Courtly Reciprocity in “Laustic” and “Guigemar” by Marie de France (Part 2)

Wes & Erin continue their discussion of two of Marie de France’s most famous lais—”Laustic” and “Guigemar”—and how their narratives marry the “flesh” of text, art, and symbology, to the “spirit” of the spoken word (via dialogue, oaths and covenants, and authorial commentary), in order, perhaps, to communicate something of the mysterious and dangerous union that is romantic love. Upcoming Episodes: Arthur (1981), Medea (Euripides), A New Leaf (Elaine May). Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Okay, welcome to part two of our discussion of the Lays of Marie de France. Last time in part one, we talked about Laustic or the lay of the nightingale. And today we're going to talk about the lay of Guigemar, or Gugamar, as 0:49 Wes: I thought it was called. 0:51 Erin: No, Guigemar, which is somebody's name. So that's a cruel trick. 0:56 Wes: Gugamar, the caveman knight. He was frozen in a block of ice. I don't know your society. I'm just an ordinary caveman. 1:08 Erin: Well, this knight is a caveman when it comes to one element of. No, that's a terrible transition when it comes to one element element of his knightly duties, which is he doesn't know love. 1:18 Wes: Yeah, I mean, his cavemen are gay, maybe. 1:23 Erin: Oh, is that how you interpret this? 1:25 Wes: Well, no, not necessarily, but of course, I'm sure that that would be the go to interpretation of the average academic, especially one who's using a psychoanalytic paradigm. Oh, you know, it's. But, you know, it's something. It's a little bit suspicious. Right. 1:38 Erin: Just make fun of me, why don't you? Calling me average. 1:40 Wes: And no, you're not the average academic. And I don't. You're not an abuser of the psychoanalytic framework for that, but for Interpretation, but I could be much more accused of that. So, well, do we want to tell the tale real quick? 1:56 Erin: Great. 1:56 Wes: I could do it this time, and I'll just do it at a very, very sketchy level. So this guy doesn't date, never had a girlfriend. Then he meets this deer. No, just kidding. Well, I mean, you're not wrong. She starts out talking about the envy of the singer, which I think we can. 2:16 Erin: Marie de France, not the dear Marie Frost. 2:19 Wes: And so we'll talk a little bit about that little preamble, that cool preamble that she gives. And as always, the Bretons have made a lay of this before she did, before she wrote her poem. So she's going to talk about this night in Arthurian times. Guigemar, who went to the knight, he's a very promising young lad, went to the court of King Arthur. And then I guess once you've trained up, you just get sent on your way. They're like, see ya. Just go wherever. You're a knight now. Wander around. So he went to the Netherlands, where people don't get along very well at that time. So everyone's killing each other. And that's your best prospects for moving up in the knight world, climbing the knight ladder, whatever that is. But interestingly, he had one fault since of love. He took no care, even though women were all over him. Any one of them would have said, yep. He's like, no, it's not for me. Men deemed him a strange man and one fallen into a perilous case. So I took that to be a hint of homosexuality, or at least the danger that other, you know, others interpreting. Whatever the case, or asexual or whatever, just not, you know, not. Not your typical guy. He goes on his adventure, comes back to see his family, comes back on spring break. 3:31 Erin: Sorry, more spring break poems. 3:34 Wes: Yep, more spring break. And wanted to go hunting. And he's pursuing a stag, but he overruns the chase. And this is where you get kind of a cool. If you were making a film of this, it's very cool, surreal kind of scene where he's gone farther than his comrades, I guess, who are chasing the actual stag. And he finds himself alone, at least initially, with a doe who has antlers, which, as far as I know, only happens if there's a hormonal problem. I looked this up and it does happen. But it's like when there's, for some reason, there's a hormonal problem. The doe is secreting testosterone, which is what makes the antlers form so it's an interesting androgynous kind of picture in the doe. 4:17 Erin: I like this idea of a Doe with an overactive thyroid or something. 4:21 Wes: Okay. She's got hormonal problems, which is also why she can speak, which is what she ends up doing. Tries to kill her, and he does grievously wound her, but the arrow also bounces off her hoof somehow. This is like the magic arrow. The arrow. There might have been another someone else firing from the grassy knoll, but somehow he kills the doe and is grievously wounded himself. I was trying to figure out how that happened. The doe kind of curses him and says, I curse you to. Falling in love is basically what it is. Your wound is not going to be healed until you find a woman, and you will both suffer a lot. Now let me die in peace. And he ends up taking this kind of enchanted trip and finds a woman who's being basically held. Another woman who's imprisoned by her husband, held hostage by her much older husband. He has a secret relationship with her for a year and a half before they're found out. 5:23 Erin: And he falls in love with her. Yeah. 5:24 Wes: Sorry. They date casually for a year and a half. Yeah. So they immediately fall in love with each other, and they're found out. And then instead of being killed, he's sent home on the enchanted ship that I may not have mentioned, but that brought him to this ancient city, this location where he met his lady. The critical part of this story is that when they are found out, his lady worries that he will move on without her. You will find another love and I'll be left alone with my thoughts. So she creates a knot in his shirt that only she knows how to untie. And he gives her a clasp to go around her waist. Right. That only can unclasp girdle. So it's almost like this lock in key situation. There's a very Cinderella. There's a big Cinderella component to this story. Right? Cinderfella. They make each other promise. Right? You're not going to get with anyone unless they can untie the knot or undo the clasp. It's really interesting. Wouldn't they just recognize each other? But it's suggestive of the possibility that some other lover might be suitable if they can fulfill that same role. If they know that same trick. So he's sent back on his ship. He returns home, and the lady herself escapes and ends up in the same country. She's taken captive by another knight. And long story short, they end up meeting again. That knight refuses to give her up. And Guigemar goes to war and kills the knight, lays waste to his castle and gets her back, and they live 7:07 Erin: happily ever after in a bigamous relationship because she's still married to the. To the other guy. But I guess that's the fine print. 