Marie de France, Ethicist: Questioning Courtly Love in Laüstic

Author(s): K. Sarah-Jane Murray

Source: Modern Philology , Vol. 109, No. 1 (August 2011), pp. 1-16
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/662145

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 Marie de France, Ethicist: Questioning Courtly
Love in Laüstic
K. SARAH-JANE MURRAY
Baylor University

Laüstic, which contains only 160 verse lines, is one of the shortest of Marie
de France’s lais (ca. 1165). It has garnered significant scholarly attention
over the years, not least because of the central motif of the nightingale
(laüstic or rossignol ), a bird typically linked by Provençal poets with the cult
of fin’amors. Most readings of Laüstic have, to date, focused on this associa-
tion,1 and Howard Bloch concludes in his well-known book that Laüstic
serves as an excellent example of the ‘‘fatalistic’’ kind of ‘‘secret or courtly
love’’ that Marie portrays throughout her collection.2
In this article, I propose an alternate reading of Laüstic, suggesting that
Marie de France is preoccupied in this lai with far more than entertainment

My thanks to Glyn Burgess, David Jeffrey, Sinda Vanderpool, Hannah Zdansky, and Mat-
thieu Boyd for their assistance at various stages of this article and also to Joan Tasker Grimbert,
who provided me with the prepublication version of her article on Laüstic.
1. See Glyn S. Burgess, ‘‘Symbolism in Marie de France’s Laustic and Le Fresne,’’ Bulletin bib-
liographique de la Société internationale arthurienne 33 (1981): 258–68; Keith Busby, ‘‘‘Je fout sa-
voir bon lai breton’: Marie de France ‘Contrefaite’?’’ Modern Language Review 84 (1989): 589–
600; and Robert D. Cottrell, ‘‘Le lai du laustic : From Physicality to Spirituality,’’ Philological Quar-
terly 47 (1968): 499–505.
2. R. Howard Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France (University of Chicago Press, 2003), 71,
67. Of course, the idea of ‘‘courtly love’’ (l’amour courtois) is essentially a modern invention. In
‘‘Études sur les romans de la Table Ronde; Lancelot du Lac, II: Le conte de la charrette,’’ Romania
12 (1883): 459–534, Gaston Paris coined this terminology in order to describe the odd, extra-
marital love relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere in Chrétien de Troyes’s Chevalier de
la charrette (ca. 1180) and its prose continuations. It subsequently passed into common usage
among literary critics. In essence, courtly love refers to a highly stylized form of love, closely
related to the ‘‘refined love’’ ( fin’amors) of the troubadours, which focused on the poet’s devo-
tion to an unattainable lady of equal or higher rank—a concept known as amor de lohn, ‘‘distant
love’’ or ‘‘love from afar.’’ On the importance of the so-called courtly love in the Lais, see Jerry
Root, ‘‘Courtly Love and the Representation of Women in the ‘Lais’ of Marie de France and
the ‘Coutumes de Beauvaisis’ of Philippe de Beaumanoir,’’ Rocky Mountain Review of Language
and Literature 57 (2003): 7–24.

Ó 2011 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0026-8232/2011/10901-0001$10.00

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2 MODERN PHILOLOGY

value, the celebration of fin’amors, or even the pleasures of language—

although she doubtless is, as Bloch and Logan Whalen have noted, highly
conscious of the power of words and of her place in the rhetorical tradi-
tion.3 The key to deciphering Laüstic lies, I argue, in line 23 of the text,
where Marie tells us that the knight who lives next door to the lady in the
story ‘‘La femme sun veisin ama’’ (loved his neighbor’s wife).4 Such an ex-
plicit reference to one of the Ten Commandments (‘‘Thou shalt not desire
[or love] thy neighbor’s wife’’ [Exod. 20:17]), arguably the most famous
and widely read passage of the Old Testament, creates an important ethical
dimension to the story and opens new paths of interpretation.5 Marie’s text
can be understood as a subtle and very interesting critique of the covetous
and destructive kind of selfish love, or cupiditas, portrayed therein (in this
way, Laüstic contrasts and complements other tales in Marie’s collection,
such as Eliduc and Le Fresne, which focus on a redeeming, selfless form of
love, or caritas). This critique of selfish love is gradually revealed from the
opening of the poem until the introduction of the nightingale motif. Then
it becomes even stronger in the second half of the lai, where Marie draws
attention to her characters’ moral shortcomings by introducing a series of
references to Ovid’s stories of Pyramus and Thisbe and Philomela in the
Metamorphoses. The innocence of Marie’s nightingale and the devastating
ending of the story all contribute to Marie’s portrayal of the selfish and de-
structive nature of the lovers’ relationship.
At the beginning of Laüstic an air of harmony seems to reign over Saint
Malo, but subtle signs raise questions about the kinds of friendship and love
that exist among the three protagonists. The description of the two knights
provides a case in point:

En Saint Mallo en la cuntree

Ot une ville renumee.
Deus chevalers ilec manëent
E deus forz maisuns i aveient.
Pur la bunté des deus baruns
Fu de la vile bons li nuns.
(Lines 7–12)

3. See Logan E. Whalen, Marie de France’s Poetics of Memory (Washington, DC: Catholic Uni-
versity of America Press, 2008).
4. I use Laurence Harf-Lancner’s reprinting of Karl Warnke’s edition for citations in Old
French from the Lais (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1990). Translations, slightly modified, are from
the version of the Lais by Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin, 1999).
5. Three lines later, Marie adds that the lady ‘‘loved the knight above all other things’’ (ele
l’ama sur tute rien) (line 26), a statement that calls to mind the first commandment. Biblical
quotations in this article are from the Dounay-Rheims Version.

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 3

[In the region of St. Malo was a famous town; two knights dwelt there, and
each had a fortified house. Because of the fine qualities of the two men, the
town had acquired a good reputation.]

The men are presented as an indissociable pair: ‘‘deus chevalers’’ (line 9),
‘‘deus barons’’ (line 11). At this point, they are virtually interchangeable.
They have similar ‘‘homes’’ (deus forz maisuns) (line 10) and appear to
have equally fair dispositions (line 11), which contribute to the good repu-
tation of the city, a fact Marie emphasizes with the adnominatio ‘‘bunté’’
(line 11) / ‘‘bons’’ (line 12). As Joan Tasker Grimbert puts it, the knights
are ‘‘described as socio-economic and moral equals.’’6 The pair is subse-
quently split, however, when the narrator announces in the following verse
line that ‘‘one of them had taken a wife’’ (Li uns aveit femme espusee) (line
13), who is ‘‘wise, courtly, and elegant’’ (sage, curteise e acemee) (line 14)
and ‘‘conducts herself with admirable propriety’’ (a merveille se teneit
chiere) (line 15). Meanwhile, ‘‘the other was a bachelor’’ (Li autres fu un
bachelors) (line 17). A closer look at the poetic structure of these opening
lines reveals the moral dilemma on which Marie’s lai centers: the descrip-
tion of the female protagonist occurs between the description of the two
men. In this sense, she is structured as an object of desire; poetically, she is
the pivot around which the whole story gravitates. She is, ultimately, the
wedge that drives the two men apart, and Marie underlines this point rhet-
orically, as the two knights are literally set against one another in the text
by the grammatical opposition li uns / li autres.
In keeping with the (ironic and playful) rules later summarized by
Andreas Capellanus in the De amore (ca. 1184–86), the lady’s neighbor initi-
ates their relationship.7 He refuses to relent until he receives satisfaction:
‘‘So persistently did he request her love, so frequent were his entreaties and
so many qualities did he possess that she loved him above all things’’ (Tant
la requist, tant la preia / E tant par ot en lui grant bien / Que ele l’ama sur
tute rien) (lines 24–26). On the surface level of the text, he appears to be
the ideal lover, and the narrator stresses what seem to be positive character
traits of the young man:
Li autres fu un bachelers
Bien coneü entre ses pers
De prüesce, de grant valur,
E volenters feseit honur.

6. Joan Tasker Grimbert, ‘‘Audience Expectations and Unexpected Developments,’’ in

‘‘Moult a sans et vallour’’: Studies in Old French Literature in Honor of William W. Kibler, ed. Rupert
T. Pickens, Monica Wright, and Sarah Crisler (Amsterdam: Rodopi, forthcoming).
7. See Kathleen Andersen-Wyman, Andreas Capellanus on Love? Desire, Seduction, and Subver-
sion in a Twelfth-Century Latin Text (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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4 MODERN PHILOLOGY

Mut tunëot e despendeit

E bien donot ceo qu’il aveit.
(Lines 17–22)

[The other was a young man who was well known amongst his peers for his
prowess and great valor. He performed honorable deeds gladly and attended
many tournaments, spending freely and giving generously whatever he had.]

However, if, in light of line 23, we interpret the knight’s behavior with re-
spect to the code of ethics presented in the Old Testament, his ‘‘courtly’’ de-
votion explicitly transgresses the tenth commandment, which admonishes
against the sin of covetousness. According to Christian ethics, then, the
knight’s attitude toward his neighbor is far from honorable, generous, or
full of valor—even if he wins tournaments and exhibits largesse to others in
the city. As with so many of the lais, the reader must become a glossator and
unveil truth through his or her reading, keeping in mind the principles of
interpretation presented in the General Prologue. In fact, as Andrew Cow-
ell has convincingly argued, we must be wary of the first impression Marie’s
works make on us and learn to read against the letter of the text.8
Another subtle clue to the ethical dimension of Marie’s story is the nar-
rator’s silence surrounding the actions of the female protagonist. Focused
on the pleasures of this world, the lady in Laüstic betrays her marital vows,
and in so doing, she of course transgresses the seventh commandment of
Exodus 20:14—a common occurrence in stories dealing with the so-called
courtly love motif. But note that Marie provides no mitigating circum-
stances for the lady’s actions. There is no indication that she is a malmariée,
who suffers like the heroines of Yonec or Guigemar from the consequences
of a marriage devoid of love.9 Her husband does not lock her up or mis-
treat her. And, if we pay close attention to the text, it is not until after the
beginning of the affair that, Marie tells us, the ‘‘lady was closely guarded
when her husband was in the region’’ (la dame ert estreit gardee, / Quant

8. Andrew Cowell, ‘‘Deadly Letters: ‘Deus amanz,’ Marie’s ‘Prologue’ to the ‘Lais’ and the
Dangerous Nature of the Gloss,’’ Romanic Review 88 (1997): 337–64.
9. Marie overtly condemns the ‘‘rich old man’’ at the beginning of Yonec for marrying a
young woman solely in order to produce heirs who would inherit his fortune; see K. Sarah-Jane
Murray, ‘‘The Ring and the Sword: Reading Marie de France’s Yonec in Light of the Vie de Saint
Alexis,’’ Romance Quarterly 53 (2006): 29. From the outset, we are told that he locks his wife up,
prevents her from seeing friends or family (lines 43– 44), and forbids her from going to church
(lines 79–80). For all of these reasons, the narrator exclaims: ‘‘Grand pechié fist qui la dona’’
(A great sin was committed by the person who gave her to him) (line 28). I conclude that the
vieillard ’s purely practical union to the heroine of Yonec does not constitute a truly Christian
marriage (and, indeed, it is eventually superseded by her remarriage to the hawk-knight). On
Guigemar, see John Brumlike, ‘‘The Lyric Malmariée : Marie’s Subtext in Guigemar,’’ Romance
Quarterly 43 (1996): 67–81.

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 5

cil esteit en la cuntree) (lines 49–50), probably because he had begun to

question his wife’s fidelity.10 In this way, the female protagonist of Laüstic
shares much in common with the selfish mother of Fresne, who jeopardizes
the life of one of her daughters solely to safeguard her own reputation.
The female protagonist also resembles that of Equitan, who abandons her
husband for a self-serving affair with the local king.11 We are dealing with a
selfish and lustful form of love, which consumes Marie’s characters and
leads them to hurt those around them and, ultimately, themselves.12
Everything about the situation in Laüstic urges the reader to recognize
the frivolity of the affair. We have seen that Marie goes out of her way to
describe just how alike the knight and the husband are. The wife essentially
falls in love with the same man all over again. Her feelings are presented as
superficial; she loves the knight ‘‘both for the good she had heard about
him and because he lived close by’’ (Tant pur le bien quë ele oı̈, / Tant pur
ceo qu’il iert pres de li) (lines 27–28). It is a liaison of convenience. In addi-
tion, there is a witty and fabliau-esque sense of humor underlying the whole
passage. The lady’s love for the neighboring knight effectively and face-
tiously mocks and perverts the Gospel commandment to ‘‘love thy neighbor’’
(Matt. 22:39).13 Through all of these details, Marie confronts her audience
and readership with a story that raises a moral issue. One can imagine that,
during an oral recitation of Laüstic at court, some ladies may have felt un-
comfortable at Marie’s implicit condemnation of frivolous and self-centered
love affairs in this story, just as others would surely have been able to identify
with the plight of the pitiful malmariée in Yonec.
One might, of course, object that the lady’s relationship with her neigh-
bor is harmless. The two never have sex, nor can they ever find time to be
alone together. At most, they exchange words and—in a rather comic and
ridiculous fashion—gifts from each side of the wall separating their homes.

