. The history of Arthurian romance from the end of the 12th century through most of the 13th is dominated by Chrétien de Troyes. When Chrétien died, probably in the 1180s, he left behind four complete romances of about 6,000 lines each (Erec et Enide, Cligés, Lancelot, and Yvain), and a fifth, unfinished at 9,234 lines (Perceval). The renown of these poems was unparalleled in French literature, their popularity being attested by reference, allusion, quotation, translation, and adaptation. Verse romance after Chrétien may be seen as a response or reaction to the works of the master.
The two or three decades following Chrétien’s death are peculiarly wanting in Arthurian verse romance. This may be historical accident, of course, in that little has survived, but it does look as if authors at the end of the 12th and very beginning of the 13th century had difficulty coping with the overwhelming reputation of Chrétien. Only Renaut de Beaujeu’s Bel Inconnu and a number of shorter poems can be assigned with any probability to this period. Renaut’s full-length romance is at once clearly different from Chrétien’s and yet owes a good deal to him. Two short so-called lais, Cor and Mantel, not actual lais bretons as written by Marie de France, are variations on a chastity-test theme in which many of the ladies of Arthur’s court prove to have been unfaithful to their partners. The poems are humorous and border occasionally on the obscene, perhaps surprising for such early texts. Two anonymous lais bretons, Tyolet and Melion, are Arthurian in their setting rather than in their essence, although Tyolet is quite clearly derived from Chrétien’s Perceval. The Gawain romances, Mule sans frein and Chevalier a l’épée also date from ca. 1200. Finally, the first two continuations of Chrétien’s Perceval may have been composed in their first versions about the turn of the century.
The 13th century saw the composition of Meraugis de Portlesguez by Raoul de Houdenc, Gliglois, Durmart le Gallois, Yder(all probably before 1220), the Occitan jaufre (ca. 1230), Fergus by Guillaume le Clerc, the Chevalier aux deux épées or Meriadeuc (before 1250), Floriant et Florete, the Merveilles de Rigomer (before 1268), Claris et Laris, and Escanor by Girart d’Amiens (before 1282). These po ems have many features in common with the Gawain romances. The only Arthurian verse romance written in the 14th century is Froissart’s Méliador, which can better be seen as an anachronism than the last example of the genre.
Raoul de Houdenc’s Meraugis de Portlesguez, of 5,938 lines, is notable for its discussion of courtly virtues articulated through the rivalry of two friends, Meraugis and Gorvain Cadrut, for the love of Lidoine. Raoul, perhaps the most talented of those writing in Chrétien’s wake, is one of the first to accept the challenge laid down by Chrétien. For Raoul, the decision to write an Arthurian romance meant acknowledging a debt to the master while realizing the necessity to do something different. Raoul’s Arthurian romance is playful, the humor ranging from light burlesque to broad farce.
Gliglois is a romance of 2,942 lines concerned with the rivalry of Gawain and his squire, Gliglois, for the love of the aptly named Beauté. Gawain relies on his reputation, assuming that this will be sufficient to win him the lady; Gliglois, on the other hand, serves her patiently and eventually wins her love. Gliglois is unusual in that it is a “realistic” poem without any fantastic or supernatural events and none of the usual adventures of Arthurian romance. It is also, by virtue of Gliglois’s success and Gawain’s failure, an exceptionally “meritocratic” romance.
The influence of Chrétien de Troyes is strangely lacking in Gliglois. The same cannot be said of the 16,000-line Durmart le Gallois, whose author is heavily indebted to Erec et Enide, Yvain, and Cligés in particular. Much of the narrative of Durmart is based on Durmart’s quest for the love of the Queen of Ireland, whom he has never seen but of whose extraordinary beauty he has heard tell. The scene in which Durmart wins a sparrowhawk for her makes conscious use of the famous episode in Erec et Enide. After many adventures, Durmart marries the queen, founds an abbey, and frees Rome from the pagans. Unusual are the Irish setting and the general lack of humor and burlesque (save perhaps the sight of King Nogant fleeing from Durmart on a camel).
The very beginning of Yder is missing. The extant 6,769 lines relate how the illegitimate Yder attempts to win the love of Queen Guenloie. This he eventually does, marries her, and then brings about the wedding of his father and mother, thus legitimizing his own birth. Yder is remarkable for its unflattering portrayal of the Arthurian court: there are hints of an amorous relationship between Yder and Guenevere, and Arthur and Kay are positively obnoxious characters rather than the ineffective king and caustic seneschal found elsewhere. In other respects, particularly in its preservation of the Yder-Guenevere story, Yder is archaic and shows evidence of otherwise lost traditions.
Fergus, by Guillaume le Clerc, is a romance of 7,012 lines set in Scotland, which may well have been written between 1237 and 1241 for the Balliol family as an ancestral romance in support of territorial claims. Political associations apart, this romance again shows the pervasive presence of Chrétien, and Fergus has even been called a “new Perceval.” Certainly, Perceval, Yvain, and Erec et Enide provided Guillaume with material for much of the poem, which is centered on the love of Fergus and Galiene. Fergus is an excellent postclassical romance, full of humor and told in a lively manner.
