count Limors, readily understandable to French ears as
“the Dead.” During the couple’s return, they encounter
the adventure known as the Joy of the Court. A huge
knight does battle in a magic garden of eternal spring.
Whenever he defeats an opponent, the latter loses his
head, which is then fi xed on a stake in the garden. Erec’s
victory ends the custom and releases joy in the garden
and the outside world. Rituals of combat and death,
following prescribed custom, were known in Celtic
tradition as geis. In Chrétien’s romances, they become
the more or less euhemerized adventures of questing
knights. The inexplicability of such adventures accounts
for their marvelous quality.
The san that Chrétien says he received for the Char-
rette from Marie de Champagne seems to imply context,
signifi cance, 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
fi rst time while he is fi ghting 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 ob-
vious 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 fi nd her again.
Although Lancelot is subject to fi ts 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 fl owed 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 fi n’amors, stressing
the adaptability of love to different contexts, environ-
ments, 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 affi rms Lancelot’s joy, as well as
his accomplishments, despite the diffi culties 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 chev-
alerie 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.
Marital problems do arise, but they are also solved.
Chrétien insists on a certain equality between the
spouses. Not that he meant a contractual equality in any
modern legal sense but rather a natural, noble equality
that was tried and tested in confl ict with the outside
world and in the resolution of disputes that occur in
the marriage.
The word conjointure occurs only once, at least in
the sense used to describe romance narrative—in the
prologue to Erec. Chrétien distinguishes his “very beau-
tiful” conjointure from the stories about Erec told by
storytellers, who were wont, he says, to take apart and
leave out material (depecier et corronpre) that belonged
in the tale. This seems to mean that Chrétien’s romance
puts the story together as it should be, omitting nothing
essential. That “putting together” would include both
matiere and san. This appears to be the case in Erec,
whose fi rst part combines two stories, the sparrowhawk
episode and the hunt for the white stag, to each of which
Enide, because of the qualities that make her desirable
as a spouse, provides a denouement. In the sparrowhawk
contest, Erec proves that Enide is the most beautiful
woman, and Arthur bestows the “kiss of the white stag”
on her for the same reason.
Enide’s beauty comprehends qualities of body,CHRÉTIEN DE TROYES