Huglo, Michel. “Antiphon.” In The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley
Sadie. 20 vols. London: Macmillan, 1979.
Steiner, Ruth. “Marian Antiphons at Cluny and Lewes.” In Music in the Mediaeval English
Liturgy: Plainsong and Mediaeval Music Society Centennial Essays, ed. Susan Rankin and
David Hiley. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993, pp. 175–204.
Wright, Craig. Music and Ceremony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1500. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1989.
MARIE DE FRANCE
(fl. 1160–1210). Recognized today among the major poets of the renaissance of the 12th
century, Marie de France was equally admired by her contemporaries at court, according
to the testimony of Denis Piramus in his Vie seint Edmunt le rei. Three works of the
period are signed “Marie” and are usually attributed to the same author: the Lais, the
Fables, and the Espurgatoire saint Patrice. In the epilogue to the Fables, the author adds
to her name si sui de France (1. 4). This is probably an indication of continental birth, a
fact to be remarked if, as seems likely, she was living in England. A number of identities
have been proposed for Marie, none of which can be established with certainty: the
natural daughter of Geoffroi Plantagenêt (and half-sister of Henry II), abbess of
Shaftsbury (1181–1216); Marie de Meulan or Beaumont, widow of Hugues Talbot and
daughter of Waleron de Beaumont; and the abbess of Reading (the abbey where the
Harley 978 manuscript may have been copied). Identifying her literary patrons is equally
problematic. The Lais are dedicated to vus, nobles reis (1. 43), who may be either Henry
II (1133–1189), the most likely candidate, or his son, Henry the Young King (crowned
1170, d. 1183). The Count William named in the Fables has been linked to a number of
prominent figures, including William Marshal, William Longsword (the natural son of
Henry II), William of Mandeville, William of Warren, William of Gloucester, and
Guillaume de Dampierre.
Marie’s works can be dated only approximately with reference to possible patrons and
literary influences. The works themselves suggest that Marie knew Wace’s Brut (1155)
and the Roman d’Énéas (1160), an undetermined Tristan romance, classical (notably
Ovid) and Celtic sources, but not the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. The Lais are
therefore dated between 1160 and 1170, the Fables between 1167 and 1189, and the
Espurgatoire after 1189 and probably between 1209 and 1215, since its Latin source, the
Tractatus de purgatorio sancti Patricii (in the version of Hugh or Henry of Saltrey), has
been placed no earlier than 1208.
Five manuscripts contain one or more of Marie’s lais; only Harley 978 contains a
general prologue, which presents the twelve lais that follow as a collection specifically
arranged by the author (the same manuscript also contains a complete collection of the
Fables). Marie appears to be the initiator of a narrative genre that flourished between
about 1170 and the late 13th century. About forty narrative lais are extant. The lyric lai,
which flourished from the 12th to the 15th century, seems to be an unrelated form.
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