Schweitzer-Pattern and Theme in Chrétiens Yvain

PATTERN AND THEME IN CHRÉTIEN'S 'YVAIN'
Author(s): EDWARD C. SCHWEITZER

Source: Traditio, Vol. 30 (1974), pp. 145-189
Published by: {fordham}
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27830966
Accessed: 03-07-2017 11:51 UTC
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms
is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Traditio
This content downloaded from 200.45.170.1 on Mon, 03 Jul 2017 11:51:46 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PATTERN AND THEME IN CHR?TIEN'S 'YVAIN'
By EDWARD C. SCHWEITZER
Yvain, Chr?tien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counter

poise to Erec et Enide, attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of love
and chivalry.1 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 Chr?tien himself the lion gave the romance its name: Le Chevalier
au lion.2 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. Chr?tien, 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, Chr?tien'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.3 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
1 E.g. Gustave Cohen, Un grand romancier d'amour et d'aventure au XIIe si?cle: Chr?tien
de Troges et son uvre (2nd ed. Paris 1948) 354-55; Albert Pauphilet, Le legs du moyen ?ge:
?tudes de litt?rature m?di?vale (Melun 1950) 163-65; Moshe Lazar, Amour courtois et 'Fin'
Amors' dans la litt?rature du XIIe si?cle (Biblioth?que fran?aise et romane publi?e par le
Centre de philologie romane de la Facult? des Lettres de Strasbourg S?rie C: ?tudes litt?raires
8; Paris 1964) 244-52; Jean Frappier, Chr?tien de Troyes: L'homme et l' uvre (Paris 1968)
146, 167, and ?tude sur Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion de Chr?tien de Troyes (Paris 1969)
200-01, with an important qualification regarding the sterility of Gauvain's chivalry.
2 Le Chevalier au lion (ed. Mario Roques [C(lassiques) F(ran?ais du) M(oyen) A(ge) 89;
Paris I960]) 6804-05: 'Del Chevalier au lyeon fine / Crestiens son romans ensi.' References
to this edition are made in the body of the text.
3 So I understand Chr?tien's reference in the prologue to. Erec et Enide (ed. Mario Roques
[CFMA 80; Paris 1966] 13-14) to the 'molt bele conjointure' which should be drawn from a
'conte d'avanture.' It seems the easiest and most satisfactory reading, although conjointure
is glossed as ' Anlass' by W. Foerster, Christian von Troyes S?mtliche Werke III (Halle 1890)
297-98, and A. Tobler and E. Lommatzsch, Altfranz?sisches W?rterbuch II (Berlin 1936)
696. See D. \V. Robertson, Jr., ' Some Medieval Literary Terminology, with Special Reference
to Chr?tien de Troyes/ Studies in) P(hilology) 48 (1951) 684-85, with comment by Mario
Roques, Romania 73 (1952) 551; Frappier, Chr?tien de Troyes 59.
146 TRADITIO
approximates the form of the story prior to Chretien's revision.4 It contains

all the essential elements of Chr?tien'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 Chr?tien's use of a progression of parallel incidents, together
with the symbolic figure of the lion, to reveal gradually the meaning of the
whole.
The opening scene in which Calogrenant recounts his visit to the magic
spring serves as an overture to what follows. It establishes the thematic frame
of violent disruption and harmonious order within which the characters of
the romance move, it reveals the psychological forces which guide them, and
it puts in question the courtly ideal of love and chivalry which Chr?tien aims
to explore and redefine.
Arthur is immediately referred to as
Artus, li boens rois de Bretaingne
la cui proesce nos enseigne
que nos soiens preu et cortois. (1-3)
His knights are ' li boen chevalier esle?, / qui a enor se traveillierent ' (39-40).
His court sets a standard against which the present world appears degenerate.
Love in particular has been much debased, declares Chr?tien, now that those
who know nothing about it lie and say they love. Yet the disarray of the scene
to which he turns is delicately pointed up by the rich feminine rhyme traveil
lierent-merveillierent between lines 41 and 42:
a enor se treveillierent.
Mes eel jor molt se merveillierent.
Though Arthur, the paragon of chivalry whose example continues to inspire us,
has never before withdrawn from so great a celebration to rest in his chamber,
he does so now. The exceptional 'mes eel jor' is repeated seven lines later.
More,
4 The Mabinogion, trans. Gwynn Jones and Thomas Jones (Everyman's Library; London
and New York 1949) 155-82. References to this edition are made in the body of the text.
Scholarship on the relationship between Owein and Yvain is summarized with new contri
butions by R. L. Thomson, Owein or Chwedyl Iarlles y Ffynnawn (Dublin Institute for
Advanced Studies, Mediaeval and Modern Welsh Series 4; Dublin 1968) xxiv-lxxxiv. Thomson
argues that the orthography of the extant Welsh text suggests it was composed before Yvain.
See also the annotated bibliography in Frappier, ?tude 281-84.
Chretien's 'yvain' 147
la reine le d?tint,
si demora tant delez li
qu'il s'oblia et endormi. (50-52)
Calogrenant is, as one would expect, ' molt avenanz, ' but here he has begun to
tell his companions 'un conte, / non de s'annor, mes de sa honte.' The
sensation one has of being witness to a scene not intended for public view is
strengthened first by the queen's stealth as, having overheard the beginning
of Calogrenant's story, she creeps out of Arthur's chamber, then by the startled
reaction of the knights to her sudden appearance. The qualifying clause which
follows is disconcerting, since it refers back to nus in line 65, and with its
stress on sudden upward movement (sanz plus, sailli, sus) forces the reader to
share verbally the knights' shock after the climactic swoop of cheoir (66).
Keu's words intensify the embarrassing nature of the incident. His sarcasm,
indeed, has an especially insidious effect on the courtly ideal propounded in
the prologue by simultaneously echoing and denying it:
'Par Deu, Qualogrenant,
molt vos voi or preu et saillant,
et certes molt m'est bel quant vos
estes li plus eortois de nos.' (71-74)
The queen's rebuke,

' Enuieus estes, et vilains,
de tancier a voz conpaignons, ' (90-91)
is obviously justified, as are Calogrenant's uncourtly references to gadflies,
bees, and manure. Yet Keu is the first of Arthur's good chosen knights whom
Chr?tien presents in any detail, and therefore his words control our perception
of the entire scene. His scurrilous behavior, moreover, is no momentary
failing. The notatio with which Chr?tien introduces him (69-70), Calogrenant's
response (112-15), and the queen's half-apology (131-35) demonstrate that this
is how Keu usually behaves.
Even Guinevere falls far short of an ideal courtesy. She insists on hearing
the story which drew her from Arthur's bed, despite Calogrenant's reluctance,
expressed first with elegant deprecation (120-23), then with a vigor which
leaves behind the heavy odor of coercion:
'Certes, dame, ce m'est molt grief

que vos me comandez a feire;
einz me leissasse un des danz traire,
se correcier ne vos dotasse,
que je hui mes rien lor contasse.' (142-46)
He makes the same point yet again when he has finished (579-80).
148 TRADITIO
The Suggestion of a vague moral disorder within the embodiment of the

putative ideal is unmistakable in the opening scene of Yvain, but Chr?tien
has deliberately developed it. It is absent in Owein. No one there wonders at
Arthur's sleep, and before he retires he expresses only the anxiety that his
court might make game of him (155). The story which Cynon (Calogrenant's
opposite number) tells is the 'best tale we know,' of 'the most wondrous
thing* (155, 156). Cei is an original, prickly enough to suggest Chr?tien's Keu
but lacking his envious and slanderous malice. Cynon's repeated interjections
? such as, was sure, Cei' ? set a tone of camaraderie. Cynon's emphasi
on the reality of the tawny-black palfrey with a red mane which he brought
back from the castle where he was lodged after his own horse was led away
by the Black Knight of the Fountain (161) diverts our attention and that of
his fictional audience from his defeat. He concedes that he has known of no
greater failure, yet what continues to puzzle him is that he has never heard an
more about so strange an adventure. A desire to experience the marvellous is
the sole motive of Owein's quest. Gwenhwyfar immediately and masterfully
rebukes Cei's challange to Owein, and Cei apologizes gracefully.
The discrepancy between the courtly ideal and its manifestation on this
Pentecost at Carduel is especially striking in Chr?tien's Yvain, but Calogrenant'
prologue to his story hints at a less obvious defect in Arthur's court. Cal
grenant insists on the literal truth of his tale. He urges his audience to listen
attentively and not to disregard any particular, because everything he is
about to say is true. In its large outlines the story of his defeat beside th
magic spring is humiliating, and he wants the extraordinary and extenuating
circumstances, which are not fabulous, to be carefully considered. He makes
this plea again more briefly just before he describes the moment of his defeat
' Par mi le voir, ce sachiez bien,
m'an vois por ma honte covrir. ' (526-27)
His motivation is psychologically convincing, particularly in the presence of
the sarcastic Keu. Nevertheless, the very language he uses to plead his cas
endows his narrative with a parabolical resonance which suggests that it does
contain a core of meaning which may not yet be understood. His insisten
distinction between words heard by the ears and words understood by th
heart recalls the language in which parables are presented in the New Test
ment:
Ideo in parabolis loquor eis: quia videntes non vident, et audientes non
audiunt, neque intelligunt. Et adimpletur in eis prophetia Isaiae dicentis
[6.9-10]: Auditu audietis, et non intelligetis: et videntes videbitis, et non
videbitis. Incrassatum est enim cor populi huius, et auribus graviter
audierunt, et oculos suos clauserunt: ne quando videant oculis, et auribus
audiant, et corde intelligant, et convertantur, et sanem eos. (Matt. 13.13-15)
Exegetes explain these paradoxes as symptoms of a general spiritual deficiency

of which the Jews' failure to understand Christ's words was but a signal
instance, and Calogrenant's language suggests a corresponding deficiency in
Arthur's court. Rabanus Maurus, for example, explains why the crowds to
which Jesus preached heard but did not understand:
Nunc apostolis reddit causam quare turbis loquatur in parabolis, ut qui
superba intentione se videntes, sive audientes aestimabant, et suo ingenio
confidentes omnia secreta divinae eruditionis penetrare se posse arbitra
bantur, et ob hoc magisterio coelesti se subdere nolebant, simplicibus et
humilibus mysteria coelestia agnoscentibus, ipsi vacui intellectu spiritali
remanerent. . . . Habent visum et auditum corporis extrinsecus, et semetipsos
privaverunt visu et auditu cordis intrinsecus.5
He even proceeds to give the same passage a generalized literary interpreta

