Abstract
Marie de France is simultaneously one of the most well-known and enigmatic female authors of the medieval period. Often cited as the first female poet writing in Old French, she is the attributed composer of three, potentially four, texts: the Lais, a collection of 12 short poems written around the 1170s; the Fables (known as the Ysopë), a collection of fables likely composed between 1189 and 1208; the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, a translation of the Cistercian monk H. de Saltrey’s Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii dating to around 1190; and, finally, La Vie Seinte Audree (The Life of Saint Audrey), a hagiography detailing the life, death, and miracles of Saint Audrey dated roughly to c. 1200.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Batt, C. 2012. The French of the English and Early British Women’s Literary Culture. In The History of British Women’s Writing, 700–1500, ed. L.H. McAvoy and D. Watt, vol. 1, 51. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Bloch, H. 2006. The Anonymous Marie de France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Kinoshita, S., and P. McCracken, eds. 2012. Marie de France: A Critical Companion. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
McCash, J.H. 2002. La Vie seinte Audree: A Fourth Text by Marie de France?’. Speculum 77 (3): 744–777.
Morgan, A.L. 2018. ‘To play bi an orchardside’: Orchards as Enclosures of Queer Space in Lanval and Sir Orfeo. In The Medieval and Early Modern Garden in Britain: Enclosure and Transformation, c. 1200–1750, ed. P. Skinner and T. Tyers, 99–101. Abingdon: Routledge.
———. 2019. Marie de France, Lanval and Alienation at Court. Le Cygne: Journal of the International Marie de France Society 6: 35–48.
Waters, C.M. ed. 2018. The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation. Trans. Peterborough: Broadview Press.
Wogan-Browne, J. 2020. Recovery and Loss: Women’s Writing around Marie(s) ‘de France’. In Women Leaders and Intellectuals of the Medieval World, ed. K. Kerby-Fulton, K.A. Bugyis, and J. van Engen, 169–189. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer.
Further Reading
Burgess, G.S. 1977; Supplement 1, 1986; Supplement 2, 1997; Supplement 3, Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2007. Marie de France: An Analytical Bibliography. London: Grant and Cutler.
Curley, M.J., ed. 1993. Saint Patrick’s Purgatory: A Poem by Marie de France. Trans. Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts.
Gilbert, D. ed. 2015. Marie de France Poetry. Trans. New York/London: W. W. Norton & Co.
Martin, M.L. ed. 1984. The Fables of Marie de France: An English Translation. Trans. Birmingham: Summa Publications.
McCash, J.H., and J.C. Barban, eds. 2006. The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France. Trans. Jefferson: McFarland & Co.
Whalen, L.E. 2008. Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press.
———., ed. 2010. A Companion to Marie de France. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Morgan, A.L. (2022). Marie de France. In: Sauer, M.M., Watt, D., McAvoy, L.H. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women's Writing in the Global Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_30-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76219-3_30-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-76219-3
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-76219-3
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities