Cliges (Revised)
21,000+ Reviews
Bookshop.org has the highest-rated customer service of any bookstore in the world
Description
In this extraordinarily fine translation of Cligès, the second of five surviving Arthurian poems by twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, Burton Raffel captures the liveliness, innovative spirit, and subtle intentions of the original work. In this poem, Chrétien creates his most artful plot and paints the most starkly medieval portraits of any of his romances. The world he describes has few of the safeguards and protections of civilization: battles are brutal and merciless, love is anguished and desperate. Cligès tells the story of the unhappy Fenice, trapped in a marriage of constraint to the emperor of Constantinople. Fenice feigns death, then awakens to a new, happy life with her lover. Enormously popular in their own time, each of Chrétien's great verse romances is a fast-paced psychologically oriented narrative. In a rational and realistic manner, Chrétien probes the inner workings of his characters and the world they live in, evoking the people, their customs, and their values in clear, emotionally charged verse. Cligès is filled with Chrétien's barbs and bawdiness, his humor and his pleasure, his affection and his contempt. It is the unmistakable work of a brilliantly individualistic poet, brought to modern English readers by Raffel's poetic translation in a metric form invented specifically to reflect Chrétien's narrative speed and tone.
Product Details
Price
$40.80
Publisher
Yale University Press
Publish Date
July 21, 1997
Pages
248
Dimensions
5.49 X 8.41 X 0.65 inches | 0.64 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9780300070217
Earn by promoting books
Earn money by sharing your favorite books through our Affiliate program.
Become an affiliate
About the Author
Chrétien de Troyes was a French author and soldier who lived from 1160 to 1191. He was famous for writing about Arthurian characters like Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval, and the Holy Grail. Some of the most famous works of medieval writing are Chrétien's chivalric romances, such as Erec and Enide, Lancelot, Perceval and Yvain, and others. People see his use of framework, especially in Yvain, as a step toward the modern novel. We don't know much about his life, but he seems to have been from Troyes or very close to it. Gaston Paris thought he might have been a herald-at-arms at the court of his patroness Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, from 1160 to 1172. Marie was the daughter of King Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine and married Count Henry I of Champagne in 1164. He then worked for Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders, at his court. According to Urban T. Holmes III, Chrétien's name, which means "Christian from Troyes" in English, could be the stage name of a Jewish person who converted to Christianity and was also known as Crestien li Gois.
