Marie de France, her lais, and courtly love

Abstract

This work addresses the role of courtly love in the Lais of Marie de France, conceived as a vehicle for social criticism, female empowerment, and aesthetic resistance in the High Middle Ages, with the central objective of determining the importance of courtly love at the time and the implications that literary criticism faces in determining the author’s position within her social class, as well as her texts, which originally came from the oral tradition in Breton. These are very particular ways of confronting some of the social ills of her time. At that time, women were relegated to secondary roles or confined to imposed marriages; hence the figure of the “included woman” is challenged through active female characters, often represented by fairies, who transcend social hierarchies through freely chosen love. This analysis focuses on three of the twelve lais: Equitan, Chevrefoil (Honeysuckle), and Lanval, highlighting how Mary alters the feudal values of the time by showing the punishment of corrupt authority, the exaltation of free love, and the vindication of women as subjects who desire or are desired.