SOURCE: "The Narrative Unity of the 'Lanval' of Marie de France," in Studies in Philology, Vol. LXXIV, No. 2, April, 1977, pp. 130-45.

In the following essay, Ireland divides the story line of "Lanval" into four "stages" while demonstrating the lai's connections with later Arthurian romances.

In perhaps the best book to date on Marie de France, Emanuel Mickel, Jr. has done much to clarify for the more peripheral reader the complex issues surrounding the medieval lai [Marie de France, 1974]. According to Professor Mickel's résumé of the scholarship, not only does the relationship between Marie's narrative lais and earlier Breton sources remain critically enigmatic, but also there continues to be widespread disagreement whether in fact Marie called her own works lais. Moreover, generic definitions of the lais based on content somehow miss the mark in describing the breadth of her narrative poems, and those based on external features...