MARIE DE FRANCE, de friiNs (twelfth century?). The earliest French poet. She was born in France. She dedicated her fables to a Ii-main William, whom sonic have identified with William Lcngsw•ord of Salisbury; and she alludes in her Eithics to at king. sometimes iden tilk41 with Henry ill, of England. if these hypotheses be correct, it would appear that she lived in England and in the early thirteenth century, hut textual evidence points to nil earlier date. She wrote Luis and a collection of animal fables, a so-called nopcf. A poem of 2300 lines on Saint Patrick's purgatory ( L'espugatoire seint Pattiz) she derived front a Latin treatise by Henry of Salfrey, written before 1185. The nre fourteen narrative poems, ranging in length front 100 to 1200 verses. Of these the best known is the eh il•refeni Ile, deserili ing an episode in the loves of Tristan and Iseult (fsoldel : the finest is Elidue. Noteworthy also are Le rossignol, Les deux currants, (a fairy tale of the bluebird), and Larval. These
Marie got from Kymrie sources. Marie says she translated her 103 fables from an English version by King Alfred (roi .1Irrez) or, as two MSS. read, "King Henry." The English version from which she worked is lost ; the Latin that stood behind it comprised nearly all the collec tion of Romulus (ninth century), supplemented from the Jewish-Oriental fables preserved in the collection of Berachyah and Pisore Alphonse, and apparently also from early native sources. The poems of Marie de France are edited hy Roque fort (Paris, 1820). and better by in vol. iii. of Bibiiotimeo Norman/tie°, with an essay by RUbler (Halle; 1885). Consult: &Idler, "Les Lais de Marie de France," in Write des Deux Nolules (Paris. 1891), and on the Ysopet, a chapter by Sudre in Petit de Julleville, Histoire dr la laugue et de la litt&ature franeaise, vol. ii. ( Paris, 1896) ; also Warlike, Die Quellen des Esope der Marie de France (Halle, 1900).