7:16 Wes: It's eternal courtly love. And, you know, they keep a nice big ancient wall between them and. Get on the parapet. Get on the parapet and the. But it's. Yeah. So I really overestimated my ability to tell that story in a brief. In a story. 7:31 Erin: It's a long story. It has lots of moving parts, literally and figuratively. Yeah. So let's. Let's start with this doe, I suppose. Right? Because I think this is a clear. This is why I wanted to do laustic first, because I have an idea that the doe is the child that predates the. The relationship. Maybe I'm right. 7:50 Wes: Maybe. Interesting. 7:51 Erin: Crazy. This is a back to the future doe. This is. This is. Do you see where I'm going with this? 8:00 Wes: Does the doe try to sleep with anyone, you know? 8:05 Erin: Well, you know, it's a. It's a doe from the future, perhaps, that comes back in time in order for his parents to meet and fall in love. 8:12 Wes: Love, Right. Interesting. 8:14 Erin: Maybe there's nothing to indicate, by the way, that this is a futuristic doe. I'm. I'm just. I'm. 8:19 Wes: Well, the doe does speak, so I think, you know, that's true. No holds are barred here. 8:26 Erin: Yeah, no, but I think, you know, the fact that this is, you know, barring any hormonal problems, the fact that this is a doe that has antlers. Right. Means that it's a combination doe. Right. It. It combines male and female qualities and in that way. Right. It's a kind of symbol of a child who combines a father and mother in itself. Maybe. 8:48 Wes: Yeah. 8:48 Erin: So the death of the doe is sort of the inciting incident. It's the ability for Guigemar to be able to like God and actually love. So there's something about this kind of. Its death communicates something about the necessity also for sacrifice in love, I think. So it teaches him a lesson and draws his blood as a way to. By the way, I read somewhere, I can't remember where now, that the thigh is always a euphemism for the genitals in medieval literature. So when it notes that he's wounded in the thigh, we're actually supposed to think that he's been wounded. 9:18 Wes: The loins. The old loins. 9:20 Erin: Genitally in the loins. Exactly. The death of the hind and the wound it produces in Guigemar opens kind of a reality to him. And I think this is also, you know, this is related maybe to, like, Christian symbolism. I think there are a lot of Eucharistic parallels going on in the story, which we can get into later. But it allows him to kind of enter the realm of love by virtue of recognition of his mortality. Like, I see that as being part of his inability to love at the beginning, that he's too. He's flying too high. He doesn't realize he's going to die. And maybe you need to recognize your own mortality in order to love. I don't know. 9:55 Wes: You're reminding me of. Is it a Grimm's Fairy Tale, the boy who left Home to find out about the shivers. Are you familiar with that? I can't remember the story well enough to retell it, except that he wasn't capable of fear, I think. And he goes on a journey to try to feel fear. It's not unlike a kind of Pinocchio story where someone who's not fully human, someone who's a bit wooden, is trying to flesh themselves out, to become fully human by getting their full range of emotions, amplifying their desire or their emotional life. So in this case. Right, so he, he's not interested in women. So obviously, what are you going to do about that? You go to the doctor and you get shot in the loins. You get an injection in the loins. No, but. So the wound. Yeah, the wound in his thigh is representative of the wound that is desire. He. He's not feeling it until he's given a physical signifier of it. So he needs a woman. Right, to search the wound. What does that mean? I mean, I presume it means it involves healing it. And, you know, it's not stitching it, it's searching it. It's. It's strange. So. So there's a bit of an inversion of the male and female there. Right. So the wound, because the wound is evocative of. Yeah. Female genitalia. And he, in a way, has to be filled. Just as with the. The antler bearing Doe, you get this confusion between roles and ultimately we'll get another representation of copulation. I think in the lock and key situation with their identities. Right. They kind of have to be able to fit each other precisely to get back together. But we'll get in, we'll get into that. 11:38 Erin: Yes. 11:39 Wes: So I don't know, am I joining up with what you were just saying? 11:42 Erin: Definitely, definitely. And I Think there's an interesting equality that happens in the course of the falling in love. Right. Because then they both have both of these lock and key scenarios with which they outfit each other, have a kind of chastity belt quality to. Yeah, I think that there are a lot of elements. You know he's Sleeping Beauty when he is wounded on the bed, right? 12:02 Wes: Yeah, he's Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. 12:05 Erin: Yeah, exactly, exactly. So he's put it repeatedly into a sort of. It seems at the beginning that his spurning of love means that he needs to be filled. He's not putting himself in a situation of potential. He's not allowing himself to get hurt and feel his feelings and to risk something in this way. And then he's repeatedly put into these sort of passive situations where he's Sleeping Beauty or Snow White. Yeah, yeah. I just wanted to say too, that not only does the doe have some of that quality of the nightingale in Laustic, in terms of it being perhaps a symbolic child, that's what I'm advancing here, anyway, but it also bears a message. Right. So there's the physical element that it induces the wound in him, and it is also itself wounded, like the nightingale, but it also bears a message, as the nightingale does. Only this time it's not a message that's been covered. It's been covered in by some kind of human artistry. It's a superhuman, magical, maybe even divine kind of message. So, again, there's a combination of word and spirit or physicality. And if we want to say the message that it speaks is kind of spiritual, of the physical and the spiritual combining here. And I think that if we're going to see Guigemar's maturation as being a need for him to combine other qualities that are foreign to him and integrate them into himself, I think that's a really good symbol for this integration that has to happen on his part personally, in order to become a real boy or whatever kind of Pinocchio parallel we want to make there. 