Love & Nightingales in the Lais
In the Laustic by Marie de France we hear a story about an affair, between two neighbors. The fable tells us about the love between a married women and the knight that lives next door. In the story they mention a nightingale, a song bird, which is used as a metaphor to represent their love for one another. The affair is short-lived, and can be interpreted in a few different ways. When reading the fable, you can see it either as a sad tragic ending to a meaningful love, or the end of a secret affair and lust between a married women and the knight from next door. A nightingale is song bird, where the male sings mostly at night. (Dictionary.com) In the Laustic the wife uses the bird’s beautiful songs as an excuse to why she is at the window night after night. Due to being …show more content…
Where in one view the fable can be seen as the loss of love, where love just isn’t enough. Or it can be seen as a false love, something born from loneliness and desire. When you look at Marie de Frances other lais, Lanval. You see the triumph of love and the knight’s loyalty- again opposite of the case here, where the wife emotionally cheats on her husband. In Lanval the knight Lanval valued the beautiful women he loved more than any other, and angered the queen for it when he rejected her. The women’s forgiveness mattered more than life to Lanval, ‘’Now I don’t care if I am killed, if only she forgives me. For I am restored, now that I see her’’ (France pg.1044 li. 597-599). Different from Laustic where the couple give up after the nightingale’s death. In Lanval the beautiful women saved the knight from the angered queen, and they lived happily ever after. Part of the reason Marie could have made the Laustic about the failure of love instead of it succeeding is because it was not a true love- instead a false and disloyal one. The woman in Laustic is disloyal to her husband, in a time when loyalty was so very
In the Laustic by Marie de France we hear a story about an affair, between two neighbors. The fable tells us about the love between a married women and the knight that lives next door. In the story they mention a nightingale, a song bird, which is used as a metaphor to represent their love for one another. The affair is short-lived, and can be interpreted in a few different ways. When reading the fable, you can see it either as a sad tragic ending to a meaningful love, or the end of a secret affair and lust between a married women and the knight from next door. A nightingale is song bird, where the male sings mostly at night. (Dictionary.com) In the Laustic the wife uses the bird’s beautiful songs as an excuse to why she is at the window night after night. Due to being …show more content…
Where in one view the fable can be seen as the loss of love, where love just isn’t enough. Or it can be seen as a false love, something born from loneliness and desire. When you look at Marie de Frances other lais, Lanval. You see the triumph of love and the knight’s loyalty- again opposite of the case here, where the wife emotionally cheats on her husband. In Lanval the knight Lanval valued the beautiful women he loved more than any other, and angered the queen for it when he rejected her. The women’s forgiveness mattered more than life to Lanval, ‘’Now I don’t care if I am killed, if only she forgives me. For I am restored, now that I see her’’ (France pg.1044 li. 597-599). Different from Laustic where the couple give up after the nightingale’s death. In Lanval the beautiful women saved the knight from the angered queen, and they lived happily ever after. Part of the reason Marie could have made the Laustic about the failure of love instead of it succeeding is because it was not a true love- instead a false and disloyal one. The woman in Laustic is disloyal to her husband, in a time when loyalty was so very