quite in accord with normal lai usage. The lai rnagic is either accomplished through the innate power of faerie beings, or the magic events just occur. A figure like Chaucer's medieval, university-trained, mortal magician, whose power is based on book-learning rather than "natural" power, is foreign to the lais. In none of them are there any such elaborate preparations for a magic event as
"Class Distinction in Chaucer," Soeculum 43 (1968): 304, as cited by Pearsall p. 245. there are for covering the rocks. (Hume 370-71)
Thus Chaucer reveals himself to be, in some ways, as circumspect as the
other English Breton lay writers in avoiding the more daring ingredients
which characterize the original Breton lays.
Unlike most of the other English Breton lay writers, however, Chaucer
does reinstate the role of adultery at the centre of the genre. Indeed, the
prominence Chaucer assigns to the subject in his story-in spite of his careful
circumvention of its actual occurrence-suggests that he held it to be
intrinsic to the form. Certainly, the Franklin spends some time establishing the great bliss which cornes from a happy and free marriage; A~erag~sand
Dorigen are ostensibly presented as the ideal of wedded love:
Thus hath she take hir servant and hir lord-- Servant in love, and lord in mariage. Thanne was he bothe in lordshipe and servage. Servage? Nay, but in lordshipe above, Sith he hath bothe his lady and his love; His lady, certes, and his wyf also, The which that lawe of love acordeth to. (792-98)
It is not too long, however, before we witness Aurelius's challenge of the married couple's union. Although in the end, the marriage bond prevails, its essence is cailed into question when Arveragus is depicted as unwilling to do anything about his wife's horrible situation Save instruct her to keep her
"trouthe" (FranT 1474); the act of adultery is only averted by the would-be paramour himself. To the English Breton lay's familiar story-pattern of the harmonious relationship which endures a near-separation but which concludes with a happy reunion of the couple, then, Chaucer restores the
motif of extra-marital influence. albeit in a self-conscious and apprehensive
manner.
While it is true that two of the Middle English Breton lays we have
studied-Sir Gowther and 73e Erle of To/ous--do deal with adultery either
directly or indirectly. neither of those works would have served as Chaucer's
source for his Breton lay. Rather. it seems likely that the author of the
Canterbuw Tales was familiar with certain French versions of the form
which. in one way or another. address the theme of extra-marital love.
Laura Hibbard Loomis, of course, attempts ta show that Chaucer's
understanding of the Breton lay need not have been gained from any
manuscript Save the Auchinleck MS; she writes:
As Professor Robinson has remarked: ". . . Chaucer could have got full knowledge of the type from the English lays." . . . For it is, I believe. possible to show that the poet's ideas about Breton lays in general. as set forth in the Franklin's Prologue, and also certain elements, previously unnoted, in the Franklin's Tale and elsewhere, can be better explained by his use of the lays in the Auchinleck MS, a manuscript from which he seems also to have borrowed other material. than by any French collection of the lays known to us. (1716@
I agree that Chaucer probably did use the Auchinleck MS for some ideas
about the Breton lay: his conception of the genre's prologue, for example. or
his consideration of married iovers. Nevertheless, the matter of adultery as
relevant to the Breton form was a notion which Chaucer undoubtedly did not
Quotation from F.N. Robinson from Chaucer's Complete Works (Boston. 1933): 827. 124 acquire from Sir Orfeo, Le Freine, or Sir Degarh, the three Breton lays which appear in the Auchinleck MS. Whether he had actually given careful consideration to French lays, or whether he had only briefly been exposed to them, Chaucer seems to have some knowledge of either Marie's lays or those of her imitators, and their risque subject matter. Otherwise it would be truly peculiar that the Franklin should, as a non-churl preoccupied with
"gentillesse," be the only Canterbuty pilgrim to give prominence to adultery in a non-fabliau, family-oriented, middle-class narrative.
All in all, if Chaucer is willing to incorporate the daring topic of extra- marital intrigue into some of his tales, he is unable to do so without making use of the same distancing devices employed by both anonymous French and English authors of the Breton lay after Marie. Even within the context of a collection which allows him to dissociate himself from his material by establishing false narrators for each of his stories, Chaucer is usually careful to treat adultery only as matter for the comical fabliau. In the one case where he endeavours to treat adultery seriousty--in his only Breton lay--the adultery never does take place, though the agitated narrator of the tale feels the need to defend the circumstances in his story when it appears that something illicit might happen. In fact, in some ways, one might argue that the twelfth-century Marie de France is more progressive than the fourteenth- century Geoffrey Chaucer, experimenting as she does with the notion that ail adulterers ought not to be condemned, and suggesting that adulterers (or adulteresses) at times have valid cause for questioning the bounds of marital
responsibility. Even Marie, of course, counterbalances sympathetic
portrayals of infidelity with representations of unfaithfulness which ought not
to be tolerated. But Chaucer does not even do this.
One can perhaps explain why Chaucer shies away from Marie's
"progressiven approach to daring subject matter by considering his
developing understanding of the written text. Whereas Marie's incipient
conception of literacy allows her to optimistically suppose that one might
rely on a static textual framework to maintain one's authorial message.
Chaucer perceives that, as literacy increases, so does the potential for
authorial misrepresentation. Pearsall describes the evolution of the writer's
role as experienced by Chaucer:
Chaucer knew that his poetry existed in a larger world than this of 'princepleasers.' Chaucer's impatience with the role of 'poet of the court' that he acquired, in however marginal a capacity, through the writing of Troilus and Criseyde can be deduced from the lamely unconcluded Legend of Good Women. The world in which he had achieved such a position was in any case disappearing. In The Canterbury Ta/es he abandoned the role, and committed himself to a work in which the author as performer was laughingly self-erased. The fiction of Tne Canterbury Tales is one of oral reportage: ît is, on the face of it. the most oral of al1 Chaucer's poems, with al1 the tales purporting to be narrated viva voce to a listening audience. But this fiction is entirely enclosed within a f rame-narrative which is explicitly addressed to the private reader. as we have seen in the Miller's Prologue, and private reading is the natural medium of Tlre Canterbury Taies. (190)
Chaucer's anxiety about the growing number of private readers that he 12 6
beheld in his society is evidenced by his reluctance to circulate the
Canterburv Tales as a whole: "Chaucer had no copy of 7Be Canterbury Tales
made, and did not prepare the work for circulation" (Pearsall 190). Indeed,
Chaucer is so sceptical of the possibilify that his intent will reach his readers
that, after having devised a remarkable compilation where Chaucer the man
can hide behind Chaucer the author, who in turn can hide behind various
narrators (including Chaucer the pilgrirn), he ultimately calls upon his
audience to ignore some of his best work.
With regards tu literacy, then, Chaucer is understandably more
progressive than Marie de France, though also more pessimistic than either
Marie, the anonymous French Breton lay writers, or the other English
adaptors of the form: he seems to believe that no matter how an author
approaches a work, his or her intention will inevitably be lost or distorted.
Doubtless, Chaucer does have some foundation for his fears: as his own
version of the Breton lay genre demonstrates, individual interpretation of another's work often yields results which could never have been foreseen by the original author. Could Marie ever have imagined. for example, that the genre she initiated in her collection would undergo the influence of the moral standards of several generations, along with their various forms of orality or literacy, to eventually precipitate works ranging from Graelent to Lecheur to
Sir OHeo to the Franklin's Tale? Yet, as these works also show. the variations which are created even by those who rnay not have a full 127 understanding of the original theme rnay at times display their own kind of genius. Works Cited
Primary Sources
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Lariy D. Benson. 3rd ad. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
Desirt?. Tobin 169-205.
Doon. Tobin 324-333.
Ernarg. Laskaya and Salisbury 153-1 99.
Espine. Tobin 264-288.
Erie of Tolous. Laskaya and Salisbury 319-365.
Graelent, trans. Russell Weingartner. The Romance of Arthur II. Ed. James J. Wilhelm. New York: Garland, 1986. 63-80.
Graelent. Tobin 96-125.
Guingamor. Tobin 137-155.
"Le Lai du Conseil," ed. Alben Barth. Romanische Forschunaen 31 (1911- 12): 831-60.
Le Lai dfHaveloc and Gaimar's ffaveloc Enisode. Ed. Alexander Bell. Publications of the University of Manchester French Series IV. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925.
"Le Lai de Oiselet," ed. Raymond Weeks. Medieval Studies in Memorv of Gertrude Schoe~oerleLoomis. Paris and New York, 1927. 341-53.
Lay le Freine. Laskaya and Salisbury 68-87.
Lecheor. Tobin 354-358.
Nabaret. Tobin 362-364.
Melion. Tobin 296-318.
Sir Degard. Laskaya and Salisbury 101-1 44. Sir Gowther. Laskaya and Salisbury 274295.
Sir Launfal. Laskaya and Salisbury 210-262.
Sir Orfeo. Laskaya and Salisbury 26-59.
Tydorel. Tobin 21 3-226.
Tyolet. Tobin 236-253.
Trot. Tobin 339-346.
Laskaya, Anne, and Eve Salisbury, eds. The Middle Enolish Breton Lavs. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval lnstitute Publications, 1995.
Marie de France. Les Lais de Marie de France. Ed. Jean Rychner. Classiques français du moyen age 93. 2nd ed. Paris: Champion, 1980.
--O The Lais of Marie de France. Trans. Joan Ferrante and Robert Hanning. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.
Tobin, Prudence Mary OfHara, ed. Les Lais anonvmes des Xlle et Xllle siècles: Édition critiaue de auelaues lais bretons. Publications Romanes et Françaises CXLII. GenBve: Librairie Droz, 1976.
Secondary Sources
Bradstock, €.M. "Sir GoMer: Secular Hagiography or Hagiographical Romance or Neither?" AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities' Lanouaae and Literature Association 59 (1983): 26-47.
Brereton, Georgine E. "A Thirteenth-Century List of French Lays and Other Narrative Poems." Modern Lanauaae Review 45 (1950): 40-45.
Brewer, Derek S. "Class Distinction in Chaucer.' Soeculum 43 (1968): 290-305.
Bryan, W.F., and Germaine Dempster. Sources and Analooues of Chaucer's Canterbuw Tales. New York: Humanities Press, 1941.
Burgess, Glyn S. The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1987. -. Marie de France: An Analytical Biblionraohv. Research Bibliographies and Checklists 21, London: Grant and Cutler, 1977.
Burrow, 3.A. Notes. Franklin's Tale. The Riverside Chaucer. By Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. Larry O. Benson. 3rd ed. Boston: ~ou~htonMifflin Company, 1987. 91 7-23.
William. The French Tradition and the Literature of Medieval Enaland. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.
Childress, Diana T. "8etween Romance and Legend: 'Secular Hagiography' in Middle English Literature." Philoloriical Quarterlv 57 (1978): 3 1 1- 22.
Clifford, Paula. Marie de France: Lais. London: Grant and Cutler, 1982.
Coleman, Janet. Enalish Literature in Historv 1350-1400: Medieval Readers and Writers. London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd, 1981.
Crosby, Ruth. "Oral Delivery in the Middle Ages." Soeculum 1 1 (1936): 88- 110.
Damon, S. Foster. "Marie de France: Psychologist of Courtly Love." Publications of the Modern Lanauape Association of Arnerica 44 (1929): 968-96.
Donovan, Mortimer. The Breton Lav: A Guide to Varieties. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969.
Ferguson, Mary H. "Folklore in the Lais Marie de France." The Romanic Review 57 (1966): 3-24.
Ferrante, Joan, and Robert Hanning. Introduction, Notes, Translation. The Lais of Marie de France. By Marie de France. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1978.
Frey, John A. "Linguistic and Psychological Couplings in the Lays of Marie de France." Studies in Philoloay 61 (1964): 3-1 8.
Ferguson, Mary H. "Folklore in the Lais of Marie de France." The Romanic Review 57 (1966): 3-24.
Grimes, Evie M. Introduction. The Lavs of Desiré. Graelent and Melion. New York: n.p., 1928. 1-47. Hieatt, Constance B. "Eliduc Revisited: John Fowles and Marie de France." Enalish Studies in Canada 3 (1977): 351-58.
Hoepffner, Ernest. Les Lais de Marie de France. Paris: Boivin, 1 935.
-- . "Pour la chronologie des Lais de Marie de France." Romania 59 (1933): 351 -70 and 60 (1934): 36-66.
Hume, Kathryn. "Why Chaucer Calls the Franklin's Tale a Breton Lai." PhiloIoaical Quarterlv 51 (1972): 365-79.