13:38 Wes: Integration of the feminine and the masculine. Is that what you. 13:42 Erin: Feminine? Yeah, I think so, yeah. 13:45 Wes: It's interesting because you're not supposed to kill the doe, right? They're chasing the stag and you kill the stags, but you leave the does alone. But he finds himself in a ambiguous situation. Normally it would be something transgressive, and it still is. Right. He knows it's a doe, and I think you're not supposed to shoot the doe, so he's doing something wrong. 14:05 Erin: It's a doe with a Fawn, too. It's kind of a double. 14:08 Wes: Yes, exactly. So it's. Yep, exactly. 14:11 Erin: Yeah. So he wants to kill this part of himself. He doesn't want to be dependent on a woman or to open himself up to love. He wants to kill this, you know. 14:17 Wes: Yeah, yeah. He's violating a taboo. And I'm thinking also. And this is because of the pernicious influence of psychoanalysis, but, you know, it may represent envy. The thing that might play a role in holding him back from desire for the opposite sex is envy, which theoretically is psychologically universal. We're kind of stuck on one team, as they would say in Seinfeld, and we want to be on both teams. We want to have it all, which is just another way of saying we don't want to be incomplete. We don't want to be one side of the. That lock and key. We want to be the key and a lock unto ourselves. So it is perhaps a good representation of his envy. The doe represents the hermaphroditic entity that he might like to be, and yet he's also trying to kill it. So I don't know. 15:05 Erin: As the doe wounds him with the ricochet, there's again, a consolation in art, I think, right? Because not only does the doe tell him that he is going to suffer more than any. Any other person has suffered, and also his lady will suffer, but that he notes that they will suffer such great things that not a lover beneath the sun, or lovers who are dead, or lovers who yet shall have their day but shall marvel at the tale. So the doe offers him immortality in art, Again in art, as the result of this love. You know, this child analogy isn't perfect, but, you know, there's this idea that maybe if you fall in love, you are. I think I'm advancing this idea, which isn't fully formed, that Guigemar also doesn't want to subject himself to love because he doesn't want to be wounded, perhaps. And there's something here about a desiring immortality or maybe staying in this premarital state forever and thereby sort of advancing one's having Peter Pan syndrome, right? Getting to be a young bachelor guy forever is perhaps appealing to him. Him. And that perhaps entering into a love relationship means subjecting oneself sort of admitting that one is subject to the forces of time and decay. And the consolation for that, perhaps, is children, right? That you live on through your children. And so here there's no mention of a child, but there is a mention of the tail that will live on after him, a sort of Immortality, not via children, but via art. 16:36 Wes: The object of art becomes the complete thing, or at least a signifier of that. 16:41 Erin: Yes, yeah. And again, we have, like the nightingale in Laustic, we have the art that lives on after the love relationship has died or after the characters have died. So the poem itself becoming a kind of consolation prize for what the people in it have suffered, which is an interesting sort of meta idea. 16:59 Wes: The art object combines the element of control and the element of release because it's. It is something crafted and something into which one puts oneself. It's crafted and it's a very controlled thing and yet it's released to the audience. Let's just say in that sense it's different from the love object. That's just that you try to keep under control. 17:20 Erin: That ties perfectly into the next episode of the story. So if you have more to do, you have more to say about. 17:25 Wes: Okay, one more thing about this is just that it's a weird sort of curse. You're going to get the starring role in the story and you're going to fall in love. Although we don't really know that at this point. I was waiting for a bad ending, especially after reading Laustic, and I was quite surprised, like, well, it's not much of a curse, but yeah. 17:45 Erin: What you're talking about, though, with the art object being released, I mean, this is immediately what happens to him. You know, you're helping me understand this enchanted ship thing. We're given such incredible ekphrastic descriptions of the beauty of this magical unmanned ship. The rich pavilion of silk, the planks of ebony, and then this bed on which he lays, which is wrought of cypress wood and white ivory, reminded me very much of episodes in the Odyssey in which Odysseus is given this really 18:16 Wes: rich welcome, tables of polished wood to eat off of. 18:21 Erin: Yes, yeah. And it's adorned with gold and precious gems. So it's also as if the wounded knight is the nightingale getting his own little reliquary. Right. But he enters this art object and then he just has to be subjected to its forces. He's then launched or released with it out into the world. He has to accept the fact that when he explores this ship and then goes into this bedchamber to look around and then comes above deck to walk off of it, he has to accept the fact that, oh, it's magical and it's now away from shore and in fact it's lost sight of land and so he has to just go with it. This first step in his. His Journey of passivity. And anyway, it reminded me so much of what you said about the art object that he has to allow this symbol of artistry to be released into the world and to, you know, have it go where it's going