Erec and Enide - Couverture souple

Chrétien De Troyes

 
9780300067712: Erec and Enide

Synopsis

Erec and Enide, the first of five surviving Arthurian romantic poems by twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes, narrates a vivid chapter from the legend of King Arthur. Chrétien's romances became the source for Arthurian tradition and influenced countless other poets in England and on the Continent. Yet his swift-moving style is difficult to capture in translation, and today's English-speaking audiences remain largely unfamiliar with the pleasures of reading his poems.

Now an experienced translator of medieval verse who is himself a poet has translated Eric and Enide in an original three-stress metric verse form that fully captures the movement, the sense, and the spirit of the Old French original. Burton Raffel's rendition preserves the subtlety and charm of a poem that is in turn serious, dramatic, bawdy, merry, and satiric.

Erec and Enide tells the story of Erec, a knight at King Arthur's court, whose retirement to domestic bliss with his beautiful new wife Enide takes him away from his chivalric duties. To regain his knightly honor, Erec sets out with Enide on a series of amazing adventures. Eric dispatches thieves and giants with prodigious strength and valor but treats his wife rather harshly for doubting his abilities. When Enide is kidnapped by a robber baron, Erec revives from near-death to perform a courageous rescue, and at length the two are reconciled.

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Biographie de l'auteur

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Little is known of his life, but he seems to have been from Troyes, or at least intimately connected with it, and between 1160 and 1172 he served at the court of his patroness Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, perhaps as herald-at-arms (as Gaston Paris speculated). His work on Arthurian subjects represents some of the best regarded of medieval literature. His use of structure, particular in Yvain, the Knight of the Lion, has been seen as a step towards the modern novel. Chrétien's writing was very popular, as evidenced by the high number of surviving copies of his romances and their many adaptations into other languages. Three of Middle High German literature's finest examples, Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival and Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein, were based on Perceval, Erec, and Yvain; the Three Welsh Romances associated with the Mabinogion, Peredur, son of Efrawg, Geraint and Enid, and Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain are derived from the same trio. Especially in the case of Peredur, however, the connection between the Welsh romances and their source is probably not direct, and has never been satisfactorily delineated. Chrétien also has the distinction of being the first writer to mention the Holy Grail (Perceval) and the love affair between Queen Guinevere and Lancelot (Lancelot), subjects of household recognition even today.

Présentation de l'éditeur

Erec and Enede was the first Arthurian romance (composed around A.D. 1170), also the first of five extant works by French court poet Chretien de Troyes. Erec and Enide, newly married and lost in erotic, conjugal bliss, are brought back to reality when gossip suggests that Erec, son of a king, prefers life at home to the existence of a fearless, heroic knight. Celtic legend, classical motifs, and ecclesiastical elements are masterfully interwoven in this tale, whose colloquial translation brings to life the clashing sounds of battle, de Troyes's multiple poetic tones and colorful expressions, and the rhyme and meter of the original. Both scholars and general readers will surely enjoy this story of the Erec’s quest for honor, glory, and the Arthurian way.

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