« Sun parastre ad le chief tolu » : vengeance, jugement et amour dans le lai d’Yonec

• Main Author: Catherine Nicolas
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Université du Sud Toulon-Var 2020-12-01
• Series: Babel : Littératures Plurielles
• Subjects: Yonec; revenge; Judgement; Christ of the Second Coming; love; icon
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/babel/11443

The end of Yonec’s lai presents a cruel and surprising spectacle : seeing his mother dead on the grave of her bird-lover, Yonec, the lady’s son, beheads his stepfather in front of the people gathered in the chapter hall of an abbey. The gesture, often read as an expression of revenge, can however be read as a judgement, with the figure of the Christ of Judgement on the horizon. The severed chief then appears next to the sword as the horrible face of a diptych, the second part of which depicts the reunion of lovers in death and the whole of which is an icon of love. Reading this end as a mnemotechnic image makes it possible to show how Marie de France guides her reader to pass on a knowledge of love.