2 - Safely through the realm: customs in Le Chevalier de la charrete

Summary

Chapter 1 identified a fundamental tension in Chrétien's Arthurian fictions, between a monarch dedicated to the maintenance of legal prerogatives established by the hereditary anterior order, and a chivalric elite eager to function independently of this tradition. The present chapter and the two following will focus on how this tension is dramatized in terms of a juridical coherence based on customs. In the previous chapter, these mechanisms were seen to play a major role in determining the parameters of conflict at the very beginning of Chrétien's Arthurian series, where their importance was shown to be both structural and ideological. Likewise in the three later romances – the contemporaneously composed Charrete and Yvain, as well as Le Conte du graal – customs play major roles essential to both structure and meaning in each work, again capturing the antagonism between the chivalric dynamic and the anterior order.

A PRELIMINARY INVENTORY OF CHRETIEN'S LITERARY CUSTOMS

In his study of the “role” of customs in the works of Chrétien, Erich Köhler classified them according to a threefold typology, taking into account practices nominally identified as customs and those giving the appearance of being customs though not specifically identified as such:

(1) “the ‘customs’ that King Arthur must observe”: under this heading appear the Custom of the White Stag in Erec and Arthur's reception of prisoners who report the circumstances of their defeat, as does Yder in Erec, for example, or Anguingueron, Clamadeu, and Orgueilleus de la Lande in Le Conte du graal.