A fine collection...an excellent introduction to Chrétien's world and work. Highly recommended. CHOICE Chrétien de Troyes is arguably the creator of Arthurian romance, and it is on his work that later writers have based their interpretations. This book offers both crucial information on, and a comprehensive coverage of, all aspectsof the work of Chrétien de Troyes - the literary and historical background, patronage, his influence on other writers, manuscripts and editions of his work and, at the heart of the volume, major essays on the themes, techniques and artistic achievements in each of his compositions; the contributions, all from leading experts in Chrétien and related studies, have been commissioned especially for this volume and are designed to remain accessible to studentswhile also addressing specialists in Arthurian studies and Chrétien de Troyes. They reflect the most current critical and scholarly views on one of the greatest of medieval authors. CONTRIBUTORS: JOHN W. BALDWIN, JUNEHALL MCCASH, LAURENCE HARF-LANCNER, NORRIS J. LACY, DOUGLAS KELLY, KEITH BUSBY, PETER F. DEMBOWSKI, ROBERTA L. KRUEGER, DONALD MADDOX, SARA STURM-MADDOX, JOAN TASKER GRIMBERT, MATILDA TOMARYN BRUCKNER, TONY HUNT, RUPERT T. PICKENS, ANNIE COMBES, MICHELLE SZKILNIK, EMMANUELE BAUMGARTNER

This 1981 book provides an interpretation of the five Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes. It explores how this most enigmatic and influential of medieval romance-writers reveals his ideas about man, society and God. The texts range from Erec and Enide, through Cliges to Perceval or Le Conte du Graal.

Taking the legends surrounding King Arthur and weaving in new psychological elements of personal desire and courtly manner, Chrétien de Troyes fashioned a new form of medieval Romance. The Knight of the Cart is the first telling of the adulterous relationship between Lancelot and Arthur's Queen Guinevere, and in The Knight with the Lion Yvain neglects his bride in his quest for greater glory. Erec and Enide explores a knight's conflict between love and honour, Cligés exalts the possibility of pure love outside marriage, while the haunting The Story of the Grail chronicles the legendary quest. Rich in symbolism, these evocative tales combine closely observed detail with fantastic adventure to create a compelling world that profoundly influenced Malory, and are the basis of the Arthurian legends we know today.

Filled with romantic tales of Lancelot and early Grail legends, this exacting translation of de Troyes' verse narratives written in the 12th century features four romances that expound on the ideals of French chivalry.

"[A]n eminently readable text, done clearly and accurately . . . it gives as good an idea as a translation can of the complexity and subtlety of Chrétien's originals. . . . The text is provided by a translator who understands the spirit as well as the letter of the original and renders it with style. . . . [T]his translation should attract a wide audience of students and Arthurian enthusiasts." —Speculum "[A] significant contribution to the field of medieval studies [and] a pleasure to read." —Library Journal "These are, above all, stories of courtly love and of knights tested in their devotion to chivalric ideals (with passion and duty often at odds); but they are also thrilling wonder stories of giants, wild men, tame lions, razor-sharp bridges and visits to the Other World." —Washington Post Book World "This tastefully produced book will be the standard general translation for many years to come." —Choice This new translation brings to life for a new generation of readers the stories of King Arthur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Gawain, Perceval, Yvain, and the other "knights and ladies" of Chrétien de Troyes' famous romances.

Twelfth-century French poet Chrétien de Troyes was one of the most influential figures in Western literature, for his romantic poems on the legend of King Arthur gave rise to a tradition of storytelling that continues to this day. This important and fascinating book is a study of all of Chrétien’s work. Joseph J. Duggan begins with an introduction that sets Chrétien within the social and intellectual currents of his time. He then organizes the book in chapters that focus on major issues in Chrétien’s romances rather than on individual works, topics that range from the importance of kinship and genealogy to standards of secular moral responsibility and from Chrétien’s art of narration to his representation of knighthood. Duggan offers new perspectives on many of these themes: in a chapter on the influence of Celtic mythology, for example, he gives special attention to the ways Chrétien integrated portrayals of motivation with mythic themes and characters, and in discussing the Grail romance, he explores the parallels between Perceval’s and Gauvain’s adventures.

The renowned and illustrious tales of King Arthur, his knights and the Round Table pervade all European vernaculars, as well as the Latin tradition. Arthurian narrative material, which had originally been transmitted in oral culture, began to be inscribed regularly in the twelfth century, developing from (pseudo-)historical beginnings in the Latin chronicles of "historians" such as Geoffrey of Monmouth into masterful literary works like the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. Evidently a big hit, Arthur found himself being swiftly translated, adapted and integrated into the literary traditions of almost every European vernacular during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. This Handbook seeks to showcase the European character of Arthurian romance both past and present. By working across national philological boundaries, which in the past have tended to segregate the study of Arthurian romance according to language, as well as by exploring primary texts from different vernaculars and the Latin tradition in conjunction with recent theoretical concepts and approaches, this Handbook brings together a pioneering and more complete view of the specifically European context of Arthurian romance, and promotes the more connected study of Arthurian literature across the entirety of its European context.

Stimulating and masterly study examines the evolution of the great mass of fiction surrounding the Arthurian legend in Western literature — from Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain and the collection of Welsh tales known as The Mabinogion, to Chrétien de Troyes' Arthurian stories, the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and such English masterpieces as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Le Morte d'Arthur. Painstakingly researched and brimming with scholarly insight, this highly readable and entertaining work will be a favorite with general audiences as well as scholars and students of the Arthurian legend.

A new study of the continuations to Chrétien's Conte du Graal shows their crucial influence on the development of Arthurian literature. Chrétien de Troyes's late twelfth-century Conte du Graal has inspired writers and scholars from the moment of its composition to the present day. The challenge represented by its unfinished state was quickly taken up, and over the next fifty years the romance was supplemented by a number of continuations and prologues, which eventually came to dwarf Chrétien's text. In one of the first studies to treat the Conte du Graal and its continuations as a unified work, Thomas Hinton considers the whole corpus as a narrative cycle. Through a combination of close textual readings and manuscript analysis, the author argues that the unity of the narrative depends on a balanced tension between centripetal and centrifugal dynamics. He traces how the authors, scribes and illuminators of the cycle worked to produce coherence, even as they contended with potentially disruptive forces: multiple authorship, differences of intention, and changes in the relation between text, audience and book. Finally, he tackles the long-held orthodoxy that places the Perceval Continuations on the margins of literary history. Widening the scope of enquiry to consider the corpus's influence on thirteenth-century verse romances, this study re-situates the Conte du Graal cycle as a vital element in the evolution of Arthurian literature. Thomas Hinton isJunior Research Fellow in Modern Languages at Jesus College, Oxford.