Fiction and Truth in Marie de France

 

Numbers in parentheses are lines of the text in Les Lais de Marie de France, ed. Jean Rychner (1966).  Translations of cited phrases are my own.  Numbers in brackets refer to endnotes.

 

     Marie de France is an enigmatic figure in that virtually no biographical information about her is known.  Her name and a few scraps of information about where she lived are included in her lais and fables.   Nearly as obscure as the particulars of the author’s life is the issue of her narratives’ fictionality.  In what sense were the stories considered to be “true”?  What did narrative truth mean to her and her audience?

     The question must arise since the lais tell of many unlikely and impossible events, for instance a speaking deer (“Guigemar”), a man who tuns into a bird (“Yonec”), and another who becomes a werewolf (“Bisclavret”).  In spite of such fabulous incidents, a good number of the self-reflective comments that open and close certain of the lais specifically insist that they are veridical.  The epilogue to “Equitan” assures the reader “These things happened, as I have told you.” (“Issi avient, cum dit vus ai” [309]), adding that she is merely repeating an earlier version, thus providing a sort of reliable provenance.  At the end of “Bisclavret” one finds the same formula: “The adventure you have heard really happened, do not doubt me.”  (“L’aventure k’avez oïe/ Veraïe fu, n’en dutez mie” [315-316]), then noting that an earlier poem had been made of it to preserve and see that it is not forgotten.  “Lanval” opens with the statement that “the story of another lay I shall tell you as it happened.”  (“L’aventure d’un autre Lai/ Cum il avint vus cunterai.”[1-2])  “Les Deus Amanz” concludes in just the same way: “The things I have told you happened and the Bretons made of it a lay.”  (“Issi avint cum dit vus ai/ Li Bretun en firent un Lai. [241-242])

     In each case Marie is defending her story as true and pointing to the fact that it is a retelling and not her invention as support.  While since Romanticism originality has been celebrated, many medieval authors claim that repeating a narrative they have heard is a positive value adding the prestige of an earlier authority.  While this gesture can indicate evidence for the tale’s factual basis, in Marie its implication is broader: as “auctor” meant writer to Chaucer, “auctorite” was sometimes “writerliness.”  The word in this sense suggests propriety, a competently made poem, with conformity to accepted  standards of  beauty and elegance and reflection of earlier models providing its artistic credentials rather than facticity.

     The issue is further obscured by the fact that the European Middle Ages had different concepts of truth in written accounts.  One influential critic [1] argues that until the twelfth century advent of the Arthurian romance, stories were generally accepted as more or less factual, but that a concept of “truth in fiction” deriving from a kind of “higher truth” first appeared around the time of Marie in Chrétien’s Erec et Enide.

     The value Marie suggests for her stories is associated with the pleasure they give due to their beauty.  This pleasure is part of an elegant courtly complex of customs that for her is the highest expression of culture.  Her prologue calls skill at writing a God-given gift on a par with factual knowledge [2], since artistic ability brings pleasure to receptive readers.  Such value is described in aesthetic terms as a flower: “When something really good is heard by many people, it has its first bloom, but when it is praised by many people then it fully flowers.” [3] 

     The motive for her poems is to recast in more beautiful form “tales I have heard” [4] in order that they should not be forgotten [5].  Here the contrast is not a matter of verisimilitude, between narratives that seem “true” and those that seem “false,” but rather between those whose worth is associated with their having existed in the tradition, in the past, and not being simple innovations.  In this way the excellence of the ancestors as exemplary models will be preserved.  According to Marie the people of Brittany had been in the past “valiant and courtly and noble,” and among their achievements was to record the stories they heard in order that they never be forgotten [6].

     The novel element in her retellings is her refinement, her application of the polish of a fine style to a worthwhile pre-existing story.  “Anyone who wants to relate a tale must begin in an original way and proceed with words so well-chosen that the story will please people.” [7]  The added value is aesthetic, attracting readers or listeners through a heightened beauty such that “the sound is good to hear” [8].

     The “truth” of Marie’s lais resides in  their embodiment of ideals of behavior and social order.  Viewed as a method of preserving and perpetuating the courtly refinement assigned to the past, this “rightness” transcends the simple facts of historicity.  This is the reason that the characters are so outstanding, the women so lovely, and the men so valiant.  As a picture of what men and women might be, how “correct” their behavior, how dazzling their lifestyle, these stories are decidedly more "real" than the mere facts of the past.  Just as myth tells of events that are less incidents that once occurred than descriptions of the way things are, Marie’s noble lovers define the standards to which their listeners aspire in the very moment of their hearing.  The truths they convey are not like the incidents recorded in annals; rather they are what seemed the timeless truths of human life.  For her as for Aristotle, poetry is something more “philosophical,” that is, reaching toward the truth and thus more “serious” and more worthy of attention [9].  

 

 

 

1.  See Walter Haug, Vernacular Literary Theory in the Middle Ages: The German Tradition, 800–1300, in its European Context (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 29) who says Chretien’s Erec et Enide is "the first vernacular romance of the Middle Ages which may be described as fictional" (p. 91), as earlier epics were presumed to be historical.  For other discussion of the issue see Hans Ulricht Gumbrecht, “Wie fictional war das höfische Roman?,” Heinrich and Iser, eds., Funktionen 433-40 and Klaus W. Hempfer, “Some Problems Concerning a Theory of Fiction(ality),” Style Vol. 38, No. 3, German Narratology II (Fall 2004).

2.  “Ki Deus ad dune escïence/ E de parler bone eloquence” (“He to whom  God has given knowledge and the ability to speak with skill” [1-2].) 

3.  Quant uns granz biens est mult oïz,

Dunc a primes est il fluriz

E quant loëz est de pluzurs,

Dunc ad espandues ses flurs. (5-8)

 

4.  Des lais pensai, k’oïz aveie. (33)  

 

5. Ke pur remembrance les firent/ Des aventures ki’l oïrent.” (35-6)

 

6.  Jadis suleient par pruësce,

Par couteisie e par noblesce,

Des aventures qu’il oient,

Ki a plusurs gens avenaient,

Fere les lais pur remembrance. (Equitan, 3-7)

 

7.  Ki divers cuntes veut traitier

Diversement deit comencier

E parler si rainablement

K’il seit pleisibles a la gent.   (Milum, 1-4)

 

8.  Bone e nest a oïr la note. (Guigemar, 886)

 

9.   “Poetry is thus more philosophical and more serious than history, since poetry is more concerned with the universal and history with the particular.”  (διὸ καὶ φιλοσοφώτερον καὶ σπουδαιότερον ποίησις ἱστορίας ἐστίν: ἡ μὲν γὰρ ποίησις μᾶλλον τὰ καθόλου, ἡ δ᾽ ἱστορία τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον λέγει.)  (Poetics, Bk. IX.)