Around 1170–1178, Marie de France — the earliest known French-language woman poet — composed her twelve Lais, short narrative poems drawing on Breton oral tradition and addressed to a 'noble king' usually identified as Henry II of England or his son. Her Lais include Lanval, Chevrefoil (about Tristan and Iseut), and Bisclavret, blending otherworldly Celtic motifs with courtly love ethics in a spare, psychologically subtle verse style. Marie also translated Aesop's Fables and composed a saint's life, demonstrating remarkable range for any medieval author.

Marie de France holds a unique place in literary history as the first woman known to have composed secular vernacular literature in France. Her Lais established models of the short lyric-narrative form that influenced subsequent French and English storytelling traditions, and her exploration of female desire, trapped wives, and magical liberation gave voice to perspectives largely absent from male-authored courtly poetry. Twentieth-century feminist literary scholarship has recuperated her as a foundational figure in women's writing.