Marie de France
Encyclopedia
Marie de France was a medieval poet
who was probably born in France
and lived in England
during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about 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 her manuscripts, though one contemporary reference to her work and popularity remains.
Marie de France wrote a form of Anglo-Norman
French, and was evidently proficient in Latin
and English
as well. 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 in particular were and still are widely read, and influenced the subsequent development of the romance genre
.
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.
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. One hundred and two "Ysopet
" fables have also been attributed to her, in addition to 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
.
Scholars have dated Marie's works to between about 1160 and 1215, these being the earliest and latest possible dates respectively. It is probable that the Lais were written in the late twelfth 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, and therefore her nephew, might be understandable.
It is likely that Marie de France was known at the court of King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine
. 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. She was first given the name Marie de France by the French scholar Claude Fauchet in 1551, in his Recueil de l'origine de la langue et poesie françoise, and this name has been used ever since.
The presence of an Anglo-Norman dialect in her writings and the survival of many of her texts in England "suggest that she lived in England during her adult life," but that she was born in France, possibly in Brittany. The signification of the phrase "si sui de France", however, is ambiguous and equivocal when applied to the 12th century. France was a word used to signify Paris and Île-de-France
when used on the continent. Marie may possibly not have stated that she was from France if she was originally from a region governed by Henry II such as Brittany, Normandy, Anjou or Aquitaine, unless she had been thoroughly anglicized.
It is even possible that when Marie says that she comes from France in the Fables, she means that she lives in Île-de-France and that this is where she is writing, perhaps on the borders of Normandy, with a broad readership and audience in mind. Three of the five surviving manuscript copies of the Lais are written in continental French and British Library MS Harley 978, written in Anglo-Norman French in the mid-thirteenth century, may reflect the dialect of the copiest.
Only five manuscripts containing some or all of Marie’s lais now exist, and the only one to include the general prologue and all twelve lais is British Library MS Harley 978. This may be contrasted with the twenty-five manuscripts with Marie's Fables, perhaps reflecting their relative popularity in the late Middle Ages. Nevertheless, Marie's lais have received much more critical attention in recent times.
and Equitan
, the adulterous lovers are severely condemned but there is evidence that Marie approved of extramarital affairs under certain circumstances: "When the deceived partner has been cruel and merits deception and when the lovers are loyal to one another.” In Marie's Lais, "love always involves suffering and frequently ends in grief, even when the love itself is approved.”
Marie's lovers are usually isolated and relatively unconcerned with anything outside the immediate cause of their distress, whether it be a jealous husband or an envious society. However, "the means of overcoming this suffering is beautifully and subtly illustrated.” "Marie concentrates on the individuality of her characters and is not very concerned with their integration into society. If society does not appreciate the lovers, then the lovers die or abandon society, and society is the poorer for it.”
The heroines in Marie's Lais are often imprisoned. This imprisonment may take the form of actual incarceration by elderly husbands, as in Yonec, and in Guigemar where the lady who becomes Guigemar's lover is kept behind the walls of a castle which faces the sea, or "merely of close surveillance, as in Laustic, where the husband, who keeps a close watch on his wife when he is present, has her watched equally closely when he is away from home.” Perhaps this reflects some experience within her own life. The willingness to endorse such thoughts as adultery in the twelfth century is perhaps remarkable. “It certainly reminds us that people in the Middle Ages were aware of social injustices and did not just accept oppressive conditions as inevitable by the will of God”.
In addition to her defying the construct of love exhibited by the contemporary Church, Marie also influenced a genre that continued to be popular for another three hundred years – the medieval romance. By the time Marie was writing her lais, France already had a deep-rooted tradition of the love-lyric, specifically in Provence. Marie's Lais represent, in many ways, a transitional genre between Provençal love-lyrics from an earlier time and the romance tradition that developed these themes.
