A TWELFTH-CENTURY ROMANCE-WRITER,
MARIE DE FRANCE
"Marie ai nom, si sui de France." Thus, more than seven centuries ago, wrote Marie de France. What an unpretentious autobiography! Yet these few simple words, which seem to tell so little, but in reality suggest so much, are the counterpart of her work, and form its fitting crown.
But who was this modest writer, and why does her work interest us to-day? Around Marie de France there must always remain an atmosphere of doubt and mystery, since she is only mentioned by an anonymous thirteenth-century poet, and by one of her contemporaries—an Anglo-Norman poet, Denys Pyramus by name—who speaks of her in the most flattering terms, and from whom we learn that her lays were much appreciated by the noblesse, especially the ladies. That these should take rare delight in them may well be, seeing how monotonous life must have been to many a woman shut up with her maidens and her needlework in a dismal castle
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