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Pattern and Theme in Chrétien's ‘Yvain’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 July 2016
Extract
Yvain, Chrétien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counterpoise to Erec et Enide, attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of love and chivalry. The several versions of this interpretation are misleading, if not quite wrong, because they divert our attention from what is special about Yvain to what it has in common with Erec. In all of them the lion is peripheral, although for Chrétien himself the lion gave the romance its name: Le Chevalier au lion. I intend to argue that Yvain is rather a critique of the Arthurian ideal, using patristic — or, if one prefers, Christian — psychology to show its hero fall victim to the sins of superbia, invidia, and ira in the first part and triumph over them in the second. Chrétien, I propose, made the lion a symbol of ira as a power of the soul and as ambivalent emotion, so that the two-part figure of the Chevalier au Lion — Yvain with his lion — dramatizes the restoration of ideal order within Yvain himself. Since the story of Yvain derives almost certainly from a Celtic source, Chrétien's originality consists not in the main events but in their disposition and in the emphasis assigned them in order to reveal their psychological and moral significance. I shall use comparisons with the Welsh story of Owein and the Lady of the Fountain to set that originality in relief, for whether the Welsh romance itself is the ultimate source of Yvain or both develop from some common source, it very likely approximates the form of the story prior to Chrétien's revision. It contains all the essential elements of Chrétien's romance — except Yvain's meeting with the hermit and the dispute between the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine — masterly in detail but loosely connected, without moral focus or thematic coherence. Yvain, on the other hand, is distinguished, as this essay will try to show, by Chrétien's use of a progression of parallel incidents, together with the symbolic figure of the lion, to reveal gradually the meaning of the whole.
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References
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18 Owein's overstaying his leave (173-74) is, by contrast, unexplained and unaccountable. There is no pursuit of honor, no hint of superbia. Any meaning which might underlie Owein's failure to return is obscured by the magical (at least in Owein) period of three years he stays away and by the fact that Arthur, out of love for him, asked the Lady of the Fountain to allow Owein to return to court with him. All this is not surprising, for—as Greiner, Walter, ‘Owein-Yvain: Neue Beiträge zur Frage nach der Unabhängigkeit der cymrischen Mabinogion von den Romanen Chrestiens,’ Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 12 (1918) 1–184, esp. 152-159, pointed out long ago, rather disparagingly for Chrétien — the author of the Welsh romance was uninterested in the psychological processes and motivations which seem to constitute Chrétien's most substantial addition to the story.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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24 Owein's nakedness is mentioned but not stressed (174), and there is no reference to any wound. His distress is physical rather than spiritual; his weakness is caused simply by starvation. The widowed countess instructs her maid to apply the ointment near the heart with the assurance, ‘If there be life in him he will rise.’ The magical quality of the ointment is further reduced when the countess assigns it a definite monetary value.Google Scholar
25 Cook, Robert G., ‘The Ointment in Chrétien's Yvain,’ Mediaeval Studies 31 (1969) 338–42, has argued — on the basis of what he believes is a strikingly parallel reference to ointment intended for the head but used instead for all the body in Bernard's twelfth sermon on the Canticle of Canticles (PL 183.831) — that the ointment which cures Yvain of his madness symbolizes pity. In fact, Bernard carefully distinguished between the ointment poured over Christ's head (Matt. 26.7) and the spices intended but not used to anoint his body (Mark 16.1). The parallel, even if there were one, could not account for Chrétien's confirmation of the lady's insistence that the ointment needed to be applied only to the head or her distress at its loss. The discrepancy between instruction and use seems rather to mark, with irony and delicate eroticism, the damsel's concern for Yvain.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
26 The earliest studies, like Chotzen, T. M., ‘Le Lion d'Owein et ses prototypes celtiques,’ Neophilologus 18 (1902) 51–58, 131-36, and Brugger, E., ‘Yvain and his Lion,’ Modern Philology 28 (1941) 267-87, were content to explain the lion by citing sources and analogues. A Christological interpretation has been offered, incidentally by Alfred Adler, ‘Sovereignty in Chrétien's Yvain,’ Publications of the) M(odern) L(anguage) Association of America) 62 (1947) 281-305, and in its fullest form by Julian Harris, ‘The Role of the Lion in Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain,’ PMLA 64 (1949) 1143-63, both based on Brodeur, A. G., ‘The Grateful Lion: A Study in the Development of Mediaeval Narrative,’ PMLA 39 (1924) 485-524. This Christological interpretation is unacceptable because it cannot account for the facts that the serpent is on the point of killing the lion when Yvain arrives, that Yvain saves the lion so that in any Christological allegory he would have to represent the Redeemer, that the lion is entirely subservient to Yvain, that it nearly commits suicide, that it occasionally displays terrific ferocity, or that Chrétien generally takes pains to make it behave like a large dog and never like divinity incarnate. It cannot, in short, explain any of the data of Chrétien's romance. Brodeur (511-12) adduces an interpretation of ‘this very story’ from an anonymous Liber exemplorum of the last quarter of the thirteenth century: ‘Exemplum de leone, de quo fertur, sicut dicitur in summa de viciis, quod cum hunc quidam miles a serpente liberavit et a milite recedere noluit. Quid igitur excusacionis habebunt, qui deserentes redemptorem suum serpenti adherent infernali?’ It seems obvious, however, despite Brodeur's italics, that the author has logically enough cast the knight in the role of Christ and recommends the lion's fidelity to the common Christian. A closer analogue (mentioned by Frappier, Étude 214) is the episode from La Queste del saint graal (ed. Pauphilet, A. [CFMA 33; Paris 1923] 93-104) in which Perceval encounters a lion and a dragon (serpent), but there Perceval only helps the lion by killing the dragon, which had seized one of the lion's cubs and which the lion has pursued and attacked. Harris (1149n.) suggests that the lion's attempt at suicide is an allusion to Christ's laying down his life for mankind, but since the lion does not lay down its life and would not have helped Yvain if it had, he concedes that his interpretation is rather desperate and blames Chrétien for such a ‘very crude’ allusion.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Christological interpretation is based on the consistent allegorization of the lion as Christ in medieval bestiaries (a fact emphasized even by Frappier, Étude 214). To maintain this interpretation, however, bestiaries select rigorously the natural details which they allegorize. None of these details appears in Yvain: Yvain's lion does not sleep with its eyes open but simply stays awake (3475-78, veilla, v. 3476) in order to watch over Yvain's horse. As soon as one turns to Biblical commentaries (e.g., Gregory's Mor. in Job, 5.21.41 [PL 75.701], where the lion illustrates the diversity of significances a single thing can have) or dictionaries of scriptural significances, the range of possible interpretations for the lion becomes wide indeed. The Allegoriae in sacram Scripturam (PL 112.983) is representative: ‘Leo est Christus, … Deus judex, … quilibet spiritualiter fortis, … populus Judaicus … Leo, austeritas legis, … imperator Romanus, … quilibet crudelis … Leo, Antichristus in fallacia sua.’ Google Scholar
Leo Spitzer's interpretation (‘Le Lion arbitre morale de l'homme,’ Romania 64 [1938] 525–30) is invalidated by Chrétien's insistence that the lion subordinates its instincts to Yvain's will.Google Scholar
Interpretations which see in the lion the symbol of some abstract ideal like manly strength and nobility of character (Stauffer, Der Wald 48) or knightly perfection (Frappier, Étude 212, 213, 216) are less obviously wrong because they point so generally to themes central to the romance, but they, too, founder on the bestiality of the lion as Chrétien presents it and on its subordination to Yvain.Google Scholar
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49 On the basis solely of a sensitive reading of the text, Alfred Adler (296-97) saw the introduction of the lion as ‘the visualization of Yvain's real recovery’ and suggested that since, as ‘a symbol of knightly courtoisie, the lion also displays uninhibited ferocity, … we may safely attempt to describe this coexistence of gentleness with ferocity as an amplificatio of the paradoxes in the personality of Yvain himself.’ Adler could not, however, explain the appropriateness of the lion or define the relationship between it and Yvain more closely and thereby account for this paradox of gentleness and ferocity, which he misleadingly implies is embodied in the lion rather than in the Chevalier au Lion, that is, in Yvain and his lion.Google Scholar
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62 Katzenellenbogen 63-67.Google Scholar
63 PL 176.1000.Google Scholar
64 Tristitia and acedia originate in a corruption of the irascible part of the soul according to John Cassian, Conlatio 24.15 (CSEL 13.691), and Alcuin, De animae ratione 4 (PL 101.640), and in Gregory's genetic scheme tristitia-acedia develops from ira. Perhaps part of the explanation of the lion's behavior lies here, but tristitia is not said to be an aspect of ira, and the lion's duel is so violent that luctus seems to describe it more closely than acedia or tristitia .Google Scholar
65 150-54.Google Scholar
66 160-61.Google Scholar
67 On Ira's suicide see Katzenellenbogen 8 n. 1,83 n. 1. Mâle, Émile, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Nussey, Dora (New York 1913) fig. 54, reproduces a window of the choir apse of the Lyons cathedral (c. 1220) which represents ira as a knight committing suicide with his own sword. The image reflects the iconographical traditions of the twelfth century.Google Scholar
68 Cf. Silvestris, Bernard, Comment. super Eneid. 62, ‘iracundos apros’; Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. nat. 18.5 (1328), ‘[Aper] est autem periracundus et insipiens, nec bonorum doctrinam morum recipiens, nullaque mutatio accidit in eo etiam si castretur.’ Google Scholar
69 1592, as Esclados' retainers search for his killer, and 6060, as Yvain and Gauvain fight to decide the dispute between the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine. See the discussion of this episode below.Google Scholar
70 1000.
