The san that Chrétien says he received for the Charrette from Marie de Champagne
seems to imply context, significance, an informing idea that is drawn out of the matiere
to explain it in a manner comprehensible to Chrétien’s audiences. In the Charrette, for
example, the bringing together of Lancelot and Guenevere as lovers has generally been
taken to imply that Marie’s san was what is today called courtly love—an ennobling love
shared by the queen and her lover. That Chrétien makes a mystery of Lancelot’s name
until near the midpoint of the romance suggests that his audiences did not know who
Lancelot was until Guenevere names him for the first time while he is fighting for her
liberation.
The Charrette begins with a quest for Guenevere after her abduction. The knight who
liberates her and others entrapped in the kingdom of Gorre makes it obvious early in the
narrative that he loves the queen in a most extraordinary way. He is willing to
compromise his honor in the eyes of all if it serves her liberation by mounting the
shameful cart in order to find her again. Although Lancelot is subject to fits of despair
and self-forgetfulness, nothing prevents him from carrying out his service and liberating
the queen. In fact, his love seems rather to make it possible for him alone to accomplish
the quest. He meets numerous adventures along the way, including a damsel who offers
her love if he will protect her from a would-be rapist; the lifting of a mysterious tomb that
only the knight able to liberate the queen can open; and the crossing of a sword-bridge on
bare hands and knees. Lancelot’s return to Arthur involves his own abduction and a great
tournament that demonstrates anew his service for the queen.
Much ink has flowed in efforts to determine whether Chrétien approved or
disapproved of the adulterous liaison between Lancelot and Guenevere. Basic to the
dispute is the presumed adulterous character of courtly love. Courtly love, as a term, is a
modern invention. In the Middle Ages, writers spoke of fin’amors, stressing the
adaptability of love to different contexts, environments, and social circumstances. The
basic features seem to have been the joy it produced and the resulting good that accrued
to the lovers and the world in which they lived. Chrétien affirms Lancelot’s joy, as well
as his accomplishments, despite the difficulties the love causes him.
A striking feature of Chrétien’s romances is the close relation obtaining between love
and prowess. Prowess is not only prowess in arms but the sum of those qualities that
represent worth in the knight or lady—the chevalerie of the Cligés prologue. Arms may
demonstrate worth, but so may the quality of love the knight and lady share. Chrétien’s
courtly chansons evince an effort to overcome the constraints of human passion and make
it enhance individual worth and serve noble ends, most notably by the rejection of the
irrational features of Tristan and Iseut’s love. The rejection also occurs in the romances,
especially Cligés, It is important to note that, in both the broader medieval context and in
Chrétien’s own romances, adultery is not predominant, despite the example of Lancelot
and Guenevere. More striking, in a medieval context, is the emphasis on conjugal love.
The notion must have seemed much more original in the 12th century than it may appear
today, after centuries of love stories. That marriage could be more than a social or family
obligation is obvious in Chrétien. Erec chooses his bride without consulting his family,
and so does Yvain. And there is no sense of forced marriage except for Fenice in Cligés,
and that marriage does not succeed precisely because it is forced and because the
husband, Alis, in marrying, violates an oath made to his brother and thus threatens the
succession of his brother’s son, Cligés, to the throne.
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