Aggression and Love in Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain

 

miniature from the Roman de Lancelot

      Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain has all the trappings associated with medieval romance: valiant knights, lovely ladies, and a measure of magic.  The poem is exemplary as well in its episodic structure, propounding and manipulating plot elements in part for the abstract beauty of the patterns so created, in part to mirror the dialectics of lived experience.  The poem embodies many of the commonest conventions of romances, yet, at critical moments, Chrétien opposes the fundamental passions of aggression and love in a tense ambivalence.  Though Yvain’s character and actions in many ways conform to heroic expectations, his story also indicates the knight’s need for the female other, for love and selflessness.   

     The principal theme of Yvain is announced clearly to be love at the outset.  Chrétien tells a tale of King Arthur’s court because he feels that love has suffered a decline since those days of glory when Amor was “dolz et buens” (17).  True love has since, he says, all but vanished since, dwindled to a mere “fable” (24), its devotees gone (19-20).  Moderns may imitate, however, the legendary times of Arthur by telling stories of great lives, just as those in earlier times had done.

Li un recontoient noveles,

Li autre parlaient d’Amors

Des angoisses et des dolors

Et des granz biens qu’orent souvant

                              (12-15)  

Earlier heroic epics such as Beowulf or the Song of Roland including early Arthurian stories such as those in the Geoffrey of Monmouth Wace’s Roman de Brut and Layamon's Brut likewise focused on war and derring-do rather than romantic love, but Yvain announces the paramount importance of love at the outset.

     While the glittering world of King Arthur’s court might seem at first charmed in its perfection, before long the reader encounter Sir Kex (Kay) who is anything but courtly, and Sir Qualogrenant (Calogrenant) who at the queen’s urging reluctantly relates the story of his defeat by a mighty and mysterious knight.  When the king emerges, he declares that he and anyone willing to join his entourage will investigate the unknown knight in two weeks.  Yvain, however outstanding in behavior generally, wishes to avenge his cousin Sir Qualogrenant and steals off in the night to confront the challenge himself.  Already King Arthur’s court has been shown to include a failure at arms, a rude mocker, and a hero who acts surreptitiously contrary to his ruler’s plan due to his ego.  A woman sets the narrative in motion.

     Yvain proves victor in the struggle with Esclados le Ros, but his success as a fighter, far from advancing his cause as his widow Laudine’s lover, makes his approach to her all but impossible as he is her husband’s killer.  However, her maid Lunete (Lunette) assists him and, though a combination of hiding the knight and advocating for him, succeeds in introducing him to her mistress.  She must use considerable argumentation to convince Laudine that he is honorable and without blame in Esclados’ death.

     Already the simplest heroic paradigm has been violated numerous times.  The fallibility of Arthur’s court is demonstrated by Qualogrenant’s failure.  Yvain himself has transgressed feudal propriety by acting on his own and, while he does defeat his foe, he could not have won Laudine without the help of Lunete, whose selfless devotion to his interests is unexplained but consistent.

     After his marriage Yvain lives happily for a time until Gauvain (Gawain) convinces him to compete in tournaments.  Gauvain specifically opposes such competitive masculine accomplishments with love which he thinks is likely to weaken a man (2484-2489).  His companionship and the challenge of competition so successfully distracts Yvain who wishes to win renown through such sports that he fails to return to his wife after the agreed year had passed, causing her to then reject him, and causing her husband what might be called a nervous breakdown. 

     He recovers from this low point only through the intervention of another lady who uses a medicine provided her by Morgue le Sage (Morgan le Fay) (2949).  Once he is physically and mentally restored he proceeds to rehabilitate himself, not by appealing directly to his estranged wife, but by further adventures, now motivated no longer by a thirst for fame but rather by the desire to practice love, not for the time romantic love, but love of others, of community, of humanity.  He undertakes a series of combats, each more altruistic than the competitions he had entered with Gauvain for the satisfaction of his ego.  Practicing disinterested love-service, he repays the lady of Norison (Noroison) who had nursed him in his recovery defeating the Count of Alier. 

     During that fight he was described as like a lion hunting deer (3198-3199), an image which is to be dramatically enacted when he next encounters a lion set upon by a snake.  “Pity” urges him to enter the fray (3369) on behalf of the lion whom he considers noble and great-hearted (“gentil et franche,” 3371), characteristics he reinforces in himself by his selfless combat.  The lion is an exemplar not only of valor and generosity but also of loyalty to the point that he contemplates suicide when he thinks Yvain may be dead.  Though Yvain regularly tells the lion not to intervene in his combats, the lion’s help is in fact critical to his success more than once.  The animal represents the nobility of disinterested courage.

     Yvain then assists Gauvain’s brother-in-law against Harpin of the Mountain as well ss Lunette who was to be executed because of her helping him.  He frees the unwilling laborers of the Castle of Misfortune and restores the inheritance of the younger daughter of the lord of blackthorn Noire Espine.  Each of these acts is in service to others and by such selfless acts he eventually gains readmittance to his marriage. 

     His deeds alone, however, would not have brought him victory.  Though Yvain is an outstanding warrior, he could not succeed with the aid of others.  Not only is the lion his invaluable companion who assists him even when directed to stand apart, but he relies also on a series of wise women.  From his rescue from Esclados’ men to the remedy originating from Morgan le Fay and provided him by another lady to Lunette’s tricking Laudine in the end, his own prowess is insufficient to bring him his victories; he requires alliances. 

     Though the poem is not assertively Christian at one point Yvain acknowledges the need to ask for divine help (3760). The aid of the lion and Yvain’s female allies parallels the Christian dogma of sanctifying grace, which is always undeserved.  The hero’s pushy egotism, so closely linked to his martial aggression and to the pride of original sin, is insufficient to win him what he wants; indeed, his desire for the sort of fame the Greeks called κλέος, renown derived from  both combat and tournaments, is what led him to disobey his king, lose his wife, and sink to a state of madness.  Unregulated by a female psyche, his aggression may prove destructive.  Yet, his match with Laudine is presented as ideal, and the poem concludes with the promise of continued balance in which the flourishing of love guarantees country-wide as well as personal harmony.

     The profound ambivalence at the heart of Yvain arises from the assumption that men can best distinguish themselves by valor, yet courage alone will be insufficient unless moderated and controlled by love.  The one is ego-aggrandizing; the other, selfless.  Yvain is an elegantly structured romance in which the nice aesthetic discernment of the artist authenticates the salutary integration of love and death, altruism and aggression in the hero’s progress to maturation. 

Appropriation of Biblical Narrative in Patience

Patience, the fourteenth century alliterative poem by the Pearl-Poet, provides a revealing model of the appropriation of a scriptural source. Though in many ways a typical homily in form, offering a Old and New Testament text to illustrate a lesson, the poem’s interest for most moderns arises from its irregularities. For instance, the opening praises not all “patience” (or acceptance or humility which also figure in the author’s concept), but in particular patience when wronged and treated with “heþyng.” (20)

The story of Jonah in the Hebrew (and the Vulgate that forms the background to the poet’s version) is most often cited by Christians as typological, an anticipation of Christ with the three days inside the beast prefiguring the interval between the crucifixion and the resurrection. The tropological or moral implication is also clear. Job provides the more common exemplum for patience, and Jonah certainly recalls Job in his railing, but the story also recalls that of Abraham and Isaac in its teaching of submission and acceptance. Whereas the earlier patriarch was willing to obey the Lord even to killing his son, Jonah is punished for his recalcitrance. Further, the time in the beast’s belly does not altogether reform his rebellious tendency, what the text calls, in its northern Midlands dialect, likely to slow even a reader comfortable with Chaucer’s language, his “janglande” (90) or grumbling, and he must be reproved a second time. Though the Bible’s account is telegraphic in the style of spare folk narrative, the poet indulges in considerable expansion, including colloquialisms and psychological motivation both of Jonah and of God. In the hands of the medieval poet, the story is more “realistic” and its thematic point altered to celebrate the virtue of patience.

Though in many ways a typical homily in form, the poem’s interest for most moderns arises from its irregularities. For instance, the opening praises not all “patience” (or acceptance or humility which also figure in the author’s concept), but in particular patience when wronged, “bullied,” or “abused, (19) a feeling no unknown to the lower orders of feudal society. After a recitation of the Beatitudes, he proceeds name eight “blessings” or virtues which is derived from the Beatitudes rather than from Prudentius’ Psychomachia (which includes seven rather different virtues). The poet links poverty and patience, noting that he himself must exercise the latter as he is afflicted with the former. He asks if he were to be ordered to Rome by his master he would have to accept or face worse, though compliance would bring little reward. He then adds that a very similar circumstance once occurred to Jonah, and begins to tell the tale of the reluctant prophet and the great sea beast.

Putting up with penury and the thoughtless demands of one’s boss may be Christian, but these sound more like the storyteller’s seduction of his audience through building links to their common experience and then promising the respite of a rousing good story than like a typical moralizing sermon.

Earlier readers have often appreciated the poet’s vernacular language (not only not Latin, but markedly informal English such as the words describing his resistance to the divine will. (Another is “gyrchchyng” or complaining, l. 53.) The narrative is introduced by comparing the speaker’s discomfiture at being sent on an unwelcome mission by his “lege lorde” (51) to a “jape” played on Jonah long ago. (57) He then invites the reader to hear an entertaining story, noting as a “teaser” the ironic plot. (58) Apart from the rhythmic swing, conversational exchanges between Jonah and God are rendered as naturally as a modern play. For instance, God responds “Herk renk is þis riȝt so ronkly to wrath/ For any dede þat I haf don oþer demed þe ȝet” (431-2), a divine attitude that elicits more “janglande” from Jonah. When Jonah has emerged from the beast and is established in a pleasant home he says in the most natural way, “Iwysse, a worÞloker won to welde I neuer keped.” (464)

The rich liveliness of the text provides vivid detailed accounts far beyond the Biblical text in such matters as the ship’s setting out, a step-by-step guide (attending to ropes, sail, hawsers, windlass, anchor, and so on). Later as the ship founders the sailors bale, toss featherbeds over the side, and each calls on his favorite pagan deity. Once Jonah is out and has warned Nineveh, the king strips, throws himself into ashes, dons a hair-shirt and a covering “sack,” and commands that all must perform penitential actions including fasting by babies and livestock.

His harrowing period in the stench and slime of the sea monster’s digestive tract is also described in terms readers are likely to remember, but the experience does little to reform our grumpy hero. Having built himself a little home, he is given the marvelous honeysuckle, an emblem of all earthly delights, and he feels such satisfaction he sounds like a purchaser of a new McMansion, declaring, “Iwysse, a worÞloker won to welde I neuer keped” (464) and requiring God to chasten him once more, not, one suspects, for the last time even then.

In the end, Jonah’s lesson must be, of course, for the poet’s audience, and for us all.

Be no3t so gryndel, godman, bot go forth Þy wayes,
Be preue & be pacient in payne & in joye;
For he Þat is to rakel to renden his cloÞez
Mot efte sitte with more vnsounde to sewe hem togeder. (524-527)

The emphasis is not so much in pious obedience to God as practicality. Who wants to be obliged to needlessly resew one’s wardrobe? Jonah’s acceptance includes obeying also his earthly lord mentioned at the poem’s outset. Simple acceptance of what cannot be altered is prudential, not revealed, wisdom. It is best to follow Jehovah’s commands in one’s own interest, realizing that rebellion against the divine will must increase anyone’s suffering, just as flouting one’s worldly master will bring unwelcome consequences.

The poet established contact with his audience through their common poverty and suffering. His prophet would have preferred to avoid direct dealings with the divine, but, when such contact is forced upon him, he finds it best to cooperate. The poem in fact teaches patience in the sense of forbearance and acceptance of what cannot be changed. God’s overarching plan holds little interest for Jonah who wishes only to make his small part in it as comfortable as possible. The poet managed to entertain his audience with an altogether fabulous tale of magic and monsters while maintaining a fundamental realism that allowed each listener to identify with the prophet as someone little different form the common man.

(This essay uses Moorman's edition, The Works of the Gawain-Poet.)