EREC ET ENIDE

Suffit-il qu'un chevalier valeureux et qu'une belle et sage jeune fille se rencontrent, connaissent l'éblouissement du premier regard et s'épousent pour que tout soit dit sur le mariage et l'amour. Certes non, car l'aventure les rattrape bientôt et, avec elle, les épreuves et le doute : le salut et la joie sont à ce prix. Erec et Enide est le premier véritable roman de notre littérature. Il inaugure, dans le monde mystérieux des chevaliers de la Table Ronde, la merveilleuse série des romans arthuriens.

"Ms. Gilbert's couplets read beautifully, encompassing Chretien's range of tone--from wit to elevation of sentiment--very sensitively."--Charles Muscatine, author of "Chaucer and the French Tradition

"A wonderfully accurate and witty translation of Chretien's "Erec and Enide which brilliantly renders the rhymed octosyllabics of the original text in compelling, colloquial English. . . . A treat not just for students and scholars of Old French literature but, more important, for what we now call general readers--that is, all those who relish a rollicking, well-told tale."--Sandra M. Gilbert, editor of "The Norton Anthology of Literature by Women

"Older translations, generally in stupefying Maloryan prose, convey little of the sense of the poetry so obvious in the original, and admirably reproduced in this translation."--Robert Harrison, translator of "Gallic Salt: Eighteen Fabliaux

"One of the best English verse renderings of any poem by Chretien."--William J. Kibler, author of "An Introduction to Old French

"A union of scholarship and consummate art that affected me like the great stories I read in my formative years; a permanent vicarious experience."--Ruth Stone, poet, author of "Second-Hand Coat

"This will be a standard English translation of "Erec and Enide and a definitive one."--Roger J. Steiner, editor of "The New College French and English Dictionary