Le Fresne + Marie de France Critics Flashcards
How love is presented in the history of writing?
According to British historian of Medieval literature Laura Ashe, since before the twelfth century, there was no elevated place for sexual love within literature
What were the Breton lais?
According to Wells - ‘short poems of romantic content intended to be sung, represented best in the lais of Marie de France’
Who was Marie de France?
One of the first women to author verse in French, assembles several conceptions of love in her collection of twelve lais
She dedicates these lais to King Henry II
What were the lais about marriage
Le Fresne, Bisclavret and Eliduc, and it was composed toward the end of the twelfth century
How long is Le Fresne?
518 lines
Was it a common belief that twins were from infedelity?
In canon law, Gratian’s Decretum suggested that sinful sexual unions were the cause of deformities and stillbirths, meaning that it was not difficult for the contemporary superstition that multiple births were the result of multiple sexual partners to emerge within society
Were economic marriages common in practise?
They were common within England in the twelfth century, and many landless knights hoped to marry a wealthy woman who would bring land as her dowry
What is primogeniture?
The law that first born sons inherit all of the wealth and land
What did the church say about love and marriage?
The church established that there should be willing consent between both parties to the union, which should then be consummated by sexual intercourse
What is their relationship not?
They are in love and marry, as Marie does not want to tell the story of the mal mariee
What Le Fresne is like as a character?
Burgess suggests that she is the ‘most passive of Marie’s heroines’
Is her work translation?
She also explicitly presents her texts as translations, akin to stories translated “de latin en romaunz” [from Latin into Romance]
The prestige of translation adds authority to her vernacular texts
