Table Of ContentGallica
Volume 19
THINKING THROUGH
CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES
This co-written book challenges assumptions about Chrétien as the
author of a canon of works. In lively exchanges, its five authors reas-
sess the relationship between lyric and romance, between individu-
ality and social conditions, and between psychology and medieval
philosophy. The idea of “logical time” is used to open up such topics
as adventure, memory, imagination, and textual variation. Recent
research on Troyes and on the political agency of women leads to
the reappraisal of subjectivity and gender. Throughout, the medieval
texts associated with the name of Chrétien are privileged as sites
where thought emerges; the implications of this thought are histori-
cized and further conceptualized with the help of theoretical thinkers,
including Agamben, Lacan and Lyotard. This is a multi-stranded
work whose dialogic texture interacts playfully with its decentered
and decentering account of the Chrétien corpus.
Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie greene, Sarah kay, Sharon kinoShita
and Peggy Mccracken are professors at UCLA, Harvard, Princeton,
UCSC and the University of Michigan respectively.
Gallica
ISSN 1749–091X
General Editor: Sarah Kay
Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval French
studies. Literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to
works written in English, although publication in French is not excluded.
Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the
publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and
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Professor Sarah Kay, Department of French and Italian, Princeton University, 303
East Pyne, Princeton, NJ 08544, USA
Caroline Palmer, Editorial Director, Boydell & Brewer Ltd., PO Box 9, Wood-
bridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
Previously published titles in this series are listed at the end of this volume.
THINKING THROUGH
CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES
ZRINKA STAHULJAK, VIRGINIE GREENE,
SARAH KAY, SHARON KINOSHITA
and PEGGY MCCRACKEN
D. S. BREWER
© Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita
and Peggy McCracken 2011
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
The right of Zrinka Stahuljak, Virginie Greene, Sarah Kay, Sharon Kinoshita
and Peggy McCracken to be identified as the authors of this work has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published 2011
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBN 978–1–84384–254–5
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
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Contents
Preface vii
Introduction 1
1 the “Changeful Pen”: Paradox, Logical time, and Poetic 15
spectrality in the Poems Attributed to Chrétien de troyes
2 Imagination 41
3 Adventures in Wonderland: Between experience and Knowledge 75
4 Feudal Agency and Female subjectivity 111
5 Forgetting to Conclude 139
epilogue 163
Appendix I: sigla of the Principal Manuscripts of the Chrétien 167
Romances
Appendix II: Lyric texts, textual notes and translations 169
Appendix III: Passages from Cligés for Comparison with Lyric texts 176
Appendix IV: Variants to the “Cart scene” in Le Chevalier de la 181
Charrete
Bibliography 183
Index 195
PREFACE
Early on, we took to calling ourselves “Chrétien Girls.” This senhal or nom de
plume accompanied us throughout our collaboration, creating a disposable,
collective, authorial persona that made it possible to agree on the meanings,
effects and affects of a collaboration. This collaboration, however, could not
have been accomplished without generous funding from various institutions.
The Chrétien Girls would like to thank the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced
Study for supporting an Exploratory Seminar, our first workshop meeting
held in May 2007, and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance
Studies whose CMRS Ahmanson Conference grant made possible our second
workshop held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in January 2008.
Lastly, we thank the Department of French and Italian at Princeton Univer-
sity and the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard
University for financial assistance with the publication of this volume.
Note on Editions and Translations
Citations of Erec et Enide are from the edition by Jean-Marie Fritz (1992);
Le Chevalier de la Charrette is cited from Charles Méla’s edition (1992);
and for Le Chevalier au lion, we used David Hult’s edition (1994); all three
are republished with occasional corrections in Chrétien de Troyes, Romans,
suivis des chansons, avec, en appendice, Philomena (Paris: Livre de Poche,
1994). Cligés and Le Conte du graal are cited from the critical editions by,
respectively, Stuart Gregory and Claude Luttrell (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer,
1993) and Keith Busby (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993). For Guil-
laume d’Angleterre we have used Anthony Holden’s edition (Geneva: Droz,
1988). Original translations of the lyrics attributed to Chrétien de Troyes are
available in Appendix II. All in-text translations are our own, unless other-
wise noted. The reader will notice slight divergences from chapter to chapter
in translations of some of the same passages, occasioned by the changing
context of each chapter.
December 2009
