Neophilologus (2009) 93:191–200 DOI 10.1007/s11061-008-9112-1
The Hind Episode in Marie de France’s Guigemar and Medieval Vernacular Poetics Ashley Lee
Published online: 29 May 2008 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract This essay explores the hind episode in Marie de France’s Guigemar in relation to its two prologues—that is, the prologue to the lay and the general prologue to Marie’s twelve lays. At the center of the episode is Guigemar’s hunt of the antlered hind, a variation on the popular motif of the stag hunt. Marie’s version of the hunt incorporates images of the author and the reader, introducing to the lay the theme of reading and interpretation. Such details of the modified stag hunt ultimately tie the lay to larger issues of vernacular authorship that Marie brings up in the general prologue. This essay will argue that Guigemar is a story most concerned with defending and establishing Marie’s authority as a woman author writing in the vernacular. Keywords Marie de France Guigemar Lais Authorship Women writers Medieval vernacular literature Guigemar’s marvelous hind has been at the center of much critical debate. Scholars have inspected the hind from head to toe, greatly puzzled by its antlers, its magical aptitude for intelligent speech, its snow-white appearance, and its sudden death from a wound on the esclot. Many scholars have rummaged through Celtic folktales and mythology, medieval chronicles, classical literature, medieval bestiaries and such, looking for the source of the hind motif, in attempts to understand what the hind symbolizes in the context of Guigemar’s adventure.1 Their research on the episode of the hind has revealed much about Marie’s art including her originality in plot 1
For discussions on the figure of the hind, see, for instance, Brook (1987); Holmes (1942); Illingworth (1962); Leicester (2005); McCash (1994); Pickens (1974).
A. Lee (&) Department of English, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada e-mail:
[email protected]
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construction, her use of symbols, and her strategies for achieving thematic and structural unity in her tales. However, no one has yet explored the hind episode in the context of Marie’s effort to position herself in the twelfth-century literary culture, as a woman author writing in the vernacular. In our continuing quest to unravel the mysteries of the hind episode, we might consider it further in relation to the issues of vernacular authorship that Marie raises in the prologue to Guigemar and the general prologue (to her collection of twelve lays).2 Although Ewert, in a passing remark, has noted that the prologue to Guigemar ‘‘discusses subjects foreign to the lay it introduces,’’ it seems to me that the prologue actually sets forth thematic issues that progressively evolve into the episode of the hind and Guigemar’s subsequent adventure (Marie de France, 1947, p. 164). Studying the episode in relation to the prologues will help us discern the author’s voice, which invites the reader into the scene. In turn, our awareness of the author’s textual presence in the hind episode may enhance our understanding of Guigemar and its importance in Marie’s defense of her art. In what follows, I propose to examine the hind episode as a key moment in shaping Marie’s authority and show how Guigemar can be read as a type of artistic treatise. The prologue to Guigemar reveals the author at war with readers who have slandered her writing. Marie opens her tale in a defiant strain, denouncing those readers who have attempted to find fault with her. According to Marie, they are troublemakers, full of envy of men and women of ‘‘grant pris’’ [‘‘great renown’’] (Guigemar 8)—a writer like Marie herself who ‘‘ne s’oblie’’ [‘‘does not squander her talents’’] (Guigemar 4) in telling well-composed tales.3 We may surmise the nature of these slanders from what writers such as her contemporaries Denis Piramus and Gautier d’Arras recorded in their books.4 In La Vie Seint Edmund le Rei, Denis tells us that Marie’s verses ‘‘are not at all true,’’ but ladies, especially, love them, because ‘‘they suit their desires’’ (Ferrante, 1989, p. 52). To Gautier d’Arras (1996), the author of Ille et Galeron, some lays sound like mere dreams and fantasies (pp. 931–936). Both Denis and Gautier seem to direct our attention to the fictitious nature of Marie’s works and insinuate that the way her lays treat fantastic love affairs and marvels (like our hind in question) is rather frivolous for serious male audience steeped in Latin literature. Marie, in her turn, marches right into the heart of the dispute at the beginning of Guigemar, insisting on the truth that is in her lays: ‘‘Les contes ke jo sai verrais, …vos conterai assez briefment’’ [‘‘I shall relate briefly to you stories which I know to be true’’] (Guigemar 19–21; italics mine). And standing her ground against slanderers, she proclaims, ‘‘Nel voil mie…leissier’’ [‘‘I do not intend to give up’’] (Guigemar 15). It is Marie’s intent to win over more admiring readers to her side, and to reach out to an audience beyond the immediate circle of medieval readers. In 2
Taylor (2002) describes the general prologue as ‘‘one of the earliest powerful assertions of vernacular authorship’’ (p. 102). For further discussions on the general prologue and medieval vernacular poetics, see Hunt (1974); Foulet and Uitti (1981–1982); Nichols (1988, 1991); Bloch (1991) Taylor (2002).
