Marie de France probably wrote late in the twelfth century in England or France. She wrote poetry primarily in Anglo-Norman French, but also knew Latin and English. Her surviving works are mainly lais and fables. Twelve lais are attributed to Marie de France, while another twenty-four lais (“anonymous lais”) have also survived. The latter lais are now readily available in Burgess & Brook’s Twenty-Four Lays from the French Middle Ages (2016). While all the lais concern relationships and are thus important to men, Marie de France’s lais are particularly important to men. Marie de France appreciated the challenges and difficulties in men’s lives and showed keen sensitivity for men as a gender.
Against all the forces that have suppressed men’s dreams, Marie de France in Lanval dared to represent a nearly unspeakable male heterosexual fantasy … Read the post Lanval: Marie de France understood men’s dreams
Gestural philology reveals that pioneering twelfth-century author Marie de France stimulated the palm-inward v-sign in the Archpriest of Talavera’s work. … Read the post gestural philology of palm-inward v-sign
Two Old French works, the fabliau The Fisherman of Pont-sur-Seine and the lai Lecheor, together demean men’s persons to a vagina-directed penis. … Read the post Fisherman of Pont-sur-Seine and Lecheor demean men’s persons
In her medieval romance Bisclavret, Marie de France acknowledges men’s depths of human being and appreciates a beast within the still-human man. … Read the post Marie de France’s Bisclavret on men’s secret, inner beast