to go. Not that he's the maker of the ship, but there's. I think there's something of that in here. 19:19 Wes: Yeah. Well, it starts out with him saying, thinking there is no lady in his life to whom he could run for pity. 19:25 Erin: Oh, that's what women are good for. 19:27 Wes: Yeah, yeah, exactly. He's just been given the task of finding someone who's gonna help him heal the wound, but he doesn't have anyone. And for some reason, you know, we already know that there's plenty of women that he could have. But instead he sends his men away on a faux errand, I think, and then wanders off on his horse. So he is still not in a position to directly seek out women. Instead, he becomes a kind of wanderer in the. In the desert, so to speak. And then he finds a ship which is like. Looks like something that Liberace would have made if he had a ship, which is also very suspicious. It's not to harp on the homosexual theme. It's very suspicious. And the rich ancient carved bed and of cypress and ivory adorned with gems, the sweet linens, the soft pillow, piano shaped swimming pool. Even the saddest person, right, the swimming pool. It's actually a luxury cruise ship. Shuffleboard on deck, the ghost crew straight out of Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 20:31 Erin: You know, he watches a really bad production of Godspell in the theater. 20:38 Wes: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. So finds himself at open sea, as you pointed out. You know, slept as one dead until the ship drew to the haven where he might find the healing for his hurt, which of course turns out to be a married woman. What are you going to do? 20:53 Erin: Can't have everything. 20:54 Wes: Yeah. He arrives at the ancient city. There's a lady of tender age with a jealous king. I like this line. Such is the wont of age from much it fears that old and young cannot mate together and that youth will turn to youth. This is the death in life of the old. 21:11 Erin: Very Mrs. Robinson. Very, very reminiscent of our graduate discussion. Yeah. 21:17 Wes: But this sort of commentary, let's say, is kind of rare in these. So it really stands out when Marie de France makes that kind of statement. And it's a very interesting one. So she's explaining the jealousy of the king, that the marriage arrangement is a bit artificial and it runs against the natural Inclinations involved in love, which is that youth gets with youth and the beautiful people get with the beautiful people and sort of mating and all that. So it creates a tension. And that's why you got to keep them in a tower or behind an ancient wall. You got to really lock them up. In this case, though, Right. There's a fatal flaw to the situation, which is that her prison, which involves. Right. So there's a tower, there's an orchard, there's a wall of green marble, and there's only one gate, and it's watched night and day, so she can't really get out. But there's an ocean. Right. Does the orchard open onto an ocean? So it's. That's your Achilles heel. 22:15 Erin: Exactly. 22:16 Wes: Don't imprison a woman next to an ocean where there's just the world of possibility. Had he never heard that There are many fish in the sea. 22:25 Erin: Right, right. And the primal force of the sea will come and steal her away. Right. 22:31 Wes: Yeah. 22:31 Erin: Yeah. I love that she's another nightingale in a reliquary because we get a really detailed description of her. Her prison, her casket, including the bedchamber, which is painted with this mural of Venus teaching men how to loyally serve their ladies. 22:48 Wes: And also throwing Ovid's book into the fire and pronouncing against it. 22:52 Erin: Yes. Yeah, I looked this up. This is Remedia amoris, which counsels people how not to be swept away by love. So Venus is like, forget that. Get swept away by the ocean or whoever arrives on the ocean. 23:06 Wes: So for some reason, the jealous king let her have her chambers painted with this kind of agit prop in favor of love. Favor of romantic love. Right. It's very rebellious. It's like having the Communist Manifesto put on the wall. 23:26 Erin: I was gonna say it's like all these Soviet realists. Super beefy Venus. Yes. And the only man who has the key is the old priest to say mass and bring her some food. I love that detail, that this ancient priest that can barely walk is the only one who's allowed in there. 23:45 Wes: And the maiden, who's her niece. 23:47 Erin: Yes. 23:48 Wes: Well, not a man. Okay. But yeah. So that's her company. 23:52 Erin: Right. So the ship washes up. The niece goes aboard. The niece is the first. She's the first one to make contact with the mystery. She goes aboard and finds Guigemar sleeping and thinks because he's. Because of his pallor, that he's dead. Sleeping Beauty situation. So she goes. Or Snow White, rather. So she goes out to tell the queen, and the queen says, you know, we'll check. And if he's really dead, if he's only partly dead, maybe he could tell us his story. But if he is dead, we'll give him a funeral. So she goes aboard, she sees the sleeping Guigemar and she stops dead, it says, for joy and grief at what she saw. And her heart is quote, unquote, ravished with his beauty, which is very interesting. 24:34 Wes: And she sorrowed beyond measure because of his grievous hurt. 24:38 Erin: Yes. Yeah. 24:39 Wes: Because this interesting combination of pity. Right. He found his pity. Pity and desire. Reminds me a little bit of the Tempest. It's almost like this is the Brave New world moment where it's raining men. Maybe she's never seen a young man before. 24:55 Erin: Right, right. 24:56 Wes: A brave new world that has such. What is it? Creatures in it. 24:59 Erin: Yes. 25:00 Wes: As if the man is, you know, a young man is almost like an alien who's. Who's descended on her. But yes. So Guigemar turns out to be a very good looking guy. 25:09 Erin: Well, she touches him. She touches his breast to see if his heart is beating. And at that he wakes up. So it's again, it's like Snow White's kiss or something. But this is gonna mirror the moment at the end of the story where he has to touch her in order to believe that it's really her. He has to touch and feel the girdle. Right. So there's a little bit of a Doubting Thomas kind of element to that. He has to stick his fingers into the wounds to believe. 