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Marie De France: Psychologist of Courtly Love

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

S. Foster Damon
S. Foster Damon*
Affiliation:
Brown University
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Extract

If One wishes to bother, one may divide mankind into two classes: those who judge their fellows by predetermined laws of conduct, and those who merely observe their fellows for what they are. Bunyan and Tolstoy are typical of the former class; Shakspere and Jane Austen of the second.

Marie de France was a sort of mediaeval Jane Austen. Both women knew their set, they knew their sex, and they knew little more of life. But that little they knew well, and of that little they wrote well, for both had the knack of story-telling. Both steered a sure course between sentimentality and cynicism; their writings reveal a general deftness, a perfect tact—“restraint,” as it is sometimes called—and a nice analysis of motives, from which spring plots that fit the characters as inseparably and yet as flexibly as the skin fits the hand. Jane is dryer, and more steadily ironical, though Chaitivel indicates that Marie could also be ironical; indeed, we might label their chief spiritual difference by saying that Jane is British through and through, but Marie is French.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1929 , pp. 968 - 996
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 969 In saying this, I am aware that I am contradicting predecessors. Emil Schiött devotes pp. 29-66 of his L'Amour et les Amoureux dans les Lais de Marie de France (Lund, 1889), to pointing out similarities. W. A. Neilson (Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, [Harvard] Stud. and Notes in Phil. and Lit., VI, 185) is content to quote Schiött's list of eight adjectives commonly applied to the knights, and let it go at that.

Note 2 in page 971 Schiött, op. cit., p. 9.

Note 3 in page 972 W. H. Schofield: “The Lays of Graelent and Lanval,” PMLA, xv (1900), 163.

Note 4 in page 972 Ibid., p. 175.

Note 5 in page 972 Ibid., pp. 150, 151; also, his “Lay of Guingamor” ([Harvard] Stud. and Notes Phil. and Lit., V), pp. 224, 235-6, 237, 238.

Note 6 in page 973 G. L. Kittredge: “Launfal,” Amer. Journ. Phil. x, (1889), 17.

Note 7 in page 973 Lay of Guingamor, op. cit., p. 238.

Note 8 in page 973 “Celtic Elements in the Lays of Lanval and Graelent,” Mod. Philol., xii, (1915), 25; “The Celtic Origin of the Lay of Yonec,” Revue Celtique, (1910) pp. 47, 48-9.

Note 9 in page 974 Arthur O'Shaughnessy (Lays of France, 2nd ed., London, 1874) retold after his own fashion five of Marie's lays. He required 840 lines to translate Marie's 160 in Laustic; 868 for the 254 of Dous Amanz; 1206 for the 240 of Chaitivel; 2164 for the 1178 of Eliduc; and 887 for the 562 of Yonec. Marie told the tale of Lanval in 664 lines; Thomas Chestre required 1045; and John Moultrie (Poems, London 1837), after writing 2670 lines, had got only as far as the union of Lanval with the fairy, whereupon he left his tale unfinished.

It is true, however, that the two modern poets were deliberately voluble and digressive, Moultrie after the fashion of Byron and O'Shaughnessy after the fashion of Keats. The former believed that digression was the very marrow of wit, the latter that poetry consists in lingering over mediaeval furniture and love's delights.

We might insert here another case of Marie's influence on later literature. Her Chievrefueil furnished the title, motto, and background for D'Annunzio's tragedy in French, Le Chevrefeuil (Paris, 1913), which was translated into English as The Honeysuckle (London, 1915). His Italian version of this play, Il Ferro (Milano, 1914) changes the names and omits all references to Marie.

Note 10 in page 975 Warnke, in his Lais der Marie de France (3d ed., Halle, 1925, pp. 259-260), quotes the formidable opening sentence of the Institutiones Grammaticae; unfortunately, when disentangled, this refers merely to clearing up the grammatical errors of his predecessors, and does not explain Marie's text in any way. As Warnke failed to find the right passage, and as Priscianus Grammaticus was hardly the type of person to understand the philosophical method of secret writing, one may well suspect that “Preciens” is the wrong reference.

Note 11 in page 976 Dante explains his four-fold system in Il Convito, ii, 1; and the letter to Can Grande. Harry Caplan, in “The Four Senses of Scriptural Interpretation” (Speculum IV, July 1929, pp. 282-290) shows how ancient and wide-spread such systems were. The alchemists (also known as “philosophers”) considered it a moral duty not to explain their sacred science clearly: their works are filled with warnings that the surface meaning was not the real meaning.

Note 12 in page 976 The difference between symbolism and allegory is too intricate a subject for discussion here. I must reserve my material for a forthcoming article.

Note 13 in page 978 Schiött (op. cit., p. 24) has also noted their similarity.

Note 14 in page 978 Guingamor is not included in the manuscript collections of Marie's lays, but so many have accepted it as the only anonymous lay which really seems to be of her composition, that I hope its place in my chart may be considered as an additional grain of evidence for ascribing it to her.

Note 15 in page 978 Professor Schofield explains Marie's sophistication on this subject by the theory that she had been reading Geoff rey of Monmouth. See his “Lays of Graelent and Lanval,” op. cit., page 148, note. See also W. Hertz: Spielmannsbuch, (2nd ed., Stuttgart, 1900), p. 375, note 7.

Note 16 in page 979 See Neilson, Origins and Sources of the Court of Love, pp. 120-123.

Note 17 in page 979 In fact, the whole ship is the Ship of Solomon, later famed in Grail legend; and as such this is its first appearance in literature. As the dates of Marie and the sources of the Grail material are all so vague, we must welcome the Ship as one more positive fact tending towards the solution of a great puzzle.