3
All quotations of Marie’s lays in this paper are from Ewert’s edition. All quotations in English are from Burgess and Busby’s translation.
4
Ferrante (1989, p. 52) draws our attention to the comments of Denis Piramus and Gautier d’Arras. Burgess (1995, p. vi) notes the same comments of Denis Piramus.
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these lines, she addresses her future readers as much as her immediate audience. Acknowledging the presence of our silent eyes following her tale, she appeals to us with her stories and reminds us that, as members of her audience, we too are involved in the debate. The true battlefield of the authorial war lies, not in the distant past, but here and now, for it is we prospective readers, who are at stake in this war. With each telling of the tale, the war between the author and her slanderers is perpetually renewed in the present. With the episode of the hind, Marie takes this conflict between the slandering readers and herself into the magical realm of fiction. Guigemar plunges into the depths of the forest to hunt and chase stags. The stag hunt, a popular allegory for pursuit of women and love in both classical and medieval literature, is often known to lead the hero to romantic adventures, as in Chre´tien de Troyes’ Erec and Enide for instance (Thie´baux, 1974, pp. 106–115). In Guigemar, Marie puts an interesting twist on the motif of the stag hunt. Instead of a stag, Guigemar spots a white hind with its fawn, a feminine figure for certain—except that it bears the antlers of a stag on its head. When we consider how white animals (such as white palfreys, white ermines, and white unicorns) frequently figure in medieval portraits of women as adjunct symbols of female virtue, purity, nobility, and innocence, it is not so difficult to see how the white hind can function here as an extension of (or a substitute for) the female body. A more obvious example of how Marie uses this technique can be found in Lanval, where the images of Lanval’s fairy mistress and her palfrey gradually merge into one, as the descriptions of the lady almost imperceptibly move to and from the descriptions of the white palfrey that she is riding on.5 Other accounts associate the deer with music and prophecy. Latin and medieval bestiaries, for instance, inform us that the deer are musical creatures, rather fond of listening to shepherds’ pipes and songs.6 Pliny (1947) adds that white stags were sometimes believed to be prophetic (pp. 84–85; book 8, chapter 50). Such stories may have played a part in the creation of Marie’s own white hind. Certainly, prophetic vision and elegant speech are among the magic powers that Marie’s hind boasts of. The white hind, in many ways, seems to be pointing to the image of a woman who has the gift of music, poetry, and prophecy. But why is this female creature sporting the antlers of a stag, in a phenomenon altogether unheard of in the rest of medieval French literature (Brook, 1987, p. 96)?7 5
See lines 547–584 in Lanval. In particular, note the following lines which begin the descriptions of the palfrey: ‘‘Un blanc palefrei chevachot, / Que bel e su¨ef la portot: / Mut ot bien fet e col e teste, / Suz ciel nen ot plus bele beste…’’ [‘‘She was riding a white palfrey which carried her well and gently; its neck and head were well-formed and there was no finer animal on earth…’’] (Lanval 551–554).
