{"product_id":"2940015506099","title":"FOUR ARTHURIAN ROMANCES","description":"INTRODUCTION\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChretien De Troyes has had the peculiar fortune of becoming the best\u003cbr\u003eknown of the old French poets to students of mediaeval literature, and\u003cbr\u003eof remaining practically unknown to any one else. The acquaintance of\u003cbr\u003estudents with the work of Chretien has been made possible in academic\u003cbr\u003ecircles by the admirable critical editions of his romances undertaken\u003cbr\u003eand carried to completion during the past thirty years by Professor\u003cbr\u003eWendelin Foerster of Bonn. At the same time the want of public\u003cbr\u003efamiliarity with Chretien's work is due to the almost complete lack of\u003cbr\u003etranslations of his romances into the modern tongues. The man who, so\u003cbr\u003efar as we know, first recounted the romantic adventures of Arthur's\u003cbr\u003eknights, Gawain. Yvain, Erec, Lancelot, and Perceval, has been\u003cbr\u003eforgotten; whereas posterity has been kinder to his debtors, Wolfram\u003cbr\u003eyon Eschenbach, Malory, Lord Tennyson, and Richard Wagner. The present\u003cbr\u003evolume has grown out of the desire to place these romances of adventure\u003cbr\u003ebefore the reader of English in a prose version based directly upon the\u003cbr\u003eoldest form in which they exist.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSuch extravagant claims for Chretien's art have been made in some\u003cbr\u003equarters that one feels disinclined to give them even an echo here.\u003cbr\u003eThe modem reader may form his own estimate of the poet's art, and that\u003cbr\u003eestimate will probably not be high. Monotony, lack of proportion,\u003cbr\u003evain repetitions, insufficient motivation, wearisome subtleties, and\u003cbr\u003ethreatened, if not actual, indelicacy are among the most salient defects\u003cbr\u003ewhich will arrest, and mayhap confound, the reader unfamiliar with\u003cbr\u003emediaeval literary craft. No greater service can be performed by an\u003cbr\u003eeditor in such a case than to prepare the reader to overlook these\u003cbr\u003ecommon faults, and to set before him the literary significance of this\u003cbr\u003etwelfth-century poet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChretien de Troyes wrote in Champagne during the third quarter of the\u003cbr\u003etwelfth century. Of his life we know neither the beginning nor the\u003cbr\u003eend, but we know that between 1160 and 1172 he lived, perhaps as\u003cbr\u003eherald-at-arms (according to Gaston Paris, based on \"Lancelot\" 5591-94)\u003cbr\u003eat Troyes, where was the court of his patroness, the Countess Marie de\u003cbr\u003eChampagne. She was the daughter of Louis VII, and of that famous Eleanor\u003cbr\u003eof Aquitaine, as she is called in English histories, who, coming from\u003cbr\u003ethe South of France in 1137, first to Paris and later to England, may\u003cbr\u003ehave had some share in the introduction of those ideals of courtesy and\u003cbr\u003ewoman service which were soon to become the cult of European society.\u003cbr\u003eThe Countess Marie, possessing her royal mother's tastes and gifts, made\u003cbr\u003eof her court a social experiment station, where these Provencal ideals\u003cbr\u003eof a perfect society were planted afresh in congenial soil. It appears\u003cbr\u003efrom contemporary testimony that the authority of this celebrated feudal\u003cbr\u003edame was weighty, and widely felt. The old city of Troyes, where she\u003cbr\u003eheld her court, must be set down large in any map of literary history.\u003cbr\u003eFor it was there that Chretien was led to write four romances which\u003cbr\u003etogether form the most complete expression we possess from a single\u003cbr\u003eauthor of the ideals of French chivalry. These romances, written in\u003cbr\u003eeight-syllable rhyming couplets, treat respectively of Erec and Enide,\u003cbr\u003eCliges, Yvain, and Lancelot. Another poem, \"Perceval le Gallois\", was\u003cbr\u003ecomposed about 1175 for Philip, Count of Flanders, to whom Chretien was\u003cbr\u003eattached during his last years. This last poem is not included in\u003cbr\u003ethe present translation because of its extraordinary length of 32,000\u003cbr\u003everses, because Chretien wrote only the first 9000 verses, and because\u003cbr\u003eMiss Jessie L. Weston has given us an English version of Wolfram's\u003cbr\u003ewell-known \"Parzival\", which tells substantially the same story, though\u003cbr\u003ein a different spirit. To have included this poem, of which he wrote\u003cbr\u003eless than one-third, in the works of Chretien would have been unjust to\u003cbr\u003ehim. It is true the romance of \"Lancelot\" was not completed by Chretien,\u003cbr\u003ewe are told, but the poem is his in such large part that one would be\u003cbr\u003eover-scrupulous not to call it his. The other three poems mentioned are\u003cbr\u003ehis entire. In addition, there are quite generally assigned to the poet\u003cbr\u003etwo insignificant lyrics, the pious romance of \"Guillaume d'Angleterre\",\u003cbr\u003eand the elaboration of an episode from Ovid's \"Metamorphoses\" (vi.,\u003cbr\u003e426-674) called \"Philomena\" by its recent editor (C. de Boer, Paris,\u003cbr\u003e1909). All these are extant and accessible. But since \"Guillaume\u003cbr\u003ed'Angleterre\" and \"Philomena\" are not universally attributed to\u003cbr\u003eChretien, and since they have nothing to do with the Arthurian material,\u003cbr\u003eit seems reasonable to limit the present enterprise to \"Erec and Enide\",\u003cbr\u003e\"Cliges\", \"Yvain\", and \"Lancelot\".","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47147969347824,"sku":"2940015506099","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940015506099","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}