Four Arthurian Romances | Page 8

warlike, virile, unsentimental feudal society, whose chief occupation was fighting, and
whose dominant ideals were faith in God, loyalty to feudal family ties, and bravery in
battle. Woman's place is comparatively obscure, and of love-making there is little said. It
is a poetry of vigorous manhood, of uncompromising morality, and of hard knocks given
and taken for God, for Christendom, and the King of France. This poetry is written in ten-
or twelve- sylabble verses grouped, at first in assonanced, later in rhymed, "tirades" of
unequal length. It was intended for a society which was still homogeneous, and to it at the
outset doubtless all classes of the population listened with equal interest. As poetry it is
monotonous, without sense of proportion, padded to facilitate memorisation by
professional reciters, and unadorned by figure, fancy, or imagination. Its pretention to
historic accuracy begot prosaicness in its approach to the style of the chronicles. But its
inspiration was noble, its conception of human duties was lofty. It gives a realistic

portrayal of the age which produced it, the age of the first crusades, and to this day we
would choose as our models of citizenship Roland and Oliver rather than Tristan and
Lancelot. The epic poems, dealing with the pseudo-historical characters who had fought
in civil and foreign wars under Charlemagne, remained the favourite literary pabulum of
the middle classes until the close of the thirteenth century. Professor Bedier is at present
engaged in explaining the extraordinary hold which these poems had upon the public, and
in proving that they exercised a distinct function when exploited by the Church
throughout the period of the crusades to celebrate local shrines and to promote muscular
Christianity. But the refinement which began to penetrate the ideals of the French
aristocracy about the middle of the twelfth century craved a different expression in
narrative literature. Greek and Roman mythology and history were seized upon with
some effect to satisfy the new demand. The "Roman de Thebes", the "Roman
d'Alexandre", the "Roman de Troie", and its logical continuation, the "Roman d'Eneas",
are all twelfth- century attempts to clothe classic legend in the dress of mediaeval
chivalry. But better fitted to satisfy the new demand was the discovery by the alert
Anglo-Normans perhaps in Brittany, perhaps in the South of England, of a vast body of
legendary material which, so far as we know, had never before this century received any
elaborate literary treatment. The existence of the literary demand and this discovery of
the material for its prompt satisfaction is one of the most remarkable coincidences in
iiterary history. It would seem that the pride of the Celtic populations in a Celtic hero,
aided and abetted by Geoffrey of Monmouth, who first showed the romantic possibilities
of the material, made of the obscure British chieftain Arthur a world conqueror. Arthur
thus became already in Geoffrey's "Historia regum Britaniae" a conscious protagonist of
Charlemagne and his rival in popularity. This grandiose conception of Arthur persisted in
England, but this conception of the British chieftain did not interest the French. For
Chretien Arthur had no political significance. He is simply the arbiter of his court in all
affairs of justice and courtesy. Charlemagne's very realistic entourage of virile and busy
barons is replaced by a court of elegant chevaliers and unemployed ladies. Charlemagne's
setting is historical and geographical; Arthur's setting is ideal and in the air. In the oldest
epic poems we find only God- fearing men and a few self-effacing women; in the
Arthurian romances we meet gentlemen and ladies, more elegant and seductive than any
one in the epic poems, but less fortified by faith and sense of duty against vice because
breathing an enervating atmosphere of leisure and decadent morally. Though the Church
made the attempt in "Parzival", it could never lay its hands so effectively upon this Celtic
material, because it contained too many elements which were root and branch
inconsistent with the essential teachings of Christianity. A fleeting comparison of the
noble end of Charlemagne's Peers fighting for their God and their King at Ronceval with
the futile and dilettante careers of Arthur's knights in joust and hunt, will show better than
mere words where the difference lies.
The student of the history of social and moral ideals will find much to interest him in
Chretien's romances. Mediaeval references show that he was held by his immediate
successors, as he is held to-day when fairly viewed, to have been a master of the art of
story-telling. More than any other single narrative poet, he was taken as a model both in
France and abroad. Professor F. M. Warren has set forth in detail the finer points in the
art of poetry as practised by Chretien and his contemporary craftsmen (see "Some
Features of Style in