Margaret Middleton

Arthurian literature in French and its significance for England

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ENGLAND, SCOTLAND AND FRANCE IN NON-ARTHURIAN LITERATURE The above findings relating to the Arthurian verse romances must now be put into a wider context, since it is by no means the case that the Arthurian romances are the only genre to be thus politically oriented towards England. There is also evidence of an equally strong sympathy for the cause of England and the English crown to be detected in a whole series of non-Arthurian texts, both courtly romances and non-courtly genres such as political propaganda, to such an extent that they have to be assessed not so much as examples of French literature but as literary products of the English territories written in French. Rickard deals with a considerable number of these works, and repeatedly expresses his astonishment that Frenchmen could identify to that extent with the interests of England; in so doing he fails to recognize the fact that from the eleventh to the fourteenth century the term ‘Frenchman’ was of a thoroughly heterogeneous nature, and that a large number of those who were born and lived on the Continent and spoke continental French felt themselves to be part of the Anglo-Norman community because of the feudal situation and the automatic assumption under the feudal system that loyalty to ones lord was an overriding principle.

Old matiere, new sens: innovations in thought and content

It is characteristic of the authors of Meraugis, Fergus and Durmart that their works continually make deliberate references to Chretiens Arthurian romances; thus it is equally true for thirteenth-century readers and for modern commentators that the three later texts cannot be properly understood unless seen against the background of the Arthurian romances that preceded them. The authors presuppose that their public is familiar with even the details of Chretiens works; it is only on this premiss that they can be fully effective in the presentation of their own attitudes, their carefully considered insertions of motifs and scenes, their playful handling of familiar matiere and also their criticism of the earlier author, both implicit and explicit. Persistent allusions to the pattern of expectations predetermined by Chretiens works create a specific kind of generic development going beyond mere similarities of form and content. All three romances bear witness to a renewed flowering of Arthurian verse romances in the period up to about 1250, a trend more conspicuous in terms of the quality rather than the quantity of the output. Some decades after Chretiens death a series of gifted authors undertook the attempt to put new impetus into the genre of Arthurian romance in verse, which in the meantime had either confined itself to shorter lays and episodic continuations of an older work, or had abdicated its dominant position in favour of romances in prose.