Chrétien de Troyes citations (21 citations)

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.
Source: Yvain or Le Chevalier au Lion, Line 2521

“One knows the man by the name he has.”

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Chrétien de Troyes

Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 562

“No one can be too talkative without often saying something that makes him look foolish, for the wise man's saying goes: "Whoever talks too much does himself a bad turn."”

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Chrétien de Troyes

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.
Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 1650.

“"It's obvious that it's after dinner," says Kay, unable to hold his tongue. "There are more words in a potful of wine than in a barrel of beer".”

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Chrétien de Troyes

Source: Yvain or Le Chevalier au Lion, Line 590.

“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.”

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Chrétien de Troyes

C. S. Lewis The Allegory of Love (Oxford, [1936] 1975), ch. 1, p. 29.
Criticism

“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.”

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Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

At Wikisource, Vv. 1-44
Cliges

“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.”

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Chrétien de Troyes livre Yvain, the Knight of the Lion

Tony Hunt "Chrétien de Troyes' Arthurian Romance, Yvain", in Boris Ford (ed.) Medieval Literature: The European Inheritance (Harmondsworth, 1983), p. 128.
Criticism

“If someone kisses a woman and goes no further once they are alone together, then in my opinion it's his own fault. A woman who freely surrenders her lips gives the rest very readily.”

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Chrétien de Troyes

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.
Source: Perceval or Le Conte du Graal, Line 3860.

“Love without fear and trepidation is fire without flame and heat, day without sun, comb without honey, summer without flowers, winter without frost, sky without moon, a book without letters.”

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Chrétien de Troyes Cligès

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.
Cligès, line 3893.