Marie de France was a medieval poet who was probably born in France and who lived in England during the twelfth century. Prominent among the earliest poets writing in the French vernacular, Marie de France helped shape the style and genres of later medieval poetry. This Norton Critical Edition includes all of Marie slais (short narrative verse poems); selected fables; and a generous excerpt from Saint Patrick s Purgatory, a long poem based on a well-known medieval legend. Each text is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. For comparative reading, two lais, Bisclavret and Yonec, are accompanied by Marie s facing-page originals. Contexts, Sources, Analogues, Influences is thematically organized to provide readers with a clear sense of Marie s inspirations. Topics include The Supernatural, Love and Romance, Medical Traditions, Fable Sources and Analogues: Similar Themes, and Purgatory and the Afterlife. Ovid, St. Augustine, King Cnut, Chaucer, Andreas Capellanus, Boccaccio, Aristotle, and Bede are among the authors included

From the wealth of scholarly work published on Marie de France, Dorothy Gilbert has chosen eight essays that address issues of history and authorship as well as major themes in the lais, fables, and Saint Patrick s Purgatory. The contributors are Thomas Warton, Abbe Gervais de la Rue, Joseph Bedier, Leo Spitzer, R. Howard Bloch, E. A. Francis, Jill Mann, and Jacques LeGoff. A selected bibliography is also included. "

In this new verse translation of one of the great works of French literature, Dorothy Gilbert captures the vivacity, wit, and grace of the first known Arthurian romance. "Erec and Enide" is the story of the quest and coming of age of a young knight, an illustrious member of Arthur's court, who must learn to balance the demands of a masculine public lifeOCotests of courage, skill, adaptability, and mature judgmentOCowith the equally urgent demands of the private world of love and marriage. We see his wife, Enide, develop as an exemplar of chivalry in the female, not as an Amazon, but as a brave, resolute, and wise woman. Composed ca. 1170, "Erec and Enide" masterfully combines elements of Celtic legend, classical and ecclesiastical learning, and French medieval culture and ideals.In choosing to write in rhymed octosyllabic coupletsOCoChr(r)tien's prosodic patternOCoDorothy Gilbert has tried to reproduce what so often gets lost in prose or free verse translations: the precise and delicate meter; the rhyme, with its rich possibilities for emphasis, nuance, puns and jokes; and the mantic power implicit in proper names. The result will enable the scholar who cannot read Old French, the student of literature, and the general reader to gain a more sensitive and immediate understanding of the form and spirit of Chr(r)tien's poetry, and to appreciate the more Chr(r)tien's great contribution to European literature."

In this new verse translation of one of the great works of French literature, Dorothy Gilbert captures the vivacity, wit, and grace of the first known Arthurian romance. "Erec and Enide" is the story of the quest and coming of age of a young knight, an illustrious member of Arthur's court, who must learn to balance the demands of a masculine public lifeOCotests of courage, skill, adaptability, and mature judgmentOCowith the equally urgent demands of the private world of love and marriage. We see his wife, Enide, develop as an exemplar of chivalry in the female, not as an Amazon, but as a brave, resolute, and wise woman. Composed ca. 1170, "Erec and Enide" masterfully combines elements of Celtic legend, classical and ecclesiastical learning, and French medieval culture and ideals.In choosing to write in rhymed octosyllabic coupletsOCoChr(r)tien's prosodic patternOCoDorothy Gilbert has tried to reproduce what so often gets lost in prose or free verse translations: the precise and delicate meter; the rhyme, with its rich possibilities for emphasis, nuance, puns and jokes; and the mantic power implicit in proper names. The result will enable the scholar who cannot read Old French, the student of literature, and the general reader to gain a more sensitive and immediate understanding of the form and spirit of Chr(r)tien's poetry, and to appreciate the more Chr(r)tien's great contribution to European literature."