Cliges; a romance

IT is six hundred and fifty years since Chretien de Troyes wrote
his Cliges. And yet he is wonderfully near us, whereas he is
separated by a great gulf from the rude trouveres of the Chansons
de Gestes and from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which was still
dragging out its weary length in his early days. Chretien is as
refined, as civilised, as composite as we are ourselves; his
ladies are as full of whims, impulses, sudden reserves,
self-debate as M. Paul Bourget's heroines; while the problems of
conscience and of emotion which confront them are as complex as
those presented on the modern stage. Indeed, there is no break
between the Breton romance and the psychological-analytical novel
of our own day.