Marie de France and the Poetics of Memory

2. The Prologues and the Epilogues

35 2 The Prologues and the Epilogues � To avoid possible confusion, the fifty-six-line prologue that precedes Marie de France’s Lais in the Harley 978 manuscript of the British Library is often referred to in contemporary critical discourse as the “General Prologue,” which distinguishes it from the exordia of individual lais, especially the prologue of Guigemar that immediately follows it in this same manuscript.1 Of the five extant manuscripts that preserve at least one or more of the lais, Harley 978 is unique in that it is the only manuscript to record the General Prologue, and is also the only manuscript that assembles all twelve lais (“assembler,” as Marie says in the General Prologue). Whether Marie wrote the General Prologue before, during, or after the composition of the lais that follow in Harley 978 may still be open to debate, but its relevance to her literary plan as a 1.See Rychner’s edition of the Lais, 239.He has suggested that the first eighteen lines of Guigemar were originally intended as the prologue to the Lais: “Il est possible que nous ayons dans les v. 1–18 [de Guigemar] un petit prologue plus ou moins indépendant que Marie avait peut-être placé dès l’abord en tête de son ouvrage et qu’elle ne supprima pas lorsqu’elle composa son prologue-dédicace [des Lais]; c’est que notamment elle y avait signé son œuvre.” Pickens elaborates on Rychner’s distinction between the prologue to Guigemar and the General Prologue to the Lais, suggesting that we view the former as the first and the latter as the second. See his “La poétique de Marie de France d’après les prologues des Lais,” Lettres Romanes 32 (1978): 367–84. 36 whole is clear.2 I share the view of Pickens, who sees the General Prologue as representing a synopsis of her literary motivations more than displaying the beginnings of her literary career, “le résultat de sa plus grande maturité créatrice” (the result of her greatest creative maturity).3 While all her narrative texts testify in one way or another to her competence in the art of rhetoric, the fifty-six octosyllabic rhymed couplets of this exordial text have a value of their own.They spell out the poet’s causa scribendi and function as a microcosm and brief apology of the process of literary invention in general that will permeate all her projects.The exordial matter in these lines has received a great deal of scholarly attention as a type of authorial manifesto in which she expounds her views on literary translatio and the poet’s role in the elucidation and transmission of knowledge from one generation to the next. Remembrance and Captatio Benevolentiae The opening lines of this prologue, quoted in chapter 1, extol the virtues of literary composition and they function as a captatio benevolentiae that justifies Marie’s decision to write.This opening passage no doubt is meant to remind the audience of the parable of the talents, from Matthew 25:14–30.4 Marie’s attempt in these 2. See Richard Baum, Recherches sur les œuvres attribuées à Marie de France (Heidelberg : Carl Winter, 1968), 32–41. Baum argues here, I think unconvincingly, that all the lais in the collection cannot be attributed with certainty to Marie de France. He cites several reasons for his position, including the repetition of material in the prologue of Guigemar that is found in the General Prologue immediately preceding it, the lack of an epilogue as found in the Fables and the Espurgatoire, and his belief that not all of the texts in the collection conform to our understanding of the lai as a genre. I believe that most of the evidence offered in critical analysis over the years, both cultural and linguistic, suggests otherwise. 3. Pickens, “Poétique d’après les prologues,” 368. Unless otherwise noted, all English translations of secondary sources are mine. 4. For studies on Marie’s allusion to the parable of the talents, see Brewster Fitz, “The Prologue to the Lais of Marie de France and the Parable of the Talents: Gloss and Monetary Metaphor,” Modern Language Notes 90, no. 4 (1995): 558–64;Alexandre Prologues and Epilogues 37 lines to acquire the goodwill of her audience by showing that it is an author’s duty to use the talent that has...