Magic in Medieval Romance: From Chrétien de Troyes to Geoffrey Chaucer. Michelle Sweeney

Speculum ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 77 (3) ◽  
pp. 998-999
Author(s):  
Ardis Butterfield
1970 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 235-258
Author(s):  
María Itzel López Martínez

Resumen: Las miniaturas en los manuscritos ilustrados de Chrétien de Troyes se valen de elementos pictóricos como los colores, los gestos o la posición y el tamaño de los objetos, así como de figuras y símbolos que aluden a lo sobrenatural, lo maravilloso o lo extraordinario, para representar los distintos sentidos de la aventura en los romans artúricos del autor. El artículo se propone mostrar cómo se lleva a cabo ese traslado a imágenes, mediante el análisis de una selección de miniaturas que aluden a la aventura como prueba, la aventura como evento que altera el curso natural de la existencia y la aventura como diálogo con el mundo, en el cual se descubre e interpreta el destino.Palabras clave: Chrétien de Troyes, roman artúrico, roman medieval, roman courtois, héroe artúrico, aventura, iconografía medieval, representación, manuscrito ilustrado, miniaturas.«Representations of Adventure in the Illuminated Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes»Abstract: The miniatures in the illustrated manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes make use of pictorial elements such as colours, gestures, positions and sizes of objects, as well as symbols and figures related to the supernatural, the marvellous and the extraordinary, to represent the different meanings of adventure that the author develops through his romances. The paper presents the analysis of a selection of miniatures that refer to the notions of adventure as test or challenge, adventure as an event that changes the normal course of life and adventure as a dialogue with the world, through which one may discover and interpret fate. Such analysis will show the process by which those ideas are translated into images.Keywords: Chrétien de Troyes, arthurian romance, medieval romance, roman courtois, arthurian hero, adventure, medieval iconography, representations, illustrated manuscripts, miniatures.


PMLA ◽  
1941 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. S. P. Tatlock

The silhouette of the Troilus, the kinds of poem behind it that it approximates, are essential and not difficult to perceive. Mr. Young, in the most important recent article on the subject, and in a delicate and masterful style, has shown its pervasive elements from the romances. Chaucer hardly set out deliberately to write a poem in the line of Chrétien de Troyes or Floris or what not, but the usages and assumptions of such poems, the commonest kind of serious secular narrative he knew, he adopted as a matter of course. There is vast variety in medieval romance, and the word itself (meaning at first merely a poem in French) is vague, to say nothing of the rarefied air which we reach when we try to grasp the romantic in the abstract. Medieval romance and the romantic in the abstract are not the same, though historically and essentially allied. I turn to the second. One of the essentials of the romantic, the satisfying a taste for the strange, Chaucer provided plentifully for his own day in the intentional ancient coloring, which affected his readers (and not us at all) just as the inevitable and unconscious medieval coloring affects us. He here aimed however no less at satisfying his own informed awareness that the remote past was very unlike his own present than at creating a romantic impression. The emotionalism which belongs to romance also in good sooth is plentiful. What Mr. Young is specially combating is the summary labelling the poem as a psychological novel, a phrase now almost a cliché, taken too literally, though no doubt meant by its first user as a mere simplification to assure the momentum of a fresh idea. The word novel is onesided, even misleading. The hazy word psychological implies lifelike portraiture of complex people with internal conflicts, which allows us with probability to descry undercurrents and motives. This is true of the Troilus. The facts are, as most critics will admit, that the poem is an intricate blending of romance on every side with delicate and perceptive truth to humanity (though emphatically not a mere “page out of the book of modern every-day life”); that the two are not contradictory, though more intense and more commingled here than in almost any other English narrative one can think of; that though it is stimulating to guess briefly, it is impossible to decide how much would fall into each category for Chaucer and his readers. Emphatically he no more medievalizes than he humanizes his chief source; he complicates and intensifies it.


1979 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 943-955 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce A. Rosenberg ◽  
D. Laurent ◽  
R. J. Cormier

La littérature médiévale en langue vulgaire est plus largement imprégnée d'éléments folkloriques que celle de n'importe quelle autre période. Les oeuvres savantes — écrits philosophiques, théologiques ou autres — étaient toujours en latin (les sermons, toutefois, étaient émaillés de proverbes, de récits facétieux ou de légendes populaires). Les récits en langue vulgaire, eux, ont souvent pour cadre le monde merveilleux du conte. Même les romans courtois, tels ceux de Chrétien de Troyes, ou les lais de Marie de France, les Nouvelles de Boccace et les Contes de Canterbury de Chaucer sont étonnamment proches des contes populaires dont ils dérivent ou qui, à l'inverse, en dérivent. Magie, croyances et savoir populaires sont partout. Théoriquement, donc, le médiéviste devrait connaître le folklore au moins aussi bien que le latin, mais, bien souvent, tel n'est pas le cas. Joseph Bédier tournait en dérision, à cause sans doute de leurs excès, ses collègues (les « folkloristes ») qui étudiaient les origines du conte populaire. Mais, ce faisant, il a retardé de plusieurs décennies le développement des études de folklore en France.


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