Chrétien de Troyes was initiator of the medieval Romance genre. By focusing on the legends of Arthur, he placed them in the centre of medieval courtly culture.
The French poet, Chrétien de Troyes is known as the author of five Arthurian romances: Erec; Cligès; Lancelot, ou Le Chevalier à la charrette; Yvain, ou Le Chevalier au lion; and Perceval, ou Le Conte du Graal. The non-Arthurian tale Guillaume d’Angleterre, based on the legend of St. Eustace, may also have been written by Chrétien.
His tales, written in the vernacular, followed the appearance in France of Wace’s Roman de Brut (1155), a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae, which introduced Britain and the Arthurian legend to continental Europe.
Little is known of Chrétien’s life. However, some time in 1181, Chrétien de Troyes, worked at the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine’s eldest daughter, Marie of Champagne (1145-1197). Here he completed his Le Chevalier de la charrette. We know that Chrétien was the first to develop the character of Lancelot. If we are to believe his own words, ‘the material and the treatment of it Le Chevalier de la charrette were ‘given and furnished to him by the Countess’. Afterwards Lancelot’s fame spread to the most distant parts of Medieval Europe. This resulted in an impressive series of translations and rewritings in different languages, as the romance continued to develop as a narrative form, of which he was the initiator
Some of the oldest secular murals preserved in medieval castles show pictorial cycles of the adventures of the heroic knights made so famous by Chrétien de Troyes.
READ:
The Complete Story of the Grail: Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval and Its Continuations
By Nigel Bryant
Boydell & Brewer 2015
ISBN: 9781843844006
Arthurian Romances (Penguin Classics)
By Chrétien de Troyes (Author), William W. Kibler (Translator), Carleton W. Carroll (Translator)
Penguin Classics; Revised edition 2004
ISBN-10: 0140445218
ISBN-13: 978-0140445213
The Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes
By David Staines (Translator, Foreword)
Indiana University Press; Reprint edition 1991
ISBN-10: 0253207878
ISBN-13: 978-0253207876
Chrétien de Troyes, An Analytic Bibliography (1977) and Supplement (2002)
vol 1 – 2
By Douglas Kelly
Tamesis Books 1977 and 2002
READ MORE:
Medieval Romance and Material Culture
Edited by Nicholas Perkins
Boydell and Brewer 2015
ISBN: 9781843843900
Medieval romance narratives glitter with the material objects that were valued and exchanged in late-medieval society: lovers’ rings and warriors’ swords, holy relics and desirable or corrupted bodies. Romance, however, is also a genre in which such objects make meaning on numerous levels, and not always in predictable ways. These new essays examine from diverse perspectives how romances respond to material culture, but also show how romance as a genre helps to constitute and transmit that culture. Focusing on romances circulating in Britain and Ireland between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, individual chapters address such questions as the relationship between objects and protagonists in romance narrative; the materiality of male and female bodies; the interaction between visual and verbal representations of romance; poetic form and manuscript textuality; and how a nineteenth-century edition of medieval romances provoked artists to homage and satire.
Nicholas Perkins is Associate Professor and Tutor in English at St Hugh’s College, University of Oxford.
Contributors: Siobhain Bly Calkin, Nancy Mason Bradbury, Aisling Byrne, Anna Caughey, Neil Cartlidge, Mark Cruse, Morgan Dickson, Rosalind Field, Elliot Kendall, Megan G. Leitch, Henrike Manuwald, Nicholas Perkins, Ad Putter, Raluca L. Radulescu, Robert Allen Rouse,
Courtly Culture: Literature and Society in the High Middle Ages
By Joachim Bumke
University of California Press 1991
ISBN-10: 0520066340 ISBN-13: 978-0520066342
ABSTRACT:
Every aspect of “courtly culture” comes to life in Joachim Bumke’s extraordinarily rich and well-documented presentation. A renowned medievalist with an encyclopedic knowledge of original sources and a passion for history, Bumke overlooks no detail, from the material realities of aristocratic society–the castles and clothing, weapons and transportation, food, drink, and table etiquette–to the behavior prescribed and practiced at tournaments, knighting ceremonies, and great princely feasts. The courtly knight and courtly lady, and the transforming idea of courtly love, are seen through the literature that celebrated them, and we learn how literacy among an aristocratic laity spread from France through Germany and became the basis of a cultural revolution.
The book by Bumke was originally published in German under the title: Höfische Kultur. Literatur und Gesellschaft im hohen Mittelalter 1 – 2. Deutsche Taschenbuch-Verlag, München 1986
FEATURED IMAGE:
Le Chevalier au Lion BnF Manuscrits, Français 1433 fol 118 – © Bibliotheque nationale de France