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    The Lays of Marie de France
    The Lays of Marie de France
    The Lays of Marie de France
    Ebook168 pages1 hour

    The Lays of Marie de France

    By Athabasca University Press

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    About this ebook

    The twelve “lays” of Marie de France, the earliest known French woman poet, are here presented in sprightly English verse by poet and translator David R. Slavitt. Traditional Breton folktales were the raw material for Marie de France’s series of lively but profound considerations of love, life, death, fidelity and betrayal, and luck and fate. They offer acute observations about the choices that women make, startling in the late twelfth century and challenging even today. Combining a woman’s wisdom with an impressive technical bravura, the lays are a minor treasure of European culture.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAthabasca University Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781927356371
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    Reviews for The Lays of Marie de France

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    • 5/5
      If you like fairy tales or weird pomo fiction, read this book. Neither pomo nor fairy tales, the Lais of Marie de France will satisfy you, especially if you are me. I'm going to read all of her works, I've decided. Marie is tons of fun.
    • 4/5
      I studied Guigemar and Bisclavret, and I ended up wanting to read the rest of Marie de France's lais. Bisclavret is one of my favourites, really, possibly due to reading William Burgwinkle's criticism of it and being amused to see it as a gay love story. Most of the lais are short and very easy to read, dwelling on knights and their lovers. I quite liked Lanval, as well, the Arthurian lai. Some of them have little morals in them, some of them are just sweet little stories (or sometimes rather bitter little stories, like Yonec, in which the lady's beloved dies!). I like the translation, even if it's put into prose instead of the original verse: it's easy to read and captures the air of storytelling.
    • 4/5
      The lais were short story poems written in old French, probably around 1170. They have been translated in this penguin edition by Glynn S Burgess and keith Busby into modern English prose.There are twelve short tales here based on chivalry and courtly love and they are utterly charming. Bisclavret was my favourite story and possibly one of the earliest tales featuring a werewolfLittle is known about the author other than Marie was probably female and she wrote these stories for the English Court, which were all based on Breton (North West France) tales or troubadour songs.
    • 4/5
      This is a collection of twelve short tales about the sad or happy love affairs of knights in shining armor and ladies in castles. They were written in poetry in Anglo-Norman (a dialect of Old French) in the mid-twelfth century by a woman called Marie of France. Marie as it turns out is a significant figure in the literature of Medieval England, one of the best poets before Chaucer. She was very well known in the literary world of her day, which revolved around the court of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. She herself was of aristocratic background, born and brought up in northern France. She is thought to have moved to England as a result of her husband's job, so to speak, which was being a feudal lord. She was remarkably well educated and, in an age when court culture was almost exclusively French-speaking, took the trouble to learn the language of the people of her adopted country, Old English, well enough to translate a book of fables from it into Anglo-Norman verse. The Lais constitute one of her three major works, the others being the afore-mentioned collection of fables, and an account translated from Latin having something or other to do with St. Patrick and Purgatory. Marie claims the Lais were based on Breton stories, though we do not have a corresponding collection in Breton, so it is hard to know how much she translated and how much she made up. But many of the themes are familiar. I generally find this type of literature tedious, but in Marie's case the brevity of each Lai forces the story to move along briskly, so they sustain interest. Also, Marie does not use the same plot twice. Each lay presents a different situation and different characters, motivations, emotions. She rings all the changes on her chosen genre to a fascinating degree. Some end happily, some sadly. Some of the protagonists are heroic or admirable, some not. Some include magical devices, some are totally naturalistic. In some the woman takes the lead, in some the man. So each tale is distinct and individual. The style is bright, crisp, and clean, with a fresh kind of observation of the world. There is refreshingly little moralizing. Though many of the affairs are illicit, she never blames or criticizes the participants, except sometimes for lack of loyalty. The characters are human, not symbolic stand-ins for abstract virtues or concepts. However, there is no character analysis, just observation and reporting. She takes her characters as she finds them. The translation is in prose, elegant, clear, and simple. Three of the lais are given in an appendix in the original Anglo-Norman. They are written in short lines, rhyming in couplets. There is a scholarly introduction, which one would do well to skip or to postpone reading until after one has read the poems. Much of it would be incomprehensible without prior acquaintance with the lais. Also, though it is not as dry as dust, it is on the dry side. But it will answer any questions you might have about the poet, the origin and interpretation of the poetry, and other background.This book presents a window on a medieval view of the world. It is the view of a privileged participant, and even so is somewhat a view of a storybook world. I found it intriguing and charming, and enjoyed the collection greatly. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest in medieval culture or in important but neglected woman authors.
