Le Lai de Lanval

Marie de France is part of “Arthuriana”: the collection of Arthurian romances, also referred to as chivalric romances. King Arthur and the magician Merlin were introduced to the literary canon by Geoffrey of Monmouth in his 12th-century book, History of the Kings of Britain. Chivalric romance is also rooted in the songs of the French troubadours. These love songs, in turn, were historically influenced by Sufi poetry (such as Rumi and Hafez). Ancient Latin inspirations for courtly love also include Ovid’s Art of Love.

In medieval France, Arthurian stories were extremely popular. During this era, when Marie de France was writing, Lancelot was introduced by Chretien de Troyes in The Knight of the Cart. Stories about King Arthur’s knights searching for the Holy Grail spawned what modern readers would call “fanfiction”; many Grail stories by anonymous authors were published during the middle ages in France.

Other countries expanded the Arthurian canon. Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto was published in Italy, and Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach was published in Germany. In Spain, Miguel de Cervantes parodied the Arthurian romance genre in Don Quixote. In England, Thomas Malory crafted a Middle English version of Le Morte d’Arthur. During the English Renaissance, Edmund Spenser published his Faerie Queene, featuring Arthur as a prince.