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indulging in penetrating self-examination and reflections on the nature of love. Although the refinement of the language gives the love an ethereal quality it is sensual and non-Platonic in nature, and for his sufferings the lover hopes for and generally receives a frankly sexual recompense. This, at any rate, is love as it appears in
The Knight of the Cart
. But was such love actually practised in the courts of twelfth-centuryFrance? Here critics are loosely divided into two opposing camps: the
realists
, who believe that such an institution did exist in the Middle Ages and is faithfully reflected in the literature of the period; and the
idealists
, who believe that it is a post-Romantic critical construct and was, in the Middle Ages, at most a game to be taken lightly and ironically.
    In
The Knight of the Cart
, Lancelot seems to substitute a religion of love for the traditional Christian ethic, even going so far as to genuflect upon leaving Guinevere’s bedchamber. Yet nowhere is there any direct condemnation of his behaviour, either by the characters or the narrator. Realists see in Lancelot the epitome of the courtly lover. For them, Marie de Champagne was a leading proponent of the doctrine of
fin’amors
, which was practised extensively at her court. To illustrate and further this concept, she commissioned Andreas Capellanus to draw up the rules for love in his
De arte honeste amnandi
and her favourite poet, Chrétien, to compose a romance whose central theme was to be that of the perfect courtly-love relationship. But Chrétien never completed his romance, an indication perhaps that he was not in sympathy with the theme proposed to him by the Countess.
    Idealists agree that the subject matter of
The Knight of the Cart
did not appeal to Chrétien, but allege different reasons. Citing the fact that adultery was harshly condemned by the medieval Church, they argue that what we today call ‘courtly love’ would have been recognized as idolatrous and treasonable passion. Lancelot must be seen as a foolled on by his lust, rather than his reason, into ever more ridiculous and humiliating situations. The idea of Lancelot lost in thoughts of love and being unceremoniously unhorsed or duelling behind his back to keep Guinevere in view could only be seen as ludicrous.
    Most realists today will concede a degree of ironic humour in the portrayal of Lancelot, but contend that the question of morality is a moot one: the love is amoral, rather than immoral. Sensitive to the attacks of the idealists, they now downplay the importance of Andreas Capellanus, whose concept of ‘pure love’ has led many commentators astray, and stress the distinctions between periods and works. The love portrayed by Dante or in Chaucer’s
Book of the Duchess
is of another period and qualitatively different from that of the troubadours and trouvères. Indeed, love in the poems of the northern French trouvères is itself distinct from that of the troubadours. And love as it is portrayed in the other romances by Chrétien is different from that in
The Knight of the Cart
. In all his other romances he appears as an advocate for marriage and love within marriage, constructing
Erec, Cligés
and
The Knight with the Lion
around this theme, and showing in all the disadvantages of other types of relationships.
    Not only do Chrétien’s prologues give us invaluable information about the poet himself, they also tell us a great deal about how he viewed his role as artist. In the prologue to
Erec
, Chrétien tells us that he
tret d’un conte d’avanture/une molt bele conjointure
(‘from a tale of adventure/he draws a beautifully ordered composition’). This
conjointure
has been variously translated ‘arrangement’, ‘linking’, ‘coherent organization’, ‘internal unity’, etc., but always implies that Chrétien has moulded and organized materials that were only inchoate