    • 5/5
      The editor and translator of Marie's lais, leading scholars in the field of medieval French literature, have in the best tradition of Penguin Classics aimed to make their subject accessible to the general public. Translating a foreign text, especially a poetic text, is always full of difficulties, but luckily Marie's poems, simple in expression and apparently without artifice, speak as well in translation as in the original. For convenience the 1999 edition prints two of Marie's shorter lais in their original French, and anybody with even just a smattering of the language can follow the gist of the tales and see how accessible the translator has made them. A comparison with the pseudo-medieval version served up by Eugene Mason in the early 20th century is revealing for not only how tastes have changed but how many liberties were taken then with the text.The editor has provided an introduction which contains pretty much all you need to know (and pretty much all anybody knows) about who Marie might have been, the historical background, the literary context and so on. For such a slim volume there is much to engage the reader, whether their interest is in a genuine female voice of the 12th century, Arthurian legend, human psychology, folk tales or just good stories succinctly told.
    • 4/5
      Marie de France was a woman who lived in the twelfth century. She is one of the earliest female writers in English literature. Her collection of lais, written in the style of the pre-existing Breton lais, tell stories of knights and ladies, kings and queens, sorcery and love.Each lai of Marie’s reads like a fairy tale or a bite-sized portion of Arthurian legend. Arthur does appear in one lai and there is another lai about Tristan and Isolde. But for the most part these are new stories about unknown figures that still take place in that extremely courtly environment we know from Arthurian legend. Courtly love abounds in these poems, as do other values of twelfth-century Britain.Marie’s writing is clear and accessible. It doesn’t borrow flowery or obscure phrases, so it’s quite pleasant to follow along. That doesn’t mean it reads like an uneducated person wrote it, however. On the contrary. I found Marie’s lais to contain a lot of complex themes. Even the lais that on the outside read like straightforward fables contain hidden depths. If you don’t believe me, take a look at “Chevrefoil.” That lai turns the traditional theme of a woman so beautiful that several men fight for her on its head.So for anyone who is interested in medieval literature and the courtly tradition, but doesn’t want to wade through difficult, pompous texts, this is a good place to start.
    • 4/5
      read this over the course of a quiet evening alone with a glass of wine. wonderful. i love sensualists, even if they get religious. reminds me of that one pessoa heteronym, i forget his name, who spends all his poems singing out about how knowing what a blade of grass or a rock IS has nothing to do with words or meaning or anything but just being, and its being being near his own. people who sing about that are essential for me...
    • 4/5
      Marie de France is considered the first woman known to write francophone verse. Who she was is not really clear (it is not even clear if she is called Marie - even if her lais say so or that she was a woman really). But the current scholarship holds that she was a woman and has some ideas of who she may have been ranging from the French Henry II sister to the countess of Boulogne and Marie de Meulan. Based on her writing, she was born in France but spent a lot of time in England (which does not narrow the field of possibility as much as you would expect). Depending on how old a book about her is, you can see different claims about what she actually wrote - the lais collected here seem to always be considered hers but the Fables (translated or composed), "The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick" and the newly tentatively attributed "The Life of Saint Audrey" had not always been connected to the author of the Lais. And I was thinking that we have a problem in our times with shared names of authors... But what is a lai? In the case of Marie, a lai is a short (for some version of short) narrative poem, written in eight-syllable verse. They are an old French form, known and popular before Marie and they are a cousin to the longer romances to come later (which are more collections of adventures than single works). Just like the romances, they deal with heroes and what happens to them although with them being much shorter, they are more stories of things happening to people than of people going on adventures. The shortest of these 12 poems is 118 