Betrayal and Redemption
in Marie de France’s Lai du Laustic
Stuart McClintock
Marie de France’s Laustic is one of several lais that treats
adultery. In two of her lais that handle this subject, Bisclavret and
Eliduc, she condemns the characters. More often she looks
favorably upon it, such as in Guigemar, Yonec, Chevrefoil and this lai,
in which love trumps an unhappy or arranged marriage to an old
or jealous husband. In Laustic, she depicts three noble characters,
the mal mariée, the brutish husband, and the young bachelor lover
who all betray the ideals of their class out of lust and jealousy. The
lovers’ affair is discovered because of their démesure, and they are
tragically separated forever without ever consummating their love.
However, they ultimately redeem themselves for their imperfect
behavior through a noble act that transforms erotic to spiritual
love.
Marie makes the reader aware of the three characters’ fall
from grace by first setting them up as models of their class. She
begins the lai with a broad view of the characters that highlights
their noble attributes established through public perception of
their behavior and character. She then narrows the narrative and
shows them in their private world where they all behave
differently from the ideal established in the introduction. As the
narrative narrows, Marie allows only the reader to witness their
actions in private that tarnish their nobility. The bachelor pursues
his neighbor’s wife with little explanation of cause; she accepts his
love because it is convenient and because he is more exciting than
her husband. The husband is jealous and proves to be a brute by
slaughtering the bird that both symbolizes and facilitates the love
of his wife and her lover. As in other of Marie’s lais, this marriage
is not a source of joy, mutual respect, or trust. The husband and
wife deceive each other, and they treat each other badly. The
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marriage for the wife confined in her chateau is a prison. Marie
condones the wife’s rebellion against her husband and her love
affair with her neighbor because love’s joy triumphs over duty’s
misery. Although the husband shatters the idyll between the wife
and her lover so that they can never see each other again, they
create a memorial of their love in the form of a dead bird wrapped
in samite for which the bachelor makes a magnificent case. The
memorial also creates a new kind of spiritual love that will endure
and that ennobles them. They regain the stature that they had lost
because their behavior embodies the true definition of courtly love
rather than the one based on the decorum that defined noble
behavior at the beginning of the lai.
Marie makes the wife the central character of the lai. She is
the source of both men’s desire throughout the tale and is the
pivotal figure around whom all action revolves. At the beginning
of the tale, the husband is defined only in terms of the wife’s
qualities. Further, she is clever. Her cunning initially enables the
lovers to conceal their love from her husband. Moreover, Glyn
Burgess and Keith Busby note that the wife makes key decisions
and takes the initiative at crucial moments in the lai.1 When her
husband asks why she is always absent from their bed, she quickly
devises the excuse for going to the window to meet her lover
secretly. Later, it is she who reestablishes communication with her
lover after they had been separated by wrapping up the dead bird
and sending it to him with an explanation sewn into the samite
wrap. With this gift, she initiates the creation of the memorial to
their love. The author sympathizes with the wife’s plight as a
victim of her husband’s violence and looks favorably on her
choice of love over duty to her husband. In the end, Marie is the
omniscient narrator but also the judge who decides in favor of the
lady and her lover.
_______
Marie de France, The Lais of Marie de France, trans. with an introduction by
Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby (London: Penguin Books, 1999) 10.
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The writer known since 1581 as Marie de France2
transformed a series of twelve Breton folk songs called lais into
some of the most marvelous French courtly literature of the
Middle Ages. Although details of her identity are unknown, she is
universally considered to be the first female French poet.3 Marie
does emphasize her French origins in her writing. In line four of
the Epilogue of her Fables, she states, “My name is Marie, and I
come From France” (“Marie ai num, si sui de France”),4 which
may indicate that she worked in England, perhaps in the AngloNorman court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine in the second
half of the twelfth century.5 The oldest copies of the lais are in the
vast thirteenth-century Harley Manuscript in the British Library
that contains all twelve lais and a fifty-six line prologue; three
manuscripts with fewer lais are in the Bibliothèque Nationale in
Paris, and another is in the British Library.6
The subject matter of the lais comes from la Matière de Bretagne
(the Matter of Britain), one of the five sources of stories in French
courtly literature, along with la Matière de France and la Matière
d’antiquité about Thebes, Troy, and Rome. La Matière de Bretagne
most notably includes the Arthurian legends. Marie does treat an
Burgess and Busby write on page one of their introduction to The Lais of Marie
de France that Claude Fauchet first used this name in his Recueil de l’origine de la
langue et la poésie françoise (Paris, 1581, Book II, item 84).