10. For a detailed discussion of the meaning of these lines, see Glyn S. Burgess, ‘‘On the
Interpretation of Laüstic, Line 50,’’ French Studies 42 (1992): 10–12. Furthermore, the lady is
hardly guarded like the heroines of Yonec or Guigemar : each night she manages to rise and
speak with her lover from the window.
11. Marie explicitly refers to the moral dimension of Equitan near the end of the lai, when
she explains, ‘‘Ki bien voldreit raisun entendre, / ici purreit ensample prendre: / tels pur-
chace le mal d’altrui, dunt tuz li mals revert sur lui’’ (Anyone willing to listen to reason could
profit from this example [in the sense of Lat. examplum, a cautionary tale]: evil can easily re-
bound on anyone who seeks another’s misfortune) (lines 313–16).
12. One might think here of the form of eros portrayed in the mid-twelfth-century lai of Nar-
cissus, prior to the transformation of the lovers. See K. Sarah Jane Murray, From Plato to Lancelot:
A Preface to Chrétien de Troyes (Syracuse University Press, 2008), 48–83.
13. We can also see that the lovers’ behavior is not only contrary to the second greatest
‘‘commandment in the Law’’ but stands against the ‘‘first and greatest commandment’’ to ‘‘love
the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind’’ (Matt.
22:36–38).

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6 MODERN PHILOLOGY

For this reason, Emmanuel Mickel concludes that ‘‘Laüstic is a peculiar

lai. . . . The two lovers seem to derive their pleasure solely from seeing one
another and never make an effort to have a physical relationship: ‘Delit
aveient al veer, / Quant plus ne poeient aver’ (lines 77–78).’’14 The empha-
sis Marie places on sight (veer) shifts us into an Ovidian context, in which
the eyes are the seat of desire.15 This classical influence creates a tension
with the Christian backdrop of the lai, for within such a context, the em-
phasis on sight also calls to mind that the lack of physical intercourse does
not reduce the gravity of the lovers’ sin.16 Thus, if the normative ethics back-
grounding Marie’s construction of the action in her lai is biblical, the narra-
tive texture is polychrome.
Kristine Brightenback, Michelle Freeman, and Joan Tasker Grimbert
rightly note that the setting for the lovers’ meetings recalls Ovid’s tale of
Pyramus and Thisbe in the Metamorphoses, as well as the anonymous mid-
twelfth-century Old French lai of Piramus et Tisbé.17 Marie’s protagonists
meet at night, with a wall separating them:
Preceines furent lur maisuns
E lur sales e lur dunguns.
N’i aveit bare ne devise
Fors un haut mur de piere bise.

14. Emmanuel Mickel, ‘‘A Reconsideration of the Lais of Marie de France,’’ Speculum 46
(1971): 55.
15. Ovid’s influence on Marie de France is well attested. See, for example, Kristine Bright-
enback, ‘‘The Metamorphoses and Narrative Conjointure in ‘Deus amanz,’ ‘Yonec,’ and ‘Le laüs-
tic,’’’ Romanic Review 72 (1981): 1–12; June Hall McCash, ‘‘Philomena’s Window: Issues of
Intertextuality and Influence in Works of Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes,’’ in ‘‘De
sens rassis’’: Essays in Honor of Rupert T. Pickens, ed. Keith Busby, Bernard Guidot, and Logan
E. Whalen (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 415–30; Robert R. Edwards, ‘‘Marie de France and Le
livre Ovide,’’ Mediaevalia 26 (2005): 57–81; and Sylvia Huot, ‘‘Troubadour Lyric and Old
French Narrative,’’ in The Troubadours: An Introduction, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999), 262–78.
16. From the point of view of Christian ethics, Marie’s lovers are adulterous whether or not
they consummate the affair: ‘‘Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt
not commit adultery; But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her
hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. . . . The light of the body is the eye: if
therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy
whole body shall be full of darkness’’ (Matt. 5:27–28, 6:22–23). This passage from the Sermon
on the Mount is typically read, by biblical commentators, as a commentary (or a ‘‘gloss,’’ to bor-
row Marie’s wording) on the Old Testament commandment prohibiting adultery. It is inter-
esting to note that, in Laüstic, Marie follows basically the same structure of commentary. First,
she translates, as we have seen, the commandment from the Old Testament (‘‘la femme sun
veisin ama’’). Then, she comments on it by insisting on the importance of sight (veer ) for the
lovers’ relationship. The code of ethics she invokes in Laüstic is carefully predicated on a close
reading of both the Old and New Testaments.
17. See Brightenback, ‘‘Metamorphoses,’’ 3; Michelle A. Freeman, ‘‘Marie de France and the
Poetics of Silence,’’ PMLA (1984): 869; and Joan Tasker Grimbert, ‘‘Audience Expectations.’’

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 7

Des chambres u la dame jut,

Quant a la fenestre s’estut,
Poeit parler a sun ami
De l’autre part e il a li,
E lur aveirs entrechangier
E par geter e par lancier.
(Lines 35–44)
[Their houses, halls, and keeps were close by each other, and there was no
barrier or division, apart from a high wall of dark-hued stone. When she stood
at her bedroom window, the lady could talk to her beloved in the other house
and he to her, and they could toss gifts to each other.]

