The Lais of Marie de France: With Two Further Lais in the Original Old French

by Marie France

Keith Busby (Introduction), Glyn Burgess (Translator), and Glyn S Burgess (Introduction)

The leading edition of the work of the earliest known French woman poet—the subject of Lauren Groff’s bestselling novel Matrix

Marie de France (fl. late twelfth century) is the earliest known French woman poet and her lais—stories in verse based on Breton tales of chivalry and romance—are among the finest of the genre. Recounting the trials and tribulations of lovers, the lais inhabit a powerfully realized world where very real human protagonists act out their lives against fairy-tale elements of magical beings, potions and beasts. De France takes a subtle and complex view of courtly love, whether telling the story of the knight who betrays his fairy mistress or describing the noblewoman who embroiders her sad tale on the shroud for a nightingale killed by a jealous and suspicious husband.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

• ISBN10: 0140447598
• ISBN13: 9780140447590
• Publish Date: 1 June 1999
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Imprint: Penguin Classics
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 176
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780140447590

Reviews

[celinenyx]

The Lais is a collection of twelve fairy-tale short stories, written in the twelfth to thirteenth century by a Frenchwoman called Marie. The short stories have different subjects, one of them featuring King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table, others for example explaining the name of a certain place.

The Lais is a quick read - some stories are about twenty pages, others only five. They all have to do something with love, courtly love to be precise. Starting with the good, I quite liked the writing style. It's very clean and to the point. Like with all medieval fiction there is no modern deposition to describe everything, but Marie's characters are surprisingly individualistic . Since they're fairy-tales they're described in superlatives: every woman is the prettiest, the most pious, the best mannered girl in the world. It was nice that plenty of women were also described as clever, smart, sensible.

That being said, I didn't really like the way basically every single one of this story is about cheating. Apparently it's fine to cheat as long as you're in love with someone in a very courtly way. They all promise each other fidelity. Uh, hello, you were already married?! The themes in the stories were not of much interest to me, and I think I prefer the more adventure kind of stories over medieval love stories.

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

The Lais of Marie de France is the perfect medieval read for anyone who enjoys fairytales. Each short story features elements that fans of the genre will recognize and love—beautiful women trapped in towers, daring knights who perform feats of arms to capture their attention, mysterious boats that sail themselves. One is even about a king who creates a contest for the hand of his daughter in marriage: any men who can carry her straight up the nearby mountain without resting can have her.

However, there is a catch to these tales. Excluding the aforementioned available princess and the lady in Marie’s version of “Lanval,” most of these beautiful women are married, and the knights who come to lift their spirits are technically adulterers. Marie condemns none of them, however. The only characters who are punished suffer pain or death not because of their extra-marital affairs, but because their secret love prompted them to other actions, such as murder. Indeed, Marie seems to approve of adultery that is composed of a “pure” love. When one of the dashing knights is killed by his lover’s jealous husband, his death is proclaimed profoundly “unjust,” and the son he helped conceive is destined to avenge the deed. Clearly Marie’s stories function on their own morality, where women trapped in unhappy marriages have the right to find true love somewhere else, which is quite different from the Church’s. Her writing was popular, so clearly there was something common and resonating enough about this scenario that allowed it to appeal to a wide audience.

Marie’s acceptance of these affairs will probably be slightly disconcerting to modern readers, but her treatment makes the situations seem natural enough that the tales cannot be ruined by it. Many of the husbands are all but absent from the story, making it easy to forget them. A couple are so cruel that the reader wants to side with the woman. And often the adultery is relatively pure—gazing from a window, sending love notes from afar. It is still wrong, of course, but it is easier to palate when it is not lewd. Despite the circumstances, there will always be something at least a little beautiful about sending a woman you cannot have a note hidden beneath the feathers of a swan.

This review was also posted at Pages Unbound Book Reviews.