Courtly Love with a Twist

Before talking about Marie de France, and her Lais, Le Fresne, I think it's important to talk about the video we watched about courtly love in the middle ages because it has such a direct relationship to Marie de France. In the video, the woman narrating talks about the basics of courtly love, and what makes it the true version of love, but mentions that courtly love was "an ideal almost impossible for anyone to maintain; a theory whose pratical application would be threatened by human fraility". This look at what was so commonly found within the Romantic Era matches very well with Marie de France and how she twists the idea of courtly love. Marie takes the classic basics of a courtly love story, but adds how she feels the human mind would react to and resolve certain situations. It can be very introspective in a way that Marie needs to completely understand and feel human fraility and breakableness to be able to write an accurate version of events (as she sees it).

Many authors tend to do this, especially when writing a story about a character with some severe flaw. Sometimes it can be a mental disorder, sometimes they're just truly a terrible person, but authors must find a way to look past their perfect story and perfect person to get to the nitty-gritty human-ness of everyone. I read a book recently called All The Bright Places, by Jennifer Niven, and the main character was a suicidal, depressed teenager with OCD and possibly another mental illness and got down to the things that truly make us human.

Even though I cannot fully relate to the main character, Theodore, as well as others may be able to, there is something so truly human and real about the character that you relate to and love him all the same. If an author, no matter the time period and no matter the gender, can get down to all the things that make us human and can have the reader relate to the character, in that way, then they will be considered a wonderful writer.

Marie de France writes in prose so it's not going to be as natural as reading a novel, but I believe she still has the correct mindset on how to twist a Romantic piece of writing into something real. Le Fresne can do this, and shows how twisted bitterness can be, but it is not like Equitan. There is a happy ending within this specific Lai while in Equitan there are two deaths. Le Fresne is more about karma as opposed to the classic tragedies that go along with courtly love and the romance genre. This noble knight certainly goes on a quest to love a woman that he cannot have (because she lives in the abbey), but there is no great conquest to win her heart or anything big like that. The story is more about the mother, how wrong she was for speaking lies about all other women, just out of spite, and how things have a way of turning back around on you.