We don’t know much about Marie de France. We don’t even know who she really was. But we certainly know how she feels about courtly love. Katie Lanning explains on today’s Why Should I Read This?
Betrayed werewolves; vengeful fairies; magical swans. Let’s get medieval with the twelfth-century tales of Marie de France. You may already know some of the conventions of courtly love, like the damsel in distress or the knight in shining armor. These tropes come to us from medieval romances written by men, and they’re so familiar to us today that we might even call them cliche. But even in Marie’s lifetime, these conventions were starting to sound trite. Marie claimed to merely be recording the adventure stories she had heard because she didn’t want them to become lost or forgotten. But I suspect she had something else up her sleeve. Almost invariably, her lais (that’s a term for her medieval romance poetry), feature unusually powerful women who call the shots. Whether they are saving the day or wreaking total havoc, Marie’s women are bold, smart, slightly unhinged, and highly entertaining. No damsels in distress here! These poems are, what, over 800 years old? And they are still an absolutely wild ride.