Hurley, Margaret. "Saints' Legends and Romance Again: Secularization of Structure and Motif." Genre 8 (1975): 60-73.
Illingworth, R.N. "La chronologie des de Marie de France," Rornania 87 (1966): 433-75.
Laskaya, Anne, and Eve Salisbury. Introduction. The Middle Enalish Breton b.Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval lnstitute Publications, 1995. 1- 14.
Legge, M. Dominica. "Anglo-Norman Hagiography and the Romances," Medievalia et Humanistica nos.6 (1975): 41-49.
Loomis, Laura Hibbard. "Chaucer and the Breton Lays of the Auchinleck Manuscript." çtudies 38 (1941 ): 14-33.
Marchalonis, Shirley. "Sir Gowther: The Process of a Romance." Chaucer Review 6 (1971 /72): 14-29.
McCrum, Robert, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. The Story of Enalish. London and Boston: Faber and Faber-BBC Books, 1986.
McCulloch, Florence. "Length, Recitation and Meaning of the Lais of Marie de France." Kentuckv Romance Quarterlv 25 (1 978): 257-68.
Menard, Phillip. Les Lais de Marie de France: Contes d'amour et d'aventure du moven a=. Litteratures Modernes 19. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979.
Mickel, E.J. "A Reconsideration of the Lais of Marie de France." Soeculurn 46 (l97f):39-65. Minnis, A.J. Medieval Theory of au th ors hi^. 2nd edition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988.
Mortimer, Richard. Anaevin Enciland 1154-1 258. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1994.
Ong, Walter J. Oralitv and Literacv: The Technoloaizina of the Word. London: Methuen and Co. Ltd, 1982.
Paris, Gaston. "Lais lnedits de Tyolet, de Guingamor, de Doon, du Lecheor et de Tydorel." Romania 8 (1879): 29-72. --- . La Litterature francaise au moven aga. 5th edition. Paris: Hachette, 1914.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrev Chaucer: A Critical Bioara~hv. Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 1992.
Rajna, Pio. "Le Origini della novella narrata da1 Frankeleyn nei Canterbury Tales del Chaucer." Romania 32 (1903): 204-67.
Saul, Nigel. "The Social Status of Chaucer's Franklin: A Reconsideration." Medium Aevum 52 (1983): 10-26.
Schofield, William Henry. "Chaucer's Franklin's Tale." PMLA 16 (1901 ): 55-77.
Sienaert, Edgar. Les lais de Marie de France: Du conte merveilleux à la nouvelle ~svcholoaiaue. Paris: Champion, 1978.
Srnithers, G.V. "Story Patterns in Some Breton Lays." Medium Aevum 22 (1953): 61-92.
Spearing, A.C. Introduction. The Franklin's Prolouue and Tale. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1972.
Specht, Henrik. Chaucer's Franklin in the Canterbuw Tales. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1981.
Spitzer, Leo. "The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France and Medieval Poetics." Modern Philofoay 41 (1943): 96-1 02.
Strohm, Paul. "The Origin and Meaning of Middle English Romaunce." Genre 10 (1977): 1-28. -- . Social Chaucer. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1989.
-. "Storie, Spelfe, Geste, Rornaunce, Tragedie: Generic Distinctions in the Middle English Troy Narratives." S~eculurn46 (1971 ): 348-359.
Tatlock, J.S.P. The Scene of the Franklin's Tale Visited. Chaucer Society Publications, Second Series 5 1. London: 191 4.
Taylor, Henry O. The Mediaeval Mind: A Historv of the Develo~mentof Thouht and Emotion in the Middle Age~.2 vols. 4th ed. London, 1925.
Trounce, A. "The English Tail-Rhyme Romances." Medium Aevum 3 (1934) : 30-50.
Vitz, Evelyn. "Orality, Literacy, and the Early Tristan Material: BBroul, Thomas. Marie de France." Rornanic Review 78 (1987): 299-31 0.
Williams, Harry F. "The Anonymous Breton Lays." Research Studies 32 (1964): 76-84. APPLlED - IMAGE. lnc -= 1653 East Main Street --,-- , Rochester, NY 14609 USA --.-- Phone: 71 W482-0300 ---- Fa 71 ôi2ü8-5989
O 1993. Appîieâ Image. Inc. An Rlghts Resenied