La chatelaine de Vergy (Folio (Gallimard))

This is a bilingual edition - medieval and modern French on facing pages - of a delightful tale in verse of the doomed love of a knight and lady for each other. Much of the poem consists of dialogue or monologue, and in the original it flows naturally, using straightforward language, with hardly any of the filler words often used in Middle English romances to facilitate a rhyme. The metre is the same as that in the Lais of Marie de France and the works of Chrétien de Troyes - iambic octosyllabic lines with four stresses. The narration is spare - there are a few rhetorical flourishes, but not many; there are no descriptions of the beauty of the lady or the alpha male handsomeness and courage of the knight; and the whole story is told in a mere 958 lines and beautifully paced.The tale contains themes often found elsewhere: the lover who swears his or her partner to secrecy; the high-up woman who seeks to revenge herself on the man who has rejected her advances by telling her husband he attempted to force himself on her (compare Potiphar’s wife in Genesis); the contrast and conflict between the idyllic world of true love (represented in this case by a paradisal orchard) and the world of duty and responsibility; situations where, in honouring an obligation to one person, one is forced to betray another.An added element is an implied critique of the values of courtly love. The spurned woman is a Duchess who invokes the doctrine of courtly love that love for a woman of greater rank is ennobling, but whose own passions twist her into doing ill and lying to, and manipulating, her husband. This is contrasted with the sincerity of the love of the knight and the lady, who are social equals, for each other. But the contrast is not quite as straightforward as might at first appear.To a modern reader, there are hints of sexual deviance. To prove that he has not betrayed the Duke, the knight takes him to watch a night of assignation he has with his beloved, and tells the Duke this will give him, the knight, great pleasure, and the way the Duke spends a whole night concealed, watching and listening to the lovers, smacks of voyeurism.There are also hints that the love of the knight and lady for each other might be thought rather excessive. It goes beyond the conventions of courtly behaviour. At the end, the lady says she valued their love more than an eternity in heaven, and the knight commits the mortal sin of suicide. One is probably meant to be reminded of the straightlaced attitude often found in medieval religion that all passionate love is inherently sinful. But the way the story is told suggests that the anonymous author of the poem questions those conventional attitudes and has full sympathy with the lovers.The work was popular in its time, and versions of it appeared subsequently in several countries. This book includes two of them, one of them from Heptamérom of Marguerite de Navarre. I can see why poem was so liked: it is rich and enjoyable.

I loved this book - the story itself in parallel text - Middle Ages French, and a modern French translation. Not having studied the literature of this period, I enjoyed the commentaries, placing it in its time as much as the narrative, - full of charming details like the little dog, and also full of treachery. A wonderful portrait of the Duke's wife as well as of the lover - le chevalier.And the 15thC miniature on the cover perfectly conveys the atmosphere.

Great quality, great book!

Great text and came in perfect condition.

Son ordered it for uni. Arrived in perfect condition and just what he wanted.