MARIE DE FRANCE (fl. c. 1175-119o), French poet and fabulist. In spite of her own statement in the epilogue to her fables: "Marie "ai num, si suis de France," generally interpreted to mean that Marie was a native of the Ile de France, she seems to have been of Norman origin, and certainly spent most of her life in England. Her language, however, shows little trace of Anglo-Norman provincialism. Like Wace, she used a literary dia lect which probably differed very widely from common Norman speech. The manuscripts in which Marie's poems are preserved date from the late 13th or even from the 14th century, but the language fixes the date of the poems in the second half of the 12th century.
The lais are dedicated to an unknown king, who is identified as Henry II. of England; and the fables, her Ysopet, were written according to the Epilogus for a Count William, generally recog nized to be William Longsword, earl of Salisbury. Marie lived and wrote at the court of Henry II., which was very literary and purely French. Queen Eleanor was a Provencal, and belonged to a family in which the patronage of poetry was a tradition. There is no evidence to show whether Marie was of noble origin or simply pursued the profession of a trouvere for her living.
The origin of the lais has been the subject of much discussion. Marie herself says that she had heard them sung by Breton min strels. Gaston Paris (Romania, vol. xv.) maintained that Marie had heard the stories from English minstrels, who had assimilated the Celtic legends. In any case the Breton lays offer abundant evidence of borrowing from Scandinavian and oriental sources.
The lais which may be definitely attributed to Marie are Guigemar, Equitan, Le Frene, Le Bisclavret (the werewolf), Les Deux amants, Laustic, Chaitivel, Lanval, Le Chevrefeuille, Milan, Y onec and Eliduc. The other similar lays are anonymous except
the Lai d'Ignaure by Renant and the Lai du cor of Robert Biket, two authors otherwise unknown. They vary in length from some 12,000 lines to about ioo.
Marie's Ysopet is a collection of fables translated from an Eng lish original which she erroneously attributed to Alfred the Great, who had, she said, translated it from the Latin. Another poem attributed to her is L'Espurgatoire Seint Patriz, a translation from the Tractatus de purgatorio S. Patricii (c. 1185) of Henri de Salterey, which brings her activity down almost to the close of the century.
See Die Fabein der Marie de France (1898), ed. by Karl Warnke with the help of materials left by Eduard Mall ; and Die Lais der Marie de France (2nd ed., 19oo), ed. by Karl Warnke, with com parative notes by Reinhold Kohler; the two works being vols. vi. and iii. of the Bibliotheca Normannica of Hermann Suchier; also J. Bedier in Revue des deux mondes (Oct. 1891) ; Alice Kemp-Welch in Nineteenth Century (Dec. 19o7) ; and Winkler, "Marie de France" in Sitzengber. d. Wiener Akad, vol. 183, 1918. For an analysis of the Lais see Revue de philologie francaise, viii. 161 seq.; Karl Warnke, Die Quellen der Esope der Marie de France (19oo). The Lais were first published in 1819 by B. de Roquefort. L'Espurgatoire Seint Patriz was edited by T. A. Jenkins (Philadelphia, 1894). Some of the Lays were paraphrased by Arthur O'Shaughnessy in his Lays of France (1872).