Reviews

Whimsical, surprising, funny. This certainly isn't something I would've thought to read, had I not taken a class on medieval literature, but I'm grateful to have been exposed to this fundamental work of Old French literature (which I read in English translation), as well as a different way of conveying short narratives.

siria's review against another edition

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4.0

Marie de France is one of the earliest known female authors, though we know little about her beyond her name, that she wrote in French and was evidently of French origin, and that she spent part of her life in England. To that extent, I found myself interested by these stories, and from a historical perspective there's a lot here. But my problem with the stories—and the reason why I'm a socio-economic historian and not a scholar of literature—is that they reflect such different sensibilities from mine that I find it extremely difficult to relate to the characters or to understand their actions. Marie does a better job than most medieval authors at making her characters something more than mere ciphers whose primary task is to communicate a moral lesson, but there was still more than one occasion where I found myself completely unable to believe that someone would (re)act in the way they did here. There's a lot of telling, not showing, and I find that difficult to relate to. (I read the edition translated by Robert Hanning and Joan Ferrante, which is a model of clarity; good explanatory notes.)

tearbear20's review against another edition

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2.0

Read for English class

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