Marie de France

French poet

• Born: c. 1150
• Birthplace: Île de France
• Died: c. 1215
• Place of death: England(?)

The earliest known French woman poet, Marie de France is still admired for her narrative and poetic skill and for her psychological insight.

Early Life

Marie de France’s (mah-ree deh frahns) identity is still a matter of conjecture. Her name is known because in an epilogue to Fables (after 1170; English translation, 1983) she said, “My name is Marie, and I come from France.” It has been pointed out that during the twelfth century, “France” was actually the Île de France, the area within the rivers around Paris, as opposed, for example, to Normandy. The phrase “from France” and other evidence indicate that she was not living in France when she composed her works; it is fairly clear that she was in England, and that the king to whom she dedicated Lais (c. 1167; Lays of Marie de France and Other French Legends, 1911, better known as The Lays) was Henry II of England.

Marie de France was almost certainly a member of the nobility. She was well read and knew English and Latin as well as her native French. She was influenced by Ovid, and she claimed to have taken her fables from those of Alfred the Great; regardless of whether she actually did, she was familiar with earlier English literature. Beyond this, conjecture begins. Scholars have suggested that she might have been the abbess of Reading, a noble lady in Herefordshire, or a countess. Some evidence exists that she could have been the abbess of Shaftesbury, King Henry’s illegitimate half sister, the daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet. There has been much speculation as to the identity of the “Count William” to whom Fables is dedicated, but because the name was so popular at Henry’s court, that clue has not been helpful. At any rate, because her work does not include any borrowings from the influential Chrétien de Troyes, it is assumed that her first poems, the lais (lays), were composed in the latter part of the 1160’.

Because so little is known about her life, her personality must be deduced from her work. She is a member of the privileged classes, compassionate toward her inferiors but impatient with their attempts to rise above their proper station. Highly intelligent, she is gifted also with the common sense evident in her second work, Fables, and with the insight into human nature, which can be seen in The Lays.

Life’s Work

Marie de France’s first work was a group of twelve lais, or narrative poems retold from stories, many of Celtic origin, which she had probably heard sung by Breton bards. Generally they are either set in Brittany or attributed to a Breton source. Marie de France formulated her own structure for these poems: a prologue, the story, and an epilogue, all in octosyllabic couplets. The Lays vary in length from one hundred to one thousand lines. Their theme is the power of love, which sometimes shapes lives for good, sometimes for bad. The stories include temptation, infidelity, treachery, seduction, betrayal, frustration, imprisonment, suffering, and death, as well as fidelity, forgiveness, and reunion. In addition to the thematic unity, the stories are unified by the voice of the poet, a realist who reveals the subtle differences among her characters, despite the similarity of the intensity of their passions.

The Lays have been divided between those that are realistic and those that draw on folklore or in some way include supernatural elements. Sometimes the realistic stories end sadly, sometimes happily. “La Fraisne,” for example, ends with a young girl’s reunion with the mother who had abandoned her; “Milun,” with the marriage of the lovers and their reunion with their son. “Chaitivel” and “Les Dous Amanz,” on the other hand, end in bitterness and death.

Interestingly, adulterous loves are treated sympathetically in some stories and unsympathetically in others. “Chievrefueil” is a touching story of a brief, idyllic tryst between the queen of Cornwall and her banished Tristan. In “Laostic,” too, the sympathy is with the lovers, not with the old husband. The scheming lovers in “Équitan” on the other hand are scalded to death. In “Eliduc,” the faithful mate, in this case the wife, is the sympathetic character. Nobly desiring her husband’s happiness, she retires to a convent so that he can be with the princess he loves. Later, both Eliduc and his new wife follow the first wife’s lead and give up human love for divine.

Although the supernatural tales will support some interesting symbolic or allegorical analyses, on the surface they deal with the same problems and passions as the realistic lays. The hero of “Bisclavret” is a werewolf with a wife just as treacherous as the wife in “Équitan,” and as the faithful mate, he is rewarded. True love, however, is not necessarily marital love. In three other lays, the supernatural forces are on the side of true love. In “Guigemar,” a magic boat brings a lover to a lady whose husband has locked her up; in “Yonec,” a lover comes to an imprisoned wife as a falcon and even fathers a child, who grows up to kill the cruel husband. In “Lanvel,” it is a supernatural lady who rescues her knight and carries him off to Avalon, where Guinevere cannot endanger his life with false accusations. Whether realistic or supernatural, the poems of The Lays were particularly significant; instead of the artificial patterns of courtly love, they dramatized the play of overpowering passions that could persist through suffering, absence, and death. If there was danger in such emotions, there was also sometimes grandeur.

Marie de France’s next work, Fables , was quite different in tone. Whether her source was really Alfred the Great, as she claimed, or some other writer in the tradition of Aesop, Marie de France made the materials her own, much as she had done with the Breton lays. Her collection consists of 102 fables, ranging in length from eight lines to more than one hundred. Like The Lays, the tales are told in octosyllabic rhymed couplets. There is a standard format: After a general statement, the story is told, and the poem concludes with a moral.

