Marie De France
Marie de France presents
her book to Henry II of England.
From the first edition of Marie de
France's works.
Charles Chasselat (1782 - 1843)
flourished 12th century
earliest known French woman poet,
creator of verse narratives on romantic
and magical themes that perhaps inspired
the musical lais of the later trouvères,
and author of Aesopic and other fables,
called Ysopets. Her works, of
considerable charm and talent, were
probably written in England. What little
is known about her is taken or inferred
from her writings and from a possible
allusion or two in contemporary authors.
From a line in the epilogue to her
fables, Claude Fauchet (1581) drew the
name by which she has since been known.
The same epilogue states that her fables
were translated from, or based on, an
English source for a Count William,
usually identified as William Longsword,
Earl of Salisbury, or sometimes as
William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. Her
lais were dedicated to a “noble” king,
presumably Henry II of England, though
it is sometimes thought that this was
Henry’s son, the Young King. Her version
of L’Espurgatoire Seint Patriz (“St.
Patrick’s Purgatory”) was based on the
Latin text (c. 1185) of Henry of Saltrey.
Every conjecture about her has been
hotly debated.
Her lais varied in length from the
118 lines of Chevrefoil (“The
Honeysuckle”), an episode in the Tristan
story, to the 1,184 lines of Eliduc, a
story of the devotion of a first wife
whose husband brings a second wife from
overseas.
