Marie de France

It is making an assumption to argue that a single individual composed the body of work traditionally attributed to someone whom modern readers have called Marie de France . But one or possibly more women named Marie, writing in the French language in twelfth-century England, composed lais (narrative poems), fables, and a prose saint's life (this last work in translation). Her work was influential for Middle English literature, and her life-story was an inspiration to women writing in the early nineteenth century.