Marie de France

Marie de France (c. 1200), French poet. She is thought to have been of Norman origin and to have lived chiefly at the court of Henry II, Norman king of England. Marie wrote 12 lais, French medieval narrative poems that relate romantic tales of knighthood. They vary in length from about 100 to 12,000 lines. The lais are taken from Breton sources, which in turn were based on Oriental and Scandinavian sources. Several deal with Arthurian legend. Marie also wrote Ysopet (Little Aesop), a collection of 103 fables that she translated from English into French.