25:31 Wes: We could talk about that now or later. But that is a weird element of the story and also of Cinderella, this idea that one cannot identify the lover after parting. But should we wait to talk about that? 25:42 Erin: Yeah, let's wait. The part that I'm really fascinated by is there's an obsession in this story with speech and hearts being too fearful for speech and things needing to be spok in order. For there's a really strong consent narrative in this story where verbal contracts need to happen. 26:04 Wes: Sign here in triplicate. 26:06 Erin: And it's a really interesting part of this. So his heart is too fearful for speech. But then the narrator actually does intervene again and says that love is a wound and that he who will not tell of his sore may not hope for balm to his hurt. So, you know, if. Unless you're a squeaky wheel, you're not going to get the oil. 26:24 Wes: Yes. 26:25 Erin: So you, you have to speak it. You have to. You have to speak out loud what you're feeling. That's a really Important component of. Of this solution to elements of the story. So at last he speaks, and he says, I die for your love. Not literally, of course. This is just speech. I'm not literally dying. I'm in fever because of my wound. Oh, maybe that is literal. And if you care not to heal my hurt, I would rather die. Fair friend, I pray you for grace. Do not gainsay me with evil words. You know, he's actually wounded, but also he's wounded. His wound is love. And she smiles at his speech and says, yea is not a word of two letters. Which. It's a word of just one more letter than that, but whatever. Anyway, she doesn't usually grant this prayer every day of the week. In other words, she's not this kind of girl. So she's, you know, she needs a little bit more. 27:13 Wes: Which translation is this? 27:14 Erin: This is the Gutenberg. Yeah. 27:16 Wes: Okay. She also says, must you have your gift so quickly? She has to play hard to get, otherwise she'll seem like a loose woman. And he basically says, look, it makes you look like a loose woman. If you have to pretend and protest like this, Just go say what you mean. If you're in love, I'll believe you. 27:35 Erin: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something of this ascent that was reminiscent to me of a couple of things I'm thinking of. One thinks of the Annunciation, right? The angel Gabriel coming to Mary. And she has to say, yes, I will do this. But of course, I think of, like, the end of Ulysses, James Joyce's Ulysses, in which the Penelope figure Molly Bloom says yes over and over again to the sort of reconsumation of their relationship. And Joyce wrote that he thought that yes is the most feminine word in the English language that women are about. Yes. And opening themselves up to experience. So she wavers and then says yes. And then they have this relationship, but she has to say the words in order for it to happen. 28:18 Wes: And then there's the explicit sex scene. 28:20 Erin: Exactly. 28:21 Wes: There's a kiss. She grants him her love. And a kiss, which is nice. 28:26 Erin: Yeah. She granted him her embrace and tenderness, as is the wont of lovers when alone. That's really spicy stuff. 28:33 Wes: That's the explicit sex scene. The wont of lovers. They do what lovers do, right? 28:39 Erin: And they do it for a year and a half straight. 28:41 Wes: That's a long time to just hang out without the jealous king finding out, Right? 28:46 Erin: Well. And she senses that they're going to be found out before they actually are, right? So they make this pact, and again she. So she ties the knot in his shirt, and also provides the words that form the verbal part of the contract. Right. Which is that he never loves a woman except the one who can first unfasten this knot. And she says that he'll keep true to her because so cunning will be my craft, that no woman may hope to unravel that coil, either by force or guile, even with her knife. So there's a very explicit earlier with the preamble, which maybe we skipped over Marie de France's preamble at the beginning of the tale. 29:24 Wes: Yeah. 29:24 Erin: When she talks about how the singer shouldn't spoil music with unseemly words. But she mentions craft. That craft is really hard. And so if the singer does well, everybody should applaud him because he deserves some recognition for it. So, anyway, I just think of the word craft as appearing here. And then she's crafty in this knot that she ties, which ties her also to. Figuratively ties her to the idea of the tapestry, the woman as weaver. The textile is the artistic craft associated with women, which Marie de France is kind of invoking as a woman poet. Right. Spinning her tail, her yarn. 30:01 Wes: Okay, so it's odd, right? Just like Cinderella is odd. It assumes that they're not going to be able to identify each other except through this cryptocurrency algorithm. This. This password, essentially, it's like, here's your password. Here's my password. Put in the password if you want to unlock me. Again, we see this in the Odyssey as well. Right. But at that point, they haven't seen each other in a long time. And Odysseus is also testing people for loyalty. He knows Penelope is his wife, but what he's really doing is testing her love. She's testing his identity. Right. So he has to know that the house has been been. Or the bed has been built around a tree trunk. 30:45 Erin: Right. But it's also. It's not just that they're not going to recognize each other. It's also an insurance policy against infidelity. So rather than him just having to be true to her and her having to be true to him, they're preventing others from being able to have access while they're away from each other. Right. So it has a double purpose, it seems. 31:03 Wes: Yeah. Okay, so that's interesting. You take the promise of fidelity and you turn it into something. Something physical. But I think the other element of it is that after a year and a half, they've kind of become molded to each other in a way. So people become alike, each other, their characters change In a way, each person has a formative effect on the other person's character, so that in a way, their love becomes so configured that there is only. Ideally. Right. There is only one person who can unlock it after that point. So that seems to be given physical representation as well in the knot and the clasp. I don't know. Is that making sense? 