I believe such an appropriation of Ovidian materials is highly ironic. In both

the Metamorphoses and Piramus et Tisbé, the protagonists are cruelly kept
apart by their families, who refuse to consent to the two youths marrying.
This is a great source of suffering for both Pyramus and Thisbe. The lovers
in Laüstic, however, enjoy and profit from their assumed roles; they are
remarkably carefree and take much delight in seeing each other. Marie’s lai
subverts the function of the wall, which prevented the Ovidian youths from
legitimately marrying and consummating their love. In Laüstic, it has be-
come the only barrier preventing Marie’s protagonists from consummating
their illegitimate affair (lines 77–78). In this way, the wall perpetuates the
love affair by ensuring that the lovers cannot proceed beyond the circum-
stances dictated by the amor de lohn (love from afar) celebrated in the lyric
poetry of the troubadours. Marie further reinforces this connection to lyric
poetry by describing a beautiful summer scene—a locus amœnus, or ‘‘pleasant
place,’’ conducive to love, where birds sing and flowers bloom.18 And yet,
the reference to Ovid’s Liebestod already inscribes the whole passage under a
shadow of death and suffering.
The lady’s questionable behavior causes her husband to become angry:
‘‘But so frequently did she stand there [at the window] and so frequently
leave the bed that her husband became angry and asked her repeatedly
why she got up and where she went’’ (Tant i estut, tant i leva / Que ses sires
s’en curuça / E meintefeiz li demanda / Pur quei levot e u ala) (lines 79–
82). She responds to him by lying19—thereby transgressing the ninth com-

18. ‘‘The copses and meadows were green and the gardens in full bloom. On the flower-
tops the birds sang joyfully and sweetly. If love is on anyone’s mind, no wonder he turns his
attention towards it’’ (lines 59–64).
19. Bloch notes that the nightingale ‘‘is nothing more than the sign of a ruse or lie told to
calm the jealous husband’s suspicion’’ (Anonymous Marie de France, 73). In ‘‘Oiseaux, ombre,
désir: Écrire dans les Lais de Marie de France,’’ Modern Language Notes 120 (2005): 807–24,
Denyse Delcourt claims that the lady’s words to her husband are not a lie, but, rather, simply
‘‘obscure,’’ while Michelle Freeman reads them as a ‘‘metaphor’’ (‘‘Poetics of Silence,’’ 868).
Nonetheless, the lady’s effectively deceives her husband (to borrow from Peter Abelard’s doc-

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8 MODERN PHILOLOGY

mandment (Exod. 20:16)—and blames the delightful song of the nightin-

gale for her sleeplessness (lines 83–90).20 In so doing, the lady appropri-
ates the language of Provençal lyric poetry, which frequently associates the
nightingale with love. Thomas Shippey observes that the association of the
lady’s wakefulness with the nightingale’s song closely parallels a passage
from Bernard de Ventadorn’s song no. 33: ‘‘For the sweet song that the
nightingale makes at night when I am asleep, I wake with joy, all confused,
troubled, and pensive in love.’’21 But this is not all that the nightingale sig-
nifies in Marie’s story. The husband’s anger, revealed precisely at the strate-
gic midpoint of the lai (line 80), intensifies. Filled with wrath (ire) and spite
(maltalent), he devises a plan to ensnare the bird (lines 91–94). While some
readers may feel inclined not to blame the wronged husband for his reac-
tion, Marie’s emphasis on the theme of wrath—one of the seven cardinal
sins—points once again to the ethical and didactic nature of her story.
(The Sermon on the Mount, for example, exhorts Christians to remember
that ‘‘whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of judgment’’
[Matt. 5:22].)22 The consequences of wrath are further emphasized in the
text by yet another layer of Ovidian intertext: by surrounding her nightin-

trine of intentionality, it is hard to imagine that her intentions are pure). Furthermore, a
lengthy passage added by the author of Renart le Contrefait (fol. 187c), composed by a clerc of
Troyes, supports this reading, for the author of this later text makes the lady’s lie in Laüstic
even more explicit (Busby, ‘‘Je fout savoir,’’ 595).
20. Marie dramatizes the scene through the use of oratio recta, as William S. Woods notes:
‘‘Marie uses direct conversation only three times (lines 83–90, 105–110, and 126–134). The
first is the wife’s explanation of her sleeplessness and the explanation introduces the symbol.
The second quotation is the ironic joy of the husband at his capture of the bird. The final
example is the wife’s monologue about the death of the nightingale and the effect on the
lover. It is of interest that the bird is the subject of the only direct discourse in the poem. Marie
uses conversation to dramatize and emphasize the importance of the nightingale symbol’’
(‘‘Marie de France’s Laüstic,’’ Romance Notes 12 [1970]: 207).
21. Thomas Alan Shippey, ‘‘Listening to the Nightingale,’’ Comparative Literature 22
(1970): 50, cited in Grimbert, ‘‘Audience Expectations.’’ Shippey provides a comprehensive
overview of the nightingale’s presence in the western canon, beginning with Homer. On this
topic, see also Wendy Pfeffer, Change of Philomel: The Nightingale in Medieval Literature (New
York: Lang, 1985), which traces the appearance of the nightingale in secular and profane me-
dieval literature (both Latin and vernacular); Vicki Mistacco, ‘‘The Metamorphosis of Philo-
mel,’’ in Écriture courante: Critical Perspectives on French and Francophone Women in Honor of Anna-
belle M. Rea; Selected Essays from Women in French International Conference 2004, special issue,
Women in French Studies, ed. Mary Rice-Defosse and Cathy Yandell (Los Angeles: Women in
French, 2005), 205–18, esp. 206–8; and Beretta Margherita Spampinatto, ‘‘L’usignolo nello
scrigno: Poesia come remembrance nei Lais di Maria di Francia,’’ in Filologia romanza e cultura
medievale: Studi in onore di Elio Melli, ed. Andrea Fassò, Luciano Formisano, and Mario Mancini,
2 vols. (Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso, 1998), 2:753–62.
22. This passage occurs immediately after Christ’s reaffirmation of the sixth command-
ment: ‘‘Thou shalt not kill’’ (Exod. 20:13).

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 9

gale with images of lust, violence, ‘‘horror, and unnatural behavior,’’ Marie
calls to mind the story of Philomela in book 6 of the Metamorphoses.23
The profound transformation Philomela undergoes in Ovid’s story prior
to her physical metamorphosis into a bird furnishes an important key to
understanding Marie’s lai. At the outset, Philomela is an innocent victim
who solicits the reader’s sympathy. Her sister’s husband, Tereus, brutally
rapes and mutilates her. By the end of the episode, however, our compas-
sion turns to horror as we witness Philomela and her sister Procne conspir-
ing to kill Procne and Tereus’s son in the most cruel and inhumane way
imaginable: they chop Itys into small pieces, cook him, and serve him up for
dinner to his father.24 Philomela is filled with rage and thirst for revenge;
her soul is so tormented by these passions that the reader hardly recognizes
the innocent young woman from the beginning of Ovid’s story. Interest-
ingly, the husband in Marie’s lai undergoes a dramatic and parallel transfor-
mation when his wife attempts to conceal her courtly affair. We have seen
how, at the beginning of her story, Marie stresses the husband’s good na-
ture (lines 11–12). But, as Robert Cottrell has noted, ‘‘through the trapping
and killing of the nightingale . . . the jealous husband takes form; he be-
comes evil and brutality incarnate.’’25 In other words, the lady’s deceitful
behavior changes her husband. Once an innocent victim, he now echoes
Philomela’s barbaric actions in the Metamorphoses, as he brutally murders
the nightingale. On a metaphorical level, he, too, is a Philomela-like laüstic,
metamorphosed by his anger into something inhuman. This metaphor fur-

