Le Lai de Lanval

The motif of color runs throughout Le Lai de Lanval. Colors like white and red are used to indicate beauty. In the first description of Lanval’s beloved, the narrator says she “surpassed in beauty the lily and the new rose when it appears in summer” (Lines 94-96). Many medieval chivalric romances—as well as renaissance poetry—include descriptions of women’s faces comparing the color of their foreheads with white lilies and the color of their cheeks and/or lips with red roses. Furthermore, the skin on the side of the fairy damsel’s body is said to be “whiter than the hawthorn blossom” (Lines 105-06). The lightness of skin is portrayed as beautiful and, in the case of Lanval’s fairy mistress, almost otherworldly.

Purple is also frequently used; it often indicates status or wealth. Purple dye was very expensive in the Middle Ages. Furthermore, in medieval texts, purple does not only refer to a specific hue, but also to a type of fabric—usually silken and manufactured in the far east. The damsel’s servants wear “closely fitting tunics of dark purple” (Line 59), and the damsel herself has a “costly mantle of white ermine covered with Alexandrian purple” (Lines 101-02). “Alexandrian” is an