Marie de France (fl. 1160–1215) was a poet, likely born in France, who lived in England during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an unknown court, but she and her work were almost certainly known at the royal court of King Henry II of England. Virtually nothing is known of her life; both her given name and its geographical specification come from manuscripts containing her works. However, one written description of her work and popularity from her own era still exists. She is considered by scholars to be the first woman known to write francophone verse.
Marie de France wrote in Old French, possibly the Anglo-Norman variety. She was proficient in Latin, as were most authors and scholars of that era, as well as Middle English and possibly Breton. She is the author of the Lais of Marie de France. She translated Aesop's Fables from Middle English into Anglo-Norman French and wrote Espurgatoire seint Partiz, Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, based upon a Latin text. Recently, she has been (tentatively) identified as the author of a saint's life, The Life of Saint Audrey. Her Lais were and still are widely read and influenced the subsequent development of the romance/heroic literature genre.
Life and works
The actual name of the author now known as Marie de France is unknown; she has acquired this nom de plume from 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."Burgess 7. Some of the most commonly proposed suggestions for the identity of this 12th-century poet are Marie of France, Countess of Champagne; Marie, Abbess of Shaftesbury and half-sister to Henry II, King of England; Marie, Abbess of Reading; Marie I of Boulogne; Marie, Abbess of Barking; and Marie de Meulan, wife of Hugh Talbot and daughter of Waleran de Meulan. Based on evidence from her writings, it is clear that, despite being born in France, she spent much of her life living in England.Simpson, James, and Alfred David. "Marie de France." The Norton Anthology of English Literature Volume 1, edited by Stephen Greenblatt, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, pp. 142-143.
Four works, or collections of works, have been attributed to Marie de France. She is principally known for her authorship of The Lais of Marie de France, a collection of twelve narrative poems, mostly of a few hundred lines each. She claims in the preambles to most of these Breton lais that she has heard the stories they contain from Breton minstrels, and it is in the opening lines of the poem Guigemar that she first reveals her name to be Marie.
102 Ysopet fables have also been attributed to her besides a retelling of the Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick and, recently, a saint's life called La Vie seinte Audree about Saint Audrey of Ely, although this last attribution is not accepted by all critics.
Scholars have dated Marie's works to between about 1160 and 1215, the earliest and latest possible dates respectively. It is probable that the Lais were written in the late 12th century; they are dedicated to a "noble king", usually assumed to be Henry II of England or possibly his eldest son, Henry the Young King. Another of her works, the Fables, is dedicated to a "Count William", who may have been either William of Mandeville or William Marshall. However, it has also been suggested that Count William may refer to William Longsword. Longsword was a recognized illegitimate son of Henry II. If Marie was actually Henry II's half-sister, a dedication to his son (who would be her nephew), might be understandable.Kibler, William W. and Grover A. Zinn, p 589
Provenance and language It is likely that Marie de France was known at the court of King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986. A contemporary of Marie, the English poet Denis Piramus, mentions in his Life of Saint Edmund the King, written in around 1180, the lais of a Marie, which were popular in aristocratic circles. Her origins could have been in the parts of Île-de-France close to Normandy, or alternatively in an area in between such as Brittany or the Vexin. But the Anglo-Norman influence may be due to her living in England during her adult life, which is also suggested by the fact that so many of her texts were found in England.Hazell, Dinah, 2003. Rethinking Marie . Medieval Forum Volume 2. In addition, "si sui de France" is ambiguous and equivocal, and may refer to a region less specific than the Île-de-France – for example, an area not in the Angevin Empire.
It is clear from her writing that Marie de France was highly educated and multilingual; this level of education was not available to the common or poor at this time, so we can infer that Marie de France was of aristocratic birth and/ or belonged to a religious house (compare to Hrotsvitha, Héloïse, Bridget of Sweden, and Hildegard of Bingen).Petersen, Zina Nibley, Dr. "Middle English, Oral (folk) and Written (clerical) and Mixed (civic)." British Literary History 1. Brigham Young University, Provo. 24 Sept. 2013. Lecture. The precise language or dialect she wrote in is a matter of some discussion. Her language is one of the many versions of Old French with Anglo-Norman elements; R. Howard Bloch notes that identifying her particular language may be a fruitless exercise given that there was no standardized spelling and that the many varieties of Old French identified by (nineteenth-century) scholars are to some extent their own invention,Bloch, R. Howard, p. 9. and the linguistic question is connected to the matter of her provenance. June Hall McCash, summarizing scholarship in 2011, said:Pontfarcy [editor of the L’Espurgatoire Seint Patriz] believes, as did H. Suchier, that the work's late 12th-century language, a mixture of Norman, Anglo-Norman, and Francien, indicates an author from "une region frontière de la Normandie, qui par la suite, se serait installé en Angleterre". Östen Södergård […] comes to a similar, though less specific, conclusion about the author of the Audree. […] his linguistic analysis reveals language traits that also suggest a mixture of Norman, Anglo-Norman, and Francien dialects.McCash 244-45.