6
Concerning the deer, Pliny (1947) writes in his Natural History that ‘‘[t]hey can be charmed by a shepherd’s pipe and by song’’ (pp. 82–83; book 8, chapter 50). The Bestiary: A Book of Beasts (White, 1954, p. 38) also tells us that ‘‘[s]tags listen admiringly to the music of rustic pipes.’’ 7
The meaning of the antlers has been variously interpreted: Brook (1987) associates them with fertility and life force of a Neolithic goddess. Green (1975) and Pickens (1974) conclude that the antlers on the hind represent the union of male and female. For McCash (1994), they are a symbol of ‘‘a special virtue and a high moral stance’’ (p. 202). Holmes (1942) takes the hind’s antlers to be a rare, but natural phenomenon. A story of Welsh origin, recorded by Giraldus Cambrensis in Itinerarium Kambriae, reports the occurrence of an antlered hind in Wales. See Holmes (1942, pp. 12–13) for a comparison of this supposedly real-life story and the lay of Guigemar. Also see Brook (1987, pp. 96–97) for a brief summary of the discussions on the antlers.
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In the hind with antlers, which Pickens (1974) aptly calls ‘‘the androgynous beast’’ (p. 335) we seem to recognize the image of a woman author in what was, in the Middle Ages, the masculine realm of literature. If the hind’s antlers emblematize a sort of crown8 of knowledge and the unusual gift of writing in woman, the antlered hind reflects the position of medieval woman writers who had to actively put on the mask of authority and power, which was commonly associated with the male.9 We need not look further than Christine de Pizan, another medieval woman writer, to confirm that this is indeed how medieval woman writers saw themselves. In ‘‘Christine’s Vision,’’ Christine (1997) metaphorically describes how her ‘‘feeble feminine body [was] transformed into a man’s’’ as a writer and lover of knowledge (pp. 200–201).10 Standing beside the androgynous hind, a little fawn also asserts its presence, as if to hint at the author’s creative ability to multiply herself through texts. It is also possible to read in the image of the antlered hind a visual representation of ‘‘feminine’’ vernacular literature, inheriting the ‘‘male’’ classical tradition. While more ‘‘serious’’ scholars, in general, would have considered vernacular literature inferior to classical literature, Marie herself quite clearly poses as a champion and guardian of vernacular literature. When she tells us in the prologue that she wishes not ‘‘laisser ne¨ oblı¨er’’ [‘‘to overlook or neglect’’] (Prologue 40) the circulating Breton lays, we might guess that Marie is interested in fostering the growth of vernacular literary tradition. It is for this reason that she chooses to set the Breton lays in verse instead of ‘‘de latin en romaunz traire’’ [‘‘translating a Latin text into French’’] (30). Marcelle Thie´baux (1974) concludes from an analysis of medieval allegories that the stag’s ‘‘lofty antlers’’ denote its ‘‘high worth,’’ and the hind, precisely because it lacks such antlers, ‘‘cannot aspire to the stag’s heights, either physically or morally’’ (p. 215). This could very well have been an assumption of slanderers like Denis Piramus and Gautier d’Arras concerning Marie’s ‘‘untrue’’ art. But Marie, as I have already suggested, is out to prove them wrong: her tales on the feminine subject of love, by a female author, in the ‘‘feminine’’ vernacular, are ‘‘true’’ and of high moral worth. If we remember her words from the general prologue, Marie does indeed stress the moral aspect of her stories: Ki de vice se volt defender Estudı¨er deit e entendre E grevos’ over comencier: Par [ceo] se puet plus esloignier E de grant dolur delivrer. Pur ceo comenc¸ai a penser De aukune bone estoire faire… (Prologue 23–29) 8
Thie´baux (1974) observes that, in Hadamar von Laber’s ‘‘Die Jagd,’’ the words in Middle High German referring to the stag’s antlers (prıˆs and kroˆne) become puns for ‘‘the worth and crown of a lady’’ (p. 214).
