Arthurian Romances Read online

  Since Chrétien gave the fuller version of his name in the prologue to Erec and Enide we must assume he was away from the region of Troyes at the time of its composition, and it now seems reasonable to speculate that he was in England at the court of Henry II, where he would have had ample opportunity to learn of the new ‘Matter of Britain’ that was then attaining popularity there. Erec, a brilliant psychological study, appears to have been the earliest romance composed in the vernacular tongue to incorporate Arthurian themes. This poem posed a question familiar to courtly circles: how can a knight, once married, sustain the valour and glory that first won him a bride? That is, can a knight serve both his honour (armes) and his love (amors)? Erec, caught up in marital bliss, neglects the pursuit of his glory until reminded of his duties by Enide, who has overheard some knights gossiping maliciously. Accompanied by her, he sets out on a series of adventures in the course of which both he and his bride are tested. The mixture of psychological insight and extraordinary adventures was to become a trademark of Chrétien’s style and of the Arthurian romances written in imitation of his work. And Chrétien would reconsider the question of armes and amors from a different perspective in The Knight with the Lion.

  Chrétien’s second major work, Cligés, is in part set at Arthur’s court, but is principally an adventure romance based on Græco-Byzantine material, which was exceedingly popular in the second half of the twelfth century. This romance, which exalts the pure love of Fenice for Cligés, has been seen by many as a foil to the adulterous passion of Isolde for Tristan. Among the numerous textual parallels adduced to support this contention, especially in the second part of the poem, are Fenice’s relationships with her husband (Alis) and sweetheart (Cligés) and her expressed views on love and marriage, the nurse Thessala’s similarity to Brangien, John’s hideaway and the Hall of Images, the love potion, and lover’s lament. However, the poem is even more interesting to us for its use of irony, its balanced structure and its psychological penetration into the hearts of the two lovers. Here, as elsewhere, Chrétien shows the influence of Ovid, the most popular Classical writer throughout the twelfth century. And again Chrétien shows his ability to exploit popular material in a highly original manner.

  It is now generally agreed that Cligés dates from about 1176. Although the subject matter is wholly fictional, scholars have found intriguing analogies in several of its situations to contemporary politics between 1170 and 1175. The intrigues that brought the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Comnenus to power over his elder brother, Isaac – who, like Alexander, received only the title – are remarkably akin to the situation by which Alis comes to the throne of Constantinople rather than his older brother Alexander. In the poem, the projected marriage of Alis to the daughter of the German emperor is, mutatis mutandis, an echo of the projected marriage between Frederick Barbarossa’s son and Manuel’s only daughter, Maria. As in the poem, Frederick received the Byzantine ambassadors at Cologne. And it was at Regensburg, also evoked in the poem, that Marie de Champagne’s parents met the Byzantine ambassadors during the Second Crusade. Chrétien’s audience would not have failed to identify the fierce Duke of Saxony to whom Fenice was originally promised with Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony since 1142 and a cousin of Frederick Barbarossa, with whom he was generally at odds. In 1168 Henry the Lion was married to Mathilda of England, a half-sister of Marie de Champagne, but this did not keep Marie’s husband, Henri the Liberal, from supporting Frederick in his struggles against his cousin. Although Chrétien freely modified these events to his own artistic ends, it seems clear that the court of Marie and Henri de Champagne would have been aware of these matters and intrigued and flattered by allusions to them.

  The relationship between Chrétien’s third and fourth romances, which were most likely composed in the late 1170s, is complex. There are several direct references in The Knight with the Lion to action that occurs in The Knight of the Cart, particularly to Meleagant’s abduction of Guinevere and the subsequent quest by Lancelot. Yet at the same time, the characterization of Sir Kay in the early section of The Knight of the Cart seems explicable only in terms of his abusive behaviour in The Knight with the Lion. Further, the blissful conjugal scene between Arthur and Guinevere at the beginning of The Knight with the Lion seems incomprehensible after events in The Knight of the Cart. These contradictory factors have led recent scholars to propose that the two romances were being composed simultaneously, beginning with The Knight with the Lion then breaking off to The Knight of the Cart, which itself was perhaps completed in three parts. According to this theory, as it has been progressively refined and widely accepted, Chrétien wrote the first part of The Knight of the Cart then turned it over to Godefroy de Lagny to complete. Dissatisfied with the contrast between the two sections, Chrétien himself would then have composed the tournament section to harmonize the two parts.

  The Knight of the Cart tells of the adulterous relationship of Lancelot with Arthur’s queen, Guinevere. Its central theme, the acting out in romance form of a story of fin’amors, has generally been attributed to a suggestion by its dedicatee, Marie de Champagne, for it is in stark contrast to Chrétien’s other romances, which extol the virtues of marital fidelity. For this reason, scholars today often find in The Knight of the Cart extensive irony and humour, which serve to undercut the courtly love material and bring its theme in line with those of Chrétien’s other romances. Its composition, and The Knight with the Lion with it, marks an important stage in the development of Chrétien’s thought, for he turns away in these works from the couple predestined to rule to the individual who must discover his own place in society.

