![]() Marie de France was unusual, though not unique, in being a highly educated woman in the late twelfth century. The second text by Marie is a set of stories of chivalry and romance, known as the Lais, starting on folio 118r. These too are in French. ![]() ![]() ![]() In the epilogue to the Fables, Marie places herself in a long line of translators, pointing out that Aesop’s Fables were translated from Greek into Latin, and that King Alfred had then had them translated into English. Following the Norman Conquest of 1066, French was the dominant language of the English ruling elite. Over the page, she addresses a ‘Count William’, who she flatters as the most valiant count in the kingdom, and for whom she claims to have translated the Fables from English into rhyming French. Marie appears to have worked for members of the English court, and her stories are set in Normandy and Brittany, regions governed by the kings of England. ![]() In the twelfth century, France meant the area around Paris that we would now call the Île-de-France, and large parts of modern-day France were ruled by the kings of England. On the final line of this page, at the end of the Fables, Marie tells us: ‘Marie ai nun si sui de Fnce’ ('Marie is my name and I am of France'). ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |