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Four Arthurian Romances

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Title: Four Arthurian Romances

Author: active 12th century de Troyes Chrétien

Translator: William Wistar Comfort

 
Release date: February 1, 1997 [eBook #831]
 Most recently updated: June 29, 2023

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/831

Credits: Douglas B. Killings and David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR ARTHURIAN ROMANCES ***

FOUR ARTHURIAN ROMANCES:

"EREC ET ENIDE", "CLIGÉS", "YVAIN", AND "LANCELOT"

by Chrétien de Troyes

Fl. 12th Century A.D.

Originally written in Old French, sometime in the second half of the
12th Century A.D., by the court poet Chrétien de Troyes.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:

ORIGINAL TEXT--

Carroll, Carleton W. (Ed.): "Chrétien DeTroyes: Erec and Enide" (Garland
Library of Medieval Literature, New York & London, 1987). Edited with a
translation (see Penguin Classics edition below).

Kibler, William W. (Ed.): "Chrétien DeTroyes: The Knight with the Lion,
or Yvain (Garland Library of Medieval Literature 48A, New York & London,
1985). Original text with English translation (See Penguin Classics
edition below).

Kibler, William W. (Ed.): "Chrétien DeTroyes: Lancelot, or The Knight of
the Cart (Garland Library of Medieval Literature 1A, New York & London,
1981). Original text with English translation (See Penguin Classics
edition below).

Micha, Alexandre (Ed.): "Les Romans de Chrétien de Troyes, Vol. II:
Cligés" (Champion, Paris, 1957).

OTHER TRANSLATIONS--

Cline, Ruth Harwood (Trans.): "Chrétien DeTroyes: Yvain, or the Knight
with the Lion" (University of Georgia Press, Athens GA, 1975).

Kibler, William W. & Carleton W. Carroll (Trans.): "Chrétien DeTroyes:
Arthurian Romances" (Penguin Classics, London, 1991). Contains
translations of "Erec et Enide" (by Carroll), "Cligés", "Yvain",
"Lancelot", and DeTroyes' incomplete "Perceval" (by Kibler). Highly
recommended.

Owen, D.D.R (Trans.): "Chrétien DeTroyes: Arthurian Romances" (Everyman
Library, London, 1987). Contains translations of "Erec et Enide",
"Cligés", "Yvain", "Lancelot", and DeTroyes' incomplete "Perceval".
NOTE: This edition replaced W.W. Comfort's in the Everyman Library
catalogue. Highly recommended.

RECOMMENDED READING--

Anonymous: "Lancelot of the Lake" (Trans: Corin Corely; Oxford
University Press, Oxford, 1989). English translation of one of the
earliest prose romances concerning Lancelot.

Anonymous: "The Mabinogion" (Ed: Jeffrey Gantz; Penguin Classics,
London, 1976). Contains a translation of "Geraint and Enid", an earlier
Welsh version of "Erec et Enide".

Anonymous: "Yvain and Gawain", "Sir Percyvell of Gales", and "The Anturs
of Arther" (Ed: Maldwyn Mills; Everyman, London, 1992). NOTE: Texts are
in Middle-English; "Yvain and Gawain" is a Middle-English work based
almost exclusively on Chrétien DeTroyes' "Yvain".

Malory, Sir Thomas: "Le Morte D'Arthur" (Ed: Janet Cowen; Penguin
Classics, London, 1969).

*****

INTRODUCTION

Chrétien De Troyes has had the peculiar fortune of becoming the best
known of the old French poets to students of mediaeval literature, and
of remaining practically unknown to any one else. The acquaintance of
students with the work of Chrétien has been made possible in academic
circles by the admirable critical editions of his romances undertaken
and carried to completion during the past thirty years by Professor
Wendelin Foerster of Bonn. At the same time the want of public
familiarity with Chrétien's work is due to the almost complete lack of
translations of his romances into the modern tongues. The man who, so
far as we know, first recounted the romantic adventures of Arthur's
knights, Gawain. Yvain, Erec, Lancelot, and Perceval, has been
forgotten; whereas posterity has been kinder to his debtors, Wolfram
yon Eschenbach, Malory, Lord Tennyson, and Richard Wagner. The present
volume has grown out of the desire to place these romances of adventure
before the reader of English in a prose version based directly upon the
oldest form in which they exist.

Such extravagant claims for Chrétien's art have been made in some
quarters that one feels disinclined to give them even an echo here.
The modem reader may form his own estimate of the poet's art, and that
estimate will probably not be high. Monotony, lack of proportion,
vain repetitions, insufficient motivation, wearisome subtleties, and
threatened, if not actual, indelicacy are among the most salient defects
which will arrest, and mayhap confound, the reader unfamiliar with
mediaeval literary craft. No greater service can be performed by an
editor in such a case than to prepare the reader to overlook these
common faults, and to set before him the literary significance of this
twelfth-century poet.

Chrétien de Troyes wrote in Champagne during the third quarter of the
twelfth century. Of his life we know neither the beginning nor the
end, but we know that between 1160 and 1172 he lived, perhaps as
herald-at-arms (according to Gaston Paris, based on "Lancelot" 5591-94)
at Troyes, where was the court of his patroness, the Countess Marie de
Champagne. She was the daughter of Louis VII, and of that famous Eleanor
of Aquitaine, as she is called in English histories, who, coming from
the South of France in 1137, first to Paris and later to England, may
have had some share in the introduction of those ideals of courtesy and
woman service which were soon to become the cult of European society.
The Countess Marie, possessing her royal mother's tastes and gifts, made
of her court a social experiment station, where these Provencal ideals
of a perfect society were planted afresh in congenial soil. It appears
from contemporary testimony that the authority of this celebrated feudal
dame was weighty, and widely felt. The old city of Troyes, where she
held her court, must be set down large in any map of literary history.
For it was there that Chrétien was led to write four romances which
together form the most complete expression we possess from a single
author of the ideals of French chivalry. These romances, written in
eight-syllable rhyming couplets, treat respectively of Erec and Enide,
Cligés, Yvain, and Lancelot. Another poem, "Perceval le Gallois", was
composed about 1175 for Philip, Count of Flanders, to whom Chrétien was
attached during his last years. This last poem is not included in
the present translation because of its extraordinary length of 32,000
verses, because Chrétien wrote only the first 9000 verses, and because
Mi

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