typifies the form of the lai, which relates only a (relatively) small period in the life of the hero or heroine, usually a time of crisis, unlike a true medieval romance, which is in effect a biography, spanning the hero's entire life. Lanval is a poor knight at King Arthur's court – demonstrating, incidentally, that King Arthur's world was one that Marie was willing to embrace. Relaxing in a meadow one day, reflecting upon his destitution, Lanval is approached by two maidens who lead him to their mistress, who declares her love for him. Her Otherworldly nature is revealed not only by his passage to the Isle of Avalon with her in the closing phrases of the lai, but in the magically limitless riches she showers him with, although no one can see her when she is with him and he must never reveal her existence. Queen Guinevere tries to seduce Lanval one day, but when she is rebuffed, she hurls spiteful accusations back at Lanval which cause him to mention his lady and – disaster! All gone. He is left to face trial alone once more, until his final rescue.
Marie may pose the question whether Lanval is guilty or not, but although she does not provide explicit answers, Guinevere's desires are placed in a very unfavourable light: “Good girls are the ones who have submerged their own desire in order to create socially effective simulacra of the desires of men.” The Queen is vilified because she went after the love that she desired, but it is not only she who suffers. The lai is also concerned with female power, in the form of the fairy queen who saves Lanval. However, even the fairy queen does not play a completely feminist role. The fairy queen gives Lanval the means of “satisfying not only his needs for erotic satisfaction and sustenance appropriate to a nobleman, but allowing him to fulfill his chivalric spirit in generosity of a public, indeed kingly sort, giving hospitality, patronage, and rich gifts to all”
, we are shown forbidden, passionate love, a love that leads ultimately to the death of the lovers. In this lai, "the choice of a Tristanian subject and the explicit statement at the beginning of the poem make the symbol of the intertwining plants one of the inevitable union of the lovers in death."
"Chevrefoil, Yonec
and Laustic
all deal with the subject of extra-marital love, and they all incorporate one of Marie's recurring themes, that of an unmarried lover and an unhappily married lady; and in none of the three does Marie give an indication of disapproving of this state of affairs."
, Bisclavret
and Chevrefoil, greed is the cause of suffering. In Laustic and Chevrefoil, love ultimately fails to reach its goal. In Guigemar
and Lanval, strength of love wins out in the end and a happy outcome is achieved. In Deus Amanz
, Yonec, and Milun
, the suffering is rewarded, though not happily. Eliduc
sees the wife of the lover overcome by the sight of her rival lying on a slab and renounces her marriage, becomes a nun and Eliduc marries his sweetheart, miraculously revived; although he then becomes a monk himself and sends his new wife to becone a nun with the old. Marie de France gives no universal answers, but determines the outcome of each lai on its merits.
In the late-fourteenth century, at broadly the same time that Geoffrey Chaucer
included The Franklin's Tale, itself a Breton lai, in his Canterbury Tales, a poet named Thomas Chestre composed a Middle English romance based directly upon Marie de France's Lanval, a poem which, perhaps predictably, spanned much more now than a few weeks of the hero's life, a knight named Sir Launfal
.
In 1816, the English poet Matilda Betham
wrote a long poem about Marie de France in octosyllabic couplets, The Lay of Marie.
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
who was probably born in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and lived in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
during the late 12th century. She lived and wrote at an undisclosed court, but was almost certainly at least known about at the royal court of King Henry II
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...
of England. Virtually nothing is known of her life; both her given name and its geographical specification come from her manuscripts, though one contemporary reference to her work and popularity remains.
Marie de France wrote a form of Anglo-Norman
Anglo-Norman language
Anglo-Norman is the name traditionally given to the kind of Old Norman used in England and to some extent elsewhere in the British Isles during the Anglo-Norman period....
French, and was evidently proficient in Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
and English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
as well. She is the author of the Lais of Marie de France. She translated Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables
Aesop's Fables or the Aesopica are a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and story-teller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BCE. The fables remain a popular choice for moral education of children today...
from Middle English
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
into Anglo-Norman French and wrote Espurgatoire seint Partiz, Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick
Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick
L'Espurgatoire Seint Patriz or The Legend of the Purgatory of Saint Patrick is a 12th century poem by Marie de France. It is an Old French translation of a Latin text Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii by the monk Henry of Saltrey. However, Marie's version is amplified from the original...
