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3 unusual facts about Marie de France


Chanticleer and the Fox

In the following century Marie de France tells a fable very similar to the Renart version in Old French verse.

Fair Annie

Marie de France retold this story in her lai, Le Fresne, where the heroine is not kidnapped but abandoned with birth tokens; she was a twin, which was regarded as proof of adultery, and a servant abandoned her to save her life.

St Patrick's Purgatory

Marie de France translated it into French and expanded it into the Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick.


The Cock and the Jewel

Literary translations of the fable, using the Latin Romulus as their source, include those by Marie de France, John Lydgate and Robert Henryson, and translators tended to retain its first-place position.


see also