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As a result of being chivalrous, the Maiden reappears and saves him from his fate and they go and live in the fairy world for the rest of their lives. Launfal loses his fairy because he boasts about her but then when called upon to be honest even though it may cost him his life, he is. While he does this, King Arthur’s wife is in love with him and is jealous about his new found love. Sir Launfal falls in love and marries a fairy woman, known only as the Maiden. Marie de France’s lay is a tale of romance, chivalry, and jealousy.

This piece of literature only survives today in a single manuscript copy in a British museum. This lay is the only writing that Chestre is known to have written that shows up during medieval times. This is a way that most romances started and authors were named. Thomas Chestre’s adaptation was written in Old English and began thusly: “Sir Launfal” by Thomas Chestre was written in the 14th century and was inspired by Marie de France’s Breton lay (which she claimed was inspired by Celtic lore). The work of Marie de France was known widely and continued to be translated through the late Middle Ages. Sher work was widely translated later on, often in the prose form that we will read. Beyond that, the Lais demonstrate that true love is generally worth enduring the suffering it causes-and that love can overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.​We are reading “The Lay of Sir Launfal” written by Marie de France in the twelfth century. Though the Lais offer various perspectives on love, they present courtly love as a delicate balance between longing and fulfillment, grief and joy, and ardor and restraint. And indeed, there are stories in which true love prevails in the end and seems to genuinely fulfill the characters, such as in “Eliduc,” when Eliduc and Guilliadun finally get married even though they’re from different countries, Eliduc is married to someone else at first, and Guilliadun temporarily falls into a coma.

Yet throughout the Lais, characters continue to pursue love in spite of emotional or physical suffering, suggesting that courtly love is nonetheless a noble and worthwhile pursuit. For instance, in a scenario that recurs in several tales, the knight Guigemar and his desired young lady are so “wounded” by love that until they admit their feelings for each other, they are despondent, each believing the other could never love them back. But in Marie de France’s stories, love isn’t always particularly romantic-it’s a source of profound joy, but it also brings about peril and misery for the characters. Courtly love is a medieval literary motif in which a knight undertakes chivalrous quests in pursuit of a noble lady whom he loves from afar. In the Lais of Marie de France, a collection of 12 short tales from the 11th century, the idea of courtly love is everywhere.