Four Arthurian Romances
elegance which is peculiarly French, and which is inseparably associated
with the Arthurian legends in all modern literature. Though Beroul, and
perhaps other poets, had previously based romantic poems upon individual
Celtic heroes like Tristan, nevertheless to Chrétien, so far as we can
see, is due the considerable honour of having constituted Arthur's court
as a literary centre and rallying-point for an innumerable company
of knights and ladies engaged in a never-ending series of amorous
adventures and dangerous quests. Rather than unqualifiedly attribute
to Chrétien this important literary convention, one should bear in mind
that all his poems imply familiarity on the part of his readers with
the heroes of the court of which he speaks. One would suppose that other
stories, told before his versions, were current. Some critics would go
so far as to maintain that Chrétien came toward the close, rather than
at the beginning, of a school of French writers of Arthurian romances.
But, if so, we do not possess these earlier versions, and for lack of
rivals Chrétien may be hailed as an innovator in the current schools of
poetry.
And now let us consider the faults which a modern reader will not be
slow to detect in Chrétien's style. Most of his salient faults are
common to all mediaeval narrative literature. They may be ascribed to
the extraordinary leisure of the class for whom it was composed--a class
which was always ready to read an old story told again, and which would
tolerate any description, however detailed. The pastimes of this
class of readers were jousting, hunting, and making love. Hence the
preponderance of these matters in the literature of its leisure hours.
No detail of the joust or hunt was unfamiliar or unwelcome to these
readers; no subtle arguments concerning the art of love were too
abstruse to delight a generation steeped in amorous casuistry and
allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after
comparison with other authors of his times, Chrétien must be let off
with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid what was
indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in general. To
appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chrétien one must know some
other forms of mediaeval literature, such as the fabliaux, farces, and
morality plays, in which courtesy imposed no restraint. For our poet's
lack of sense of proportion, and for his carelessness in the proper
motivation of many episodes, no apology can be made. He is not always
guilty; some episodes betoken poetic mastery. But a poet acquainted, as
he was, with some first-class Latin poetry, and who had made a business
of his art, ought to have handled his material more intelligently,
even in the twelfth century. The emphasis is not always laid with
discrimination, nor is his yarn always kept free of tangles in the
spinning.
Reference has been made to Chrétien's use of his sources. The tendency
of some critics has been to minimise the French poet's originality by
pointing out striking analogies in classic and Celtic fable. Attention
has been especially directed to the defence of the fountain and the
service of a fairy mistress in "Yvain", to the captivity of Arthur's
subjects in the kingdom of Gorre, as narrated in "Lancelot", reminding
one so insistently of the treatment of the kingdom of Death from which
some god or hero finally delivers those in durance, and to the reigned
death of Fenice in "Cligés", with its many variants. These episodes are
but examples of parallels which will occur to the observant reader. The
difficult point to determine, in speaking of conceptions so widespread
in classic and mediaeval literature, is the immediate source whence
these conceptions reached Chrétien. The list of works of reference
appended to this volume will enable the student to go deeper into
this much debated question, and will permit us to dispense with an
examination of the arguments in this place. However, such convincing
parallels for many of Chrétien's fairy and romantic episodes have been
adduced by students of Irish and Welsh legend that one cannot fail to
be impressed by the fact that Chrétien was in touch, either by oral or
literary tradition, with the populations of Britain and of Brittany, and
that we have here his most immediate inspiration. Professor Foerster,
stoutly opposing the so-called Anglo-Norman theory which supposes the
existence of lost Anglo-Norman romances in French as the sources of
Chrétien de Troyes, is, nevertheless, well within the truth when
he insists upon what is, so far as we are concerned, the essential
originality of the French poet. The general reader will to-day care as
little as did the reader of the twelfth century how the poet came upon
the motives and episodes of his stories, whether he borrowed them or
invented them himself. Any poet should be judged not as a "finder"
but as a "user" of the common stock of ideas. The study of sources of
mediaeval poetry, which is being so doggedly carried on by scholars, may
well throw light upon the main currents of literary tradition, but it
casts no reflection, favourable or otherwise, upon the personal art of
the poet in handling his stuff. On that count he may plead his own cause
before the jury.
Chrétien's originality, then, consists in his portrayal of the social
ideal of the French aristocracy in the twelfth century. So far as we
know he was the first to create in the vulgar tongues a vast court,
where men and women lived in conformity with the rules of courtesy,
where the truth was told, where generosity was open-handed, where the
weak and the innocent were protected by men who dedicated themselves to
the cult of honour and to the quest of a spotless reputation. Honour and
love combined to engage the attention of this society; these were
its religion in a far more real sense than was that of the Church.
Perfection was attainable under this code of ethics: Gawain, for
example, was a perfect knight. Though the ideals of this court and
those of Christianity are in accord at many points, vet courtly love and
Christian morality are irreconcilable. This Arthurian material, as used
by Chrétien, is fundamentally immoral as judged by Christian standards.
Beyond question, the poets and the public alike knew this to be the
case, and therein lay its charm for a society in which the actual
relations or the sexes were rigidly prescribed by the Church and by
feudal practice, rather than by the sentiments of the individuals
concerned. The passionate love of Tristan for Iseut, of Lancelot for
Guinevere, of Cligés for Fenice, fascinate the conventional Christian
society of the twelfth century and of the twentieth century alike,
but there-is only one name among men for such relations as theirs, and
neither righteousness nor reason lie that way. Even Tennyson, in spite
of all he has done to spiritualise this material, was compelled to
portray the inevitable dissolution and ruin of Arthur's court. Chrétien
well knew the difference between right and wrong, between reason and
passion, as the reader of "Cligés" may learn for himself. Fenice was not
Iseut, and she would not have her Cligés to 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 Chrétien'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", "Cligés", "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 Chrétien'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 Chrétien. 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, Chrétien 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. "Cligés" 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 Chrétien'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 Chrétien 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
Chrétien's art, if indeed it be his work.
A few words must be devoted to Chrétien'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