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Chretien de Troyes Part 3: Cliges

Chretien de Troyes Part 3: 

Cligès


Hello all and welcome back.  I hope you all have had time to read ahead a little as I am sure you have noticed, the works can be quite lengthy.

Let's briefly review the story before diving in.  Before the story even gets to Cliges, we learn the story of how Cliges' parents, Alexander and Soredamors, met.  Alexander, the son of Emperor Alexander of Greece, spent some time in Britain testing his knighthood in the famed court of King Arthur.  During his time there he meets Soredamors, the niece of King Arthur and sister to Sir Gawain.  They both fall in deep love for one another but are both too shy to speak of it.  Guenevere notices this and urges them together and are soon married. Cliges is born soon after. They return to Greece to discover Emperor Alexander has died, and Prince Alexander's brother Alis has usurped the throne.  Alexander, in order to make peace with his brother decides to concede that Alis can rule in all ways except he must never take a wife or have a child and essentially give over power when Cliges comes of age.  However, when the time comes, and Alexander dies, Alis marries the German Princess Fenice, forsaking his oath.  Cliges is smitten with Fenice immediately and she feels the same for him as well.  To escape his deep love for a woman he can never be with, he decides to journey to King Arthur's Court and to be Knighted with honor there, just as his father was.  After displaying his courtly and knightly virtues there he eventually returns to Greece.  Once meeting with Fenice again they decide to devise a plan for Fenice to escape undetected by use of a magic potion and a feigned death.  They live together for a while but are soon discovered and are forced to seek the help of King Arthur.  Fortunately, Alis dies while they are away and Cliges can become Emperor and take Fenice as a wife.

As you, no doubt, have discovered by this point, Cliges is barely Arthurian as far as Arthurian tales go.  In fact, it is considered the least Arthurian tale of Chretien's Arthurian Romances.  We, as readers, visit the court twice, do some jousting while there and then back to Greece (Byzantium).  It is almost as if Arthur and his Knights are thrown into a pre-existing tale to make it more popular.  In the opening lines of Cliges, Chretien talks of his earlier works, of which none have survived, but more than one of them happen to be translations (or adaptations) of Ovid.  Another lost work happens to be a version of Tristan and Iseult, which is a marginally Arthurian tale as well, filled with an adulterous love for the King/Uncle's wife.  This has strong similarities to that story, so it is easy to imagine a blending of Tristan and Chretien's love of Greek subjects.  It even has all of the makings of a Greek Tragedy (or a Shakespearean one if you wait 400 more years) but minus the actual tragedy.  Despite the fact that is the least Arthurian, and I also might add, my least favorite, it has several points that still make it interesting.

Even though I find this the least palatable of the Chretien tales, it is overall a fairly decent story.  I always enjoy the use of magic in these stories and it has plenty of that.  Fenice has a potion that makes Alis think he is making passionate love to her each night and he is none the wiser until the very end.  She also uses magic to fake her death pretty convincingly, allowing her and Cliges to finally be together.  The story also has a tomb with a secret entrance and a tower with a secret room.  Those are elements I would expect to find in a Victorian Gothic tale.   My experiences with other classic literature such as the works of Edgar Allan Poe, or even Shakespeare, almost anticipates Fenice not making out of the tomb to be with Cliges, but this is a French Romance and we know they will live happily ever after.  Regardless of my personal tastes this still has all of the hallmarks of a Knightly romance.  It has magic, castles, evil kings, unrequited love and some guest appearances by some of our favorite Arthurian characters.  You may remember some of the earlier Arthurian works got by with much less.

Thank you and I will see you soon with the next Chretien work, Yvain, which happens to be my personal favorite!

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