"[G] Four Arthurian Romances" - читать интересную книгу автора (DeTroyes Chretien)

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.

And now let us consider the faults which a modern reader will not
be slow to detect in Chretien's style. Most of his salient
faults are common to all mediaeval narrative literature. They
may be ascribed to the extraordinary leisure of the class for
whom it was composed--a class which was always ready to read an
old story told again, and which would tolerate any description,
however detailed. The pastimes of this class of readers were
jousting, hunting, and making love. Hence the preponderance of
these matters in the literature of its leisure hours. No detail
of the joust or hunt was unfamiliar or unwelcome to these
readers; no subtle arguments concerning the art of love were too
abstruse to delight a generation steeped in amorous casuistry and
allegories. And if some scenes seem to us indelicate, yet after
comparison with other authors of his times, Chretien must be let
off with a light sentence. It is certain he intended to avoid
what was indecent, as did the writers of narrative poetry in
general. To appreciate fully the chaste treatment of Chretien
one must know some other forms of mediaeval literature, such as
the fabliaux, farces, and morality plays, in which courtesy
imposed no restraint. For our poet's lack of sense of
proportion, and for his carelessness in the proper motivation of
many episodes, no apology can be made. He is not always guilty;
some episodes betoken poetic mastery. But a poet acquainted, as
he was, with some first-class Latin poetry, and who had made a
business of his art, ought to have handled his material more
intelligently, even in the twelfth century. The emphasis is not
always laid with discrimination, nor is his yarn always kept free
of tangles in the spinning.

Reference has been made to Chretien's use of his sources. The
tendency of some critics has been to minimise the French poet's
originality by pointing out striking analogies in classic and
Celtic fable. Attention has been especially directed to the
defence of the fountain and the service of a fairy mistress in
"Yvain", to the captivity of Arthur's subjects in the kingdom of
Gorre, as narrated in "Lancelot", reminding one so insistently of
the treatment of the kingdom of Death from which some god or hero
finally delivers those in durance, and to the reigned death of
Fenice in "Cliges", with its many variants. These episodes are
but examples of parallels which will occur to the observant
reader. The difficult point to determine, in speaking of
conceptions so widespread in classic and mediaeval literature, is
the immediate source whence these conceptions reached Chretien.