Marie de France

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The French poet Marie de France (active late 12th century) was an accomplished writer of lais and was probably the originator of that form.

Marie de France is one of those authors whose work is well known but whose life is largely conjectural. Her status as a trouvère, her education in both Latin and French, and her vocabulary and style identify her as a member of an aristocratic circle, possibly of noble birth. Her assumption of "de France" indicates no title but merely her connection with the Île-de-France. The themes of her lais reveal her close association with the amour courtois movement and strongly suggest that if, as a number of literary historians claim, she is the illegitimate half sister of Henry II, she was one of the young women who came under the direct influence of Marie de Champagne at the Poitevin court of Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. This would account for her romantic inspiration.

Marie wrote in a dialect that indicates Normandy on the border of the Île-de-France. This would explain her use of Breton contes and fabliaux as the source of her stories, stories she said she had heard, not read. Breton entertainers were ubiquitous in Normandy and in Poitiers during the period Eleanor was in residence. They had to be bilingual, for otherwise their patrons and audiences would have been very small. The strange tales were seized upon and synthesized with the love code of Poitou to create the lais which Marie dedicated to Henry II.

The lais are done skillfully in octosyllabic rhymed couplets extending to 100 lines or less. This is a most satisfying length for a reading with a circle of ladies, and a handsome little page could hold their attention with his clear young voice. Also, in beautiful manuscripts the lais were entertaining private reading. They never were intended for public gatherings; they were too tenuous and dreamy. Of the dozen or so lais acknowledged as Marie's, only one, Sir Lanval, belongs specifically to the Arthurian legend.

Later work (ca. 1180) includes the didactic Ysopet, based on the fables of shrewd Reynart the Fox. Though the title refers her fables to Aesop, Marie claims that the collection she used was produced by "Alfred," presumably Alfred the Great. This has strengthened the contention that Marie de France lived many years in England, where she was at her death the abbess of Shaftesbury.

Marie's last known work is her La Espurgatoire de Saint Patrice. Basically this is a translation of a Latin source which proved so popular that several French poets produced "purgatories" at about the same time.

Further Reading

Urban Tigner Holmes, A History of Old French Literature, from the Origins to 1300 (1937; rev. ed. 1962), is a satisfactory substitute for the many fine surveys written in French. Holmes's treatment of Marie de France sets her in relationship to the poets of her time. A remarkably complete look into the lives of the courts in various parts of France and England where Eleanor, Henry II, and their sons presided is in Amy R. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (1950), which provides a brilliant introduction to the workings of the Poitevin courts of love. E.K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (1927), gives careful attention to Marie's place in the Arthurian legend.

Marie de France, 12th‐century French poet. The first known European woman writer to compose vernacular narrative poetry, Marie was best known for her Aesop‐based Fables and her twelve widely translated Lais (c.1160–1215). Short verse romances, the Lais are sophisticated retellings of traditional Breton oral lais. In several, the supernatural plays a key role: ‘Lanval’, a fairy bride story whose hero is one of Arthur's knights; ‘Bisclavret’, the story of a virtuous werewolf; and ‘Yonec’, an animal‐groom tale whose captive heroine is visited by a lover in the form of a hawk.

— Suzanne Rahn

Marie De France (fl. second half of 12th c.) is commonly assumed to be a woman writer from the Île-de-France who lived in England and perhaps wrote at the court of Henry II Plantagenet. More precise identification of Marie with a historical person is disputed. The name ‘Marie’ appears in three works attributed to the same author, the Lais, the Fables, and (with less certainty) the Espurgatoire seint Patriz. Judging from these texts, Marie was an educated person of the nobility who knew Latin, English, and French, was well-versed in classical culture as well as popular traditions, was a sensitive observer of social and amorous problems, and a sophisticated, self-conscious artist. Many readers, medieval and modern, have assumed that the author was a woman; some have seen in the writings a woman's distinctive perspective upon love, social relationships, and courtly literature.

Marie's Lais (written between 1160 and 1178) rank among the best-loved works of medieval literature. Extant wholly or partly in five manuscripts, of which one alone contains all 12 stories, these brief tales in rhymed octosyllabic couplets are inspired by and named after the songs, or lais, sung by Bretons to commemorate an extraordinary or dramatic event, an aventure. In the Prologue, Marie states her desire for poetic originality: she chooses not to translate from Latin, because so many others have done so, but to remember the lais she has heard. With stylistic economy, thematic complexity, and symbolic richness, the Lais recount the sufferings of lovers who struggle, often unsuccessfully, against social constraints. The Lais' Breton setting mixes feudal reality with other-worldly fantasy. The merveilleux often intrudes in the form of fairies and magical animals, objects, or plants, but it never distorts the human dimension of the lovers' plight.

