Chretien de Troyes & Western Literature
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Chretien de Troyes was a twelfth century French court poet who played a major part in shaping both the tone and the subject matter of popular literature, not only in his own time, but to our own day. He helped to popularize the legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table as a subject of literature, and to him, in large measure, we "owe the colour" in which Arthurian subject matter is still presented, as recently as the 1964 movie "Camelot."1 This paper is a study of the role which Chretien de Troyes played, specifically, in the development of the medieval tradition of "courtly love." To understand the importance of Chretien de Troyes in Western literature, and in our very ways of thinking, we may begin by considering the word romance. It has three main meanings in English. Two are fairly closely related; the third has no obvious connection to either of them. By far the most familiar meaning, the meaning that most people will immediately think of on hearing the word romance is "love affair." Two people falling in love are said to be having a romance. A romance novel is a novel about a love affair. An atmosphere which we associate with love affairs candlelight dinners, soft music, walks by moonlight is called a romantic atmosphere. The second, related meaning of romance is a story or atmosphere of adventure. It is related to the most familiar meaning because a love affair is supposed to be an adventure of sorts, and because in o
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Love in the strictest sense. Erec, a young knight of King Arthur's court, enters into a traditional arranged marriage with Enide, daughter of a minor king.9 Only after they are married do they "fall in love," and since they are married, their passion is entirely lawful. Nevertheless, their love displays many of the emotive qualities of courtly love. It is passionate in quality, and Enide, as a king's daughter, is of higher social rank within the nobility than is Erec.
Cliges, Chretien's second romance, can be seen in a sense as a "refutation" or criticism of another pioneering courtly romance, the adulterous love story of Tristan and Isolde.10 In the Tristan story, Tristan and Isolde accidently drink a love potion meant to be drunk by Isolde and her intended husband, King Mark, and they promptly fall in love with one another, with properly tragic results. In Cliges, the triangle involves the young knight Cliges, his love Fenice, and her affianced husband to be, an old goat named Alis. A sort of love potion also figures in this tale; Fenice gives a potion to Alis which makes ________
9Noble, 12ff.
10Ibid., 31ff. him think that he is enjoying intimacy with Fenice, though in fact he is not. As a resu
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Approximate Word count = 4886
Approximate Pages = 20 (250 words per page)
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