Medieval Love Stories

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31053, 7 May 1966, Page 4

Medieval Love Stories

The Ways of Love. By Norma Lorre Goodrich. Allen and Unwin. 214 pp. Note on Sources.

These eleven medieval French love stories which have been translated into modern English illustrate the baffling problem of explaining legendary events in terms that are creditable and free of bathos. It is plain to readers of the Notes that the author knows her subject thoroughly, and that she writes occasionally with her tongue in her cheek, but she faithfully reproduces the original chroniclers’ narrations of what must have been to them a succession of true and factual happenings.

Such well-known romances as those of Aucassin and Nicolette, Tristran and Yseut (the author’s spelling) and the early history of the Grail are among the contents of the book. It is clear from the Notes that some of the stories go back to earlier days than the 12th and 13th centuries in which they were first recorded. Otherwise, would the beautiful Guilliadun, who was loved so dearly by Eliduc that

he bore her supposedly dead body by sea to his home in Brittany, have been revived by a red flower which had been picked by a mouse! Even in the Middle Ages this would seem to be rather a tall story.

The inherent selfishness of a religious fanatic is exemplified by that holy man, Saint Alexis, who deserted his bride practically at the altar to “serve God” in unspecified ways, and in foreign lands. Years later he returned disguised to his home, in the character of a holy beggar where he lived for some years in a cellar. Only after his death was his Identity revealed to his sorrowing parents and widow. There are curious echoes of Arthurian chivalry in many of the tales. Tristran and Yseut (wife of King Mark) for example. Though deeply in love they were never. In this idealised version, lovers in the modern sense of the word, but yearned for each other in decorous unhappiness. Like the pictures of the period these tales seem out of perspective by our present standards, but they have a certain quaint charm for lovers of antiquity.