23. Shippey, ‘‘Listening to the Nightingale,’’ 47. On the theme of violence in the Lais, see
Judith R. Rothschild, ‘‘The Brutish World of Marie de France: Death and Violence in the Lais,’’
Cygne 3 (2005): 23–34. A mid-twelfth-century translation of Ovid’s story into Old French,
known as Philomela, has survived and has generally been attributed to Chrétien de Troyes. Like
the lais of Narcisse and Piramus et Tisbé, the Old French Philomela was later included in the
fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé.
24. Here is Ovid’s account of Itys’s murder in Metamorphoses 6.639–46: ‘‘Et iam sua fata
videntem / et ‘mater! mater!’ clamantem et colla petentem / ense ferit Procne, lateri qua pec-
tus adhaeret, / nec vultum vertit. satis illi ad fata vel unum / vulnus erat: iugulum ferro Philo-
mela resolvit, / vivaque adhuc animaeque aliquid retinentia membra / dilaniant. pars inde
cavis exsultat aenis, / pars veribus stridunt; manant penetralia tabo’’ (And, when they reached
a remote part of the great house, while the boy stretched out pleading hands as he saw his fate,
and screamed, ‘‘Mother! mother!’’ and sought to throw his arms around her neck, Procne
smote him with a knife between breast and side—and with no change of face. This one stroke
sufficed to slay the lad; but Philomela cut the throat also, and they cut up the body still warm
and quivering with life. Part bubbles in brazen kettles, part sputters on spits; while the whole
room drips with gore) (Metamorphoses, Books 1–8, trans. Frank Justus Miller, rev. G. P. Goold,
Loeb Classical Library 42 [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999], hereafter cited
parenthetically as Met.).
25. Cottrell, ‘‘Le lai du laustic,’’ 502.

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10 MODERN PHILOLOGY

ther extends to the wife: by selfishly singling out the nightingale and sealing
its fate (albeit inadvertently), her behavior parallels the decision of Philo-
mela and Procne, who choose Itys, an innocent and unsuspecting child, for
their vengeful sacrifice.26
Marie’s description of the laüstic ’s death further supports this interpreta-
tion. When his servants successfully trap the bird, the husband takes it to his
wife’s chambers. She asks for the laüstic, but he kills it ‘‘out of spite, breaking
its neck wickedly with his two hands’’ (Et il l’ocist par engresté. / Le col li
rumpt a ses deus meins; / De ceo fist il que trop vileins) (lines 114–16).
Then, Marie adds, ‘‘he threw the body at the lady, so that the front of her
tunic was bespattered with blood, just on her breast’’ (Sur la dame le cors
geta, / Se que sun chainse ensanglanta / Un poi desur le piz devant) (lines
117–19). Judith Rotschild draws attention to Marie’s choice of the verb
ensanglanter, used only once in the Lais. The sheer visual force of this word
highlights the brutality of the husband’s act.27 Clearly motivated, like Philo-
mela, by sentiments of rage and revenge, he exemplifies here the old saying
‘‘an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,’’ overturned in Matthew 5:38, a
passage that implores human beings to ‘‘turn the other cheek’’ to their ene-
mies. The blood stain on the lady’s breast is also revealing. It may be tempt-
ing to gloss the red mark, in close proximity to the lady’s white skin, as a sym-
bol of her great love for the neighboring knight, which ‘‘emblematize[s]
her suffering’’ and points to her broken heart.28 But the rich image also sug-
gests something more. The location of the stain, ‘‘just on [the lady’s] breast’’
(line 119), recalls the red marks of shame Philomela and Procne bear on
their own chests after their metamorphosis into birds: ‘‘neque adhuc de pec-
tore caedis / excessere notae, signataque sanguine pluma est’’ (And even
now, their breasts have not lost the marks of their murderous deed, their
feathers are stained with blood) (Met. 6.669–70). The red stain, akin to a scar-
let letter, marks the lady and identifies her sinfulness. She is both adulteress
and participant in the laüstic ’s murder. Meanwhile, as June Hall McCash
points out, Marie’s husband, in throwing the nightingale, is no more sympa-
thetic to us than Philomela herself, who ‘‘springs forward and hurls the gory
head of Itys straight into his father’s face’’ (prosiluit Itysoque caput Philo-
mela cruentum misit in ora patris) (Met. 6.658–59).29

26. Interestingly, the Philomela story (both in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and in Chrétien de
Troyes’s twelfth-century translation) centers around Procne’s ill-fated marriage to Tereus.
Thus, whereas Marie remains silent about the nature of her female protagonist’s marriage, in
Ovid, Procne is clearly a malmariée.
27. Rotschild, ‘‘Brutish World,’’ 33 n. 26.
28. Shippey, ‘‘Listening to the Nightingale,’’ 52.
29. McCash, ‘‘Philomena’s Window,’’ 426–27.

