"Puis que des lais ai comencé,
Ja n'iert par mun travail laissé:
Les aventures que j'en sai
Tut par rime les cunterai."
("Now that I have begun composing lais, I would not stop for all the world: the adventures that I know I will recount in rhyme.")
Marie de France
Marie de France was arguably the greatest narrative poet writing in French during the twelfth century. Her collection of twelve Breton lais, short verse narratives of magic and of love thwarted and love triumphant, were written probably in the 1160s and were addressed to the English court of the great Plantagenet King Henry II. Each of them is a small masterpiece. Her later work, equally impressive, consists of a versified "translation" of a collection of Aesop's Fables, a verse life of the English St. Audrey, and a vernacular translation of the story of St. Patrick's Purgatory, in which an intrepid knight finds in Ireland a gateway to the netherworld and recounts his vision of the torments awaiting sinners in the afterlife. All of her works demonstrate both an awareness of courtly aristocratic behaviors and a level of erudition that was uncommon among women of her day.
Although we do know Marie's name and we can establish with relative confidence the rough chronology of her life, we cannot identify her with any known historical person. As R. Howard Bloch has pointed out, this renders Marie de France essentially anonymous. We can say with near certainty that she was of an aristocratic background and that she lived most of her adult life in England, though, as her name itself indicates, she was born in France, most likely in the dominions of the Plantagenet kings in northwest France.
The attempts to identify Marie with a known historical personage have been numerous but none, needless to say, ultimately conclusive. Popular earlier candidates included Marie the Abbess of Shaftesbury (half-sister of Henry II), Marie de Champagne (the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France), and Marie de Boulogne. Marie de Meulan, the wife of Hugh Talbot, has garnered considerable support, but her very existence is not well-documented. Most recently, it has been proposed that Marie de France was actually Marie Becket, the sister of the archbishop-martyr Thomas Becket and, after 1173, Abbess of Barking Abbey; this theory is also quite plausible, and has gained some adherents. None of the theories are fully conclusive, however, and so Marie's essential anonymity must stand for the time being.
Whoever Marie was, it seems probable to me that she was of aristocratic birth, that after a childhood in France (perhaps close to Brittany?), where she may have encountered Breton folkloric traditions, she lived primarily in England, probably after being married. Several scholars note that her earlier lais seem more Breton-oriented, while her later ones seem more oriented toward Wales. Might Marie have lived among the Anglo-Norman marcher barons in Wales? Might she have been married to one? Her preoccupation throughout the Lais with unhappy marriages suggests that her own marriage may not have been happy. Her later works offer fewer biographical clues, but they do confirm that she was able to read (if not also speak) English as well as Latin. Both her Lais and her later Fables display canny perceptions of the workings of monarchical power, and so it is not unlikely that she may have spent considerable time, at least at some point in her life, at one of the royal courts.
Regardless of our inability to ascertain her identity, Marie de France remains one of the greatest writers of both the French and English Middle Ages. In a period in which the world of letters was dominated by men, Marie's oeuvre is unique in articulating a woman's perspective on the human condition with eloquence, sophistication, and courage.
Further Reading
Although we do know Marie's name and we can establish with relative confidence the rough chronology of her life, we cannot identify her with any known historical person. As R. Howard Bloch has pointed out, this renders Marie de France essentially anonymous. We can say with near certainty that she was of an aristocratic background and that she lived most of her adult life in England, though, as her name itself indicates, she was born in France, most likely in the dominions of the Plantagenet kings in northwest France.
The attempts to identify Marie with a known historical personage have been numerous but none, needless to say, ultimately conclusive. Popular earlier candidates included Marie the Abbess of Shaftesbury (half-sister of Henry II), Marie de Champagne (the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII of France), and Marie de Boulogne. Marie de Meulan, the wife of Hugh Talbot, has garnered considerable support, but her very existence is not well-documented. Most recently, it has been proposed that Marie de France was actually Marie Becket, the sister of the archbishop-martyr Thomas Becket and, after 1173, Abbess of Barking Abbey; this theory is also quite plausible, and has gained some adherents. None of the theories are fully conclusive, however, and so Marie's essential anonymity must stand for the time being.
Whoever Marie was, it seems probable to me that she was of aristocratic birth, that after a childhood in France (perhaps close to Brittany?), where she may have encountered Breton folkloric traditions, she lived primarily in England, probably after being married. Several scholars note that her earlier lais seem more Breton-oriented, while her later ones seem more oriented toward Wales. Might Marie have lived among the Anglo-Norman marcher barons in Wales? Might she have been married to one? Her preoccupation throughout the Lais with unhappy marriages suggests that her own marriage may not have been happy. Her later works offer fewer biographical clues, but they do confirm that she was able to read (if not also speak) English as well as Latin. Both her Lais and her later Fables display canny perceptions of the workings of monarchical power, and so it is not unlikely that she may have spent considerable time, at least at some point in her life, at one of the royal courts.
Regardless of our inability to ascertain her identity, Marie de France remains one of the greatest writers of both the French and English Middle Ages. In a period in which the world of letters was dominated by men, Marie's oeuvre is unique in articulating a woman's perspective on the human condition with eloquence, sophistication, and courage.
Further Reading
- R. Howard Bloch, The Anonymous Marie de France (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
- Glyn S. Burgess, The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Context (University of Georgia Press, 1987)
- Michelle Freeman, "Marie de France's Poetics of Silence: The Implications for a Female Translatio," Publications of the Modern Language Association 99 (1984): 860-883
- Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken, A Companion to Marie de France (D. S. Brewer, 2012)
- Emmanuel Mickel, Marie de France (Twayne Publishers, 1974)
- Carla Rossi, Marie de France et les érudits de Cantorbéry (Éditions Classiques Garnier, 2009)