While the romantic lais had been limited to love among the upper classes, Fables dealt with every social class. Nevertheless, Marie de France emphasized the importance of hierarchy, as in fable 15, when an ass mimics the dog by jumping on his master. The moral is that one should stay in one’s own station. In fable 38, a flea thanks a camel for a ride to his destination and even offers to return a favor. Like the flea, the poet said, when the poor get close to the rich, they overestimate their own importance.

On the other hand, Marie de France gave practical advice to all levels of society, as in fable 47, in which she warned that one should be careful in legal matters, or in fable 74, in which she showed the way that the arrogant bring about their own downfall. Her compassion for victims of injustice is evident in fable 4, in which a dog sues a sheep and by his clever lies deprives the innocent sheep first of his wool and then of his life. Most of the fables, however, are not so pessimistic. Their very structure suggests that humans can learn to live more wisely as well as more safely. If humans use their reason, they will understand that society is a whole, functioning properly only when every element in it is treated justly. Fable 27 is the story of the man who refused to give his stomach some food, only to discover that neither his hands nor his feet could perform their proper functioning without the help of the organ he had despised.

Marie de France’s final work was Espurgatoire Saint Patriz (English translation, 1894), which has been dated as being begun in 1208 and finished in 1215. Written in the same couplet form as her other works, Espurgatoire Saint Patriz is based on a Latin work written by an English monk, Henry of Salisbury, whose popularity is demonstrated by the fact that Marie de France’s version is only one of seven that appeared during the period. In taking an Irish knight through Purgatory, this kind of story anticipates Dante’s La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802). As her final work, it illustrates the intellectual depth and versatility that place her among the finest poets of the twelfth century.

Significance

Despite the paucity of biographical details about Marie de France, her fame as a writer has never diminished since her lifetime, when, as one of her contemporaries attested, The Lays brought her popular success. That Fables also was popular is evidenced by the fact that it is preserved in no less than twenty-three manuscripts.

It would be difficult to overestimate Marie de France’s influence on later writers. From the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries, Fables was translated or adapted frequently. In fact, as Mary Lou Martin pointed out, for several centuries it was Fables for which she was best known. She is also credited with inventing or refining the lai form, however, and although her poems in that genre were the models for all the later lays, critics believe that her poems were never surpassed by those of her successors. With the development of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century, writers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe rediscovered The Lays; they are now generally considered Marie de France’s most significant production. Certainly they are emphasized by today’s critics, who find a depth of symbolic meaning beneath their deceptively simple surface.

Marie de France should be remembered as the first woman writing in French whose name is now known. Her importance, however, is not merely historical. Because of her knowledge of human nature, her skill in storytelling, and her poetic genius, she deserves recognition not only as an early woman writer but also as one of the finest poets, woman or man, of the medieval period.

Major Works by Marie de France

Date

• Work

c. 1167

• Lais (The Lays)

After 1170

• Ysopet (Fables)

1208-1215

• Espurgatoire Saint Patriz

Bibliography

Bloch, R. Howard. The Anonymous Marie de France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Argues that Marie de France was a writer of profound importance and significance, a “Joyce of the twelfth century.” Includes notes and an index.

Crosland, Margaret. Women of Iron and Velvet: French Women Writers After George Sand. New York: Taplinger, 1976. Despite the seeming limits of the title, in the second chapter the author discusses Marie de France from a feminist perspective, thus providing a different view of her importance.

Damon, S. Foster. “Marie de France: Psychologist of Courtly Love.” PMLA 44 (Spring, 1929): 968-996. An outstanding study of the subject, structured as a systematic analysis of the similarities and differences among the characters in the various lais.

Donovan, Mortimer J. The Breton Lay: A Guide to Varieties. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969. Includes an initial chapter on Marie de France, which is followed by other chapters detailing the later development of the lay form. Contains useful plot summaries of The Lays.

Ferrante, Joan M. Woman as Image in Medieval Literature: From the Twelfth Century to Dante. New York: Columbia University Press, 1975. Argues that Marie de France’s lays, in which an imprisoned woman invents or calls forth an ideal lover, indicate the power of the female imagination.

Ferrante, Joan M., et al., eds. In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature. Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1975. Discussion of Marie de France in this book is brief, but the author includes an argument that “Eliduc” represents Marie de France’s rejection of the tradition of courtly love. The various essays provide a good, general background for the study of medieval literature on love.

Holmes, Urban Tigner, Jr. A History of Old French Literature: From the Origins to 1300. Rev. ed. New York: Russell and Russell, 1962. One of the authoritative books on medieval literature. An assessment of the merits of various opinions, helping the reader make sound judgments.

Larsen, Anne R., and Colette H. Winn, eds. Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women: From Marie de France to Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun. New York: Garland, 2000. Translations of Marie de France’s “Chievrefueil,” “Laostic,” and “Bisclavret.”

Martin, Mary Lou. The Fables of Marie de France: An English Translation. Birmingham, Ala.: Summa, 1984. The translator’s fine introduction to this book provides an interesting thematic analysis of the fables as well as a discussion of their literary reputation.