The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation ed. by Claire M. Waters (review)

Scholars of Marie de France rejoice: for the first time ever, we have a facing-page Old French—Modern English scholarly edition of the Lais. Making the original language of these texts more widely accessible would be justification enough for this new entry into the near-half-dozen extant editions of the Lais, but editor and translator Dr. Claire M. Waters goes far beyond mere textual reproduction. Instead, she provides an exciting and expansive introduction to Marie and her milieu that, unlike previous editions, addresses in-depth the multilingual afterlives of the Old French original. For instance, building off the important work in recent years in Northern Archipelagic Studies by Sif Ríkharðsdóttir and others, Waters gives a detailed overview of the Lais’ popularity in medieval Scandinavia; this edition includes a translation of the Old Norse prologue to the Lais, just one of many helpful appendices to this text that also covers “Speaking Animals,” “Love Relationships,” “Prologues and Epilogues,” “Historical and Legendary Accounts of Britain and the Normans,” “Textual Variants,” and “Courtly Life and Pursuits.”

These appendices are what make this edition of the Lais particularly useful for a teaching volume. As Waters points out in her preface, countless medievalists learning Old French for the first time have used William Kibler’s Introduction to Old French as their textbook of choice for the language. While this volume certainly doesn’t replace Kibler’s text, it does serve as a useful companion to it. Kibler provides several Lais as translation practice but provides little context and no translated version, making lone study difficult. With Waters’ new edition, however, the Lais and their cultural context are far more accessible, providing critical grounding for students of medieval French. The versatility of this edition extends to all students encountering the Lais for the first time as well as senior scholars. Beyond the utility of easy access to the Old French, this edition provides an excellent overview of the latest developments in Marie de France scholarship in its introduction. The aforementioned appendices bring together a wide variety of medieval primary sources, from the obvious—excerpts from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae—to the obscure: a translation of an anonymous Anglo-Norman verse chronicle last edited in 1836. Also included is a useful timeline that juxtaposes major events in Marie de France’s time alongside proposed dates for each of her compositions. The carefully-thought-out details of this edition make it as well-suited to an undergraduate medieval survey as to an upper-level graduate seminar.

The limitations of this text are mostly the result of practicality, and even these decisions are made with great care and pedagogical utility. Waters uses as her base text London, British Library, Harley MS 978. Though she notes that “in some cases scholars think that [other] versions may well be closer to the original composition than the version in Harley 978,” Waters justifies her decision to adhere to Harley because of the recent digitization of the manuscript. She provides the link immediately in the “Note on the Text” (43). This has the double-advantage of both making the collation and transcription of the edition marginally easier for the editor while also providing educators with a multitude of teaching opportunities: an Old French palaeography unit, for instance, as part of an insular palaeography class, or a useful way to familiarize students with the difference between an edited and a manuscript version of a text. At the very least, the book’s basis in Harley 978 only adds to its value as a solid option for both the undergraduate medievalist and senior scholar alike. Waters’ translation is well-rendered and captures the nuances of the original text well through extensive explanatory footnotes that provide cultural context as well as linguistic clarification. In some ways, Waters argues for a new canon of Marie through this volume. The lai most commonly known as “Eliduc,” for instance, is...