lines; the longest is 1,184 lines.The order of the collection is not always clear - there are a lot of partial manuscripts, the order in the surviving ones seems to be almost random so in a lot of cases the editors decide how to order them when they are published. The editors of the Penguin edition used the order of the Harley manuscript (which also contains the prologue) and made a decision to translate the poems in prose. That may sound weird but it is not unusual - most of the narrative poems, from Antiquity to nowadays, had seen prose translations. And the translations actually read like tales so even if I would have preferred a verse translation (and I may decide to chase one of those at some point), I liked the flow of the stories. Plus when you do not need to try to keep the rhythm, you have more freedom in words and expressions choices that actually fit the poem you are translating. The poems themselves were not what I expected. There are damsels in distress and heroes but... there are also a lot of people cheating on their spouses and thinking about cheating (and not always being punished about it, especially if the husband was much older than the bride). There is a tale about a werewolf. There was a lot of implied sex (including a maiden who got liked so much by a man that she got pregnant). There are a lot of happy ends and most of the people who do good things get awarded for them but that did not always happen. The heroes usually got the girl but not all of them got to keep her. As with most of the medieval writing I had ever seen, there were usually the moral lessons to be learned by the tales but some of them may not be what you would expect in the 12th century. But there are also tales which end up in a way you hoped they won't ("Les Deux Amants" for example).I picked up the book because of two of the lais connected to the Arthurian myths: "Lanval" and "Chevrefoil". "Chevrefoil", which happens to retell an episode of the Tristan and Iseult mythology and is the shortest of the 12 lais, was a bit underwhelming besides the lyrical part somewhere in the middle of it which used the honeysuckle and hazel symbiosis as a metaphor for the love between the two lovers and spent some time expanding on that (thus the title of the lai meaning "Honeysuckle")."Lanval" went into a direction I did not expect it to go. The knight Lanval gets in love with a fairy lady and because of that he refuses the advances of King Arthur's queen thus getting her very angry at him. When she cannot produce his lover (because she had broken the promise never to mention her), he gets in a real trouble - until he gets taken to Avalon at the end. Apparently this story was very popular and got retold a lot so I suspect I will meet Lanval again while exploring the Arthurian myths development. The poem mentions the Round Table explicitly as well - showing that it had become part of the Arthurian myths by the time the lai was written. But I am happy that I read all of them and I will probably be returning to them (in a different translation) - I am curious to see how these work in verse even if the prose translation was pretty good. One more note on the edition: the introduction is very useful for putting things in context, giving you some pointers on what to look for in specific poems... and telling you how the lais end, even when the end is surprising. Which is fine if you know the stories but very annoying if you don't. But it is helpful as a guide before you read them so... I am not sure if I would say to leave it for the end or not - I wish the editors (who are also the translators and wrote the introduction) had split it into two parts - leaving the text analysis and the spoilers for the endings for for the end of the book. But that's a common problem with introductions.
    • 4/5
      Marie de France was a woman who lived in the twelfth century. She is one of the earliest female writers in English literature. Her collection of lais, written in the style of the pre-existing Breton lais, tell stories of knights and ladies, kings and queens, sorcery and love.Each lai of Marie’s reads like a fairy tale or a bite-sized portion of Arthurian legend. Arthur does appear in one lai and there is another lai about Tristan and Isolde. But for the most part these are new stories about unknown figures that still take place in that extremely courtly environment we know from Arthurian legend. Courtly love abounds in these poems, as do other values of twelfth-century Britain.Marie’s writing is clear and accessible. It doesn’t borrow flowery or obscure phrases, so it’s quite pleasant to follow along. That doesn’t mean it reads like an uneducated person wrote it, however. On the contrary. I found Marie’s lais to contain a lot of complex themes. Even the lais that on the outside read like straightforward fables contain hidden depths. If you don’t believe me, take a look at “Chevrefoil.” That lai turns the traditional theme of a woman so beautiful that several men fight for her on its head.So for anyone who is interested in medieval literature and the courtly tradition, but doesn’t want to wade through difficult, pompous texts, this is a good place to start.
    • 5/5
      Marie de France... a woman writer 14th c. -- an automatic must read, and well worth it. Short stories about knights and ladies, evil queens and knavery, originally in a poetic format, easily as entertaining as Bocaccio's Decameron. Fun to read and to re-read.