tion.6
The relevance of these allusions, of course, is only potential. They do not
explain the meaning of Calogrenant's story, but they arouse in the reader
the expectation that it has a meaning which will be revealed. If allowed, the
Biblical and exegetical context gives point to the contrast between Calo
grenant's humility and the pride of the other members of the court ? a contrast
which further distinguishes the second part of the romance from the first and
Yvain as the Chevalier au Lion from Gauvain ? and to the superficiality of
Arthur's response to the story as a mere collection of marvels.
Certainly Calogrenant seems aware that he has experienced a great mystery,
and his entire encounter with the bestial bullherd suggests a depth of meaning
beyond that of the corresponding episode in Owein. The grotesque comedy of
the churl's repetition (356-57) of Calogrenant's own question (328-33) should
not obscure its disconcerting penetration. It sets the churl, quietly tending his
herd of wild bulls, against Calogrenant on his quest as if one were a distorted
reflection of the other. The correlation, once noted, cannot be ignored. By
his very existence the churl qualifies the validity of the courtly ideal, for its
representative betrays his narrowness of outlook in asking, 'Se tu es boene
chose ou non.' The unanswerable simplicity of the churl's reply, 'Et il me dist
qu'il ert uns horn, ' is laughable, but Calogrenant's corresponding answer ?
'Je sui, fet il, uns chevaliers,
qui quier ce que trover ne puis' ?
5 Comment, in Matt. (PL 107.942). Similarly Jerome, Comment, in Math. (GGL 77.103-04),
Bede, In Evang. Marc. exp.t on Mark 4.11-12 (GCL 120.482), Herv? de Bourgdieu, Comment,
in Isaiam, on Isaiah 6.9-10 (PL 181.93), and Zacharias Chrysopolitanus, Concord, evang.
74 (PL 186.230).
6 Comment, in Matt. (PL 107.942).
150 TRADITIO
is more superficial and less satisfactory than it appears and is no more self
evident than the churl's. For the romance as a whole forcefully poses th
questions: what sort of man is Calogrenant?and Yvain, who takes up his
quest ? and, further, in what sense are they chevaliers. In the large view, the
churl, tending his herd of bulls, is no more amoral than Calogrenant. He is,
as he remarks, again with disarming simplicity, 'master of his beasts.' Ev
dently that is a remarkable achievement. Calogrenant at first refuses to
believe its possibility:
' Gardes ? Par saint Pere de Rome,
ja ne conuissent eles home;
ne cuit qu'an plain ne an boschage
puisse an garder beste sauvage,
n'en autre leu, por nule chose,
s'ele n'est l'?ee et ancl?se. ' (333-38)
No other man could step among them without being killed (352-54), yet the
churl not only keeps watch over his herd of bulls; he controls them as well:
' Je gart si cestes et justis
que ja n'istront de cest porpris. ' (339-40)
Calogrenant's disbelief makes the fact more outstanding and one wrhich we
should recall when we encounter the single other character in Yvain who is
master of a beast. The emphasis put upon the detail seems meaningful only
in retrospect. At this point it can merely serve as a clue to the meaning of
what follows.
The 'big black man' whom Cynon meets in Owein, who is 'keeper of that
forest,' around whom a thousand wild animals graze, and who can summon
a multitude of other animals of all kinds to do him obeisance (158-59), clearly
betrays his descent from some anthropomorphic forest spirit; Chr?tien's churl
has been transformed into a figure of moral significance.
The churl's occupation puts Calogrenant's quest in an ambiguous light, and
Chr?tien tellingly juxtaposes the bullherd's final assertion of mastery ove
his beasts with his superficially impertinent question to Calogrenant; the
prefix re- of redevroies stresses the interrelationship of the two speakers:
'Einsi sui de mes bestes sire,
et tu me redevroies dire
quiex hom tu ies, et que tu quiers. ' (355-57)
The comedy here is fine spun. The churl's ignorance is extravagant, and the
answers to his questions outrageously obvious to any connoisseur of chivalric
romances, though not, of course, to him. Yet one must smile at the painfully
dignified form of Calogrenant's answer to those questions, which are inevitably
awkward precisely because they are so simple, and smile again when the churl
will not let him escape but asks more pointedly, ' Et que voldroies tu trover ? '
Galogrenant's first response, moreover, suggests by its abstractness a meta
physical dimension to his quest:
' Je sui, fet il, uns chevaliers
qui quier ce que trover ne puis;
assez ai quis, et riens ne truis' ? (358-60)
a dimension against which
' avanture, por esprover
ma proesce et mon hardemant'
seems trivial, even if one denies any allusion to Christ's promise ' quaerite, et
invenietis' (Matt. 7.7) in Calogrenant's curious stress ? repeating both verbs
? on his seeking and not finding.7
The allusion need not be insisted upon too strongly. It creates a further
resonance and deepens the shadow thrown over aventure by its bathetic place
ment after the grandiose abstraction quier; it does not radically alter the
effect of the dialogue. Its relevance seems likely, however, when we look ahead
to the religious cast given Yvain's quest of retribution as the Chevalier au
Lion by the repeated invocation of God's will. In addition, Augustine, ex
plaining Matthew 7.7 ('Petite, et dabitur vobis; quaerite, et invenietis; pulsate,
et aperietur vobis'), concentrates on the metaphorical door implicit in pulsate
and aperietur, makes the three imperatives successive stages in a quest for
truth, and so makes the correspondence between Christ's sermon and Calo
grenant's quest closer.8 Chr?tien's contemporary, Peter Riga, likewise regards
the verse as the description of an ongoing search; in his popular versified
Bible and commentary, the Aurora, he makes that same metaphorical door the
gate of the kingdom of heaven, located, as one knows, at the end of a narrow
road from which it is easy to go astray.9 The churl will caution Calogrenant in
the next lines not to wander from the straight path to the spring. These
7 In Owein (159) the corresponding exchange is flat though it contains, in embryo, most
of the crucial details developed by Chr?tien: 'And he said to me, "Dost see then, little man,
the power I have over these animals?" And then I asked the way of him, and he was rough
with me, but even so he asked me where I wanted to go, and I told him what kind of man
I was and what I was seeking, and he then showed me. "Take," said he, "the path to the
head of the clearing, . . ."' There is no other path and no possibility of missing the way.
Nor is anything made of the giant's power over the animals.
8 De sem. Domini in monte 2.21.72 (CGL 35.169-70). More generally, Augustine repeatedly
quotes or alludes to Matt. 7.7 in his E narr, in Ps. while he attempts to penetrate to the
mystery of a difficult text, 33.S.1.1, 74.11, 93.1, 103.S.2.1, 146.12 (CGL 38.273, 39.1032, 1300,
40.1492, 2130-31).
9 Evang. 1334-35, ed. Paul E. Beichner (U. of Notre Dame Pubi, in Med. Stud. 19; Notre
Dame 1965) II 478.
152 TRADITIO
citations, of course, are not intended to prove that Calogrenant is really seeking
the kingdom of heaven, lux Dei, or Truth, or to imply that the spring is an
allegory or type of spiritual initiation or baptism.10 On the contrary, by
alluding to the most profound mystery he knows, Chr?tien suggests the triv
iality of Calogrenant's quest for aventure.
The ensuing confusion over aventure is, on the surface, another trivial joke
at the expense of the rustic's ignorance of courtly life. The bullherd tells
Calogrenant that he does not know about any aventure or mervoille, but, he
says, he can direct him to a nearby spring:
' Mes se tu voloies aler
ci pr?s jusqu'? une fontainne
n'en revandroies pas sanz painne,
se ne li randoies son droit.
Ci pr?s troveras or en droit
un santier qui la te manra.
Tote la droite voie va,
se bien viax tes pas anploier,
que tost porroies desvoier:
il i a d'autres voies mout. ' (370-79)
The spring will in fact prove to be more than a test of prowess and courage,
for Yvain if not for Calogrenant.
Calogrenant, to be sure, remains motivated by mere curiosity:
' La mervoille a veoir me plot
de la tanpeste et de l'orage.' (432-33)
Except for his defeat, the episode at the spring is essentially a conventional
aventure which establishes a norm against which the later adventures can be
measured. The contrast between the violence of the storm (439-50) and the
spellbinding beauty of the polyphonous song of the birds in the tree which
follows it (458-77) and signals the reaffirmation of divine order (451-54)11
10 Such an interpretation has been presented by Maxwell S. Luria, 'The Storm-making

Spring and the Meaning of Chretien's Yvain,' SP 64 (1967) 576-85.
11 The birds' song in Owein (160-61) is also superlatively beautiful but there is no mention
of the harmonious relationship of parts, the most remarkable feature of the song from Calo
grenant's point of view. Consequently it cannot suggest, as the birds' song does in Yvain,
the Platonic notion of the power of music to order the parts of the human soul and to bring
them into harmonious consort. Calcidius' commentary on Timaeus 47 c-d is authoritative
(Timaeus a Calcidio translatus commentarioque instructus, ed. J. H. Waszink [Corpus Platoni
cum Medii Aevi; London and Leiden 1962] 272): ' Quantumque per uocem utilitatis capitar
ex musica, totum hoc constat hominum generi propter harm?ni?m tributum, quia iuxta rationem
harmonicam animam in superioribus aedificauerat naturalemque eius actum rhythmis
modisque constare dixerat, sed haec exolescere animae ob consortium corporis necessario
provides a fundamentally affective matrix which is rendered meaningful by

such subsequent details as Yvain's swoon with a torbeillon in his head12 and
the reconciliation between Yvain and Laudine which follows the final storm.
The mood of regret which is clear in the lines following Calogrenant's expression
of delight at the prospect of witnessing the storm and tempest is more imme
diately important:
' La mervoille a veoir me plot
de la tanpeste et de l'orage,
don je ne me ting mie a sage;
que volontiers m'an rapantisse
tot maintenant, se je po?sse,
quant je oi le perron erose
de l'?ve au bacin arose. ' (432-38)
His desire to undo his having poured water on the stone is the first enunciation
of a fundamental and increasingly prominent theme of the romance: the
unfortunate consequences of thoughtless knight-errantry.
The sense of pervasive mystery, which can still be felt in the tone of quiet
humility on which Calogrenant's narrative ends (550-80), is successively dissi
pated, first by Yvain's brash exclamation of comradely concern, 'Par mon
chief, fet mes sire Yvains, / vos estes mes cosins germains' (581-82ff.); then
by Keu's sarcastic attack upon Yvain (590-611) together with Guinevere's and
Yvain's responses (612-48); and finally by the bluff heartiness of Arthur's
triple oath to see the marvels by St. John's Eve (661-72). As the queen recounts
the story to Arthur 'mot a mot,' its world is transferred to the plane of con
ventional chivalric romance, the plane of Owein. The world of Car duel is
shown to be a diminished world which does not look beyond surfaces. And
similarly, it is impossible not to feel the irony, underscored by the rhyme
oscurtez-asseiirez, in Yvain's relief when he at last reaches the
obtinente obliuione proptereaque immodulatas fore animas plurimorum. Medelam huius

uitii dicit esse in musica positam, non in ea qua uulgus delectatur quaeque ad uoluptatem
facta excit?t uitia non numquam, sed in illa diuina, quae numquam a ratione atque intelli
gentia separetur; hanc enim censet exorbitantes animas a uia recta reuocare demum ad
symphoniam ueterem. Optima porro symphonia est in moribus nostris iustitia, uirtutum
omnium princip?lis, per quam ceterae quoque uirtutes suum munus atque opus exequuntur,
ut ratio quidem dux sit, uigor uero intimus, qui est iracundiae similis, auxiliatorem se rationi
uolens praebeat. ' In the course of this essay I shall urge the large-scale relevance of this
Platonic conception of justice in the human soul to the relationship between Yvain and his
lion.
12 Roques (230) glosses this word 'vertige,' and F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne
langue fran?aise VII (Paris 1892) 748, adds the synonyms 'trouble,' '?tourdissement' but
cites only the use in Yvain, where the sense is obviously transferred from the primary accep
tation, 'whirlwind,' as modern French 'tourbillon.' See the verb tourbeillier and the adjec
tive torbeilloneus in Godefroy. Chr?tien similarly uses tempeste, 2946,
154 TRADITIO
santier estroit
plain de ronces et d'oscurtez;
et lors fu il asse?rez
qu'il ne pooit mes esgarer. (768-71)
For he ignores entirely the moral dimension of this geography, implied s
strongly by Calogrenant's narrative and re-emphasized here where the land
scape is less particular and therefore vaster in the range of its suggestiveness,
while he plunges further and further into its shadows.
II
Calogrenant's account of his quest suggests in general terms an ambivalent

view of the conventional courtly ideal, of which Arthur's court is nominally
the embodiment. As presented by Chr?tien, the court falls short even of that
ideal. Yvain's quest, which begins by following in Calogrenant's path, further
examines that ideal and anatomizes in special detail the psychological forces
which motivate it. Chr?tien's perceptions are accurate insights into how
human beings in fact behave. Yet it must be axiomatic that recognition of
a general pattern separates knowledge of particular facts from understanding of
them. Such theory is not likely to be individual, however individual the
perceptions which it accommodates. I would suggest that the theory which
orders Chr?tien's individual observations is patristic psychology and that it can
illuminate the interrelationship between characters and between events.
Keu's symptoms are familiar. It is hardly necessary to point out that he
is 'molt. . . ranponeus, / fei et piegnanz et venimeus' (69-70) because he is
so consumed with invidia that he is virtually the incarnation of that sin. The
brutal sarcasm he directs against Calogrenant immediately betrays the motiva
tion of his attack:
'Par Deu, Qualogrenant,
molt vos voi or preu et saillant,
et certes molt m'est bel quant vos
estes li plus cortois de nos. . . .
S'est droiz que ma dame le cuit
que vos avez plus que nos tuit
de corteisie et de proesce:
ja le leissames por peresce,
espoir, que non ne nos lev?mes
ou por ce que nos ne deignames. ' (71-82)
He cannot endure the thought that anyone might seem more valiant or courtly
than he or that he might be accused of sloth or pride. He does not even dare
take the chance that his sarcasm might not be recognized, and so he is driven to
deny explicitly the charge which his manner suggests he thinks has actually
been made:
' Mes par Deu, sire, nel fe?smes,
mes por ce que nos ne ve?smes
ma dame, ainz fustes vos levez.' (83-85)
Yvain rightly anticipates that Keu will ask to joust first with the Knight of
the Fountain (682-86), and it should come as no surprise to learn that Keu
always wants to be the first to fight, whatever the outcome, and is furious if
he cannot (2230-35). The intimately related sins of superbia and invidia act
together to make one always strive to put oneself first.
It must be clear that superbia and especially invidia are more fundamental
and wider in implication than their English equivalents 'pride' and 'envy.'
In the De Genesi ad litteram Augustine defined superbia as 'amor propriae ex
cellentiae' and linked it necessarily with invidia to explain the fall of the angels
and of man:
porro autem inuidia sequitur superbiam, non praecedit; non enim causa
superbiendi est inuidia, sed causa inuidiendi superbia, cum igitur superbia
sit amor excellentiae propriae, inuidentia uero sit odium felicitatis alienae,
quid unde nascatur satis in promtu est. amando enim quisque excellentiam
suam uel paribus inuidet, quod ei coaequentur, uel inferioribus, ne sibi
coaequentur, uel superioribus, quod eis non coaequetur, superbiendo igitur
inuidus, non inuidendo quisque superbus est.13
In this sense, I shall try to show, Yvain repeatedly manifests invidia even
though he never envies anyone ? unless it be the slain Esclados, while Laudine
grieves over his corpse ? and invidus describes Keu more fully and accurately
than ' envious. ' Similarly, in Gregory the Great's scheme superbia is the root
of the other sins, which grow from it in succession, each one giving rise to
the next. Inanis gloria is the first offshoot and invidia the second.
Sed unumquodque eorum tanta sibi cognatione jungitur, ut non nisi unum
de altero proferatur. Prima namque superbiae sob?les inanis est gloria,
quaedam oppressam mentem corruperit, mox invidiam gignit, quia nimirum
dum vani nominis potentiam app?tit, ne quis hanc alius adipisci valeat
tabescit. Invidia quoque iram generai, quia quanto interno livoris vulnere
animus sauciatur, tanto etiam mansuetudo tranquillitatis amittitur; et
quia quasi dolens membrum tangitur, idcirco oppositae actionis velut gravius
pressa sentitur. Ex ira quoque tristitia oritur, quia turbata mens quo se
inordinate concutit, eo addicendo confundit: et cum dulcedinem tranquil
litatis amiserat, nihil hanc nisi ex perturbatione subsequens moeror pascit.14
13 11.14 (CSEL 28.346).

14 Moralia in Job 31.45.89 (PL 76.621-22), repeated by, e.g., Hugh of St. Victor in the
second quarter of the twelfth century, Exp. in Abdiam and De quinqu? septenis seu septenariis
1-4 (PL 175.400-06, 405-10), though by the twelfth century the distinction between superbia
156 TRADITIO
And just as inanis gloria leads to invidia and invidia to ira, so ira leads to
tristitia, tristitia to avaritia, avaritia to gula, and gula to luxuria, although
these last way-stations on the road to complete depravity seem irrelevant to
the moral problem with which Chr?tien concerns himself in Yvain.
The events which follow Calogrenant's narrative show Yvain infected with
Keu's invidia. Yvain's immediate response to his cousin's story (581-89) is
direct and sincere, and it captures our sympathy. At the same time, it is
simple and conventional, and in the context of this particular scene those
qualities assign it an uncertain value. Keu's sarcastic challenge easily perverts
the tendency toward superbia evidenced in Yvain's self-confidence. The
effect is neatly suggested by Yvain's adoption of Keu's characteristic sarcasm
even as he assures the queen that Keu's insults do not bother him (630-37).
Yvain's tone here contrasts sharply, and unfavorably, with Calogrenant's
(107-20). From now on Yvain is driven primarily by his desire to vindicate
himself by proving Keu wrong and only incidentally by the thought of avenging
his cousin's defeat. His reaction to Arthur's proclamation of an expedition
en masse to the spring leaves no doubt about this change in his motivation.
Calogrenant's defeat could be avenged equally well by any of Arthur's knights,
but Yvain is determined not on vengeance but on self-vindication. With this
purely selfish motivation, he is the only member of the court displeased with
Arthur's plan:
Por ce seulemant li grevoit
qu'il sav?it bien que la bataille
avroit mes sire Kex, sanz faille,
einz que il, s'il la requeroit;
ja vehee ne le ser oit;
ou mes sire Gauvains me?smes,
espoir, li demandera primes.
Se nus de ces deus la requiert,
ja contradite ne lor iert. (682-90)
'Einz que il' is the sore point, and Chr?tien gives it special prominence by
placing it at the climax of the period. The use of third-person pronouns and
verbs in this report of Yvain's reasoning, presented entirely from his point of
view, mutes but does not conceal the intense amor propriae excellentiae, aggra
vated by invidia, which motivates him.
Yvain is 'trop cusan?oneus' (700) to find Calogrenant's forest path, and
he is determined that
and inanis gloria was no longer retained. See in general M. W. Bloomfield, The Seven Deadly
Sins . . . (East Lansing 1952) esp. 69-104, and Siegfried Wenzel, 'The Seven Deadly Sins:
Some Problems of Research,' Speculum 43 (1968) 1-22.
qui que le doie conparer,

ne finera tant que il voie
le pin qui la fontainne onbroie,
et le perron et la tormante
qui grausle, et pluet, et tone, et vante. (772-76)
But he obviously has little interest in these wonders for their own sake, because
once at the spring his curiosity is satisfied in an instant:
Puis erra jusqu'? la fontainne,

si vit quan qu'il voloit veoir.
Sanz arester et sanz seoir
verssa sor le perron de plain
de l'?ve le bacin tot plain. (800-04)
His breathless race to be first to the spring dramatizes his superbia and invidia.
The thematic connection between Yvain's quest, his fight with Esclados,
his first infatuation with Laudine, and his departure with Gauvain and failure
to return within the promised time may at first sight seem loose, yet they all
demonstrate the effects of Yvain's excessive amor propriae excellentiae. The
recollection of Keu's stinging sarcasm and the fear of further attacks on his
reputation if he should fail or not be able to prove his victory drive Yvain
to desperate violence in his fight with Esclados just as they goaded him on
his journey to the spring. Chr?tien pointedly notes Keu's influence upon
Yvain as he pursues his mortally wounded opponent. Yvain nowhere appears
more selfishly cruel. He is utterly insulated from any sympathy for Esclados
by the invidia which Keu's threat to his pride has aroused in him.
Ensi cil fuit, et cil le chace
si pr?s qu'a po qu'il ne l'anbrace,
et si ne le par puet ataindre,
et s'est si pr?s que il Tot plaindre
de la destrece que il sant;
mes toz jorz a fo?r entant,
et cil de chacier s'esvertue,
qu'il crient sa poinne avoir perdue
se mort ou vif ne le retient,
que des ranpones li sovient
que mes sire Kex li ot dites.
N'est pas de la promesse quites
que son cosin avoit promise,
ne cre?z n'iert an nule guise
s'anseignes veraies n'an porte. (885-99)
158 TRADITIO
Alongside Chr?tien's stress on Esclados' mortal agony ? here and at the

moment of the blow (866-74)? 'perdre sa poinne' carries a precise and
mordant force. Its effect is repellent because the idiom, with its dull patina of
conventionality, exactly conveys Yvain's egotistical indifference to the pain
of another man a bare arm's reach away whose groans he can clearly hear
He thinks only of the injury his own pride might suffer from Keu's triumphan
insults if he could not prove his victory.
Indeed, the fight as a whole presents a glimpse of disturbing inhuman
ferocity which transgresses the limits of a courtly ideal. It need only be com
pared with the deliberately normal battle between Yvain and Alier for th
violence of its representation to be apparent. Chr?tien specifically note
the exceptional ferocity and cruelty of the first battle:
einz dui chevalier plus angr?s
ne furent de lor mort haster. . . .
s'est mervoille cornant tant dure
bataille si fiere et si dure. (838-39, 849-50)
These are not conventional hyperboles. Lances, shields, helmets, and hauberks
are shown hacked to pieces in systematic detail. The focus on the several
blows is close and sharp; their effects are carefully indicated. The ten line
in which Yvain and Esclados first resort to their swords are representative:
Li uns l'autre a l'espee assaut
si ont au chaple des espees
les guiges des escuz colpees
et les escuz dehaciez toz
et par desus et par desoz
si que les pieces an depandent,
n'il ne s'an cuevrent ne desfandent;
car si les ont harigotez
qu'a d?livre, sor les costez,
et sor les piz, et sor les hanches,
essaient les espees blanches. (824-34)
The diction is precise; the verbs, undulled by familiarity, catch and hold the
attention: s'antreha?ssent de mort, percent, deslicent, fondent, esclicent, dehachiez,
harigotez, anbuingnent, ploient, enpiroit (twice), navr?rent (twice), escar?ele,
estonez, s'esmaia, fandu. The adverb felenessement near its beginning (835) and
the ' felon cop ' at its end (866) control our response to this combat. The com
parisons of Esclados to burning coals (812) and of Yvain and him to two stones
(837) and to a falcon and a crane point to their inhuman ferocity.15
15 Vergil uses animal similes in this way to characterize the bloody and senseless combats
of Aeneid 9 and to present in Turnus the virtual incarnation of the fury of war. See Viktor
Chretien's a ' 159
In Yvain's battle with Alier, on the other hand, where Yvain's restoration
has begun, the verbs are reassuringly familiar (ferir, requerre, abatre). Even
when the battle is recounted directly, the violence is comfortably distant.
When Yvain unhorses his first opponent, for example, Chr?tien presents the
blow of lance against shield with emphasis on Yvain's strength ('feri de si
grant vertu,' 3151), qualifies his reference to horse and rider's falling into a
heap by a hesitating 'it seems-to-me,' and avoids ever saying bluntly that
Yvain killed the man by first noting that he never rose again, then explaining
that his heart had burst and his back had been broken (3151-57). When the
battle is recounted from the perspective of La Dame de Noroison's ladies in
their tower (3180-354), the violence is still more remote, the focus on Yvain
more narrow, the praise of his valor more intense. In lines 3208-30 Yvain
virtually performs a chivalric ballet against a backdrop of the most shadowy
opponents. The lion simile here (3198-200) differs affectively from that in
Calogrenant's narrative (488) because the stress is placed on the natural drive
of hunger rather than bloodthirsty ferocity. The simile of falcons and teal
recalls the comparison of Yvain spurring after Esclados to a gerfalcon pur
suing a crane (882) but suggests a new restraint and humane control. The
phrase venir a merci alone ? not to mention the eulogistic adjectives cortois,
preuz, and buens ? sufficiently marks the change in tone between this battle
and that with Esclados:
Mes li cortois, li preuz, li buens,
mes sire Yvains trestot ausi
les fesoit venir a merci
con fet li faucons les c?rceles. (3188-91)
The style of the first battle reappears momentarily while La Dame de Noroison's
men-at-arms pursue Alier's routed troops (3260-66), but Yvain is remote from
that savagery in his own pursuit of the Count up to the very walls of his
castle, where he accepts his surrender in a scene parallel to his heartless pursuit
of Esclados (3267-89). The violence which immediately precedes it seems
intended to point up the contrast in Yvain's behavior. We may safely conclude
P?schl, Die Dichtkunst Virgils: Bild und Symbol in der ?neis (2nd ed; Vienna 1964) 168-205.
On Vergil's influence on Chr?tien, see Werner Ziltener, Chr?tien und die Aeneis: Eine Unter
suchung des Einflusses von Vergil auf Chr?tien von Troyes (Graz and Cologne 1957) esp. 84-91.
The effect of such similes did not have to await the twentieth century for recognition. In
the twelfth century Arnulf of Orleans, Glosule super Lucanum(ed. Berthe M. Marti [Papers
and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 18; Rome 1951]), commenting on motus
in Lucan's Civil War 1.184, noticed the point of the lion simile which followed and wrote,
'MOTVS id est de triumpho sibi denegato; sed motus proprie ferarum est quod Cesari attri
buit, quia inferius leoni comparato.' Turnus was interpreted allegorically as Furor by
Fulgentius, Vergiliana continentia, Opera, ed. R. Helm (Teubner Series; Leipzig 1898)
105-06.
160 TRADITIO
that Chr?tien did not intend the battle beside the spring to reflect his notion
of the heroic ideal. Yvain's anger there, aggravated by his superbia and
invidia, is evidently excessive. So, in the Gregorian scheme, the sin of ira
grows out of invidia, which itself arose from superbia.
Yvain's infatuation with Laudine also does not simply illustrate an ideal
of courtly love. How much of its analysis of the emotions which accompany
love at first sight is conventional and how much original perceptions of Chr?
tien's, or how many of Yvain's reactions are intended to be admirable and how
many ridiculous though natural, is difficult to say exactly. Certainly Chr?tien
recognizes the very human comedy in Yvain's infatuation. Lunete's astonish
ment at learning, in her delightfully urbane dialogue with Yvain (1550-68),
that he has enjoyed his stay in the gatehouse assures the modern reader that
his response is not essentially disqualified by historical prejudice. And Lau
dine's queries in Yvain's first interview with her demonstrate that Yvain's
protestations must have seemed almost as extravagant in the twelfth century
as they do now.16 The comedy of the dialogue, indeed, depends on the contrast
between the romantic Yvain and the practical Laudine, seeking a defender for
her spring. Once she has brought him to what is for her the main point, the
interview ends abruptly:
'et oseriez vos enprandre

por moi ma fontainne a desfandre?'
' O?l voir, dame, vers toz homes. '
' Sachiez donc, bien accord? somes. ' (2035-38)
In this context, Yvain's immediately preceding confession of transcendent
love (2025-34) cannot quite be taken seriously by anyone but him.
Chr?tien displays as well the intense egotism which inevitably accompanies
Yvain's love at first sight for Laudine and which might be monstrous if it
were not so human. The association of Yvain's love with his fear of being
shamed by Keu (1343-78, 1527-44) suggests the self-centered perspective
which, indeed, appears immediately as he stands at the window watching
Laudine wring her hands and read in her gold-illumined psalter beside her
husband's grave:
Et quant il plus s'an done garde,
plus l'ainme, et plus Ii abelist.
Ce qu'ele plore et qu'ele list
volsist qu'ele lessi? e?st
et qu'a lui parler Ii ple?st. (1422-26)
It pervades the whole interior monologue. When he laments, for example,
16 1977-2038; e.g. 1984, 'Einz mes, fet ele, n'o? tel . .
'De ce qu'ele plore me duel,

ne de rien n'ai si grant detrece
come de son vis qu'ele blece, ' (1476-78)
he cares not for Laudine but for the pleasure it would give him to look at her
beautiful face. And he again betrays his lack of sympathy when he exclaims,
' Dex ! Por coi fet si grant folie
et por coi ne se blece mains?' (1488-89)
His unspoken meaning is obvious enough: 'Why should she behave so madly
when she is so beautiful and I am so anxious to declare my love to her?' Chr?
tien finally undercuts the entire passage with the mordant rhyme of his con
clusion:
Ensi mes sire Yvains devise,
celi qui de duel se debrise. (1511-12)
The scene in which Gauvain persuades Yvain to leave Laudine and go off
tourneying with him again reveals in Yvain the same fundamental vice of
excessive self-love. Gauvain's argument has been taken for the thematic
core of Le Chevalier au lion9 a straightforward statement of the moral problem
with which the romance attempts to come to terms.17 In fact, Chr?tien does not
suggest that Yvain's marriage threatens his renown, and Gauvain appeals to
Yvain's superbia just as surely as Keu did with his taunts, though more subtly,
when he counsels,
' Amander doit de bele dame
qui l'a a amie ou a fame,
que n'est puis droiz que ele l'aint
que ses los et ses pris remaint. . . .
Or primes doit vostre pris croistre. ' (2491-2501)
Gauvain strikes again at the related vice of invidia, Yvain's fear that he might
be considered inferior to someone else, when he continues to urge,
' Ronpez le frain et le chevoistre,
s'irons tornoier moi et vos,
que l'en ne vos apiaut jalos. ' (2502-04)
So when Yvain asks leave of Laudine, he maintains that he is requesting ' une
chose . . . por vostre enor et por la moie' (2254-55), 'que l'an ne l'apialt
recreant' (2563). The same superbia motivates Yvain here as in his solitary
departure for the spring, his battle with Esclados, and his love for Laudine.
Yvain's obsession with honor makes his failure to return within the ap
17 See . 1 supra.
162 TRADITIO
pointed time inevitable, not because he will never think of returning ?- Lau
dine's charge is unjust in this respect ? but because he will be held back by
Gauvain, the epitome of conventional courtoisie (2402-10):
que departir ne le leira
mes sire Gauvains d'avoec lui. (2671-72)
Chr?tien uses the rhyme enorer-demorer to mark the fatal conjunction of cause
and effect:
mes sire Gauvains
se penoit de lui enorer,
et si le fist tant demorer
que toz li anz fu trespassez
et de l'autre encor assez. (2676-80)
Yvain's superbia is most conspicuous at the moment he is confronted with

its consequences. On the feast of the Assumption he and Gauvain attain the
moral goal toward which all Yvain's previous actions tended. The honor which
he sought is at its zenith:
a la mi aost vint
que li rois cort et feste tint.
Et furent la voille devant
revenu del tornoiemant
ou mes sire Yvains ot est?;
s'an ont tot le pris aport?,
ce dit li contes, ce me sanble;
et li dui chevalier ansanble
ne vostrent en vile descendre,
einz firent lor paveillon tendre
fors de la vile et cort i tindrent
c'onques a cort de roi ne vindrent,
ein?ois vint li rois a la lor,
car avoec ax sont li meillor
des chevaliers, et toz li plus.
Entr'ax seoit li rois Artus. (2681-96)
After their triumph at a tournament, Gauvain and Yvain have made them
selves rivals to King Arthur. The parallelism between 'cort et feste tint' and
'cort i tindrent' and the pointed chiastic correspondence between the two
lines 'c'onques a cort de roi ne vindrent, / ein?ois vint li rois a la lor' insist
upon it. Obviously their refusal ('ne vostrent') to stop in the city wher
Arthur is holding court constitutes a willful challenge to Arthur's sovereignty.
Obviously, too, they have succeeded in it, for the best knights are on their
Chretien's 'wain' 163
side, and Arthur must come to them, reduced to the anonymity of sitting in a
position no more precisely noted than 'entr'ax.'18
Yvain's humiliation is complete when Laudine's messenger suddenly arrives
to accuse him of disloyalty in love, condemn him to Laudine's continuing
hatred, and take back the magic ring which preserves a true lover from harm.
Her denunciation recalls the references in the prologue19 to the degeneracy
of love among those who talk about it but do not know what it is and the
mention of fools who mistake courtesy for love ? at the time apparently
fortuitous ? which Chr?tien inserted between Gauvain's meeting with Lunete
and his conversation with Yvain. More generally, it recalls the theme of
letter and spirit in Calogrenant's prologue. The more conventional a hero
Yvain may have seemed, the more forcefully the courtly ideal is now put in
question. If Yvain cared nothing for Laudine, the realization that his love has
been defective and the fear that he has lost her would not be so shattering.
But he has indeed been more concerned about his own excellence than about
Laudine.
III
The second part of Le Chevalier au lion traces Yvain's moral restoration.

In its large outlines it parallels the first part, for it begins with Yvain's abrupt
and solitary departure from Arthur's court and ends in a second reconciliation,
again arranged by Lunete, between Yvain and Laudine.20 But whereas Yvain's
conduct in the first part was grounded in superbia, in the second it is grounded
in humilitas, the root of all virtues; although it was irresponsible in the first,
in the second it is for the most part rationally controlled. The first part re
vealed the defects of Arthurian courtoisie, and the second moves toward a
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 Walter Greiner,
' Owein-Yvain: Neue Beitr?ge zur Frage nach der Unabh?ngigkeit der cymrischen Mabinogion
von den Romanen Chrestiens,' Zeitschrift f?r celtische Philologie 12 (1918) 1-184, esp. 152-159,
pointed out long ago, rather disparagingly for Chr?tien ? the author of the Welsh romance
was uninterested in the psychological processes and motivations which seem to constitute
Chr?tien's most substantial addition to the story.
19 Cf. esp. 2732-34 and 24-28.
20 The parallels between Yvain's marriage and final reconciliation with Laudine were
first emphasized as an important stylistic device by Elise Richter, 'Die k?nstlerische Stoff
gestaltung in Chrestiens Iuain,' Zeitschrift f?r) r(omanische) Philologie) 39 (1919) 385-97,
esp. 393-97.
164 TRADITIO
redefinition of the chivalric ideal in the twin figures of Yvain and his lion.
In the second part, Yvain triumphs successively over the vices of superbia,
invidia, and ira to which he fell victim in the first. Only with order restored
to his own soul does he become a force for order in the social world around him
His accomplishments there consistently contrast with Gauvain's relative
failures.
Yvain first left Arthur's court alone to avenge Calogrenant's defeat at
the hands of the Knight of the Spring and thereby to vindicate himself before
Keu. He leaves now to take vengeance upon himself (2795-97). The tor
beillons (2806) and tempeste (2946) which he encounters on this second journey
are internal. His grief and inwardly directed anger reduce him dramatically
to the level of a wild beast (2829-30) as his wrath first did morally. But on
this journey Yvain's moral direction is changed when he meets a hermit. The
episode is brief and has no necessary literal connection with Yvain's discovery
by the Dame de Noroison. Nor has it any parallel in Owein. Its importance
is thematic and psychological. It begins to reintegrate Yvain into a community
based on the hermit's charity, represented by the rustic commerce in which
the hermit cooks the venison which Yvain brings him and takes the trouble
to sell the hides in order to buy him bread. In a comparable psychological
integration, Yvain's encounter with the hermit begins, though it does not
accomplish, the redirection of his grief from self-destruction to regeneration.
Within this pattern, recognition of guilt and repentance are perhaps figured in
the 'pain a Thermite' (2852), all of which Yvain ate ? even though, as Chr?tien
pointedly observes,
ne cuit que onques de si fort
ne de si aspre e?st gost?. (2846-47)
The bitterness of penitence was a commonplace, and it was frequently associated
with cheap, bitter bread.21 The weight of this tradition would add a deeper
21 Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 5.15 (GCL 38.25-26), explained, ' peccatoribus autem panis
ueritatis amarus est; unde os uera dicentis oderunt. Ipsi ergo inamicauerunt Deum, qui
peccando in earn aegritudinem deuenerunt, ut cibum ueritatis, quo sanae animae gaudent,
tanquam felleum sustinere non possint.' Similarly Gregory, Mor. in Job 4.18.33-34, 8.21.37
22.38, 10.44.67 (PL 75.654, 822-24, 896), Horn, in Ezech. 1.10.28, 1.11.45 (PL 76.897, 905);
Alain de Lille, Serm. 4, De pascha (PL 210.209); Peter Lombard, Comment, in Ps. 101 (PL
191.910); Alleg?ri?? in sacram Script. (PL 112.1020-21). These various allegories were
summed up in the mid-thirteenth century by the highly traditional exegete Hugh of St.
Cher, Opera omnia in universum V?tus et N?vum Testamentum (Lyon 1645) V 21vb: 'Tali
cibo debent pasci ut invitentur ad asperitatem poenitentiae, ad timorem gehennae, ad
humilitatem et propriam deiectionem, pro vilitate culpae praeteritae. Hordeum enim est
asperitas poenitentiae, quia asperum est hordeum'; similarly I 282va (3 Kings 19.8), III
68 (Prov. 31.14), V 22^ (Ezek. 4.10-12), VI 99v*> (Mark 6), 323v-324' (John 6). In some
MSS and in Foerster's text the bread Yvain eats is identified as barley bread. Coarse bread
moral import to the superficial humiliation of the courtly Yvain's being

obliged to eat peasant's bread and would thereby prepare thematically for
him to be discovered ? fortuitously, or, better, gratuitously ? and cured by
the Dame de Noroison and her damsels. Penance, with God's grace, heals the
effects of sin, the ' vulnera interioris hominis. '22
Chr?tien's striking insistence upon Yvain's nakedness (2834, 2888, 2894-96,
2908, 3016, 3019) and the wound by which alone he can be recognized, stripped
as he is of his courtly dress, emphasizes the totally unaccommodated state to
which he has been reduced. Afterward, his putting on the rich clothes which
the Dame de Noroison has sent him and the arms with which she equips him
to fight Count Alier marks a new entrance into the chivalric world; and when
they are considered alongside the encounter with the hermit within this large
pattern of events, the important details of Yvain's nakedness and wound may,
like the hermit's bread, point to the moral significance of this second beginning.
According to Gregory the Great, nakedness figures forth the loss of primal
justice and innocence, but the garment of innocence will be returned to the
repentant:
Nullus homo sine peccato est, nisi ille qui in hune mundum non venit ex
peccato. Et quia omnes in culpa ligamur, ipsa amissione justitiae morimur;
concessa prius in paradiso veste innocentiae nudamur, interitu etiam carnis
subs?quente consumimur. Homo itaque peccator moritur in culpa, nudatura
justitia, consumitur in poena. Hanc nuditatem peccatoris filii tegere dig
natus est pater, qui eo redeunte dixit: Cito prof erte stolam primam [Luc.
15.22]. Prima quippe stola est vest?s innocentiae, quam homo bene con
ditus accepit, sed male a serpente persuasus perdidit. Contra hanc rursum
nuditatem dicitur: Beatus qui vigilai, et custodit vestimenta sua, ne nudus
ambulet [Apoc. 16.15]. Vestimenta quippe custodimus cum praecepta inno
centiae servamus in mente, ut cum non judici culpa nudat, ad amissam
innocentiam poenitentia operiat.23
of barley and oats is also associated with penitence in Perceval, ed. William Roach (Textes
Litt?raires Fran?ais 71; Geneva and Paris 1959) 6476-79, 6499-504. Perceval's meeting with
the hermit has been considered inauthentic by some critics. Even if it were, the association
of penitence and coarse bread by a roughly contemporary continuator would still be note
worthy. See Leo Pollmann, Chr?tien de Troyes und der Conte del Graal, ZrPh Beihefte 110
(1965) 5-29. Pollmann concludes that the verses cited here are authentic.
22 Hugh of St. Victor, Exp. in Abdiam (PL 175.401), De quinqu? septenis 1 (PL 175.405).
Similarly Gregory, Mor. in Job 31.45.89, quoted at n. 14 supra.
23 Mor. in Job 12.6.9 (PL 75.990-91). Similarly Bede, In evang. Luc. exp. 3.10.30, 4.15.22
(GGL 120.222, 291); the second passage is repeated in the Glossa ordinaria, in Biblia sacra
cum glossa . . . ordinaria . . . (Venice 1588) V 165va; Zach. Ghrys., Concord, evang. 97 (PL
186-308); Hugh of St. Cher, Opera VI 225va. Augustine explained the raising of Lazarus as
a type of the resurrection from sin brought about by repentance, Serm. 98.7 (PL 38.595),
Enarr. in Ps. lOl.s.2.3 (CCL 40.1440), Tract, in Joh. 49.24 (CGL 39.431); similarly Gregory,
Mor. in Job 22.15.31 (PL 76.231-32), Horn, in evang. 26.6 (PL 76.1200-01). The interpretation
does not ultimately depend upon knowledge of an exegetical tradition. According to Marianne
166 TRADITIO
Like the Prodigal Son, Yvain was dead and is alive, was lost and is found.
Similarly it may not be over-ingenious to see in the wound on Yvain's face,
by which the damsel recognizes him, the old wound of superbia, which was,
from a moral standpoint, his most distinctive feature. Her words to her lady
would then take on a special irony:
'Dame, je ai Yvain trov?,
le chevalier mialz esprov?
del monde, et le mialz antechi?;
mes je ne sai par quel pechi?
est au franc home mesche?;
espoir, aucun duel a eu
qui le fet ensi d?mener.' (2917-23)
Pechi? is more exact than she realizes, and though she recognized Yvain by his
wound, she does not know, as the reader does, that the sin of superbia, no
some generalized calamity, brought about his fall.24 In any case, the invocation
of God with which Yvain salutes her and the question which he asks her in
their first interchange demonstrate the new humility which has taken the
place of amor propriae excellentiae as the controlling force in his conduct:
' Dameisele, or me dites donc
se vos avez besoing de moi ? ' (3074-75)
And I have already attempted to show the difference in tone between Yvain's
fights with Esclados and with Alier which dramatizes this moral development.
The abruptness of Yvain's departure from the Dame de Noroison stands out
against the background of exceptional concern demonstrated in the healing of
Yvain, for the damsel added clothes of her own to the already rich stock provide
for him by the lady (2973-76); she was so anxious for his recovery that she
did not follow the lady's instructions to apply Morgan le Fay's magic ointment
only to his temples but anointed him all over and thought the ointment well
used (2989-95); and although the lady lost thereby the best and most valuable
of all her possessions, she nonetheless instructed the damsel to serve Yvai
Stauffer, Der Wald: Zur Darstellung und Deutung der Natur im Mittelalter (Studiorum
romanicorum collectio turicensis 10; Bern 1959) 74, 'ist nun Yvain jeder Kleidung entbl?sst,
so bedeutet das, dass er gleicherweise jeder Menschlichkeit und menschlichen W?rde ent
bl?sst ist. '
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.
in every way (3116-23).25 The abruptness of this departure contrasts with

Yvain's failure in the first part of the romance to return to Laudine within
the appointed time. The rhyme enorer-demorer recurs, but here, together with
Chr?tien's reference to 'la voie arriere,' it confirms Yvain's triumph over
superbia and the beginning of his restoration:
Or se mist a la voie arri?re
et leissa molt la dame iriee
que il avoit molt feite li?e.
Et con plus li?e avoit feite,
plus li poise et plus se desheite
quant il ne vialt plus demorer,
c'or le volsist eie enorer. (3320-26)
Yvain's subsequent encounter with the lion constitutes the structural and
thematic center of the romance, yet it seems never to have been understood.26
25 Robert G. Cook, 'The Ointment in Chr?tien'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 forali 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 Chr?tien'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.
26 The earliest studies, like T. M. Chotzen, 'Le Lion d'Owein et ses prototypes celtiques,'
Neophilologus 18 (1902) 51-58,131-36, and E. Brugger, ' Yvain and his Lion, ' Modern Philology
28 (1941) 267-87, were content to explain the lion by citing sources and analogues. A Chris
tological interpretation has been offered, incidentally by Alfred Adler, 'Sovereignty in
Chr?tien'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 Chr?tien
de Troyes' Yvain,' PMLA 64 (1949) 1143-63, both based on A. G. Brodeur, '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 Chr?tien 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
Chr?tien'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 hune quidam miles a
serpente liberavit et a milite recedere noluit. Quid igitur excusacionis habebunt, qui deser
entes 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
168 TRADITIO
The scene which Yvain stumbles upon in the depths of the forest is unm
takably grotesque. Yvain himself stares for a moment at 'cele mervoille'
(3349). The grotesque naturally verges on the absurd, and Chr?tien throughout
is ironic and detached, but the scene is never ludicrous. Yvain expects th
lion to attack him (3367-68, 3384-86); later, in Yvain's company, the lion
terrifies those it meets; and Chr?tien must have expected his audience t
share in a pleasant way something of that fear. Even Chr?tien's amplif
cation of the lion's obeisance to Yvain is elaborate because it is extraordinary
and significant.
Of the two animals Yvain finds fighting to the death, the significance of
the serpent is the more obvious and confirms that of the lion. Chr?tien link
the serpent to Keu and the invidia of which he is the incarnation. It is
venimeus,
si li saut par la boche feus,
tant est de felenie plains. (3354-56)
Chr?tien focuses exclusively on these two details ? and on the lion's tail and
back, which I shall consider in a moment. The serpent embodies venom and
by Frappier, ?tude 214) is the episode from La Queste del saint graal (ed. A. Pauphilet
[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 Chr?tien for such a 'very crude'
allusion.
The Christological interpretation is based on the consistent allegorization of the lion as
Christ in medieval bestiaries (a fact emphasized even by Frappier, ?tude 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 Alleg?ri?? in sacram Scripturam (PL 112.983) is representative:
'Leo est Christus, . . . Deus judex, . . . quilibet spiritualiter fortis,. . . populus Judaicus . . .
Leo, austeritas legis, . . . imper?tor Romanus, . . . quilibet crudelis . . . Leo, Antichristus
in fallacia sua.'
Leo Spitzer's interpretation ('Le Lion arbitre morale de l'homme,' Romania 64 [1938]
525-30) is invalidated by Chr?tien's insistence that the lion subordinates its instincts to
Yvain's will.
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, ?tude
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 Chr?tien presents it and
on its subordination to Yvain.
felenie. It is 'le felon serpant' (3373), the 'serpant felon' (3380); Yvain
cleans its venom and filth from his sword to bring the episode to a conclusion
(3404-06). The serpent appears, moreover, in a context which presents venimeus
and fel as abstract moral categories controlling Yvain's decision to aid the
lion:
Lors dit qu'au lyon se tanra,
qu'a venimeus ne a felon
ne doit an feire se mal non,
et li serpanz est venimeus,
si le saut par la boche feus,
tant est de felenie plains. (3352-56)
Chr?tien has used these categories before. Recall Guinevere's initial rebuke
to Keu. Amplifying the adjective venimeus (70) in the notatio which introduced
him, it is at once apt, acute, and traditional:
'Certes, Kex, ja fussiez crevez,
f et la re?ne, au mien cuidier,
se ne vos poissiez vuidier
del venin don vos estes plains.' (86-89)
The venom of malice in general and of invidia in particular was, and still is,
a commonplace. Gregory the Great makes a special point of it: 'Sed inter
haec sciendum est quia quamvis per omne vitium quod perpetratur, humano
cordi antiqui hostis virus infunditur, in hac tarnen nequitia [i.e., invidia] tota
sua viscera serpens concutit, et imprimendae malitiae pestem vomit.'27 And
Keu, like the serpent, is fei: 'fel et poignanz et venimeus' (70):
tant est Kex, et fel, et pervers,
plains de ranpones et d'enui. (1352-53)
So Calogrenant says of Keu:
'Toz jorz doit pu?r li fumiers
et toons poindre, et maloz bruire,
et felons enuier et nuire.' (116-18)
Before Yvain's encounter with the serpent the adjective fel is comparably
applied besides only to the 'felon cop' which shatters Esclados' skull (866)
and to his retainers as they search for Yvain (1092). With the first use, I
27 Mor. in Job 5.46.85 (PL 75.728). Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 13.4 (GGL 38.87), similarly
uses 'Quorum os maledictione et amaritudine plenum est' to gloss 'venenum aspidum'
(Ps. 13.3). Hugh of St. Cher, Opera II 146vb on Ps. 57.5, writes, 'Item serpens venenum
fundit, in quo notatur invidia. ' The motif is classical: in Ovid, Met. 2.768-69, 77, Minerva
finds Invidia 'edentem / vip?reas carnes, vitiorum alimenta suorum; / . . . lingua est suffusa
veneno. '
170 TRADITIO
think, Keu may fairly be associated.28 It is easy to see in the serpent's fiery
breath a metaphorical equivalent of the taunts and insults which stream from
Keu's mouth and injure his fellow knights, and once we have, Chr?tien's
emphasis on the serpent's mouth as its source (3356, 3362-64) appears mor
precisely meaningful.
If the serpent is associated with Keu, so the lion is with Yvain. The lion,
of course, is a traditional simile for an heroic warrior,29 and Yvain has just
been compared to a lion, at the end of his battle with Alier (3198-200). As
Keu is fel and venimeus, so Yvain, like the lion, is gentil and franc. As if to
emphasize the correspondence between lion and knight, the rescued lion 'fist
que preuz et deboneire' (3389 ff.).
Thus, from this point of view, killing the serpent at last frees Yvain from Keu's
influence, wh ch goaded him to unbridled savagery in his fight with Esclados,
and from the taint of invidia. The obsessive quality of his dismembering the
serpent, like the note of finality in cleaning his sword and thrusting it back
into its scabbard, reinforces such an interpretation. The position of the
incident is also right. Yvain has been made to feel the consequences of his
conduct in the first part of the romance. In his despair, he became practically
a beast and behaved exactly as the lion will in succeeding lines when he
hunted deer and brought them to the hermit. He has repented of his folly,
and in the Dame-de-Noroison episode he demonstrated, somewhat rudely to
be sure, his victory over superbia. He is more gracious and unselfish here,
since he is so moved by pity for the noble lion (3369) that he resolves to rescue
it even though he expects it to attack him afterwards; the point is made twice
(3365-68, 3384-86). The self-effacement is perfect. This episode as a whole
marks the further victory over invidia evidenced literally by Yvain's unconcern
whether the lion will turn on him.
This explication of the lion as an analogue to Yvain can be only approximate,
however. It does not account for cutting off the tip of the lion's tail. More
important, this is not a dream-vision, and the lion is a continuing character
in the romance. Yvain and his lion are virtually two aspects of a single per
sonage, epitomized in the name ' Chevalier au Lion. ' When Yvain leaves this
clearing in the forest
28 'Fel' is later applied once each to Laudine's seneschal (3662), whose envy ('qui grant
envie me port?it' 3663) recalls Keu's, to the battle he has arranged for Lunete's champion
(3733), and to the two demons at Pesme Aventure (5611). It is used in a cluster about Harpin
(3892, 4097, 4130, 4144, 4743).
29 E.g. Homer's famous comparison of Achilles to a lion, Iliad 20.164-73. Twenty-four
lion similes in classical Latin epics are listed by P.-J. Miniconi, ?tude des th?mes 'guerriers'
de la po?sie ?pique gr?co-romaine suivie d'un index (Pubi, de la Facult? des Lettres d'Alger,
2nd series 19; Paris 1951) 200-01. See also R. R. Steele, 'The Similes in Latin Epic Poetry,'
TAPA 49 (1918) 90-91.
li lyons lez lui costoie

que ja mes ne s'an partira,
toz jorz mes avoec lui ira
que servir et garder le vialt. (3408-11)
The lion does indeed follow Yvain like a shadow from now on.30 In the hunting
scene which follows, the lion's nature and will are entirely subordinate to
Yvain's:
car encontre sa volent?
ne voloit aler nule part. (3426-27)
Yvain, for his part,
an grant chiert? le tint
por la grant amor qu'an lui ot, (3448-49)
and he tells the retainers who are so terrified of the lion that they will not allow
it into their castle with him,
'N'en parlez mie

que ja n'i enterrai sanz lui:
ou nos avrons Tostel andui,
ou je me remanrai ?a fors
qu'autretant Taim corne mon cors.' (3788-92)31
Chr?tien never lets us forget that the Chevalier au Lion is the knight with
the lion. His lion identifies Yvain like a red beard or a hooked nose. It is
an extension of his self. The maiden who is seeking Yvain on behalf of the
second daughter of the Lord of Noire Espine tells the baron whose family
Yvain has just saved from Harpin:
'Je quier ce que je ne vi onques,
mien esciant, ne me quenui,
mes un lyon a avoec lui
et an me dit, si je le truis,
que an lui molt f?er me puis. ' (4893-98)32
And, as here, the lion is associated with the trust which Yvain inspires, for
when Yvain arrived at the baron's castle,
an s'esperance molt se fient
et molt pansent qu'il soit preudon
por la conpaingnie au lyon
30 Cf. 3764-65, 4018-19, 4161-63, 4694-96, 4935-37, 5439-41, 6461-62, 6520-22.

31 See also 4688-89.
32 See also 5012-13, 5032-33, 6661-62.
172 TRADITIO
qui ausi dolcemant se gist

lez lui com uns aigniax feist. (4002-06)
Yet if they are two aspects of a single personage, they are different, and the
lion is not simply Yvain's alter ego or a doublet symbolique.
The scene in the forest can be most satisfactorily viewed as a projection of
psychological forces. At the end of Book 9 of the Republic Socrates constructs
an image of the soul:
Do you now model the form of a multitudinous, many-headed monster,
having a ring of heads of all manner of beasts, tame and wild, which he
is able to put forth and metamorphose at will. . . .
Suppose now that you make a second form as of a lion, and a third of
a man; but let the first be far the largest, and the second next in size. . . .
And now join them into one, and let the three somehow grow together. . . .
Next fashion the outside of them into a single image, as of a man, so
that he who is not able to look within, and sees only the outer case, may
believe the beast to be a single human creature. . . .
And now, to him who maintains that it is profitable for this human
creature to be unjust and unprofitable to be just, let us reply that, if he
be right, it is profitable for this creature to feast the multitudinous monster
and strengthen the lion and the lion-like qualities, but to starve and weaken
the man, who is consequently liable to be dragged about at the mercy of
either of the other two; and he is not to attempt to familiarize or harmonize
them with one another ? he ought rather to suffer them to fight and bite
and devour one another. . . .
To him the other, who says that justice is profitable, makes answer that
one should ever so speak and act as to give to the man within the most
complete mastery over the entire human creature, ? to enable him to
watch over the many-headed monster like a good husbandman, fostering
and cultivating the gentle qualities, and preventing the wild ones from
growing; and when he has made the lion-heart his ally, and in common
care of them all has reconciled the several parts with one another and with
himself, he will endeavor to preserve the whole.33
Chr?tien could not have known this text, but it is the essential statement
of a philosophical tradition which was available to him and of which, I shall
try to demonstrate, he made use in Yvain. Jerome's Commentary on Ezechiel
preserved the animal comparisons from Plato's myth of the soul, although he
substituted a calf for the many-headed beast:
Plerique, iuxta Platonem, rationale animae et irascentiuum et concupi
scentiuum, quod ille et et uocat, ad hominem
et leonem ac uitulum referunt: rationem et cogitationem et mentem et
consilium eandem uirtutem atque sapientiam in cerebri arce ponentes,
feritatem uero et iracundiam atque uiolentiam in leone, quae consistit in
felle, porro libidinem, luxuriam et omnium uoluptatum cupidinem in iecore,
33 588b-589b, trans. . Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato (4th ed. Oxford 1964) II 463-64.
id est in uitulo, qui terrae operibus haereat; quartumque ponunt quae super
haec et extra haec tria est, quam Graeci uocant e quae scintilla
conscientiae in Cain quoque pectore, postquam eiectus est de paradiso non
extinguitur.34
As the seminal text for the doctrines of synderesis and conscience which began
to develop in the twelfth century, this section of Jerome's Commentary on
Ezechiel was often repeated and commented upon,35 and it was incorporated
into that great twelfth-century collection of traditional exegesis, the Glossa
ordinaria.
Associating the lion with the second part of the soul was all but inevitable,
however, and Chr?tien would not have had to know Jerome's Commentary on
Ezechiel to have made the connection himself. In Latin the technical philo
sophical terms for the irascible part of the soul were ira (in Cicero and Alcuin),
irascentia or iracundia (in Apuleius), vigor iracundiae (or simply vigor, in
Calcidius), irascibile or irascentivum (in Jerome), irascibile (in Cassian and
Rabanus), irascibilitas (in the De spiritu et anima).37 And the lion's anger was
proverbial. Pliny observed in his Natural History, 'Crebrior iracundia [leo
nis].,88 Ovid's Pythagoras urges the citiziens of Crotona not to eat meat, the
food of savage beasts:
at quibus ingenium est inmansuetumque ferumque,
Armeniaeque tigres iracundique leones
cumque lupis ursi, dapibus cum sanguine gaudent.39
In his De ira Seneca noted that different animals demonstrate different char
acteristic emotions: 'iracundia leones adiuvat, pavor cervos, accipitrem im
petus, columbam fuga. '40 Lady Philosophy teaches Boethius that sinful men
forfeit their humanity and associates the wrathful with lions:
34 1.1 (GGL 75.11). Other texts read .

35 See Odon Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe si?cles II (Louvain 1948)
103-338. Alexander Neckam's Speculum speculations, MS London Brit.Mus. Royal 7 F 1,
fol. 72v, contains a nearly full-page illustration of the head of a man between the bull of
concupiscentia and the lion of ira and beneath the eagle of synderesis. I owe this reference
to Professor Joseph S. Wittig of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
36 Biblia sacra cum glossa IV 210va, on Ezek. 1.10.
37 Cicero, Acad. priora 38.124, Tuse, disp., 1.20; Apuleius, De Platone et eius dogmate 1.13,
ed. Paul Thomas (Teubner Series; Leipzig 1908); Calcidius, cc. 229-34, pp. 244-47; Jerome,
Comment, in Hiezech. 1.1.6-8 (GGL 75.11), repeated in the Glossa ordinaria (see note 36
supra), and Comment, in evang. Math. (CGL 77.109), repeated in Zach. Chrys., Concord, evang.
74 (PL 186.228-29); John Cassian, Conlatio 24.15 (CSEL 13.691); Alcuin, De animae ratione
3 (PL 101.639-40); Rabanus Maurus, Comment, in Matt. 4.13 (PL 107.949-50); pseudo
Augustine, De spiritu et anima 4, 13, 65 (PL 40.781-82, 789, 829-30).
38 8.19.49. 39 Met. 15.85-87. 40 2.16.1.
174 TRADITIO
euenit igitur ut quem transformatum uitiis uideas hominem aestimare non

possis. Auaritia feruet alienarum opum uiolentus ereptor: lupi similem
dixeris. . . . Irae intemperans fremit: leonis animum gestare credatur.41
Bernard Silvestris quoted Boethius in his commentary on the Zeneid42 an

repeated the idea himself in his explanation of Aeneid 6.7-8: 'Teda vero
ferarum sunt temporalia bona, in quibus sunt ferae i.e. homines vitio in fera
transformati. Iracundi enim sunt leones, immundae sues, litigosi canes.'4
And in the twelfth century Arnulf of Orleans similarly allegorized the mytho
logical metamorphosis of men into beasts: 'Circe . . . incantationibus suis
socios Ulixis in feras mutavit i. [e.] in insensatos nimio amore sui reddidit
quosdam faciendo leones i. [e.] iracundos, quosdam sues i. [e.] immundos, quos
dam cervos i. [e.] invidos. '44 The lion, therefore, would have been an obvious
choice for anyone seeking an objectification of the irascible part of the soul.
Calcidius, moreover, very nearly reproduced the features of Plato's myth
most pertinent to Yvain in his commentary on Timaeus 42 a-c, which describes
the proper composition of the human soul.
Pedissequas quidem cupiditati dolorique cognatas et consentaneas passiones
aemulationem dicit inuidiam obtrectationem et cetera huius modi, uolup
tati uero in alienis malis gaudium iactantiam gloriae uanitatem, metu
porro fug?m formidinem, iracundiae nihilo minus saeuitiam feritatem calo
rem quaeque his sunt pr?xima. Diuerso, inquit, affectu pro natura su
permouentes, ea uidelicet, quae sunt his lapsis contraria uirtutum ornamenta
quae uirtutibus fiunt. Quae quidem uitia si frenarent, inquit, iustam his
lenemque uitam fore. Aperte et ita, ut dubitare nequeamus, sui iuris esse
animas docet in delectu atque optione.45
And while Calcidius explained away Plato's doctrine of reincarnation, he chose
the lion to objectify the feritas and saevitia which are the limits of iracundia:
Sed Plato non putat rationabilem animam uultum atque os ratione carenti
animalis induere, sed ad uitiorum reliquias accedente corpore incorpor
tionem auctis animae uitiis efferari ex instituto uitae prioris, et iracundum
quidem hominem eundemque fortem prouehi usque ad feritatem leonis,
ferum uero et eundem rapacem ad proximam luporum naturae similitu
dinem peruenire, ceterorum item.46
41 De consol, philos. 4 pr. 3 (GGL 94.71).

42 Commentum . . . super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, ed. Wilhelm Riedel (Greifswald 1924
22. Bernard also has 'truculentos leones, iracundos apros' in a longer catalogue of animal
linked with various sins (62).
43 Ibid. 35.
44 Alleg?ri?? super Ovidii Metamorphosin 14.3, ed. Fausto Ghisalberti in an appendix to
'Arnolfo d'Orl?ans: Un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo ,' Memorie del R. Istituto Lombardo di
Scienze e Lettere 24 (15 of series 3, 1932) 227. Cf. also Wolfram, Parzwal 42.13-14, ed. Karl
Lachmann, Wolfram von Eschenbach (6th ed. Berlin and Leipzig 1926): 'S?n zorn begunde
limmen / und als ein lewe brimmen. '
45 C. 195 p. 217. 46 G. 198 p. 219.
As in the soul iracundia must be the subordinate ally af ratio and concupiscentia
must be subordinate to both or the result will be profound spiritual disorder,47
so in the moral sphere Gregory the Great distinguished the sin ira per vitium
from ira per zelum rectitudinis but cautioned,
cum per zelum animus movetur, curandum summopere est ne haec eadem,
quae instrumento virtutis assumitur, menti ira dominetur, nec quasi domina
praeeat, sed velut ancilla ad obsequium parata, a rationis tergo nunquam
rec?d?t. Tune enim robustius contra vitia erigitur, cum subditur rationi
famulatur. Nam quantumlibet ira ex zelo rectitudinis surgat, si immoderata
mentem vicerit, rationi protinus servire contemnit; et tanto se impudentius
dilat?t, quanto impatientiae vitium virtutem putat. Unde necesse est ut
hoc ante omnia, qui zelo rectitudinis movetur, attendat, ne ira extra mentis
dominium transeat.48
These texts reproduce the tenor of Plato's myth of the soul, as Jerome does
its vehicle, for they proclaim that only a man who controls his passions, within
whose soul ira is the ally of ratio, and whose moral anger serves reason can
lead a just and gentle life ('iustam lenemque vitam'). The lion's traditional
association with wrath suggests too its use as a symbol of ira. So in the first
half of Le Chevalier au lion Yvain did not control his passions, which reduced him
ultimately to a bestiality which objectified the savagery and spiritual disorder
already manifest in the fight with Esclados; in the second half he does. With
the original justice of his soul restored, with the lion as his ally, Yvain becomes
a force for order and justice in the social world.49
Reconsider now the scene in the forest, which Chr?tien has described with
such iconographical conciseness and precision: Yvain
vit un lyon, en un essart,
et un serpant qui le tenoit
par la eoe, et si li ardoit
trestoz les rains de flame ardant. (3344-47)
The lion's tail is re-emphasized after Yvain has cut the serpent to pieces:
Mes il li covient une piece
tranchier de la eoe au l?on
47 Calcidius 232-33, 267 pp. 246-47, 272; Apuleius 1.13; both based on Republic 439d-448e.
48 Mor. in Job 5.45.82-83 (PL 75.726-27).
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 amplificano
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 im
plies is embodied in the lion rather than in the Chevalier au Lion, that is, in Yvain and his lion.
176 TRADITIO
por la teste au serpant felon

qui par la eoe le tenoit;
tant con tranchier an covenoit
en trancha, c'onques moins ne pot. (3378-83)
The detail seems too trivial to bear the weight of emphasis put upon it until
we realize that to medieval science the lion's tail was special, even unique, in
its function. Pliny observed that it revealed a lion's temperament as a horse's
ears did its: 'leonum animi index cauda sicut et equorum aures.'50 Although
Pliny's remark was frequently repeated,51 its explanation appeared less often:
' inmota ergo placido, clemens blandienti, quod rarum est, crebrior iracundia,
cuius in principio terra verberatur, incremento terga ceu quodam incitamento
flagellantur. ' But it was repeated in the second quarter of the thirteenth
century, some fifty years after Yvain, by Thomas of Cantimpr?, who omits
Pliny's 'as if ' and says without qualification that the lion lashes its back with
its tail in order to increase its anger.52 Lucan, an important school author,
likewise omitted that 'as if when he made an account like Pliny's the basis
for an impressive simile in the first book of his Civil War. Caesar, whom
Lucan loathes, is confronted at the Rubicon by a vision of the trembling
spirit of Rome, who demands that he and his troops go no farther if they come
as lawful citizens. For a moment Caesar is horrified and nearly faints, but
he quickly finds the audacity to reply that he comes as Rome's champion:
inde moras soluit belli tumidum per amnem
signa tulit propere: sicut squalentibus aruis
aestiferae Libyes uiso leo comminus hoste
subsedit dubius, totam dum colligit iram;
mox, ubi se saeuae stimulauit uerbere caudae
erexitque iubam et uasto graue murmur hiatu
infremuit, turn torta leuis se lancea Mauri
haereat aut latum subeant uenabula pectus,
per ferrum tanti securus uolneris exit.53
50 Hist, nat. 8.19.49.

51 Solinus, Collectanea rerum memorabilium 27.13-22, ed. T. Mommsen (2nd ed. Berlin
1895); Isidore, Etymologiae 12.2.4, ed. W. M. Lindsay (Oxford 1911); Thomas of Gantimpr?,
Liber de natura rerum, MS Paris Bib. Nat. lat. 14720, fol. 44va; Vincent of Beauvais, Speculum
naturale 19.68 (quoting Thomas), 69 (quoting Pliny; Douai 1624, reprinted Graz 1964) 1419-20.
52 MS cit. fol. 45rb: 'Solinus et Plinius: cauda [leonis] immota est blandienti et placido,
quod rarum. Crebrior enim ira; qui etiam consumi interius dicitur calore iracundiae quando
immoderatus est. Cauda in principio ire terram verberat. In incremento terga sua quodam
incitamento flagell?t'; quoted by Vincent, Spec, nat., 19.68 (1419).
53 1.204-12, ed. A. E. Housman (Oxford 1926), italics added.
One of a series of versified questions composed before 1200 by a master at the

medical school of Salerno asks,
Cur leo prostratis parcens instantibus instet
Exacuatque suas cum caude motibus iras?54
The same details appear in the anonymous romance Partenopeu de Blois,
written shortly after Yvain. Wandering through the Ardennes, Partenopeu
sees a huge lion:
Fors est et grans et alques maigres,
Geons et familhos et aigres.
Si c'est por le cheval tapis
Con fait li chas por la soris;
Oilz a fo?ns, tos alum?s,
De sa cowe bat ses cost?s:
C'est la costume del lion,
Par tot s'a fiere beste non;
De sa eoe se seit ferir
Por ire et por coros coillir.
Tant est gentils et debonaire
Qu'il ne seit sens coros mal faire;
Ce fait il as bestes de pes,
Mais les hardis et les engres
Et les grans tigres et les ors,
Cant il en voit un ou plusors,
Assalt et vaint sens soi ferir,
De lor orguel se vuet marir.55
And the biblical exegete Hugh of St. Cher colorfully explains, * Cauda leonis
verberat eum, et anim?t ad praedam, sic Praelatum malum familia sua anim?t
ad rapinam.'56 The notion that the lion whipped itself into a rage with its
tail was obviously a commonplace, and Chr?tien must have known it, for we
find Yvain's lion striking the ground with its tail in the first flush of its anger at
Pesme Aventure, in perfect agreement with the traditional accounts (5520-29);
54 From Dietrich Ulsen, Speculator consiliorum enigmaticus microcosmi protheati torreas

