235 ([return])
[ Note that Chrétien here deliberately avoids such a list of knights as he introduces in "Erec". (F.)]
236 ([return])
[ It must be admitted that the text, which is offered by all but one MS., is here unintelligible. The reference, if any be intended, is not clear. (F.)]
237 ([return])
[ Much has been made of this expression as intimating that Chrétien wrote "Cligés" as a sort of disavowal of the immorality of his lost "Tristan". Cf. Foerster, "Cligés" (Ed. 1910), p. xxxix f., and Myrrha Borodine, "La femme et l'amour au XXIe Seicle d'apres les poemes de Chrétien de Troyes" (Paris, 1909). G. Paris has ably defended another interpretation of the references in "Cligés" to the Tristan legend in "Journal des Savants", 1902, p. 442 f.]
238 ([return])
[ This curious moral teaching appears to be a perversion of three passages form St. Paul's Epistles: I Cor. vii. 9, I Cor. x. 32, Eph. v. 15. Cf. H. Emecke, "Chrétien von Troyes als Personlichkeit und als Dichter" (Wurzburg, 1892).]
239 ([return])
[ "This feature of a woman who, thanks to some charm, preserves her virginity with a husband whom she does not love, is found not only in widespread stories, but in several French epic poems. In only one, "Les Enfances Guillaume", does the husband, like Alis, remain ignorant of the fraud of which he is the victim, and think that he really possesses the woman.... If Chrétien alone gave to the charm of the form of a potion, it is in imitation of the love potion in "Tristan". (G. Paris in "Journal des Savants", 1902, p. 446). For many other references to the effect of herb potions, cf. A. Hertel, "Verzauberte Oerlichkeiten und Gegenstande in der altfranzosische erzahlende Dichtung", p. 41 ff. (Hanover, 1908).]