Roberta Krueger, Burgess Professor of French, has published a chapter titled "The Wound, The Book, and the Knot: Marie de France and Literary Traditions of Love in the Lais," in A Companion to Marie de France, edited by Logan Whalen (Brill, 2011).
Krueger's essay examines the representation of love in 12 short narrative poems by Marie de France, a 12th-century poet who wrote most probably at the English court of Henry II. As she weaves together themes and motifs from classical myth, Latin love literature (especially that of Ovid), Breton fairy tales, and troubadour lyric, Marie tells stories of unhappily married women and resourceful maidens from a distinctly feminine perspective.
