The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes

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The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes

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The Romances of hrétien de Troyes Joseph J. Duggan

Yale University Press

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New Haven and London

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Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Philip Hamilton McMillan of the Class of 1894, Yale College. Copyright © 2001 by Yale University. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Designed by Nancy Ovedovitz and set in ITC Veljovic type by Tseng Information Systems. Printed in the United States of America by Sheridan Books, Chelsea, Michigan. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Duggan, Joseph J. The romances of Chrétien de Troyes / Joseph J. Duggan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN

0-300-08357-2 (cloth)

1. Chrétien, de Troyes, 12th cent.—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. PQ1448 .D84

841'.1—dc21

2001 00-011726

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10

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For Marie, Kathleen, Joe

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Contents Preface

ix

List of Figures and Abbreviations

xii

1 Chrétien and His Milieu

1

2 Kinship and Marriage

47

3 Values

93

4 Interiority and Responsibility

133

5 Celtic Myth, Folklore, and Historical Tradition

183

6 The Art of the Storyteller

271

7 Knights and Ladies

311

Notes

329

Bibliography

343

Index

373

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Preface his book has a double audience: the general reader interested in literature of the Middle Ages who is looking for an account of Chrétien de Troyes’s romances set in the context of their period and the specialist in medieval French literature. To satisfy the needs of both is not easy, but I have tried to take no arcane knowledge for granted, have gone to some length in clarifying technical terms, and have provided necessary background. I have endeavored to give the uninitiated access to the results of the research and interpretations of specialists in medieval French literature. For initiates my principal aim has been to emphasize certain important features of Chrétien’s works that I considered to be underemphasized—although by no means untreated—in the current critical literature, namely the roles of kinship, societal values, interiority, and myth, and to furnish a synthesis that draws together the many strands of a rich body of critical and philological thought. For foreign-language citations I have provided English translations, my own unless otherwise noted. The criteria for the translations from medieval French are clarity and faithfulness to the text: I have no illusions as to their elegance. For readers in search of that quality, I recommend the fluid renderings of Burton Raffel published by Yale University Press between 1987 and 1999. I take it for granted that the reader has read Chrétien’s works or is reading them in tandem with this book. Thus I provide no comprehensive summary of the various romances, although interpretive summaries are furnished for some passages under discussion. Line numbering, alas, differs from edition to edition of Chrétien’s works, and thus also from translation to translation. Etymons are indicated by the symbol