The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes: The Art of Ambivalence

The urge towards love, pushed to its limit, is an urge towards death.

— George Bataille

The legends surrounding King Arthur and his court are rich and diverse, not just in narrative content, but in the different approaches which authors throughout the ages have taken to write about the cast of characters that surround the "once and future king." Rooted in Celtic oral traditions filled with elements of the supernatural, the earliest written examples of Arthurian stories are quite practical in intent. Historia Britonum of the 9th century AD was composed to justify the Welsh King Merfyn's claim to all of Britain. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae would become the founding text of Arthurian chronicle tradition as we know it, folding in the legend of Arthur with that of the Homeric and Virgilian traditions, asserting that people of the British isles were descendants from Trojans who fled the sword of Agamemnon.

It was Chrétien de Troyes (1135-1191) in the 12th century whose writing transformed a much cruder tradition of Arthurian legend into a truly literary form, written in the vernacular Old French rather than scholarly Latin. Chrétien, unlike previous composers of Arthurian narrative, did not see faithfulness to an original text or series of events to be his final goal. Instead, his interest was in the bele conjointure, that is, the satisfying arrangement of source material to express a thesis. As Ad Putter remarks, “having thrown off the shackles of history, Chrétien presents a universe that is self-consciously fictional and obeys its own rules.” Yet Chrétien’s works do not consist merely of sequences of combat, adventures, marvels, and, of course, love stories. Such devices are but vehicles for getting across the stories' central concern—how men and women deal with a crisis whose onset typically arises from the heroes reaching a high point in their chivalric career, a crisis which sets their individuality against the social order which grants them recognition. It is the interiority of the hero, then, and its possible threat to social order, which brings about this recurrent crisis in Chrétien's poetry. Chrétien's development of the interiority of his characters, coupled with the no less recurrent theme of identity lost and recovered, has earned him the reputation among some scholars as Europe's "first novelist," introducing the world to complex and almost comically quixotic figures such as Lancelot, and provocative, dreamlike tales such as the story of the Grail.

Concurrent with Chrétien's unique approach to Arthurian legend was the shift of European social organization towards urbanization, as well as the changing face of nobility. Since the 11th century, noble families had begun to shift from "spatial" and "horizontal" modes of organization premised upon martial prowess and vassalage, towards more "vertical" modes which increasingly emphasized lineage, inheritance of land, and a new vocabulary of nobility whose most notable exponents were heraldry and the chansons de geste, or "songs of lineage" which established the family name as that which had its roots in a mythic time beyond memory.

If the chansons celebrated this new form of aristocratic social organization and identity, the romance poem, exemplified by Chrétien de Troyes, would be something very different. In distinction from the chanson, whose limited linguistic formulas rarely examine the gap between illusion and reality, Norris J. Lacy recommends that the romance poems of Chrétien de Troyes be read as essais, that is, attempts at questioning, though ultimately reconciling with, the reality of these social changes. How does a noble class whose integrity had been based upon its special privilege of violence integrate themselves into an increasingly civilized, urbanized, and legalistic way of life? At the heart of Chrétien's work lies this very question.

The Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes have mesmerized readers for centuries. So much more than mere adventure tales or simple love stories, Chrétien's five romances (Erec & Enide, Cligés, Lancelot: the Knight of the Cart, Yvain: the Knight with the Lion, Perceval: the Story of the Grail) are works of profound psychic depth which explore the tensions between male and female, the individual and society, pride and humility, desire and death, as well as meaning and its expression in/as language.

The New York Public Library is hosting a series of 10 online lectures to assist both the reader and the merely curious alike in understanding the world of Chrétien de Troyes and his Arthurian Romances through a lens at once literary, historical, and psychological, so that we may understand the relevance of Chrétien's poetry for our own times. The series will begin on Thursday, June 13th, 2024, taking place every second and fourth Thursdays of each month at 6 PM. Click here to access the registration page to register for all events. Registration for this first event qualifies as registration for the entire series.

This is an online-only program. Reading the material is not necessary for attendance or participation. If you have questions about this program or need help accessing the reading, please email andrewfairweather@nypl.org

You must register with your email address in order to receive the link to participate. The link will be sent to you by email approximately one day before the discussion. You will need a device with audio and/or video and an internet connection to join.

