Del cigne firent messager: Swan as Llatai in Marie de France's Milun.

This article revisits the swan love-messenger in Marie de France's Milun —a topic of much critical attention— to posit a new analogue and consider its implications. While scholars have widely praised the uniqueness of Marie's swan, they have overlooked a similar cygnine envoy in the fourteenth- or f...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Romance Notes Vol. 62; no. 3; pp. 539 - 550
Main Authors:	Brannelly, L. A., Lopatin, Jennifer, McMullen, A. Joseph
Format:	Article
Published:	University of North Carolina Press 2022
Subjects:	Marie, de France, 12th century Swans Breton literature Romanticism in literature Messengers in literature
Online Access:	View this record in EBSCOhost

Description
Summary:	This article revisits the swan love-messenger in Marie de France's Milun —a topic of much critical attention— to posit a new analogue and consider its implications. While scholars have widely praised the uniqueness of Marie's swan, they have overlooked a similar cygnine envoy in the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century Welsh poem Yr Alarch ("The Swan") and generally ignored the broader Welsh llatai ("love-messenger") tradition. Since Marie frequently claims to have drawn on Breton tales for her Lais , we will explore the possibility that she might have adopted her love-messenger from Brittonic sources that reach their pinnacle with Dafydd ap Gwilym.