The Ship of Solomon does not appear in the works of Chrétien de Troyes or his immediate followers, but it does appear in the Queste del Saint Graal (ed. Pauphilet, Paris, 1923, pp. 222-6) and in the Lestoire del Saint Graal (ed. Sommer, Vulgate Version Arthurian Romances, Washington, 1909, I, 133-7) where the passages are virtually identical; Malory's corresponding version is to be found in Bk. xvii, chs. 2-7. I am indebted to Mr. John Marshall for starting me on this note by calling my attention to the Ship in Malory.

What interests us here, however, is that Marie is using what was probably a recognized symbol: a fact which lends support to the theory that these lays are symbolic. In the Lestoire del Saint Graal the symbolism has been allegorized at great length. If we could only find Marie's source, we could speak positively on just what that Ship meant to her and to her auditors. Solomon, of course, was noted as a pessimist, on account of Ecclesiastes; after having been deceived by a woman, he became a woman-hater. These facts would cause the bed to signify complete despair and chastity. And these facts appear in the later versions of the Ship.

Marie's account of the Ship differs from these later accounts chiefly by omission. She includes the beauty of its workmanship, its emptiness, its power of self-motion, the exquisite bed, and the name of Solomon (which, however, she applies only to the bed and not to the ship). She adds merely two golden candlesticks at the head of the bed. But she omits the sword of David, the crown of Solomon, the three spindles from the Tree of Life, and the elaborate explanations. Were all these things added after her day? Or did she eliminate those details not to her purpose (in accordance with what is usually supposed to have been her literary method)? I tend to favor the latter theory: I suspect that the drifting was sufficiently significant for her not to dwell upon the Ship longer; and that she attached Solomon's name to the bed rather than to the Ship, because she wished to emphasize the fact that Guigemar's soul was lying exhausted on a bed of pain.

The later explanations of which we have spoken do not contradict this conclusion, though they expand it into rather startling religious directions. According to Lestoire del Saint Graal: “par la nef dois tu entendre [saint eglise] & par la meir le monde” (op. cit., p. 139). With this interpretation in mind, Guigemar is drifting through the world in the arms of the Church; and Marie certainly represents him as in prayer. The bed, however, comes to mean the Cross itself: “or te dirai que li lis senefie qui en mi la neif estoit [li lis qui tant estoit &] biaus & riches & aournes de toutes uertueuses coses senefie la sainte table ou lí fiex dieu est cascun iour sacrefijes la ou li uins est mues en sanc & li pains en char par la force des saintes paroles & des hautes qui amenteues i sont par la bouce de la boineuree persone qui de ce sentremet. par le lit dois tu entendre la sainte crois ou li fiex dieu par sa grant deboinarete fu sacrifies por raenbre de la pardurable paine lumain lignage qui par pechie mortel uient de iour en iour & plus estoit trebuchies es tenebres dinfer. par le lit dois tu entendre signe dassouagement & de repos par quoi on doit le lit a la crois comparer por samblable cose. Car tout ausi comme apres le lassete del trauail requiert chascuns terriens hom le repos du lit. tout ausi dois tu entendre que apres le laseche & le trauail des grans paines & des grans angoisses dinfer prist le lignage humain repos & souagement en large don que li fiex dieu fist de soi meismes en la uraie crois a cel iour quil sousfri mort por peceours oster de la tenebreuse prison” (pp. 139-140).

From this passage we can guess what tremendous significance any one of Marie's symbols may have meant to her.

Note 18 in page 981 De Remedia Amoris.

Note 19 in page 988 Cf. the symbolism of the clothes in Bisclavret. We may go even further and suggest that the cloak episode which starts the action of Guingamor may typify the queen's attempt on Guingamor's virtue.

Note 20 in page 989 Analogues are always popular with scholars, but they seem to have overlooked the Japanese analogues to Guingamor. Supernatural bathing beauties whose clothes men steal are common the world over, of course; yet one must mention that masterpiece of Japanese No-drama, Seami's Hagoromo. (See Arthur Waley's No-Plays of Japan, N. Y., 1922, pp. 177-185.) A fisherman finds on the shore a robe of feathers. An angel claims it as hers, but he refuses to give it up. She cannot return to heaven without it; she cannot even keep her status as angel. When Hakuryō, the fisherman, sees her withering, he gives back the robe on condition that she show him some of the dances of heaven. She revives, dances, and finally vanishes among the clouds.

It is to be noted that Hakuryō, like Guingamor, but unlike Graelent, acts as a gentleman should. Marie, after all, is of the same sex as the Wife of Bath.

A more striking parallel to Marie's lay, however, is to be found in the ancient Japanese ballad of Urashima, to be found in the Manyoshu (early ninth century) but originally much earlier. (See W. G. Aston's History of Japanese Literature, Lond., 1899, pp. 39-40.) Urashima, a fisher boy, wins the love of the sea-king's daughter, and lives with her in her submarine palace for what seems to be three years. Then, against her protests, he decides to return and see his parents. She gives him a casket, with injunctions not to open it while he is away. He returns to this world, finds that he has been away three centuries, opens the casket (out of which flies a white cloud), and at once dies of old age.

Stravinsky's Soldier (Histoire du Soldat) also discovers that his three days with the Devil were really three years.

Note 21 in page 993 Goethe: Annalen (1820) Sämt. Werke, Jubiläums-Ausgabe, xxx, 345, 488.

Note 22 in page 994 H. O. Taylor, op. cit., ii, 73.

Note 23 in page 996 Ann Radcliffe: Gaston de Blondeville (Lond., 1831) II, 110-111. In III, 85-86, she adds a historical note on Marie.

Note 24 in page 996 I wish to express my indebtedness to Professor F. P. Magoun, who not only introduced me to Marie de France, but also gave me the great advantage of his advice on my manuscript.