Influence On Literature
Marie’s stories exhibit a form of lyrical poetry that influenced the way that narrative poetry was subsequently composed, adding another dimension to the narration through her prologues and the epilogues, for example. She also developed three parts to a narrative lai: aventure (the ancient Breton deed or story); lai (Breton melodies); conte (recounting the story narrated by the lai).
In the late-fourteenth century, at broadly the same time that Geoffrey Chaucer included The Franklin's Tale, itself a Breton lai, in his Canterbury Tales, a poet named Thomas Chestre composed a Middle English romance based directly upon Marie de France's Lanval, a poem which, perhaps predictably, spanned much more now than a few weeks of the hero's life, a knight named Sir Launfal.
In 1816, the English poet Matilda Betham wrote a long poem about Marie de France in octosyllabic couplets, The Lay of Marie.
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