NOTES

 

 

CONFLICTING CODES OF CONDUCT : EQUITY IN MARIE DE FRANCE'S EQUITAN  : 

 

 

 

* Cet article a été initialement publié dans Utah Foreign Language Review (1993), p. 92-117. 

 

(1) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, New York, W. W. Norton and Company, 1980, p. 86.

 

(2)The impact of the code of courtly love, whether litterary of literal in origin, is undeniably significant. "The conception of life to which the gestes gave expression was, in many aspects, only the reflexion of that of their public : in every literature a society contemplates its own image" ; Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, (trans.) L. A. Manyon, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, p. 102. See also Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, Garden City, Doubleday Anchor Books, 1954, p. 78.

 

(3) Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle A ges, op. cit., p. 110. 

 

(4) Michelle A. Freeman, "Marie de France's Poetics of Silence :  The Implications for a Feminine Translatio", P.M.L.A. 99.5 (1984), p. 877. 

 

(5) Nouveau Petit Larousse, Paris, Librairie Larousse, 1968, p. 389. 

 

(6) Ibidem. 

 

(7)  Websters Seventh New Collegiate Dictlonary, Springfield, G. & C. Merriam Co., 1970, p. 281.

 

(8) The lack of the printed final "t" is no problem, as its pronunciation in either case is questionable.

 

(9) Michelle A. Freeman, "Marie de France's Poetics of Silence :  The Implications for a Feminine Translatio", art. cit. p. 877. 

 

 (10) All English translations of lines from "Equitan" are my own, and will immediately follow the old French quotations from Rychner.

 

(11) Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, (éd.) A. J. Greimas, Canada, Librairie Larousse,1980, p. 512. 

 

(12) I must insert here the alternate meanings for lai, for the pleasure of the play on words :  "vulgairement" the king ended up vulgarly, in an unkingly, vulgar position : "lac" they were both drowned in scalding water : "sans engagement dans l'Eglise" (Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, op. cit., p. 353) can we disengage the religious questions from this story ?

 

(13) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p. 53. 

 

(14) Pruz is the catch-all word for any positive value in the feudal code.

 

(15) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p. 25.  And "only rarely were women permitted to appear in their own defense before a legal tribunal" ; ibidem, p. 24.

 

(16) Or perhaps, in pursuit : aler apres = poursuivre (Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, op. cit., p. 37) ; we remember how he loves the hunt, lines 25-28. 

 

(17) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 124.

 

(18) I will examine much more closely the lines 170-176 in terms of the ritual of hommage of the feudal code in relating it to "le Code Courtois".

 

(19) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p.15.

 

(20) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 309. 

 

(21) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p.35, 44-46.

 

(22)  The experts agree to disagree that : "if life borrows motifs and forms from literature, literature after all is only copying life"; Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, op. cit., p. 78. 

 

(23 Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, op. cit., p. 108. 

 

(24) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p. 53.

 

(25) Denys Hay, The Medteval Centuries. New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1965, p.41. 

 

(26) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 309-310. 

 

(27) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", Pour un Autre Moyen Age Temps, Travail et Culture en Occident : 18 Essais, France, Gallimard, 1977, p. 382. 

 

(28) C. S. Lewis, The Allegory of Love, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1970, p.12. 

 

(29) "Yet to the individual, threatened by numerous dangers bred by an atmosphere of violence, the kinship group did not seem to offer adequate protection, even in the first feudal age. That is why men were obhgated to seek or accept other ties. The tie of kinship w was feudalism at all" ; Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 142.

 

(30) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 354.

 

(31) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 145.

 

(32) Ibidem, p. 146. 

 

(33) Ibid., p. 145.

 

(34) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 355.

 

(35) Ibidem, p. 357, 373.

 

(36) Ibid., p. 357, 373 : "The body is not only the revealor of the soul but it is the symbolic site where, in all its forms, the human condition fulfills itself."

 

(37) As in today's society, a man is hand-cuffed in order to eliminate any power to attack ; the knight, through the offering of the immixtio manuum, yields not only his abnity to attack or harm, but to possess anything that cannot be held between palms pressed together, and the ability even to maintain his own balance, were he to be bumped or shoved in his kneeling position. To display publicly this profession of such encompassing vulnerabihty is to strip the male ego to the soul.

 

(38) Holy Bible, Job 33, 4. 

 

(39) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 83 ; Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit.,p. 391. 

 

(40) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p.146. 

 

(41) Ibidem,  p. 173.

 

(42) Ibid., p. 163, 5,7. 

 

(43) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 363.   

 

(44) LeCang has catalogued 99 different objects used in either the investiture or exfestucatio ; ibidem, p. 415. 

 

(45) Raoul de Cambrai, (éd.) P. Meyer et A. Longno, cited by Marc Bloch, cited by Jacques LeGoff.

 

(46) Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, op. cit., p. 69. 

 

(47) Meg Bogin, The Women Troubadours, op. cit., p. 38.

 

(48) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 309.

 

(49) Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, op. cit., p. 594.  

 

(50) Les Lais de Marie de France, (éd.) Jean Rychner, Paris, Champion, 1983, p. 302. 

 

(51) Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, op. cit., p. 623, 4.  

 

(52) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 382.   

 

(53) Ibidem, p. 383. 

 

(54) Jacques Legoff, "Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 383.   

 

(55) Dictionnaire de l'Ancien Francais, op. cit.,  p. 182-183.  

 

(56) Robert concise French - English Engltsh - French Dictionary, Canada, Collins publishers, 1981, p. 108. 

 

(57) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 160.

 

(58) Ibidem, p. 125-126. 

 

(59) Ibid., p. 83. 

 

(60) The bread in this instance reads as seed, the semination of sin. Which is cast into boiling waters at the end.

 

(61) Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 83.

 

(62) Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, op. cit., p. 69. 

 

(63) Ibidem, p. 23

 

(64) "Quelle conscience les acteurs et les spectateurs d'une action symbolique avaient-ils de son symbolisme ? Un système symbolique peut fonc­tionner dans toute son efficacité sans prise de conscience explicte."

"Prise de conscience : problème central et combien difficile de l'histoire ! Il faudrait [...] un critère fondamental pour saisir ce phénomène essentiel. L'instant décisif ou les infrastructures sont perçues, où le groupe se reconnait, s'affirme, naît une seconde fois, décisivement par la conscience de son originalité" (Jacques Legoff,"Quelle conscience l'université médiévale a-t-elle eue d'elle-même ?", "Le rituel symbolique de la vassalité", art. cit., p. 382. )  "Having attributed a real existence to an idea, the mind wants to see this idea alive, and can only effect this by personifying it. In this way is allegory born."

"Symbolism was like a second mirror held up to that of the phenomal world itself."

"In the Middle Ages the symbolic sttitude was much more in evidence than the causal or the genetic attitude."

"Every event, every action, was still embodied in expressive and solomn forms, which raised them to the dignity of a ritual" (Johan Huinzinga, The Wanlng of the Middle Ages, op. cit., 205, 214, 156, 9). "In the eyes of all who were capable of reflection the rnaterial world was scarcely more than a sort of mask, behind which took place ail the really im­ portant things ; it seemed to them also a language, intended to express by signs a more profound reality. Since a tissue of appearances can offer but little in­ terest in itself, the result was that observation was generally neglected in favor of interpretation" (Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, op. cit., p. 83).