nascent passion between the hero and his lady: Alexandre/Soredamors, in the first part of the romance, and Cligés/Fenice, in the second part. The prosateur’s keen interest in describing combat for a mid-fifteenth-century audience steeped in war culture is obvious, however, when we note how much more space he devotes to these action scenes than to the love intrigue and how many more striking details he provides than does Chrétien4. Although we do not know how the prose Cligés was received at Philip’s court, we can well imagine that this work, which highlights war and the tournaments that imitate it, would have appealed greatly to an audience that had experienced a nearly constant state of warfare by the mid-fifteenth century, including the Hundred Years War and the duke’s incessant efforts to expand his domain and keep peace within it5. The greater emphasis on war in this romance (compared to Chrétien’s Cligés) can thus be attributed partly to the process of “acculturation”6.

When we compare the prose redactor’s treatment of combat with Chrétien’s, we can see that the prose Cligés is not simply a pale or maladroit imitation of its model, as early scholars thought7, but rather a very skilful adaptation, involving significant changes both in emphasis

and in detail8. My initial foray into this field focused on the first half of the romance. It was a comparative analysis of the siege of Windsor Castle, showing how the prosateur brings this episode to life for his contemporaries, both by enhancing the hero’s role, as Michelle Szkilnik has shown, and by adding a profusion of graphic detail9. Moreover, rather than having Arthur summarily execute Count Angrés, as Chrétien does, he adds a final dramatic scene of his own invention to depict the complete public humiliation of the traitor10. By staging the whole siege in a more vivid fashion than had Chrétien, the prosateur demonstrates not only that combat has great appeal for him and his audience, but also that he is a terrific teller of war tales.

The purpose of the present article is to show how, in the second half of the prose Cligés, the adaptor pursues his fruitful enhancement of Chrétien’s take on combat. My comparison of the verse and prose accounts of Cligés’s performance in two episodes that are crucial for his development as a knight will unfold in two stages. I will first consider his performance as a young but extremely promising combatant in the war waged by the duke of Saxony against the emperors of Constantinople and Germany. In a subsequent – very different – development, I will describe his exemplary conduct as a more mature knight intent on increasing his prestige by measuring himself against the best knights in a tournament organized in Britain by King Arthur.

the knights and ladies in the palace rush to the windows and battlements to witness the conflict. Chrétien does not describe an elaborate tournament, but rather a bohort, an informal joust generally fought between squires or knights-in-training, in which the participants, equipped only with lance and shield, wear no armor12. Chrétien frames this confrontation beforehand with Fenice’s eager anticipation at seeing Cligés joust (23 verses) and afterwards with her jubilant reaction to his success and her delight that Amor has chosen to have her love the most beautiful, courtly, and brave man in the world (nine verses), followed by her anguish at having to marry another (Alis), whom she does not love (31 verses). Included in the frame are a few verses recording Cligés’s feelings before and after the joust: he is delighted that Fenice will see how courageous and skilled he is and prize him for that reason, and he exchanges an amorous glance with her afterwards.

Given the size and importance of this frame (over 60 verses), the bohort itself seems relatively insignificant, and indeed Chrétien devotes a mere 35 verses to it! When Cligés sees the duke’s nephew breaking lances and routing the Greeks, he springs into action and unhorses him with one blow. The nephew remounts, determined to avenge his shame, but only doubles it as Cligés fells him a second time, effectively putting the Saxons to flight and chasing them to the river where he leaves them to soak, shamed and chagrined.

The prosateur, for his part, follows the general outline provided by his model but makes numerous, quite significant, changes. He is clearly intent on enhancing Cligés’s prestige even more than Chrétien was and in describing the combat in substantially more detail. When the duke’s nephew – here dignified with a name, Archadés – issues his challenge, Cligés’s answer shows his desire to set up a real tournament, using armor. He tells Archadés to collect 300 of his knights and to meet him on the plain. He himself will use one-third fewer of his own men (200) and even takes care to choose the most inexperienced ones! The prose writer notes the presence of spectators, but he mentions only the German emperor, his daughter, and the ladies and maidens, and he devotes only two lines to Fenice’s excitement at seeing her beloved joust and none to Cligés’s desire to shine before her. Once the fighting

is over, the narrator notes the exchange of a sweet and amorous glance between the lovers before expanding on an important element in the speculation among the women regarding the victor’s identity, one that Chrétien glosses over quite rapidly. Indeed, the adaptor scrupulously records Fenice’s discovery of Alis’s treacherous usurping of his brother’s throne, her realization that Cligés was to be the legitimate heir, and her determination to be true to that heir as the one to whom she was actually promised13. The prosateur, clearly unwilling to follow Chrétien in using irony to question his earnest heroine’s motives, considers this point to be crucial in establishing her right to enlist Thessala’s help to keep herself from committing adultery by serving Alis a magic sleeping potion to convince him that he is making love to his bride14.

The changes just described are the ones the adaptor makes to the frame of the tournament episode. As for the portion detailing the actual combat, he expands it threefold by devoting 54 lines to it, which is roughly equivalent to 108 verses. It is no longer a simple bohort, nor is it a full-fledged tournament of the type that fifteenth-century audiences were used to seeing. It is, rather, a tournoi-mêlée, the kind of scrappy confrontation used in the twelfth century when tourneys resembled wars and before they became more formal, often featuring a preliminary joust between two exceptional combatants or a series of jousts between several knights. Although Cligés and Archadés are clearly eyeing each other as eventual targets, they begin by lashing out right and left; only when Cligés observes his adversary’s haughtiness does he charge

him. With a single blow, he unhorses him before plunging back into the thick of the fray and performing wondrous feats. Meanwhile, the Saxons’ struggle to get their leader remounted causes the death of as many as 40 knights or squires, for Archadés is struck back down five times by the Greeks before he is able to remount and charge back into the fray to confront Cligés anew. When Archadés lands a heavy blow on Cligés’s shield, the hero responds with a stunning hit to his adversary’s helmet, felling him a second time. Undaunted, Archadés remounts and for the third time charges into the fray, but Cligés pounds the Saxons so persistently that their numbers diminish, forcing them to beat a vile retreat. This is a pale summary indeed of the adaptor’s lively prose, in which he enthusiastically expands on his model. As in Chrétien, Cligés unhorses the duke’s nephew only twice, but in the prose, Archadés’s repeated attempts to remount serve to ridicule him. Moreover, the clash between the two men and their armies is considerably more detailed – and lovingly so. This is truly combat in earnest.

Space does not allow more than a cursory examination of the second – more diffuse – phase of this war15, which takes place after Alis and Fenice’s wedding and underscores the Saxon leader’s determination to wreak vengeance on the Greeks and to recover the woman to whom he was betrothed. Throughout this phase, Cligés continues to display his impressive skills. When he is ambushed by the duke’s nephew, he pierces him through the heart with one blow and likewise slays the knight sent subsequently to “have” his head. The prosateur increases this second Saxon’s prestige – and thus the importance of Cligés’s victory – by giving him a name, Terri, and characterizing him as “la machue au duc” (p. 117). After defeating this redoubtable knight, Cligés delights in mocking Terri’s stated mission by attaching the Saxon’s decapitated head to his lance and donning his armor before going off in search of the two armies. Both sides are fooled into thinking that Cligés is dead, but as they engage in pitched battle, Cligés reveals his identity and proceeds to slay countless Saxons. As a last resort, the duke’s men kidnap Fenice, but Cligés recovers her and handily dispatches 11 of the 12 knights who are escorting her to the enemy camp. Whereas the Saxon leader’s rage over the prospect of losing Fenice to Alis seems in Chrétien’s account to be a question mainly of pride and power politics,

the prosateur, while scarcely neglecting these aspects, actually transforms his feelings into a veritable love passion that he has nurtured for the maiden since adolescence16. Consequently, in the prose, the scenes in which the duke hears reports of Cligés’s various successes, especially the recovery of Fenice after her abduction, include descriptions of his heartfelt anguish.

