Marie de France: A Critical Companion by Sharon Kinoshita and Peggy McCracken (review)

Not to be confused with A Companion to Marie de France edited by Logan E. Whalen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), in which ten contributors have chapters to themselves for their respective topics, the present volume has been written by the two named authors, but without specific attribution of responsibilities. After an Introduction entitled ‘The World of Marie de France’, there are six chapters: ‘Communication, Transmission, and Interpretation: Literary History’; ‘Courtly Love and Feudal Society: Historical Context’; ‘Movement and Mobility: Plot’; ‘Bodies and Embodiment: Characters’; ‘Repetition and the Art of Variation: Narrative Techniques’; and ‘Posterity: The Afterlives of Marie’s Works’. Coverage is wide-ranging, therefore, and the general points in each chapter are convincingly supported by discussion of individual texts. Of Marie’s three works, the Lais, the Fables (or Ysopë), and the Espurgatoire seint Patriz (the Vie de sainte Audree, recently introduced as a possible fourth work by Marie, also gets a brief mention), the authors naturally devote most attention to the Lais. A disadvantage of the approach they adopt is that a reader interested in a particular lay has to locate up to eight different pages or sequences of pages in order to access its full coverage. But the chapters make telling connections between the various lays, with close attention paid to the text as well as to general issues. I found of particular interest the discussion of the politics of lineage (pp. 75–82), that is, the way nobles ‘defined their place in the world, negotiated their politics, and transmitted their values’ (p. 75), and also the scattered remarks on the concept of the gueredon (pp. 21, 54, 73, 75, 95), which is seen as ‘a formalization of reciprocity structuring feudal society’ (p. 93). More perhaps could have been said about narrative lays other than those by Marie, of which over twenty survive, as they help us to assess Marie’s role within the genre of the lay (there is merely a brief mention of the prologue to Tyolet plus a few comments on Graelent and Guingamor). The Fables and the Espurgatoire are both allocated around twenty pages of discussion within three or four different chapters. The fables are viewed as purveying morals that are closely bound up with feudal relations and as emphasizing the routine victimization of the poor by the powerful. The Espurgatoire deals with the Christian afterlife, in particular the theological innovation of Purgatory, but it nevertheless appeals to a courtly, secular audience and honours a knight’s place in society. Overall, the present volume is well written and informative throughout and succeeds in its stated aim (p. vii) of catering for the needs of the student, the scholar, and the general reader.