  Many critics consider The Knight with the Lion to be Chrétien’s most perfectly conceived and constructed romance. In it he reconsiders the question of the conflict between love and valour posed in Erec, but from the opposite point of view: Yvain neglects his bride (amors) in the pursuit of glory (armes). Unlike Erec, who sets off for adventure accompanied by his bride, Yvain sets out alone upon his series of marvellous adventures in order to expiate his fault and rediscover himself. He eventually meets up with a lion which, among other possible symbolic roles, is certainly emblematic of his new self.

  Chrétien’s final work, begun sometime in the 1180s and never completed, was and still is his most puzzling: The Story of the Grail. Controversy continues today over whether or not Chrétien intended this romance to be read allegorically. Even those who agree that his intent was indeed allegorical argue over the proper nature and significance of the allegory. His immediate continuers, Robert de Boron and the anonymous author of the Perlesvaus, clearly assumed that the allegory was a Christian one. Unfortunately, death apparently overtook Chrétien before he could complete his masterwork and clarify the mysteries of the Grail Castle.

  In the prologues to most of his romances, Chrétien alludes to a source from which he took his story. In Erec, he says that his source was a ‘tale of adventure’ that professional jongleurs were wont to mangle and corrupt, but that he would relate in ‘a beautifully ordered composition’. Though no direct source for this, or any other of his romances, has been identified, there exists a general parallel to Erec in the story of the Welsh Mabinogion called Gereint Son of Erbin. This tale contains the episodes of the stag hunt, the joust for the sparrow-hawk, Enide’s tears, the quest with Enide’s repeated warnings for Gereint (Erec), the lecherous count, the ‘little king’ Gwiffred Petit (Guivret le Petit), and even a small-scale Joy of the Court. This relatively late Welsh prose tale, dating probably from the thirteenth century, could not have influenced Chrétien, and marked differences in details, tone and artistry suggest that it was not directly influenced by Chrétien’s work either. Together, however, they attest to an earlier common source, which most critics now assume to have been Celtic in origin and oral, rather than written.

  In the prologue to Cligés, Chrétien states that his source was a written story in a book from the library of St Peter’s church in Beauvais. Again, Chrétien’s precise so
urce is unknown, though he drew heavily on Ovid, Thomas’s Tristan, and the Old French Roman d’Eneas for his depictions of the nature and effects of love in this romance. The motif of feigned death occurs in other medieval works, notably in the thirteenth-century Old French romance Marques de Rome, in which the hero is likewise named Cligés. Much of the first part of this romance is surely of Chrétien’s own invention, whereas analogies with the Tristan story seem to structure the second half.

  Chrétien claims in his prologue to The Knight of the Cart that he was given the source material by the Countess Marie. If that is true, then she probably conveyed to him a popular Celtic abduction story, or aithed. In these mythological tales a mysterious stranger typically claims a married woman, makes off with her through a ruse or by force, and carries her to his other worldly home. Her husband pursues the abductor and, after triumphing over seemingly impossible odds, penetrates the mysterious kingdom and rescues his wife. Guinevere is the subject of such an abduction story in the Latin Vita sancti Gildæ (Life of St Gildas) by Caradoc of Llancarvan (c. 1150), which contains much Celtic mythology. She is carried off by Melwas or Maheloas, lord of the œstiva regio (land of summer), to the Urbs Vitrea (City of Glass, alleged to be Glastonbury in Somerset). From there she is rescued by King Arthur with the aid of the Abbot of Glastonbury. However, this story is far removed from that by Chrétien and has no role for Lancelot. It is intriguing to speculate – but impossible to prove – that the Countess suggested the love relationship between Guinevere and Lancelot.

  For The Knight with the Lion, which does not have a prologue, Chrétien claims in his epilogue to have given a faithful rendering of the story just as he had ‘heard it told’. Like Erec, The Knight with the Lion has an analogue in the Welsh Mabinogion in a story known as Owein, or The Lady of the Fountain, which reproduces the plot of Chrétien’s romance very closely up to the episode in which Lunete is saved from the stake, then diverges radically to the end. Like Gereint Son of Erbin, this tale dates from the thirteenth century and could not have influenced Chrétien. Nor does it appear to have been influenced by The Knight with the Lion, but attests rather to an earlier common source, probably oral, that Chrétien may have known from bilingual Breton storytellers he may have encountered in England, or later in France. In addition to the general parallel furnished by The Lady of the Fountain, there are many individual motifs that can be traced to Celtic influence. Foremost among these are the episodes of the spring and of the town of Dire Adventure, which are closely analogous to a Celtic otherworld myth in which a hero follows a previous adventurer into a mysterious fairy kingdom defended by a hideous giant; he leaves again for his own land, breaks his faith with the fairy and loses her, then goes mad. With the legend of the spring Chrétien has skilfully blended another fairy motif that is also most likely to be of Celtic origin: the fairy enchants a mortal who must remain at her side to preserve some fearful custom until he is replaced by another who in turn continues it. This motif is found in its purest form in Erec’s ‘Joy of the Court’.

