Editing Marie de France (section)

===Provenance and language===
It is likely that Marie de France was known at the court of King Henry II and his wife, [[Eleanor of Aquitaine]].<ref name="BurgessBusby">Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |last1=Barban |first1=J. |title=The Case for a Possible Acrostic in the "Lais" of Marie de France |journal=Le Cygne |date=2002 |volume=1 |pages=25–39 |jstor=44633407 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/44633407}}</ref> A contemporary of Marie, the English poet [[Denis Pyramus|Denis Piramus]], mentions in his ''Life of Saint Edmund the King'', written in around 1180, the lais of a Marie, which were popular in aristocratic circles.{{cn|date=March 2025}} Her origins could have been in the parts of Île-de-France close to [[Normandy]], or alternatively in an area in between such as [[Brittany]] or the [[Vexin]]. But the Anglo-Norman influence may be due to her living in England during her adult life, which is also suggested by the fact that so many of her texts were found in England.<ref name="Classen">{{cite encyclopedia|last = Classen| first = Albrecht| title = Marie de France|encyclopedia = The Literary Encyclopedia |date = 2003-09-15| access-date = 2009-10-12 |url = http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5494}}</ref><ref name="dhmarie">Hazell, Dinah, 2003. [http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/Volume2/Hazell.html Rethinking Marie]. [http://www.sfsu.edu/~medieval/index.html Medieval Forum] Volume 2.</ref> In addition, "si sui de France" is ambiguous and equivocal, and may refer to a region less specific than the Île-de-France – for example, an area not in the [[Angevin Empire]].

It is clear from her writing that Marie de France was highly educated and multilingual; this level of education was not available to the common or poor at this time, so we can infer that Marie de France was of aristocratic birth and/ or belonged to a religious house (cf. [[Hrotsvitha]], [[Héloïse]], [[Bridget of Sweden]], and [[Hildegard of Bingen]]).<ref>Petersen, Zina Nibley, Dr. "Middle English, Oral (folk) and Written (clerical) and Mixed (civic)." British Literary History 1. Brigham Young University, Provo. 24 Sept. 2013. Lecture.</ref><ref>{{cite ODNB |last1=Hunt |first1=T. |title=Marie de France |url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/display/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-52460 |date=2004 |publisher=OUP|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/52460 }}</ref> The precise language or dialect she wrote in is a matter of some discussion. Her language is one of the many versions of [[Old French]] with [[Anglo-Norman language|Anglo-Norman]] elements; R. Howard Bloch notes that identifying her particular language may be a fruitless exercise given that there was no standardized spelling and that the many varieties of Old French identified by (nineteenth-century) scholars are to some extent their own invention,<ref>Bloch, R. Howard, p. 9.</ref> and the linguistic question is connected to the matter of her provenance. June Hall McCash, summarizing scholarship in 2011, said:<blockquote>Pontfarcy [editor of the ''L’Espurgatoire Seint Patriz''] believes, as did H. Suchier, that the work's late 12th-century language, a mixture of Norman, Anglo-Norman, and Francien, indicates an author from "une region frontière de la Normandie, qui par la suite, se serait installé en Angleterre". Östen Södergård […] comes to a similar, though less specific, conclusion about the author of the Audree. […] his linguistic analysis reveals language traits that also suggest a mixture of Norman, Anglo-Norman, and Francien dialects.<ref>McCash 244-45.</ref></blockquote>

The amount and importance of [[Francien language|Francien]] in her language is assessed variously. According to Liam Lewis, "her works are written in the Francien dialect with Anglo-Norman influences."<ref>Lewis 3.</ref> McCash and Barban are less convinced of such a single designation: "The language of Marie's other works has been studied by a number of earlier editors, from Warnke and Jenkins to Brucker and Pontfarcy, all of whom have concluded that she wrote in a form of continental French, though they have debated precisely what dialect of continental French she may have used. While there are elements of Francien and Norman, there are also a few Picard characteristics in the various texts."<ref>McCash and Barban 9.</ref>

She was first called "Marie de France" by the French scholar [[Claude Fauchet (historian)|Claude Fauchet]] in 1581, in his ''Recueil de l'origine de la langue et poesie françoise'', and this name has been used ever since:<ref>Burgess, Glyn S., and Busby, Keith, 1986, p&nbsp;11.</ref> Fauchet names her that and then cites the description of herself quoted above ('Marie ai nun, si sui de France').<ref>Bloch, R. Howard, p. 2.</ref>