The hero of the Chevalier aux deux épées is Meriadeuc, from whom the romance takes its alternative title. This poem of 12,352 lines has a complex plot, the main part of which concerns the love of Meriadeuc for Lore of Caradigan and Meriadeuc’s search for his own identity. Meriadeuc’s father had been unwittingly slain by Gawain, who is eventually reconciled with the hero. Meriadeuc marries Lore, and Gawain consummates his love for a girl he had cham pioned earlier. The Chevalier aux deux épées is typical of romances of the period and of the compositional techniques of romance in general, reworking episodes and motifs found elsewhere into a tightly knit and satisfying whole.
Floriant et Florete (8,278 lines) is one of the rare later romances that reverts to the marriage-crisis-resolution structure found in Chrétien’s Erec and Yvain. Floriant, posthumous son of a king of Sicily, is abducted by Morgan the Fay, educated, and sent to Arthur’s court. After defending his mother against the Emperor of Constantinople, Floriant marries Florete; like Erec, Floriant takes his wife with him to prove his prowess after he has been accused of recreantise. The end of the romance is lacking. It is evident that the basic central structure of Floriant et Florete is that of Erec et Enide, and indeed there are many verbal echoes from this and Chrétien’s other romances. The use of material provided by Chrétien, in Floriant et Florete and elsewhere, ranges from the use of motifs and entire narrative segments down to verbatim quotation.
The Merveilles de Rigomer, by an author known simply as Jehan, is an incomplete romance of 17,271 lines and has often been regarded as a degenerate example of the last stages of Arthurian verse romance. However, seen in the light of its relationship to Chrétien and the prose romances, it can better be regarded as an example of the creative reception of existing models. It has a double plot, the first involving Gawain’s quest to free the imprisoned Lancelot, and the second, Arthur’s restoration of her inheritance to the heiress of Quintefuele. One of the most remarkable features of the Merveilles de Rigomer is its bestiary of fantastic creatures, such as talking birds, flame-breathing panthers, and a man-eating falcon. Its treatment of the Arthurian material is burlesque and often outrageous.
The most distinctive feature of both Claris et Laris and Escanor is perhaps their complex narrative structure, based on a series of multiple quests. Although these two lengthy romances (30,369 and 25,936 lines, respectively) have long been regarded, like the Merveilles de Rigomer, as degenerate and rambling, their qualities can be seen in a different light when the influence of the prose romances is taken into account. Since they make extensive use of narrative techniques and characters from the prose tradition, they can in many respects be regarded as prose romances in verse.
Recent study of these romances stresses their “epigonal” relationship to Chrétien’s œuvre with particular reference to audience reaction. Authors make such frequent and subtle use of Chrétien’s works that it must be assumed that audiences were aware of this and listened to the romances against the background of Chrétien. There were many ways for Arthurian authors to respond to the phenomenon of Chrétien: they could attempt, although they rarely did, to do blatantly otherwise than he had done; they could attempt various degrees of burlesque and parody; they could write severely didactic works using Arthurian material as sugar for the pill. The Chrétien epigones usually deal less with the fundamentals of human existence than did Chrétien, and their productions are frequently lighthearted and self-consciously literary. It has recently been argued that many of these romances were written directly, but not exclusively, for the Anglo-Angevin court and that they had a strong political function, strengthening dynastic and territorial claims on both national and regional levels. If this is true, then part of their audience must be sought in England and they need to be placed at least partly in a British historical and cultural context. Whatever the case, they are finally beginning to attract the attention they deserve from scholars, and the yoke of the odious comparison with Chrétien is at last slowly being cast off.
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Alton, Johann, ed. Li romans de Claris et Laris. Tübingen: Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 1884.
Bennett, Philip, ed. Mantel et Cor: deux lais du 12e siècle. Exeter: University of Exeter, 1975.
Foerster, Wendelin, ed. Li chevaliers as deux espees. Halle: Niemeyer, 1877.
——, ed. Les merveilles de Rigomer. 2 vols. Dresden: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1908–15.
Gildea, Joseph, ed. Durmart le Gallois. 2 vols. Villanova: Villanova University Press, 1965–66.
Girart d’Amiens, ed. Der roman von Escanor von Gerard von Amiens, ed. Henri Michelant. Tübingen: Bibliothek des litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, 1886.
Guillaume le Clerc. Fergus, ed. Wilson Frescoln. Philadelphia: Allen, 1983.
Livingston, Charles H., ed. Gliglois. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1932.
Tobin, Prudence Mary O’Hara, ed. Tyolet and Melion. In Les lais anonymes des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Geneva: Droz, 1976.
Williams, Harry F., ed. Floriant et Florete. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1947.
Busby, Keith. Gauvain in Old French Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980.
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