It's in the introduction as my professor says but I don't know the meaning of it. He also says it can relate to the Harry Potter saga in an incident there. Please help!
I'm not sure what your professor is looking for with this question. There is a detailed description of how the ladies would dress....... how their purpose was to please the eye and entice. The last line speaks to the fact that great prose was written and inspred by what was considered beautiful...... but as it also says, a woman must be beautiful in her own eyes before she can inspire.
The paragraph in the introduction reads;
"Of the dress of the ladies who moved about the castle, seeing themselves reflected from Marie's pages as in a polished mirror, I am not competent to speak. The type of beauty preferred by the old romancers was that of a child's princess of fairy tale--blue-eyed, golden-haired, and ruddy of cheek. The lady would wear a shift of linen, "white as meadow flower." Over this was worn a garment of fur or silk, according to the season; and, above all, a vividly coloured gown, all in one line from neck to feet, shapen closely to the figure, or else the more loosely fitting bliaut. Her girdle clipped her closely about the waist, falling to the hem of her skirt, and her feet were shod in soundless shoes, without heels. The hair was arranged in two long braids, brought forward over her shoulders; as worn by those smiling Queens wrought upon the western porch of Chartres Cathedral. Out of doors, and, indeed, frequently within, as may be proved by a reference to "The Lay of the Ash Tree," the lady was clad in a mantle and a hood. It must have taken a great deal of time and travail to appear so dainty a production. But to become poetry for others, it is necessary for a woman first to be prose to herself."
The Lais of Marie de France
