Erec and Enide (French: Érec et Énide) is the first of Chrétien de Troyes' five romance poems, completed around 1170. It is one of three completed works by the author. Consisting of about 7000 lines of Old French, the poem is the earliest known Arthurian romance in any language, though the Welsh Culhwch and Olwen likely predates its surviving manuscripts.
Contents |
Chrétien de Troyes played a primary role in the formation of Arthurian romance and is influential up until the latest romances. Erec et Enide features many of the common elements of Arthurian romance, such as Arthurian characters, the knightly quest, and women or love as a catalyst to action. While it is not the first story to use conventions of the Arthurian characters and setting, Chrétien de Troyes is credited with the invention of the Arthurian romance genre by establishing expectation with his contemporary audience based on its prior knowledge of the subjects.
Popular in its own day, the poem was translated into several other languages, notably German in Hartmann von Aue's Erec and Welsh in Geraint and Enid, one of the Three Welsh Romances included in the Mabinogion. Many authors explicitly acknowledge their debt to Chrétien, while others, such as the author of Hunbaut, betray their influence by suspiciously emphatic assurance that they are not plagiarizing.
Erec and Enide has come down to the present day in seven manuscripts and various fragments. The poem comprises 6,878 octosyllables in rhymed couplets. A prose version was made in the 15th century. The first modern edition dates from 1856 by Immanuel Bekker, followed by an edition in 1890 by Wendelin Foerster.
Erec and Enide displays the themes of love and chivalry that Chrétien continues in his later work. Tests play an important part in character development and marital fidelity. Erec's testing of Enide is not condemned in the fictive context of the story, especially when his behaviour is contrasted with some of the more despicable characters, such as Oringle of Limors.[1] Nevertheless Enide's faithful disobedience of his command to silence saves his life.
Approximately the first quarter of the work recounts the tale of Erec son of Lac and his marriage to Enide, an impoverished noble girl of Lalut. An unarmored Erec is keeping Guinevere company while other knights participate in a stag hunt near Cardigan when a strange knight and his dwarf approach the queen and treat her servant roughly. At the Queen's orders, Erec follows the knight, Yder, to a far off town where he meets and falls in love with Enide. Erec defeats Yder, returns to Arthur's court and marries his love.
The central half of the poem begins some time later when rumors spread that Erec has come to neglect his knightly duties. He overhears Enide crying over this and orders her to prepare for a journey to parts unknown. He commands her to be silent throughout, but she disobeys several times to warn him of danger. Erec defeats a string of knights and captures a string of horses, overcomes two counts who in turn attempt to kill him and have Enide, and, after defeating him in a joust, makes a friend of Guivret, an Irish lord with family connections to Pembroke and Scotland.
The last quarter of the poem adds another episode, in which Erec and Enide set free prisoners and meet relations, before in time they are crowned King and Queen of Nantes in a lavishly-described ceremony.[2]
Wittig has compared aspects of the story to that of Dido, Queen of Carthage and Aeneas in Virgil's Aeneid. Enide does not lose her lover or commit suicide but many connections can be shown between Erec’s gradual maturing process throughout the story and Aeneas’s similar progress.[3]
|
|||||