31:44 Erin: I like that. Yeah, it does. You're putting me in mind of the. In a way, it's. Now that the relationship is sort of sacramentalized or that there's a marital knot that's being tied here. Right. It seems to elevate the marriage so that then when he wins her at the end, you know, mention of this old king that she's actually married to sort of flies out the window. Now they can have a sacramental marriage, it seems, because of what's gone on here with the tying of the marital knot between them. But another thing I was thinking of in relationship to this, and the fact that they're verbalizing the terms of the contract and sort of signing on the dotted line at the same time, similar to what I hinted at with the Doe as well, is this idea also of kind of a Eucharistic. It's not to talk about the marital sacrament. You know, maybe it's a stretch to hop to a different sacrament, but I'm just thinking about the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the fact that, first of all, the Mass, which. She's at Mass when he decides that he's going to verbalize his love for her. Right. But the Mass has the two components, the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. And then within the Liturgy of the Eucharist itself, transubstantiation has to happen because two conditions have to be satisfied. So you have to have the physical substances that are there, the bread and the wine, which are going to become the Body and Blood of Christ. And you also need the priest to speak the words in Persona Christi to affect the transubstantiation. I just. I can't help but think of that Eucharistic parallel here with. So often the conditions in which the relationship is formed are those of, like, physical love. So they have, like. They're obviously physically intimate with each other, as seen in the. 33:21 Wes: In the sex scene, which is obviously part of what. Yeah, the whole lockdown. 33:26 Erin: Exactly. 33:26 Wes: Key thing is, you know, evocative of here, too. 33:29 Erin: Yeah. So there's a physical component and there's a verbal. There's a spoken component that. That needs to happen. And we'll see this again later, too, when he has to tell his story. There's a lot of, like, speaking of the story words, you know, really crucial as much as the physical. So he can't just unclasp the girdle and she can't just untie the knot. There needs to be something spoken to. It's very strange. 33:51 Wes: Yeah, well, it seems to be a reflection on different sorts of bonds of love, ways in which people can be betrothed. The other way, right. Is complete control of the love object. Putting them in a tower or an orchard or whatever. Imprisoning the love object, in other words, imprisoning the woman. It's unidirectional. It's not consenting, except nominally. Right. She consented to get married, but not really. It's a use of force. And here we get a reciprocal bond. It's already there in the idea of a clasp or a knot, this reciprocal bond. The two parts, at least in the clasp, bond each other. They create a restraint on the other. And then the nature of the bond of fidelity that's created is a bit more open because instead of saying, you are mine, don't. They don't sleep with anyone. You're mine. It creates the possibility that some other person could fit the bill. Maybe he could find someone who can untie the knot in the sense that she has the particular qualities she's good enough. In other words, it's a way of saying don't get with anyone unless they're good enough, because there's no guarantee, obviously, that they're going to meet each other again. And instead of consigning him to fidelity for life, she's just putting these very, very stringent conditions on any future love. That's one way of looking at it. I'm reminded of a Larry David episode where his wife Cheryl, they're redoing their marriage vows. Do you watch Curb on TV? 35:20 Erin: I've watched a little bit, but, yeah, not this episode. 35:23 Wes: They're redoing their marriage vows and she puts something in there about how they're going to be together for eternity. And he balks at that. And he's like, well, till death do us part. He honks at that idea as if they're really going to be stuck with each other for eternity. But in any case, I think it's important that it's not just this kind of controlling imprisonment. The bonds are created by the love relation. They're created by the suitability of one lover to the other lover. Does that make sense? They fit each Other. And that's what creates the bond. It's not. Artificial enclosure. 35:58 Erin: Yeah, that's great. I'm thinking, too, about the conditions under which their love is found out. It's. The lord sends the message to the queen. So it's sort of unidirectional. Right. We don't know what the message is. Again, like the actual words of the servant in Laustic, we don't know exactly what's spoken. 36:15 Wes: I'm coming for my quarterly visit to your chamber. 36:20 Erin: In fact, we don't find out what the message is either, just like in Laustic. 36:23 Wes: Right. 36:23 Erin: Because the servant was meant to come and deliver a message to the queen, which, again, this lord seems like he's opening himself up to lots of potential problems here, because the servant could get with the queen, if that's what the. 36:36 Wes: Yeah, it doesn't make any sense, but. 36:37 Erin: Right, doesn't make any sense, but the servant sees. He looks through the window and sees Guigemar with the queen, and that's how he's found out. And so then when the king comes and says, how did you get here? You know, there's some ink spilled over this conversation. So the king looked earnestly upon the fearless knight, inquiring of him who he was and where he was born and in what manner he came to dwell within this house. So Guigemar told over to him this story of his fate. He showed him of the beast that he had wounded to his hurt, of the knave and of his bitter wound, of how he came within the realm and of the lady's surgery. He told all to the ancient lord to the last moment when he stood within his power. The king replied that he gave no credence to his word, nor believed that the story ran as he had said. If, however, the vessel might be found, he would commit the knight again to the waves. He would go the more heavily for the night seining, and a glad day would it be if he made shipwreck at sea? When they had entered into this covenant together, they went forth to the harbor and there discovered the barge, even as Guigemar had said. So they set him thereon and prayed him to return to his own realm. This is fascinating to me because again, Guigemar has just entered into what is called explicitly a covenant, you know, a verbal covenant, and this physical covenant with the object of his love. And then when the king comes and Guigemar again has to tell the story, it's not told in dialogue, but it is kind of told at some length. What Guigemar covers the king, doesn't believe him, you know, gives no credence to his word, you know, so there's this disbelief, but he has to see it then to believe it. So he's like, all right, if the ship is there, I'll put you on it. And it's a covenant, like a verbal covenant. And then turns out the ship is there. 