Chrétien de Troyes and Arthurian Romance

1. Chrétien de Troyes and Arthurian Romance

2. How Does Romance Differ from (Pseudo-)Chronicle?

3. How Does Romance Differ from (Pseudo-)Chronicle? • Romance tells of adventures, not of survival • The hero is wealthy and privileged • The hero quests voluntarily • Action has no real exterior motivation • The hero fights to test and prove the values of chivalry. • He also fights in service to a lady • He is the lady’s lover and follows the rules of courtly love. • Elements of the “marvelous” or supernatural occur • Geography and time are unreal • The hero’s successes are vital to his identity and self-realization • The hero’s inner consciousness is explored

4. Why Does the Arthurian Story Change Genres?

5. Why Does the Arthurian Story Change Genres? • Arthur gets transplanted to France • Once removed from the British, the story loses nationalistic characteristics • After losing these, it becomes concerned with social fashion instead of heroic acts

6. Offshoots of Chrétien

7. Offshoots of Chrétien 1135-1183 • Vulgate Cycle 1215-1230 • 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 • Alliterative MorteArthure • StanzaicMorteArthure

8. Vulgate Cycle • How does it expand Chrétien’s story of the Grail? • In Chrétien’s romance, the grail is vaguely mysterious and associated with the wounded Fisher King • In the Vulgate, the grail is the object of a quest for spiritual perfection • Arthur’s knights will fail • Galahad is introduced to win the grail

9. Alliterative MorteArthure • Draws much on Geoffrey of Monmouth and the epic, pseudo-chronological tradition • Deals with the last days of Arthur and the end of the Round Table • Is heroic, martial, focused on war • Women are mostly absent or are wives and/or mothers of dynasties

10. StanzaicMorte Arthur • Derives from the French Tradition: the Vulgate • Has as its purpose to show that the failure of the Grail Quest marked the failure of the Round Table • At the end, the only recourse is to religion • Everyone left alive retreats to a monastery. • Serves as important source for Malory • Focuses on the expression of powerful feeling.

11. Tone in Chrétien • Where does Chrétien seem funny? • Where does he seem serious? • What might be the purpose of his tone?

12. Knight of the Cart: Lancelot • Marie de Champagne was patroness to both Andreas Capellanus and Chrétien. Which of the Rules of Courtly Love are invoked in the Lancelot story? • What is your sense of Sir Kay in Chrétien’s Lancelot? Does this differ from Malory? • The queen grants Kay a “rash boon” at the start of the story. Where else do you see these? • Why does Lancelot hesitate to get into the cart? • How does Gawain behave as a foil for Lancelot?

13. Knight of the Cart: Lancelot • Completion of the story left to Godefroy de Lagny. • One instance of jousting occurs on p. 218. Find other examples. Why such repetition? • Chrétien claims his source for the story was Marie de Champagne who would likely have obtained it from Celtic abduction stories. Is this believable? • What meaning might be attached to Lancelot’s discovery of the future tombs of Gawain and others, including his own? • What are Lancelot and Guinever like at the start of the story? Does either or do both change?

14. The Story of the Grail: Perceval • Chrétien is the first to mention the Grail, the Bleeding Lance, and the Fisher King • The story’s origin is argued. It does combine supernatural and mystic elements with “keenly observed contemporary social behavior” (Kibler 11) • Perceval has no idea of his noble lineage • Perceval is instinctually capable of chivalric acts • 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. • Gawain is a secular foil to Perceval • Does Chrétien’s tone in the Grail story differ significantly from his tone in the Lancelot story? If so, why might this be? • Chrétien’s descriptions of nature and of human-made artifacts are detailed, lush, realistic, and suggestive of mystery.

15. The Story of the Grail: Perceval • What do the young Perceval’s exchanges with the knights and the maiden in the tent show about him? • Why does Perceval fail in his first stay in the Grail Castle? • What insight does Perceval show or fail to show with respect to his mother and her death? • Is Perceval consistent in obeying the suggestions given to him on his quest?

16. Malory • Where is Malory’s story pseudo-chronicle? • Where is Malory’s story romance?

17. Who Are Important 19th Century Arthurians?

18. Who Are Important 19th Century Arthurians? • Sir Walter Scott • The Bridal of Triermain • Alfred, Lord Tennyson • Idylls of the King • Mark Twain • A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

19. Contemporary Arthuriana • Once and Future King by T. H. White • 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

20. Contemporary Arthuriana • Camelot by Learner and Lowe • Monty Python and the Holy Grail • The Mists of Avalon by Marion Z Bradley

21. Who and Where is Arthur Now?