9 Having examined the poetics of androgyny prevalent in Yonec, Milun, and the general prologue, Pickens (1994) too concludes, ‘‘as a woman who is a poet, Marie boldly appropriates to herself the attributes—and the aggressiveness—of the male writer’’ (p. 219). 10 In her works, Christine (1997) repeatedly describes how she ‘‘[became] a man’’ as a professional writer. See ‘‘The Book of Fortune’s Transformation’’ for another example (Christine de Pizan, 1997, pp. 106–107).
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[Anyone wishing to guard against vice should study intently and undertake a demanding task, whereby one can ward off and rid oneself of great suffering. For this reason I began to think of working on some good story…] ‘‘The hind is a messenger, but of whom?’’ asks Pickens (1974, p. 332), sensing a higher presence driving the hind. Illingworth (1962) and Hodgson (1974) see a Celtic fairy motif at play here and argue that the hind is a fairy-in-disguise. Brook (1987) suspects that ‘‘a pagan life-force’’ (p. 99) is behind the hind, while Pickens (1974, p. 332) himself attributes the presence to the Christian God. But the antlered hind, we might argue, is a messenger of Marie, its author and creator. On spotting the hind, Guigemar’s hounds bark and charge forth, bringing us back to the image of the slandering critics whom Marie likens to the ‘‘malveis chien coart felun’’ [‘‘vicious, cowardly, treacherous dog’’] in the lay’s prologue (Guigemar 13). Here, the image of the vicious dogs links the physical aggressions of the hunting pack with the verbal assaults of the critics from the prologue. Leading this aggressive team of hunters and hounds is Guigemar, who swiftly fires an arrow at the hind in what can be seen as an attack on Marie’s authority and her subject matter. Love is too effeminate and trivial for his fine hunter’s taste and prowess. The arrow hits the hind in the forehead, a body part that represents the intellectual and creative faculty, and then, immediately rebounds, wounding Guigemar in the thigh.11 This violent scene resonates with the echoes of slanders that Marie has mentioned in the prologue. But this time, the rebounding arrow signals a complete reversal in the direction of the attack, as the author begins to turn her critics’ slanders against them. So if the hind is a literary incarnation of the author, what kind of reader might Guigemar be? Though Guigemar may be the finest knight to be found in all of Lorraine, Burgundy, Anjou, and Gascony, he has a serious flaw in Marie’s eyes: A cel tens ne pout hom truver Si bon chevalier ne sun per. … De tant i out mespris nature Ke¨ unc de nul’ amur n’out cure. … Nuls ne se pout aparceveir Ke¨ il volsist amur aveir. Pur ceo le tienent a peri E li estrange e si ami. (Guigemar 55–68) [At that time no one could find his equal as a knight … But Nature had done him such a grievous wrong that he never displayed the slightest interest in love. … He showed no visible interest in love and was thus considered a lost cause by stranger and friend alike.]
11
Explaining that the word ‘‘esclot’’ (Guigemar 95) could refer to either ‘‘horn’’ or ‘‘hoof,’’ McCash (1994, pp. 200–201) reasons that a wound on the esclot is not likely to kill the hind. Therefore, she concludes that the blow the hind receives from Guigemar must have a symbolic meaning. Burgess and Busby’s translation renders this word as ‘‘forehead’’ (Marie de France, 2003, p. 44).
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Guigemar is not interested in love. This indeed makes for the greatest flaw anyone could possibly have as a prospective reader of love-lays. That Guigemar is not altogether mature is further hinted at in the lines immediately following, where we learn that the young man, still emotionally attached to his family, returns home for more than a month ‘‘[v]eer sun pere e sun seignur, / Sa bone mere e sa sorur’’ [‘‘to see his father and his lord, his loving mother and his sister’’] (Guigemar 71–73). Once home, he indulges himself in physical activities like hunting, instead of pursuing amorous activities.12 Marie implicitly distinguishes between the two types of readers—the knowing readers with experience of love and the ignorant readers, like Guigemar, on whose minds love has not registered itself, and who are therefore incapable of decoding symbols of love. Then, we might conclude that Guigemar is cast in the image of the unappreciative reader, apathetic to Marie’s tales of love. It would certainly be asking too much of Guigemar to provide a gloss for her tales and ‘‘de lur sen le surplus mettre’’ [‘‘put the finishing touches to their meaning’’] at this point (Prologue 16). What ultimately leads us to see Guigemar as the reader (an every reader) are the hind’s words that Guigemar’s growth into a lover is to be marveled at by those readers ‘‘[k]i aiment e ame´ avrunt / U ki pois amerunt apre´s’’ [‘‘who are in love, who have known love or are yet to experience it’’] (Guigemar 120–121). The portraits of readers grouped by their relative experiences of love are also portraits of Guigemar growing as a lover (from someone ‘‘who is ‘‘yet to experience [love]’’ to someone who is ‘‘in love’’ to someone has ‘‘known love’’), and they encapsulate his past, present, and future. The portraits thereby describe the evolution of readers and lovers, and leave us with the impression that the pool of readers is endlessly feeding the supply of lovers and would-be lovers, and that would-be lovers bloom into mature readers through the experience of love. Essentially, the hind’s words define an infinite cycle in which readers continually metamorphose into lovers (and lovers to readers) through time. In other words, Marie presents growth as a lover and growth as a reader as one and the same.13 Returning to the scene of the attack, we realize that, however deplorable Guigemar’s reading skills may be, the fates of Guigemar (the defective reader) and the hind (the author) are tightly bound together with one arrow—one shot wounds both. A concrete visualization of Marie’s take on her slanderers, the image of the rebounding arrow induces us to see Guigemar’s wound as self-inflicted. Figuratively speaking, the unappreciative attitude of the reader can potentially prevent the author’s verses from spreading ‘‘ses flurs’’ [‘‘its flowers’’], and in this way, be a deadly blow to the author (Prologue 8). At the same time, when the reader refuses to 12 Guigemar’s inability to love has been variously attributed to his repressed, alienated nature (Hodgson, 1974, p. 27), his homosexuality (Pickens, 1974, p. 331), his misogyny (Holmes, 1942, p. 11), and his emotional immaturity (Green, 1975, p. 325). For Hodgson (1974, p. 27), Guigemar’s return to his family is a sign of his alienation from the society at large. Pickens (1974, p. 331) concludes from the word ‘‘peri’’ (Guigemar 67) that Guigemar is accused of being homosexual and therefore, socially inept. Green (1975) contends that the hunt in the forest represents the ‘‘search for uncommitted sexual adventure’’ (p. 325). 13
In ‘‘Texts and Readers in Marie de France’s Lais,’’ Sturges (1980) illustrates how closely the activities of love and the activities of reading are intertwined in the lays of Marie de France. Bloch (2003, pp. 42–50) also makes an analogy between readers and lovers, as well as desire and words.
