Little is known about Marie de France. She is the first named woman poet in French and wrote three books of verse stories, some time between 1160 and 1210. She must have been educated and probably came from the upper class. She may have spent much of her adult life in England. She appeals to modern sensibility because she valued herself sufficiently to “sign” her verse: “Here is my name for your remembrance/ I'm called Marie, and I'm from France.”

She seems not to have called the poems lais. Travelling singers, passing between France and Britain, carried with them the fashion for telling aventures of noble lords and ladies in lais of words and music. These are the oral tales that Marie wrote down — about Arthur and Gawain, Tristram and Iseult, set in a world of merchants trading saffron and cloth of gold, wine, olive oil and hunting dogs. It is the stuff of an enchanted tapestry.

This superb new version is by Jane Tozer, winner of the 2006 Times Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation. It is faithful to the world of Marie, representing her tone of wistful admiration and earthy humour.

So when the wounded knight Guigemar is nursed by a noble but lonely lady, the results are predictable but funny: “He's sick with love and can't forget her/ But she can't boast, for she's no better./ Plagued by her heartache's anguished pangs,/ She too lies wakeful all night long./ You may say ‘Amor Vincit Omnia'/ But in their case, it caused insomnia.”

Some are long and elaborate, others short and bawdy. All are exquisite, and the quirky illustrations capture the individual spirit of each.

Tozer suggests that Lai XI, Chevrefoil — as she translates it, Withywind — Marie's account of Tristram and Iseult — deserves to be better known. In this version it is intense, obsessive, sad, fey and movingly sexy. Marie, too, deserves to be better known.

Knights of Love, After the Lais of Marie de France by Jane Tozer
Fal Publications, £12

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