Sir Lancelot A Poem

A narrative poem about the death of Elaine, "the lily maid of Astolat".

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

The romantic poems of twelfth-century French poet Chretien de Troyes were of immense influence across Europe - widely imitated, translated, and adapted. Giving rise to a tradition of story-telling that continues to this day, the poems established the shape of the nascent Arthurian legend. In this outstanding new translation of Lancelot, Burton Raffel brings to English-language readers the fourth of Chretien's five surviving romantic Arthurian poems. This poem was the first to introduce Lancelot as an important figure in the King Arthur legend. Lancelot tells of the adulterous relationship between the knight and his mistress, Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur. Thematically this poem differs from Chretien's other romances - Lancelot and Guinevere's love is a serious crime against their king, Lancelot casts aside his knightly ideals and reputation for the sake of his beloved, and Arthur is endowed with a weaker personality. Raffel has created an original three-stress metric verse form that captures Chretien's swift-paced narrative and lively, sparkling Old French. A consummate translator, Raffel enables the modern reader and the reader who is unfamiliar with French to appreciate the beauty of Chretien's original.

In this verse translation of Chrétien de Troyes's Lancelot, Ruth Harwood Cline revives the original story of the immortal love affair between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, a tale that has spawned interpretations ranging from Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur to Lerner and Lowe's Camelot. By remaining faithful to Chrétien's highly structured form, Cline preserves the pace, the pungency of proverbial expressions, and the work's poetical devices and word play in translating this archetypal tale of courtly love from Old French into modern English. Cline's introduction--containing a description of Arthur in history and literature, a discussion of courtly love, and an account of the continuations of the story of Lancelot and Guinevere--makes Lancelot an ideal classroom text.