Swordplay and wordplay
Carol J. Chase
Carol J. Chase, « Swordplay and wordplay », Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes, 30, 2015, 373-390.
Extrait de l’article
Written in the context of the Burgundian court during the reign of Philip the Good, the fifteenth-century prose adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide retains the general outline of the story but makes numerous modifications. One of the most striking is the addition of a tournament after Erec and Enide’s coronation. The prose also appends a brief epilogue relating the couple’s life after that time and the legal succession to their eldest son at their death. In fact, the adaptation reworks nearly all the episodes, often abbreviating but occasionally expanding. Many details are changed ; motivation and characterization are affected, as are the meaning and structure of the romance. The rewriting is not a simple dérimage : the prose evidences stylistic recasting.