1 - Rex quondam: Arthurian tradition and the anterior order

Summary

The portrayal of King Arthur in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes contains scant evidence of a vigorous rise to power or of a glorious regnum, as in the magnificent career recorded by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace. These forerunners are not entirely obscured in Chrétien's narratives, however. Indeed, they are emphatically brought to mind in the first part of Cligés. An examination of Arthur and his court as they initially appear in what some critics have viewed as the least Arthurian of all of Chrétien's romances will enable us, in the first part of this chapter, to see how Cligés provided a means of effecting a dramatic turn away from the powerful example set by immediate precursors. The rest of the chapter will reveal how in his first work, Erec et Enide, Chrétien was from the very outset of his career already reconceptualizing the Arthurian world, in an effort to delineate a fictive anterior order against the background of which to set forth a fresh portrayal of Arthur as a complex, often ineffectual figure. In sum, we shall begin to see in this chapter how Cligés and Erec offer two different yet complementary departures from the earlier twelfth-century tradition that together orientate Chrétien's subsequent development of Arthurian romances in a significantly new direction.

ANTECEDENT TRADITION AND CHRETIEN'S REVISIONARY DESIGN: CLIGES

In Cligés, it is the universal renown of Arthur and his court that prompts Alexandre and his Byzantine companions at arms to journey to England, to receive knighthood at Arthur's hand “or not at all” (vv. 336ff.).