The Anonymous Marie de France

by R. Howard Bloch

The Anonymous Marie de France offers a fundamental reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the woman now referred to as Marie de France. Written by renowned medievalist R. Howard Bloch, it is the first book to consider all of the writing ascribed to Marie, including her famous Lais , her 103 animal fables, and the earliest vernacular Saint Patrick’s Purgatory . 

Marie is, Bloch asserts, one of the most self-conscious, sophisticated, and disturbing figures of her time—a writer whose works reveal an acute awareness not only of her role in the preservation of cultural memory, but also of the transformative psychological, social, and political effects of her writing within an oral tradition. The Anonymous Marie de France recovers the central achievements of one of the most pivotal figures in French literature. It is a study that will be of enormous value to medievalists, literary scholars, historians of France, and anyone interested in the advent of female authorship.

Genres: France, Biography, Nonfiction

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Birgit Constant · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book about Marie de France and what we can deduce about her from the works attributed to her.
Slightly repetitive and academic at times, the book provides an in-depth, insightful and informational profile of this mysterious medieval woman writer.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bloch examines all of Marie de France's works -- the lais, the fables, and St. Patrick's Purgatory -- from all sorts of scholarly points of view -- historical, new historical, desconstructionist, psychological, literary, anthropological, and more. His basic point about Marie is that she is shown through her works to be cosmopolitan; alive to the behaviors of Henry II of England's court; aware of the changing attitudes in law, literature, the aristocratic family, and religion/philosophy; searching for the value of words and language both spoken and unspoken; and more. According to Bloch, Marie de France has been seen by past scholars to be simple, naive, and young. His book is a testament to proving the opposite: Marie was mature, sensitive, deliberate in use of language, situation, and character, and willing to create new approaches to old ideas.

Bloch goes overboard in his proofs with carefully explained examples that run the gamut of deeply ancient to modern (he considers Marie to be Joycean). I really enjoyed this book.