Yvain: Yvain falls in love

About the scene and clip:
The performer tells how Love attacks and wounds Yvain, and he falls madly in love with his enemy, Laudine, the lady whose husband he has just killed in combat.

About the work:
Yvain is one of the five surviving romances by Chrétien de Troyes, who is often considered the father of Arthurian romance. This great work, in octosyllabic rhymed couplets, was composed for Marie, Countess of Champagne, around 1170. The romance recounts the adventures of Yvain, a knight of King Arthur’s court, who wins the beautiful Laudine in marriage (having killed her husband in single combat). He then loses both her love and his honor through his failure to keep a vow to return home from his knightly activities by an agreed-upon date. The second half of the romance is devoted to adventures in which Yvain, accompanied by a lion, creates a new name for himself (the “Knight with the Lion”), recovers his honor through a series of good deeds, and finally wins back his wife.

About the genre:
Medieval romances are typically long narratives of love and adventure in which an aristocratic hero (or occasionally a heroine) proves himself in combat and courtship. Medieval romance arose in France and Anglo-Norman England in the 12th century and spread through Western and even Eastern Europe. Many early romances tell the stories of knights and ladies at King Arthur’s court. In the 12th and 13th centuries, romances are composed in verse (typically octosyllabic rhymed couplets), and are commonly performed aloud from memory by minstrels; romances are also sometimes read aloud. In the 13th century, some romances begin to be written in prose; public and private readings become more frequent.

About the edition/translation:
Yvain or The Knight with the Lion, trans. Ruth Harwood Cline, Athens, GA, University of Georgia Press, 1975, pp. 38ff. Old French: Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), ed./trans. David F. Hult, in Romans de Chrétien de Troyes, eds./trans. J.M. Fritz et al, Paris, Classiques Modernes/ Livre de Poche, 1994.

About the performer/ensemble:
Alex Herron is a student in Film and TV at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (2012).

About the production:
This performance was created for the course “Acting Medieval Literature,” taught by Prof. Timmie (E.B.) Vitz at New York University in spring 2012. It was videoed by Samantha Ehrenberger and edited by Abigail Wahl.

Cid: The Cid with his defeated enemy the count

About the scene and clip:
Here we see The Cid with an enemy, Count Ramón, whom he has defeated in battle and who angrily refuses to break bread with him. The Cid offers him his liberty if he will eat—and he does so. (But The Cid won’t give him back all he has won from him!) The Cid is performed as a cowboy, with appropriate recorded music as a backdrop.

About the work: 
The Song of the Cid (Cantar del Mio Cid) is a medieval Spanish epic, probably composed in the 12th century, and preserved in a single, somewhat incomplete 14th-century manuscript; it is probably anonymous (though there is controversy on the issue). It recounts important adventures of an historical figure, Rodrigo (or Ruy) Díaz, known as “El Cid” (from an Arabic honoric term, meaning “lord” or “sir”).  The Cid was a major hero of the “reconquista” (reconquest) of Spain from the Moors. This epic is (especially for an epic) unusually cheerful on the whole: The Cid was “born at the right hour!” The first part tells of his banishment from Castile by King Alfonso (for reasons unclear in the epic), his many conquests in Moorish territory, and his reinstatement at court. The second part focuses on the highly unsatisfactory marriages of The Cid’s two daughters to arrogant, cowardly Spanish noblemen, the sons of Carrión (the king had chosen the marriages); the brothers beat the two women and leave them for dead in the forest, but they are rescued. The Cid contrives a sophisticated and civilized revenge on the two men—and his daughters go on to marry kings.    

About the genre:  
The epic is an ancient genre and is found in almost every culture. It is a long heroic narrative that tells of war and great deeds. Epics are generally composed in verse, and sung from memory or improvised in performance by professional performers with instrumental accompaniment. These narratives are created from traditional elements, commonly without recourse to writing, by poets whose names are often unknown to us. Among the famous traditional epics are the Iliad and the Odyssey, attributed to Homer; the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf; and the Old French Song of Roland. Many known poets adopt epic forms and themes for their literary verse (such as Virgil in his Aeneid).

About the edition/translation: 
The Song of the Cid: A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text, trans. Burton Raffel, New York, Penguin Editions, 2009; stanzas 61-62, pp. 73.

About the performer/ensemble: 
Alex Herron is a student in Film and TV at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts (2012).

About the production:
This performance was created for the course “Acting Medieval Literature,” taught by Prof. Timmie (E.B.) Vitz at New York University in spring 2012. It was videoed by Samantha Ehrenberger and edited by Abigail Wahl.