Distractions de Troyes

     Things escalate at a snail’s pace in this story. Just when the storyline seems to be picking up speed, the narrator slows down by giving us (unnecessary) in-depth descriptions of characters and settings. 

     One example of this distraction (as I will now refer to it), comes on page 6. Instead of simply stating the maiden’s beauty, we are flooded with details of Nature’s efforts to create such an attractive human being. Plenty of people would kill to be told that “never before had such a lovely creature been seen on the face of the earth” (6). I am impressed by the way that the narrator is able to speak so much and so intensely about the beauty of this maiden, yet, I still do not have a clear idea of what she looks like (except, of course, her hair is even brighter than the women in Pantene commercials). 

http://imgkid.com/pantene-hair-commercial.shtml

       What confused me about this maiden’s description, was the end. The narrator focuses solely on the maiden and Nature’s painstaking efforts, but the last sentence of this description focuses on males instead. It seemed odd to me that the narrator praised this maiden’s beauty and wisdom, then decides to compare her to a “mirror” for men to see their beauty in.

      Another distraction appears on page 21, when we are told about Enide’s new cloak. It isn’t simply a nice cloak, it is made of “deep-green silk,” and, “embroidered with little crosses that had been made especially for her.” I think we can all share the jealousy of her wardrobe here.

      Enide, to me, is a very important part of this story. It frustrates me that she is praised mainly for her beauty, and less so for her intelligence, but I am impressed that her knowledge is even mentioned within this text. In fact, there were a lot of differences in this text from the texts we have previously read.

One example comes on page fourteen. Erec states his disgust for violence toward women when he says, “It is disgraceful to strike a woman.” 

      This would be a foreign concept to the writer of “Courtly Love.” We’ve moved quickly from a reading which supports beating wives if they don’t agree with their husbands, to a text that claims the act of hitting women should never be acceptable. It’s crazy how drastically opinions can change over time. In a few years, I’m sure we will be looking back on the standards and beliefs of our society, wondering what the heck we were thinking. 

      Toward the end of the reading, I found that things picked up the pace—rather quickly. One small morning conversation between the couple, and all hell breaks loose. I didn’t expect Erec to act the way he does, and even less so the way he begins to treat Enide. I can’t help but to believe that he is testing her…but for what? She is obviously faithful and fully invested in their relationship. On the other hand, he could be trying to prove his worth as a knight to her. But I wish he would just give up the dramatic act and go home, because I can’t see this ending well.

On the subject of plagiarism, Dr. Heather Mitchell-Buck’s syllabus for Medieval Romance advises: “Not sure what constitutes plagiarism, or how to correctly cite your sources?... Ask me, ASAP.” (3)  Marie de France would have been wise to ask Mitchell-Buck’s advice “ASAP” when compiling these Lai. Bisclavret is, be it intentional or coincidental, plagiaristic of the most famous text in the Western World, the only one that most would have access to:

Much of this story is merely a retelling and reframing of the story of Samson and Delilah. The parallels are uncanny-the narrative of the man with some unusual power, pressured by his lover to reveal the secret behind it, only to find himself betrayed. His enemy, informed by his lover, manipulates or otherwise takes advantage of his power to destroy him (or, in this case, curse him to life as a werewolf). With the help of a higher authority of some sort, the man gets revenge and his enemy suffers. It’s important to take note of where these stories differ, however -

The happy ending is what separates Bisclavret from Samson and Delilah’s formula. While Samson finds himself dead, Bisclavret lives to see his revenge be exacted, and the exile of his ex and the knight. This is characteristic, as we discussed in class, as the genre of romance as a whole - the happy ending is crucial to justify the story.

It’s unlikely that Marie, as a literate aristocrat during a time of hegemonic Catholicism, was unfamiliar with the original story. The question then becomes, why? What about this specific story was appealing enough to the reader of the era that Marie thought the romantic play on it would be successful?

The answer apparent to me is one of self-insertion - using the self as a point of comparison for the text. This is a theme that I think will likely be pervasive through many of the texts we study; the role of female characters in the texts will be for the audience of the era to compare themselves and their actions and thus creating an “ideal” of femininity to perform. We touched on this in our class discussion of Lanval: the woman’s role in the story is not as a character in her own right, but as an ideal for the women reading to strive to perform, to be the idealization of beauty to be won by men.

Both the Biblical story and Bisclavret have the same “example” archetype of an evil, scheming woman. Unlike in Lanval, however, the woman here serves as an antithesis of the ideal - to be avoided at all costs. This would appeal to women reading doubly as a model of what not to do and as a point of direct comparison: they could look at the text and say “I am better than this woman,” and feel affirmed. The ultimate ideology at play here is more sinister, as it promotes women reaffirming themselves at the expense of other women and, given the woman’s ultimate drastic consequence, vaguely threatening. This also stands out to me as something that will pervade the texts we will read, as it remains common even in modern capitalist patriarchy (despite being an entirely different beast from feudal patriarchy).

For all her success at appealing to women and the genre of romance, Marie de France should’ve made like an honorable knight and signed the Hood Honor Pledge. Looks like she’ll be getting an

Those Darn Real-Life Details

So I thought that these lais were pretty interesting, and I didn’t mind reading them at all. 

With Equitan, I was actually surprised at how similar the plot was to some of our modern romances about couples who cheat. It started out with two people who lusted after each other and realized all of the reasons why having an affair would be wrong, but then said, “fuck it” and did it anyway. They were caught, of course, and had to suffer the consequences, but death is just a bit harsher than our normal punishments now a days. Also, I feel compelled to ask: wouldn’t Equitan’s death have major repercussions? I mean, yeah, he was a crap king and his seneschal did most of his work, but he was still the king and, since he didn’t have a wife or heir, his death would have created massive problems and probably thrown the area he ruled into turmoil. And the seneschal would have been put to death for treason, so no real happy ending for him either.

Le Fresne on the other hand, was a sweet story and I was actually happy to find out that not all of their stories involved torture, death, and other things like that. However, I have to admit that I was disappointed that the mother didn’t have to face any sort of punishment for getting rid of one of her daughters and never telling her husband about it. Also, she would rather kill someone and go directly against her religion rather than have to deal with her reputation taking a nosedive? What a vain woman. But then she goes ahead and gives the child (that she was about to kill) this ridiculously expensive robe and ring and sends her off to the monastery. I’m sorry, do you care about this child or not? Your attitude just did a complete 180. But hey, I guess her confessing and repenting at the end was enough to make up for this so…happy ending for everyone!

Now Bisclavret was an odd story. One thing that I thought was weird was how he couldn’t turn back into a human if he didn’t have his clothes. I mean, who came up with that? That is such a random rule (although I guess only changing during a full moon is a kind of random rule too). And his wife was absolutely horrible. She begged and manipulated her husband into telling her all of his secrets after promising that she would still love him, and then she turned around and betrayed him immediately. Also, why did she keep his clothes around after she took them? If she really wanted him to stay as a werewolf, then why didn’t she just burn the clothes or something? I did, however, like her punishment (and the nose less children idea was hilarious).

 

And did the king and Bisclavret get together? Because they were kissing at the end but Maríe de France didn’t really mention anything else about it.

                Overall, these were some intriguing stories, even if I couldn’t stop my brain from pointing out all of the little discrepancies. I realize that I just have to accept the random ideas in the lais, but it still bugs me.