Silence: A Thirteenth-Century French Romance

by Heldris de Cornualles

Book Overview

This bilingual edition, a parallel text in Old French and English, is based on a reexamination of the Old French manuscript, and makes Silence available to specialists and students in various fields of literature and women's studies. The Roman de Silence, an Arthurian romance of the thirteenth century, tells of a girl raised as a boy, equally accomplished as a minstrel and knight, whose final task, the capture of Merlin, leads to her unmasking.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870135430
• ISBN13: 9780870135439
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Michigan State University Press
• Length: 343 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Entertaining and Informative (Weird Intro, Though)

I thought the story "Silence" was very good, surprisingly interesting and engaging given its age. Its plot was not unlike many modern tales, which I found interesting also. If I have one complaint, it is that the translator used some seemingly too modern vocabulary in her translation, like "hit the road," though I suppose there could be something quite similar in old French usage. The most amusing part is the introduction, that among other things, mentioned that the story shows a hatred for women. They describe insults from the story against women. As a woman, I thought "Yeah, seems about right for a book written in that time." But lo and behold, turns out, the writer threw only as many insults towards evil women as he lavished great praises upon the women of good virtue. And he even said as much at the end, almost as if he were speaking in reply to the introduction. Didn't do him much good, though, they didn't listen. ;) About the story, it was much better than I expected, with lots of excitement (never a dull moment) and strong characters. My main disappointment was the end, but I'll leave that to be discovered. Cheers!

Deceit, desire, and disguise!

While another review has stated a similarity between this work and Homer's Odyssey, I would like to state that I did not see any connection between the two stories. On the other hand, this is a wonderful story containing dragons, true love, anthropomorphic personifications of abstract concepts such as Nature and Nurture, wars, romance, thought provoking commentary, and humor. The poet inserts his own comments on life, society, and the behavior of the characters throughout the work to such an extant that he is as much a character as anyone else. Furthermore, this thirteenth century romance contains a French female warrior who predates Joan of Arc by approximately a century. It is amazing to think that this work was nearly lost to time by being hidden in a box labeled "old papers - no value." I thoroughly enjoyed this book. My only complaints were concerning the translation rather than the text itself. There were a number of spelling errors in the English text. Some references to notes on the translation were mismarked or missing. Also, as someone who can translate a bit of Old French, I found that while the majority of the translation was fine, there were occasional places where I wondered how she arrived at the word that she chose. Furthermore, while the line by line translation in a facing page format made it easy to switch back and forth between English and Old French, I found many of her English phrasings to be awkward in that while they would look fine as a sentence, they did not scan well in a poetry format. Still, those were minor quibbles over all. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who enjoys medieval literature like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight or Chretien de Troyes' romances.

A remarkable story of feminsm, heroism, symbolism; a classic

I had the luck to read this book in a literature class, and it has become a very personal love of mine. The story is beautiful and the characters are so full of symbolism; it is a feminine version of Homer's "The Odyssey", but with a feminist theme. The history behind the book is to intriguing that anyone interested in Classical Literature Studies, French Literature, Feminist Literature, or a good story, would quickly fall in love with its beauty as I have. I am currently attempting to contact publishers in hope that someone may realize its importance as a mythological masterpiece, and hope this review may spark some interest. If De Beauvior were born 500 years earlier this would be her "Second Sex". I believe in the story and its universal importance. (I give it a 9 because it was originally written as an Old French poem, which may be why it is so inaccessible--very few people can read Old French--but the story itself is priceless)