Marie de France
Who was Marie de France?
We only know her through the general prologue to her text, where she says "Marie ai num si sui de France" and, as others point out, we know the following:
It is by the signature line in the introduction to her twelfth-century translation of Aesop’s Fables, “Marie ai num si sui de France”, that we know her as Marie de France. She claimed to be writing in “romanz”, which we classify as Anglo-Norman. She was also proficient in Latin, English, and “breton” or Welsh. Though Marie lived in England, she was of French origin. Her identity cannot be tied definitively to any real person. She is best known for her Lais, and her Fables, which were also known as Esope (a Middle English version of the Classical model). An Espurgatoire seit Patriz and a Vie Seinte Audree are also attributed to her.
Judith Shoaf discusses her as a witty but not spectacular poet and well-educated woman writing contemporaneously to Chrétien de Troyes:
We know nothing about Marie de France. For various reasons, it’s thought that her twelve Lais date from around 1170, that their author was a woman named Marie who also wrote a rhymed collection of Aesop’s Fables (or rather of an expanded medieval version of these fables) and one longer poem translated from Latin, the Purgatory of St. Patrick. She may have been an aristocratic woman, perhaps a nun, living in England.
Marie de France’s Lais were read in her own time; her French is “easy” (a widely-read Anglo-Norman literary language) and the poems are relatively short (the longest is only about a sixth as long as the verse romances being written at the same time by Chrétien de Troyes); readers usually seem to have read them in French, though they were translated, for example, into Old Norse and read in Iceland.
Marie’s language is Anglo-Norman, the dialect spoken among the aristocracy of England and large parts of Northern France; she was part of a generation of writers (notable among them Chretien de Troyes) who were in the process of inventing the French verse romance. Her verse form is the octosyllabic couplet: eight-syllable lines in rhyming pairs:
Ki Deus ad doné escïence
E de parler bon’ eloquence
Ne s’en deit taisir ne celer,
Ainz se deit volunters mustrer.
Quant uns granz biens est mult oïz,
Dunc a primes est il fluriz,
E quant loëz est de plusurs,
Dunc ad espandues ses flurs.Her rhyme-words are not technically surprising or showy; abstract nouns (escience, eloquence), infinitives (celer, mustrer), past participles (oïz, fluriz) rhyme easily in a language whose accents all fall on the last syllable. At the same time, she is obviously making a point by demonstrating that “science” and “eloquence” rhyme, or “hide” and “show” (celer, mustrer). Her wit is in her teasing rationality, rather than in clever verbal pyrotechnics.
Lanval, or Guinevere up a creek
Lanval sees the breakdown of both speech and trust in the courtly setting, an implosion of values that echoes the treason, pride, and betrayal that structure Roland's destruction. We have so many betrayals and accusations flying that it is difficult to even understand the nature of the text's — and the courts — objections, leaving us with a number of questions to consider while reading:
- What are the many betrayals that structure Lanval, and how do they individually represent a breakdown of some courtly value?
- Compare and contrast the betrayals of both Guinevere and Lanval. From where do they get their power (ie, what kinds of systems do they transgress in their betrayals?) Which, in your opinion, is more injurious to the court, and why?
- How do you explain Guinevere's accusation against Lanval that he prefers the company of men (to women)? Why would she make such an accusation? How does her accusation reveal the power structures she seeks to invoke ? ……..or, to put it another way, What do you think of Stephen Jursasinski's argument in "Treason and the charge of Sodomy in the Lai de Lanval," where he aligns sodomy not with sexuality, but with the state:
One of the most intriguing features of Guinevere’s cryptic remark about the dangers posed to Arthur by Lanval’s putative behavior is its resemblance to the dominant atti- tudes toward sodomy in the juridical literature of the early Middle Ages. Both the literature and normative texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries often reflect the view of sodomy expounded by Damian and others as an offense endangering not only those who engage in it but any collectivity that tolerates their membership. It is this notion of sodomy as a wrong done to others — as an offense endangering precisely those people who refrain from it — that Guinevere seems specifically to invoke.
Consider the current alignment of sexuality with the state in the recent debate over the legalization of gay marriage by the supreme court. In one recent post on Constitution Daily, Lyle Denniston claims that:
The bans on same-sex marriage in Tennessee and other states, the ruling said, must yield to that Amendment’s guarantee of equality in how a law applies to the most intimate relationship between people — that is, the choice of a life partner in marriage.
The decisions in Windsor and Obergell, together, provide a classic illustration of how the Constitution operates along the boundary between national and state power, and between Article VI and the Tenth Amendment.
Or, for another modern take on the intersection of state & sexuality, consider the construction of white power that is done through portrayals of black sexuality, as noted by Stereo Williams in the Daily Beast:
It’s not hard to understand why some filmmakers and audiences would prefer that black sex stay off the screen. On the one hand, black sexuality has often been presented in unhealthy ways — hypersexual images of black people are an old and constant part of the dehumanization of black people. The big black buck and the voluptuous black harlot are caricatures that African-Americans have been burdened with consistently; but there is also a tendency to present black people as nearly asexual in response to those images. The idea that a black person can’t be sexualized in any context only further dehumanizes black people and marginalizes black sexuality. Because the reluctance to feature black sex on screen isn’t about presenting “safe” images for black audiences — it’s also rooted in the desire to present white audiences with “comfortable” depictions of black people.
5. How do you reconcile the ethics and moral of Lanval with a "woman's point of view," as we so often like to call Marie de France's subjectivity? How can you explain this version of Guinevere as a “woman’s Guinevere? "Would the text have looked different if written by a man?
Bisclavret, Guigemar, Yonec: Beasts, Monsters, & the making of Love
Who are the monsters in Marie de France? Who are their victims? How do they invite us to reconsider how the medieval period imagined the relation between love and loyalty? between love and marriage? between marriage and duty?
Stephanie Ruck invites us to consider how the following sources intersect with our readings:
