the true power of the lai via the character of Lanval's mistress, the lady who chooses him for a lover and ultimately rescues him. She effectively reverses the standardized stereotype of the weak female character in appearance, motive, and action. Modern feminist scholarship often focuses on the spaces between these two characters and personas in defining Lanval as a comment on and response to then-contemporary primarily patriarchal values. Form, context and connections The work was written in eight-syllable couplets, the standard form of French narrative verse. Lanval is related to two other anonymous lais: Graelent and Guingamor. With Graelent it shares a plot structure involving a fair lover whose identity must not be revealed if her love is to be kept. Lanval is one of Marie de France's 12-lai collection, and only one explicitly set in Arthur's court with reference to the Round Table and the isle of Avalon (although the lai Chevrefoil too can be classed as Arthurian material). It was composed after Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote of King Arthur in History of the Kings of Britain (ca. 1136) and of Avalon in Life of Merlin (ca. 1150). A lai is a lyrical, narrative written in octosyllabic couplets that often deals with tales of adventure and romance. Lais were mainly composed in France and Germany, during the 13th and 14th centuries. Marie's lays, despite the fairy tale atmosphere, all feature ordinary humans, except for Lanval which features an immortal "fairy mistress" from the Otherworld (Avalon) and able to confer everlasting life on her lover. Lanval is rescued from Arthur's judgment by his mistress, which reverses the traditional gender roles of the knight in shining armour and the damsel in distress—at the conclusion, Lanval leaps onto the back of his mistress's horse and they ride off to an unknown destination. Having composed Lanval around 1170–1215, Marie wrote near the time of the Third Lateran Council 1179, which prescribed excommunication for those guilty of sodomy. This was following a tradition derived from a misreading of the Bible that the innocent in Sodom and Gomorrah were killed as well as those guilty of homosexuality, although it states that God only slew the wicked. Thus, homosexuality became a sin not just against oneself, as with other sexual sins, but an endangerment to everyone near the person. In France it was punishable by hanging. The only way to prove sexuality was to have