A poet, storyteller, and translator who clearly establishes her ambitions and credentials on the side of the moderns, Marie de France is one of the finest writers of the twelfth-century Renaissance and the first woman poet whose name has come down through the history of French literature. Her popularity today recalls what must have been her fame for medieval audiences. In his life of St. Edmund (after 1170, possibly 1190-1200), Denis Piramus associates “dame Marie's” renown with that of the contemporary romancer who wrote Partonopeu de Blois. Taking the moralist's point of view and questioning the veracity of her tales, he complains that she and her rhymed lays are much praised, appreciated by a courtly audience of counts, barons, knights, and, especially, ladies:

E si en aiment mult l'escrit
E lire le funt, si unt delit,
E si les funt sovent retreire.
Les lais solent as dames pleire,
De...