The amount and importance of Francien in her language is assessed variously. According to Liam Lewis, "her works are written in the Francien dialect with Anglo-Norman influences."Lewis 3. McCash and Barban are less convinced of such a single designation: "The language of Marie's other works has been studied by a number of earlier editors, from Warnke and Jenkins to Brucker and Pontfarcy, all of whom have concluded that she wrote in a form of continental French, though they have debated precisely what dialect of continental French she may have used. While there are elements of Francien and Norman, there are also a few Picard characteristics in the various texts."McCash and Barban 9.
She was first called "Marie de France" by the French scholar Claude Fauchet in 1581, in his Recueil de l'origine de la langue et poesie françoise, and this name has been used ever since:Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986, p 11. Fauchet names her that and then cites the description of herself quoted above ('Marie ai nun, si sui de France').Bloch, R. Howard, p. 2.
Breton lais
Breton lais were certainly in existence before Marie de France chose to recast the themes that she heard from Breton minstrels into poetic narratives in Anglo-Norman verse, but she may have been the first to present a "new genre of the lai in narrative form."Whalen, Logan E, p 63 Her lays are a collection of 12 short narrative poems written in eight-syllable verse that were based on Breton or Celtic legends, which were part of the oral literature of the Bretons.Webb, Shawncey J. "Marie de France." Reference Guide to World Literature. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. 3rd ed. Vol. 1: Authors. Detroit: St. James Press, 2003. 658-659. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 8 February 2015. The lais of Marie de France had a huge impact on the literary world.Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986, p 11: "[A twelfth century poet-contemporary of Marie wrote:] Marie's poetry has caused great praise to be heaped on her and it is much appreciated by counts and barons and knights who love to have her writings read out again and again." They were considered a new type of literary technique derived from classical rhetoric and imbued with such detail that they became a new form of art. Marie may have filled her detailed poems with imagery so that her audience would easily remember them. Her lais range in length from 118 (Chevrefoil) to 1,184 lines (Eliduc),Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986, p 8. frequently describe courtly love entangled in love triangles involving loss and adventure, and "often take up aspects of the merveilleux [marvellous], and at times intrusions from the fairy world."Whalen, Logan E, p 62
One may have a better sense of Marie de France from her very first lay, or rather, the Prologue she uses to prepare her readers for what is to come. The first line dictates “Whoever has received knowledge/ and eloquence in speech from God/ should not be silent or secretive/ but demonstrate it willingly” Marie de France, in so many words, credits her literary skills to God and is therefore allowed to write the lays without her patron’s permission (her patron likely being Henry II of England). She wants people to read what she has produced, along with her ideas, and as such urges readers to search between the lines, for her writing will be subtle. In this Prologue alone, Marie de France has deviated from common poets of her time by adding subtle, delicate, and weighted writing to her repertoire. Marie de France took her opportunity as a writer to make her words be heard, and she took them during a time when the production of books and codexes was a long, arduous, and expensive process, where just copying the Bible took fifteen months until the text’s completion.
Unlike the heroes of medieval romances, the characters in Marie’s stories do not seek out adventure. Instead, adventures happen to them. While the settings are true to life, the lais often contain elements of folklore or of the supernatural, such as Bisclavret."Marie de France." The Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia for Students. Ed. William Chester Jordan. Vol. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1996. 120-121. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 8 February 2015. While the setting is described in realistic detail, the subject is a werewolf, sympathetically portrayed. Marie moves back and forth between the real and the supernatural, skillfully expressing delicate shades of emotion. Lanval features a fairy woman who pursues the titular character and eventually brings her new lover to Avalon with her at the end of the lai. The setting for Marie's lais is the Celtic world, embracing England, Wales, Ireland, Brittany and Normandy.
Only five manuscripts containing some or all of Marie’s lais exist now, and the only one to include the general prologue and all twelve lais is British Library MS Harley 978. That may be contrasted with the 25 manuscripts with Marie's Fables and perhaps reflects their relative popularity in the late Middle Ages. In these Fables, she reveals a generally aristocratic point of view with a concern for justice, a sense of outrage against the mistreatment of the poor, and a respect for the social hierarchy."Marie de France." Arts and Humanities Through the Eras. Ed. Edward I. Bleiberg, et al. Vol. 3: Medieval Europe 814-1450. Detroit: Gale, 2005. 207-208. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 8 February 2015. Nevertheless, Marie's lais have received much more critical attention in recent times.
Fables