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 11

Ovid’s story underlines how violence breeds violence, and how the pas-
sions, when unleashed, wreak havoc on the human soul.30 Robert T. Cargo
concludes that ‘‘it leaves us with a terrible sense of destructive power of hate
and revenge, a brute force . . . which only the gods can partially mitigate.’’31
From a twelfth-century perspective, we might add, Tereus, Procne, and Phi-
lomela are all morally responsible in some way for Itys’s death. Each of them
is guilty of intentio mala.32 Similarly, in Laüstic, everyone incurs blame for the
death of the nightingale, for although the jealous husband traps the bird
and wrings its neck, its fate is set in motion by the actions of the wife and
her lover. The key difference between the lai and the Metamorphoses is that
Marie’s analogue of Philomela’s story, composed for a medieval and Chris-
tian audience, is filtered through the omnipresent biblical narrative. It strik-
ingly illustrates how the passions wreak havoc on the human soul or, in the
words of James, how ‘‘when concupiscence hath conceived, it bringeth forth
sin. But sin, when it is completed, begetteth death’’ ( James 1:14–15).33 Only
the bird, which Burgess rightly identifies as the ‘‘central image’’ of the lai,
remains—in sharp contrast to Ovid’s account—entirely innocent.34
What purpose, then, does the little bird serve in this tale? Marie’s deci-
sion to call her nightingale by the Breton word, laüstic, instead of the Old
French rossignol, has puzzled scholars. Lucien Foulet believed that the
Breton term merely added an exotic dimension to Marie’s text, which, he

30. In the Summa theologica, a passage Aquinas cites from the book of Daniel (13:56) about
the origin of sin provides an interesting perspective on reading Marie’s Laüstic : ‘‘It is written:
‘Lust hath perverted thy heart’’’ (Summa theologica, first part of the second part, question 77, ar-
ticle 1, in Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas, vol. 1, trans. and ed. Anton C. Pegis [Indianapo-
lis: Hackett, 1995]). It is hardly surprising, then, that Boccaccio, in telling his version of the
nightingale’s fate in the Decameron 5.4, emphasizes the licentious nature of the tale.
31. Robert T. Cargo, ‘‘Marie de France’s Le laustic and Ovid’s Metamorphoses,’’ Comparative
Literature 18 (1966): 166.
32. A person is guilty of intentio mala once he has consented to sin. For a twelfth-century
Christian reader, Ovid’s Tereus, Philomela, and Procne would all fall into this category. On
intentio mala see J. C. Payen, Le motif du repentir dans la littérature française médiévale (des origines à
1230) (Geneva: Droz, 1967), esp. 54 –75.
33. This does not mean that Marie’s Laüstic is essentially anti-Ovidian as McCash (‘‘Philo-
mena’s Window’’) suggests. Instead, Marie takes great care to gloss, or shed light on, her Ovid-
ian source, reinventing it for her twelfth-century audience. To borrow an analogy from the fa-
mous twelfth-century teacher Bernard of Chartres (see John of Salisbury, Metalogicon 1.24):
like any good glossator or commentator, Marie ‘‘sees further’’ than her source, while firmly
standing on Ovid’s gigantesque shoulders. This serves, yet again, as an illustration that Marie’s
Lais, while possessing undeniably Celtic characteristics, are also firmly rooted within the classi-
cal ‘‘matter of Rome,’’ and exemplify the humanistic practices of the Renaissance of the
twelfth century. One of Marie’s greatest strengths as an author lies, no doubt, in her ability to
fuse the classical and Celtic traditions, as did her contemporary, Chrétien de Troyes.
34. Burgess, ‘‘Symbolism,’’ 258; see also Brightenback, ‘‘Metamorphoses,’’ 4.

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12 MODERN PHILOLOGY

suggested, would have pleased her audience.35 Robert Cottrell takes the
analysis further, suggesting that by adopting a foreign word, Marie gives
the nightingale ‘‘a unique reality, an individuality and singularity, which
the common generic word, rossignol, could not have suggested. It is as if the
nightingale’s proper name were Laüstic.’’36
Let us not forget that Marie situates most of her intrigue during the sum-
mer months (line 58), rather than the spring, which is traditionally asso-
ciated with love in the Provençal corpus. Furthermore, the Breton word
laüstic derives from Old Breton aostig (recorded in the Catholicon of 1499 as
eaustic > Modern Breton eostig) and is closely related to Cornish eost (< Lat.
AUGUSTUS), signifying the ‘‘month of August’’ and the ‘‘harvest.’’ Marie’s laüs-
tic, then, is essentially the ‘‘little bird of the harvest.’’37 It is a symbol of fertil-
ity and duty, as the following passage from the Aberdeen Bestiary, written and
illustrated in England around 1200, clearly suggests:
Lucinia avis inde nomen sumpsit quia cantu suo / significare solet surgentis ex /
ortum diei quasi lucenia. / Est enim pervigil custos cum / ova quodam sinu
corporis et / gremio fovet, insompnem / longe[i] noctis laborem cantile / ne
suavitate solatur. Ut mihi vi / detur, hec summa eius est inten / tio quo possit
non minus dul / cioribus modulis quam fotu corporis animare fetus ovaque
fo / vere. Hanc imitata tenuis illa mulier sed pudica, incussum / mole lapidem
brachio trahens ut possit alimentum panis / suis parvulis non deesse nocturno
cantu mestum pauperta / tis mulcet affectum, et quamvis suavitatem lucinie
non possit / imitari, imitatur tamen eum sedulitate pietatis.
[The nightingale is so called because it signals with its song the dawn of the new
day; a light-bringer, lucenia, so to speak. It is an ever-watchful sentinel, warming
its eggs in a hollow of its body, relieving the sleepless effort of the long night with
the sweetness of its song. It seems to me that the main aim of the bird is to hatch
its eggs and give life to its young with sweet music no less than with the warmth
of its body. The poor but modest mother, her arm dragging the millstone
around, that her children may not lack bread, imitates the nightingale, easing
the misery of her poverty with a night-time song, and although she cannot
imitate the sweetness of the bird, she matches it in her devotion to duty.]38

35. Lucien Foulet, ‘‘Marie de France et les lais bretons,’’ Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie
29 (1905): 318.
36. Cottrell, ‘‘Le lai du laustic,’’ 500.
37. I am grateful to Matthieu Boyd (Harvard University, Department of Celtic Languages
and Literatures) for help with this etymology. For two surviving Breton renditions of Laüstic
by Théodore de La Villemarqué and Auguste Brisieux, see Anxo Fernández Ocampo, ‘‘Tra-
ductions et survivances du Laüstic au dix-neuvième siècle,’’ Cygne 6 (2000): 44–53.
38. Aberdeen Bestiary, Aberdeen University Library MS 24, fols. 52v–53r; English translation
from the Aberdeen Bestiary Project, http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/. The Aberdeen Bestiary
thus affords us a discussion of the nightingale roughly contemporary (and geographically
close) to Marie de France.