, based upon a Latin text. Recently she has been (tentatively) identified as the author of a saint's life
Hagiography
Hagiography is the study of saints.From the Greek and , it refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy people, and specifically to the biographies of saints and ecclesiastical leaders. The term hagiology, the study of hagiography, is also current in English, though less common...
, The Life of Saint Audrey
The Life of Saint Audrey
La Vie Seinte Audree is a 4625-line hagiography detailing the life, death, and miracles of Saint Audrey, an Anglo-Saxon saint from Ely in Britain....
. Her Lais in particular were and still are widely read, and influenced the subsequent development of the romance genre
Romance (genre)
As a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as...
.
Life and works
The actual name of the author known to us 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." Some of the most commonly-proposed suggestions for the identity of this twelfth century poet are: Marie, Abbess of ShaftesburyShaftesbury
Shaftesbury is a town in Dorset, England, situated on the A30 road near the Wiltshire border 20 miles west of Salisbury. The town is built 718 feet above sea level on the side of a chalk and greensand hill, which is part of Cranborne Chase, the only significant hilltop settlement in Dorset...
and half-sister to Henry II, King of England
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...
; Marie, Abbess of Reading
Reading, Berkshire
Reading is a large town and unitary authority area in England. It is located in the Thames Valley at the confluence of the River Thames and River Kennet, and on both the Great Western Main Line railway and the M4 motorway, some west of London....
; Marie I of Boulogne; Marie, Abbess of Barking
Barking
Barking is a suburban town in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, in East London, England. A retail and commercial centre situated in the west of the borough, it lies east of Charing Cross. Barking was in the historic county of Essex until it was absorbed by Greater London. The area is...
; and Marie de Meulan, wife of Hugh Talbot.
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
The Lais of Marie de France
The Lais of Marie de France are a series of twelve short narrative Breton lais by the poet Marie de France. They are written in the Anglo-Norman and were probably composed in the late 12th century. The short, narrative poems generally focus on glorifying the concept of courtly love through the...
, 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
Guigemar
"Guigemar" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France during the 12th century. The poem belongs to the collection known as The Lais of Marie de France...
that she first reveals her name to be Marie. One hundred and two "Ysopet
Ysopet
Ysopet refers to a medieval collection of fables in French literature, specifically to versions of Aesop's Fables. Alternatively the term Isopet-Avionnet indicates that the fables are drawn from both Aesop and Avianus....
" fables have also been attributed to her, in addition to a retelling of the Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick
Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick
L'Espurgatoire Seint Patriz or The Legend of the Purgatory of Saint Patrick is a 12th century poem by Marie de France. It is an Old French translation of a Latin text Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii by the monk Henry of Saltrey. However, Marie's version is amplified from the original...
and recently, a saint's life called La Vie seinte Audree
The Life of Saint Audrey
La Vie Seinte Audree is a 4625-line hagiography detailing the life, death, and miracles of Saint Audrey, an Anglo-Saxon saint from Ely in Britain....
about Saint Audrey
Æthelthryth
Æthelthryth is the proper name for the popular Anglo-Saxon saint often known, particularly in a religious context, as Etheldreda or by the pet form of Audrey...
of Ely
Ely, Cambridgeshire
Ely is a cathedral city in Cambridgeshire, England, 14 miles north-northeast of Cambridge and about by road from London. It is built on a Lower Greensand island, which at a maximum elevation of is the highest land in the Fens...
.
Scholars have dated Marie's works to between about 1160 and 1215, these being the earliest and latest possible dates respectively. It is probable that the Lais were written in the late twelfth century; they are dedicated to a "noble king", usually assumed to be Henry II of England
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...
, or possibly his eldest son, Henry the Young King
Henry the Young King
Henry, known as the Young King was the second of five sons of King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine but the first to survive infancy. He was officially King of England; Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou and Maine.-Early life:Little is known of the young prince Henry before the events...
