Les Deux Amants ("The Two Lovers") is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France sometime in the 12th century. The poem belongs to what is collectively known as The Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in the collection, Les Deux Amants is written in Old French, in rhyming octosyllabic couplets. This lai tells the tragic story of two lovers.
Plot summary
Template:Spoiler A widowed king takes comfort in raising his beautiful daughter, and he is reluctant to let go of her when she is of marriageable age. He challenges all her potential suitors to prove themselves by carrying her up a nearby mountain. Many men make the attempt and fail. When the king's daughter falls in love with a noble and handsome man, she tells the man of a magical potion that will renew his strength and allow him to carry her all the way up the mountain. He obtains the tonic from her aunt who has vast medical knowledge, but when he tries to carry her up the mountain, he repeatedly refuses to take her. He succeeds in bringing her to the summit, but he collapses and dies. She dies shortly afterward from exhaustion, refusing to take the tonic. The people of the kingdom bury them on the mountain, and the mountain becomes known as "the Mountain of Two Lovers". Template:Spoiler-end
Allusions
The mountain mentioned in the poem actually exists, near the commune of Pîtres in the Haute-Normandie region of France.[1]
See also
Notes and references
- ^ Lais de Marie de France, traduits, annotés et présentés par Laurence Harf-Lancner, Lettres gothiques, Livre de Poche 1990, p. 169