justification, she likely knew, or knew of the Romulus of Nilant, with which she shares
most of the initial forty of her 102–104 fables. Nevertheless, for more than 60 percent of
her work no precise sources have been found, a fact that may demonstrate her originality
or point speculatively to undocumented influences from as far away as Greece, Arabia,
and India. That she greatly enriched the tradition of the Aesopic fable is manifest from
the adaptations of her work by Berechiah ben Natronai (Mischle Shu’alim), by the
compilers of the Romulus of Robert, the L(ondon)B(russels)-G(öttingen) fragments and
an Italian fable collection, and by the author of the Promptuarium exemplorum (ed.
Warnke).
The case of Marie de France’s fables illustrates that despite a long history of written
transmission, the genre is fundamentally an oral one. It shares with popular songs,
proverbs, riddles, and fairy and animal tales the common sources of folklore and has, like
them, an essentially didactic purpose. The lesson to be drawn from a fable is summarized
in an opening “promythium” or in a closing “epimythium,” or “moral.” In keeping with
their didactic function, fables usually adhere to a simple structural paradigm according to
which the plot line progresses straight-forwardly from (1) the presentation of the
characters (mostly but not always animals) and (2) their intentions to (3) their distribution
into opposing roles (the strong against the weak, the poor against the rich), and from
there to (4) their interaction and (5) its results.
Because of its origins, intent, and structure, the fable is often denied any intrinsic
literary value. Only rarely are fables expanded into skillfully told stories in which the
artistic purpose outweighs the didactic, or into a vast creation, such as the animal epic of
the Roman de Renart. While the fable may have had to wait for La Fontaine in the 17th
century to be admitted into the French canon of respectable literary genres, its medieval
manifestations offer, despite their didactic dryness, invaluable insights into the everyday
life of the society they describe and reflect.
Hans R.Runte
[See also: MARIE DE FRANCE; RENART, ROMAN DE; VINCENT DE
BEAUVAIS]
Bastin, Julia, ed. Recueil général des Isopets. 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1929–30. [Edition of all
Isopets and of the Avionnet.]
Spiegel, Harriet, ed. and trans. Marie de France: Fables. Toronto: University of Toronto Press,
1987.
Warnke, Karl, ed. Die Fabeln der Marie de France. Halle: Niemeyer, 1898. [Includes edition of the
York Fragment of the Avionnet, and of the Promptuarium exemplorum.]
Martin, Mary Lou, trans. The Fables of Marie de France: An English Translation. Birmingham:
Summa, 1984.
Carnes, Pack. Fable Scholarship: An Annotated Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985.
FABLEL DOU DIEU D’AMORS
. Written in the mid- to late 13th century, probably in Hainaut, the Fablel is among the
earliest surviving allegorical first-person love visions. It occurs in a single Picard
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