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 13

While the Aberdeen Bestiary highlights the typical association of the nightin-
gale with dawn,39 it also insists on the bird’s fertility and motherly instincts.
It is a ‘‘sentinel’’ whose purpose is to protect its eggs; by ‘‘warming’’ them, it
brings life and nurtures its young. The illumination on folio 52v further
emphasizes these themes. Here, the ‘‘poor . . . mother’’ sits on her eggs,
guarding the nest and waiting for her chicks to hatch. Seen in this light,
Marie’s dutiful nightingale, which never explicitly sings in the story40 (and
through no fault of its own falls prey to the husband’s wrath and his wife’s
unmitigated desire), highlights once again the selfishness and destructive-
ness of the human protagonists.41
The ending of the lai stresses further the self-centered and self-serving
nature of the lady’s relationship with the lover. When she takes the nightin-
gale’s body and weeps, her tears are not shed out of repentance or out of
sympathy for the dead bird; nor, even, for the pain she has caused her hus-
band or her lover. She focuses solely on her own grief: ‘‘The lady took the
tiny corpse, wept profusely and cursed those who had betrayed the nightin-
gale by constructing the traps and the snares, for they had taken so much
joy from her. ‘Alas,’ she said, ‘misfortune is upon me. Never again can I get
up at night or go to stand at the window where I used to see my beloved’’’
(La dame prent le cors petit; / Durement plure e si maudit / Ceus ki le laüs-
tic traı̈rent / E les engines e laçuns firent, / Kar mut li unt toleit grant hait.
/ ‘Lasse,’ fet ele, ‘mal m’estait! / Ne purrai mes la nuit lever / Ne aler a la
fenestre ester, / U jeo suil mun ami veer) (lines 12–29). In her self-pity, she
blames others; she does not realize that she, too, set the ‘‘trap and snare’’ for
the bird.42 And, when she ultimately sends the nightingale’s body to her

39. This is the focus of Isidore of Seville’s description: ‘‘The nightingale (luscinia) is a bird
that took its name because it is accustomed to indicate by its song the onset of the rising sun,
as if its name were lucinia (cf. lux ; gen. lucis, ‘light, sun’). This same bird is also the acredula,
concerning which Cicero says in his Prognostics (fr. 6): ‘And the acredula performs her morning
songs’’’ (The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. and ed. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A.
Beach, and Oliver Berghof [Cambridge University Press, 2006], 12.7.37).
40. See Freeman, ‘‘Poetics of Silence,’’ 867.
41. One might even suggest that, given the connection of the bird to fertility and mother-
hood, the death of the laüstic stands in stark opposition to the lady’s necessarily barren liaison
with the neighboring knight, which condemns the bird and prevents it from returning to its
young. Similarly, the affair undermines the lady’s marriage and the natural purpose it is in-
tended to serve: to produce children (Gen. 9:1).
42. Her selfishness—a selfishness embodied by all of the characters in this story—stands in
stark opposition to the generosity of the heroines of Le Fresne and Eliduc, who emblematize the
idea of sacrificial love. (On the idea of sacrificial love in Eliduc, see Brewster E. Fitz, ‘‘The Storm
Episode and the Weasel Episode: Sacrificial Casuistry in Marie de France’s Eliduc,’’ Modern Lan-
guage Notes 89 [1974]: 542–49.) In Laüstic, Marie portrays everything that truly selfless Chris-
tian love, or charity (caritas), is not. To situate this idea within a theological context, the love
portrayed in Laüstic exists in its most rudimentary form as a ‘‘love of self ’’ in the ‘‘first degree’’
(see On Loving God, chap. 15, by the twelfth-century theologian Bernard of Clairvaux).

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14 MODERN PHILOLOGY

lover, it is not out of a pressing concern for his needs. She fears, rather, that
he will consider her to be fainthearted (Il quidera ke jeo me feigne) (line
131) and that her reputation as a devoted lover will be put into question.43
The lover’s reaction to the lady’s message is the most ambiguous pas-
sage in the story. After listening carefully to the messenger upon receiving
the dead body (lines 143–44), the knight orders that a shrine be con-
structed for the martyred bird. Burgess interprets this as a symbol of the
couple’s undying affection, adding that it is equally possible that the death
of the nightingale stresses ‘‘the fact that the love is dead, that the lady’s
heart was broken when the bird was killed.’’44 Consistent with McCash’s
reading, Adrian Tudor suggests that the knight keeps the memory of his
lady close to him at all times like a precious relic. Cottrell has even sug-
gested that the knight’s behavior signals the metamorphosis of his love
from a lustful, earthly plane to a more spiritual dimension: he continues to
love the lady, despite the fact that they never can be together in this life.45
However, the text also authorizes a much less benevolent reading. In send-
ing him the dead bird, the lady (who, we have seen, focuses on her own
need to tell the knight that their affair is over) condemns him to love her
always. ‘‘What is being emphasized here,’’ notes Mickel, ‘‘is that the lover
carries around with him always the agonizing memory of his lost love, and
that never again would his suffering be assuaged by the sight of his loved
one.’’46 In this way, the lady selfishly forces her lover to become a sort of
foolish Tristan figure, who carries the body of the laüstic around with him
forever and willingly submits himself to a perverted form of ‘‘love’’ that can
never be fruitful. Like Dante’s Paolo and Francesca in canto 5 of Divina com-
media, Marie’s lovers are bound together in an eternal yet unproductive rela-

43. The wrapping of the laüstic ’s body in rich cloth, subsequently sent as a message to the
lover, recalls once again the story of Philomela in the Metamorphoses. See McCash, ‘‘Philo-
mena’s Window’’; Cargo, ‘‘Marie de France’s Le laüstic’’; Brightenback, ‘‘Metamorphoses’’; Anna
Airò, ‘‘Tessitrici di parole,’’ in Il racconto nel medioevo romanzo: Atti del convegno, Bologna, 23–24
ottobre 2000, con altri contributi di filologia romanza, Quaderni di filologia romanza della Facoltà
di lettere e filosofia dell’Università di Bologna 15 (Bologna: Patron, 2002), 181–95; and Gilles
Eckard, ‘‘‘Li oiseaus dit en sun latin’: Chant et langage des oiseaux dans trois nouvelles cour-
toises du Moyen Âge français,’’ Critica del Testo 2 (1999): 677–93.
44. Burgess, ‘‘Symbolism,’’ 259–60.
45. McCash, ‘‘Philomena’s Window,’’ 423; Adrian Tudor, ‘‘The Religious Symbolism of the
Reliquary of Love in ‘Laüstic,’’’ French Studies Bulletin 46 (1993): 1–3; Cottrell, ‘‘Le lai du laus-
tic,’’ 504– 5.
46. Mickel, ‘‘Reconsideration,’’ 56. On the functioning of the tomb as a repository of grief
and memory, see Leslie A. Callahan, ‘‘‘En remembrance e en memoire’: Grief, Memory and
Memorialization in the Lais of Marie de France,’’ Romance Notes 40 (1999–2000): 259–70. In
emphasizing the link to the Occitan lyric, especially the razo, Jean-Michel Caluwé observes that,
once the nightingale is dead, the characters fully understand that their love now survives only as
récit (‘‘Du chant du rossignol au Laöstic de Marie de France: Sources et fiction dans le lai,’’ in
Chant et enchantement au Moyen Âge [Toulouse: Éditions Universitaires du Sud, 1997], 171–88).