. Another of her works, the Fables, is dedicated to a "Count William", who may have been either William of Mandeville
William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex
William de Mandeville, 3rd Earl of Essex was a loyal councilor of Henry II and Richard I of England.He was the second son of Geoffrey de Mandeville, 1st Earl of Essex and Rohese de Vere, Countess of Essex. After his father's death while in rebellion , William grew up at the court of the Count of...
or William Marshall
William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke
Sir William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke , also called William the Marshal , was an Anglo-Norman soldier and statesman. He was described as the "greatest knight that ever lived" by Stephen Langton...
. 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, and therefore her nephew, might be understandable.
It is likely that Marie de France was known at the court of King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine was one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in Western Europe during the High Middle Ages. As well as being Duchess of Aquitaine in her own right, she was queen consort of France and of England...
. A contemporary of Marie, the English poet Denis Piramus
Denis Pyramus
Denis Pyramus was a Benedictine monk of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey and an Anglo-Norman poet who was active in the second part of the 12th and the beginning of the 13th century....
, mentions in his Life of Saint Edmund the King, written in around 1180, the lais of a Marie which were popular in aristocratic circles. She was first given the name Marie de France by the French scholar Claude Fauchet in 1551, in his Recueil de l'origine de la langue et poesie françoise, and this name has been used ever since.
The presence of an Anglo-Norman dialect in her writings and the survival of many of her texts in England "suggest that she lived in England during her adult life," but that she was born in France, possibly in Brittany. The signification of the phrase "si sui de France", however, is ambiguous and equivocal when applied to the 12th century. France was a word used to signify Paris and Île-de-France
Île-de-France (province)
The province of Île-de-France or Isle de France is an historical province of France, and the one at the centre of power during most of French history...
when used on the continent. Marie may possibly not have stated that she was from France if she was originally from a region governed by Henry II such as Brittany, Normandy, Anjou or Aquitaine, unless she had been thoroughly anglicized.
It is even possible that when Marie says that she comes from France in the Fables, she means that she lives in Île-de-France and that this is where she is writing, perhaps on the borders of Normandy, with a broad readership and audience in mind. Three of the five surviving manuscript copies of the Lais are written in continental French and British Library MS Harley 978, written in Anglo-Norman French in the mid-thirteenth century, may reflect the dialect of the copiest.
Breton lais
Breton lais were certainly in existence before Marie de France chose to recast the themes 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." The lais of Marie de France had a huge impact on the literary world. 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), frequently describe courtly love entangled in love triangles involving loss and adventure, and "often take up aspects of the merveilleux, and at times intrusions from the fairy world." The setting for Marie's lais is the Celtic world, embracing England, Wales, Ireland, Brittany and NormandyOnly five manuscripts containing some or all of Marie’s lais now exist, and the only one to include the general prologue and all twelve lais is British Library MS Harley 978. This may be contrasted with the twenty-five manuscripts with Marie's Fables, perhaps reflecting their relative popularity in the late Middle Ages. Nevertheless, Marie's lais have received much more critical attention in recent times.
Love
In most of Marie de France’s Lais, love is associated with suffering and over half of them involve an adulterous relationship. In BisclavretBisclavret
"Bisclavret" is one of the twelve Lais of Marie de France written in the 12th century. Originally written in French, it tells the story of a werewolf who is trapped in lupine form by the treachery of his wife...
and Equitan
Equitan
"Equitan" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France sometime in the 12th century. The poem belongs to what is collectively known as The Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in the collection, Equitan is written in the Anglo-Norman language, a dialect of Old...
, the adulterous lovers are severely condemned but there is evidence that Marie approved of extramarital affairs under certain circumstances: "When the deceived partner has been cruel and merits deception and when the lovers are loyal to one another.” In Marie's Lais, "love always involves suffering and frequently ends in grief, even when the love itself is approved.”
Marie's lovers are usually isolated and relatively unconcerned with anything outside the immediate cause of their distress, whether it be a jealous husband or an envious society. However, "the means of overcoming this suffering is beautifully and subtly illustrated.” "Marie concentrates on the individuality of her characters and is not very concerned with their integration into society. If society does not appreciate the lovers, then the lovers die or abandon society, and society is the poorer for it.”
Defying Church traditions
Marie de France’s lais not only portray a gloomy outlook on love, they also defied the traditions of love within the Church at the time. She wrote about adulterous affairs, women of high stature who seduce other men, women seeking escape from a loveless marriage, often to an older man, which gave the idea that women can have sexual freedom. She wrote lais, many of which seemed to endorse sentiments that were contrary to the traditions of the Church, and especially the idea of virginal love and marriage. The lais also exhibit the idea of a stronger female role and power. In this, she may have inherited ideas and norms from the troubadour love songs that were common at the Angevin courts of England, Aquitaine, Anjou and Brittany; songs in which the heroine "is a contradictory symbol of power and inarticulacy; she is at once acutely vulnerable and emotionally overwhelming, irrelevant and central." Marie's heroines are often the instigators of events, but events that often end in suffering.The heroines in Marie's Lais are often imprisoned. This imprisonment may take the form of actual incarceration by elderly husbands, as in Yonec, and in Guigemar where the lady who becomes Guigemar's lover is kept behind the walls of a castle which faces the sea, or "merely of close surveillance, as in Laustic, where the husband, who keeps a close watch on his wife when he is present, has her watched equally closely when he is away from home.” Perhaps this reflects some experience within her own life. The willingness to endorse such thoughts as adultery in the twelfth century is perhaps remarkable. “It certainly reminds us that people in the Middle Ages were aware of social injustices and did not just accept oppressive conditions as inevitable by the will of God”.
In addition to her defying the construct of love exhibited by the contemporary Church, Marie also influenced a genre that continued to be popular for another three hundred years – the medieval romance. By the time Marie was writing her lais, France already had a deep-rooted tradition of the love-lyric, specifically in Provence. Marie's Lais represent, in many ways, a transitional genre between Provençal love-lyrics from an earlier time and the romance tradition that developed these themes.
Lanval
The lai of LanvalLanval
"Lanval" is one of the Lais of Marie de France. Written in Anglo-Norman, it tells the story of a knight at King Arthur's court who is overlooked by the king, wooed by a fairy lady, given all manner of gifts by her, and subsequently refuses the advances of Queen Guinevere...
typifies the form of the lai, which relates only a (relatively) small period in the life of the hero or heroine, usually a time of crisis, unlike a true medieval romance, which is in effect a biography, spanning the hero's entire life. Lanval is a poor knight at King Arthur's court – demonstrating, incidentally, that King Arthur's world was one that Marie was willing to embrace. Relaxing in a meadow one day, reflecting upon his destitution, Lanval is approached by two maidens who lead him to their mistress, who declares her love for him. Her Otherworldly nature is revealed not only by his passage to the Isle of Avalon with her in the closing phrases of the lai, but in the magically limitless riches she showers him with, although no one can see her when she is with him and he must never reveal her existence. Queen Guinevere tries to seduce Lanval one day, but when she is rebuffed, she hurls spiteful accusations back at Lanval which cause him to mention his lady and – disaster! All gone. He is left to face trial alone once more, until his final rescue.
Marie may pose the question whether Lanval is guilty or not, but although she does not provide explicit answers, Guinevere's desires are placed in a very unfavourable light: “Good girls are the ones who have submerged their own desire in order to create socially effective simulacra of the desires of men.” The Queen is vilified because she went after the love that she desired, but it is not only she who suffers. The lai is also concerned with female power, in the form of the fairy queen who saves Lanval. However, even the fairy queen does not play a completely feminist role. The fairy queen gives Lanval the means of “satisfying not only his needs for erotic satisfaction and sustenance appropriate to a nobleman, but allowing him to fulfill his chivalric spirit in generosity of a public, indeed kingly sort, giving hospitality, patronage, and rich gifts to all”
Chevrefoil, Yonec and Laustic
In ChevrefoilChevrefoil
"Chevrefoil" is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The eleventh poem in the collection called The Lais of Marie de France, its subject is an episode from the romance of Tristan and Iseult. The title means "honeysuckle," a symbol of love in the poem...
