The Lais of Marie de France

The love that forms the subject of Marie de France’s Lais, is a serious business that inevitably involves pain. In Guigemar the narrator describes love as “an invisible wound within the body, and, since it has its source in nature, it is a long-lasting ill” (49). The idea of love as a wound originates from the Roman god of love, Cupid, who shoots his victims with an arrow and fundamentally changes their nature. However, the “nature” the narrator refers to is both the human propensity to fall in love and the human weakness to make the fulfilment of one’s amorous hopes a precondition for happiness. In the Lais, the love-struck knights’ and ladies’ wounds manifest physical symptoms, such as sighing, growing pale, sleeplessness, and continual mental “anguish.” Both in Yonec and Les Deus Amants, the pain of amorous misfortune is so extreme that the ladies die when their beloved ceases to live, as though there is no further reason for them to exist. The ladies are commended for the depth of their devotion and are duly awarded with a memorial in Les Deus Amants and a revenge killing in Yonec. The pain suffered in loving an exalted other parallels the deep and somber devotion to a Catholic God.