Upon hearing that Cligés has rescued Fenice, the frustrated duke decides to challenge the Greek youth to single combat, thus initiating the final phase of his war, the judicial duel17. Cligés’s combat in the first stage of the war was with someone of his own youth and inexperience, and in the second he defeated the best Saxon knight, but his confrontation in the last phase with the duke, a seasoned warrior, promises to be more challenging. Cligés insists on being allowed to accept the challenge, although it causes great consternation in his entourage. In Chrétien’s version, Cligés’s exchange with his uncle is recounted at length, and because this joust is clearly a milestone in his life, several verses describe his knighting and ceremonial arming. The prosateur, for his part, shortens the emotional exchange, eliminates the reference to Cligés’s arming, and has Alis promptly dub Cligés. On the other hand, in the prose, the duke’s challenge is rendered much more explicit and narrower in scope. No longer is it a complaint against the emperors regarding a broken promise; rather, it focuses specifically on Cligés’s recovery of Fenice: the duke “le fist deffier pour comparoir personnellement devant luy en champ mortel, sur la querelle qu’il se complaindoit de Cligés, disant que a tort il lui avoit guerpie la pucelle” (p. 122). This detail emphasizes the change in focus, which is underscored when Cligés tells the herald that he accepts the challenge, as “le chevalier serviteur aux dames” (p. 123). In both texts, Fenice is brought out to witness the joust and vows to kill herself, should Cligés lose.

The main contrast between the verse and the prose is in the description of the joust itself. It is an excellent illustration of how differently Chrétien and his adaptor treat combat in their respective versions. Chrétien takes care to note the arrival of the spectators, after which the lance attack begins:

4041 Qant el chanp furent tuit venu,

haut et bas et juene et chenu,

et les gardes I furent mises,

4044 lors ont andui lor lances prises,

si s’antrevienent sanz feintise

que chascuns d’ax sa lance brise

et des chevax a terre vienent,

4048 que as seles ne se retienent.

The prosateur, for his part, begins his description of the combat without preamble, and the lance attack is much more detailed and violent:

Quant les deux chevaliers se voient prestz de commencier les armes, chascun ampoigne la lance, et tant asprement brocent les destriers qu’il samble que tout doibve fendre devant eulz; si s’entrefierent par tel vertu que lez lances brisent et que le duc wide lez arçons, et Cligés chiet de l’autre lés par lez changles du destrier qui rompent. (p. 123)

To describe the second part of the joust, the sword fight, Chrétien resorts to a series of metaphors that betray his clear lack of interest in the nitty-gritty of combat. Moreover, both his remark that the duel begins as soon as the spectators have arrived on the field and his subsequent allusion to the “onlookers” seem to indicate that he is filtering his account through their eyes. Chrétien describes the sword fight as follows, using no fewer than five metaphors or similes:

4049 Mes tost resont an piez drecié,

car de rien ne furent blecié,

si s’antrevienent sanz delai.

4052 As espees notent un lai

sor les hiaumes qui retantissent

si que lor genz s’an esbaïssent.

Il sanble a ces qui les esgardent

4056 que li hiaume espraignent et ardent,

car quant les espees resaillent,

estanceles ardanz an saillent

ausi come de fer qui fume

4062 que li fevres bat sor l’anclume,

qant il le tret de la [favarge].

Molt sont andui li vasal large

de cos doner a grant planté,

4064 s’a chascuns boene volanté

de tost randre ce qu’il acroit,

ne cil ne cist ne s’an recroit

que tot sanz conte et sanz mesure

4068 ne rande chetel et ousure

li uns a l’autre sanz respit.

