Lanval Critical Thinking Sample

This week’s hero is Lanval, a French knight in King Arthur’s army. Lanval cannot even be compared with those muscular, testosterone-flavored fellows that are considered heroes nowadays. The present day heroes put emphasis only on their body and on the way they look, i.e. they care mainly about their physical appearance, leaving the spiritual and moral qualities without attention. Marie de France does not tell us much about Lanval’s appearance, but we know that Lanval was famous first of all due to his bravery and generosity. That was the reason why other knights envied and women admired him.
The ladies in the Lais are Lanval’s love and the Queen. Lanval’s love can be compared to the tales about fairies which are found in the folklore of many European countries. The plot of those tales can be summarized as follows: a fairy leaves her kingdom to visit her mortal lover and she stays with him until he inevitably violates one of the fairy’s conditions. The Queen can be compared to another popular type of stories about a woman offering her love to a man, and if he rejects her love she rushes to her husband and accuses that man of attempting to seduce her.
It is a pity that the English translation of the Lais does not rhyme as the original French text does. I suppose that the poets could have translated it in such a way that it rhymed, and the main reason they did not do this was probably the desire to translate it accurately, without distortion of meaning. If they tried to find a word that rhymes instead of a word that conveys the same meaning that would lead to a certain inaccuracy and discrepancy between the original text and translation. The fact that the text does not rhyme does not affect my enjoyment and understanding of this Lais at all. It was interesting to read and easy to understand.
I cannot agree with the student whose work I got to evaluate in one point: the student writes that Lanval fell victim to the charms of the Queen (including her beauty and wealth) and then decided that it is better not to pursue her because he will cause a big dishonor to the King. But in fact Lanval was not interested in the Queen and her love at all and he did not decide to end an affair with her – he rejected the Queen’s love proposal from the very beginning. And he had to appear in court and stand trial not because he really had an affair with the King’s wife but because she unjustly blamed him for trying to seduce her to revenge for his refusal to become her lover.