is Provencal. But what a brilliant whole! what art! what measure!
Our thoughts turn to the gifted women of the age--as subtle, as
interesting, and as unscrupulous as the women of the
Renaissance--to Eleanor of Aquitaine, a reigning princess, a
troubadour, a Crusader, the wife of two kings, the mother of two
kings, to the last, intriguing and pulling the strings of
political power--"An Ate, stirring him [King John] to blood and
strife."

The twelfth century was an age in which women had full scope--in
which the Empress Maud herself took the field against her foe, in
which Stephen's queen seized a fortress, in which a wife could
move her husband to war or to peace, in which a Marie of
Champagne (Eleanor's daughter) could set the tone of great poets
and choose their subjects.

If, then, this woman-worship, this complexity of love, this
self-debating, first comes into literature with Chretien de
Troyes, and is still with us, no more interesting work exists
than his earliest masterpiece, Cliges. The delicate and reticent
Soredamors; the courteous and lovable, Guinevere; the proud and
passionate Fenice, who will not sacrifice her fair fame and
chastity; the sorceress Thessala, ancestress of Juliet's
nurse--these form a gallery of portraits unprecedented in
literature.

The translator takes this opportunity of thanking Mr. B. J.
Hayes, M.A., of St. John's College, Cambridge, for occasional
help, and also for kindly reading the proofs.