The prosateur, for his part, does not emphasize the presence of spectators, any more than he did at the outset, and replaces the impressionistic account of his model with the solid running commentary that accompanied the lance attack and that recalls a knowledgeable sportscaster describing the combat play-by-play for ardent fans18. The only hint we have that he is even following Chrétien in this instance is when he notes of the combatants “des heaulmes et haubers ilz font estinceller feu” (p. 123):

Mais combien qu’ilz soient chutz, ilz sont habillement sallies sur piés et ont tost saisiez bonnes espees, du trençant desquellez il fierent l’un l’aultre en telle maniere que des heaulmes et haubers ilz font estinceller feu, et sanble qu’ilz doibvent occirre l’un l’aultre a chascun coup. Or sentent ilz pluseurs coupz lourz et pensans; chascun pense de sauver sa vie, et Cligés, qui tresbien se acquitte, ung coup donne a son ennemi tel que cliner le fait et desmarcier ung pas. (p. 123-124)

The verse and prose accounts merge at the point where the duke, furious at his inability to defeat Cligés, lands a stunning blow on his helmet, and one of Cligés’s knees drops to the ground. Both authors describe the apprehension of the youth’s entourage, especially Fenice who cries out and faints straightaway. Because her emotional reaction gives Cligés renewed energy, when he resumes fighting he seems fiercer and more refreshed than when he began, much to the dismay of the duke who, sensing certain defeat, attempts to negotiate a settlement. His approach

differs considerably in the two accounts. In Chrétien’s, he compliments Cligés on his bravery and nobility and claims that were it not for his own desire to avenge his nephew he would gladly yield to him in their quarrel. When Cligés appears unmoved, the duke takes another tack, underscoring the contrast in their ages and experience and claiming that were he to kill the young knight he would reap no honor, whereas for Cligés it would always be a source of glory to have withstood such a seasoned adversary in only two attacks. Eventually, the duke capitulates, stating that it is his wish and desire to cede to Cligés in their dispute, but the Greek demands that he acknowledge his defeat before all present so that it will never be said that the duke did him a kindness, but rather that Cligés took pity on him.

The prose writer, for his part, takes this outcome a step further, again emphasizing the legalistic aspect of the encounter and the specific focus on Fenice’s abduction and recovery. Here, the duke does not mention his nephew (who was killed before the kidnapping took place), preferring simply to underscore what he claims will be his certain victory over his opponent. If Cligés begs for mercy, he says, he will take pity on him and pardon him for “les durz desplesirz et grans inconveniendz” (p. 124-125) that the youth has caused him. Cligés, vowing never to put himself at the duke’s mercy, asserts that he will see their combat through to its conclusion, “soubstenant ma querelle que injustement tu me as deffié et assailli” (p. 125). Unlike in Chrétien’s account, Cligés does not have to demand specifically the duke’s public surrender. The Saxon leader, “qui mieux aime vivre en deshonneur que mourir en loange”, lays down his sword forthwith and solemnly intones: “Sire chevalier, je me rens a vous congnoissant que j’ay grandement offensé et mesprins envers vostre haulte noblesse. Je vous prie merci, suppliant que en faveur de gentillesse et de chevalerie vous aiés pitié de moy, et je serai vostre servant durant ma vie” (p. 125). This conclusion echoes the legalistic way the adaptor formulated the duke’s initial challenge as a joust to the death regarding the complaint he had against Cligés, who in his view had wrongly kidnapped the maiden. In this way the prosateur underscores the fact that this joust is a judicial duel. He also reduces the duke’s complaint to the question of Fenice’s abduction and rescue. The outcome proves both that the duke committed a punishable offense by kidnapping Fenice and that Cligés was within his rights to recover the maiden.

