{"id":2025,"date":"2022-05-09T14:30:48","date_gmt":"2022-05-09T22:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=2025"},"modified":"2022-05-09T14:30:48","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T22:30:48","slug":"my-favourite-medieval-werewolf-or-marie-ai-num-si-sui-de-france","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2022\/05\/09\/my-favourite-medieval-werewolf-or-marie-ai-num-si-sui-de-france\/","title":{"rendered":"My favourite Medieval werewolf, or, Marie ai num si sui de France"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a few hours late today and I\u2019m writing this with the sound of the Roman de Fauvel (a Medieval musical satire) in the background. I\u2019m at the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies. If I\u2019m going to be one of the ways writers learn about the Middle Ages, I need to maintain my knowledge and the congress is online this year. The last time I was able to go was in 1984.<\/p>\n

Because I\u2019m firmly fixed in the Middle Ages at this moment and because I delivered my paper at 5.15 am my time, I thought\u2026 maybe this week you\u2019d like the text I used as a case study in my paper? It\u2019s short and it\u2019s cool and there are translations readily available on the internet. In fact, let me give you several of the links I referred to in my paper. I\u2019m sorry about the formatting, but I\u2019m sneaking this post into time I don\u2019t really have. I\u2019ll introduce the work itself in a moment:<\/p>\n

Judith Shoaf, Introduction to the lais<\/i> https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/jshoaf\/marie_lais\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Judith Shoaf, translation Bisclavret<\/i> https:\/\/people.clas.ufl.edu\/jshoaf\/files\/bisclavret.pdf<\/p>\n

Eugene Mason translation Bisclavret<\/i> 1911 translation at Project Gutenberg https:\/\/www.gutenberg.org\/files\/11417\/11417-h\/11417-h.htm#VIII<\/a><\/p>\n

ARLIMA on Marie de France (including Bisclavret<\/i>) https:\/\/www.arlima.net\/mp\/marie_de_france.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Marie de France wrote in Old French, and is famous for her lais<\/i>. She is, in fact, one of the most important writers in Old French, and if you love fantasy fiction and stories about the knights of Arthur, she\u2019s more than worth visiting. The lais<\/i> are long poems that tell stories. It\u2019s that simple. Except that when I say \u2018long\u2019 I\u2019m comparing the lais<\/i> to modern short poetry. They\u2019re not long compared to some other forms of Medieval poetry. It\u2019s like the difference between a novella (the novella representing Marie\u2019s work) and a big fantasy blockbuster series where each novel is long and readers seldom stop after just one novel (the chansons de geste<\/i> \u2013 the French term for them is generally translated as \u2018epic legend\u2019 but\u2026 they\u2019re not quite that.)<\/p>\n

Bisclavret<\/i> is the story of a knight-werewolf, who is tricked by his wife into remaining in wolf shape. It took the help of a good lord for him to return to his human body. (The Roman de Fauvel<\/i> is satirical and so I\u2019m full of bad puns.) I don\u2019t want to explain the plot any more than that, because Marie\u2019s story is so worth reading. Just remember that Medieval customs were not the same as ours. One person said happily on Goodreads, for instance \u201cGAY WEREWOLF GAY WEREWOLF GAY WEREWOLF\u2019 but the Medieval church would have caused much trouble for the two men if that were so. I do like this as a modern interpretation, however.<\/p>\n

There was a Late Medieval Jewish reinterpretation of Bisclavret<\/i> and it\u2019s the strangest misogynist story. Since I write about books every Monday, if you\u2019re interested I can introduce you to it and to some of the other stories in the volume in which it appears.<\/p>\n

Today is short and sweet, because I have a meeting in a few minutes. I can\u2019t think of a better way of spending the next few minutes than introducing yourself to Bisclavret<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m a few hours late today and I\u2019m writing this with the sound of the Roman de Fauvel (a Medieval musical satire) in the background. I\u2019m at the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies. If I\u2019m going to be one of the ways writers learn about the Middle Ages, I need to maintain my knowledge […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[499,500,157,26,70,501,498],"class_list":["post-2025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","tag-bisclavret","tag-chansons-de-geste","tag-comfort-reading","tag-gillian-polack","tag-history","tag-lais","tag-marie-de-france"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2025"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2026,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2025\/revisions\/2026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}