38:15 Wes: Right. 38:15 Erin: But this repeated disbelief or even the fact that then Guigemar enters into a quote unquote covenant with the king immediately after entering into a covenant with the queen. It's just a really, really interesting detail. Like every, every interaction seems to follow the same trajectory, even when it's not the romantic one. It's strange, you know, it's one sided here though. King controls the terms. Right. Maybe that is reflective of what you're saying. That like this is not a mutual thing. And he's eager to get rid of Guigemar. So it turns out to be convenient. The ship is there though, he could kill him otherwise. So yeah, the one sidedness, the fact that, you know, Guigemar doesn't have a say in what happens to him is, is maybe why that parallel happens, but it's missing, you know, it's illustrative of the fact that the King only enters into these one sided arrangements. And that's what differentiates Guigemar. 39:07 Wes: Yeah, it's bound to get him, get the king in trouble. It's, it's the kind of plot hole that bothers me in any story where, you know, you just. If you capture Bond, you kill Bond. You don't set him up on a table with a, a move slowly moving towards a buzzsaw or whatever so he can escape and then beat you. Just don't keep them prisoner, just kill them right away. 39:28 Erin: Exactly. 39:29 Wes: But yes. So it's an interesting unexpected twist that this jealous king is actually just going to let him go. And then it's the same sort of odd situation with Meriadus. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes, because when she escapes, she's picked up by this guy Meriadus, and he's in love with her. And he is, you know, he finds her lovely beyond mortal measure and sets her up in his sister's chamber and goes frequently to see her, to cheer her with mirth and speech by reason that he wished to gain her love as a free gift and not by force. So this guy is a bit of a. He's not just an uncomplicated villain, he's a bit of a villain, but it's kind of obvious he's not forcing himself on her. He is curious about Guigemar, right? He invites Guigemar to the court. He sets it up so that they can meet each other. He lets them do the whole clasp and knot thing. Why does he go through that whole routine only when they find out, only to deny them when it turns out that they are the long lost lovers. Why do all that? 40:34 Erin: He shoots himself in the foot. Because again, it's about speech. It's about the fact that they've been discovered. Because she shows him her girdle and explains that she can't give her love to a man except who could unloose its buckle without harm to belt or clasp, right? And Meriadus says, hey, I've heard of this guy who won't take a woman as his wife, except she first untied the knot, right? So. And then she swoons and can't get enough air. And it turns out she can't even get any air to her brain because this girdle is tied so tightly. But anyway, yeah, so he. He like, tells on himself precisely because this. They've already become famous enough that he's heard this story. Because every woman who wants to get. Get with Guigemar doesn't have the right size shoe, you know, to fit his foot. Right. 41:18 Wes: Trying to put the slipper on his danger foot. 41:21 Erin: Yeah. So there's this idea that, like, their tale is already becoming canonized. It's already, you know, part of literature. It's already part of the discourse that he's heard of the story, which is such a great story that it's traveled to him. And so, you know, he says, hey, I'd wager that this is the guy that these two ends of the story actually match up. And so it's because the story has been publicized, because it is such a good tale, that Meriadus, in a way, is like the lock and key, right. He's the one that figures out that the two ends of the tale are actually. They actually fit together. 41:57 Wes: Interesting. 41:58 Erin: And then he's a conduit for their reunion. So he calls this great joust. 42:02 Wes: Hold on one second. So it's like meeting two famous people, basically, who have been in a film that he's, you know, seen. And he's so. He's curious, you know, he's curious. And he's going to allow this, so to speak, in his court. 42:18 Erin: Right? But. But it's against his own interest. 42:20 Wes: He wants to see how this develops. But. But in the end, yeah, he's. He wants to keep her but that's very interesting. I mean, you're pointing to an important thing, which is it's almost as if the lay has already partly been written and publicized. So the artist has a role here. 42:35 Erin: Yeah. And he's so taken by the tale that he wants to see the end of the tale, even when it goes against his more immediate desire, which is for this woman who he can't have. So the power of the story is such that he serves art before his own sexual desire and puts them into contact with each other because he just has to know what's going to happen next. 42:53 Wes: Yeah. And he sets up this wonderful reunion between them, and she tells a story and says, mariatis has kept me in all my honor. Right. He hasn't tried to do anything. And Guigemar says, I have found my friend. I like this way they refer to each other as friend. You know, my friend with benefits. And then, you know, he says, okay, thanks for getting us back together, Meriadus. Can we go our way? And Meriadus is like, no, I will defend my right against you in all your power. And there's something about Meriadus. He set up the be this. Right. Warlike prince, he's called. He likes fighting. And in fact, Guigemar, part of the reason he's come to the court is to help Meriadus fight another lord, another warlord. So it's almost. I don't know, it seems a bit perverse what Meriadus is up to, but. But of course, it doesn't work. And Guigemar goes and goes to Meriadus's enemy, and then they come back and lay siege and. 43:46 Erin: Yep, I'll just go fight against you, then. 43:48 Wes: Get her back. Yeah. So it's those odd elements to the story that really add to the quality of enchantment or the fairy tale quality. So maybe I think the way you put it is best. It's like this idea that Meriadus is not just a character in the tale, but he's become part of the audience now, too, and wants to see it unfold, to see how it ends, you know? 44:11 Erin: So when Guigemar and the queen, who never gets a name, by the way, the lady. The lady. Lady. That chick? 