Arthurian Romances

by Chretien de Troyes

  VAIR and MINIVER (OF menu or petit vair, gris) were both furs, highly prized for trim on medieval garments. Their exact origin is uncertain, though they probably came from different types of squirrel.

  VAVASOUR, the vassal of an important noble, rather than of the king. Although he might serve at court, his role there was traditionally occupied by the seneschal. The vavasour generally held an outlying fief and lived in the sort of manor house that formed an important stop along the routes of itinerant knights.

  VENTAIL (OF vantaille), a detachable triangular or rectangular flap of mail, laced by leather thongs to the mail hood or coif to protect the lower face.

  VESPERS, see CANONICAL HOURS.

  NOTES

  The numbers given in square brackets at the end of each note refer to the line(s) in the Old French text.

  EREC AND ENIDE

  1. Exotic locations were undoubtedly prized as sources of fashionable materials, but this particular name was probably chosen to rhyme with noble. [98]

  2. Hunting with hawks was one of the most important pastimes of the medieval nobility, and as such is frequently evoked in Chrétien’s romances. The sparrow-hawk was the smallest of the hunting birds. The term ‘hawk’ could refer to either the long-winged falcons or the short-winged birds known commonly today as hawks, and might include either sex. When one wishes to distinguish between the sexes, ‘falcon’ is used for the female of all long-winged hawks, and ‘tercel’ for the male (but the male sparrow-hawk is called a ‘musket’). The goshawk is a short-winged hawk, about six times the size of the sparrow-hawk, and was the most prized, as well as the most independent of hunting hawks. The largest and swiftest of medieval hunting birds was the gyrfalcon. To moult is to go through the annual process of shedding old feathers and acquiring new plumage. This does not happen during the hawk’s first year; a red hawk (also called a ‘sorehawk’ or ‘sorrel hawk’) is less than a year old and still has its first reddish-brown plumage. [352–4]

  3. This is the first example in Chrétien’s romances of a motif which was to enjoy great favour with him and romancers who followed: the ‘rash boon’. Typically, someone agrees to grant a request before it is formulated. The boon to be granted often goes against the grantor’s deepest wishes, or even his moral principles, but to fail to grant it would involve a loss of honour, though in this instance the vavasour, who has agreed to grant the boon, is delighted when he discovers what he has agreed to. [631–8]

  4. Perceval the Welshman will become the central hero of Chrétien’s The Story of the Grail. [1514]

  5. Lancelot, of course, is the hero of Chrétien’s later romance, The Knight of the Cart, and Go[r]nemant of Gohort is the mentor of the young Perceval in The Story of the Grail. The Yvain in 1. 1693 will become the hero of The Knight with the Lion. Other knights in this listing reappear in minor roles in later romances, by both Chrétien and his emulators. [1682–3]

  6. This list of ‘unnumbered’ knights varies according to the manuscript used. In Guiot’s MS (the base MS used for all translations in this volume except Cligés) there are twenty-one knights over twenty-two lines. In MS B (Foerster’s text) there are forty-two knights in forty-six lines, while in H (the shortest list), there are twenty-one names in eighteen lines. [1693–1714]

  7. Much has been written concerning the meaning of premiers vers in this line, which we translate ‘first movement’. Frappier (Chrétien de Troyes: L’homme et l’æuvre) refers to this first portion of the romance as the ‘prélude’, while René Louis translates ‘le premier couplet’. Comfort and Owen both translate simply ‘first part’. (Cf. Kelly 1970: 189–90, 195–6.) [1808]

  8. Morgan (le Fay) was Arthur’s sister. Chrétien alludes in Erec 1. 4172 and in The Knight with the Lion 1. 2957 to her healing powers, but gives no hint of the malevolent side of her character, which was to come to the fore in the Lancelot-Graal. [1921]

  9. On the night of Iseut’s marriage to Tristan’s uncle King Mark of Cornwall, Brangain, Isolde’s maid, took the place of her mistress in the marriage bed.

