1. Who wrote Eliduc?  What is known about her?
2. What is the genre (the literary type) to which Eliduc belongs?
3. The author says that her story is "a very old _____ tale."  This relates the story she tells to Brittany and the Breton language.
4. How are Eliduc and Guildelüec described as the work begins?  What sort of marriage do they have?
5. Judging by the initial descriptions, what characteristics does this society seem to value in a man and a woman of the social class Eliduc and Guildelüec belong to?
6. What is the initial relationship between Eliduc and his overlord?  How is it spoiled?  What does Eliduc ask for but not receive?  What does Eliduc decide to do?
7. What promise does Eliduc make as he leaves?
8. Where does Eliduc go?  Whom does he decide to help, and how does he plan to help him?  How is he received?
9. What kind of leader does Eliduc seem to be, and what happens when he fights the king's enemies?  What promise does Eliduc make to the king?
10. What happens when the king's daughter hears of and then meets Eliduc?  Notice how this is described.  In romances and lais, love of this kind is "courtly love," which is always sudden, unavoidable, and-at least at first-secret.   (Courtly love is a very complicated concept.  The Columbia Encyclopedia provides a helpful, if not particularly sympathetic, brief definition, and Backgrounds to Romance:  "Courtly Love"  gives a longer discussion with a different perspective.  This essay discusses the "rules" for courtly love and shows how some of them can be seen in Eliduc. )
11. Does Eliduc forget that he is a married man?  Does he decide to abandon his wife?   Notice that his love for Guilliadun is described as an involuntary response.   Once it begins, can he possibly be true to all his promises?
12. Why does Eliduc decide to go home?  What promise does he make to Guilliadun?
13. How does Eliduc act toward Guildelüec when he reaches Brittainy?  What does she think has happened?  How does he respond?  (What do you think his feelings are when he exclaims, "I will not break promises"?
14. How are Eliduc and Guilliadun reunited?  What do they do?  How does Guilliadun find out that Eliduc is married?  What is her response?
15. Eliduc thinks Guilliadun is dead.  What does he do to the sailor?  Where does he take Guilliadun, and what does he plan to do?
16. How does Eliduc act at home during the next "couple of days"?  When he goes to the chapel, what puzzles him?  How does Guildelüec find out what is happening?
17. Guildelüec also thinks Guilliadun is dead, but she is able to restore her to consciousness.  How? 
18. Notice what Guildelüec and Guilliadun say to each other.  Is it the wife or the mistress who says "Women are mad to trust in men"?  Is that what you would expect?
19. Officially, Guildelüec asks for Eliduc's permission to become a nun, as a medieval married woman would in reality have had to do.  Notice, however, that she is actually the one who decides what all three of them will do, and she does not phrase her plans as a suggestion.  The lands and wealth Eliduc gives her endow a nunnery (a virtuous use of wealth), but they could be viewed as a rather generous divorce settlement, since they create an alternative career of considerable authority for Guildelüec.  ("Thus she established her order and her new way of life.")
20. What happened to Eliduc and Guilliadun?  How did all three of the characters live in their last years, and how did they die?

Many commentators, including the editors of our text, point out the contrast between the selfish love Eliduc has for Guilliadun and the unselfish, "good" love Guildelüec has for him, and certainly that is one way to look at the story.  It's also interesting, though, to contrast the story with that of Medea and to speculate on why Guildelüec is able to behave so much more generously.  It may be important that her culture, unlike Medea's, gives her an alternative place in life--a role besides that of wife to which a woman can aspire.  In addition, it is surely relevant that Guildelüec, again unlike Medea, has not given away her self--she has not betrayed her family or her own moral nature for her husband's sake as Medea has.

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