71 Ed. Roques, Mario (CFMA 86; Paris 1958) 3725, 3790.Google Scholar
72 2670, 6076, 6098, 8857.Google Scholar
73 Acceptance of God's will is a distinctive leitmotif of the second half of Yuain, dramatic evidence of humilitas. Cf. 3715-16, 3754-56, 3760-61, 3829, 3850, 3870-71, 3932, 3977-85, 4052-53, 4057-69, 4132-33, 4900-01, 4942, 4954, 5019, 5034, 5046, 5055, 5169, 5244-45, 5332-35, 5474, 5789-90, 5793-801, 5927, 5977-84. It may be worth noting that when the seven sins are set against the seven Petitions — as became popular in the twelfth century — ira is opposed to ‘fiat voluntas tua.’ According to Hugh of St Victor, Exp. in Abdiam (PL 175.403) and De quinque septenis 3 (PL 175.407-08), ‘Tertia petitio est contra iram, qua dicitur: Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra. Hac sibi placere indicat, quidquid voluntas Dei sive in se, sive in aliis secundum arbitrium suae dignationis dispensat. Huic ergo petitioni datur spiritus scientiae, ut ipse ad cor veniens erudiat illud et salubriter compungat, ut sciat homo malum quod patitur ex sua culpa provenire: si quid autem boni habeat, ex misericordia Dei procedere; ac per hoc discat sive in malis, quae sustinet, sive in bonis, quae non habet, contra Creatorem non irasci sed per omnia patientiam exhibere. Optime ergo per compunctionem cordis, quae spiritu scientiae operante interius ex humilitate nascitur, ira et indignatio animi mitigatur.’ Google Scholar
74 Apuleius, , De Platone 2.6, makes the point explicitly, but it is obviously inherent in Plato's comparison (Republic 441a-442c; Calcidius c. 233, pp. 246–47) of the rational part of the soul to the rulers of a state and of the irascible part to its soldiers.Google Scholar
75 Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R. (New York 1953) 173–76.Google Scholar
76 4470-502, 5572-623; e.g. 4493-94: ‘li donent granz cos anbedui, / mes plus granz reçoivent de lui,’ and 5612-13: ‘Moet i avoit cos andurez / et randuz, tant com il plus pot.’ Google Scholar
77 The lion's physical intervention suggests more clearly than would a mere burst of strength in Yvain the providential protection of those who serve the cause of justice. This is especially true of the Lunete episode, where the lion's help comes immediately after all the ladies who favor her cause have prayed God not to allow the hard-pressed Yvain to be defeated. But in this episode it is equally clear that the lion does not represent direct divine intervention, because the lion and Yvain are alike wounded, the lion so severely that Yvain must carry him off on his shield, and the two are healed together at a nearby castle. Yvain trusts in the aid of God and the Right and does not despise his lion (4323-30) not because all three are the same but because they all tend toward the same end: justice.Google Scholar
78 In Owein the Giant-of-the-mountain and Luned episodes have no connection with Gwalchmei, nor does Owein have to meet any deadline, though he arrives just as the fire in which Luned will be burned is being lit.Google Scholar
79 4758-60; cf. 4784-85.Google Scholar
80 Cf. 4780-93, 5844-47, 5878-82.Google Scholar
81 In Owein (172) Gwalchmei by chance wears a new cloak which conceals his identity.Google Scholar
82 De officiis 1.62; similarly 1.63, 66, 157.Google Scholar