In examining carefully the first and third phases of the duke’s war, we have seen how the prose adaptor modified Chrétien’s text by greatly increasing the number of lines devoted to combat and by adding much more detail. We have also observed that he replaces the bohort with an actual tournament and turns the single combat at the end into a judicial duel. More generally, we have seen how he charts Cligés’s evolution from an untried youth battling a young Saxon to a more mature knight engaged in a judicial duel with a seasoned warrior. Although Cligés has certainly proved his valor in the duke’s war, he wishes to put his prowess to the ultimate test by traveling to King Arthur’s court where he knows he will encounter the best knights in the world; he will do so in a tournament organized by King Arthur. Continuing our comparative analysis of combat in the verse and prose versions of this romance, we turn now to an examination of Cligés’s performance in that context, where he will arrive at the pinnacle of martial success.

The tournament organized by King Arthur
between Wallingford and Oxford

To elucidate the significance of the changes wrought by the prosateur in the verse account of this key tournament, I will begin with a brief description of how such events unfolded in reality and how Chrétien “adjusted” reality to romance. We are not sure exactly when tournaments began to be held, in part because the earliest references are to assemblees, which in some cases might have been simply displays of horsemanship19. However, it is certain that the taste for such events increased throughout the twelfth century and that Chrétien’s romances were contemporaneous with the public’s growing interest in them. Erec et Enide was actually composed around the time of the tournament that took place between

Gournai and Ressons, an event described in the biography of Guillaume le Maréchal, who made an excellent living from his active and highly effective participation in multiple tourneys. Historians have culled a great deal of information from Guillaume’s Histoire in order to recreate the reality of the twelfth-century tournament20. Such reconstruction is necessary because Guillaume’s account – part history / part fiction, like so many medieval texts – was commissioned by his son after his death, and, according to Larry Benson, it was greatly influenced by the descriptions of tournaments in Chrétien’s romances21. As Christine Ferlampin-Acher notes: “Il s’agit d’un panégyrique d’un personnage qui trouve sa grandeur dans sa ressemblance avec les héros courtois”. She adds that although caution is advised in working with Guillaume’s Histoire as a transcription of reality, it is still possible to see how Chrétien, by stylizing reality, developed a scheme sufficiently structured to engender a topos22.

The first assemblees were very similar to war, with two sides combating each other, but principally for material rather than territorial gain. The point, therefore, was not to kill one’s opponent, but to take him prisoner, along with his horse if possible, and to ransom the lot. Because a few men were needed to guard the booty, teamwork was crucial; consequently, there was less emphasis on the performance of a single knight. Moreover, the tourneys were not particularly well organized, and they were focused mainly on the mêlée, in which the participants, divided between two sides and working in groups, came together in a charge, or estor, whose primary goal was to disorganize their opponents.

Thus, tourneys took place in the midst of a great deal of confusion, especially since they were not restricted to a single flat plain, as they are in Chrétien’s romances, but rather ranged over a fairly large space, which could include hills and extend into towns. Moreover, the time period was not as circumscribed as in Chrétien. Often the participants just had a merry brawl until nightfall or until one side was soundly defeated. The region where most early tournaments were held was in northern France; it was not until 1194 that King Richard I granted permission to organize tournaments in England. Yet, all of the tournaments in Chrétien’s romances take place in Britain. Given how gritty the twelfth-century tourneys were in reality, there was no question of a knight arriving for the event in spanking new armor and arms, and he certainly could not afford to have four different horses and four different sets of armor, as Cligés does at the tournament between Oxford and Wallingford23!

Now, in stylizing the reality that he knew, Chrétien transformed these events into fairly elaborate noble spectacles, with innovations including (1) the extension of tourneys from two to three and even four days, (2) the introduction of the matrimonial tournament, and (3) the extended use of fighting incognito24. In all of these events, a knight’s prowess alone makes the difference, and everything is done to highlight that aspect. Although Chrétien does not depict tournaments in the same way in every romance, in Cligés, the usual pattern is that an initial joust between the hero and a knight whose reputation has already been established takes precedence. The second knight is handily defeated and sometimes taken prisoner. Then the mêlée begins, where the protagonist again prevails, but this time over a horde of unnamed knights.

