Final questions! Just answer ONE for Monday (I'll give you a break...); but think about them all as you read.
Q1: In “Laüstic,” the narrator remarks that “she loved him
above all things, both for the good she had heard about him and because he
lived close by” (94). In these stories, how can we argue that love is still an
arrangement based on proximity and availability? Do women truly get to choose
from anyone, or from the best ones? Or just the best ones in
their immediate eyesight?
Q2: Discuss how one of these stories might be consciously
addressing the so-called “mythology of love” we discussed on Friday. In other
words, how is the story trying to symbolically give lessons about love (right
and wrong behavior, ideas, values) through the metaphorical events of the
story? How can we read a specific character or element of the plot
allegorically?
Q3: In the story “Chaitivel,” we are told that “It would be
less dangerous for a man to court every lady in an entire land than for a lady
to remove a single besotted lover from her skirts, for he will immediately
attempt to strike back” (105). Is this chivalry? And if so, is love always
couched with a hidden threat? Is romance just another word for rape?
Q4: In the brief tale, “Chevrefoil,” about the fabled lovers
Tristan and the queen, Iseult, we are told that “the two of them resembled the
honeysuckle which clings to the hazel branch: when it has wound itself around
and attached itself to the hazel, the two can survive together: but if anyone
should then attempt to separate them, the hazel quickly does, as does the honeysuckle”
(110). While this is a poetic metaphor, why might it also be a trouble one to
describe “pure” love? What might be a darker interpretation of this legend
which we see in other stories?
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