• Part I: Erec & Enide (a) - [pp. 37- 70] - Thursday, June 13,  6 PM
• Part II: Erec & Enide (b) - [pp. 71 - 122] - Thursday, June 27, 6 PM
• Part III: Cligés (a) - [pp. 123 - 157] - Thursday, July 11, 6 PM 
• Part IV: Cligés (b) - [pp. 157 - 205] - Thursday, July 25, 6 PM
• Part V: Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart (a) - [pp. 206 - 238] - Thursday, August 8, 6 PM
• Part VI: Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart (b) - [pp. 239 - 294] - Thursday, August 22, 6 PM
• Part VII: Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion (a) - [pp. 295 - 330] - Thursday, September 12, 6 PM
• Part VIII: Yvain, or the Knight with the Lion (b) - [pp. 330 - 380] - Thursday, September 26, 6 PM
• Part IX: Perceval, or the Story of the Grail (a) - [pp. 381 - 431] - Thursday, October 10, 6 PM
• Part X: Perceval, or the Story of the Grail (b) - [pp. 431 - 494] - Thursday, October 24, 6 PM

We will be working from the translations found in the Penguin Classics edition of Chrétien de Troyes' Arthurian Romances. Page numbers refer to those found in print copies of this edition.

• Archibald, E., Putter, A. (Eds.) (2009). The Cambridge companion to the Arthurian legend. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press
• Bloch, M. (1989). Feudal Society. London ; New York : Routledge
• Bloch, R. H. (1983). Etymologies and genealogies : a literary anthropology of the French Middle Ages. Chicago : University of Chicago Press
• Brody, S. N. (2001). Reflections of Yvain's Inner Life. Romance Philology, 54(2), 277–298. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44742150
• Bruckner, M. T. (1986). An Interpreter’s Dilemma: Why Are There So Many Interpretations of Chrétien’s “Chevalier de la Charrette?” Romance Philology, 40(2), 159–180. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44942815
• Cavendish, R. (1978). King Arthur & the Grail : the Arthurian legends and their meaning. London : Weidenfeld and Nicolson,
• Condren, E. I. (1970). The Paradox of Chrétien’s Lancelot. MLN, 85(4), 434–453. https://doi.org/10.2307/2907990
• Duggan, J. J. (2001). The romances of Chrétien de Troyes . New Haven : Yale University Press
• Feinstein, S. (1999). Losing Your Head in Chrétien’s “Knight of the Cart.” Arthuriana, 9(4), 45–62. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869496
• Frappier, J. (1982). Chrétien de Troyes, the man and his work . Athens, Ohio : Ohio University Press
• Haidu, P. (1968). Aesthetic distance in Chrétien de Troyes : irony and comedy in Cligés and Perceval. Genève, Droz, 1968.
• Harris, J. (1949). The Rôle of the Lion in Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain. PMLA, 64(5), 1143–1163. https://doi.org/10.2307/459555
• Keen, M. (1984). Chivalry . New Haven : Yale University Press, 1984
• Kelly, D. (Ed.) (1985). The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes : a symposium. Lexington, Ky. : French Forum, c1985.
• Lacy, N. J., Grimbert, J. T. (Eds.) (2005). A companion to Chrétien de Troyes. Cambridge [England] ; New York : D.S. Brewer
• Lacy, N. J. (1984) "Cligés" and Courtliness.  Interpretations, 15(2), 18–24. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23241570
• Lacy, N. J. )1980). The craft of Chrétien de Troyes : an essay on narrative art. Leiden : Brill
• Luria, M. S. (1967). The Storm-Making Spring and the Meaning of Chrétien’s “Yvain.” Studies in Philology, 64(4), 564–585. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4173574
• McCracken, P. (2008). Love and War in Cligés. Arthuriana 18(3), 6-18. https://doi.org/10.1353/art.0.0013.
• Schroeder, J. L. (1998). The vestal and the fasces : Hegel, Lacan, property, and the feminine. Berkeley : University of California Press
• Ragland, E. (1995). Psychoanalysis and Courtly Love. Arthuriana, 5(1), 1–20. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869092
• Schweitzer, E. C. (1974). Pattern and Theme in Chrétien’s ‘Yvain’  Traditio, 30, 145–189. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27830966
• Sturm-Maddox, S. (1982). The “Joie De La Cort” : Thematic Unity in Chrétien’s “Erec et Enide.” Romania, 103(412 (4)), 513–528. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45041127
• Sullivan, P. (1983). The Presentation of Enide in the “Premier Vers” of  Chrétien’s “Erec et Enide.” Medium Ævum, 52(1), 77–89. https://doi.org/10.2307/43628684
• Vance, E. (1986). Chrétien’s Yvain and the Ideologies of Change and Exchange. Yale French Studies, 70, 42–62. https://doi.org/10.2307/2929848