by Marie de France
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Product Description
This is a prose translation of the lais or poems attributed to Marie de France. Little is known of her but she was probably the Abbess of the abbey at Shaftesbury in the late 12th century, illegitimate daughter of Geoffrey Plantagenet and hence the half-sister of Henry II of England. It was to a king, and probably Henry II, that she dedicated these poems of adventure and love which were retellings of stories which she had heard from Breton minstrels. She is regarded as the most talented French poet of the medieval period.
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0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 A woman's voice for medieval women, 2008-12-25
Marie's first line in her first lai reads, "Whoever has good material for a story is grieved if the tale is not well told." What writer would not be? A storyteller as good as Marie de France would have a right to be aggrieved.
Fortunately, translators Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby have gone some way to raise Marie of France from her pages. Eight hundred years later "her" words help me to imagine her personality. By reading her stories I sense her avatar. It speaks energetically, clearly.
Here is Marie as her writing reveals her. I visualize a rebellious young woman of independent spirit, a flirt, sought by young men, but not loose. Marie's persona describes an eccentric orbit: she ventures away from the straightened regime of taut, restrictive mores prescribed for noble and gentle women of her day.
She writes, "My name is Marie, and I am from France." The words suggest a small child fearlessly introducing herself to an imposing stranger. We have that declarative assertion, and that is almost all we know about this fine medieval writer. We can add that Marie's written style suggests a good education in or near the Vexin, a strategic county bristling with fortifications, a military and diplomatic shock absorber set between Normandy and France. My mind's-eye conceives this child being born at the heart's-core of trouble.
There is more. Henry II's consort, Eleanor of Aquitaine, had separated from Henry, setting up her Court of Ladies at Poitiers (1167-74), where she may have stirred up her sons' revolt against their father. Henry took his revenge, raiding Eleanor's court and sending his wife and other noble ladies to exile in England. Marie of France may have been among them. I recall Amy Kelly suggesting, in "Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings," that Marie was exiled for writing subversive, i.e. feminist, verse. Her style suggests she started writing around 1170. (Influenced by Eleanor? At Eleanor's court?) Remember, Marie tells us, "I am from France!" Was she repudiating Henry's Angevin Empire?
Without doubt the furious Henry suspected Eleanor of leading a conspiracy involving women centered around Poitiers. It may have been this Marie whom Henry installed in her exile as the abbess at Shaftesbury in Dorset. I imagine Marie pacing Park Walk along the edge of that high ridge of a town, looking over one of the finest views in England, that of the Blackmore Vale.
Translators Glyn Burgess and Keith Busby assert that Marie de France is the "earliest known French woman poet," and that "her lais are among the finest examples of the genre." A lai is a short romance in which the course of love may run true but never smoothly. Readers soon discover Marie's peerless gift for setting up the bumps in her lovers' tales.
And the authors have a gift for managing Marie's tales so that they impart an image one can feel, of an assertive woman, angry, restless, writing her way through twelfth century misogyny to unwittingly win her lasting literary fame.
Robert Fripp, author of
"Power of a Woman. Memoirs of...Eleanor of Aquitaine"
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
 Magnificent!, 2008-08-04
This is not a book that I would normally read. It was required reading in a college lit course, and I fell in love with it. This book is full of wonderful stories written by a woman in a time when women where meant to be seen and not heard. The stories are entertaining at first, but after delving deeper you see much more than simple "knight in shining armor fairy tales."
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
The French Renaissance of the 12th Century., 2006-05-18
Before the famous Italian Renaissance, you could speak of a French Renaissance in the 12th century as far as literature is concerned.
In Southern France there were the Troubadours, singers and poets, often part of the nobility or their entourage. In the North of France you had Chretien de Troyes and his Arthurian romances and the Lais of Marie de France, to name only two of the most important.
The 'Roman de la Rose' was written in the 13th cent. but is probably the most important masterwork of the French Renaissance.
About the person of Marie de France almost nothing is known for certain.Her 'Lais' - stories about romance or adventure - are based upon the popular and folkloristic tales that already existed for centuries in Bretagne - a region close to where the Atlantic meets the North-Sea.
