Anonymous Marie de France, The

The Anonymous Marie de France is valuable because it examines Marie's three works both discretely and comparatively, thereby giving us a parallactic view of her total output, -which in turn allows us to see how she, on a perproject basis, summoned various poetic tools and strategies while passing over others. This information, as we distill it, becomes a de facto ars poetica. In addition, Bloch proves that by mining her texts we can, in fact, know Marie from within, and perceive-almost alongside her-how she felt about the literary and sociopolitical universe in which she lived. Here then, three-quarters of a century later, is a generous addendum to Warnke's one-line biography.

Future editions of this study will benefit if bibliographical data from the endnotes are reproduced in a separate, freestanding bibliography and if every citation in Old French is translated into modern English, rather then just the majority of them. These desiderata take nothing away from the sophistication and power of the study. The Anonymous Marie de France is undoubtedly an important book that will alter and expand how we understand one of medieval literature's greatest poets. (PAUL CREAMER, Columbia University)

(PAUL CREAMER, Columbia University)

Copyright Romanic Review May 2004
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