The Anonymous Marie de France

Acknowledgments
Note on Texts
Introduction
Chapter One The Word Aventure and the Adventure of Words
Aventure
Lai
History, Philology, and the Quest for Origins
The Obligation to Speak
The Will to Remember
"Guigemar"
Chapter Two If Words Could Kill: The Lais and Fatal Speech
Marie mal mariée
"Lanval" and "Laüstic"
"Equitan" and "Le Fresne"
"Bisclavret"
Chapter Three The Voice in the Tomb of the Lais
"Eliduc"
"Les Deus Amanz" and "Chaitivel"
"Milun" and "Chevrefoil"
"Yonec"
Chapter Four Beastly Talk: The Fables
The Fables and the Lais
Speech Acts in the Fables
An Ethics of Language
Chapter Five Changing Places: The Fables and Social Mobility at the Court of Henry II
Scholasticism and the Fables
Abelardian Ethics
Appetite and Envy
Logic and the Body
Changing Habitat
Social Mobility
Chapter Six Marie's Fables and the Rise of the Monarchic State
Right Reason and the Moral
Town and Court and Royal Peace
Measure, Timing, and Alertness
Marie's Social Contract
Chapter Seven A Medieval "Best Seller"
Chivalric Adventure
Doors In and Out of the Otherworld
In and Out of Another Tongue
Making the Dead Speak
Chapter Eight Between Fable and Romance
Making the Dead See
Testimony and Transcription
Genesis of the Tale
Remembering What the Dead Have Said and Seen
Chapter Nine The Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland and the Colonization of the Afterlife
Patrick the Administrator
The Norman and Irish Peace Movement
Ecclesiastical Reform and the Cistercian Presence
The Civil Governance of Captured Land
The Invention of Purgatory and the Bureaucratization of the Afterlife
Purgatory and the Law
Conclusion
Notes
Index