The Anonymous Marie de France

Chicago, IL, and London, UK: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Hardcover. Fine/Near Fine. 6x1x9. [LITERATURE]. Bloch, R. Howard. "The Anonymous Marie de France." Chicago, IL, and London, UK: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. English. Hardcover in jacket. Brown boards with gilt lettering on spine and scarlet endpapers. 9.25 x 6.25 x 1 in. 24 x 16 x 3 cm. 8 oz. Minor crinkling on bottom of back dust jacket. Text clean. Fine in Near Fine jacket. ISBN: 9780226059686."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 Marie, including her famous Lais, her 103 animal fables, and the earliest vernacular Saint Patrick's Purgatory.Evidence about Marie de France's life is so meager that we know next to nothing about her-not where she was born and to what rank, who her parents were, whether she was married or single, where she lived and might have traveled, whether she dwelled in cloister or at court, nor whether in England or France. In the face of this great writer's near anonymity, scholars have assumed her to be a simple, naive, and modest Christian figure. Bloch's claim, in contrast, is that Marie is among the most self-conscious, sophisticated, complicated, and disturbing figures of her time-the Joyce of the twelfth century.