These stories were handed down from generation to generation by story tellers.
The Lais of Marie de France excel by diversity. There are love stories - of course - but also vivid descriptions of
tournaments and even a story about a werewolf.
Marie de France proofs that medieval literature can be entertaining.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
 Loyalty vs. Arranged Marriage in Marie de France, 2005-11-30
In "Lanval," the knight performs his duties in Arthur's court without fail, but receives no compensation for his loyalty. His attachment to King Arthur's court is questionable, but the lack of reciprocity could be a factor in his falling into love with the fairy and abandoning the kingdom with her. However, Lanval promises a certain loyalty to his lover to keep the relationship a secret, and having two loyalties, one must fail. Lanval chooses love over his king, and rides away with her. One opinion of the ending is that Lanval rides off to death, but perhaps it is only obscurity. However, the ending could also be perceived as triumphant, where he is going off disloyal to his king and happy for it.
Marie de France presents an old man with a young beautiful wife in "Yonec." For seven years she is locked in a tower where she ages and loses her beauty - it is a kind of death to be out of love. And it takes her seven years to abandon the concept of her arranged marriage and begin praying for real love. In this poem, maltreatment justifies the disloyalty to her marital union. In fact, when Yonec beheads his mother's husband, it is considered an "avenging" murder. However, this disloyalty to the husband does not come on a whim; it's a build up of seven years locked in a tower. There is a feeling that the old man is impotent and does not deserve her loyalty.
"Laustic" is another situation of chronic boredom leading to disloyalty, although the wife never actually touches her lover - it is strictly love from afar.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
Girl Power, Medieval Style, 2003-11-17
The Lais of Marie de France, aside from being a landmark in the history of literature, are a collection of romantic stories that transcend time. I absolutely love the power and authority Marie de France assigns to her female characters. She juxtaposes the social superiority of men during the late twelfth century with abnormally strong women. The effect can be both compelling and saddening, while always poignant. In the Lai du Lanval, Marie de France creates a larger-than-life female character whose authority and affluence eclipse even King Arthur's grandeur. She essentially tells a love story in reverse, wherein the woman, as the figurative 'white knight',
rescues the man, who plays the role of the 'damsel in distress'. Also, in the Lai du Laustic, she tells the tale of a woman who falls in love with her neighbor and uses the chirping of a nightingale to justify her late night meetings with him. When her husband grows tired of her leaving the bed each
night, he has the nightingale killed so that his wife can sleep. Without the nightingale's chirping, she cannot talk to her love, thus, as an explanation of their bad fortune, she wraps the dead bird and sends it to her lover. This particular lai exposes the sad, immutable predicament of arranged marriages. Marie de France uses clever and subtle ways to describe the complications of love and marriage, which make her writing so uniquely profound.
More specifically, I believe the Penguin Classic's edition of The Lais of Marie de France is an excellent version to study. Compared to other translations I've read, this is the most readable. The translators, Glyn S. Burgess and Keith Busby make it clear in their Translator's note that their aim was to stay as close to the original written word as possible.
Their introduction is equally fascinating, as they explore the possibilities that Marie de France was not actually a woman and that she may not have written all of the lais. I think the introduction is wonderful: the translators examine much of the context surrounding the lais, which creates and entirely new level of depth for the reader.
The actual book, however, seems a little too expensive ($10.95) for the approximate 170 pages it provides (we're talking like 7 cents per page!). But, I must say, it's entirely worth the price.
I think that aside from being the earliest known French female poet, Marie de France gained and maintains so much popularity because she really hit the nail on the head when she described the underbelly of courtly love. The psychology of her characters is so accurate and moving that the fairy-
tale atmosphere can not conceal the messages embedded in the lais. And those messages have become a fixture of popular culture in the 21st century. Sitcoms, films and literature today readily embrace the power of woman. For the modern reader, Marie de France's lais are both a reminder of unhappier
times in social history and a tribute to 'girl-power'. And in my opinion as a college student, there couldn't be a better combination of messages to inspire and to empower a young woman in this day and age.
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