Twelfth-century poet who invented Arthur's modern novel
Chrétien de Troyes, trouvère at Champagne and Flanders circa 1160–1191, shaped the Matter of Britain—Erec, Lancelot, Yvain, Perceval, and the Grail—in rhymed eight-syllable couplets. Scholars call him founder of the vernacular romance and even the modern novel.
Almost nothing about Chrétien's life is certain. He seems to have come from Troyes, or at least to have been closely tied to it, and he was active from roughly 1160 to 1191. Between 1160 and 1172 he worked at the court of Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, a daughter of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine who wed Count Henry I in 1164; Gaston Paris guessed he may have served as a herald. He later attached himself to Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders. Urban T. Holmes III suggested that his name, meaning Christian from Troyes, might mark a convert from Judaism.
He left five major poems in rhymed couplets of eight syllables. Erec and Enide dates to about 1170 and Cligès to about 1176, while Yvain and Lancelot were written in parallel between 1177 and 1181; Yvain is usually rated his finest. Perceval, the Story of the Grail, composed between 1181 and 1190 and dedicated to Philip of Flanders, broke off after 9,000 lines, and four later poets tacked on 54,000 more in the Four Continuations. Godefroi de Leigni supplied the last thousand lines of Lancelot, apparently with Chrétien's consent, which has fuelled guesses that he disliked its adulterous plot. A Tristan poem he mentions is lost; Philomela, adapted from Ovid, survives.
Where his stories came from is murky. Geoffrey of Monmouth or Wace may have lent some names, yet neither mentions Erec or Lancelot. The Grail tale has been linked to Saint Galgano, a knight who died in 1180 or 1181 after driving his sword into the ground. Old French versions of the Iliad, the Aeneid and the Metamorphoses circulated during the 1150s, and Foster Guyer finds Ovid's weeping, sighing lovers echoed in Yvain.
Many manuscript copies survive, and his romances were widely adapted: Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Iwein and Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival grew from them, as did three Welsh romances. He is the first writer known to mention the Holy Grail, Camelot and the affair of Guinevere and Lancelot. William Wistar Comfort placed him above every poet of the Latin peoples between Rome's fall and Dante, and Karl Uitti credits Yvain's clear beginning, middle and end with launching the vernacular novel centuries early.
Source: Chrétien de Troyes
