Title: Chrétien de Troyes revisited
First published: 1995
Description: In Chretien de Troyes Revisited, author Karl D. Uitti at last places Chretien in context, offering a strong sense of the author's identity and the milieu in which he lived and wrote. Uitti's 30 years of work on the subject pay handsome dividends for the reader, as we view Chretien - likely for the first timeoutside of a vacuum. Uitti locates Chretien within the theological and philosophical setting of his time; views him as a worker-craftsman who produced stories on demand for his patron; depicts him as a clerc, that is, a learned man who took possession of the literary heritage coming down from Greece and Rome, thus becoming a successor to Virgil and Ovid; establishes a link between the "joining" of Heloise and Abelard and the numerous couples depicted in Chretien's romances; and argues persuasively that he advanced the French language to new heights through his work.
Subjects: Arthurian romances, History and criticism, Criticism and interpretation, Chrétien, de Troyes, 12th cent. -- Criticism and interpretation.
People: Chrétien de Troyes (12th cent)
LC classification: PQ1448 .U38 1995