2
For discussion of Marie’s identity, see Burgess and Busby’s introduction to
The Lais of Marie de France or R. Howard Bloch’s The Anonymous Marie de France
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003).
3
4
Burgess and Busby 15.
Eleanor’s support of the arts and her introduction of the lyric poetry of the
troubadours from her southwestern French homeland to both northern France
(through her first marriage to Louis VII) and England were driving forces in
the development of the roman courtois from the epic chansons de geste.
5
The Old French version used in this essay is from the Harley Manuscript
found in The Lais of Marie de France on pages 156-160. The English prose
translation of this lai is by Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby in the same work on
pages 94-96.
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Arthurian subject in Lanval, but the other lais treat Breton subjects
unrelated to this cycle.
Marie transformed the lais into French verse using the
traditional octosyllabic rhyming couplets of medieval romance.
Although Marie’s lais have similar themes and conventions as
romances, they are considerably shorter. Her two longest lais,
Guigemar and Eliduc, that open and close the series in the Harley
Manuscript, are much shorter than the romances of Marie’s near
contemporary, Chrétien de Troyes. Nonetheless, the lengths of
her lais vary. Burgess and Busby categorizes them as short (fewer
than 400 lines), mid length (between 400-700 lines), or long (more
than 700 lines).7 Six fall into the first category, four into the
second, and two into the last. The average length is 477 lines. At
160 lines, Laustic is one of the shortest of the twelve lais. Only the
episodic Chevrefoil is shorter at 118. Laustic’s brevity necessarily
limits detailed description and means that the reader is missing
information that could help interpretation. For example, the
reasons for the bachelor’s pursuit of the wife are not fully
developed. We do not know the background of the marriage
whose problems are only apparent when the wife takes a lover.
Nevertheless, Marie is still able to develop in just 160 lines a tale
with complex characters and plot that takes place over a period of
several months. The lai is dense, every word contributing meaning
and nuance to the tale of deception, jealousy, violence, shattered
love, and ultimately, spiritual love. She is able to create such a
complete tale with so few lines because the lai has only three
characters and is set in just two noble houses. Magic or the
supernatural is often central to courtly romance and to other lais,
but Laustic stands out for its realism. There are no fairies like in
Lanval, no magic potions as in Les Deux Amanz, no shapeshifting
animals or humans as in Yonec or Bisclavret. Further, God, who
often figures in courtly literature on the side of the good nobles, is
absent in this lai. By eliminating God and the supernatural and by
focusing on a love triangle, she creates a purely secular and
7
Burgess and Busby 10 and 31.
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domestic tale. Without the conflict between love and martial duty
so often central in Chrétien’s romances, she further highlights the
domestic.
The nightingale was already a popular symbol in both classical
literature and in the French troubadour love lyric by the time
Marie was writing in the mid-twelfth century. In her treatment of
the nightingale in medieval romance, Wendy Pfeffer states that the
use of this bird was particularly popular in the twelfth century.8 As
in a troubadour aubade, Marie’s nightingale is nocturnal and
vanishes at dawn in the same way the lovers meet at night and
must separate at sunrise. The nightingale can specifically
symbolize physical love, which it does indirectly in this lai.
Although they never actually make love, the wife does experience
physical rapture at hearing her lover’s voice, which she compares
to a nightingale’s song. The bird also symbolizes their love. Its
joyful song comes to life because of summer’s bounty just as the
couple’s love intensifies for the same reason. The bird’s
exuberance in summer reflects their own uncontrolled joy, which
leads to their downfall. The bird’s death means the end of their
idyll. The killing of the nightingale also stands for the husband’s
wish to kill the lover and/or his wife. The lovers’ creation that
houses the dead bird both memorializes their affair and puts it
back together in a new, more spiritual way.
_______
In the first six lines, Marie introduces herself as the lai’s
author, identifies the source of the tale, and then proceeds to
highlight the literary and cultural transformations through which
she puts it. By focusing on herself as both narrator and translator,
she draws attention to role of the author as she does throughout
the lais, most significantly in the fifty-six line prologue. She
becomes part of the lai with the phrase “Une aventure vus dirai”
Wendy Pfeffer, The Change of Philomel: The Nightingale in Medieval Literature.
American University Studies III: Comparative Literature, Volume 14 (New
York: Peter Lang Publishing, 1985).
