Lais Bretons (XIIe-XIIIe siècles) - Marie de France et ses contemporains

by Various, Nathalie Koble (Director), Mireille Seguy (Director)

Dans notre mémoire littéraire, l'apparition des lais narratifs bretons a fait deux fois événement : pour les auditeurs du XIIe siècle, qui en ont fait un succès littéraire – déterminant ainsi la constitution d'un genre qui a fait école – mais aussi pour nous, lecteurs contemporains, qui n'avons cessé, depuis leur découverte, de les éditer, de les traduire, d'en commenter l'énigmatique attrait. En proposant de lire côte à côte les lais de Marie de France et plusieurs lais anonymes, le présent volume voudrait faire apparaître la cohérence d'un corpus constitué sur plusieurs décennies. Choisis pour la richesse des résonances qu'ils offrent avec les lais de Marie, les cinq lais anonymes ici présentés bénéficient d'une édition et d'une traduction nouvelles. Les lais de Marie de France ont été traduits d'après l'édition de Jean Rychner, entièrement revue.

944 pages, Paperback

First published April 20, 2018

About the author

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Reviews

[Markus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Marie de France XII to XIII century
« Lais Bretons by Marie de France » (1160 – 1215)

“My name is Mary, and I am from France”. This is all we know of her name. It is from a line in one of her Lais.
Even though born in France, she spent most of her life in England. It is clear from her writing that Marie was highly educated and multilingual; this level of education was not available to the common population at this time, so we can infer that she was of noble birth.
She has produced four collections of works, but she is best known for her “Lais of Marie de France”.
This collection of her twelve Lais is the subject of the present edition, which also includes a further five Lais from unknown contemporary authors.
Marie wrote her works in the language of ‘Francien’ sprinkled with vocabulary from Anglo/Norman French. In this edition, a translation into modern French is present on every other page.
My first reaction, when starting to read the book, was that these Lais were to the Bretons what the Sagas were to the Icelanders.
But there are several major differences.
The Sagas of the Icelanders are the written recordings of ancient popular heroic stories carried over time by word of mouth.
Whereas Marie’s Lais are writings based on lyric stories as were sang and accompanied with musical instruments, by troubadours and minstrels at Royal and Aristocratic courts.
They sang of medieval romance, courteous love lyrics, heroic chivalry tales and legends of Celtic, Gallic origin disclosing a fabulous dream world of fairies, shining castles ‘over the lake’, men turning into werewolves and more of the kind.
Marie kept her Lais in a short and condensed way, as they were used by the singers
She succeeded with her style and vocabulary to give these Lais a special charming and even frivolous atmosphere, reflecting an unconstrained ‘joie de vivre’ in her multiple love affairs, several of them in triangular, adulterous situations.
Marie dared to express a feminist position of free female sexuality, in no way different from modern opinions.
Her collection of Lais attracted an immediate outstanding success in reader populations in the Aristocratic and Clerical society. But naturally also, critics from religious and jealous competitor authors.
Marie de France was likely known at the court of King Henry II and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
A contemporary of Marie, the English poet Denis Piramus mentions in his Life of Saint Edmund the King, written in around 1180, the Lais of a Marie, which were popular in aristocratic circles.
This work would be a prime choice for readers of authentic medieval authors.

[mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

c’était délicieuse………. si je n’avais pas eu la pression du PARTIEL j’aurais mis 5 étoiles 3