Turning now to our analysis proper, let us consider the features that are common to both the verse and the prose accounts of this tournament before noting the divergences. We recall that after Cligés has proven his mettle as a young knight in Constantinople, he travels to Arthur’s court to measure himself against knights who are reputedly the best in the world. On arriving in England, he learns that Arthur has organized a tournament to be held outside Oxford, near Wallingford. Because the tournament is to last four days, and Cligés wants to fight

incognito throughout, he sends his squires off to purchase three different sets of armor, one black, one red, and one green; he will use these on successive days, before donning on the last day the white one that he brought with him25.

Since the tournament in Chrétien’s day was focused on the mêlée, the joust – in which two knights engaged in single combat – was never the main feature the way it was to become in the later Middle Ages26. It did, however, constitute one component. In both the verse and prose Cligés, where the point is for the protagonist to measure himself very visibly against Arthur’s best knights, Cligés will face, on each of the four successive days, a formidable challenger: Sagremor, Perceval, Lancelot, and finally Gauvain, and naturally it will be a joust in which he will endeavor to prove his worth – succeeding brilliantly. After each joust, the two sides do confront each other in the mêlée, but Cligés’s performance is highlighted, and of course he unhorses everyone he encounters in both the joust and the mêlée until he meets his match with Gauvain. As is the case in all of Chrétien’s romances, the hero’s performance in the joust is so striking that there can be no nuanced hierarchy from poor to excellent among the participants. The only distinction is between the best knight and the others. Cligés manages to defeat Arthur’s three finest knights and is proving a redoubtable opponent to Gauvain when their combat is abruptly curtailed by a worried King Arthur. Moreover, as spectator commentary confirms, Cligés is also in competition with himself, that is, with his own performance as another knight in different armor fighting incognito on the previous day(s).

Having noted the features of the tournament in Cligés that are common to the verse and prose accounts, we turn now to the differences27. The most striking way by far in which Chrétien’s description stands out is in the amount of spectator talk that is featured. Except in the combat with Gauvain, which ends prematurely and is followed by the revelation of Cligés’s identity, the fighting itself is nearly dwarfed by the amount of comment and speculation in which the onlookers indulge at all points: (1)

before the joust begins, when they gaze wonderingly upon the unknown knight, marveling that anyone would even dare respond to the knight who has issued the challenge (Sagremor, Lancelot, Perceval), (2) during the joust, as they admire the challenger’s skill in defeating his renowned opponents, and finally (3) after the mêlée on the first three days, when, following Cligés’s disappearance, they search for him high and low.

The prosateur, who is clearly fascinated by the details of combat and assumes quite reasonably that his audience shares that interest, reduces considerably the amount of spectator talk, but because Cligés is purposely concealing his identity, at least a minimum of the audience speculation found in the verse must be retained. Chrétien, for his part, does not seem particularly interested in the fighting, and, given the importance he accords in his romances to the opposition between appearance and reality, he is pleased to filter the combat descriptions through the onlookers, who in some cases actually take over the narration by providing a running commentary in which, more often than not, they reveal how utterly and comically clueless they are. The following chart compares how much space is given over to combat (joust, mêlée) vs. spectator talk in the verse and the prose and approximately how much is devoted to each joust and mêlée; in the case of Gauvain, there is no mêlée because Arthur ends that confrontation prematurely.

Since by the fifteenth century the joust had become much more important than it had been in the twelfth century, we might have expected the prosateur to devote more space to it than to the mêlée; yet, it is quite the opposite. But if the descriptions of the joust are shorter in the prose, it is because Cligés dispatches his challengers with greater alacrity (than in the verse) before plunging into the mêlée, where his performance is just as spectacular, for he delivers a resounding defeat to all who assail him. And if the mêlée portions of the tournament are longer in the prose than in the verse, it may be that the prosateur understood the appeal they would undoubtedly have for his contemporaries steeped in war culture. Indeed, for their greater resemblance to war, deeds in the mêlée were ranked higher than those of the joust by Geoffroi de Charny, the theoretician of fourteenth-century chivalry28.