  As was the case with Cligés, Chrétien cites a specific written source for his Perceval: ‘the Story of the Grail, whose book was given him by the count’ (Philip of Flanders). No one knows what this book contained, nor indeed whether it ever actually existed. At any event, it was not the Peredur story from the Mabinogion which, like the analogues for Erec and The Knight with the Lion cited earlier, was too late to hasbeen known by Chrétien. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the origins of this, Chrétien’s most mystifying romance, but none has met with widespread acceptance. The stories of Perceval and of the Grail seem originally to have been independent, and were perhaps amalgamated by Chrétien for the first time. Many motifs can be traced back to Celtic and Classical sources, but here and in his other romances Chrétien adapts his source materials in accord with the artistic needs of his own composition and the accepted mores of his time. He combines mysterious and magical elements from his sources with keenly observed contemporary social behaviour to create an atmosphere of mystery and wonder that is none the less securely anchored in a recognizable twelfth-century ‘present’.

  To fully appreciate Chrétien’s achievement, it is important to place his romances in the broader context of twelfth-century literary creativity and sensitivity. Although Latin was still the predominant language for literary production well into the twelfth century, by Chrétien’s day it was slowly being supplanted in France by the vernacular language known today as Old French. This ‘translation’ of learning from Classical lands and languages to France and the vernacular is mentioned by Chrétien in the same Cligés prologue from which we quoted earlier:

  Par les livres que nos avons

  Les feiz des anciiens savons

  Et del siecle qui fu jadis.

  Ce nos ont nostre livre apris,

  Que Grece ot de chevalerie

  Le premier los et de clergie.

  Puis vint chevalerie a Rome

  Et de la clergie la some,

  Qui or est an France venue.

  Deus doint qu’ele i soit retenue… [27–36]

  [Through the books we have, we learn of the deeds of ancient peoples and of bygone days. Our books have taught us that chivalry and learning first flourished in Greece; then to Rome came chivalry, and the sum of knowledge, which now has come to France. May God grant that they be maintained here…]

  This movement implies a significant desire to bring literature and learning to those with little or no knowledge of Latin. That many were engaged in this undertaking is clear from the testimony of Chrétien’s contemporary, Marie de France, writing in the general prologue to her Lais that she ‘began to think of working on some good story and translating a Latin text into French, but this would scarcely have been worthwhile, for others have undertaken a similar task’ (The Lais of Marie de France 1986, p. 41). The earliest romances, the so-called romances of Antiquity – the Roman d’Eneas, Roman de Thèbes, and Roman de Troie – were adaptations respectively of Virgil’s Aeneid, Statius’s Thebaid, and the late Latin Troy narrative attributed to Darys and Dictys. Ovid’s tales of Narcissus and Piramus and Thishe were also done into Old French at this same time. This early period of French literature likewise witnessed the translation of religious treatises, sermons, and books of proverbial wisdom, as well as a number of saints’ lives. The evidence of a thirst for every sort of knowledge is provided by the many scientific and didactic works that appeared in French for the first time in the twelfth century: lapidaries, herbals, bestiaries, lunaries, Mirrors for Princes, and encyclopaedic works of all kinds.

  Chrétien’s prologues, as well as numerous allusions in his poems, offer ample proof of his familiarity with this material. In the prologue to The Story of the Grail he compares the generosity of his patron to that of the great Alexander. This same romance contains a reference to the loves of Aeneas and Lavinia, an affair that is given more play in the Old French Roman d’Eneas than in Virgil’s Aeneid. In Cligés Chrétien compares King Arthur’s wealth to Alexander’s and Caesar’s, and notes the similarities between Alis’s and Alexander’s situation and that of Eteocles and Polynices in the Roman de Thèbes. Also in Cligés, he compares Thessala’s knowledge of magic with that of the legendary Medea and alludes to Paris’s abduction of Helen of Troy, which was played out in the Roman de Troie. In The Knight of the Cart, he mentions the tragic love tale of Piramus and Thisbe. Erec, his first romance, is however the richest in classical allusions, for there we find references to Alexander, Caesar, Dido, Aeneas, Lavinia, Helen and Solomon, as well as to the late Latin writer Macrobius.

  In moving from doing translations to composing original works on non-Classical themes, Chrétien was merely emulating a popular twelfth-century tendency. Beginning early in the century, there was a great creative movement that saw the appearance of a number of forms and works that had no Latin antecedents. The first original Old French genre to flourish was the chanson de geste, which featured epic themes generally centred aro
und the court and times of Charlemagne. In MS Bibl. Nat f. fr. 24403, Chrétien’s Erec is curiously bracketed by two chansons de geste: Garin de Montglane and Ogier le Danois. Chrétien’s comparison of Yvain’s skill in battle to that of the legendary Roland (ll. 3239–41) is good proof of his knowledge of the most famous of the chansons de geste. And Chrétien, as we have seen, practised the other great original genre of the twelfth century, the courtly lyric. While lyric poetry certainly existed in Latin, a wholly different inspiration informs the love-lyrics of the southern French troubadours. In their poetry love becomes an art and an all-subsuming passion. The lady becomes a person to be cherished, a source of poetic and personal inspiration, rather than simply a pawn in the game of heredity.