Chrétien de Troyes
13 quotes
Biography
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère known for his writing on Arthurian subjects such as Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval, and the Holy Grail. Chrétien's chivalric romances, including Erec and Enide, Lancelot, Perceval, and Yvain, represent some of the best-regarded works of medieval literature.
"Amors sanz crieme et sans peor Est feus sanz flame et sanz chalor, Jorz sanz soloil, bresche sanz miel, Estez sans flor, iverz sanz giel, Ciaus sanz lune, livres sanz letre."
"Bien pert que c'est aprés mangier, Fet Kex, qui teire ne se pot Plus a paroles an plain pot De vin qu'an un mui de cervoise."
"Joie d'amors qui vient a tart Sanble la vert busche qui art, Qui dedanz rant plus grant chalor Et plus se tient en sa valor, Quant plus demore a alumer."
"Qu'a toz mangiers est sausse fains Bien destanpree et bien confite."
"Par le sornon connoist on l'ome."
"Nus ne puet estre trop parliers Qui sovent tel chose ne die Qui torné li est affolie, Car li sages dit et retrait: Qui trop parole, il se mesfait."
"Que molt est malvais qui oblie S'on li fait honte ne laidure."
"Qui baise feme et plus n'i fait, Des qu'il sont sol a sol andui, Dont quit je qu'il remaint en lui. Feme qui se bouche abandone Le sorplus molt de legier done."
"Our books have informed us that the pre-eminence in chivalry and learning once belonged to Greece. Then chivalry passed to Rome, together with that highest learning which now has come to France. God grant that it may be cherished here, and that it may be made so welcome here that the honour which has taken refuge with us may never depart from France: God had awarded it as another's share, but of Greeks and Romans no more is heard, their fame is passed, and their glowing ash is dead."
"He was one of the first explorers of the human heart, and is therefore rightly to be numbered among the fathers of the novel of sentiment."
"Chrétien is nothing if not versatile: popular, recherché, allusive, insistent, arch, naïve, racy and demure...He has a dramatist's flair for the handling of dialogue, a deft and economic way with characterization, the sharp confidence of the logician in his handling of rhetorical figures and the self-assurance of the entertainer in the deployment of humour (he is master of the verbal nudge). It is his essential vivacity that one misses most in his imitators."
"Through their kisses and caresses they experienced a joy and wonder the equal of which has never been known or heard of. But I shall be silent...; for the rarest and most delectable pleasures are those which are hinted at, but never told."
"Come, let me know whether thou art acreature of good or not.' And he replied: `I am a man."