    Book preview

    The Lays of Marie de France - Athabasca University Press

    France

    Prologue

    If one has received from God the great

    gift of eloquence, it is his fate

    and duty to exercise and display

    these talents. If one would compose a lay

    he must speak or rather write

    as well as he can for men’s delight

    and appreciation. The talent will first

    blossom in his company’s thirst

    for more and ever more of the same.

    Then people will hear of him: his name

    will spread about him. In his pursuit

    of fame these blossoms will bloom, and fruit

    may even appear in the form of books

    in library shelves and tables and nooks.

    Some poets dare to be obscure

    to engage the scholars (although perhaps fewer

    simple readers). Priscian describes

    how poets can dupe the scholarly tribes

    and by this contrarian endeavor

    contrive for their works to live forever.

    The scholars’ glosses and citations

    provide them with harmless occupations

    by which they avoid the rudenesses

    of the rough-and-tumble world that is

    the lot of most. My original scheme

    was to find a Latin text that would seem

    to lend itself to a version in our

    French and pass a pleasant hour.

    But others have done such things before

    and I wanted to occupy myself with a more

    worthwhile project. I thought of the lays

    I had heard in my younger days

    that I could preserve for those who care

    about bold knights and ladies fair.

    Some of these I have put into rhyme

    not merely to pass some idle time

    but to do some good. Late into the night

    I have sat and worked by candlelight.

    I did this in your honour, sire,

    whom all good men respect and admire,

    a paragon of virtue and taste.

    If your kind acceptance graced

    my little verses it would please

    me greatly, and upon my knees

    I offer them to you, hoping to win

    a royal smile. Let us begin.

    I. Guigemar

    A good story deserves to be

    well told. My gracious lords, Marie

    understands her obligation

    on such a fortunate occasion

    when an interesting story

    presents itself. And yet I worry

    that any show of excellence

    invites envy of women’s or men’s

    achievements. Slanders, insults, and lies

    attend me. Everybody tries

    to sneer at whatever one composes —

    they joke and even thumb their noses.

    They are cowardly dogs that bite,

    mean, malicious, and full of spite.

    But I refuse to be deterred

    as, line by line and word by word,

    I do my best to compose my lay,

    whatever the jealous critics say.

    I shall relate some tales to you

    from Brittany that I know are true

    and worthy of your attention. In

    a friendly spirit, let us begin.

    This was back in Hoilas’s reign,

    when in battles men were slain

    or badly wounded. One of the king’s

    barons, trusted in all things,

    was lord of Liun: his given name

    was Oridial. He enjoyed great fame

    for valour. His wife had borne him two

    children, a beautiful daughter who

    was called Noguent and a son,

    a smart and very handsome one,

    named Guigemar. His mother doted

    on him, and his father was devoted.

    Too soon he grew to the proper age

    to be sent away to serve as page

    in the court of a distant king. The lad

    excelled there because he had

    courtesy and charm and wit

    and with them he showed that he was fit

    for knighthood. The king’s ceremonial sword

    touched his shoulder and that lord

    promoted him deservedly

    to the ranks of noble chivalry

    and gave him a set of armor, too,

    to equip him for fighting and derring-do.

    Guigemar gave gifts to those

    who had been kind to him. He chose

    to go to Flanders, which was inviting

    because of its continual fighting,

    which was the road to fame. He showed

    allegiance to the chivalric code

    and a puissance which was such that he

    had no equal in Burgundy,

    Gascony, Lorraine, Anjou,

    or anywhere else. The whole world knew

    that Guigemar was brave and above

    reproach — except in matters of love,

    to which he was indifferent. He

    had many an opportunity

    from beautiful noble ladies who

    made it clear that if he would woo

    he would win them instantly.

