Women and Women's Writings from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages | Marie De France (Poem Date C. 12Th Century)
MARIE DE FRANCE (POEM DATE C. 12TH CENTURY)
SOURCE: Marie de France. "The Nightingale." In The Honeysuckle and the Hazel Tree: Medieval Stories of Men and Women, translated by Patricia Terry. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Below is a translated reprint of Marie de France's twelfth-century lai titled "The Nightingale."
The story I shall tell today
Was taken from a Breton lai
Called Laüstic in Brittany,
Which in proper French would be
Rossignol. They'd call the tale
In English lands The Nightingale.
There was near Saint Malo a town
Of some importance and renown.
Two barons, who could well afford
Houses suited to a lord,
Gave the city its good name
By their benevolence and fame.
Only one of them had married.
His wife was beautiful indeed,
And courteous as she was fair:
A lady who was well...
[The entire page is 1366 words long]
Navigate
