King Arthur's Forest

Chretien and His Works As mentioned in an earlier post, I intend on treating each of Chretien's works in its own article rather than trying to lump them in a single enormous one.  This opening article will be a short overview of Chretien and his works before we get into his individual romances. Very little is known of Chretien himself except for the little information he provides in his stories.  There are no available records from that time that mention him.  What is "known" are actually suppositions or deductions.  He is believed to possibly have been born sometime around 1140 and to have died before 1200.  He names himself "of Troyes" which is the center of the Champagne province and we know that he was associated with the court there because of his dedication to Marie de Champagne found in The Knight of the Cart.  This is backed up by the fact that Troyes was a known center of literary activity with several writers associated with it.  Aside...

Wace and the Roman de Brut To understand the progression that Wace ( Wace rhymes with "Boss" ) has made with this book you really need to go back to Geoffrey of Monmouth and his "Historia" (HRB) which we covered early on.  But just as a refresher, Geoffrey took the standard latin historical chronicles of Gildas and Bede as well as other sources and built up a new history of Britain that dates all the way back to the Trojan war and the trojan Brutus from where he claims Britain got its name.  This is mostly fantasy, as is a good portion of his history, but it was devoured by the scholarly elite there and on mainland Europe and single handedly place Britain on the world stage with the rest of the continent.  It was published in Latin which was the language of the scholar and received serious treatment by other literates.  The book received such fame and recognition that it would receive treatments by other authors even during Geoffrey's own lifetime.  One of th...

Here is a small flow chart that I have been working on to display how some of the major works have depended on each other for influence as well as others that have developed independently.  You will (later on) see that after Geoffrey of Monmouth and Chretien de Troyes, the works really begin to explode with a high concentration of works in a short period.  Enjoy!

The Life of Merlin (Vita Merlini) Welcome back!  I hope everyone enjoyed The Life of Merlin, I know I did.  I found it quite interesting as this early introduction to Merlin seems to have little to do with the wizard that is well known today. If you are just coming in now I advise going back to read one of my 1st postings regarding Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain)   Here!    It directly relates to this article and may provide extra insight, even if you read the material later.  Let me recap a little on Merlin in his earliest appearances. Prophetiae Merlini (The Prophecies of Merlin) The Prophetiae Merlini is the 1st actual appearance of the character we know as Merlin.  He was an invention of Geoffrey of Monmouth in order to deliver a set of " political   prophesies."  This work was created shortly before Geoffrey's influential work, The HRB, sometime between the year...