Passion and Parody

This chapter analyses the lai “Equitan” by Marie de France (d. around 1210), exploring how the text both recycles and subverts the code of gentle love, exposing it to parody. King Equitan, infatuated with the wife of his vassal, strategically adopts the role of a submissive lover in line with the code. He and the lady soon enter a liaison. Eventually they conspire to murder her husband, but their plan backfires in a slapstick reversal, leading them both to death. Through this tragicomic outcome, Marie demonstrates the unsustainability of refined love when confronted with reality, foreshadowing later medieval writers’ wariness about fin’amor affairs.