Cligès by Chrétien de Troyes

Cligès Reviews

• 
  Yani

  Relectura agosto 2016
  
  Es un libro muy amable en cuanto a dificultad, así que lamento no haberlo leído antes de otros textos medievales pesados que leí anteriormente. Me gustaron las referencias directas a Tristán e Isolda y que se inscriba dentro del mundo del rey Arturo. La historia de amor es similar a la de los primeros (Cligès es sobrino del hombre que se casa con su enamorada, Fenice) y el giro del final es interesantísimo, al punto que guarda referencias con una obra de teatro muy famosa de William Shakespeare (reservo el nombre).
  
  No me encantó tanto como quería porque tiene un par de reflexiones sobre el Amor (así, con mayúscula) que se vuelven repetitivas, ya que antes del nacimiento de Cligès cuenta la historia de sus padres Alejandro y Soredamor. Otra cosa que influyó en la calificación es lo hilarante o lo imposibles que llegan a ser algunas escenas, por más que la magia sea un elemento sobrenatural que está muy presente en el libro.
• 
  Lada

  Deuxieme roman de Chretien de Troyes , ecrit a peu pres en 1176, en 6702 en vers octosyllabes, il reelabore l'amour courtois, sa naissance, et ses sequelles. Le roman, apres le prologue ou Chretien, met en scene son erudition en mentionnant ce qu'il connait et a racontetout en nous faisant part d'un livre trouve dans la bibliotheque du monseigneur Saint-Pierre a Beauvais. Chretien montre ici cette obsession de gens lettres au sujet de la memoire et de faire perdurer quelque chose qui est en train de devenir desuet et de mourir sans laisser de trace.
  Le romam est a la fois orienta et byzantin , grec, breton ou Chretien lit imaginativement le monde grec a la matiere arthurienne et bretonne
  Le roman suit les deux histoires, celle du pere de Cliges, Alexanre,, aine du roi de Grece et la soeur de Gauvain, soeur d'amour Soredamour, et leurs regards et les yeux rencontres et emprisonnes pour de bon dans leur ame ou ils trouvent leur siege. C'est Amour et l'amour vrai qui est le veritable heros dans ce roman comme aussi dans l' oeuvre precedant, Erec et Enide. Dans tous les deux Chretien essaie de concilier l'amour avec le mariage, et prouver son existence comme possible.
  C'est Amour comme magie, amour qui aide a faire vaincre des obstacles qui cree le merveilleux en un autre espace temps, celui de reve amoureux - ce qui traduit bien la rime songe / mensonge lui donnant son sens .
  La deuxieme histoire, est celle de Cliges et Phenice au nom magique et renaissant en joie et en douleur vers une nouvelle vie, sa tante, la femme de son oncle paternel Alis. Et Amour vainc par un recit magique, incantatoire, puisant sa force dans l'art de bien dire une histoire valeureuse et amoureuse et de donner a son oeuvre puisant la matiere de l'ailleurs, une force et un sceau bien personnels.
  le roman met en avant des le titre une illusion qui s'elabore. il est question des yeux et du coeur qui se sont soumis a l' Amour. L'amour fait voir au souffrant ou a l'amoureux ce qu'il veut ou croit voir - une vision esquivee, voir en biais.
  extrait ou Alis, oncle paternel de cliges touche par le philtre enivre par lui que la nourrice de Fenice lui a fait boire:
  
  il croit la tenir, mais il n'a rien d'elle,
  un pur neant fait son bonheur,
  il enlace du neant, embrasse du neant,
  c'est du neant qu'il voit, auquel il parle,
  du neant avec lequel il se debat!
  
