Since the early fourteenth century, scholars, playwrights and screenplay writers have translated and reinterpreted Marie de France's Lanval. This lai in is the second most frequently translated throughout the medieval era and it continues to be reimagined and retold. All of the translations and reimagined renditions of the Lanval story have in common a strange tonality of otherworldly attraction, unusual gender dynamics, a curious new age aura, and elements of proto-feminism especially in terms of female agency, empowerment and eroticism. While some of these motifs seem to reflect more modern understandings of gender dynamics and conceptualizations of women, a critical analysis of Marie's original text in combination with an exploration of Celtic sources reveals that these motifs were always already present. These elements, stemming from Celtic oral traditions and finding their way across the often unnavigable barriers of time, culture, language, re-adaptation, and genre, establish Marie's Lanval as timeless. / Master of Arts

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

Abstract The Breton lay, a genre claiming to enjoy popularity in Medieval England, often arouses critics?debate on its legitimacy of forming a distinct genre. By alluding to the remote literary form, the Anglo-Norman and Middle English author create their own Breton lays according to their social and historical context. Donovan asserts conclusively that the Breton lays are all concerned with the idea of

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Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Salzburg, 1984. / Summary in German. Added thesis t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-160) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--Universität Salzburg, 1984. / Summary in German. Added thesis t.p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 151-160) and index.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Marie de France a rédigé en Angleterre vers 1170 le premier recueil de fables en français, original à la fois par son ampleur (104 fables) et par sa variété.Sa première partie est une réécriture des fables classiques issues de la tradition du Romulus et en particulier d’un de ses remaniements, le Romulus de Nilant, composé avant le Xe siècle. Marie a traduit du latin un recueil intermédiaire perdu, le *Romulus anglo-latin, d’où provient également un recueil latin, le Romulus hexamétrique (Xe siècle). Si Marie prétend, à la fin de son recueil, s’appuyer sur un recueil anglais, celui-ci n’a jamais été retrouvé et les indices historiques suggèrent plutôt une source factice. Sa réécriture des fables antiques se caractérise par une réinterprétation des rapports de force dans un contexte féodal.La seconde partie, composée d’éléments variés, contient d’autres fables antiques dont le rassemblement est imputable à Marie elle-même. Le reste des fables n’a pas de source connue mais leurs origines peuvent être liées à différents genres en formation au XIIe siècle : les formes hétérogènes du récit comique qui aboutissent plus tard au fabliau (chansons, contes, aphorismes) et que Marie a pu connaître par l’intermédiaire du monde clérical ; le roman épique animalier qui prend forme aux XIe et XIIe siècles et qui pouvait circuler sous la forme d’assortiments de poèmes latins ; au moins deux exemples de fables arabes ; des fables « philosophiques » issues peut-être du monde de la prédication ou de l’invention personnelle de l’auteur.La répartition de ces fables dans le recueil montre que Marie a pu l’élaborer en « trovant » (découvrant, inventant) différents matériaux de multiples origines sur une longue période de temps. / Marie de France wrote in England, around 1170, the first book of fables in the French language, original both by its extent (104 fables) and by its diversity.The first half is an adapation of classical fables taken from the Romulus tradition and in particular from one of Romulus’ many offsprings, the Romulus de Nilant, written before the 10th century. Marie translated from latin a lost intermediary, the *Anglo-latin Romulus, from which also derives the Hexametrical Romulus (10th century). Though Marie asserts in her epilogue that she worked from an English book, historical context and contemporary sources suggest a fictitious claim. The main characteristic of her adaptation of the fables from Antiquity is the recasting of the classical power struggles into the feodal context.The second half is far more diverse and contains other fables from Antiquity probably gathered by Marie herself as well as many fables of unknown sources but whose origins can be linked to different emerging genres of the XIIth century : the comic story in all its varied forms from which the fabliau will soon be born (songs, tales, aphorisms), known to Marie by way of the clerical world ; the beast epic taking shape during the XIth and the XIIth centuries, accessible to Marie in manuscripts collecting latin animal poems ; at least two exemples of Arabic fables and “philosophical” fables taken from predicators or entirely invented by the author.The repartition of theses fables in her anthology-like book shows that Marie could have built it by “finding” (trover, meaning both finding and inventing) diverse materials from many origins over a lenghty period of time.

