Marie de France

Marie de France was a twelfth-century poet who wrote in Anglo-Norman French and is best known for the Lais of Marie de France, a collection of narratives about love, loyalty, marvels and social obligation. She also produced a collection of fables and a translation of the legend of Saint Patrick’s Purgatory. Her identity remains uncertain, although her work is closely associated with the literary culture of Angevin England.

Marie wrote in Anglo-Norman French and is best known for a collection of twelve lais that combine courtly love, marvel, moral conflict and Breton narrative traditions. She also produced a collection of fables and the Espurgatoire Seint Patriz. Her precise identity remains uncertain, but her works make her the earliest named woman poet writing in French and a major figure in twelfth-century literary culture.

In Lauren Groff’s Matrix, Groff identifies her heroine with Marie de France, the twelfth-century poet whose biography remains uncertain, and imagines a life shaped by the Angevin court of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine.