Cliges: A Romance
by
Chretien de Troyes
Trans. L. J. Gardiner.
This translation was published with no copyright notice in 1966.
"T. Camp" <campt miralink.com>
CLIGES: A ROMANCE
NOW TRANSLATED BY L. J. GARDINER, M.A.
FROM THE OLD FRENCH OF CHRETIEN DE TROYES
COOPER SQUARE PUBLISHERS, INC.
NEW YORK 1966
Published 1966 by Cooper Square Publishers, Inc.
59 Fourth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10003
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 66-23315
Printed in the United States of America
By Noble Offset Printers, Inc., New York, N. Y. 10003
INTRODUCTION
IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrote his Cliges. And yet he is wonderfully near us, whereas he is separated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansons de Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still dragging out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is as refined, as civilised, as composite as we are ourselves; his ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves, self-debate as M. Paul Bourget's heroines; while the problems of conscience and of emotion which confront them are as complex as those presented on the modern stage. Indeed, there is no break between the Breton romance and the psychological-analytical novel of our own day.