Erec et Enide

By -
Erec is very comfy at home with Enide
Erec et Enide, by Chretien de Troyes

Erec et Enide is the first story in my book of Chretien de Troyes' Arthurian Romances, and one of the earliest tales in the tradition.  I may have read it in college, but I don't remember doing so, so it certainly felt like the first time.  Erec has pretty much fallen out of the Arthurian tradition; I don't know that he appears in Malory and you certainly don't run into him in the modern retellings, so here is a quick summary:

King Arthur declares a stag hunt, and Erec keeps the queen company as they watch the hunt.  A strange knight comes by and insults them; Erec cannot retaliate because he is unarmed, but he vows a quick revenge.  Once the hunt is over, he arms himself and sets out to follow the knight, and ends up in a town where he defeats the knight and meets Enide, a poor but gentle girl.  Erec takes her back to Camelot, where they marry before setting out to go to Erec's home kingdom.  There, Erec is so enamored of his lovely wife that he stays home with her until people start gossiping about his lack of valor.  This makes Enide cry and they set out together to find some adventure.  Erec orders Enide not to speak to him, but when danger threatens, she cannot help warning her beloved husband though it earns her his anger.  Eventually they arrive at a town with a deadly peril called "The Joy of the Court."  Erec defeats the peril, discovers some relatives, and goes back to Camelot until his father dies and he becomes king of Nantes.

It's a very typical story in many ways, and unusual in others.  Erec and Enide are married near the start of the story, and they are never separated, nor does Erec ever suspect Enide of unfaithfulness (though he is angry at her for a while).  I fully expected Erec to spend most of the story trying to rescue Enide from captivity or peril, and then marry her at the end.

Also, they visit towns which are full of people!  Usually, Arthurian stories have the court, the wilderness, churches, and various knightly manors, but actual towns are not common.  Nor are ordinary people--you meet knights, damsels, hermits, and so on, but not plain old peasants. That is still true here; the towns are filled with knights and ladies, not ordinary folks.  Peasants and merchants do not rate a mention in a courtly romance!  It gives you this interesting image of a sort of fairy-tale town that matches the fairy-tale wilderness of most Arthurian romances.  No real 12th-century town was ever like that, which is probably why there aren't many in the stories.

As far as I know, only Culhwch and Olwen is earlier in the romantic tradition.  I need to get that!  But for now, I'm going to stick with Chretien and read the next story in the book, Cligès.


Comments

  1. Amateur Reader (Tom)January 16, 2014 at 9:13 PM

    Towns! Now that is weird.

    Have you read Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival, by chance? I mention it because it is the extreme case among the Arthurian books I have read of a landscape that makes no sense whatsoever. Almost dream-like. And it certainly has no towns!

    ReplyDelete
  2. JeanJanuary 16, 2014 at 10:25 PM

    I have only read Chretien's version. I should put that on the list, a German romance would be great.

    I know--towns! Two of them!

    ReplyDelete
  3. JenniferJanuary 17, 2014 at 1:40 AM

    I was supposed to read the romances of Chretien de Troyes during a semester-long course entitled "Medieval Chivalry and Courtly Love." I must admit, I didn't get through them all, and I remember even less. :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. JeanJanuary 17, 2014 at 1:58 PM

    Oh, you should try them again sometime! You could do it easily, they're not hard.

    I can no longer remember if I read these in the general medieval lit course I took, which did feature something with Arthur, or in the one I audited that was entirely Arthurian. Same instructor.

    ReplyDelete
  5. AnonymousJanuary 25, 2014 at 6:12 PM

    I haven't read Eric et Enid but I have read Le Chevalier de la Charette (The Knight and the Cart). I love Medieval French epic poems and lais. I need to read all of Chretien de Troy's works. Currently, I'm reading La Chanson de Roland (The Song of Roland).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ruth @ with freedom and booksFebruary 27, 2014 at 6:13 PM

    I just finished Eric and Enide of my Arthurian Romances, and I expected there to be more dangerous conflict, too; however, in each case, Erec was easily victorious. A true fairy tale, but it is sweet to imagine.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I'd love to know what you think, so please comment!

Popular posts from this blog

The Four Ages of Poetry

By -
Image
  "The Four Ages of Poetry," by Thomas Love Peacock I am becoming fond of Thomas Love Peacock.  Besides his unbeatable name, he was a lot of fun.  Peacock was a minor literary figure of the early 19th century; he tried his hand at poetry but mainly succeeded in satire.  I read his short novel Nightmare Abbey last year, but at the time I didn't know that the young hero of the story, Scythrop, was modeled on Peacock's good friend Percy Shelley.  He and Shelley were quite close and Peacock was the executor of Shelley's will. Thomas Love Peacock Percy Bysshe Shelley "The Four Ages of Poetry," a tongue-in-cheek essay on the history and development of poetry, was published in 1820 in a new magazine called Literary Miscellany , which promptly died.  It would probably have been completely obscure and unknown--it nearly is anyway--but for Shelley.  Peacock sent a copy to his friend, who I guess didn't really have much of a sense of...
Read more

A few short stories in Urdu

By -
Image
 Back in August, I got hold of a book of Urdu short stories translated into English.  It's a large book, so I wanted to read just the women authors for WIT, and that would still be a good amount.  August got away from me, and I only read one or two stories back then, but I've continued reading them since.  I've now finished all the short stories in the book that were written by women (luckily for me, there are short biographies in an appendix, since I could only tell from the name about half the time).  I'll just highlight a couple: "The Wagon," by Khalida Asghar, is a hallucinatory, apocalyptic story.  The narrator meets three strange men who are watching the evening sky and point out that it has become red.  No one had noticed until they said so, but the sky is now strangely red.  Then a smell arrives, so offensive and sickening that it causes real pain -- but only once it's pointed out.  And finally, a mysterious wagon, which may be the s...
Read more

Faerie Queen Readalong I: Redcrosse, the Knight of Holiness

By -
Image
I did it, I read all of Book I!  My minimum requirement was two cantos a day, but I managed three a couple of times.  I'm hoping to read ahead, because I'll be gone for two weeks in the middle of this event and I'd like to be able to prep a post ahead of time...but the schedule is already pretty demanding.  The reading is not terribly difficult, but it is slow.  I keep thinking that I've read a large chunk, only to look back and realize that in fact I have read six verses.  So here we go with analysis... Each book in the Faerie Queene features a knight, and a story, about a particular virtue.  The Redcrosse Knight, to be known as St. George after he accomplishes his feats, is all about Holinesse .  This does not mean that Redcrosse already exemplifies holiness; he doesn't.  Holiness is what he's working towards and struggling with.  His foes symbolize various forms of unholiness, and he falls into their clutches at least as often as he ...
Read more