acase@tulane.edu / This study examines the Old French narrative lay from the perspectives of orality, performance, and reception. The Old French narrative lay is a short medieval genre often conflated with romance or with other short forms due to similar themes and/or structure. However, the medieval author had a variety of terms from which to choose; and connections can and should be drawn between texts that self-identify as one type or another. While the twelve lays of Marie de France have come to define the genre, many others do not conform to this standard. This study rejects the accepted notion of a static lay standard modeled on the works of Marie de France and instead seeks to reconstruct the medieval understanding of the genre over time by analyzing a later, non-standard example. Long considered a generic aberration, the lay of Lecheor appears to mock the genre by presenting a tale of courtly ladies who compose a song in praise of the uncourtly cunt. Yet of greater interest is its metatextual commentary on lay composition, performance, and reception, which serves as the framework for this study. Following an introduction to the lay in Chapter One, Chapter Two draws from Orality and Literary Studies to situate the lays in the context of writing as authority in Anglo-Norman Britain. Chapter Three transitions from orality as communication to orality as aesthetic, looking to oral theory and performance studies to explore performances in and of the lay. In Chapter Four, I turn to reception theory to justify the application of Lecheor’s troublesome view of courtly love to other lays and, by extension, romance. Each chapter addresses one or two lays that exemplify or challenge the schema provided by Lecheor. This intertextual analysis of the Old French narrative lay reveals a new “horizon of expectations” closer to that experienced by the contemporary reader and demonstrates that he or she was already aware of the literary concerns that these and other medieval texts continue to pose to modern scholars. In short, this study both reevaluates the genre and closes the perceived gap between medieval and modern receptions of the work. / 1 / Tamara Bentley Caudill