Annotated Bibliography of Major Modern Studies. London:
Mansell, 1987 [for criticism].
The Chaucer Bibliographies. Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1983–[ongoing series].
Leyerle, John, and Anne Quick. Chaucer: A Bibliographical
Introduction. Toronto Medieval Bibliographies 10. Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 1986 [for scholarship].
Studies in the Age of Chaucer. 1979–[annual annotated bibliog-
raphies for 1975 on].
General Criticism
Boitani, Piero, and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Com-
panion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.
Burnley, David. A Guide to Chaucer’s Language. London; Mac-
millan, 1983. Repr. as The Language of Chaucer; London:
Macmillan, 1989.
Crow, Martin M., and Clair C. Olson, eds. Chaucer Life-Records.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966.
David, Alfred. The Strumpet Muse: Art and Morals in Chaucer’s
Poetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976.
Jordan, Robert M. Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader.
Berkeley. University of California Press, 1987.
Kean, P.M. Chaucer and the Making of English Poetry. 2 vols.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Mann, Jill. Geoffrey Chaucer. Feminist Readings. London: Har-
vester Wheatsheaf, 1991.
Muscatine, Charles. Chaucer and the French Tradition: A Study
in Style ami Meaning. Berkeley. University of California
Press, 1957.
The Oxford Guides to Chaucer: Helen Cooper, The Canterbury
Tales.
Alastair J. Minnis, The Shorter Poems.
Barry A. Windeatt, Troilus and Criseyde. Oxford: Clarendon,
1989–95.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Black-
well, 1992.
Robertson, D.W., Jr. A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval
Perspectives. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962.
Schoeck, Richard J., and Jerome Taylor, eds. Chaucer Criticism.
2 vols. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, I960
[reprints of classic essays].
Shorter Poems and Troilus
Wetherbee, Winthrop. Chaucer and the Po e t s: An Essay on Troilus
and Criseyde. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984.
Windeatt, Barry A., ed. and trans. Chaucer’s Dream Poetry:
Sources and Analogues. Cambridge: Brewer, 1982.
Canterbury Tales
Bryan, William F., and Germaine Dempster, eds. Sources and
Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1941.
Cooper, Helen. The Structure of the Canterbury Tales. London:
Duckworth, 1983.
Howard, Donald R. The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976.
Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature
of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury
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Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales. London: Allen & Unwin,
1985.
Helen Cooper
CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES (fl. 1165–91)
Although Chrétien wrote lyric poetry in the troubadour
and trouvère traditions, he is known principally for his
Arthurian romances, where he appears to have treated
for the fi rst time, in French at least, the chivalric quest,
the love of Lancelot and Guenevere, and the Grail as a
sacred object. He also emphasized the problematic side
of the love of Tristan and Iseut and may have contributed
to the spread of this legend in French in an early work
that is lost today.
Although the chronology of his writings is uncertain,
the order of composition of his major romances seems
to be as follows: Erec et Enide, Cligés, Le chevalier de
la charrette (Lancelot), Yvain (Le chevalier au lion),
and Le conte du graal (Perceval). He may also have
written Philomena, an adaptation of the Ovidian story of
Philomela (Metamorphoses 6.426–74), and Guillaume
d’Angleterre, a saint’s life told like an adventure ro-
mance. The prologue to Cligés refers to works Chrétien
wrote in his early years: Philomena (“de la hupe et de
l’aronde”) and another, lost, on the tale of Pelops (“de
la mors de l’espaule”), as well as French versions of
Ovid’s Ars amatoria and Remedia amoris, and a Tristan
story, concerning which, curiously, Chrétien does not
mention Tristan himself: “del roi Marc et d’Iseut la
blonde.” He is also the author of two courtly chansons
in the trouvère tradition.
Chrétien names as patrons Marie de Champagne, the
fi rst daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Louis VII
of France, who, he writes, gave him the matiere and
san for the Charrette, and Philippe d’Alsace, count of
Flanders, who gave him “the book” for the Conte du
graal. Philippe died in the Holy Land in 1191, which
may explain why the romance is incomplete. But there
is also evidence that Chrétien died before completing
it. The last 1,000 lines of the Charrette were written
by the otherwise unknown Godefroi de Leigni, who
names himself in the epilogue and says that he is fol-
lowing Chrétien’s plan for the romance. The Charrette
plot is referred to three times in Yvain, and it is likely
that Chrétien worked on the two romances at about the
same time; this may explain why he left the completion
of the Charrette to another, whose work he supervised
while himself completing Yvain.
Erec treats the love of Erec and Enide. In the fi rst
part, Erec successfully completes the combat for the
sparrow-hawk and brings Enide to Arthur’s court, where
they marry. A dispute between husband and wife breaks
out in the second part because Erec abandons deeds of
prowess, notably in tournaments, to dally with his wife.
Erec and Enide set out in quest of reconciliation, after
which they return to Arthur’s court and are crowned king
and queen there upon the death of Erec’s father.CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES