La vérité des Lais de Marie de France

Authors

• Leena Löfstedt University of California, Los Angeles

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51814/nm.145139

Keywords:

Marie de France, lais

Abstract

Marie de France is famous for her Lais, which are short stories, rhymed and performed to musical accompaniment. When describing their origin, she tells the reader that she based them on Celtic lais which she claims reported true events. However, Marie de France's Lais included decidedly un-Celtic elements, among them material taken from Anglo-Norman legal procedure, or details found in Ovid, and formulaic introductions reminiscent of techniques learned in twelfth century grammar schools. Collecting and analyzing these novel elements of her Lais might shed light on Marie's own person.

This study uses A.Ewert's edition bsed on the MS H (BL Harley 978).