Incorporating diverse sources and multiple perspectives, Marie's tales are irreducible to a single moral or theme. Guigemar, whose unhappily married heroine is ultimately united with the eponymous hero, shows a debt to Ovid and the romans d'antiquité; Equitan, where the adulterous couple conspire to kill the husband and are ultimately punished, prefigures the materialism of the fabliaux. An unfaithful wife who schemes against her werewolf husband gets her due in Bisclavret, a variation of a beast fable. The Arthurian court is the backdrop for the knight's betrayal of his fairy mistress in Lanval; courtly conventions are parodied in Chaitivel. Symbolic objects or animals often emblematize the lovers' plight and provide poetic fulfilment in the place of real-life solutions: in Deus Amanz a flowering mountainside commemorates the magic potion spilled by a lover who dies as he carries his lady to the summit. In Laüstic the lady embroiders her story in a cloth to shroud the nightingale that her jealous husband has killed, and she then sends the relic to her lover. In Yonec the lover himself takes the form of a hawk who flies through the window to visit an unhappy wife until he is treacherously killed. In Milun the bird motif reappears in a swan who carries the lovers' messages, allowing the constant couple to be reunited with their son after the jealous husband has died. The briefest lai, Chevrefoil, recounts a poignant episode of the Tristan legend; the longest, Eliduc, portrays the plight of a man betrothed to two women, who is saved through the altruism of the first wife. Sympathy between women is also remarkable in Fresne.

The Fables or Ysopet (the generic name for fable collections in the Middle Ages), which appear to have been written after the Lais, are 103 brief narrative poems, exempla for moral instruction that Marie claims to be translating from an English source. Some 40 fables correspond closely to a Latin adaptation of Aesop; the others have diverse origins. Protagonists include peasants, knights, and ladies, as well as beasts. A distinctive authorial style conveys sharp observations of social injustice. Their concise moral endings are often ironic or obliquely related to the tale. The Espurgatoire seint Patriz, based on a Latin text and possibly Marie's last work, casts the voyage of a knight, Owein, to the underworld as a chivalric adventure.

The recent revival of critical interest in Marie's work suggests that she fulfilled her intention, implied in the Lais' Prologue, to put wisdom and eloquence to good use in the creation of distinctive, subtle texts that encourage her readers to add the ‘surplus’ (or additional meaning) of their own interpretation.

— Roberta Krueger

Bibliography

• E. Mickel, Marie de France (1974)
• P. Ménard, Les Lais (1979)
• H. Spiegel, The Fables (1987)

Marie de France
Marie de France from an illuminated manuscript
Born	Ile-de-France
Nationality	French
Writing period	Medieval
Genres	Lais, Fables, Saints' Lives
Influences Breton lais, Aesop
Influenced Chrétien de Troyes, Anonymous lais, Fabliaux

Marie de France ("Mary of France") was a poet evidently born in France and living in England during the late 12th century. Virtually nothing is known of her early life, though she wrote a form of Anglo-Norman. She also translated some Latin literature and produced an influential version of Aesop's Fables. Marie de France was one of the best Old-French poets of the twelfth century. She identifies herself only as Marie who originated in France. Nothing else definite is known about her.

Contents 1 Life and works 2 Notes 3 References 4 External links

Life and works

Although her actual name is now unknown, she is referred to as "Marie de France" after a line in one of her published works: "Marie ai num, si sui de France," which translates as "My name is Marie, and I am from France." Some of the most widely accepted candidates for the poet are^[1] Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury and half-sister to Henry II, King of England; Marie, Abbess of Reading; Marie de Boulogne; Marie, Abbess of Barking;^[2][3] and Marie de Meulan, wife of Hugh Talbot.^[4][5][6]

Four works have been attributed to Marie de France: The Lais of Marie de France (a collection of twelve short narrative poems not unlike shortened versions of romances), the one hundred and two "Ysopet" fables, a retelling of the Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, and, most recently, a saint's life called La Vie seinte Audree about Saint Audrey of Ely. Scholars have dated Marie's works between about 1160 at the earliest, and about 1215 at the latest, though it is probable that they were written between about 1170 and 1205. One of her works, the Lais, is dedicated to a "noble king," another to a "Count William." It is thought that the king referred to is either Henry II of England or his eldest son, "Henry the Young King." The Count William in question is, most likely, either William of Mandeville or William Marshall.