• 
  Crito

  I didn't expect this to be as fun, lucid, and clever as it is. If the stereotype of Arthurian romance is to be cliche, stiff, meandering, and naive this is really something of a counterexample. For starters, it has a frame narrative of being a found document much in the way of Don Quixote, and that affords Chrétien the mythical framework to really get as ridiculous as possible with this. We're talking knights that run headlong into enemy fortresses lopping off heads and limbs in single swipes, but then returning to camp and having long internal battles over the fact that he can't so much as look his qt crush in the eyes. Perhaps one thing which makes this feel so fresh is how little anglicized it is, being written by a Frenchman and following Greek characters which tilts this closer to classical myth than Arthurian legend. The same folks we all know show up but they play bit parts. But perhaps what makes this so interesting is how much focus Chrétien puts on their interior lives. The main concept of this romance is the reciprocity of love, that is love freely volunteered between equal parties, which is amazing considering how the cliche of romances is the damsel to be taken from the captors. Chrétien is cartoony but only superficially so, and these characters come out far more well rounded than they have any right to be. He wants you to think this is a goofy ridiculous myth yet at the same time makes digs at Tristian and Isolde for being idiots. I'll admit that Chrétien isn't quite subtle in his ironies, but that's maybe what makes him so fun. For example,
  Remember Saint Paul's advice,
  And follow it: he teaches that those
  Who can't remain chaste should always
  Carefully arrange their affairs
  So no one knows what they're doing.
  Cligès reads pretty quickly and part of it is good pacing on the part of Chrétien, but I'd give a lot of credit to Raffel's verse translation. There are prose versions floating around but I can't imagine them as fast and snappy as this reads. It doesn't feel nine centuries old, which is pretty amazing, though again a lot of the credit for this goes to the poet. Overall I'm impressed and somewhat ashamed, for myself and everyone else, that this is a work that flies under the radar. It deserves more than that. Strong Recommendation.
• 
  Meghan

  This is Chrétien's fix-it fic for the story of Tristan and Iseut, a story he loathes because he is so squicked by adultery. Cligès, like Tristan, falls in love with his uncle's intended (and doesn't even have the excuse of a love potion to proffer for it). However, unlike the hapless King Mark, Cligès's uncle Alis is actually the one wronging his nephew by taking a bride, which he promised his dead, usurped older brother that he would never do so that his throne would pass to Cligès, who can therefore argue that his uncle started it.
  
  Furthermore, rather than falling victim to a love potion, Cligès's resourceful sweetheart Fenice gets her nurse to brew up a potion of her own, which causes Alis to fall asleep every night in their marital bed and dry-hump his mattress whilst dreaming of his wife, meaning that their marriage is never actually consummated, meaning that it doesn't actually count, so there! I ... do not believe that it would work that way, but I haven't actually reviewed any relevant medieval case law, so I'll let Chrétian have his technical non-adultery.
  
  Fenice, wanting to escape her sham marriage so she can finally get it on with Cligès, fakes her own death with the same stuff Juliet used. Unfortunately, she is intercepted on her way to her tomb by a lot of fancy Italian doctors, who take her pulse and notice that she is still, although unresponsive to their questioning. Finding this state of affairs unsatisfactory, said doctors proceed to whip her bloody, pour molten lead into her hands, and are finally preparing to grill her alive, apparently on the principle that if she isn't going to act like she's alive, she shouldn't be permitted to remain so any longer. At the crucial moment, however, a mob of indignant ladies intervene and deservedly defenestrate the doctors for having such terrible bedside manners.
  
  Understandably, Fenice's convalescence from this ordeal takes time. She and Cligès live happily together for over a year in the secret tower that Cligès commissioned from the same serf who built the trick crypt for Fenice. It has a fancy garden and everything and they would apparently stay there happily forever if one of Alis's men didn't climb into the tower garden to retrieve a mislaid hawk and surprise them in flagrante. This man is so credulous he is actually prepared to believe that the woman that Cligès is getting it on with just happens to look exactly like the late lamented empress, but Cligès gives it all away by saying Oh noes, now I have to kill this guy to protect our secret, so then he does have to kill that guy to protect their secret. Except, in spite of pwning all of King Arthur's knights four days running in different colored suits of armor earlier, he only manages to lop off this poor guy's leg, so he drags himself back to Alis to break the bad news to him.
  
