#cliges

[gaheriskinnie]

I'm really glad i grew up and now i dont hate guinevere for cheating on her husband. she's fine actually.

Fenice however

[wayfareramongthestars]

Going over Cliges again, because it's part of what I'm writing about in my master's essay, and I keep coming back to how little of an impact it seemed to make compared to Chrétien's other stories. It doesn't seem to have really influenced later writers; there aren't, to my knowledge, any retellings or adaptations of Cliges, later writers didn't use these characters.

Erec et Enide, Le Chevalier de la Charrette, Le Chevalier au Lion, Le Conte del Graal are all so good - they live in my head rent free & apparently a lot of people writing after Chrétien felt the same way. And then there's Cilges. Cliges for me is so dull. I want to love the characters, but I don't; I mainly find them dull or frustrating.

Alexander & Soredamor are so frustrating; Cliges & Fenice are slightly more interesting, at least in parts. Thessala is fascinating & I would've loved more of her. Alis... I genuinely don't know how Chrétien wanted me to feel about him. Like, he should be the villain: he's marrying Fenice when he gave Alexander his oath that he wouldn't marry & would pass the throne to Cliges, his nephew. But then we're told (during the combat between Cliges & the Duke of Saxony) that he cares about Cliges & holds him "...as dear as he should..." (p.135 of the David Staines translation). To me, Alis doesn't make sense ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Perhaps my problem is the removal of the plot from Arthur's court. Of all of Chrétien's Arthurian romances, Cliges has the least to do with King Arthur & the Arthurian characters. And maybe if the characters had spent more time at the Arthurian court it would have been more interesting to me...

[joemerl]

Alexander: *monologues for three frickin' pages about the personification of Love making him fall for Soredamor*

Soredamor: *monologues for two frickin' pages about the personification of Love making her fall for Alexander*

The personification of Love:

[gawrkin]

[...]

I was looking through Chretien's Cliges and came across a footnote regarding Thessala, the sorceress-nurse of Fenice. Something about the name being a generic word for witch or sorceress.

Lo and behold, turns out, "Thessala" really is a term for witch.

Lol, Chretien. Very Subtle.

But more interesting to me is how this word came about from Greco-Roman culture. Thessaly is the home of the (infamous) Greek hero Jason, leader of the argonauts and husband of the sorceress Medea.

Apparently, Pliny the Elder here states that Thessaly owes its knowledge of the Healing Arts to Chiron, the centaur mentor of Jason, Achilles and other Greek Heroes.

The funny fact is: Jason (Ἰάσων (Iásōn)) means "Healer":

So, it seems to me the association of Thessaly and Witchcraft came about through Jason's knowledge of Herbs and Medicine and through Jason marriage to the barbarian Medea.

The study of medicine, and drugs, in Ancient Greek is Pharmakeia - the origin of the word "Pharmacy"... and is synonymous with Witchcraft. Indeed, the magic of Medea is described as "Pharmakon" and certain translations of the Bible also use the term "Pharmakeia" to refer to magic and witchcraft.

It kind of makes me imagine Jason and Medea were a wizard couple together. It helps that both Jason and Medea were both subjects of cultic worship in various areas of the Hellenic World.

[tiodolma]

female anthrophomorphic representation of Death

But Death cannot restrain herself from acting as her custom is. Every day, to the extent of her power, she blots out the best creature she can find. So she wishes to try her power, and in one body she has carried off more excellence than she has left behind. She would have done better to take the whole world, and leave alive and sound this prey which now she has carried off. Beauty, courtesy, and knowledge, and all that a lady can possess of goodness has been taken and filched from us by Death, who has destroyed all goodness in the person of our lady, the empress. Thus Death has deprived us all of life."

i wonder if it's just Chretien de Troyes who refers to Death as a she.

Reminds me of the Mexicans' La Santa Muerte

[itonje]

‘it is not without significance that i am called by the name of soredamors. i am destined to love and be loved in turn...’

[once-and-future-princess]

I've noticed a lot of the Arthuriana People have like....a pet charecter. Like sure, we all like the big names, Gawain and Lancelot and Kay and such but the world is so big and full of so many minor charecters, who are interpreted so many different ways every time, it's natural that you sort of latch on to one Ensemble Dark horse and go That. That One is mine. I shall adopt them and write all the fic about them.

(where's that post about the Arthurian mythos being a series of peoples OCs that got famous)

Any way I'm about 50 pages into Cliges and I think I've found mine. There is a Greek prince, Alexander, who travels all the way from Constantinople to be a knight under King Arthur. He seems to be fitting in very well, becoming friends with Gwenyfar falling stupidly in love with a girl he can't look in the eye, capturing some traitors, standard knight shit. But my brain is going WILD imagining a Greek prince--and one from Constantinople, one of the greatest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world--showing up in England and the culture clash of this. The weather ALONE is going to be an adjustment.

Anyway, we stan Sir Alexander, a byzantine prince in king arthur's court

[gringolet]

gawain will see a Fair Unknown and be like, is anyone gonna mentor that? and not wait for an answer.