    But somehow he seemed not to be

    interested or even aware.

    It puzzled his friends; he didn’t care,

    but went on his solitary way

    and there was nothing they could say.

    Having earned great fame as a knight,

    he decided after a while that he might

    go home to visit his parents and his

    sister whom he’d begun to miss,

    and they were longing to see him, too,

    but after a month with them he grew

    restless and thought it might be wise

    to engage in some strenuous exercise

    like hunting. He called on friendly knights

    and summoned beaters and when the lights

    of the stars gave way to the rising sun

    they set out together for the one

    kind of venery he found

    agreeable. It was at the sound

    of a horn that the grooms let the hounds go

    to quarter the ground with their noses low

    to catch the scent of a suitable stag.

    Guigemar and the knights would lag

    behind with weapons at the ready,

    hoping for a stag, but he

    found a hind, completely white,

    with a fawn beside her. At this sight

    the hounds bayed and the hind darted

    out of the bush. As soon as she started

    Guigemar fired an arrow that found

    the animal’s forehead. She fell to the ground

    but the arrow somehow ricocheted

    returning to the knight where it made

    a passage through his thigh and through

    his horse’s skin from which it drew

    a trickle of blood. The knight fell down

    into the thick grass on the ground

    close to the hind, that said somehow,

    "I am fatally wounded, and now

    as long as you live you will feel

    pain from your wound that will not heal.

    No root or herb or elixir will

    ever be of help until

    you find a woman willing to

    suffer even more pain than you

    can imagine, more pain than any other

    woman has felt, wife or mother,

    for the sake of your love, and you’ll undergo

    equal anguish — so much so

    that lovers will be astonished by

    your torments. Now go and let me die."

    The knight was dismayed hearing this

    and wondered what would alleviate his

    suffering and if there could be

    a woman anywhere whom he

    could love or be loved by. Appalled

    by what the hind had said, he called

    his page and ordered him to ride

    to fetch his companions. Then he tried

    to bind the wound as well as he could,

    remounted his horse that stood

    nearby and managed to ride away.

    It’s inconsistent: what can I say?

    He felt ashamed at having been

    so badly wounded and in chagrin

    was reluctant to be seen in this

    condition. He did not stay for his

    friends but disappeared into

    the wood on a path that led him through

    the trees to an open space where he

    found a stream that ran to the sea.

    He came to a harbor that he did not

    remember (or had he forgot?)

    in which was a ship ready to sail.

    The planks of her decks were ebony and

    her sail was silk and very grand.

    He advanced to the shore and climbed aboard

    this mysterious vessel, called out a word

    of greeting but heard no reply.

    The ship was deserted. He wondered why,

    but he saw a bed of cypress wood

    inlaid with gold and ivory, good

    enough for Solomon of old.

    In the silken bedclothes were threads of gold

    and the pillow was such that any knight

    whose head had touched it would never turn white.

    The coverlet was sable lined

    with satin. Guigemar reclined

    on the bed in need of a few minutes’ rest —

    but he slept for an hour, or so he guessed.

    He was about to disembark

    but he could make out in the dark

    that the ship was now on the high seas

    with its sail bellied out in the breeze.

    He was not afraid but he realized

    his helplessness — which he despised.He was in pain but this he could bear.

    He prayed to God to take good care

    of him and help him to survive

    and guide the vessel to let it arrive

    at some safe harbor. Exhausted, he

    lay down again and amazingly

    fell asleep as the ship progressed

    heading generally west

    even with no one at the helm

    to arrive at last at an unknown realm.

    The lord who ruled over it was old

    and very jealous. He controlled

    his wife who was so beautiful

    that he doubted she was dutiful

    (although he had no reason to

    but still this is what old men do).

    He’d built her a lovely garden at

    the foot of the keep, with high walls that

    enclosed it — except for its view of the sea.

    There were guards, as you would expect, in three

    shifts around the clock. Also

    there was a chapel where she could go

    for

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