Yvain by Chrétien de Troyes

First transcribed:Yvain: Ou, Le Chevalier au lion, c. 1170 (English translation, c. 1300)

Type of work: Short fiction

Type of plot: Arthurian romance

Time of plot: Sixth century

Locale: Britain

Principal characters

• Yvain, a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table
• Laudine de Landuc, the lady he marries
• Lunete, a damsel in Laudine de Landuc’s service
• King Arthur, ruler of the Britons
• Queen Guinevere, his wife
• Sir Gawain, Yvain’s friend and King Arthur’s nephew
• Sir Kay, the cynical seneschal
• Harpin of the Mountain, a giant slain by Yvain

The Story:

At the season of Pentecost, King Arthur holds his court at Carduel in Wales. After dinner on that feast day, a knight named Calogrenant tells a tale of adventure that is not altogether to his credit, and for which he is mocked by Sir Kay the seneschal. Calogrenant reveals that seven years before he had journeyed beyond the forest of Broceliande. After a night’s lodging in the tower of a courteous vavasor he continued on his way until he encountered a giant seventeen feet tall who was guarding some wild bulls in a clearing. The giant told the knight that if he sought some marvel he was to look for a spring in a mysterious wood, for water from the spring poured on a nearby stone would bring down upon him a storm such as few men had ever seen, with bolts of lightning that would blind him and thunder that would shake the earth. All happened as the giant had foretold, and after the storm had ceased, a knight appeared and challenged Calogrenant to a duel because of the great damage that had been caused by the wind and rain Calogrenant had brought about. The two fought and Calogrenant was overthrown. He tells his companions that he had been so shamed in that encounter that he had never told the story before.

One of those who listens to his tale is Yvain, a valiant knight, who swears to avenge the shame of Calogrenant, his German cousin. Yvain is then also mocked by Sir Kay. While they speak, King Arthur comes from his chamber, and Queen Guinevere tells him the tale as she has heard it. The king thereupon swears an oath that he must see these wonders for himself; he says that any of his knights who wishes to come may accompany him on the venture. Yvain, thinking that the quest should be his alone, leaves the court secretly and rides on horseback over mountains and through valleys until he comes to the forest of the magic spring. When he pours a basin of water on the stone, a great storm arises. After the storm the strange knight appears, and he and Yvain battle until their lances splinter and their armor has been pierced in many places. At last Yvain deals the enemy a blow that shatters his helmet and splits his skull, but even then the knight does not fall down at once but gallops off on his horse to take refuge in his castle.

Yvain, riding in close pursuit of his foe, is trapped when a portcullis falls before him as well as another behind him after he has ridden through the castle gate. There the maid Lunete finds him and saves his life with the gift of a magic ring, which makes him invisible while the nobleman’s vassals search for the knight who gave their lord his mortal wound. While he is thus protected, Yvain sees the Lady Laudine de Landuc, the mistress of the castle, a lady so fair that he falls in love with her on the spot. The maid Lunete, seeing how matters stand, conceals Yvain and ministers to his wounds. Between visits to Yvain, she speaks to her lady, urging her to put aside her anger and grief and to take a new husband who will be master of her domain and defender of the magic spring. Lunete is so cunning in her speech that her lady finally agrees to do as the damsel suggests. Then Yvain is brought from the chamber where he has been hidden. Falling on his knees before the Lady Laudine, he begs forgiveness for killing her lord in fair fight. The lady, impressed by Yvain’s comeliness and bravery, is soon reconciled, and the two are wed with great rejoicing.

As he had sworn, King Arthur comes with his knights to see the magic spring, and Sir Kay mocks the absent Yvain, who had sworn to avenge his cousin’s name. Then the king pours a basin of water on the stone, and immediately the rain begins to fall and the wind to blow. When the storm has subsided, Yvain appears, his armor and helmet concealing his identity, to challenge King Arthur’s knights, and Sir Kay begs to be allowed the first encounter. Yvain quickly unhorses the braggart seneschal and then reveals himself to King Arthur and the other knights. All are delighted to find Yvain safe and well. For a week thereafter, Yvain and his lady entertain the royal party with feasting and entertainment of all kinds.

At the end of that time, as the king is preparing to depart, Sir Gawain urges Yvain to return to Britain with them and to take part in all tournaments, so that none can say that so brave a knight has grown weak and slothful in marriage. The Lady Laudine agrees, but on the promise that Yvain will return to her in one year. Before he leaves, she gives him a ring set with a stone that will keep its wearer from all harm as long as he keeps his sweetheart in mind.

So successful is Yvain in all the tournaments that are held throughout the land that he forgets his promise until the Lady Laudine sends a damsel to denounce him as a hypocrite and liar and to demand the return of the ring. Yvain, overcome by remorse at the thought of losing his lady’s love, goes mad; he begins living like a wild beast in the forest. A hermit living there finds him, naked and distracted, and gives him bread and water; the hermit takes care of Yvain until one day the noble lady of Noroison and her two damsels find the naked man asleep under a tree. The lady and her maids attend the knight and anoint him with a soothing, magic ointment to restore his wits. When he has recovered, Yvain pledges himself to the lady’s support and vows to champion her against Count Alier, who is plundering her lands. So fierce is Yvain’s attack on the marauders that the count yields and gives his oath that he will live in peace from that time on. Afterward, having refused to accept the lady’s hand in marriage or to take her as his mistress, Yvain rides away in search of new adventures.

One day, as he is wandering through the wood, he comes upon a lion and a fire-breathing serpent that holds the beast by the tail. Yvain draws his sword and slays the scaly monster, and from that time on the grateful lion becomes the knight’s inseparable companion. At last, Yvain returns to the magic spring where all his adventures began. There he finds the maid Lunete held prisoner in a nearby chapel by order of the Lady Laudine. The damsel is to be burned the next day, and she weeps that she has no one to defend her against charges brought by a wicked seneschal who has persuaded her mistress that the maid acted falsely in the sad affair of the Lady Laudine’s marriage to Yvain. The knight, without revealing himself, promises to act as her champion before he rides away to find lodgings for the night.

At last he comes to the castle of Sir Gawain’s brother-in-law, only to learn that the baron is threatened with the death of his four sons, prisoners of a dreaded giant, Harpin of the Mountain, unless the father will give his daughter over to the lewd embraces of the ogre’s lackeys. In spite of the fact that he does not have much time, Yvain rides out and slays the giant, with the help of the lion, because of his friendship with the baron’s kinsman, Sir Gawain. Refusing to give his name, he says that he wishes to be known only as the Knight with the Lion. Then he rides as fast as his horse can carry him to the chapel in the forest, where the pyre on which Lunete is to be burned has already been prepared. Although he has been wounded in his encounter with the giant, Yvain fights the seneschal and his two brothers. Again, with the lion’s help, he is victorious, and the false knights he has slain are burned on the funeral pyre prepared for Lunete. When confronted by the Lady Laudine he again refuses to reveal his identity, so ashamed is he of his inconstancy; he calls himself only the Knight with the Lion. Lunete has recognized him, however, and she accompanies him for some distance when he rides away. She promises to keep his secret, but she declares that she will bring about a reconciliation between him and his lady if it is ever in her power to do so.

The disconsolate Yvain departs to seek other adventures, but he is unable to travel far because of the wounds that he and the lion have suffered in their battles with Harpin of the Mountain and the three false knights. At length he comes to a fair castle where the lord’s retainers help him from his horse and attend gently to the lion, which Yvain has been carrying on his shield. There Yvain and the lion stay, attended by maidens skilled in surgery, until both the man and the beast are completely healed. Then they continue on their way.

About that same time, the lord of Noire Espine dies, and his older daughter claims the whole of his estates, saying that she will give no share to her sister. When the younger daughter goes to King Arthur’s court to plead her case, she learns that her older sister has been there before her and that Sir Gawain has promised to act as the sister’s champion. Granted forty days in which to find a champion of her own, the maid sets out in search of the famed Knight with the Lion.

Along the way she falls ill, but the quest is taken up by a friend whose search brings her at last to the magic spring. When the friend arrives at the spring, Lunete is saying her prayers in the chapel close by; Lunete is able to point out to the traveler the road Yvain had traveled many days before. The maid comes finally to the castle where the knight and the lion were nursed back to health, and, told that they had departed only a short time before, she rides after them as fast as she can. She overtakes the knight and his beast companion, and after she has told her story, Yvain promises to help the younger sister in her need.

Before he can act for the maid, however, he is to engage in still another desperate adventure. Toward nightfall, he and the damsel come to the town of Pesme Avanture, where, as they approach the castle, all the people call out to them to turn back. Yvain pays no heed to their warnings. Entering the castle, the knight finds three hundred maidens working at all kinds of embroidery; they are, they tell him, hostages for the king of the Isle of Damsels, the ransom he has paid to escape doing battle with two half-devils born to a mortal woman and an imp. Yvain and the damsel are courteously received by the lord of the castle, however, and that night everything is done in their honor.

When Yvain prepares to depart the next morning, the owner of the castle tells him that he cannot go without first fighting the sons of evil. The prize, if he wins, will be the hand of the baron’s beautiful daughter and dominion over all of her father’s lands. Although Yvain tries to refuse the terms of the offer, the lord assures him that no knight who has lodged in the castle can avoid or renounce the battle. The lion is taken away from Yvain and confined, but the beast manages to scratch his way out of the room where he is being held, and he arrives on the scene of the conflict in time to save the sorely wounded Yvain by killing one devil outright and so disconcerting the other that the knight is able to lop off the evil creature’s head.

With this victory, Yvain releases the wretched hostages from their imprisonment. Over the protests of the lord of the castle, he renounces the hand of the daughter and rides away with the damsel to the court of King Arthur. The younger sister rejoices when the Knight with the Lion arrives in time to champion her cause against her avaricious sister, who is defended by Sir Gawain. The struggle between the knights lasts all day and into the dusk. By that time both are exhausted, but neither knows the identity of the other until Yvain at last proposes postponement of the contest until the next day. Then Sir Gawain, recognizing his friend’s voice, grants him the victory, while Yvain, in turn, refuses this boon and reverses the decision. King Arthur finally solves the problem by granting them equal prowess in arms and conferring upon the younger sister her rights after the older one incautiously admits her attempt to dispossess her sister.

As soon as Yvain is cured of his wounds, he sets out once more for the magic spring, accompanied only by his faithful lion. Again he pours water on the stone and brings down such a storm that the Lady Laudine fears her castle and the town will be washed away. Meanwhile, the damsel Lunete speaks to her mistress in such winning fashion that the lady, losing all the resentment she has held against her husband, promises to restore him to her favor and love. So Yvain and his lady are reconciled after many troubles and trials, to the great happiness of Lunete and all their vassals.

Bibliography

Duggan, Joseph J. The Romances of Chrétien de Troyes. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2001. Presents analysis that focuses on the common characteristics of Chrétien’s romances, such as the importance of kinship and genealogy, the artful narration, and the depiction of knighthood. Includes discussion of Yvain.

Lacy, Norris J. The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes. New York: Brill, 1980. Describes all of Chrétien’s romances and argues that their meanings can be determined through the comparison of similar episodes. Chapter 3, which covers characterization and symbolism, suggests that the lion in Yvain is a symbol of Christ.

Lacy, Norris J., and Joan Tasker Grimbert, eds. A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes. New York: D. S. Brewer, 2005. Collection of essays addresses such topics as Chrétien in history, his patrons, his literary background, the Arthurian legend before him, and the medieval reception and influence of his work. Includes an analysis of Yvain in the essay “Le Chevalier au Lion: Yvain Lionheart,” by Tony Hunt.

Loomis, Roger Sherman. Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes. 1949. Reprint. New York: Octagon Books, 1982. Shows how Chrétien’s romances were influenced by Irish and Welsh mythology. Although Loomis’s conclusions have been challenged by later scholars, this classic source remains interesting.

Murray, K. Sarah-Jane. From Plato to Lancelot: A Preface to Chrétien de Troyes. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2008. Argues that there were two intersecting sources for Chrétien’s romances: the works of Plato, Ovid, and other Greco-Roman writers and the Celtic myths and legends found in Irish monastic scholarship.

Noble, Peter S. Love and Marriage in Chrétien de Troyes. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1982. Examines the theme of love and marriage in all of Chrétien’s romances, concluding that Yvain’s situation is different from that of Erec in Chrétien’s earlier romance. Laudine is not at fault; rather, Yvain is entirely blameworthy, and he must undergo his trials alone—he, not the marriage, needs testing.

Reichert, Michelle. Between Courtly Literature and al-Andalus: Matière d’Orient and the Importance of Spain in the Romances of the Twelfth-Century Writer Chrétien de Troyes. New York: Routledge, 2006. Examines the references to Spain in Chrétien’s romances, maintaining that these allusions occur at key moments and are often combined with linguistic “riddles” that suggest how the romances are to be read. Chapter 4 focuses on Yvain.

Topsfield, L. T. Chrétien de Troyes: A Study of the Arthurian Romances. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Presents an allegorical or symbolic interpretation of Chrétien’s work, showing how Yvain’s first quest is successfully accomplished when love makes him whole. Notes that the tension in the work is not between knighthood and love but between the rival worlds of Laudine and Arthur.