SOURCE: “Marie de France and the Tristram Legend,” in PMLA, Vol. 63, No. 2, June, 1948, pp. 405-11.

In the following essay, Frank maintains that the Chievrefueil, a lay by Marie de France, was derived from longer versions of the Tristram (Tristan) legend.

Chievrefueil, the shortest and perhaps the most charming of the lays by Marie de France, has troubled critics because, unlike her other poems, it seems to lack clarity. Is it not fair to assume, however, that in this instance the usual limpidity and forthrightness of Marie's narrative style may have been clouded by her modern interpreters, rather than by Marie herself? I hope to show that to her mediæval audience the lovely lines of Chievrefueil presented no difficulties whatsoever, needed no esoteric subtleties for their understanding, and that their Old Norse translator as well as the scribes of both our surviving manuscripts readily comprehended Marie's lucid phrases...