Encore les trois cents pucelles (Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain, v. 5298-5324)
1991; CESCM; Volume: 34; Issue: 134 Linguagem: Inglês
10.3406/ccmed.1991.2492
ISSN2119-1026
Autores Tópico(s)Medieval and Early Modern Justice
ResumoThe story is well known. Accompanied by his faithful lion, Yvain, the hero of Chrétien de Troyes, arrives one day at the Castle of Pesme Aventure. There he finds three hundred imprisoned virgins, emaciated, dirty, poorly dressed, busily weaving threads of silk and gold. They tell Yvain who they are and how they came to be there : every year the young king of Île-aux-Pucelles (the Island of Virgins) has to pay a tribute of thirty virgins to the custodians of the Castle of Pesme Aventure. This custom has been in operation for ten years, so there are now three hundred of them, and as yet no knight has been able to free them from their evil captors. This famous passage from Chrétien de Troyes, entitled "Lament of the Silk Weavers», is extensively quoted in anthologies. For more than a century, critics have mourned the fate of these three hundred unhappy slaves and cursed their cruel exploiter, stressing the fact that this episode in the text reflects the social and economic realities of the twelfth century. What is the case exactly ? I review the various interpretations of this extract that have been proposed in the past and try to show that they corne up against a difficulty of a philological nature.
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