Produced by T. Camp. HTML version by Al Haines. 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. Whence comes this amazing modernity and complexity? From many sources:--Provencal love-lore, Oriental subtlety, and Celtic mysticism--all blended by that marvellous dexterity, style, malice, and measure which are so utterly French that English has no adequate words for them. We said "Celtic mysticism," but there is something else about Chretien which is also Celtic, though very far from being "mystic". We talk a great deal nowadays about Celtic melancholy, Celtic dreaminess, Celtic "other-worldliness"; and we forget the qualities that made Caesar's Gauls, St. Paul's Galatians, so different from the grave and steadfast Romans--that loud Gaulois that has made the Parisian the typical Frenchman. A different being, this modern Athenian, from the mystic Irish peasant we see in the poetic modern Irish drama!--and yet both are Celts.