Marie de France

Marie de France , fl. 1155-90, poet. Born in France, she spent her adult life in England in aristocratic circles and wrote in Anglo-Norman. She is best known for some dozen lais; several are of Celtic origin, and some are Arthurian.

Bibliography: See Lais, ed. by A. Ewert (1944). See translations by J. L. Weston (1900), E. Rickert (1901), and E. Mason (1911); study by E. J. Mickel, Jr. (1974).

Marie de France (fl. 1160–90), a French poet of whom little certain in known. She appears to have done much or all of her literary work in England. She is the author of twelve Lais (See Breton lays), a series of apparently Celtic stories told in Anglo-Norman couplets. She also wrote a French version of the Latin St Patrick's Purgatory and a collection of Aesop's Fables called Isopet.