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 K. Sarah-Jane Murray Marie de France, Ethicist 15

tionship. If we may entertain such an interpretation, then the enshrined

laüstic, which the knight prizes above all things, becomes a sort of false
idol and, as C. S. Lewis puts it, ‘‘love, having become a god, becomes a
demon.’’47 This, in turn, serves as an effective warning to readers or auditors
of Laüstic : the knight covets the bird’s body much as Marie’s contemporary
audience may be tempted to elevate and idolize relationships such as the
one presented in this lai.
As we turn away from Marie’s story, the lady’s marriage is ruined; we
anticipate that she will never see her lover again; and the close friendship
and community stability afforded by the good-neighbor love of the two
knights, once such good friends, has been fractured to the great cost of the
whole cuntree. This cannot be construed as a happy ending. In fact, to inter-
pret this lai as a celebration (or vindication) of fin’amors is, I think, to miss
Marie’s point. In Laüstic, she draws our attention to the dangers and limita-
tions of lustful desire, to the frivolity of the morally dubious paradigm of
fin’amors, and thus, to its dangers for medieval society. Her profound irony
thus recalls the position that Andreas Capellanus, writing at the court of
Marie de Champagne, takes vis-à-vis cupiditas in the final book of the De
amore.
It is important, though, not to confuse the ethical questions Marie de
France raises in this story with an outright and unconditional condemna-
tion of extramarital love in general in the Lais. Clearly, this is not the case.
Many of Marie’s poems, especially Yonec and Guigemar, critique the unchari-
table and unchristian marriages in which the female protagonists are
trapped, ultimately vindicating the lovers and sanctioning the extramarital
affair. Each one of Marie’s lais deals with a specific set of circumstances and
motivations, so that the collection as a whole presents a set of nuanced and
rich reflections on the nature(s) of love. I have suggested that the key to
understanding Laüstic lies in the selfish, nature of all the lovers’ relation-
ships, which shares more in common with the eros or cupiditas of the Meta-
morphoses (a theme taken back up in Ovide moralisé ) than with a meaningful,
sacrificial, and thus profoundly Christian love (or ‘‘charity’’).48 By pointing
out the limitations of selfish earthly relationships, this lai invites Marie’s ex-
plicitly Christian audience and readership to reconsider their priorities and
to understand that everything undertaken in this world with an eye toward
self-gratification is ultimately doomed to failure.49

47. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, 1960), 56.
48. Marie’s Eliduc, which very appropriately is situated at the end of the Harley Collection,
reflects the progression through the ‘‘degrees of love’’ described by Bernard of Clairvaux in On
Loving God and explores in greater depth the meaning of caritas.
49. Throughout the Lais, it is not the idea of love that is in question so much as the motives
and decisions made by the characters. As Dante puts it in the Purgatorio (canto 18), while the

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16 MODERN PHILOLOGY

Critics have yet to propose a satisfactory account for Marie’s apparently

indiscriminate condemnation or approval of lovers throughout the various
lais attributed to her. I hope the reading presented in this essay, grounded
in an ethical context, will make a productive contribution to the ongoing
debate. Throughout Laüstic, Marie weaves together Christian ethics as well
as Celtic and classical matière to do what she does best, creating a dynamic,
vibrant, and engaging narrative that invites her future readers, provided
they are willing to undertake its study and shed light on its obscurity, to gloss
the letter and ‘‘guard against vice’’ (Ki de vice se vuelt defender) (General
Prologue, line 23). The story of the nightingale is not merely entertaining.
Marie’s use of closely intertwined biblical and Ovidian sources points to an
important moral and ethical framework in the Lais heretofore overlooked
by critics. Like li philosophe (General Prologue, line 17) of ancient days,
Marie de France engages her public in a process of self-examination.50 She
aims not to ‘‘judge’’ her peers but invites her courtly audience to ‘‘see
clearly’’ and to address their own moral shortcomings (see Matt. 7:1–5),
foreshadowing the kind of didactic and moral preoccupations that will
permeate the Fables and, later, the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz. In narrating the
ugly and needless death of the nightingale, Marie questions covetous love
and leads her medieval audience to a better understanding of what it means
to lead a fulfilled, moral, and Christian life in relation to their neighbor, or
socius. She reminds us that, ultimately, the things of this world are transient
and petty compared with those of the next and anticipates the moral of the
Old French Philomela, preserved in the encyclopedic Ovide moralisé (ca.
1310–20): ‘‘he who devotes himself to nothing except to live in pleasure and
to pursue the delights of the shameful and stinking flesh, that delight goes
fleeing away from him more quickly than a nightingale flies’’ (Qui a riens
nulle n’atendoit / Qu’a vivre delitablement / Et a sivre l’aaisement / De la
char honie et puant, / Et li delis li vait fuiant / Plus tost que rousseignos ne
vole) (6.3826–31)51—or, in this case, as quickly as the laüstic dies.

‘‘wax’’ may not be in and of itself bad, the seal with which it is stamped—that is, our motives
and our decisions—determines whether or not the love in question is good or bad.
50. Thus, it is not only in the General Prologue that Marie reveals herself to be, as Leo Spit-
zer (‘‘The Prologue to the ‘Lais’ of Marie de France and Medieval Poetics,’’ Modern Philology 41
[1943]: 96–102) and D. W. Robertson Jr. (‘‘Marie de France, Lais, Prologue, 13–16,’’ Modern
Language Notes 64 [1949]: 336–38) have pointed out, a ‘‘poeta philosophus et theologus’’
(C. A. F. Mahn, Gedichte der Troubadours in provenzalische Sprache [Berlin, 1856], quoted in
Robertson, ‘‘Marie de France,’’ 336).
51. The quotation is from the second volume of C. De Boer’s edition of the Ovide moralisé:
Poème du commencement du quatorzième siècle, 5 vols. (Amsterdam: Müller, 1915–38).

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