| "Ain't love the sweetest thing?� wrote Bono, the lead singer of the biggest riot in Ireland since the potato famine, U2. One could only agree. Love (the word or the notion) is clearly the most widely written about, spoken of, or implied topic in popular culture today, as it has been for centuries. In 2001, approximately 41 films were released to the general public containing a strong element of love in the plot. In February, R&B singer-songwriter Alicia Keys received five Grammy Awards for her debut album, Songs In A Minor, in which the word love (as a root word or alone) was used 55 times; 19 uses alone were found in the song she was nominated for. Love is the sweetest thing; it�s a concept burnished in every element of society. Little girls from every culture have dreams of meeting that special guy who will sweep her off her feet and whisk her off to a faraway place where they live happily ever after (whether or not they come true is an entirely different story). Marie de France was once that little girl who had heard stories all her life about star-crossed lovers who risked it all in order to simply love each other. Her dream of real love in an unlovely time sparked a revolution in thought and in literature that makes it everyone�s favorite interest. Marie de France believed in love. In medieval Europe the aspect of the courtly love (her topic of choice) was not considered when a couple was to be married. Under the feudal system, marriages were arranged to allow the families to the bride and groom to be allied commercially. There was usually little or no romance or even attraction involved. Marie, inspired by the tales of Breton storytellers, looked past her culture�s economic view of love and began to write about the possibility of genuine love. She was the original romance novelist. Her poems are at times explicit and as a result almost controversial in the image of love she painted with her words. France�s Chr�tien de Troyes also wrote about courtly love through his Arthurian tales of Lancelot and Gawain in the late 12th century. Marie de France�s lais were able to familiarize her culture and ours with the notion of courtly love, which is embodied in many of the Breton lais. The common thread in these writers� views of courtly love is that love cannot exist in marriage and that the church is wrong to revile lovers for their adultery. As a result, courtly literature was used in the medieval period to protest the arranged marriages valued in the Feudal system. Possibly a half-sister of Henry II, Marie de France was the earliest French female poet. From what scholars have been able to infer about her life (other than what has been implied in her works), she was born in Normandy and was popular in the latter half of the 12th century. She was a trouv�res, or a traveling musician and poet, often found performing in the court of Henry II and Queen Eleanor. Marie wrote and performed a style of poetry called lais, which were narrative couplets with stanzas of 6-16 lines and 4-8 syllables per line. Specifically, the type of romantic lais she penned were called Breton lais, as they were inspired by Breton troubadours. The word Breton could refer to residents of Britain or Brittany, France. The tales of these traveling storytellers usually included an element of the supernatural and chivalry and the influence of Celtic and classical mythology. Another famous writer of this style of lai included Geoffrey Chaucer, though Marie was the first. Marie�s lais retold stories of women in unhappy situations who would be rescued by someone (usually a young knight) and often included explicit, extramarital love affairs. In Equitan (circa 1155-1160), the king of Nauns is having an affair with his seneschal�s (the overseer of his estate and most trusted knight) wife, but solely on the condition that Equitan promises to not take a bride unless her husband dies. She suggests a plan to murder her husband by boiling him in a bathtub of scalding water after he is bled (a medieval custom to prevent disease by draining a certain amount of the blood). When the time comes for the seneschal to bathe after three days of bleeding, he catches his wife and Equitan in a compromising position. Startled, Equitan hurries out of his bedroom and mistakenly jumps in the vat of boiling water nearby to hide and is fatally scalded. Knowing the lover�s intentions, the seneschal plunges his wife headfirst into the boiling water next to Equitan. Marie concludes Equitan with a moral: �He who seeks to harm his neighbor/ Will be the victim of his own labor�. Breton storytellers furthered the soiling of Guinevere�s (the adulterous wife of King Arthur) reputation by telling of another man she lusted, Lanval. Marie composed a lai based on the tale, naming it Lanval, circa 1190. One day, Lanval, a knight of the Round Table, meets two beautiful women who greet him and lead him to their mistress who is even more beautiful and wealthy. The two become lovers with the stipulation that Lanval tells no one else about their affair; doing so would prevent the two from seeing each other. Later, in an orchard, he refuses a proposition from Queen Guinevere, remaining true to his lover; furious, Guinevere accuses him of being a homosexual. Lanval is outraged and brags to Guinevere that even his lover�s servants are more lovely than she is and his lover�s wealth far surpasses hers. Vengefully, she tells her husband, King Arthur, that Lanval tried to seduce her and insulted her when she refused; he is put on trial. Later, at his trial, the court rules that unless he can show proof that his lover is the most beautiful woman in the world (more so than Guinevere), as he claimed, his knighthood would be stripped of him. Soon after, the two beautiful servants of his lover appear, making way for their mistress, who upon appearing proves that she is truly the most beautiful woman in the world. Free, Lanval and his lover travel to Avalon and are never heard from again. Among her works, scholars have also found 103 fables based on the tales of Aesop, as well as a verse translation of the Latin story of a saint�s life. Ironically, they only found 12 lais. Clearly, they remain her most vital contribution to medieval literature; Marie�s frank and honest interpretation of courtly love birthed the modern love story. Her poetry reached deep into the souls of readers, challenging them to break the bonds of feudal love and really begin to love someone regardless of social position or economic stature. For hundreds of years, countless writers, lyricists, and directors attempt to do what Marie was able to accomplish in 12 relatively short lais: teach the world to love. |
| Love, She Wrote |
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