Chrétien de Troyes and
Arthurian Romance
How Does Romance Differ from (Pseudo)Chronicle?
How Does Romance Differ from (Pseudo)Chronicle?
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Romance tells of adventures, not of survival
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The hero is wealthy and privileged
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The hero quests voluntarily
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Action has no real exterior motivation
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The hero fights to test and prove the values of chivalry.
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He also fights in service to a lady
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He is the lady’s lover and follows the rules of courtly love.
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Elements of the “marvelous” or supernatural occur
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Geography and time are unreal
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The hero’s successes are vital to his identity and self-realization
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The hero’s inner consciousness is explored
Why Does the Arthurian Story Change Genres?
Why Does the Arthurian Story Change Genres?
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Arthur gets transplanted to France
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Once removed from the British, the story loses
nationalistic characteristics
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After losing these, it becomes concerned with social
fashion instead of heroic acts
Offshoots of Chrétien
Offshoots of Chrétien
1135-1183
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Vulgate Cycle 1215-1230
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Includes the Romance of Lancelot du Lac
Includes the Quest for the Holy Grail
Includes the Mort Artu
Composed by Cistercian monks
 Hence its emphasis on the life of holiness
 The chaste Galahad is the perfect knight with Percival
and Bors secondary
Reshaped in 1230 with more on Merlin
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Alliterative Morte Arthure
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Stanzaic Morte Arthure
Vulgate Cycle
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How does it expand Chrétien’s story of the Grail?
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In Chrétien’s romance, the grail is vaguely mysterious
and associated with the wounded Fisher King
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In the Vulgate, the grail is the object of a quest for
spiritual perfection
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Arthur’s knights will fail
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Galahad is introduced to win the grail
Alliterative Morte Arthure
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Draws much on Geoffrey of Monmouth and the
epic, pseudo-chronological tradition
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Deals with the last days of Arthur and the end of the
Round Table
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Is heroic, martial, focused on war
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Women are mostly absent or are wives and/or
mothers of dynasties
Stanzaic Morte Arthur
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Derives from the French Tradition: the Vulgate
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Has as its purpose to show that the failure of the
Grail Quest marked the failure of the Round Table
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At the end, the only recourse is to religion
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Everyone left alive retreats to a monastery.
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Serves as important source for Malory
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Focuses on the expression of powerful feeling.
Tone in Chrétien
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Where does Chrétien seem funny?
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Where does he seem serious?
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What might be the purpose of his tone?
Knight of the Cart: Lancelot
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Marie de Champagne was patroness to both Andreas
Capellanus and Chrétien. Which of the Rules of
Courtly Love are invoked in the Lancelot story?
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What is your sense of Sir Kay in Chrétien’s
Lancelot? Does this differ from Malory?
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The queen grants Kay a “rash boon” at the start of
the story. Where else do you see these?
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Why does Lancelot hesitate to get into the cart?
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How does Gawain behave as a foil for Lancelot?
Knight of the Cart: Lancelot
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Completion of the story left to Godefroy de Lagny.
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One instance of jousting occurs on p. 218. Find other
examples. Why such repetition?
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Chrétien claims his source for the story was Marie de
Champagne who would likely have obtained it from
Celtic abduction stories. Is this believable?
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What meaning might be attached to Lancelot’s
discovery of the future tombs of Gawain and others,
including his own?
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What are Lancelot and Guinever like at the start of the
story? Does either or do both change?
The Story of the Grail: Perceval
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Chrétien is the first to mention the Grail, the Bleeding Lance, and the Fisher King
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The story’s origin is argued. It does combine supernatural and mystic elements
with “keenly observed contemporary social behavior” (Kibler 11)
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Perceval has no idea of his noble lineage
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Perceval is instinctually capable of chivalric acts
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Perceval’s meditation on three drops of blood get attached to his religious
experience by writers, but they are focused on a lady, not God.
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Gawain is a secular foil to Perceval
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Does Chrétien’s tone in the Grail story differ significantly from his tone in the
Lancelot story? If so, why might this be?
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Chrétien’s descriptions of nature and of human-made artifacts are detailed, lush,
realistic, and suggestive of mystery.
The Story of the Grail: Perceval
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What do the young Perceval’s exchanges with the
knights and the maiden in the tent show about him?
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Why does Perceval fail in his first stay in the Grail
Castle?
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What insight does Perceval show or fail to show with
respect to his mother and her death?
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Is Perceval consistent in obeying the suggestions
given to him on his quest?
Malory
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Where is Malory’s story pseudo-chronicle?
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Where is Malory’s story romance?
Who Are Important 19th Century Arthurians?
Who Are Important 19th
Century Arthurians?
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Sir Walter Scott
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Alfred, Lord Tennyson
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The Bridal of Triermain
Idylls of the King
Mark Twain
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A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
Contemporary Arthuriana
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Once and Future King by T. H. White
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Strengths
 Fine details of medieval practices
 “Imaginative inhabiting of other realms of experience”
(Pearsall 154)
 An effective framework to drive the story
 An effective ending
Weaknesses
 Reflects bias against pop democracy and totalitarianism
 Cultivated quaintness: not historical reality, but full of
historical references
 Consciously anachronistic (“historical goulash”)
 Oppressively patronizing and “avuncular” tone
Contemporary Arthuriana
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Camelot by Learner and Lowe
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail
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The Mists of Avalon by Marion Z Bradley
Who and Where is Arthur Now?