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[v.1]. She informs the reader that she is relating a tale from
Brittany known as Laustic and proceeds to give its French
translation as rossignol to show the conversion of the tale from its
original Breton to her own French. She then, for the only time in
her lais, provides the English translation of the Breton title as
nightingale. In that brief introduction, she emphasizes the
international audience that her writing addresses. She is writing a
Breton tale in French with an English reference that might prove
that the author was writing in the francophone Anglo-Norman
court. Further, the translation of this Breton tale into French is all
the more compelling because its themes of foiled happiness, of
failed noble ideals, and of redemption from flawed behavior were
also recurring themes in the contemporary noble literature of
France and Britain. Marie’s work defines translatio, in which both
words and culture are transformed and adapted for another
culture ready to accept them.
In lines seven to twenty-two, Marie introduces the only three
characters in the lai. They include a knight and his wife and a
young knight who is a bachelor. They live in adjoining chateaus
separated by a wall as in Ovid’s Pyramus and Thisbe.9 The author
only relays what is said and thought about these characters. Later
the reader can draw his or her own conclusions about them based
on their actions. To the outside world, the characters shine and
are the quintessential representatives of their class. The behavior
of the two males so embodies noble ideals that they have brought
renown to their entire town: “Pur la bunté des deus baruns / Fu
de la vile bons li nuns” [v.11-12]. Although Marie never names the
village, she lends it and the entire tale verisimilitude by saying that
it is near the actual port of Saint Malo in Brittany. She then
proceeds to detail each of the three characters. The first
description is of the married knight. Curiously, Marie says nothing
about his character. She only writes that he had “taken a…wife”
(“Li uns aveit femme espusee” [v.13]), whom Marie then describes
Ovid’s Metamorphoses was one of the most widely known classical texts in
Marie’s time, and she is probably referencing it here and will do so again later.
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formulaically as behaving according to the mandates of her class.
Marie writes that she is “Sage, curteise e acemee/ a merveille se
teneit chiere / Sulunc l’usage e la manere” [v. 14-16]. Marie only
describes the husband through his wife. What are we to make of
her silence? Only in retrospect can the reader surmise that Marie’s
silence could hint at the husband’s lack of admirable traits.
However, at this point in the lai, she uses metonymy to lead the
reader to transfer the courtly qualities of the wife to the husband.
In stark contrast to the husband’s nameless qualities, Marie
reserves one of her only detailed descriptions in the lai for the
bachelor, although it is, again, stock. He conforms perfectly to the
definition of chivalry in courtly literature. She first focuses on the
most important of a knight’s requisite skills. He is courageous and
talented in the use of arms. She writes that he was “Bien coneü
entre ses pers / De prüesce, de grant valur” [v. 18-19]. He also
excels in his courtly manners: “E volunters feseit honur / Mut
turnëot e despendeit / E bien donot ceo qu’il aveit” [v. 20-22].
Her description progresses logically from his martial to his social
character, and, finally, in the next section, to his erotic behavior.
From lines twenty-three to fifty-six, Marie sets the aventure in
motion. She describes the lovers’ courtship and the development
of the affair that they keep hidden through their discreet behavior.
At this point, the lai moves from the characters’ lives in public to
their lives in their own private world, into which Marie has a
privileged view as omniscient narrator. Mary’s narrative technique
shifts from reports about the nobles to descriptions and
transcriptions of what they actually do and say. The reader must
now judge the characters based on their actions behind closed
doors. All three nobles are different from the public perception of
them. The courtly ideals that they exemplify to those in the
outside world who see them as models of noble qualities give way
to demonstrations of uncontrolled passion, lies, jealousy, and
violence. In the privacy of their own homes, they all betray the
code of noble behavior in some way and are tarnished.
Whether intended or not, Marie begins her description of the
love affair with some irony. In line twenty-two, she finishes her
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glowing description of the bachelor as the ideal knight and
continues in the next lines to describe his relentless pursuit of his
neighbor’s wife. Instead of “giving generously whatever he had”
as Burgess and Busby translate “E bien donot ceo qu’il aveit”
from line twenty-two, the bachelor now takes whatever he wants.
Conforming to patterns of courtly literature, the nobleman
pursues the noblewoman. Curiously, however, Marie does not
clearly specify the reasons for the knight’s attraction to the
woman, as she does in her other lais treating adultery. She only
states that he fell in love with her and successfully pursues her by
relying on persistence, prayer, and his admirable qualities: “La
femme sun veisin ama; / Tant la requist, tant la preia / E tant par
ot en lui grant bien” [23-25]. Marie does specify why the wife
surrenders to the bachelor’s request for her love. She has heard
good things about him; plus he lives next door. Those qualities so
thoroughly detailed by Marie just a few lines previously that
describe him as the ideal noble make him attractive to the wife: “E
tant par ot en lui grant bien / Que ela l’ama sur tute rien / Tant
pur le bien quë ele oï / Tant pur ceo qu’il iert pres de li” [v. 2528]. She is swayed by what she has heard and by what she has
seen, two of the standard reasons for falling in love in courtly
literature. This is, however, not an affair of passion that has been
simmering across fences, has been kept in check, but can no
longer be controlled. Among all the affairs in Marie’s lais, this one
seems to have the most mundane origin, born out of convenience,
the bachelor’s persistence, and the wife’s boredom with her
husband, whose nameless qualities do not match those of the
exciting young bachelor. Marie’s irony shines through again as she
finishes the section that describes the beginning of their affair.
The wife is hardly conducting herself, as was stated earlier in line
sixteen, “Sulunc l’usage e la manere” of noble courtesy.
Although the original reasons for their mutual attraction may
be mundane, their love for each other does become strong and
true. Perhaps Marie emphasizes the banal origins of the affair to
juxtapose it to the intense love that develops. Marie’s description
of the joy that their love brings is so positive that she clearly
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condones their behavior. They play their love out day and night
through looks, words, and gifts exchanged through their windows
in their neighboring mansions. In line twenty-nine, she
emphasizes the wife’s wisdom, using the word “wisely’
(“sagement”) to describe how they conduct their affair so that
they are able to conceal it from her husband. Earlier in line
fourteen, Marie had also described the wife as “wise” whose use
was more conventional, meaning to behave moderately. In this
second use in line twenty-nine, Marie shows that the wife’s
wisdom is not defined as propriety but as cunning. Nonetheless,
both kinds of wisdom reflect the wife’s mesure, the Old French
term for moderation, the trait so highly prized in medieval
literature. Because of their mesure, they keep their affair hidden,
and it can continue.
The first description of the husband’s actions reveals that he
is protective and suspicious of his wife. He has her supervised so
that she and the bachelor are never alone and cannot consummate
their love. Clearly, they would like to and give no thought to their
marital or chivalric duty. The husband, however, has taken
precautions to prevent his wife from straying: “N’unt gueres rien
que lur despleise / Mut esteient amdui a eise / Fors tant k’il ne
poënt venire / Del tut ensemble a lur pleisir / Kar la dame ert
estreit gardee / Quant cil esteit en la cuntree” [v. 45-50].
The aventure takes a turn in line fifty-eight when, for the only
time in the lai, Marie describes the weather and its effects. The
fecundity of summer stimulates the lovers’ passion. It is a force of
nature that influences them, and they act recklessly. They
constantly go to their windows at night to speak to each other.
Her earlier mesure gives way to démesure, and their affair is exposed:
“Lingement se sunt entramé? Tant que ceo vient a un esté / Que
bruil e pre sunt reverdi / E li vergier ierent fluri. Cil oiselet par
grant duçur / Mainent lur joie en sum la flur. Ki amur as a sun
talent / N’est merveille s’il i entent” [58-64].
At this point, the field of characters and the setting narrow
further as the action moves into the couple’s mansion. Her
frequent absence from bed angers her husband, and he demands
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to know the reason for it. The wife quickly invents a plausible
excuse. Unwittingly however, she dooms their love with this
ruse.10 She explains that the nightingale’s song in the night wakes
her up, but its song is so beautiful and gives such pleasure that she
must listen to it. Her words are pure double entendre. Each time
she refers to the “song of the nightingale” to her husband, she is
replacing those words in her own mind with “lover’s voice.” This
is the first instance in the lai in which the wife speaks directly to
her husband. The wife’s first words to her husband are lies for
which she feels no shame. Because it is a direct address, the lie lays
open the deceit even more powerfully: “‘Sire’, le dame li respunt /
‘Il nen ad joië en cest mund / Ki n’ot la laüstic chanter / Pur ceo
me vois ici ester / Tant ducement l’I oi la nuit / Que mut me
semble grant deduit / Tant me delit e tant le voil / Que jeo ne
puis dormir de l’oil’” [v 83-90]. Her experience at the window is so
powerful that it puts her in a state of physical rapture. Marie
clearly believes that the joy that such powerful emotion brings
outweighs the deception.
Her answer rankles the protective husband who is indifferent
to the song’s beauty, jealous of its place in his wife’s life, and
suspicious of her behavior. In lines 91-110, he plans his revenge
against his wife by first trapping the bird: “Quant li sires ot que ele
dist/De ire e de maltalent en rist / De une chose se purpensa / Le
laüstic enginnera” [v. 91-94]. Just as her excuse for her absence
couched her true meaning, the ostensible reason for capturing the
nightingale also conceals his real intention. His stated reason for
trapping the bird appears honorable; he captures it so that it will
no longer disturb the wife’s sleep. His real intention is to prevent
her from having a reason to go to the window. As with the wife,
the husband’s first direct quote to his partner also conceals his real
meaning: “‘Dame’, fet il, ‘u estes vus? / Venez avant, parlez a nus!
