Yvain, the Knight of the Lion

The great thing about classics like this one is that we’ve gained this great reverence for them, maybe just by virtue of how old and enduring they are, but so often if you actually take the time to read them you find they’re quite entertaining. To people in Chrétien de Troyes’ time, the idea of studying “low entertainment” like this would’ve been absurd—and yet I’m writing an essay on this very book for my Western Classics in Translation class.

When you get past the pretence that capital-C Classics are complicated books for big-brained lit majors, there’s a lot of fun to be had. Like Yvain, in which our titular knight really just manufactures his own problems and then laments them. He kills a giant, adopts a lion, and show more fights a bunch of people but for seemingly no other reason than that it’s something to do. And there’s this side plot about Love and the pain of losing it and whatever but the only reason Yvain’s lover broke up with him is because he couldn’t bring himself to stop jousting all the goddamn time. It’s fun and it’s dumb and I love that I was so apprehensive about reading a twelfth century French chivalric romance only for it to turn out to be little more than a rollicking bedtime story. show less

I found Yvain in my public library when I was in middle school, and fell in love with it. The edition I read then, and the one I still favor, was translated by Ruth Harwood Cline, whose translations still amuse and amaze me. First, the translation is in rhymed couplets, which I consider a great (if occasionally annoying) feat. I find it easy to imagine this translation recited orally. The story itself is my favorite of Cretien de Troyes' romances, and remains one of my favorite medieval romances. It's got some cool courtly love themes, adventure, magic, madness, gory bits. What more could you want, really?

I don't want to give too much away (although the plot is so rich and the characters so varied that I could tell you everything and it would still be worth reading), but needless to say there is a lot of knightly adventure, chivalrous quests, and moral lessons in this romance. It is amazing to read something written over 800 years ago that still seems so fresh and with characters (including female characters) who have flaws and motivations that don't seem that different from people today.

The translator purposefully discards the original meter and rhyme of the Old French version, which would be nearly impossible to recreate in English, at least in any readable way, and instead gives us a metered but unrhymed modern English translation show more that (as far as I know) retains the tone and metaphors of the original. This edition also includes a well-written afterward by Joseph J. Duggan that puts the book into its cultural context, gives biographical information on Chrétien de Troyes, and discusses his many known and probable inspirations and sources for the romance.

[full review here: http://spacebeer.blogspot.com/2009/04/yvain-knight-of-lion-ca-1177.html ] show less

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EL CABALLERO DEL LEON

El Caballero del León es, sin duda, una
de las obras más perfectas de Chrétien
de Troyes. Su autor (ca. 1135-1190),
quizá el mejor y más representativo de
los escritores de una época de auge y
vitalidad creativa, nos adentra con un
encanto extraordinario en la atmósfera
mágica y fascinante de las aventuras
de los caballeros del rey Arturo.

Su argumento -una historia de amor
al gusto de la civilización
cortés - reinterpreta, con gran habilidad
narrativa, esquemas míticos
provenientes de los relatos célticos
difundidos oralmente y, a su vez,
adaptados al ambiente y la moral
caballeresca.

Así, el caballero Yvain,
símbolo de la caballería cristiana,
ayudado por un león, realizará, a través
de todas las pruebas show more iniciáticas que
atraviesa, una intima alianza con la
Dama de la Fuente, que le llevará a la
Fuente más sagrada y secreta, donde
manan perennemente todos los poderes
de la vida.

Chrétien de Troyes, creador
indiscutible de la novela europea, es
también, en cierto sentido, como dijo
una vez Jean Frappier, «el Ovidio
de una mitología en desintegración», show less

Influido seguramente por la traducción libre al francés de la fabulosa "Historia de los reyes de Britania" de Godofredo de Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes (c. 1135-1190) advirtió las grandes posibilidades que ofrecía el mundo del rey Arturo para la fabulación de aventuras y la creación de personajes caballerescos. El resultado es que sus narraciones confirieron dignidad literaria a las versiones de las leyendas celtas que divulgaban oralmente galeses y bretones en las cortes francesas. Compuesto entre 1170 y 1181, paralelamente a "El caballero de la Carreta", "El caballero del León" narra las aventuras de Yvain, hijo de Urien, incorporando así el personaje a la extensa galería de protagonistas de las obras en prosa y en verso que show more forman la "materia de Bretaña". El elemento maravilloso procedente de las leyendas celtas que configura algunas de las aventuras principales (como la Aventura de la Fuente) se entrelaza con temas de la antigüedad clásica (como el del león agradecido) en una serie de episodios concatenados con una destreza que ha convertido a Chretien de Troyes en precursor de la novela moderna. show less