It has been suggested that Marie de France was a member of the court Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. In 1816, the English poet Matilda Betham wrote a long poem about Marie de France in octosyllabic couplets, "The Lay of Marie."

What is known from others:^[1]

The English poet Denis Piramus (Vie Seint Edmund le rei, after 1170) refers to her as "dame Marie," emphasizing her noble rank, the scholar Claude Fauchet was the first to coin the name "Marie de France" in his Reueil de l’origine de la langue et poésie françoise (1581). Both the historical circumstances of the manuscripts containing her texts, and linguistic elements of Anglo-Norman, suggest that she lived in England during her adult life, but it seems most likely that she was born in France, probably in the Bretagne.

Historical Context:^[7]

Twelfth century was period of change and transformation in medieval European culture and society: increased economic production and trade; prosperity, splendor, luxury, and entertainment at the courts of aristocrats; development of a sophisticated courtly culture celebrating love, courtesy, gallantry, and the enjoyment of the arts (poetry, music, dance, etc.)

Crusades: Christian European military enterprise seeking to gain control of the Holy Land (Palestine). Though claiming spiritual motivations, the Crusades had much to do with looting and pillaging of both pagan and Christian lands and opening and controlling vital trade routes with the East. The First Crusade was called by Pope Urban II and resulted in the conquest of Jerusalem in 1099. Though often resulting in military disasters, the Crusades brought to Europe an unprecedented influx of Eastern riches (silks, spices, jewels, etc.) which radically transformed the way of life of aristocrats.

Court of Henry II (r. 1154-1189) and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine; parents of Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland

Rise of women like Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122-1204) and her daughter, Marie de Champagne, to positions of power and influence; role of women as patrons in the development of courtly culture; powerful women as centers of a courtly culture of love promoting values of courtesy and refinement in human behavior and relationships

Courtly love: practices of amorous dalliance at the courts, often involving adulterous relationships which were celebrated in poetry and narrative; jealous and brutish old husbands are portrayed as the villains in a variety of tales and poems, while beautiful ladies and their lovers (young knights, talented poets, witty clerks) enjoy themselves at their expense

Courtly literature: love poetry composed by courtly poets known as troubadours (e.g. Bernart de Ventadorn, in southern France) and trouvères (e.g. Thibaut de Champagne, in northern France); also narrative poetic romances telling stories of love and adventure (e.g. the Lais of Marie de France and the romances of Chrêtien de Troyes).

The animosity of the Catholic Church against the courtly culture of southern France led to the launching of a military and moral crusade against the supposed heresies practiced there (Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1229). The crusaders looted and destroyed all the main cultural centers of southern France and effectively put an end to courtly culture.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Classen, Albrecht (2003-09-15). "Marie de France". The Literary Encyclopedia. http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5494. Retrieved 2009-10-12. 
2. ^ Rossi, Carla (2007). Marie, ki en sun tens pas ne s'oblie; Maria di Francia: la Storia oltre l'enigma. Rome: Bagatto Libri. 
3. ^ Rossi, Carla (2009). Marie de France et les èrudits de Cantorbéry. Paris: Editions Classiques Garnier. 
4. ^ Holmes, Urban T. (1932), "New thoughts on Marie de France", Studies in Philology 29: 1–10 
5. ^ Grillo, Peter R. (1988), "Was Marie de France the Daughter of Waleran II, Count of Meulan?", Medium Aevum 57: 269–273 
6. ^ Pontfarcy, Yolande de (1995), "Si Marie de France était Marie de Meulan", Cahiers de Civilisation Medievale (Xe-XIIe Siecles) 38: 353–61 
7. ^ Fajardo-Acosta, Fidel (2002). "Marie de France (12th c.)". Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta's World Literature Website. http://fajardo-acosta.com/worldlit/marie/index.htm. Retrieved 2009-10-12. 

References

• Blain, Virginia, et al. "Marie de France," The Feminist Companion to Literature in English (Yale UP, 1990, 714).
• McCash, June Hall, "La Vie seinte Audree, A Fourth Text by Marie de France." Speculum (July 2002): 744-777.
• Watt, Diane, 'Medieval Women's Writing' (Polity, 2008).

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marie de France

French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Marie de France

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marie de France

• International Marie de France Society
• Works by Marie de France at Project Gutenberg
  • French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France at Project Gutenberg
• Complete bibliography of her works, including secondary literature (Archives de littérature du Moyen Âge, Arlima)
•  "Marie de France". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/Marie_de_France. 

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