  10. In the twelfth century tournaments had little of the spectacle and elegance traditionally associated with them in the popular imagination today. They were not much more than pre-arranged battles with fixed time and space limitations, ‘crude and bloody affairs, forbidden by the Church and sternly suppressed by any central authority powerful enough to enforce its ban’ (Benson 1980: 23). The objective was to capture opposing knights and hold them for ransom. They might be preceded by jousts between individual champions, one on one, but the tournament itself was a clash of two large opposing forces of knights in a great mêlée or pitched battle. They are evoked by Chrétien as a part of the everyday reality of noble life as it was lived in his time. [2097ff.]

  11. A popular old French proverb, also used by Villon as the opening line to his ‘Ballade des proverbes’. This is one of many used by Chrétien in his romances. [2550]

  12. The art of decorating shields with individual coats of arms (blazons) apparently originated in the twelfth century, so Chrétien here evokes a relatively recent phenomenon. [2843]

  13. These lines have been variously interpreted. Our translation is taken, with minor modifications, from Z. P. Zaddy, Chrétien Studies (Glasgow, 1973) pp. 12–14, 184–9. She maintains that esprover (1. 5091) is used in the sense of: ‘assessing or recognizing someone’s character or worth’ rather than with its other meaning of subjecting someone or something to a deliberate test, and that to argue from this line ‘that Erec set out to test his wife’ is to mistake result for cause. [5090–92]

  14. For the first city, the MSS read Quarrois (Guiot), Robais (H), Rohais (PBVE). R. S. Loomis (1949, p. 490) claims the castle might be Roadan, the one Erec gave to Enide’s father (II. 1323, 1846), which he identifies as Rhuddlan in North Wales, but it seems strange that King Arthur would hold court there. The second location is also the setting for the opening of The Knight with the Lion, where its location is specified as Carduel en Gales (‘Carduel in Wales’). Carduel has been identified with Carlisle in Cumbria, one of Arthur’s principal residences in later romances. Gales (‘Wales’) might be a case of mistaken geography, or it might refer more generally to land occupied by the Cymri, including modern Cumbria. [5236]

  15. A green line on a horse is both surprising and puzzling, but the agreement of the MSS and the comparison to a vine-leaf lend credence to this interpretation. Foerster speculated that the term referred to some shade or tone, but Burgess (1984) and Buckbee (in Kelly 1985) see in this an allusion to the description of Camille’s palfrey in the Old French Eneas, an even more extraordinary animal, combining not only a dazzling array of colours but also physical features of several different animals. [5282]

  16. Thibaut, Ospinel, and Fernagu are traditional heroes of Old French epic poetry. [5732–3]

  17. Lavinia of Laurentum was wife of Aeneas.

  18. The reference is presumably to the city on the Rhône, south of Lyon. [5918]

  19. The vielle and fiddle were stringed instruments played with bows. The psaltery was a medieval stringed instrument played by plucking the strings with the fingers or with a plectrum or pick. Symphonia were large hurdy-gurdies, stringed instruments capable of producing melody and drone by means of a hand-cranked wheel. [6337–8]

  20. This puzzling line has provided much commentary on the part of editors and critics. Some have suggested a sexual image, whereas others see a less explicit expression of contagious joy. [6422]

  21. Macrobius was a fifth-century Latin grammarian and writer from whose Commentary on the Dream of Scipio Chrétien may have derived the notions of the liberal arts depicted on Erec’s robe. [6692]

  22. Berbïoletes have recently been plausibly identified by Glyn Burgess and John Curry (1989) as the multicoloured douc langur monkey of the Asian subcontinent. [6755]

  CLIGÉS

  In translating Cligés, I have preferred the reading of other MSS (usually Guiot) to Foerster’s edited text at the following lines:
499, 1043, 1286, 1287, 1906, 1966, 2135, 2374, 2627–8, 2668, 3308, 3554, 3611, 3804, 3807, 4154, 4594, 4661, 5422–3, 5491, 5529–30, 5675. 5800, 6249.

