In this extraordinarily fine translation of Cliges, the second of
five surviving Arthurian poems by twelfth-century French poet
Chretien de Troyes, Burton Raffel captures the liveliness,
innovative spirit, and subtle intentions of the original work. In
this poem, Chretien 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. Cliges 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 Chretien's great
verse romances is a fast-paced psychologically oriented narrative.
In a rational and realistic manner, Chretien 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. Cliges is filled with Chretien'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 Chretien's narrative speed and tone.
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