Arthurian Romances (2 page)

Since this prologue mentions only
Erec
among his major romances, it is assumed that
The Knight of the Cart, The Knight with the Lion
and
The Story of the Grail
all postdate
Cligés
. From this listing it seems established that early in his career Chrétien perfected his technique by practising the then popular literary mode of translations and adaptations of tales from Latin into the vernacular. The
‘comandemanz d'Ovide
' is usually identified with
Ovid's
Remedia amoris
(Remedies for Love); the ‘
art d'amors'
is Ovid's
Ars amatoria
(Art of Love), and the
‘mors de l'espaule'
is the Pelops story in Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, Book 6. These works by Chrétien have all been lost. However, the
‘muance de la hupe et de l'aronde et del rossignol'
(the Philomela story in
Metamorphoses
6) is preserved in the late thirteenth-century
Ovide moralisé
, a lengthy allegorical treatment of Ovid's
Metamorphoses
, in a version that is most probably by our author.

Chrétien also informs us in this passage that he composed a poem
‘Del roi Marc et d'Iseut la blonde'
. As far as we know, this was the first treatment of that famous Breton legend in French. Chrétien does not tell us whether he had written a full account of the tragic loves of Tristan and Isolde, and scholars today generally agree that he treated only an episode of that legend since Mark's name, and not Tristan's, is linked with Isolde's. But we are none the less permitted to believe that he is in some measure responsible for the subsequent success of that story, as he was to be in large measure for that of King Arthur. Indeed, in his earliest romances Chrétien seems obsessed with the Tristan legend, which he mentions several times in
Erec and Enide
and against which his
Cligés
(often referred to as an ‘anti-Tristan') is seen to react.

In the prologues to his other romances (only
The Knight with the Lion
has no prologue) Chrétien often speaks in the first person about his poetry and purposes. He gives us the fullest version of his name, Crestïens de Troies, in the prologue to
Erec
, and this designation is also used by Huon de Mery in the
Tornoiement Antecrist
, by Gerbert de Montreuil in his
Continuation
of
The Story of the Grail
and by the anonymous authors of
Hunbaut, Le Chevalier à l'épée
, and the
Didot-Perceval
. In the prologues to
Cligés
(l. 45),
The Knight of the Cart
(l. 25), and
The Story of the Grail
(l. 62), and in the closing lines of
The Knight with the Lion
(l. 6821), he calls himself simply Crestïens. The fuller version of his name given in
Erec
suggests that he was born or at least spent his formative years in Troyes, which is located some one hundred miles along the Seine to the south-east of Paris and was one of the leading cities in the region of Champagne. The language in which he composed his works, which is tinted with dialectal traits from the Champagne area, lends further credence to this supposition.

At Troyes, Chrétien most assuredly was associated with the court of Marie de Champagne, one of the daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine by her first marriage, to King Louis VII of France. Marie's marriage in 1159 to Henri the Liberal, Count of Champagne, furnishes us with one of the very few dates that can be determined with any degree of certainty in Chrétien's biography. In the opening lines of
The Knight of the Cart
, Chrétien informs
us that he is undertaking the composition of his romance at the behest of ‘my lady of Champagne', and critics today agree unanimously that this can only be the great literary patroness Marie. Since she only became ‘my lady of Champagne' with her marriage, Chrétien could not have begun a romance for her before 1159.

Another relatively certain date in Chrétien's biography is furnished by the dedication of
The Story of the Grail
to Philip of Flanders. It appears that, sometime after the death of Henri the Liberal in 1181, Chrétien found a new patron in Philip of Alsace, a cousin to Marie de Champagne, who became Count of Flanders in 1168 and to whom Chrétien dedicated his never-to-be-completed grail romance. This work surely was begun before Philip's death in 1191 at Acre in the Holy Land, and most likely prior to his departure for the Third Crusade in September of 1190. Chrétien may have abandoned the poem after learning of Philip's death, or his own death may well have occurred around this time.

Apart from the dates 1159 and 1191, nothing else concerning Chrétien's biography can be fixed with certainty. Allusions in
Erec
to Macrobius and the Liberal Arts, to Alexander, Solomon, Helen of Troy and others, coupled with similar allusions in other romances, suggest that he received the standard preparation of a
clerc
in the flourishing church schools in Troyes, and therefore must have entered minor orders. The style of his love monologues, particularly in
Cligés
, shows familiarity with the dialectal method of the schools, in which opposites are juxtaposed and analysed, as well as with the rhetorical traditions of Classical and medieval Latin literature. It is possible, however, that he derived his style and knowledge of Classical themes uniquely from works available to him in the vernacular, without having undergone any special training in Latin, since all of the Classical stories to which he alludes had been turned into Old French by 1165. The elaborate descriptions of clothing and ceremonies in several of his romances can likewise be traced to contemporary works composed in French, particularly to Wace's
Roman de Brut
and the anonymous
Eneas
and
Floire et Blancheflor
.

Circumstantial evidence also strongly suggests that Chrétien spent some of his early career in England and may well have composed his first romance there. References to English cities and topography, especially in
Cligés
but indeed in all of his works, show that the Britain of King Arthur was the England of King Henry II Plantagenet. Moreover, there is a close link between Troyes and England in the person of Henry of Blois, abbot of Glastonbury (1126–71) and bishop of Winchester (1129–71). This prelate
was the uncle of Henri the Liberal of Champagne, at whose court we have seen Chrétien to have been engaged. Henry of Blois had important contacts with Geoffrey of Monmouth and William of Malmesbury, two medieval Latin writers who, more than any others, popularized the legends of King Arthur that Chrétien was to introduce to the aristocratic public.

An even closer tie to Henry II's England has been proposed in the case of
Erec and Enide
, in which the coronation of Erec at Nantes on Christmas Day may be a reflection of contemporary politics. In 1169 Henry held a Christmas court at Nantes in order to force the engagement of his third son, Geoffrey, to Constance, the daughter of Conan IV of Brittany. This court had significant political ramifications for it assured through marital politics the submission of the major Breton barons, a submission Henry had not been able to attain by successive military campaigns in 1167, 1168 and 1169. The guest list at the coronation of Erec includes barons from all corners of Henry II's domains but, significantly, none from those of his rival Louis VII of France. Two other details from this coronation scene lend credence to such an identification: the thrones on which Arthur and Erec are seated are described as having leopards sculpted upon their arms, and the donor of these thrones is identified as Bruianz des Illes. Leopards were the heraldic animals on Henry's royal arms, and Bruianz des liles has been positively identified as Henry's best friend, Brian of Wallingford, named in contemporary documents as Brian Fitz Count, Brian
de ínsula
, or Brian de l'lsle. It thus seems plausible that
Erec
was composed at the behest of Henry II to help legitimize Geoffrey's claim to the throne of Brittany by underscoring the ‘historical' link between Geoffrey and Arthur. This would place its composition shortly after 1169 while memories of the Nantes court were still fresh. Such a dating corresponds well with what we know about the composition of Chrétien's other romances, which most critics now place in the 1170s and 1180s.

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.