Table Of ContentThe Anonymous Marie de France
The Anonymous
Marie de France
.
(cid:1)
The University ofChicago Press / Chicago and London
The University ofChicago Press, Chicago
The University ofChicago Press, Ltd., London
© by The University ofChicago
All rights reserved. Published
Paperback edition
Printed in the United States ofAmerica
: ---(cloth)
: ---(paperback)
This book is published with the assistance ofthe Frederick W. Hilles Publication
Fund ofYale University.
Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bloch, R. Howard.
The anonymous Marie de France / R. Howard Bloch.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
: --- (alk. paper)
. Marie, de France, th cent. — Criticism and interpretation. I. Title.
.
(cid:1).—
oThe paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements ofthe
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence ofPaper
for Printed Library Materials, Z.–.
, ‒
The joy ofsending this little book into the world is tempered
by the sudden death ofmy beloved wife Naomi on December .
Ofall the readers I could have imagined
she would have been the best, and she still lives as the conjured voice,
not silent yet, behind the words.
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Texts xi
Introduction
The Word Aventure and the Adventure of Words
Aventure
Lai
History, Philology, and the Quest for Origins
The Obligation to Speak
The Will to Remember
“Guigemar”
If Words Could Kill: The Laisand Fatal Speech
Marie mal mariée
“Lanval” and “Laüstic”
“Equitan” and “Le Fresne”
“Bisclavret”
The Voice in the Tomb of the Lais
“Eliduc”
“Les Deus Amanz” and “Chaitivel”
“Milun” and “Chevrefoil”
“Yonec”
Beastly Talk: The Fables
The Fablesand the Lais
Speech Acts in the Fables
An Ethics of Language
Changing Places: The Fablesand Social Mobility
at the Court of Henry II
Scholasticism and the Fables
Abelardian Ethics
Appetite and Envy
Logic and the Body
Changing Habitat
Social Mobility
Marie’s Fablesand the Rise of the Monarchic State
Right Reason and the Moral
Town and Court and Royal Peace
Measure, Timing, and Alertness
Marie’s Social Contract
A Medieval “Best Seller”
Chivalric Adventure
Doors In and Out of the Otherworld
In and Out of Another Tongue
Making the Dead Speak
Between Fable and Romance
Making the Dead See
Testimony and Transcription
Genesis of the Tale
Remembering What the Dead Have Said and Seen
The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the
Colonization of the Afterlife
Patrick the Administrator
The Norman and Irish Peace Movement
Ecclesiastical Reform and the Cistercian Presence
The Civil Governance of Captured Land
The Invention of Purgatory and the Bureaucratization
of the Afterlife
Purgatory and the Law
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments
It is, ofcourse, impossible to thank adequately those who have contributed
to this book which has fermented slowly in various academic and archival
vats over the course of the last few years. I would like to express my appre-
ciation of my students at the University of California, Berkeley, where the
section on Marie’s Laiscame into being; my students at Columbia Univer-
sity where the section on the Fables was hatched; and my students at Yale
University who have been through Purgatory on my account. The parti-
cipants in the NEH Seminar on Marie conducted at Columbia in the
summer of deserve special praise for pushing me in the direction of
a book focused equally on Marie’s three works. Of those with whom dia-
logue about Marie has been particularly intense, I express my deep grati-
tude to Margaret Pappano ofColumbia, Karen Jambeck ofWestern Con-
necticut State, Zrinka Stahulak ofBoston University, and Chantal Marechal
of Virginia Commonwealth University and the guardian angel of Marie
studies in the United States. Were it not for Scott Hiley’s merciless trimming
ofmy prose, the present volume might be less compact than at present. For
this he is to be thanked, along with Alan Thomas and Randy Petilos who,
again, have made publishing with Chicago a privilege and a treat.
Parts ofthis book have appeared in other publications. Portions ofchapter
appeared in “The Medieval Text—‘Guigemar’—as a Provocation to the
Discipline of Medieval Studies,” Romanic Review (): ‒; re-
printed by permission of Romanic Review.Other portions of chapter and
portions of chapter appeared in “DasAltfranzösische Lai als Ort von
Trauer und Gedächtnis,” in Gedächtnis als Raum,ed. Renate Lachmann and
ix
Description:This book by one of our most admired and influential medievalists offers a fundamental reconception of the person generally assumed to be the first woman writer in French, the author known as Marie de France. The Anonymous Marie de France is the first work to consider all of the writing ascribed to
