Arthurian Romances
€14,00
Before the legends of King Arthur became the familiar tapestry of kings, quests and enchanted objects we know today, Chrétien de Troyes gave them some of their most enduring forms. Writing in the late twelfth century, he transformed Arthur’s court into a world of restless knights, formidable women and perilous adventures, where the demands of honour are continually tested by the claims of love. This Everyman’s Library edition, translated by D. D. R. Owen, brings together five romances: Erec and Enide, Cligés, Lancelot, Yvain and the unfinished Perceval, the story that helped establish the Holy Grail as a central object of Arthurian legend.
Beneath their pageantry and supernatural marvels, these tales are subtle explorations of character, desire and the uneasy balance between private devotion and public duty. A knight may win renown in battle yet fail in love; a quest may reveal as much about the traveller’s inner life as the world beyond the castle walls. Chrétien’s influence reaches through the later romances of medieval Europe and into Malory, Tennyson and the modern imagination of Arthurian Britain. These are not merely early versions of familiar legends, but the brilliant beginnings of a literary tradition.
From the book
“Come, let me know whether thou art a creature of good or not.' And he replied: `I am a man.”
— Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion
On Arthurian Romances
"A significant moral statement about human love and redemption in a private, irrational world of magic symbols and themes beyond social convention...the symbolic representation of insanity and irrationality [is] brilliantly portrayed in this masterpiece."
— Marc M. Pelen.