ABSTRACT
Lanval is one of the most appealing of the twelfth-century Anglo-Norman lais of Marie de France. Lanval tells the story of a knight whom Morte D'Arthur neglects to include in one of his periodic distributions of rewards. Some of Chestre's narrative elaborations may have been suggested to him by a version of Graelent, an old French lai that is recognizably an analogue of Lanval. Lanval's plight has from the first a larger psychological element than Launfal's. A certain degree of narcissistic introversion and engagement in fantasies or daydreams are otherwise said to perform, in fact, an adaptive function. Lanval enjoys an independence from the court much more potentially dangerous than the psychic self-sufficiency enjoyed by the confirmed daydreamer. The transformation of Lanval into Sir Launfal in that respect illustrates a minor law that seems to operate in the interpretation and retelling of fictions that catch the imagination.
