The Wife's Lament

First of all, I just wanted to apologize about how late my first entry is. I am just now really familiarizing myself with blogging. I am very impressed however with everyone else's blogs and how insightful everyone is. I just wanted to comment on one of the reading's from our last class. I found The Wife's Lament the most interesting of our readings as it wasn't particularily clear exactly what the author was trying to say as it had to be translated. This was somewhat unique as everyone's able to draw thier own conclusions as to what the story may be about. When I first read the text I thought that the husband had to leave the country for somekind of battle, but after reading it again and discussing it in class, it seems that maybe he was forced from the country. It is such a sad story for the woie as she is left alone in the world yearning for her husband that either can't or refuses to be with her. I can't even imagine how hard it would have been to live in those days.
I also enjoyed the piece by Christine de Pizan. Although her idea of a women's Utopia sounds nice for a while, I think we would miss the men. Maybe not in her day, but iff there were no rain we would not appreciate the sun.

.Marie de France's Lanval was an enjoyable read for me. I like the stories of arthur, Lancelot and Guinivere so this was a pretty good read. I wasn't expecting this as I ahve never read Marie de France before. I'm glad I did. She definetly wasn't using the master's tools for this one, as she is using this tale to publish her own opinions about the king. Very sneeky. She starts to put doubt in people's minds about Henry's reign