Talk:Chrétien de Troyes

Untitled
Hmmm. What about Tristan and Isolde? The article on Gottfried von Strassburg mentions Chrétien as an author in the series, but I don't see that here. Ben 23:04, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Chretien only mentions that he wrote a story about Iseult and Mark in the opening lines of his Cliges. It doesn't survive. - Cuchullain

Chrétien and Geometry
Is anyone aware of any published sources on the work of Dr Joan Helm about mathematical interpretations of the Arthurian Romances?

I recently came across this work on the ABC Science Show. Seems like it might be worth a mention in the article if some details can be found... Comtebenoit 15:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
 * No, I've never heard of that. If you find any more information, but it in.--Cuchullain 07:57, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

i have not only the information reguarding Dr Joan helms Work but i have every piece of her reasearch stored i can tell u now i dont understand 90%of it but if anyone is looking for information about it to contact me and i will do my best to help with what i have of hers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Bundybabe1131

Ok so still don't understand how all this works and its not letting me delete my earlier post so I'm adding another on just to say I have her work and there is currently a documentary being made about her work on this subject she is my grandmother Bundybabe1131 (talk) 16:02, 2 September 2021 (UTC)

Chretien is a pseudonym meaning Christian?
In the episode The Holy Grail of In Our Time (BBC Radio 4) the academics seem agreed that Chretian may just be a pseudonym, meaning 'Christian' for someone with an entirely different name. I seem unable to find a source for this online (though the programme is itself available to listen to for anyone interested) via the BBC's In Our Time website. The programme also specualtes that he may have been a coverted jew and that the Candleabra in his Perceval is associated with the Kabbalah. --bodnotbod 16:23, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

I've heard he was a converted Jew too, but if that were the case, "Chretien" would be less of a pseudonym and more of an assurance of his conversion. --BDD (talk) 17:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)


 * No one really knows anything about him. Chretien may be a pseudonym, but that's just speculation, as is the theory that he was a converted Jew (though I'd like to know the basis of that speculation).--Cúchullain t/ c 18:01, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
 * "Christian" is a French name (like "Wolfram" can be a German name), derived from "Chrétien" which could've been the medieval form of "Christian", simple enough. Now, stating that he actually was the jewish medieval french rabbi Rashij is not only highly speculative (without offering any serious foundation apart from the fact that both bore "From Troyes" in their names - a region where much more than one single human being was living), but also fallaciously wrong (a BIG LIE) : indeed, Rashi died in July 1105, while what we know is that Chrétien de Toryes served at the court of his patroness Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, between 1160 and 1172. Please remove that lie. --HawkFest (talk) 17:09, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Some years ago, I added the speculation that "Chretien" may have been chosen to distinguish this writer from Troyes from his predecessor, Rashi. I don't know who made the implausible speculation that they were the same person. Richard M. Waugaman, M.D. (talk) 21:48, 20 March 2018 (UTC)Richard M. Waugaman, M.D.

Romances are not Novels
I've never, in my life, heard of Chretien identified as a novelist. Nor should he be. His mode of writing is that of romance, essentially debased epic. Some later romances, maybe there's an argument. It gets fuzzy towards the end. His - not at all. These romances also, aside from the lit crit perspective, are just too short to be novels. The father of "French novels" is thus a bit of a stretch.

The same standards that establish his work as a novel could establish every epic and romance as one. The view presented at the end by Uitti is not a commonly held one. Historians are always trying to assert that X/Y/Z "really started" in their period of study. It didn't. It's facts to suit theories. The only "early novel" I'll bite on is maybe Apuleius and some late Romances. Guinness4life (talk) 14:22, 27 April 2010 (UTC)


 * I think what Uitti is saying is that in some respects Chretien's work (in particular Yvain) represent certain steps towards the novel in plotting and structure (as opposed to, for instance, the way Celtic narratives, epic poems, etc., are written). Obviously, in other ways, it's not at all like a modern novel - it's verse, not prose, and it's not very long. I think the stuff about him being the "first novelist" or "creating the novel" are not a good representation of his argument, so I've tried to amend it.--Cúchullain t/ c 14:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)

Infobox needed
Please put an infobox for this article, thx. Tuanminh01 (talk) 09:31, 8 July 2016 (UTC)

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The removed huge quotes
French medievalist Karl Uitti writes that:

Like Wace and Benoît de Sainte-Maure before him, Chrétien de Troyes was a court poet, that is, a clerc attached to a noble court, in his case the court of the count and countess of Champagne (and later, after the death of Henri le Libéral de Champagne, the court of Philippe d'Alsace, count of Flanders). Wace had described himself as a cler lisant, by which he probably meant a school-trained man of letters whose principal job was to praise his patrons and their lineage in vernacular narratives, as well as to provide them with spiritually edifying stories (principally, saints' lives). By Chrétien's time (the 1160s and 1170s), such values as courtoisie (courtesy and "courtliness") and fin'amor, as well as honorable chevalerie and its counterpart, learned clergie, had come to predominate in the aristocratic ideals of, first, the French-speaking English nobility and, next, the noblesse of Continental France and, somewhat later, that of Germany. It was incumbent upon the clerc to celebrate these values and to analyse them in works of narrative (and at times even in lyric song). To this end old stories of Celtic origin--Tristan and Iseut, Arthurian tales--offered a seemingly inexhaustible reserve of material, and romance narrative, a genre well conceived to explore the possible discrepancies between what appears to be so and what actually is, fastened upon them--especially in the work of Chrétien de Troyes. These stories also surely appealed to the imagination of clercs who, like Chrétien, obviously delighted in them: they must have seemed ready-made for the display of poetic fireworks to be found in all his romances--Chrétien's sheer artfulness.

William Wistar Comfort writes that: A French narrative poet of the twelfth century had three categories of subject-matter from which to choose: legends connected with the history of France ("matiere de France"), legends connected with Arthur and other Celtic heroes ("matiere de Bretagne"), and stories culled from the history or mythology of Greece and Rome, current in Latin and French translations ("matiere de Rome la grant"). Chretien tells us in Cliges that his first essays as a poet were the translations into French of certain parts of Ovid's most popular works: the Metamorphoses, the Ars Amatoria, and perhaps the Remedia Amoris. But he appears early to have chosen as his special field the stories of Celtic origin dealing with Arthur, the Round Table, and other features of Celtic folk-lore. Not only was he alive to the literary interest of this material when rationalised to suit the taste of French readers; his is further the credit of having given to somewhat crude folk-lore that polish and elegance which is peculiarly French, and which is inseparably associated with the Arthurian legends in all modern literature. Though Beroul, and perhaps other poets, had previously based romantic poems upon individual Celtic heroes like Tristan, nevertheless to Chretien, so far as we can see, is due the considerable honour of having constituted Arthur's court as a literary centre and rallying-point for an innumerable company of knights and ladies engaged in a never-ending series of amorous adventures and dangerous quests. Rather than unqualifiedly attribute to Chretien this important literary convention, one should bear in mind that all his poems imply familiarity on the part of his readers with the heroes of the court of which he speaks. One would suppose that other stories, told before his versions, were current. Some critics would go so far as to maintain that Chretien came toward the close, rather than at the beginning, of a school of French writers of Arthurian romances. But, if so, we do not possess these earlier versions, and for lack of rivals Chretien may be hailed as an innovator in the current schools of poetry.

SNAAAAKE!! (talk) 08:26, 15 August 2018 (UTC)