Marie de France - Medieval Imagination - Oakland Campus - Guides at University of Pittsburgh

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary

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An Anglo-Norman Dictionary

The Lais of Marie de France

Bruckner, Marilda Tomaryn. Shaping Romance: Interpretation, Truth, and Closure in Twelfth Century French Fictions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. PQ178 B78 1993
Traces interesting patterns across the Lais, looks at Guigemar and Eliduc as boundary markers int he collection, and focuses at length on Marie's experiments with free indirect discourse of her narrator/characters.
Bruckner, Matilda Tomaryn. "Of Men and Beasts in Bisclavret." Romanic Review. 81.3 (1991): 251-269.
This interpretation of Bisclavret makes the werewolf's wife sympathetic in the end because she, like the werewolf, is being misjudged.
Calabrese, Michael. "Controlling Space and Secrets in the Lais of Marie de France." Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative. Laura L. Howes. Ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007. PN671 P53 2007
Analysis of the parallel between the crisis of public envy and malice suffered by author, Marie and by the lovers of her tales, and the strategic ways that they use secret enclosures (literary and physical) to cope. He has a lively personable writing style.
Freeman, Michelle. "Marie de France's Poetics of Silence: The Implications for a Feminine Translatio. PMLA. 90.5 (1984): 860-883.
This analysis of the purposeful silences in Marie's Lais, especially Laustig and Chevrefoil, establishes several of the female characters as, themselves, poets and writers who create metaphors and symbols through which to preserve or perpetuate their love.
Kinoshita, Sharon and Peggy McCracken. Marie de France: A Critical Companion. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2012. PQ1495 .K56 2012
Chapter 3 explores courtly love and the chivalric code in relation to various Lais. She pays special attention to adultery and to lineage.
Krueger, Roberta L. "Marie de France." The Cambridge Companion to Women's Writing. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace. Eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. PN682 W6 C36 2003
Krueger situates Marie de France in her literary historical context and raises interesting questions about Guigemar.
Marechal, Chantal A. In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth Century Poet. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. PQ1495 I5 1992
Freeman, Michelle A. "The Changing Figure of the Male: Revenge of the Female Storyteller." In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth Century Poet. Chantal A. Marechal. Ed. Lewiston: the Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. PQ1495 I5 1992
Essay has insights about Christian redemption and other meaning in Yonec and Laustig.
Poe, Elizabeth Wilson. "The Problem of the Tournament in Chaitivel." In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth Century Poet. Chantal A. Marechal. Ed. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. PQ1495 I5 1992
Holten, Kathryn. "Metamorphosis and Language in the Lay of Bisclavret." In Quest of Marie de France: A Twelfth Century Poet. Chantal A. Marechal. Ed. Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1992. PQ1495 I5 1992
McCash, June Hall. "The curse of the White Hind adn the Cure of the Weasel: Animal Magic in the Lais of Marie de France." Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture. Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox. Eds. Carmbridge: D.S. Brewere, 1994. PN682 C6 I58 199
Argues that the animals are emblematic (and reveals their classical and medieval associations) and elicit moments of enlightenment in the stories.
Pickens, Rupert T. "Marie de France and the Body Poetic." Gender and Text in the Later Milddle Ages. Jance Chance. Ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. PN682 W6 G46 1996
Explores the violence in Marie's Lais, looks at ambiguous sexuality of various characters, and traces connections between the General Prologue and figures of speech in the stories.
Whalen, Logan E. Marie De France & the Poetics of Memory. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2007. PA1495 W43 2008
Chapters 2 & 3 raise the importance of the detailed descriptive writing in the Lais; how descriptive passages make Marie's stories memorable, and how visual artistic movements in the 12th Century (illuminated manuscripts, tapestries, and frescoes) influenced Marie's descriptive arts.

Marie de France at Her Desk

Marie de France at her writing desk

The Longman Anthology. New York: Longman, 2004, p. 178.

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Medieval Imagination - Oakland Campus: Marie de France

The Anglo-Norman Dictionary

The Lais of Marie de France

Marie de France at Her Desk

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