Arthurian Romances

ARTHURIAN ROMANCES

Regarded as the greatest of the writers of courtly romance, CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES wrote in French in the second half of the twelfth century. Very little is known about his life. He was probably a native of Eastern Champagne and most of his active career was spent at Troyes at the court of Marie de Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine. Circumstantial evidence also suggests that he spent some of his early career in England at the court of King Henry II Plantagenet. His romances are outstanding in medieval European literature for the inner meaning which he unobtrusively wove into them.

WILLIAM W. KIBLER gained an AB from the University of Notre Dame and MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. From 1969 to 2003 he taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Superior Oil-Linward Shivers Centennial Professor of Medieval Studies. He has served twice as president of the North American Branch of the Société Rencesvals, and edited its journal, Olifant, from 1986 to 1991. He is currently vice-president and president-elect of the North American Branch of the International Arthurian Society. He has published many articles on medieval French literature and is the author of An Introduction to Old French (1984). In 1994 he edited The Lancelot-Grail Cycle: Text and Transformations, and in 1995, with Grover Zinn, published Medieval France: An Encyclopedia. He has also produced editions and translations of Guillaume de Machaut’s Le Jugement du Roy de Behaigńe and Remede de Fortune (with James I. Wimsatt, 1988), Raoul de Cambrai (1996) and Huon de Bordeaux (with François Suard, 2003). He has previously published facing-line translations of Chrétien’s Lancelot (Le Chevalier de la Charette), Yvain (Le Chevalier au Lion) and (Perceval Le Conte du Graal).

CARLETON W. CARROLL earned his BA degree from Ohio State University and MA and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Wisconsin. Since 1974 he has taught at Oregon State University, where he holds the rank of Professor of French. Previous publications include editions and translations of Chrétien’s Erec et Enide and Le Chevalier au Lion, translations of two large segments of the prose Lancelot, a critical edition of Olivier de La Marche’s allegorical poem Le Chevalier deliberé, and articles on various aspects of medieval French literature. He is preparing a new critical edition of Erec et Enide.

CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES

Arthurian Romances

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
WILLIAM W. KIBLER
(Erec and Enide translated by
CARLETON W. CARROLL)

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Published in Penguin Books 1991
Reprinted with revised Bibliography 2004
26

These translations copyright © William W. Kibler, 1991, except Erec and Enide
copyright © Carleton W, Carroll 1991
Introduction and other editorial matter copyright © William W. Kibler, 1991, 2004

Erec and Enide, The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot),
The Knight with the Lion (Yvain) and The Story of the Grail (Perceval)
originally appeared in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature

The moral right of the translators has been asserted
All rights reserved

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to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
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EISBN: 9781101487808

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Note on the Translations

Select Bibliography

Erec and Enide

Cligés

The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)

The Knight with the Lion (Yvain)

The Story of the Grail (Perceval)

Appendix: The Story of the Grail Continuations

Glossary of Medieval Terms

Notes

INTRODUCTION

WRITING in the second half of the twelfth century, Chrétien de Troyes was the inventor of Arthurian literature as we know it. Drawing from material circulated by itinerant Breton minstrels and legitimized by Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudo-historical Historia Regum Britanniœ (History of the Kings of Britain, c. 1136–37), Chrétien fashioned a new form known today as courtly romance. To Geoffrey’s bellicose tales of Arthur’s conquests, Chrétien added multiple love adventures and a courtly veneer of polished manners. He was the first to speak of Queen Guinevere’s affair with Lancelot of the Lake, the first to mention Camelot, and the first to write of the adventures of the Grail – with Perceval, the mysterious procession, and the Fisher King. He may even have been the first to sing of the tragic love of Tristan and Isolde. All of these themes have become staples in the romance of King Arthur, and no treatment of the legend seems complete without some allusion to them.

Yet we know virtually nothing about this incomparable genius, the author of the five earliest Arthurian romances: Erec and Enide, Cligés, The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot), The Knight with the Lion (Yvain), and The Story of the Grail (Perceval).