44:16 Wes: Yeah, the dame. 44:19 Erin: When they see each other, they have to also, like, recite the tale to each other again. It's just this compulsion to speech. And when he's doubting if it's really her, he says to himself, I must have speech of the lady. So it's just this compulsion to tell the story, to unravel the yarn the way that the knot must be unraveled. 44:37 Wes: Oh, that's great. I like that. 44:39 Erin: You know, it's so self conscious that these moments. Yeah, I think they do like, as you say, I think they elevate the story because they're so there's a strangeness to them and just a self conscious quality of, I guess, meta commentary. Right. Tied to the preamble at the beginning of saying, this is a tale that I have inherited, that I've heard. Maybe she's heard it from Meriadus or whoever. And now I'm transmitting it to you. And the attention paid to her own narration and partially this kind of like the self confidence that she has, like I'm Marie de France and I'm telling you this story, you know, that concern with narration and who the narrator is, where the story is coming from, and the repeated mention of the story itself will ultimately point back to her and it increases her kind of street cred as the one who's keeping this tale going and, you know, holding the torch. So, yeah, I just, I love it as this, you know, it turns into this really bizarre meta commentary on narration itself, on storytelling itself and. And how stories keep themselves going. 45:43 Wes: Yeah, yeah. So she gets revenge on her naysayers after all the people that in the beginning she compares to mad dogs by brand them as they deserve, as mad 45:55 Erin: dogs, cowardly and felon. 45:58 Wes: She says, verily, they are in their right to speak ill of me. So, yeah, it's this extended, you know, extended preamble, preemptively defending herself against envy. Envy, which is. Right. So that's an important component of being a lover and an artist. Envy is the thing that can really interfere and it's the thing that, you know, I was speculating that Guigemar is subject to in the beginning. Envy of the opposite sex, but really envy of the thing that's needed to complete oneself. Right. You resent the fact that it's outside of you and you almost want to destroy it. And to be in denial of need of something that's external and say, I'm just complete unto myself. I also want to say before we end. Yeah. I just want to repeat that for listeners who are not excited by the idea of medieval literature, these are very charming and pleasurable to read and I don't quite know how it's accomplished, but there's a delight in reading these. And I think that's kind of at the center of this sort of craft. And it's hard to pull off. It's easy to lose sight of that. I think as A writer and a storyteller or the central role of that. You know, there should be something delightful. I think delight is the word about it. 47:09 Erin: I agree. That's well put. I also just want to call attention to the fact that she, you know, she has this preamble. Then she has another preamble where she says, hearken, O gentles, to the tale I set before you. And she says, I will not do it harm by many words. So she is a better narrator than the people in her own story or what? But I love the. I can only describe it as a Perd Hapley quality to this, according to the text in Scripture. Now I relate a certain adventure which be chanced in the realm of Brittany in days long gone before, you know, here is the commencement of the matter. Like she's, you know, the story of this story is that it is a question, and that is what is the story? You know, Perd Hapley does that, like meta commentary on his own role as a news reporter. There's something of that here which is, I think, adds to its charm. Just as Perd Hapley, a charming guy. So I've been rewatching a little bit of Parks and Rec, which makes the connection. Anyway. 48:05 Wes: Yeah, yeah. No, I think that that is part of it. This reference to the predecessors. I mean. Yeah, I just find that quite this, you know, the Bretons have already made a lay, and it seems like every one of these lays begins that way. Right. And every one of her poems begins with this reference. The Bretons have already made a lay. Is that right? I haven't looked at it. I mean, I've looked. 48:23 Erin: Most of them start that way. Yeah. There are 12, I think, total, and I don't know how many start this way, but I know it's the vast majority. 48:31 Wes: So she's giving credit to her predecessors, but she's doing something new and creative, which is where the possibility of inducing envy lies. 48:40 Erin: Cool. Okay. Well, before we go, I just want to ask our listeners to keep sending us questions because we've gotten some. And we want to do a question episode. So if you could think of one, please send them to us and we'll do a special Q and A episode for subscribers. And next time, we're going to do a couple of episodes on the great Preston Sturges film the Lady Eve from 1941, which is one of my favorites. I'm really excited about that. 49:08 Wes: Yeah. You know, and I forgot to ask you in this episode about whether there's some kind of relationship between screwball comedy. And was it tales of remarriage, marriage, and this sorts of infidelity that goes on with this courtly love stuff? But we can talk about that next time. 49:23 Erin: So many connections. Yeah, I'm excited. All right, thank you, thank you. And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook at Subtext Podcast and on Twitter at Enjoy Subtext.