, we are shown forbidden, passionate love, a love that leads ultimately to the death of the lovers. In this lai, "the choice of a Tristanian subject and the explicit statement at the beginning of the poem make the symbol of the intertwining plants one of the inevitable union of the lovers in death."
"Chevrefoil, Yonec
Yonec
"Yonec" is one of the Lais of Marie de France, written in the twelfth century by the French poet known only as Marie de France. Yonec is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem. The poem is written in the Anglo-Norman dialect of Old French in rhyming couplets of eight syllables each...
and Laustic
Laüstic
"Laüstic", also known as "Le Rossignol", Le Laustic", "Laostic", and "Aüstic", is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The title comes from the Breton language word for "nightingale", a symbolic figure in the poem...
all deal with the subject of extra-marital love, and they all incorporate one of Marie's recurring themes, that of an unmarried lover and an unhappily married lady; and in none of the three does Marie give an indication of disapproving of this state of affairs."
Other lais
In EquitanEquitan
"Equitan" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France sometime in the 12th century. The poem belongs to what is collectively known as The Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in the collection, Equitan is written in the Anglo-Norman language, a dialect of Old...
, Bisclavret
Bisclavret
"Bisclavret" is one of the twelve Lais of Marie de France written in the 12th century. Originally written in French, it tells the story of a werewolf who is trapped in lupine form by the treachery of his wife...
and Chevrefoil, greed is the cause of suffering. In Laustic and Chevrefoil, love ultimately fails to reach its goal. In Guigemar
Guigemar
"Guigemar" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France during the 12th century. The poem belongs to the collection known as The Lais of Marie de France...
and Lanval, strength of love wins out in the end and a happy outcome is achieved. In Deus Amanz
Les Deux Amants
"Les Deus Amanz" is a Breton lai, a type of narrative poem, written by Marie de France sometime in the 12th century. The poem belongs to what is collectively known as The Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in the collection, Les Deux Amants is written in Old French, in rhyming...
, Yonec, and Milun
Milun
"Milun" is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. Milun is the ninth lai in the collection known as the Lais of Marie de France. Like the other lais in this collection, Milun is written in the Anglo-Norman dialect of Old French, in couplets of eight syllables in length...
, the suffering is rewarded, though not happily. Eliduc
Eliduc
"Eliduc" is a Breton lai by the medieval poet Marie de France. The twelfth and last poem in the collection known as The Lais of Marie de France, it appears in the manuscript Harley 978 at the British Library. Like the other poems in this collection, "Eliduc" is written in the Anglo-Norman dialect...
sees the wife of the lover overcome by the sight of her rival lying on a slab and renounces her marriage, becomes a nun and Eliduc marries his sweetheart, miraculously revived; although he then becomes a monk himself and sends his new wife to becone a nun with the old. Marie de France gives no universal answers, but determines the outcome of each lai on its merits.
Influence on Literature
Marie’s stories exhibit a form of lyrical poetry that influenced the way that narrative poetry was subsequently composed, adding another dimension to the narration through her prologues and the epilogues, for example. She also developed three parts to a narrative lai: aventure (the ancient Breton deed or story); lai (Breton melodies); conte (recounting the story narrated by the lai).In the late-fourteenth century, at broadly the same time that Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
included The Franklin's Tale, itself a Breton lai, in his Canterbury Tales, a poet named Thomas Chestre composed a Middle English romance based directly upon Marie de France's Lanval, a poem which, perhaps predictably, spanned much more now than a few weeks of the hero's life, a knight named Sir Launfal
Sir Launfal
Sir Launfal is a 1045-line Middle English romance or Breton lay written by Thomas Chestre dating from the late-14th century. It is based primarily on the 538-line Middle English poem Sir Landevale, which in turn was based on Marie de France's lai Lanval, written in a form of French understood in...
.
In 1816, the English poet Matilda Betham
Matilda Betham-Edwards
Matilda Betham-Edwards was an English novelist, travel writer and francophile. She was also a prolific poet and wrote several children's books. She also corresponded with well-known English male poets of the day.-Biography:She was the daughter of a clergyman...
wrote a long poem about Marie de France in octosyllabic couplets, The Lay of Marie.