138-39, ed. Brian Lawn, The Salernitan Questions: An Introduction to the History of Medieval
and Renaissance Problem Literature (Oxford 1963) 164.
55 Partonopeu de Blois: A French Romance of the Twelfth Century, ed. Joseph Gildea,
I (Villanova 1967) 5797-814. Dated 1182-85 by Anthime Fourrier, Le courant r?aliste dans
le roman courtois en France au moyen-?ge I (Paris 1960) 384. The passage is cited by Edmond
Farai, Recherches sur les sources latines des contes et romans courtois (Paris 1913) 361, and
by Spitzer (note 26 supra) 527-28.
56 Opera IV 26vb (on Isa. 9.14-15), likewise III 66 (on Prov. 30.30).
178 TRADITIO
I have found no other text which says so much only to neglect the more im
pressive particular of the lion's lashing itself with its tail.
The serpent, then, has seized what is, figuratively, the root of the lion's
anger, and the serpent's fiery breath falls on 'trestoz les rains' ? exactly
where the tip of the tail, which it holds, would strike ? in the grotesque
perversion of a natural process: the serpent's breath, rather than the lion's
tail, incites the lion to a frenzy which cannot be self-controlled because it is
not self-generated. This precisely described physical connection images the
spiritual link between invidia and ira, and so this scene in the clearing marks
the defeat of invidia and the subordination of ira to rational control. Cutting
off the tip of the lion's tail held by the serpent both frees ira from the corrupting
influence of invidia and tames it.57 But Yvain cuts off no more than he must,
because so long as it is controlled, he needs the strength of ira, physically
(as a power of the soul) and morally (ira per zelum rectitudinis).
In all its actions the lion is, indeed, ire and force (4215) made palpable. Ire
is evidently its most characteristic emotion (3502, 4215, 5526, 5603, 5659),
and its behavior is purely instinctive. In the fight with Harpin, it responds,
as if by reflex, to a particular blow ('a ce cop . . .,' 4213); in Lunete's trial
by combat it attacks as soon as Yvain becomes hard-pressed by all three of
his opponents at once (4501-02); so, too, in the fight with the demons at Pesme
Aventure (5588-627). The lion's instinctive reaction to the two demons is
especially striking because they are evidently the incarnation of abstract evil,
yet to the lion they simply threaten Yvain, and its response has no intellectual
or moral dimension but is entirely visceral:
Li lyeons comance a fremir
tot maintenant que il les voit,
qu'il set molt bien et apar?oit
que a ces armes que il tienent
conbatre a son seignor se vienent;
si se herice et creste ansanble,
de hardement et d'ire tranble.
et bat la terre de sa eoe
que talant a que il rescoe
son seignor, einz que il l'oc?ent. (5520-29)
Since the lion symbolizes ira, its extravagant subservience to Yvain once
he has rescued it from the serpent and its subordination to Yvain's will in the
67 Another of the Salernitan questions, Questiones phisicales 90-92, ed. Lawn 174, asks
' Cur sibi cauda / Truncata minui leo toto corpore vires / Sentiat ? ' The answer should be
apparent from the evidence already presented. I owe this reference to Professor Thomas
D. Hill of Cornell University.
Chretien's 'yvain ' 179
hunting scene which follows dramatize the restoration of natural order within
Yvain's soul. That the lion watches over Yvain's horse while he sleeps figures
forth the same Platonic hierarchy of function as the proper relationship among
the metaphorical man, lion, and bull recorded by Jerome, the ' summum quod
imperat, medium quod agit, tertium quod regitur et administratur. ' Here,
rightly, 'ratio quidem dux [est], uigor uero intimus, qui est iracundiae similis,
auxiliatorem rationi uolens [praebet]. '58 A point for point allegorical quadration
is unnecessary, because the significance of the scene emerges from the sum
of its parts, yet it is especially appropriate that the lion of ira should watch
over a horse ? and a grazing horse, at that ? traditionally associated with
the flesh and concupiscence.59
This order, once established, is disturbed only in the scene of attempted
suicide at the magic spring. Although the episode, which has no parallel in
Owein, seems pointlessly to slow the advance of the plot, I believe its rationale
can be explained by the iconography of ira. Along with the Harpin and Lunete
episodes, which develop from it, it can be seen to resume and reverse the
events of the first part of Le Chevalier au lion. Yvain and his lion are perhaps
never more closely interconnected than here, but the fundamental distinction
which remains between them is thematically crucial.
Yvain's return to the spring is both physical and psychological. The
memories of his first arrival there and its aftermath make Yvain faint. 'Par
po ne reforsena . . . cele foiee' (3486-87) harks back to his madness and links
the metaphors of torbeillons and tempeste within his head which were used then
(2806, 2946) to the physical storm after his first approach to the spring, the
rock, and the chapel. Chr?tien explicitly notes the disjunction between this
episode and the regimen which followed the lion's rescue (3479-85). The funda
mental distinction is that here, when Yvain has fainted and the lion thinks he
is dead, the lion's will is no longer subordinate to Yvain's. Its instincts have
free rein:
Einz de rien n'ot ire graignor,

qu'il coman?a tel duel a fere,
n'oi tel conter ne retrere,
qu'il se detuert et grate et crie
et s'a talant que il s'ocie
de l'espee, qu'il li est vis
58 Calcidius, c. 267, p. 272 (quoted n. 11 supra); also c. 232, p. 246.

59 Jerome, Brev. in Ps. (PL 26.918) explains equus in Ps. 32.17 as 'corpus hum?num,
jumentum est animae ideo fallax'; repeated and amplified by Peter Lombard, Comment,
in Ps. (PL 191.334); also Gregory, Mor. in Job 31.15.27 (PL 76.588); Rabanus, De universo
7.8 (PL 111.214), 'equus, carnalis potentia'; Hugh of St. Cher, Opera, I 453vb, II 181vb,
126vb, V 198 (on Job 39.18, Ps. 32.17, 48.13, Mich. 5.10)
180 TRADITIO
qui ait son boen seignor ocis.

A ses danz l'espee li oste,
et sor un fust gisant l'acoste
et derriers a un tronc l'apuie
qu'il a peor qu'el ne s'an fuie
qant il li hurtera del piz. (3502-13)
The lion's behavior here is more typical than it may appear. Ire and duel
can be used as synonyms in Old French (and are here, 3502-03), and Chr?tien
consequently may not have distinguished grief so sharply from anger as the
modern reader. Moreover, in Prudentius' Psychomachicfi0 and in the icono
graphical tradition of virtues and vices which derived from it and which
underwent no essential change until the early-thirteenth century,61 the vice
ira is set against the virtue patientia. It therefore includes the undirected
'anger' of impatience and frustration. The De fructibus carnis et Spiritus ?
spuriously attributed to Hugh of St. Victor and a basic text for the icono
graphical trees of virtues and vices which assumed conventional form early in
the twelfth century62 ? defines ira as ' strictus concitati animi furor ulciscendi
libidine fervens. Ejus comit?s sunt clamor, blasphemia, contumelia, luctus,
temeritas, furor, indignatio, ' and further explains, ' luctus est, qui exacerbato
animo, quod minus in superiorem potest ultionis in se fletibus satisfacit.'63
Ira in general, then, is vengeance upon another and luctus in particular venge
ance upon oneself. In any case, its violence obviously links the lion's behavior
now and later.64
Not even the lion's demonstration of fealty to Yvain, however, has prepared
for the method of its attempt at suicide, nor does it ever again so grotesquely
parody human action. More than the scene in which Yvain rescued the lion
from the serpent, this is ironic, even comic, in tone. Yet for all the absurdity
of the lion's behavior, the episode seems fundamentally serious. The lion here
enacts an iconographical motif which should unmistakably reveal its thematic
60 109-77 (CGL 126.155-57).

61 See Adolf Katzenellenbogen, Allegories of the Virtues and Vices in Mediaeval Art . . .
(London 1939) 8 n. 1; 10-11; 11 n. 1; 18 n. 0; 20 nn. 2, 5; 21 n. 3; 83 n. 1; and on the trans
formation of the iconography of the virtues and vices, 75-84. The connection between ira
and impatientia is pointed out by Gregory, Mor. in Job 5.45.82 (PL 75.726).
62 Katzenellenbogen 63-67.
63 PL 176.1000.
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 ex
planation 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 tris
titia.
Chretien's 'yvain 5 181
significance and image the limit of ira. In the Psychomachia Ira is ultimately
impotent before Patientia and destroys herself in her rage. As Patientia stands
unharmed by all Ira's weapons, Ira at last throws aside the hilt of her sword,
its blade shattered in vain against Patientia's helmet,
et ad proprium succenditur effera letum.
Missile de multis quae frustra sparserat unum
puluere de campi peruersos sumit in usus.
Rasile figit humi lignum ac se cuspide uersa
perfodit et calido pulmonem uulnere transit.65
Patientia moralizes over the corpse of the suicide:
Ipsa sibi est hostis uaesania seque furendo
interimit moriturque suis Ira ignea telis.66
In subsequent iconography a figure committing suicide regularly represented

ira until the early-thirteenth century, when the influence of the Psychomachia
waned and suicide came to identify desperation1 The lion is just on the point
of dying from its own rage, like Ira, when Yvain recovers from his swoon.
Chr?tien stresses the lion's blind fury by comparing it to an enraged boar:
a la mort toz escorsez
coroit come pors forsenez
qui ne prant garde ou il se fiere. (3517-19)
The boar was considered an especially wrathful and ferocious beast, like the
lion but without the lion's noble qualities.68
It should be clear, then, that Yvain is perverse when he thinks of imitating
his lion and committing suicide, because he would willfully abandon himself
to ira, ratio would be made fatally subordinate to iracundia, and the natural
order of his soul would be overturned. Yvain's fight with Esclados, beside
this same spring, evidenced precisely that disorder. In that physical encounter,
Yvain and Esclados * s'antrevindrent et sanblant firent / qu'il s'antreha?ssent
de mort' (815-16), and in this spiritual one, Yvain thinks that he 4molt se
doit bien ha?r de mort' (3538). Ha?r de mort is a strong and memorable ex
65 150-54. 66 160-61.
67 On Ira's suicide see Katzenellenbogen 8 . 1,83 . 1
of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Dora Nussey (New
of the choir apse of the Lyons cathedral (c. 1220) whi
suicide with his own sword. The image reflects the i
century.
68 Cf. Bernard Silvestris, Comment, super Eneid. 62, 'iracundos apros'; Vincent of Beauvais,
Spec. nat. 18.5 (1328), f[Aper] est autem periracundus et insipiens, nec bonorum doctrinam
morum recipiens, nullaque mutatio accidit in eo etiam si castretur. '
182 TRADITIO
pression. Chr?tien uses it only two other times in Yvain,69 once in Erec et
Enide not at all in Clig?s, twice in Lancelot,71 and four times in Perceval.12
Given the same geographical and thematic situations, it points up the corre
spondence between the two scenes, like the suggestion of corresponding physical
and psychological storms.
If this suicide scene is thematically parallel to the fight with Esclados,
then Yvain's monologue as a whole clarifies the psychological connection
between the fight and his first love for Laudine, because the extreme selfish
ness of his monologue in the gatehouse reappears here as he bewails his loss
of happiness (3522-56). Again Chr?tien undercuts it by setting Yvain's plight
against another's through rhyme:
Que que cil ensi se demante,
une cheitive, une dolante,
estoit en la ch?pele ancl?se. (3557-59)
And the ensuing exchange puts in relief the whole complex of superbia-invidia
ira which Yvain betrays here, since he at first refuses to believe that anyone
could be more unfortunate than he:
' Je sui, fet ele, une cheitive

la plus dolante riens qui vive. '
Cil le respont: 'Tes, foie riens !
Tex diax est joie ! Tex est biens
envers les max don ge lenguis. ' (3567-71)
This is Yvain's last such failure, however, and it is tactfully corrected by
Lunete, who evidences the sympathetic understanding which Yvain momen
tarily lacks:
'Par foi, fet ele, jel sai bien
que c'est parole tote voire;
mes por ce ne fet mie a croire
que vos aiez plus mal de moi,
et por ce mie ne le croi,
qu'il m'est a vis que vos poez
aler quel part que vos volez
et je sui ci anprisonee. ' (3580-87)
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.
70 1000.
71 Ed. Mario Roques (GFMA 86; Paris 1958) 3725, 3790.
72 2670, 6076, 6098, 8857.
Chretien's ' y vain' 183
Having learned that Lunete is to be burned at the stake for his fault ('por
mal de vos et por despit'), Yvain demonstrates again the selflessness, the
humility, and the control which marked his rescue of the lion. He puts himself
into God's hands (3715-16,3755-56), at the service of the distressed and helpless,
as he continues to do from now on.73 Now, when he leaves the spring, the
lion is 'toz jorz apr?s.' The proper order, momentarily in precarious balance,
has been re-established, so that when Yvain arrives at the baron's castle he
can declare to the men terrified of his lion:
'Et ne por quant, n'en dotez rien,

que je le garderai si bien
qu'estre porroiz tot asse?r. ' (3793-95)
Fortitudo is the special virtue of the irascible part of the soul as sapientia is
of the rational,74 and the ideal hero must combine both.75 As the Chevalier au
Lion, Yvain does. The ferocity which he demonstrated in the first part of the
romance is transferred to the lion in the second, and Yvain remains 'con
frans et dolz' (4129). His fight with Harpin is a diverting game:
el sane del cors, an leu de sausse,
le fer de la lance li moille. (4196-97)
Only when the lion leaps up 'par ire, et par grant force' (4215), does the humor
become more cruel:
A ce cop, li Lyons se creste

de son seignor eidier s'apreste,
73 Acceptance of God's will is a distinctive leitmotif of the second half of Yvain, 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 quinqu? septenis 3 (PL 175.407-08), 'Tertia petitio est contra iram, qua
dicitur: Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra. Hac sibi piacere indicat, quidquid voluntas
Dei si ve in se, si ve in aliis secundum arbitrium suae dignationis dispens?t. 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 compunc
tionem cordis, quae spiritu scientiae operante interius ex humilitate nascitur, ira et indignatio
animi mitigatur. '
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.
75 E. R. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. W. R. Trask
(New York 1953) 173-76.
184 TRADITIO
et saut par ire, et par grant force

