Marie de France Challenges the Common Courtly Love Throughout Medieval English literature writers display stories of love and gallantry. Customarily dominated by grand kings and queens and dashing knights, literary pieces of this time typecast women to serve primarily as inspiration for a chivalric male hero. Considering the predominantly patriarchic society, surviving works of female authors are limited. The lais of Marie de France confront the conventional virtues of men and women in regard to wealth and power as well as suggest the potential of heroic equality. In her tale, “Lanval”, Marie de France presents a deviant assembly of characters while using the paradigm of courtly love to both challenge and subvert traditional gender stereotypes. Twelfth century English society understood men to possess traits of valor, dexterity in arms, and chivalry; therefore, medieval men were entitled to wealth and power. Marie de France disrupts the congruency of such customary belief by casting Lanval as a woeful knight who is courted by a lavish…show more content… When the fairy maiden rides in to rescue Lanval from the court she and her horse defy common expectation: “The palfrey’s trappings were rich; under heaven there was no count or king who could have afforded them all without selling or mortgaging lands. She was dressed in this fashion: in a white linen shift that revealed both her sides.” (de France 551-561) Not only does de France declare the maiden’s status higher than that of a king, she enhances her independence by allowing her audacious composure and a fresh physical appearance. Upon sight of her astonishing beauty, the judges acquit Lanval of all charges; the maiden is a heroine. To further exemplify her prominence, Lanval leaps onto the back of the palfrey and is carried off by the fairy maiden who maintains her position of power by guiding them to
