Gallant knights, blushing maidens, tyrannical lords, damsels in distress, feats of courage, love pure and true -- you'll find all of this and more in this enchanting collection of tales from France's medieval period. Selected from the classic twelfth-century text Lais of Marie de France and rendered in an engaging English translation, this volume is a treat for readers of all ages.

Douglas Kelly provides a comprehensive and historically valid analysis of the art of medieval French romance as the romancers themselves describe it. He focuses on well-known writers, such as Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France, and also draws on a wide range of other sources—prose romances, non-Arthurian romances, thirteenth-century verse romances, and variant versions from the later Middle Ages. Kelly is the first scholar to present the “art” of medieval romance to a modern audience through the interventions and comments of medieval writers themselves. The book begins by examining the difficulties scholars perceive in medieval literature: problems such as source and intertextuality, structure in its manifold modern meanings, and character psychology and individuality. These issues frame Kelly’s identification and discussion of all the known authorial interventions on the art and craft of romance. Kelly’s careful reconstruction of the “art” of romance, based on the records left by the romancers themselves, will be an invaluable resource and guide for all medievalists.

Gallant knights, blushing maidens, tyrannical lords, damsels in distress, feats of courage, love pure and true-you'll find all of this and more in this enchanting collection of tales from France's medieval period. Selected from the classic twelfth-century text Lais of Marie de France and rendered in an engaging English translation, this volume is a treat for readers of all ages.

Marie de France ([Mary of France[) was a poet evidently born in France and living in England during the late 12th century. Virtually nothing is known of her early life, though she wrote a form of continental French that was copied by Anglo-Norman scribes. Therefore, most of the manuscripts of her work bear Anglo-Norman traits. She also translated some Latin literature. Although her actual name is now unknown, she is referred to as [Marie de France[ after a line in one of her published works: [Marie ai nun, si sui de France, [ Four works have been attributed to Marie de France: The Lais of Marie de France, the Ysopet fables, a retelling of the Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick, and, most recently, a saint[s life called La Vie Seinte Audree about Saint Audrey of Ely. Scholars have dated Marie[s works between about 1160 at the earliest, and about 1215 at the latest, though it is probable that they were written between about 1170 and 1205. In 1816, the English poet Matilda Betham wrote a long poem about Marie de France in octosyllabic couplets, The Lay of Marie.