Bloch states that the lais are Marie’s “articulation of the fatal effects of
language” whereas her Espurgatoire shows that language is “a means to
salvation” (21).
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/ J’ai le laüstic englué/Pur quei vus avez tant veillé / Desor poëz
gisir en peis / Il ne vus esveillerat meis’” [v.105-110].
Starting in line 111, the husband’s brutal behavior directed at
his wife is the climax of the lai. He first refuses her pleas to save
the bird and then wrenches off its head in front of her and throws
the bloody body at her breast, staining her dress. He purposefully
targets her breast because it symbolizes the love that she denies
him that she offers the young bachelor. Behind closed doors, the
husband betrays the code of chivalric behavior for which he was
lauded in public. He does to the bird what he would like to do to
the intruding bachelor and perhaps to his wife. Earlier, in lines
eighty-three to ninety, the wife craftily talked about the
“nightingale’s voice” to her husband as she replaced those words
with “lover’s voice” in her own mind. The death of the
nightingale’s song is now also the death of the lover’s voice and
the joy that it brought. By killing the bird, the husband has
accomplished the task he had set out to do. He ends the affair
between the wife and the bachelor because the wife no longer has
the excuse for leaving the marital bed. At the same time, his
actions have another consequence that he perhaps did not intend
or perhaps to which he is indifferent. His ugly behavior destroys
any relation he had with his wife. The husband’s disappearance
from the rest of the narration reflects his disappearance from his
wife’s life. His disappearance also prevents any redemption for his
loutish behavior. The stain on her dress stands for the stain on his
honor that is not rectified.
However, the wife and her lover do have the opportunity to
redeem themselves from their imperfect behavior. The wife
realizes that the bachelor does not know what has happened and
devises a way to reestablish communication with him. She
beautifully wraps up the dead bird in samite and sends it to him
with a note of explanation woven into the cloth.11 Monica L.
Marie is probably referencing the scene in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in which
Philomila weaves images of her sad tale and sends it to her sister Procne.
Philomila is the object of Tereus’ violence just as the wife suffers that of her
husband in this lai.
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Wright has stated that samite was exquisite, richly decorated silk
that was technically challenging to make. It was greatly sought
after but difficult to obtain because it was commercially
unavailable. It was part of the medieval gift economy among those
at the most rarified levels of society and was often given to
churches.12 The lover builds a vessel also made of precious
materials to house the bird, and he will carry it with him forever.
Both lovers’ careful treatment of the bird indicates the importance
that each feels about the love they shared. The bejeweled case
refers to both the past and to the future. It memorializes the joy
that they shared that the husband can never stifle. Although they
are destined to be forever separated, the case keeps their love alive
and saves it, it some way, from being an unattained quest. Their
creation also puts back together what has been shattered by the
husband and signals the birth of a different kind of love. In his
translation of the lais into modern French, Philippe Walter states
that the case resembles a reliquary.13 It thereby takes on a religious
nature. Because samite was often given to churches, the use of this
material inside the case adds to its sacred quality. Their love
therefore takes on a holy dimension, and the lovers transform
their erotic love into spiritual love.
The lovers’ combined actions at the end of the tale conform
closely but not perfectly to the definition of courtly love. The
knight’s creation makes him worthy of the love of his mistress.
Although she never sees the case and cannot confer her love on
him, she did initiate the action that led to their redemption.
They therefore restore their noble character that had been
sullied by their earlier actions. By living up to the ideals of courtly
love, the lovers come full circle to the lai’s beginning. Yet the
The description of samite is based on a presentation for the International
Courtly Literature Society entitled “Superlative Silk: Samite in Medieval French
Romances” by Monica L. Wright of Middle Tennessee State University at the
2006 South Central Modern Language Association conference at the
Renaissance Hotel in Dallas, October 28, 2006.
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13Marie
de France: Lais, trans. Philippe Walter (Paris: Gallimard, 2000) 468.
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noble behavior at the beginning is different from that at the end.
Initially, the three characters’ nobility is defined in terms of their
conforming to the rituals of their class that they act out in public.
In the end, the actions of the lovers stem from their purity of
heart. Marie contrasts two different definitions of noble behavior:
actions based on depth of emotion and actions based on external
codes of behavior. As she does in several other lais, Marie sides
with the lovers despite their deception because their love is more
important than conformity to codes of behavior.
Midwestern State University
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