Marie de France, the earliest known woman poet writing in French, was active at the Anglo-Norman court during the reign of Henry II, composing her twelve Lais probably between 1160 and 1178. Drawing on Breton oral traditions she describes as the matière de Bretagne, her lais are short narrative poems exploring love, transformation, and the intersection of the fairy world with human society. Works such as Lanval, Bisclavret, and Laustic show an exceptional psychological sophistication and sympathy for female experience rare in medieval literature. She also composed a collection of fables (Ysopet) and a work on the pains of purgatory.

Marie de France stands as the first named female poet in French literary history and a foundational figure in the tradition of the short narrative poem in European literature. Her Lais established conventions of fairy-tale enchantment, doomed love, and moral ambiguity that persisted through Renaissance romance and into Romantic poetry. Her explicit statement in the prologue to the Lais — that she is engaging with Breton songs to preserve their meaning — marks one of the earliest articulations of literary purpose by a woman writer.