until cured by a woman’s love. The injured knight jour-
neys to a remote land where an old king is married to a
lovely woman whom he guards jealously. She treats
Guigemar’s wound, and the two end up falling in love
and exchanging tokens (a knotted shirt and a chastity
belt). However, the lady’s husband discovers their clan-
destine affair and sends Guigemar away. Eventually the
lady goes in search of him but ends up being taken cap-
tive by Lord Meriaduc. When Guigemar chances upon
Lord Meriaduc’s castle, he recognizes the lady by her
possession of his love token. He then engages Meriaduc
in battle and kills him. The lai concludes with Guige-
mar being reunited with his beloved.
The lai contains a strong fairy-tale motif (the
enchanted animal) and constitutes a type of story com-
mon in the medieval period: the unhappily married
woman, usually of an older and possessive/jealous hus-
band, who falls in love with a knight errant. The poem
celebrates “true” love—based on the individuals’ com-
patibility and emotional attachment—over duty. A
number of scholars have seen this as indicative of the
triumph of the individual heart over the dictates of soci-
ety and the strictures of arranged marriages. Others have
examined the seemingly Celtic concepts of the story,
attempting to contextualize ANGLO-NORMAN society.
FURTHER READING
Burgess, Glyn S., and Keith Busby, trans. Lais of Marie de
France. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin, 1999.
———. The Lais of Marie De France: Text and Context. Ath-
ens: University of Georgia Press, 1987.
Joseph Becker
GULLINGE SONNETS SIR JOHN DAV I E S
(1590s) Though diffi cult to date with precision, the
Gullinge Sonnets of SIR JOHN DAVIES were fashioned as a
direct commentary on the saccharine SONNET SEQUENCEs
in vogue during the 1590s. The Sonnets consist of nine
poems and a dedicatory verse to Sir Anthony Cooke.
In the dedicatory poem, Davies warns that through-
out this sequence, his “camelion Muse” will assume
“divers shapes of gross absurdities,” such that “if some
rich, rash gull these Rimes commend, / Thus you may
sett his for all witt to schoole,... / and beg him for a
fool” (ll. 12–14). The purpose of these poems thus was
to both satirize the writers of bad SONNETs and expose
those readers who pretend to have good taste by com-
mending technically profi cient but fundamentally
fl awed sonnets.
The wit of the opening two sonnets is contained in
the sudden transition of the terminal COUPLET away
from the expected—and overused—CONCEITs and met-
aphors regarding love to a comic resolution. The fi rst
sonnet is written in the third person, which allows
Davies to criticize an external object. Here he is the
lover whose endurance of his mistress’s love is trans-
formed “Into a patiente burden-bearinge Asse” (l. 14).
In the second sonnet, Davies compares the “poysonous
beauty” of a lover to a “contagious yll” that decimates a
fl ock of sheep (ll. 7–8).
Sonnet 3 is a SATIRE on the rhetorical trope of redu-
plication, where the end of one phrase is repeated at
the beginning of the next. Though technically profi -
cient, the sonnet says very little and shows no progress
of narrative or thought, which is the point. The octave
of Sonnet 4 compares love to the workings of a gun,
only to change the overarching metaphor at the VOLTA
to that of a lamp, as though the SESTET and the OCTAVE
were from different poems.
Sonnet 5 mocks trick poetry and list poetry, which
relied on the poet’s ability to fi nd synonyms rather than
create good verse. Sonnet 6 clothes a personifi ed “love”
in the attire of an Elizabethan gentleman rather than
that of a mistress. Sonnets 7–9 are heavily laced with
legal conceits and jargons, which is perhaps unsurpris-
ing from a man who later became a great lawyer. These
three sonnets, though, are a direct attack on the writ-
ings of students at the Inns of Court that were laced
with legal terminology quite foreign to a love poem.
As much of the humor is drawn from a very narrow
historical and legal context, the satirical wit of the Gull-
inge Sonnets can be diffi cult for readers today to recog-
nize. Nevertheless, they stand as a self-conscious
refl ection on the poetic standards and fashions of the
late Elizabethan period.
FURTHER READING
Sanderson, James L. “Bérenger de La Tour and Sir John
Davies: Two Poets Who Set the Planets Dancing.” Library
Chronicle 37, no. 2 (1971): 116–125.
Andrew Bretz212 GULLINGE SONNETS