One of the greatest vernacular writers of the Middle Ages, Chretien is the first known author of an Arthurian romance (initially, a narrative poem written in octosyllabic couplets), active between 1165 and 1190. He wrote five such romances (Erec et Enide, Cliges, Le Chevalier de la charrette, Le Chevalier au lion, and Le Conte du graal), two surviving lyric poems, a series of adaptations from Ovid, and a lost poem about King Mark and Iseult, all of them in Old French. He may also have been the author of a non-Arthurian romance, Guillaume d’Angleterre.
Chretien wrote Le Chevalier de la charrette (also known as Lancelot) for Marie of Champagne (d. 1198), daughter of King Louis VII of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and wife of Henry I (the Liberal), count of Champagne (d. 1181). He wrote Le Conte du graal (Perceval) for Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders (d. 1191). Given that he wrote for the courts of Flanders and Champagne, both of which had strong crusading traditions, Chretien’s work is astonishingly free of references to the crusade movement. It does contain a handful of allusions to the Near East (Arabia, Babylon, Beirut, Constantinople, Greece, India, Persia, Saracens, and Turks), but these occur almost invariably in stock expressions or as the sources of exotic stuffs and objects. He never mentions Jerusalem, and the only reference to Saracens in the entire oeuvre occurs in the Chevalier de la charrette, where the people of the fictitious land of Gorre are said to be “worse than Saracens” [Chretien de Troyes, The Complete Romances, p. 196]. The only direct references to the crusade movement occur in the Chevalier au lion (Yvain), where the character Kay the Seneschal notes that “after dinner, without budging, everyone goes to slay Noradin,” that is, Nur al-Din, the Muslim ruler of Syria (d. 1174) [Chretien de Troyes, The Complete Romances, p. 264], and in the Chevalier de la charrette, where the narrator states that certain knights refrained from participating in a tournament because they had taken the cross to go on crusade.
These references show that Chretien was aware of the crusade movement. His description of the order of chivalry as “the highest honor God had created and ordained,” in the Conte du graal [Chretien de Troyes, The Complete Romances, p. 360], perhaps also owes something to Bernard of Clair-vaux’s ideas about the new chivalry. It has also recently been argued that his portrayal of the ailing Fisher King in Conte du graal may have been influenced by the historical figure of the Leper King, Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (d. 1185). However, the crusade movement never figures directly in any of Chretien’s works. This may have been because the Arthurian world he describes supposedly dated to the sixth century, or because it was a resolutely fictional world whose literary strength lay precisely in its detachment from the everyday world of its audiences; but it is a remarkable and curious absence.
-Jeff Rider
Bibliography
Chretien de Troyes, The Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes, trans. David Staines (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1990).
-, Oeuvres completes, gen. ed. Daniel Poirion (Paris:
Gallimard, 1994).
Diverres, Armel, “The Grail and the Third Crusade. Thoughts on Le Conte del graal by Chretien de Troyes,” Arthurian Literature, 10, ed. Richard Barber (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 13-109.
Holmes, Urban Tigner, Chretien de Troyes (New York:
Twayne, 1970).
Uitti, Karl D., Chretien de Troyes Revisited (New York:
Twayne, 1995).
World History
