The Lais of Marie de France
Twelve short verse narratives out of Breton oral tradition: a knight who turns wolf and is trapped in that shape by his wife, a lover who comes as a hawk to a woman locked in a tower, hazel and honeysuckle twined at a roadside as a signal to Tristan. The Anglo-Norman writer who signs herself Marie is the first named woman author in French, and she gives courtly romance its short form. Chaucer, the Middle English Breton lays and the whole later tradition of the literary tale draw on her.
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Lineage
- alludes to ↑ Tristan and Iseult
- ↓ The Canterbury Tales
- ↓ Sir Orfeo
Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 57% · 11 shared
- 53% · 13 shared
- 49% · 9 shared
- 47% · 11 shared
- 47% · 11 shared
- 47% · 10 shared