If you wish to go a-questing to the court of King Arthur and his round table, through brambly hedges and past cottages of maidens and their woodland creature friends, first we must return to 12th century France, slightly before the Chaucer’s iconic Canterbury Tales. On our quest to find the origin of familiar magical and romantic themes, we find our Holy Grail: the poems of Marie de France.
Marie de France’s fable of “The Wolf and the Lamb'' is about the dominance that upper-class nobles exerted over peasants. A wolf and a lamb drink water from the same flowing stream, but the wolf is offended and slaughters the lamb for the crime of being audacious enough to think that they were equal and could indulge at the same time. Her lesson is that rich nobles destroy poor people with false evidence at their whim.
She is responsible for some of the earliest pieces of court literature, which demonstrates ideals of class honor and valor for personal glory and moral perfection. Beloved stories of knights on adventures and crusades are court literature.
In “The Woman Who Tricked Her Husband”, a wife cheats on her husband and gets caught multiple times, and wiggles her way out of it using trickery. She is portrayed as cunning and intelligent and her husband as comedically foolish and stupid. During the time of her writing, lyrical poems were performed and listened to, rather than read on the page. Those listening would often not understand the language in which the tale was being told, but the lyrical format made it pleasurable to hear anyways.
Marie de France’s work embodies the style of chivalric literature that we are familiar with today. Her protagonists’ adventures are not sought out but “happen'' to them, noticeable in the “chosen one” narrative popular in novels. The force of her work is in the character’s spirit and individual lives.
In de France’s lai (lyrical poem) “Chaitivel”, the story of a woman and her social strife with suitors and marriage is portrayed. The tale relates to the woman and the issues that she and her peers face as women in their society.
"In Nantes, a city in Brittany,
there dwelt a lady of high degree,
intelligent, and fair of face
whom any knight with any trace
of spirit would want to love and claim
for himself. She thought it was a shame
that loving all of them would not be
possible. Still with courtesy she
wanted not to give offence
to any of them. It made no sense
but it was true that a man could fall
safely in love with any and all
women in the land. But refuse
a single suitor, and ladies can lose
their reputations and risk even more.
Therefore women must with a store
of coquettish small talk and jokes divert
all suitors and keep them from feeling hurt."
(Chaitivel excerpt, trans. Slavvit)
She signed her work with “I shall name myself in order to be remembered. My name is Marie and I am from France.” De France lives on in her influence on literature, but also as herself. Lauren Groff’s 2021 novel Matrix follows de France as she travels to England to become a prioress. At the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, the International Marie de France Society meets, with lectures on how her poems relate to the current culture.
As Women’s History Month comes to a close, we remember the importance that women have had in society, and their perspectives are invaluable.
Dembowski, Peter F. "Marie de France." Dictionary of the Middle Ages, edited by Joseph R. Strayer, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/BT2353101120/WHIC?u=mlin_n_littlehs&sid=bookmark-WHIC&xid=7f4f3e1d. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.
Harris, Julian. "Originality of Marie de France." Classical and Medieval Literature Criticism, edited by Jennifer Stock, vol. 208, Gale, 2020. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420127654/LitRC?u=mlin_n_littlehs&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=a09c9020. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022. Originally published in Marie de France, Publications of the Institute of French Studies, 1930, pp. 61-77.
Kinoshita, Sharon. "Cherchez la Femme: Feminist Criticism and Marie de France's 'Lai de Lanval'." Poetry Criticism, edited by Carol T. Gaffke and Anna J. Sheets, vol. 22, Gale, 1999. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/H1420025270/LitRC?u=mlin_n_littlehs&sid=bookmark-LitRC&xid=a154ea5d. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022. Originally published in Romance Notes, vol. 34, no. 3, Spring 1994, pp. 263-273.
Streissguth, Thomas. "Arthurian literature." The Greenhaven Encyclopedia of The Middle Ages, edited by Bruno Leone, Greenhaven Press, 2003, pp. 34-36. Gale In Context: World History, link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX2277800039/WHIC?u=mlin_n_littlehs&sid=bookmark-WHIC&xid=00d9b3e0. Accessed 17 Mar. 2022.
Slavvit, David. “The Lays of Marie de France”, AU Press, 2013, pp. 105-110, https://www.aupress.ca/app/uploads/120228_99Z_Slavitt_2013-The_Lays_of_Marie_de_France.pdf