Les auteurs qui vivaient à la cour des Plantagenêt, créaient une sorte de mythe historique et culturel, appelé à contribuer à la consolidation politique et sociale de leur royaume. Les Lais de Marie s’inscrivent dans ce contexte. La première partie montre pourquoi et comment Marie s’adresse à l’œuvre historiographique de Wace. L’influence de cet écrivain transparaît incontestablement dans l’œuvre de Marie et il n’est pas impossible que son projet littéraire, consistant à créer un recueil des douze lais, puisse être inspiré par la chronique de l’historiographe. La seconde partie dégage de nombreux liens intertextuels entre Marie et Chrétien de Troyes. Les contes d’origine celtique portant sur les transformations des personnes en animaux, « métamorphoses bretonnes », furent aux yeux de Marie une sorte de version des Métamorphoses antiques, un monument littéraire adapté par le jeune Chrétien. Celui-ci n’hésitait pas à faire dans ses romans des allusions plus au moins claires aux lais. La troisième partie étudie les notions-clés de la poésie des troubadours, ainsi que certains genres de la lyrique provençale qui auraient pu influencer les Lais. La quatrième partie met en lumière l’aspect parodique de la réception de la matière bretonne, ainsi que des lais de Marie par les auteurs anonymes. Marie transforme radicalement le statut culturel et littéraire des contes bretons, en imprégnant leurs adaptations françaises des réminiscences des écrits créés par ses contemporains et en ennoblissant les personnages conformément à la nouvelle morale de la société courtoise. Le genre de lai acquiert des contours précis, le chronotope breton se fixe en tant qu’élément essentiel du lai. / Authors who lived at the Plantagenet court created a historical and cultural myth that was meant to contribute to the political and social consolidation of the kingdom. Marie de France’s Lais are situated in this context. The first part of my thesis focuses on how and why Marie addresses the historiographical work of Wace. Not only is his influence visible in the lais but his voluminous poetical chronicle might have inspired in Marie the very idea of composing a collection of twelve lais. The second part brings to light a significant number of intertextual connections between Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes. It is argued that Marie saw some similarities between the tales of Celtic origin about the transformation of humans into animals and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, translated by young Chrétien de Troyes. In his turn, Chrétien did not hesitate to allude to Marie’s Lais, more or less openly. The third part centers on the key notions and certain genres of troubadour poetry as a potential source of Marie’s Lais. The fourth part examines the parodic aspect in the reception of the Matter of Britain and of Marie’s Lais by anonymous authors. The results of my research have lead me to the conclusion that Marie radically transformed the cultural and literary status of Breton tales, filling them with reminiscences of her contemporaries’ writings, ennobling the characters of her tales in accordance with the new moral code of the court, and endowing them with the gloss of a fairy-tale ideality. Her immediate successors made this gloss even more pronounced. Thus the genre of the lai acquired a precise shape, and the Breton chronotope became an essential element of the lai.

This dissertation is a critical analysis of identity in literature within the historical context of the theopolitical climate in England between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries. The narratives under consideration are the Lais of Marie de France, The Canterbury Tales, and The Book of Margery Kempe. A focus on the business of theology and the Church’s political influence on identity will highlight these lay writers’ artistic shaping of theopolitical ideas into literature. Conducting a literary analysis on the application of theopolitical ideas by these lay writers encourages movement beyond the traditional exegetical interpretation of their narratives and furthers our determination of lay intellectual attitudes toward theology and its political purposes in the development of identity and society.