  Cligès gets Arthur to send him an army to fight his uncle, but conveniently by the time he gets back, Alis has died of grief, so he can get married and assume his throne without any casualties besides Missing Leg Guy. And the moral of the story is: you can still live happily ever after if you weasel out of your technical adultery.
• 
  Anna Jo

  Book 35 Cliges by Chretien de Troyes
  no new update or authors
  Rating 3/5
  Summary: This is the story of Alexander the Great and his grandson. After Alexander dies Cliges is suppose to inherit all of the empire. Instead, his uncle keeps it to himself and takes a wife (after he promises not to). Cliges and Fenice ( the uncles wife) end up falling in love. They devise a plan in order to be together for all time. And it works.
  What I thought of it: This one was kind of hard to get into. I hate the long Monologue. I mean who the hell needs to talk for 5 pages. And plus, they would repeat and be about the same damn things. When Fenice suggested her plan the book got interesting. Its a little like R and J. She decides to fake her death by drinking a sleeping potion. The emperor believes it and has a man build her a coffin. The whole time he is helping them escape. Plus the ending just infuriates me. Every man is now worried that his empress is going to pull a stunt that Fenice did. They have to know Thessla and where to find potion in order to do that. And keeping their wives prisionor is terrible! Shame shame shame
• 
  Maggie

  Half way through and you're still wondering why it's called Cliges. Then he's born. Fast, easy, much like the way the characters fall in love.
• 
  Valentine

  2,5/5
  
  TW : Violence
  It was so boring, damn. Only the last 50 pages had actions, but the rest was boring. I felt like I read twice the same story in this book, as we first follow Alexandre and then his son. And uh, really, it had nothing new compared to other Middle Ages books, in my opinion. For reals.
• 
  Justyrofoam

  Superbe traduction! J’ai lu plusieurs œuvres de Chrétien de Troyes dans la collection Lettres gothiques de Livre de poche et selon moi il s’agit de la meilleure de celle que j’ai lue jusqu’à maintenant.
• 
  Aylu

  Hacia el final, con todo el plan que traman los amantes, se pone mejor. El resto me aburrió. De los roman artúricos que leí es el que menos me gustó (quizás, por el rechazo de Chrétien hacia Tristán e Iseo...)
• 
  Walter

  Wonderful!
• 
  Maddie

  2 1/2 stars! First book of the school finished!
• 
  Andene

  3.5
• 
  yoghurt

  bonus points for avoiding incest
• 
  Avis

  I was for more interested in Alexander and Soredamors thank Cliges and Fenice. This barely counts as an Arthurian story. Too
• 
  Frederick

  So, far I've read three of Chretien de Troyes five medieval romances. This was interesting although looking back at history it resembles reality as little as a modern historical movie resembles reality. Still, as Arthurian romances go its a pretty good read. Hope to never meet someone like Cliges unless we're on the same side.
• 
  Céline FrenchAlps

  "Un amour sans crainte et sans peur est un feu ardent mais sans chaleur, un jour sans soleil, de la cire sans miel, un été sans fleur, un hiver sans gel, un ciel sans lune, un livre sans lettres".
  Une jolie histoire qui mêle Tristan et Iseut, ou encore Roméo et Juliette, sauf que ça finit bien !
• 
  Arin

  This one was interesting for its battle descriptions and higher level of violence. It was a bit tedious for its numerous treaties on love. Holy hell so many long “my heart is not with me I will die” speeches.
• 
  Ailish

  To be honest, it just kept being overshadowed by other things, so back it went to the library.
• 
  Tinquerbelle

  Troyes, Chrétien de
  Arthurian Romances
  
  In compilation only.
• 
  Daniel Wright

  
  Arthurian Romances
• 
  Adelina Vladislav

  Better than Tristan & Isolde!