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Good Vs. Evil In Lanval And Sir Orfeo

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The battle between good and evil is a theme that has long been a part of literature. In the two lais Lanval and Sir Orfeo, there is a differing display of good versus evil. Since both of the stories fall into the same genre and have a common theme, it is easy to compare the ways that good and evil are presented in each story. By comparing these two stories, one can see how the characteristics that define “good” and “evil” can vary vastly from story to story. In addition, the comparison will show how, despite their differences, the two lais fit within the basic structure of the romance genre. In the lai Lanval, Marie de France seems to present the faeries as better than the humans. The faeries appear to be of higher class; they have more …show more content…

This is their use of gender as a significant role in the battle between good and evil. In Lanval, female characters take the lead roles in both the good and evil side of things. Queen Guinevere represents the bad, she is vengeful and merciless. After being rejected by Lanval, Guinevere goes to bed ill and says that she will never get up “unless the king gave her satisfaction for the offense against her” (309-310). While King Arthur is shown to be against Lanval, he is a more neutral character. He is acting according to the accusations made by his wife, wanting Lanval to be punished for his alleged crimes. In this sense Arthur is being manipulated by Guinevere, so that she can exact revenge. The faerie queen represents the good, she is generous and forgiving. At the end of the lai she comes to Lanval’s rescue and says “I have loved one of your vassals…I don’t want him to suffer for what he said; you should know that the queen was in the wrong” (615-620). This shows that despite Lanval breaking his promise to not tell anyone about their love, the faerie queen is willing to save Lanval from being punished and continues to love

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In Lanval, it appears that the faeries are held to a higher set of standards. When compared to the faerie world, the human world lacks justice and beauty. This could be a way to rationalize why Lanval is so ready to give up his, albeit rather unsatisfactory, life in Arthur’s court to be with the faerie queen. In Sir Orfeo, however, these standards are slightly altered. The human world still has less beauty and wealth than the faerie world, but it has stronger morals.

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Marie uses strong symbolic adjectives throughout the lays to portray the power that desire has on Lanval. We first realize at the beginning of the poem that even though Lanval

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Marie de France’s Lanval outlines not a joyous, beautiful tale, filled with love and last second heroics, but a story fraught with fey consequence, predatory behavior, unhealthy reliance, and psychological enthrallment with Lanval the knight himself as the shallow damsel in distress. The main female character, entitled only as The Fairy Queen, already is obviously not to be trifled with, considering her ethereal origins, but she takes an uncharacteristic saunter far past both her female and fey limitations and expectations with her actions towards Lanval. Indeed, she could be said to flirt with godly territory in her machinations of Lanval’s personage, disregarding her more easily detectable entrapment of Lanval’s mind via her control of Lanval’s

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When he spurns her love, refusing to betray his King, the Lady goads him into breaking the one rule given to him by Queen Semiramis, lest he never see his beloved again. Lanval announces to Arthur’s Queen “any one of those who serve her / the poorest girl of all / is better than you, my lady queen,”(298-300). This upset the Lady who complained to King Arthur, claiming that Lanval dishonored her, and the king was angered and “he swore an oath / if Lanval could not defend himself in court / he would have him burned or hanged” (326-28). By standing by his boast as truth, and through the efforts of Queen Semiramis, Lanval overcame the Supreme Ordeal of the trial by his King and as a reward “He was set free by their decision” (629). From there Lanval left the court to await his Queen on a marble stone and “When the girl came through the gate / Lanval leapt, in one bound / onto the palfrey, behind her.”

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Marie De France is scornful at the fact that the queen must be disloyal to her husband as she is not truly in love with him. I believe that Marie De France wrote her lais in a hope that one day her audience will understand and start to accept women into being in more influential roles; she wishes that she can influence women to want to become powerful and have more of a say in their future and who they will marry. Her lais seem to want a change to come by mocking how social order is in her time, pushing forward the idea of finding true love, and forcing the idea of giving women their own mind and love whoever they

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In Book One of The Faerie Queene, the character of Gloriana is used as a vehicle for holiness, and Arthur’s search for her is allegorical to a quest for holiness. Arthur’s encounter with Gloriana in his dream reveals that he not yet reached holiness, therefore taking the same path as Redcrosse in order to achieve this moral state. Whereas both knights are meant to represent holiness, their continued search for it exemplifies Spenser’s point: holiness is an unperceivable, ongoing, and unattainable goal, even for the most exemplary knights. When Arthur recounts the events leading up to his dream of Gloriana, he has an experience similar to Redcrosse’s upcoming spiritual rebirth, as Elizabeth Spiller suggests (Spiller 70).

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And lastly, the fairy came in on her noble steed to save Lanval, when in traditional stories, the male saves the damsel in distress. So, as you can see, the fairy has qualities of both types of women in medieval literature. In summary, the role of women seen in medieval literature is seen in a pattern throughout Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Lanval. Being powerful, ugly, or disobedient made you unworthy of being a women, if you wanted to be respected and well-liked, you must become quiet and attractive.

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