Three works by the twelfth-century, poet Marie de France, achieved significant notoriety during the High Middle Ages: a collection of twelve Lais, the Ysopet, a collection of fables, and Espurgatoire Saint Patriz, a translation of the poem St. Patrick’s Purgatory. In addition to being one of the first secular female writers, Marie is notable for being a source for Chaucer, as being the possible creator of the “narrative lai,” and for her stories themselves, which remain entertaining and provocative to modern readers.
About Marie de France
Though she was one of the only secular women writers of the time, few biographical details are available on Marie and no one has been able to identify any historical personage as the writer of the three works. Marie de France is so called due to the epilogue of the Ysopet in which she claims her work: “I am from France, my name’s Marie.” Marie is believed to have been born in France but a member of the English Courts. The most widely accepted theory suggests that she was the Abbess of Shaftesbury, Mary (Abbess from 1181-1215), daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and sister to King Henry II.
The Lais
The Lais, like all of Marie’s works, are written in eight-syllable, rhyming couplets in Old French. While the exact order in which the Lais might have been composed cannot be determined, the parallelism of themes, situations and morals throughout the tales suggests that Marie created them with a collection in mind. Love, in its many forms (extra-marital, married, fraternal, parental, etc), is the most prominent theme explored in the Lais. Marie also explores themes such as identity, chivalry, and the interaction of the real world with the fantastical.
The Lais are highly entertaining with tales such as: “Guigemar”- the story of a knight, perfect except for his complete disinterest in women; “Bisclavret”- the story of a noblemen who turns into a werewolf and is betrayed by his treacherous wife; “Chaitivel” in which a woman courts the favor of four men because she is unable to pick a favorite.
The Ysopet
Marie’s Ysopet contains 103 fables, most centering around animals, though approximately one third of them containing human characters. Each contains a short epilogue in which Marie explains the exact moral of the fable. Marie’s Ysopet achieved wide popularity, with 23 remaining manuscripts recovered in a variety of locations including London, Brussels, Rome, and Paris, among others. Marie states that she translated the tales from an English text translated from Latin by King Alfred, although no such English text has yet been recovered.
Common themes in the Ysopet include chivalry, power of speech, greed, power and general human flaws.
St. Patrick’s Purgatory
St. Patrick’s Purgatory also known as the Espurgatoire Saint Patriz is thought to be the latest of the three works Marie composed. It was translated from Henry of Saltrey’s Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii. In the legend, Purgatory is a physical location: called Lough Derg, a small island near Station Island in Ireland, which became a popular site of pilgrimages during the Middle Ages.
In the story, the knight, Owen voluntarily enters Purgatory before his death in order to purge his sins and emerge a cleansed man, thus lessening the time he would spend in Purgatory after death. St. Patrick’s Purgatory explores themes of religious faith, the power of speech and identity.
Sources:
Harriet Spiegel tr. Marie de France: Fables (University of Toronto Press, 1987)
Emanuel Mickel Jr. Marie de France (Twayne Publishing, 1974)
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