tomb (the episode from which the romance takes its title). In addition to Chrétien’s
romance, the poet of the Atre périlleux knows and alludes to Meraugis de Portlesguez
and the Vengeance Raguidel.
The fragmentary Enfances Gauvain (712 lines), dating probably from the 1230s, tells
the story of Gawain’s birth and childhood. According to this poem, Gawain’s parents are
Arthur’s sister, Morcades, and her page, Lot. The child is entrusted to a knight called
Gauvain le Brun, who names it after himself and then sets it adrift in a cask; after the boy
is rescued by a fisherman, he is brought to Rome and educated by the Pope. Other
versions of this story can be found elsewhere, notably in Wace’s Brut, the Perlesvaus,
and the Latin romance De ortu Walwanii. Writing the enfances of a hero who had already
become popular was one way of capitalizing on his celebrity; writing about the hero’s
offspring was another, and that was the option chosen by Robert de Blois in Beaudous
(third quarter of the 13th c.). Beaudous’s mother conceals his lineage from him so that he
must win his own fame rather than bask in his father’s reflected glory. Beaudous
accomplishes much, wins the hand of a beautiful princess, defeats many of Arthur’s
famous knights, and is reunited with his father; the romance concludes with the double
wedding of Beaudous and Gawain. Robert de Blois is known also for didactic works,
such as the Enseignement des princes, and there is a strong didactic streak in Beaudous,
particularly in its presentation of chivalry.
Authors clearly expect their audiences to be familiar with Gawain’s basic traits, since
they rarely take the time to introduce him. He is in many respects a “preformed”
character capable of limited development; he is used by authors rather than investigated
psychologically. In this sense, the romances that do choose Gawain as a hero are the
exceptions rather than the rule, although he plays extensive roles in most Arthurian verse
romances.
A number of characteristics are common to most of these romances. First of all,
Gawain is confronted at almost every turn with his own reputation as knight and lover: he
is the standard to which all knights must aspire and the knight whom all ladies seek to
love. When authors in the 13th century begin to treat these aspects of romance in a gently
burlesque or sometimes openly parodic light, Gawain, the courtly knight par excellence,
is himself burlesqued and parodied as a result. Yet the criticism is affectionate. In
contrast to the unrepentant sinner of the prose Queste del saint Graal and the vindictive
rapist and murderer of the Prose Tristan, the Gawain of the verse tradition remains an
amiable character and a great if flawed knight. The later verse romances that take Gawain
as hero suggest that the popularity of the figure was too strong for the attempts to
discredit it in the prose tradition. In the last instance, however, it is the variety of uses to
which Gawain is put in French Arthurian literature that is significant: foil, hero, villain, to
mention only three. This is testimony not only to the conventional nature of romance but
also to the differing uses to which convention can be put by authors with different aims
and intentions.
Keith Busby
[See also: ARTHURIAN VERSE ROMANCE; GIRART D’AMIENS; RAOUL DE
HOUDENC; RENAUT DE BEAUJEU; ROBERT DE BLOIS; ROMANCE]
Johnston, Ronald Carlyle, and D.D.R.Owen, eds. Two Old French Gauvain Romances: Le
chevalier à l’épée and La mule sans frein. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1973.
Meyer, Paul, ed. “Les enfances Gauvain.” Romania 39 (1910):1–32.
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