s'aert, et fant con une escorce,
sor le jaiant, la pel velue,
si que desoz li a tolue
une grant piece de la hanche;
le ners et les braons li tranche,
et li jaianz li est estors,
si bret et crie come tors,
que molt Ta li lyons grev?. (4213-23)
Yvain's fights with Lunete's accusers and with the demons at Pesme Aventure
are defensive exchanges of blow for blow76 until the lion intervenes. Its as
saults upon the seneschal (4519-31) and the demons (5629-63) display, in the
same vigorous language, the same terrific violence as its assault upon Harpin
but without the same grotesque comedy. Even the stroke with which Yvain
beheads one of the demons is controlled, effortless, and clean in contrast to the
crude violence with which the lion mauls the second and tears its arm from its
shoulder (5648-63).
Just as the scene of attempted suicide beside the spring repeats and then
corrects the excessive anger of Yvain's fight with Esclados and the excessive
self-love of his infatuation with Laudine, the Harpin and Lunete episodes are
antitypes of Yvain's tourneying with Gauvain and his broken promise to return
to Laudine within a year. He refuses to allow Gauvain's sister and her ladies
to prostrate themselves at his feet ? as he and Gauvain had effectively forced
Arthur to do ? and he will not accept the land and wealth which the baron
offers him in order to persuade him to stay 'ancor un po' (4051, 4037, 4061),
que por le r?aume de Garse
ne voldroit que cele fust arse
que il avoit ase?ree. (4071-73)
Gauvain's family puts far more powerful pressures upon him than any Gauvain
himself could have exerted, but this time Yvain does not succumb and keeps
his engagement. Both his victories, over Harpin and the seneschal, demonstrate
that with the lion as his ally?with the righteous anger, strength, and courage
which it embodies (4215, 5526) controlled ? Yvain is an even greater knight
than before. Humbly trusting in God ? and surely his willingness to take
the lion from the battleground but not to reject its aid dramatizes that trust77
76 4470-502, 5572-623; e.g. 4493-94: donent granz cos anbedui, / mes plus granz re?oivent
de lui/ and 5612-13: 'Moet i avoit cos an durez / et randuz, tant com il plus pot/
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
ghr?tien's 'yvain ' 185
? the Chevalier au Lion is more than a match for the proud giant Harpin,
who trusts only in his own strength (4203-04), and for all three of Lunete's
accusers. When he has defeated them, his own restoration is complete.
IV
If Le Chevalier au lion were primarily about Yvain and his marriage with
Laudine, it might end here. Instead, it is about chivalry, and the episodes
of Pesme Aventure and of the dispute between the daughters of the Lord of
Noire Espine develop that major theme, first enunciated in Chr?tien's prologue
and Calogrenant's tale and everywhere implicit. They measure Yvain against
the conventional norm rather than against his own past conduct. Yvain
succeeds now where others have failed, not he himself. The change is one of
emphasis. Yvain's story has from the outset anatomized one aspect of the
larger theme. The episodes which delay his reconciliation with Laudine extend
its scope. The Harpin and Lunete episodes provide structural and thematic
links with the first part.
The most important of these links is Gauvain's absence from Arthur's court
on a quest for Guinevere, who has been abducted by Meleagant.78 Gauvain
might otherwise have defended Lunete, whom he promised to serve 'et a
mestier et sanz besoing' (2436), and his sister's family. As it is, Yvain must act
in his place. Gauvain, moreover, has just returned from his quest when he
promises to defend the cause of the elder daughter of the Lord of Noire Espine;
and because 4 li miaudres li falloit ' ? even though she implored him ' en
mainte meniere, / et par amor, et par proiere'79 ? the younger daughter must
go in search of the Chevalier au Lion.
These literal links point more and more insistently to the impotence of
Arthur's court and of the chivalric ideal which it represents. To his astonish
ment Yvain learns that Lunete could find no assistance there ? not even
from Gauvain, since he was pursuing Meleagant and Guinevere (3686-714).
Yvain's astonishment is greater still, the circumstance less accidental, the
moral failure and its consequences for the innocent more striking, when the
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.
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.
79 4758-60; cf. 4784-85.
186 TRADITIO
same explanation accounts for the baron's plight in the Harpin episode. The
baron assures Yvain that he would have had aid if he had found Gauvain at
the court, and he condemns the aggregate folly of Arthur, Keu, and Guinevere
more bitterly and at far greater length than Lunete did (3702-03):
'Ne por quant ja ne l'en e?st
menee, por rien qu'il pe?st,
ne fust Kex qui anbricona
le roi, tant que il li bailla
la re?ne, et mist en sa garde.
Cil fu fos et cele musarde
qui an son conduit se f?a,
et je resui cil qui i a
trop grant domage et trop grant perte,
que ce est chose tote certe
que mes sire Gauvains li preuz
por sa niece et por ses neveuz,
fust ?a venuz grant ale?re
se il se?st ceste aventure;
mes il nel set, don tant me grieve
que par po li cuers ne me crieve;
einz est alez apr?s celui,
cui Damedex doint grant enui,
quant menee en a la re?ne.' (3915-33)
And the impotence of the court to preserve justice is not simply reported but
dramatized in the case of the daughters of the Lord of Noire Espine. There,
moreover, Gauvain, the savior manqu? of the Harpin and Lunete episodes,
actually defends the cause of injustice.
Only the episode of Pesme Aventure is not connected with Arthur's court
? though Chr?tien has inserted it into the Noire-Espine episode, which is.
Its generalizing force is all the greater as a consequence. To Arthur corresponds
the king of the Isle as puceles, who
aloit por apanre noveles
par les corz et par les pa?s.
S'ala tant come fos na?s
qu'il s'anbati an cest peril.
A mal e?r i venist il,
que nos cheitives, qui ci somes,
la honte, et le mal, en avomes,
qui onques ne le desserv?mes. (5252-59)
The folly is the same, only its consequences here extend directly to three
hundred maidens and indirectly to an entire kingdom. Their plight is more
economic and less romantic than the baron's or Lunete's. It dramatizes,

however, the poverty to which the younger daughter of the Lord of Noire
Espine would be reduced if her obviously just claim against her sister were
not upheld. Gauvain, the embodiment of the Arthurian ideal, nevertheless
stands with the elder sister and makes possible her injustice,80 so that it is
paradoxically difficult to distinguish his conduct from that of Lunete's accusers,
who were not courtly enough to refuse unfair odds of three to one in the trial
by combat (3678-79). Moreover, the desire to ' alerpor apanre noveles' effective
ly made Calogrenant go 'querant aventures' (175; 363-64). It made Arthur
vow to see the marvellous spring within two seeks and there implore Yvain to
tell them all
cornant il a voit esploiti?;
car molt avoit grant covoiti?
de savoir tote s'avanture. (2295-97)
It partly motivated Yvain in his quest for the spring. It is, in short, essential
to the Arthurian ideal.
The nature of true proesce and cortoisie, put in question by the opening
scene of the romance and implicit throughout Yvain's adventures, is a special
concern of the second part of Le Chevalier au lion. In the Harpin episode when
the baron's sons are brought up to the castle on four emaciated cart-horses,
uns nains, fel come boz anflez,
les aloit costoiant toz quatre,
onques ne les fina de batre
d'unes corgiees a sis neuz
don molt cuidoit feire que preuz;
les batoit si que tuit seinnoient. (4097-4103)
This dwarf, who thinks he is acting like a knight, is as disturbing an analogue
to the Arthurian ideal as the giant bullherd was a contrast. The ladies of
Laudine's court, however, define negatively an alternative when they lament
Lunete's imminent execution:
' Ja de ce n'iert parole feite

que nus n'est mes frans ne cortois,
einz demande chascuns ein?ois
por lui, que por autrui ne fait
sanz ce que nul mestier en ait. ' (4374-78)
Lunete's active caritas is exactly the virtue which distinguishes Yvain's
conduct in this second part, as self-serving did in the first. The distinction
is basic to the chivalric ideal of service which Chr?tien propounds. Unlike
80 Cf. 4780-93, 5844-47, 5878-82.
188 TRADITIO
all his opponents in the second part, Yvain conspicuously does not put him
self first. The contrast is pointed in the Noire-Espine episode, culminatin
as it does in a duel between Yvain and Gauvain, as disturbing in its violence
as Yvain's fight with Esclados. Gauvain is thoughtless at best and holds
willfully to his indefensible decision to side with the elder daughter, apol
gizing to the younger,
'Amie, an vain
me priez que je nel puis feire
que j'ai anpris une autre afeire
que je ne le lesseroie pas. ' (4762-65)
The younger daughter echoes this reply but inverts its sense when she tells
Arthur about Yvain:
'S'eiist il molt aillors a feire
Ii frans chevaliers deboneire;
mes de moi li prist tex pitiez
qu'il a arrieres dos gitiez
toz ses afeires por le mien. ' (5943-47)
The basic difference is here: Yvain will abandon his own affairs for another's
and Gauvain will not. Gauvain is obviously arbitrary because he is unjust
Yvain is equally selfless because he does not know the younger daughter, nor
she him (5981-84), and because he took up her cause in response to a secon
unknown maiden, to whom the first was likewise a stranger ('si n'est pas la
besoingne moie, ' 5063).
Although Gauvain and Yvain must be disguised, and the lion absent, for the
duel to proceed, Chr?tien gives these mechanical prerequisites thematic point
Gauvain's disguise betrays his realization that his enterprise is not to his
credit81 ? though he will not therefore give it up ? and the appearance of th
lion immediately after the resolution of the combat, until then a draw, demon
strates that Yvain is in fact a greater knight than his friend, since he ha
matched Gauvain without the aid of his lion, which would not have failed him
if the fight had continued longer. Thus without overturning the donn?es of
his mati?re, Chr?tien makes Yvain triumph dramatically over the embodimen
of the chivalric ideal which first caused his downfall.
Yvain and Gauvain, like Yvain and Esclados, hate each other mortally in
this fight (6060), but here at the climax of Yvain's ?moral restoration their
hatred is not personal or selfish. Since the dispute between the two daughters
alone motivates the combat and since Yvain and Gauvain can see in each
other only the anonymous agents of the two sides, we have to do here with th
81 In Owein (172) Gwalchmei by chance wears a new cloak which conceals his identity.
abstract and absolute hatred of justice for injustice. Chr?tien insists upon
Yvain's and Gauvain's love for one another as individuals in his long and
paradoxical prologue to the fight (5992-6099). To emphasize Yvain's pres
ent selflessness, which contrasts so vividly with the superbia and invidia
which drove him to fury against Esclados, Chr?tien describes at length Yvain's
grief once he realizes he has hurt his friend (6262-76), and even risks confusing
the issue of* the younger daughter's rights by having Yvain attempt to make
amends and honor Gauvain by declaring himself beaten (6283-85). The gesture
involves an obvious fiction, since neither side has yet been beaten in a fight
ended only by the approach of night. Gauvain, courteous as ever, refuses
to accept it, insisting more honestly that Yvain, because of his prowess and
the injustice of the sister for whom Gauvain fights, would have killed him if
the duel had gone on much longer (6335-41); the lion's arrival confirms Gau
vain's claim. 'Gariz et sains' (6518) after this last fight, Yvain leaves Arthur's
court a third time, not alone as before but with the lion as his companion,
wounded by love, not invidia. The final storm he raises at the spring is more
violent than any of the others, but paradoxically it is entirely controlled and
achieves reconciliation, not the discord of combat.
The chivalric ideal which emerges from Le Chevalier au lion, and which is
symbolized in the double figure of Yvain and his lion which gives the romance
its name, is based on a classical model of moderation and rational control.
More than a thousand years before Chr?tien wrote, it found succinct expression
in Cicero: 'Sed ea animi elatio, quae cernitur in periculis et laboribus, si iustitia
vacat pugnatque non pro salute communi, sed pro suis commodis, in vitio est;
non modo enim id virtutis non est, sed potius immanitatis omnem humanitatem
repellentis. Itaque probe definitur a Stoicis fortitudo, cum earn virtutem esse
dicunt propugnantem pro aequitate.'82 In just this way, so long as he was
motivated by superbia and invidia, all Yvain's prowess succeeded only in
stripping him of his humanity, reducing him first morally then dramatically
to the level of a beast; and the Arthurian ideal as represented by Gauvain is
a perversion of fortitudo because it is exercised for its own sake apart from the
common good. Chr?tien's originality and genius lie in his superbly skillful
combination of this classical sens with Christian moral psychology and a Celtic
mati?re to create a romance where no detail is irrelevant or misplaced, where
characters and incidents are made with self-effacing art to form a pattern of
symmetries and correspondences which illuminate each other and the whole.
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge
82 De officiis 1.62; similarly 1.63, 66, 157.

Schweitzer-Pattern and Theme in Chrétiens Yvain

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Schweitzer-Pattern and Theme in Chrétiens Yvain

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

PATTERN AND THEME IN CHRÉTIEN'S 'YVAIN'

Author(s): EDWARD C. SCHWEITZER

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Traditio

Yvain, Chr?tien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counter

approximates the form of the story prior to Chretien's revision.4 It contains

The queen's rebuke,

'Certes, dame, ce m'est molt grief

The Suggestion of a vague moral disorder within the embodiment of the

Exegetes explain these paradoxes as symptoms of a general spiritual deficiency

He even proceeds to give the same passage a generalized literary interpreta

10 Such an interpretation has been presented by Maxwell S. Luria, 'The Storm-making

provides a fundamentally affective matrix which is rendered meaningful by

obtinente obliuione proptereaque immodulatas fore animas plurimorum. Medelam huius

Calogrenant's account of his quest suggests in general terms an ambivalent

13 11.14 (CSEL 28.346).

qui que le doie conparer,

Puis erra jusqu'? la fontainne,

Alongside Chr?tien's stress on Esclados' mortal agony ? here and at the

'et oseriez vos enprandre

16 1977-2038; e.g. 1984, 'Einz mes, fet ele, n'o? tel . .

'De ce qu'ele plore me duel,

Yvain's superbia is most conspicuous at the moment he is confronted with

The second part of Le Chevalier au lion traces Yvain's moral restoration.

moral import to the superficial humiliation of the courtly Yvain's being

in every way (3116-23).25 The abruptness of this departure contrasts with

25 Robert G. Cook, 'The Ointment in Chr?tien's Yvain,' Mediaeval Studies 31 (1969)

li lyons lez lui costoie

'N'en parlez mie

30 Cf. 3764-65, 4018-19, 4161-63, 4694-96, 4935-37, 5439-41, 6461-62, 6520-22.

qui ausi dolcemant se gist

34 1.1 (GGL 75.11). Other texts read .

euenit igitur ut quem transformatum uitiis uideas hominem aestimare non

Bernard Silvestris quoted Boethius in his commentary on the Zeneid42 an

41 De consol, philos. 4 pr. 3 (GGL 94.71).

por la teste au serpant felon

50 Hist, nat. 8.19.49.

One of a series of versified questions composed before 1200 by a master at the

54 From Dietrich Ulsen, Speculator consiliorum enigmaticus microcosmi protheati torreas

Einz de rien n'ot ire graignor,

58 Calcidius, c. 267, p. 272 (quoted n. 11 supra); also c. 232, p. 246.

qui ait son boen seignor ocis.

60 109-77 (CGL 126.155-57).

In subsequent iconography a figure committing suicide regularly represented

' Je sui, fet ele, une cheitive

'Et ne por quant, n'en dotez rien,

A ce cop, li Lyons se creste

et saut par ire, et par grant force

economic and less romantic than the baron's or Lunete's. It dramatizes,

' Ja de ce n'iert parole feite

80 Cf. 4780-93, 5844-47, 5878-82.

82 De officiis 1.62; similarly 1.63, 66, 157.

You might also like