Ywain: The Knight of the Lion

Translated, with an introduction, by Robert W. Ackerman, Stanford University, and Frederick W. Locke, Stanford University. For present purposes, the complete prose rendering of "Ywain" by W. W. Comfort seemed to us not altogether suitable because its literal, line-by-line adherence to the French text has sometimes led the translator into difficult locutions and archaisms. The present translation is syntactically somewhat freer than Comfort's although we have sought to render the sense of every passage as accurately as possible. Lines 3416 to 6526 are given in summary form rather than in direct translation. Explanatory notes are limited to a few bracketed expansions of words or allusions that might be unfamiliar to modem readers.