As is clear from the chart, in the two accounts, Cligés’s confrontation with Gauvain is the climax of his performance. Both authors devote about the same amount of space to that combat, but the prosateur reports a portion of it through the wondering – and increasingly concerned – eyes of Arthur and his court. If in this respect the adaptor is imitating Chrétien’s technique, he nevertheless offers a contrast in that his spectator-reporters are totally reliable. We should note that although Cligés’s thoughts of Fenice frame the tournament episode in both accounts, it is only in the prose that the hero derives extra strength from thinking about her while he is fighting Gauvain. Other such romantic inserts – thoughts of Fenice – occur in other parts of the prose romance. They are innovations by the prosateur, who may well be trying not simply to imitate Chrétien’s style, but to build on it, although as stated earlier, he devotes much less space to the love intrigue than does his predecessor29.

One significant contrast between the verse and prose accounts of this tournament is that in the earlier romance Cligés systematically makes a prisoner of every knight he defeats, whether in the joust or the mêlée. Taking prisoners for ransom is a practice that was abandoned in the thirteenth century. Although there is no talk of ransom in the verse romance, Cligés does take prisoners, who dutifully seek him out after each segment of the tournament. In the prose, on the other hand, the protagonist does not take a single prisoner, a detail that reflects how the tournament had evolved by the mid-fifteenth century into an activity that was much less warlike and mercenary than it had been in the twelfth century. This does not mean that fifteenth-century Burgundy did not have its mind on war – far from it30. But by that time, pageantry had progressed to the point where tournaments could be seen essentially as displays of horsemanship and prowess. The tournament as pageant appeared in its most elaborate form in 1430 during the festival that Philip the Good organized for the formal entry into Bruges of his new duchess, Isabel of Portugal31. The duke, who presided over one of the most splendid courts in Europe32, sponsored numerous tourneys, the protocol of which was strictly defined, in part by the romances that the dukes had in their extensive library, such as those of Chrétien33. It was in 1430 as well that, in the most striking case of life imitating art, Philip created a special order of elite knights known as the Order of the Golden Fleece, which, like Edward III’s Order of the Garter in England

(1348) and Jean II’s Order of the Star in France (1351), was modeled on Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table and in direct imitation of the fourteenth-century romance Perceforest34.

Since Philip created his chivalric order just a short time before the prose Cligés was composed (1456), it is possible that if our prosateur adheres as closely as he does to the general form of Chrétien’s account of the tournament between Wallingford and Oxford, it may be because he felt a certain nostalgia for these events as they were described in his famous predecessor’s romances. Such feelings may also explain in part his decision to depict the tournoi-mêlée in the freer form it had in Chrétien’s day, rather than in the more organized, codified form it took in the great tournaments of the later Middle Ages, where knights from two sides challenged each other in an enclosed space35. Of course, there were limits to the adaptor’s nostalgic impulse. Having little interest in irony, he drastically reduced the amount of unreliable spectator commentary found in Chrétien’s account of the first three jousts, while actually interlacing the description of the joust between Cligés and Gauvain with reliable commentary. Moreover, because the taking of prisoners at tournaments had long been abandoned, the adaptor refused to allow his noble Greek protagonist to revert to that mercenary tactic36.

In refashioning Chrétien’s tournaments for the court of Burgundy, the prose redactor did not alter his model as much as he did when he reworked the duke of Saxony’s war on the emperors of Germany

and Constantinople (or King Arthur’s siege of Windsor Castle37). To explain this unexpected similarity I have suggested nostalgia on the part of the prosateur, who is casting a backward glance and inviting his contemporaries to do likewise. But we could also attribute it to another important fact: when Chrétien chose to depict his tournaments as more noble than they were in reality, he was, as Benson suggests, actually anticipating the evolution that these events would take in the centuries following38. It is thus that the gaze of each author – one looking forward and the other backward – met in the middle.

Joan Tasker Grimbert

Catholic University of America