Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes

Description

This co-written book challenges assumptions about Chrétien as the author of a canon of works. In a series of lively exchanges, its five authors reassess the relationship between lyric and romance, between individuality 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 historicized 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. Preface vii Introduction 1 1. The 'Changeful Pen': Paradox, Logical Time, and Poetic Spectrality in the Poems Attributed to Chrétien de Troyes 15 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 Romances 167 Appendix II: Lyric Texts, Textual Notes and Translations 169 Appendix III: Passages from 'Cligès' for Comparison with Lyric Texts 176 Appendix IV: Variants to the 'Cart Scene' in 'Le Chevalier de la Charrete' 181 Bibliography 183 Index 195