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see truth behind the fictional surface of literary works and insists on adhering to empirical truth, he is revealing his own limitation in experience and love, and announcing his own doomed spirit. In Marie’s view, the malicious slanders she has received testify to the death of human spirit in the slandering reader. The deadly blows of the arrow, in a way, form an archetype of the conflict between the reader and the author. In this timeless moment, the story of their conflict culminates in symbolic deaths of both parties, brought about by their inability to understand each other. The hind, determined to set ignorant Guigemar on a road to edification, makes a prophecy: the cure to Guigemar’s wound in the thigh (and his defective readership) is to be found in the experience of love. And, his experience as a lover is to be marveled at by those readers ‘‘[k]i aiment e ame´ avrunt / U ki pois amerunt apre´s’’ [‘‘who are in love, who have known love or are yet to experience it’’] (Guigemar 120–121). As mentioned before, Marie implicitly urges us to view lovers and readers as interchangeable entities. Guigemar, who belongs to the last category of readers (i.e. readers ‘‘ki pois amerunt apre`s’’), is to be metamorphosed into a lover, and in his experience as a lover, he is to become the subject of a marvelous tale for others to read. The metamorphosis, at the same time, will transform the defective reader into one of those mature readers ‘‘[k]i … ame´ avrunt.’’ As many critics have suggested, the antlered hind visually demonstrates with his appearance what Guigemar must attain in spirit—the ‘‘perfect union of a man and a woman’’ (Pickens, 1974, p. 335)—by immersing himself in experience of true love.14 Thus, the hind announces its verdict on Guigemar’s revolt against love and fiction, with a sense of poetic justice. Guigemar is to become the hero of a tale of love, and thereby solve the problem of authority and the problem of love in one fell swoop. In all this, we sense the story extending outward toward the readers. We appear in Guigemar (in the hind’s speech) as the future readers who will marvel at the hero’s adventure of love. This observation leads us to reconsider the relevance of the hind’s speech to our own act of reading. When the hind tells Guigemar exactly what his future readers will marvel at, it is, in fact, giving us directions on how to read Guigemar. It is not the physical marvels, like the magic ship, that constitute the essence of the tale (cf. the hind does not mention any of these in his prophetic speech), but the pain, anguish, and suffering of the hero for love that become the central object of marvel. The reader is to seek spiritual truth in the tale, and not to give it up as untrue by concentrating on its fairy tale appearance. This is how Marie refutes accusations of untruth in her lay. If we do not find her tales pleasing, it is because we are like Guigemar whom the hind is just sending out on an adventure to learn more about love, so that he could bring his own experience to reading. Experience can help the reader recognize truth in tales and merge disparate realms of the reader and the lover into one. 14 See Green (1975) and Pickens (1974) for instance. Pickens sees the lovers headed toward a more socially meaningful type of union—that is, marriage (p. 340). However, we must not forget that the lady is still legally bound to the old husband at the end of the story. The lay’s unresolved ending seems to point to the limitations of the society, which has no relief to offer to those trapped in abusive, loveless marriages.
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The subsequent story (i.e. Guigemar’s adventure following his meeting with the hind) is played out in keeping with the plot, the theme, and the structure laid out by the hind. Even its balanced structure reflects the condition of reciprocity (in love) that the hind has set out for Guigemar and his lover: Jamais n’aies tu med[e]cine! … N’avras tu jame´s garisun Ki suffera pur tue amur Issi grant peine e tel dolur Ke unkes femme taunt ne suffri; E tu ref[e]ras taunt pur li… (Guigemar 109–118) [May you never find a cure … until you are cured by a woman who will suffer for your love more pain and anguish than any other woman has ever known, and you will suffer likewise for her.] In line with these words, the first part of Guigemar’s romantic quest shows the suffering hero embarking on a journey on the magic ship to experience the pain of love. The second part balances the first and shows the suffering lady risking her life and setting out on a journey on the same magic ship in search of Guigemar. The hind lays out the original conception of the story, and Guigemar lives the story. The hind tells the story within the story, and Guigemar interprets the story and completes it by adding his own experience to it. The relationship between the hind and Guigemar parallels the relationship between the ancient writers and their readers: Custume fu as ancı¨ens … Es livres ke jadis feseient Assez oscurement diseient Pur cues ki a venir esteient E ki aprendre les deveient, K’i peu¨ssent gloser la letter E de lur sen le surplus mettre. (Prologue 9–16)15 [It was customary for the ancients, in the books which they wrote … to express themselves very obscurely so that those in later generations, who had to learn them, could provide a gloss for the text and put the finishing touches to their meaning.] This is also the ideal relationship envisioned by Marie between herself and her readers. In the episode of the hind, Marie strategically captures the reader’s attention with the marvelous phenomenon of the antlered hind. The episode then proceeds to present us with a mini-Guigemar in the form of the hind’s prophecy, so that 15 This passage has been the subject of much critical discussion. See, for instance, Spitzer (1943–1944); Robertson (1949); Donovan (1961); Hunt (1974); Mickel (1975); Sturges (1980, pp. 248–249); Foulet and Uitti (1981–1982); Nichols, (1988, 1991); Leupin (1991); Bloch (1991); Taylor (2002).