  1. Ovid’s Commandments is generally identified with his Remedia amoris, and the Art of Love with his Ars amatoria. ‘The Shoulder Bite’ is the Pelops story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 6; and ‘the metamorphosis of the hoopoe, swallow, and nightingale’ is the Philomela story in Metamorphoses, Book 6. Chrétien’s Old French translations of these have all been lost, with the possible exception of the latter, which might be preserved as the ‘Philomena’ story in the late thirteenth-century Ovide moralisé. Also lost is any version of the Tristan legend by Chrétien, to which he also alludes here. [2–7]

  2. The church of St Peter in Beauvais burned in 1180 and was replaced in the thirteenth century with the present High Gothic structure. [23]

  3. This is the most famous medieval French statement of the Classical theme of translatio studii, by which learning passed from Greece to Rome, and thence to France. [30–39]

  4. In this passage Chrétien engages in an extended and celebrated wordplay on la mers (‘the sea’), l’amer (‘bitter pain’), and amer (‘to love’), which regrettably cannot be captured in English. He appears to be imitating a similar passage in Thomas’s Tristan. [545–57]

  5. Etymological interpretation of names was popular in the Middle Ages. The impetus was given in the seventh century by Isidore of Seville’s encyclopaedic work, The Etymologies. Soredamors’s name means, literally, ‘she who is gilded by Love’ (sororee d’amors). [962ff.]

  6. Ganelon is the archetypal traitor in Old French literature, responsible for betraying Roland and the rearguard in the Song of Roland. [1076]

  7. Polynices and Eteocles were the sons of Oedipus and brothers of Antigone. Following Oedipus’ abdication, his two sons agreed to reign in alternate years, but after the first year Eteocles refused to step aside. In the famous ‘Seven Against Thebes’ expedition, Polynices led the Argive chiefs against his elder brother. All the allies died and Oedipus’ sons killed one another. Chrétien probably knew the legend from the Old French Roman de Thèbes, composed in the 1150s by an anonymous Norman poet. [2537–8]

  8. The heroine’s name Fenice (‘Phoenix’) is significant, as will be seen, since the phoenix was believed to rise from its ashes and became therefore, in the Middle Ages, the symbol of resurrection. [2725]

  9. In Metamorphoses, Book 3, Ovid recounts how Narcissus rejected the love of the nymph Echo and became enamoured of his own image, which he saw reflected in a fountain. Pining away because he was unable to possess his own image, he was transformed into the yellow flower with white petals that still bears his name. An Old French version of this legend was circulating in Chrétien’s day. [2767]

  10. King Mark of Cornwall’s nephew Tristan is here evoked positively for his skills in fighting and hunting, but on three subsequent occasions (11. 3147, 5260, 5313) he is mentioned unfavourably in the context of his illicit love for Mark’s wife Isolde the Blonde. These direct allusions, as well as a number of contrasting features in the two tales, have led many critics to view Chrétien’s Cligés as an ‘Anti-Tristan’ or as a recasting of the Tristan story in a comic mode. The influence of the Tristan story is evident in other of Chrétien’s romances as well, notably Erec and Enide and The Knight with the Lion. [2790]

  11. Medea, the wife of Jason, was a legendary Greek sorceress. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses 7, the country associated with her enchantments is Thessaly. [3031]

  12. In this topsy-turvy world, the pursuers are the pursued. The Middle Ages thought beavers ate fish, though today we know they are vegetarian. Most MSS and Foerster give tortre, turtre (‘turtledove’) which makes no sense, but MS R gives troite (‘trout’). [3850]

  13. Chrétien develops an elaborate financial metaphor on the notion of lending, borrowing, and repaying with interest. Cf. The Knight with the Lion 11. 6252–68. [4080–87]

  14. The idea seems to be that the flatterer must be by his lord’s side night and day, ready even to remove the feathers that have lodged in his master’s hair while he was sleeping upon a feather bed. [4529ff.]

  15. Cæsarea (Palestine), Toledo (Spain) and Candia (Crete) are evoked as distant exotic sites. [4746–7]

  16. At the Oxford tournament Cligés defeats two knights destined to become the principal heroes of two later romances by Chrétien: Lancelot of the Lake (The Knight of the Cart) and Perceval the Welshman (The Story of the Grait). Sagremor, whom he had defeated on the first day of the tournament, reappears briefly in Erec and Enide and The Knight with the Lion, before playing a prominent role in the Manessier Continuation of The Story of the Grail and the thirteenth-century Prose Vulgate. Gawain is the Arthurian knight who shares adventures with Lancelot, Yvain and Perceval in later romances, and who is the knight against whom all others’ worth is measured. [4759ff.]

  17. Pavia and Piacenza were wealthy commercial centres in twelfth-century Lombardy. [5200]

  18. As Foerster first noted, this unusual moral teaching is not to be found in St Paul. It may be a liberal interpretation of 1 Corinthians vii.8–9, ‘To those not married and to widows I have this to say: it would be well if they remain as they are, even as I do myself; but if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.’ Interestingly, Chrétien also misquotes Scripture in his prologue to The Story of the Grail, where he attributes a verse by John to Paul (see note5 to The Story of the Grail).

  19. The most important medical schools in the Middle Ages were at Salerno in Italy and Montpellier in France. Doctors from Montpellier are alluded to in Chrétien’s Knight of the Cart, 1. 3485. [5818]

  20. The legend of King Solomon, deceived by his wife so she could enjoy her lover, was the subject of a popular fabliau in Chrétien’s day and an important part of the medieval misogynist arsenal. [5876ff.]

  21. Almería and Tudela were cities in Moorish-occupied Spain reputed for their great wealth. [6332–4]

  22. The precise type of bird (OF machet) that, along with the lark (OF aloe), is hunted by the tiny sparrow-hawk is unclear. It may be a type of owl or a gannet, but Comfort’s ‘brown-thrush’ or Owens’s thrush-like ‘wheatear’ seem more plausible. [6432]

  23. A tanned or dark complexion in the Middle Ages, unlike today, was considered a sign of low birth. Only those who were obligated to work in the sun by day were tanned; nobles prided themselves on having lily-white complexions. [6779]

  THE KNIGHT OF THE CAST (LANCELOT)

  1. ‘My lady of Champagne’ is Marie de Champagne, daughter of the French King Louis VII by his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Marie was married in 1159 to Henri I the Liberal of Champagne and was the patroness of Chrétien, Andreas Capellanus, Conon de Béthune, and other important writers of both Latin and vernacular literature. Theirs was the principal literary court of twelfth-century France, and was rivalled in Europe only by that in England of her mother Eleanor and her second husband, Henry II Plantagenet. [1]

  2. In spite of Uitti’s objections (1984), I prefer the traditional interpretation of this passage, which preserves its symmetry, with the term representing the countess consistently in first position. Uitti’s selective ‘editorial grill’ eliminates contravening data (e.g., the separation of qui from its antecedent in lines 7–8, and the fact that si con does not normally cause inversion in this text) and obliges him to come up with a line supported by none of the extant MSS. The traditional reading remains much more strongly supported by the existing evidence. Rahilly (1974, p. 413), in the only detailed study of the Garrett MS, upon which Uitti bases his arguments, concludes that it ‘apporte peu d’aide à notre compréhension de la tradition textuelle. Plusieurs omissions, des passages embrouillés, des réfections donnent l’impression qu’il s’agit d’une part d’un texte de la tradition copié tardivement, d’autre part d’une certaine inattention scribale qui mène à des interprétations assez particulières à ce manuscrit’. [12]


  3. The precise meanings of the principal terms in this passage are the subject of much scholarly dispute. The countess is, of course, ‘My lady of Champagne’. Matiere (‘source’) is usually interpreted to refer to Chrétien’s source matter or story – be it Celtic, Classical, or contemporary; san (‘meaning’) furnished (like the matiere) by the Countess, is seen as the meaning or interpretation given the source material – and refers therefore to the thematic interpretation of the entire poem. Painne (‘effort’) might ‘include all the steps of composition from the conception of the matter and order of the poem to the final organization’ (Kelly 1966, p. 94), while antancion (‘diligence’) appears to refer to the care and attention that Chrétien showed in the elaboration of the matiere so as to reveal the san intended by the countess. The tone of the prologue is ambiguous and much disputed, and indeed the problem of tone extends to the entire romance. Is Chrétien saying he will offer a serious and sympathetic depiction of an adulterous courtly love relationship, as Marie has requested? Or does he ironically and humorously undercut his patroness’s apparent wishes, suggesting thereby that the practice of ‘courtly love’ renders a lover ridiculous? [24–9]

  4. This is the earliest known mention of Arthur’s famous castle of Camelot, and the only allusion to it in Chrétien’s works. Whether it actually existed and its location are still the subjects of much scholarly disagreement. Caerleon is generally identified as Caerleon on the river Usk (Gwent). [32]