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Upcoming works

Upcoming Works


Hello everyone, I hope you all enjoyed your excerpt of Wace's Roman de Brut.
Chretien de Troyes
  If you purchased the Everyman "The Life of King Arthur,"  I recommend you hang on to it.  The second section by Lawman covers the same story but done much later in English with even more embellishments and we will be getting to it soon enough.  In the meantime we will be taking a break from the Brut tradition and exploring the beginnings of the French romance tradition as well as a small Welsh work described below.

As I frequently like to do, we will be covering a small work before tackling a much larger work.  In this case we will be covering a short but very unusual Welsh work called the Dream of Rhonabwy from around 1159 - 1200. It's only about 12 pages long, so it should not be too much to handle. If you purchased the Oxford World Classics version of The Mabinogion, then you should have it already. I will list a link to the book below. Also, I forgot to mention, this will be considered one of my "Extra Credit" lessons as this is not generally considered integral to Arthurian development. The following group of works however is definitely important. Or, I should say one of the most important Arthurian works ever made. The work (or works) I speak of are the romances of Chretien de Troyes and are on par with Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of England in regard to development and influence. His romances include 5 works which are, in order of creation; Eric and Enide, Cliges, Lancelot (or The Knight in the Cart), Yvain (or The Knight of the Lion), and Perceval (or The Story of the Grail). Because each of them are important in their own right, and fairly long as well, I intend on covering them separately and may discuss thematic ideas within each article or, perhaps, in a follow-up lesson afterward.

The books listed below for the upcoming articles are the copies and translations I used personally to study. You may select your own versions if you wish. There are individual books available by Yale University Press for the Chretien Romances (each romance separated into its own book) and they each cost as much as this whole volume below but some have claimed them as a better translation. I feel the one below is the best bargain and will serve our purposes just fine. (If you can read Old French well enough to balk at a translation, then why not just read it in the original French?) That being said, I have been guilty of being a purist at times so I shouldn't point fingers. I have one of the Yale University versions myself and it seems fine, to my amatuer eyes, if not a tad overpriced. The Mabinogion below, for our upcoming discussion of the Dream of Rhonabwy, is one we have already referenced in past discussions so if you don't already have it, you may want to grab it as we will continue using it.



Thank you and I look forward to seeing everyone soon!
Joe
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