Four Arthurian Romances | Page 7

Chrétien de Troyes
be a Tristan. Infidelity, if you will, but not
"menage a trois". Both "Erec" and "Yvain" present a conventional morality. But
"Lancelot" is flagrantly immoral, and the poet is careful to state that for this particular
romance he is indebted to his patroness Marie de Champagne. He says it was she who
furnished him with both the "matiere" and the "san", the material of the story and its
method of treatment.
Scholars have sought to fix the chronology of the poet's works, and have been tempted to
speculate upon the evolution of his literary and moral ideas. Professor Foerster's
chronology is generally accepted, and there is little likelihood of his being in error when
he supposes Chretien's work to have been done as follows: the lost "Tristan" (the
existence of which is denied by Gaston Paris in "Journal des Savants", 1902, pp. 297 f.),
"Erec and Enide", "Cliges", "Lancelot", "Yvain", "Perceval". The arguments for this
chronology, based upon external as well as internal criticism, may be found in the
Introductions to Professor Foerster's recent editions. When we speculate upon the
development of Chretien's moral ideas we are not on such sure ground. As we have seen,
his standards vary widely in the different romances. How much of this variation is due to
chance circumstance imposed by the nature of his subject or by the taste of his public,
and how much to changing conviction it is easy to see, when we consider some
contemporary novelist, how dangerous it is to judge of moral convictions as reflected in
literary work. "Lancelot" must be the keystone of any theory constructed concerning the
moral evolution of Chretien. The following supposition is tenable, if the chronology of
Foerster is correct. After the works of his youth, consisting of lyric poems and
translations embodying the ideals of Ovid and of the school of contemporary troubadour

poets, Chretien took up the Arthurinn material and started upon a new course. "Erec" is
the oldest Arthurinn romance to have survived in any language, but it is almost certainly
not the first to have been written. It is a perfectly clean story: of love, estrangement, and
reconciliation in the persons of Erec and his charming sweetheart Enide. The
psychological analysis of Erec's motives in the rude testing of Enide is worthy of
attention, and is more subtle than anything previous in French literature with which we
are acquainted. The poem is an episodical romance in the biography of an Arthurinn hero,
with the usual amount of space given to his adventures. "Cliges" apparently connects a
Byzantine tale of doubtful origin in an arbitrary fashion with the court of Arthur. It is
thought that the story embodies the same motive as the widespread tale of the deception
practised upon Solomon by his wife, and that Chretien's source, as he himself claims, was
literary (cf. Gaston Paris in "Journal des Savants", 1902, pp. 641-655). The scene where
Fenice feigns death in order to rejoin her lover is a parallel of many others in literary
history, and will, of course, suggest the situation in Romeo and Juliet. This romance well
illustrates the drawing power of Arthur's court as a literary centre, and its use as a
rallying-point for courteous knights of whatever extraction. The poem has been termed an
"Anti-Tristan", because of its disparaging reference to the love of Tristan and Iseut,
which, it is generally supposed, had been narrated by Chretien in his earlier years. Next
may come "Lancelot", with its significant dedication to the Countess of Champagne. Of
all the poet's work, this tale of the rescue of Guinevere by her lover seems to express
most closely the ideals of Marie's court ideals in which devotion and courtesy but thinly
disguise free love. "Yvain" is a return to the poet's natural bent, in an episodical romance,
while "Perceval" crowns his production with its pure and exalted note, though without a
touch of that religious mysticism which later marked Wolfram yon Eschenbach's
"Parzival". "Guillaime d'Angleterre" is a pseudo-historical romance of adventure in
which the worldly distresses and the final reward of piety are conventionally exposed. It
is uninspired, its place is difficult to determine, and its authorship is questioned by some.
It is aside from the Arthurian material, and there is no clue to its place in the evolution of
Chretien's art, if indeed it be his work.
A few words must be devoted to Chretien's place in the history of mediaeval narrative
poetry. The heroic epic songs of France, devoted either to the conflict of Christendom
under the leadership of France against the Saracens, or else to the strife and rivalry of
French vassals among themselves, had been current for perhaps a century before our poet
began to write. These epic poems, of which some three score have survived, portray a
Continue reading on your phone by scaning this QR Code

 / 241
Tip: The current page has been bookmarked automatically. If you wish to continue reading later, just open the Dertz Homepage, and click on the 'continue reading' link at the bottom of the page.