Chrétien de Troyes and Arthurian Romance

Chrétien's hero Yvain and his pet lion savage a poor, defenseless giant.

The chroniclers, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Layamon, and Robert Wace, described Arthur’s reign in glorious terms, but they left some years blank. These years were presumably prosperous for the king and his country, but what happened? The medieval insatiable appetite for completeness more or less required that the gap be filled, and the years that followed the publication of the Historia and the Bruts saw the blossoming of a new kind of literature to tell the story of the “lost years” of Arthur’s reign: Arthurian romance.

The word romance means “pertaining to one of the romance languages,” i.e., French, Italian, Spanish—one of the languages that evolved from Latin. Most frequently, these stories, written in the continental vernacular, recounted the deeds of a single knight, rather than a whole army (as did the parallel literary form, the chanson de geste). Most frequently, the knight ended up married to one of the plethora of damsels and maidens that inhabited the world of medieval romance, and thus, romance eventually came to mean “love story,” as it does now. Actually, that definition is very recent indeed—as late as Shakespeare, romance did not yet mean “love.”

Nevertheless, love was frequently a prominent feature in these stories, and this in itself was unusual. In classical times, love was not considered a proper subject for literature. Love stories were largely incidental to the stories that Greek and Latin authors wanted to tell, and sometimes downright detrimental to the heroes: Aeneas’ fling with Dido takes up a brief, if impressive moment of The Aeneid, and the consequences of love in Greek drama can be almost cataclysmic. Ovid, however, wrote a series of poems that became known collectively as Ars Amatoria, The Art of Love. These poems are witty, sometimes psychologically penetrating, but most often flippant. In the twelfth century, French and later German poets began to explore the theme of love more frequently; Andreas Capellanus, a French clerk at the court of Marie de Champagne devised his own response to The Art of Love: De Arte Honeste Amandi, The Art of Courtly Love. His treatise appears to support the notion of adultery as the only true form of love, on the basis that, since marriages between members of the nobility were most frequently arranged for political motivations, true love must be sought somewhere other than in marriage. This new response to love—albeit presented satirically by Andreas—has been called fin’amor or courtly love by modern scholars. There’s no evidence that medieval knights and ladies really behaved this way, but courtly love is certainly an important element in the stories of Lancelot and Guenevere and Tristan and Isolde.

One of the most talented poets to attempt to tell this kind of story and incorporate them into Arthur’s “lost years” was the late twelfth-century Frenchman, Chrétien de Troyes. He wrote five Arthurian poems that have survived, and a version of the Tristan story which has not. But Chrétien puts his own unique spin on courtly love. He suggests, in fact, that not only can love exist within marriage, but that it is the only place where is can healthily exist.

Cligès is only a tangentially Arthurian story, and something of an anti-Tristan. Cligés is in love with Fenice, the wife of his uncle. But rather than have an adulterous affair, like Isolde, Fenice resolves to fake her own death so that her love for Cligès can be an honorable one.

Erec et Enide is the story of a knight, Erec, who upon getting married, discovers that his reputation as a knight is suffering because he spends all of his time indoors with Enide, his wife. He consequently sets out with her to seek noble deeds and prove himself a worthy knight. In the process, husband and wife have their loyalty put to the test, and they find that the real love adventure begins after the wedding.

Yvain, or The Knight of the Lion, takes the same theme and flips it around. Yvain marries Laudine, the widow of a man he has killed in combat. When he leaves her to return to Arthur’s court, she makes him promise to return within a year. Unfortunately, the fun of being in tournaments and his comradeship with Gawain make him forget his promise, and Laudine sends him a message rejecting his love. The rest of the poem follows Yvain as he seeks to redeem himself in Laudine’s eyes.

Lancelot, or The Knight of the Cart is the romance that introduced the love of Lancelot and Guenever. Guenever is kidnapped by Meliagant, and Lancelot must overcome a number of obstacles, including a bridge made out of the blade of a sword, in order to rescue her. Chrétien makes it clear in his prologue that he wrote this romance at the behest of Marie de Champagne, and he never finished it, leaving it to Godefroy de Leigni to complete, suggesting that he did not altogether agree with the theme of the poem.

Perceval, or The Story of the Grail is the first romance to deal with the most famous quest-object in the Arthurian canon. Perceval, a rather blundering knight, finds himself at the castle of the mysterious Fisher King. He sees a graal (what it might be is not explained fully, and it is introduced by the indefinite article, rather ingloriously) borne through the hall but, although his curiosity is burning within him, he does not ask whom the graal serves, because of some advice he has been given earlier in the story. When he awakens the following morning, the castle is empty, the lands all around are withered by drought and blight, and he is chidden for not asking the question that was on his mind. After a series of further adventures, Perceval at last returns to the Fisher King’s castle, asks the question, and restores the waste land to fertility.

Chrétien did not finish Perceval, presumably because of death, but it must have been a popular story, because four other poets attempted to write a conclusion to it in French, and Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote his own version of the whole story in German. A little-known poet to those who concentrate on modern literature, whose output was relatively small, Chrétien de Troyes has nevertheless left an unforgettable legacy: no Arthurian story is untouched by his influence.