Customer Reviews

The Anonymous Marie de France

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How wonderful to recieve an expertly guided tour through the corpus of Marie de France! Bloch writes in part to show the continuity of ideas and forms in the three works attributed to the twelfth century poet Marie de France. The Lais of Marie de France still receive attention in first year university humanities class. Bloch seems to reach a bit far in his effort to show Marie's "obsession with language". Bloch pleasingly works through the fables and shows the educative value of talking animals as well as the political values they reflect. The final work Bloch addresses is Marie's Saint Patrick's Purgatory. Bloch's final chapter on discussing Ireland and the colonization of purgatory is absolutely fabulous. Bloch uses different methods (deconstructive criticism, psychoanalytical criticism, new historicism) to approach Marie's texts, but this diversely constructed philology creates some stunning results. There is much to admire in this new book by Bloch. I am convinced it will make extraordinarily useful reading for those interested in Marie de France or early French literature and history. Analysis of the poetry, rhythms,and forms is lacking, perhaps because such analysis matters not as much as Marie's and Bloch's obsession for language.