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Guigemar, in effect, becomes a self-reflexive story about how to read Guigemar.16 The hind, the hind’s prophecy, and Guigemar form the trinity of the author, the text, and the reader, and together, they enact the way in which Marie wishes us to receive her work. Charging forth against her slanderers, Marie unfurls her vision as a woman author, writing in the vernacular, on romantic subjects. She positions herself as an author of truth, whose tales are not any less deserving of glossing than those of male writers in the Latin tradition, and she appeals to the authority of love and experience to establish her authorship. To initiate the process of glossing, Marie sends out Guigemar, an every reader, on a romantic quest to seek out the meaning of the hind’s words, and then beckons us readers to go along. Her message is clear: at the end of Guigemar’s journey, we are to inherit his mission and start expanding on the work by adding glosses of our own, first to the lay of Guigemar, then to the other lays that follow. Guigemar, then, can be read as a defense of Marie’s art and, at the same time, a story of the author’s wish fulfillment. In the story, Marie, in the disguise of the hind, proposes and exercises her potential power to reform every defective reader and enlist him as her admiring reader. As the opening lay in MS Harley 978, Guigemar interacts with and extends the general prologue in defense of Marie’s art, and it ultimately seeks to shape how we approach the rest of her lays in the collection. Acknowledgement I would like to thank Prof. Stephen Partridge for his generous support and encouragement throughout the course of this project.
References Bloch, R. H. (1991). The medieval text—‘Guigemar’—as a provocation to the discipline of medieval studies. In M. S. Brownlee, K. Brownlee, & S. G. Nichols (Eds.), The new medievalism (pp. 99–112). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Bloch, R. H. (2003). The anonymous Marie de France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brook, L. C. (1987). Guigemar and the white hind. Medium Aevum, 56, 94–101. Burgess, G. (1995). Introduction. In A. Ewert (Ed.), Marie de France: Lais (pp. v–xxxiv). Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. Christine de Pizan. (1997). The selected writings of Christine de Pizan (R. Blumenfeld-Kosinski & K. Brownlee, Trans.). New York: Norton. Donovan, M. J. (1961). Priscian and the obscurity of the ancients. Speculum, 36, 75–80. Ferrante, J. (1989). A Frenchwoman in England writes for a Norman court: Marie de France. In D. Hollier (Ed.), A new history of French literature (pp. 50–56). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Foulet, A., & Uitti, K. D. (1981–1982). The prologue to the Lais of Marie de France: A reconsideration. Romance Philology, 35, 242–249. Gautier d’Arras (1996). Ille et Galeron (P. Eley, Ed. and Trans.). Exeter: Short Run Press. Green, R. B. (1975). The fusion of magic and realism in two lays of Marie de France. Neophilologus, 59, 324–336. Hodgson, F. (1974). Alienation and the otherworld in Lanval, Yonec, and Guigemar. Comitatus, 5, 19–31. Holmes, U. T., Jr. (1942). A Welsh motif in Marie’s Guigemar. Studies in Philology, 39, 11–14. Hunt, T. (1974). Glossing Marie de France. Romanische Forschungen, 86, 396–418. Illingworth, R. N. (1962). Celtic tradition and the lai of Guigemar. Medium Aevum, 31, 176–187.
16
On self-reflexivity in Marie de France’s lays, see Sturges (1980).
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