Arthurian Romances Read Online Free PDF

before he applied his artistry to them. Already in his first romance, and repeatedly in his later work, Chrétien shows himself to be conscious of his role as a literary artist, a ‘maker’ or ‘inventor’ who fashions and gives artistic expression to materials that have come to him from earlier sources.
    In speaking of
un conte d’avanture
in the singular and with the article, Chrétien implies that he conceived of his source as a single work, rather than as a collection of disparate themes or motifs. He goes on to inform us that other storytellers, the professional jongleurs who earn their living by performing such narrative poems before the public, were wont to
depecier et corronpre
(‘mangle and corrupt’) these tales. Chrétien, on the other hand, clearly implies that he has provided a coherent structure for his tale, a structure that most critics today agree is that of a triptych. Like the traditional triptych altarpiece, Chrétien’s
Erec and Enide
has a broad central panel flanked by two balanced side-panels. The first panel, which Chrétien refers to as
li premiers vers
(‘the first movement’, l. 1808), comprises ll. 27–1808 and weaves together the episodes of the Hunt of the White Stag and the Joust for the Sparrow-hawk. The final episode, known as the Joy of the Court, forms an analogous panel of approximately the same length as the first, ll. 5321–6912. The central panel of his triptych, ll. 1809–5320, is by far the largest and most important, covering the principal action of the poem.
    Erec
, like the other romances that followed with the exception of
Cligés
, was arranged around the motif of the quest. In each of his romances Chrétien varied the nature and organization of the central quest. In
Erec
it is essentially linear and graduated in structure, moving from simple to increasingly complex and meaningful encounters. But already in
Erec
Chrétien was experimenting with a technique for interrupting the linearity and varying the adventures, a technique he would employ with particular success in
The Knight with the Lion
and
The Story of the Grail
, and which would be used extensively in the prose romances: interlacing. In its simplest manifestations, as it functions twice in
The Knight with the Lion
, interlacing involves the weaving together of two distinct lines of action: each time Yvain begins anadventure, it is interrupted so that he can complete a second before returning to finish the first. In the first instance, Yvain is on his way to defend Lunete, who has been condemned to die for having persuaded her mistress to marry the unfaithful Yvain. He secures lodging at a town that is besieged by the giant Harpin of the Mountain and, though it nearly causes him to be too late to save Lunete, he remains and defeats the giant. In the second instance, Yvain agrees to defend the cause of the younger daughter of the lord of Blackthorn, who is about to be disinherited by her sister. But before the combat with her champion, Gawain, can be concluded, Yvain is called to enter the town of Dire Adventure and free three hundred maidens who are forced to embroider for minimal wages in intolerable conditions. The same pattern recurs in
The Story of the Grail
, where Chrétien cuts back and forth between the adventures of Gawain and those of Perceval. The adventures in
The Knight of the Cart
, on the other hand, are organized according to the principle of
contrapasso
, by which the nature of the punishment corresponds precisely to the nature of the sin: having hesitated to step into the cart, Lancelot must henceforth show no hesitations in his service of ladies and the queen.
    In the midst of the interlace in
The Knight with the Lion
, Chrétien introduces a complex pattern of intertextual references designed to link that poem to
The Knight of the Cart
, which he was composing apparently simultaneously. In the town besieged by Harpin of the Mountain,