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Pattern and Theme in Chrétien's ‘Yvain’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 July 2016

Edward C. Schweitzer*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge

Extract

Yvain, Chrétien's masterpiece, has been conventionally seen as a counterpoise to Erec et Enide, attempting to reconcile the conflicting claims of love and chivalry. 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 Chrétien himself the lion gave the romance its name: Le Chevalier au lion. 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. Chrétien, 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, Chrétien'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. 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 approximates the form of the story prior to Chrétien's revision. It contains all the essential elements of Chrétien'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 Chrétien's use of a progression of parallel incidents, together with the symbolic figure of the lion, to reveal gradually the meaning of the whole.

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Copyright © Fordham University Press 

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References

1 E.g. Cohen, Gustave, Un grand romancier d'amour et d'aventure au XII e siècle: Chrétien de Troyes et son œuvre (2nd ed. Paris 1948) 354–55; Pauphilet, Albert, Le legs du moyen âge: Études de littérature médiévale (Melun 1950) 163-65; Lazar, Moshe, Amour courtois et ‘Fin’ Amors' dans la littérature du XII e siècle (Bibliothèque française et romane publiée par le Centre de philologie romane de la Faculté des Lettres de Strasbourg Série C: Études littéraires 8; Paris 1964) 244-52; Frappier, Jean, Chrétien de Troyes: L'homme et l'œuvre (Paris 1968) 146, 167, and Étude sur Yvain ou le Chevalier au lion de Chrétien de Troyes (Paris 1969) 200-01, with an important qualification regarding the sterility of Gauvain's chivalry.Google Scholar

2 Le Chevalier au lion (ed. Mario Roques [C(lassiques) F(rançais du) M(oyen) A(ge) 89; Paris 1960]) 6804-05: ‘Del Chevalier au lyeon fine / Crestiens son romans ensi.’ References to this edition are made in the body of the text.Google Scholar

3 So I understand Chrétien's reference in the prologue to. Erec et Enide (ed. Roques, Mario [CFMA 80; Paris 1966] 1314) 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 Foerster, W., Christian von Troyes Sämtliche Werke III (Halle 1890) 297-98, and. Tobler, A. and Lommatzsch, E., Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch II (Berlin 1936) 696. See. Robertson, D. W. Jr., ‘Some Medieval Literary Terminology, with Special Reference to Chrétien de Troyes,’ S(tudies in) P(hilology) 48 (1951) 684-85, with comment by Roques, Mario, Romania 73 (1952) 551; Frappier, , Chrétien de Troyes 59.Google Scholar

4 The Mabinogion, trans. Jones, Gwynn and Jones, Thomas (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 contributions by Thomson, R. L., 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, Étude 281-84.Google Scholar

5 Comment. in Matt. (PL 107.942). Jerome, Similarly, Comment, in Math. (CCL 77.103-04), Bede, In Evang. Marc. exp., on Mark 4.11-12 (CCL 120.482), de Bourgdieu, Hervé, Comment. in Isaiam, on Isaiah 6.9-10 (PL 181.93), and Zacharias Chrysopolitanus, Concord, evang. 74 (PL 186.230).Google Scholar

6 Comment. in Matt. (PL 107.942).Google Scholar

7 In Owein (159) the corresponding exchange is flat though it contains, in embryo, most of the crucial details developed by Chrétien: ‘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.Google Scholar

8 De serm. Domini in monte 2.21.72 (CCL 35.169-70). More generally, Augustine repeatedly quotes or alludes to Matt. 7.7 in his Enarr. 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 (CCL 38.273, 39.1032, 1300, 40.1492, 2130-31).Google Scholar

9 Euang. 1334-35, ed. Beichner, Paul E. (U. of Notre Dame Publ. in Med. Stud. 19; Notre Dame 1965) II 478.Google Scholar

10 Such an interpretation has been presented by Luria, Maxwell S., ‘The Storm-making Spring and the Meaning of Chrétien's Yvain,’ SP 64 (1967) 576–85.Google Scholar

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 Calogrenant'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. Waszink, J. H. [Corpus Platonicum Medii Aevi; London and Leiden 1962] 272): Quantumque per uocem utilitatis capitur ex musica, totum hoc constat hominum generi propter harmoniam tributum, quia iuxta rationem harmonicam animam in superioribus aedificauerat naturalemque eius actum rhythmis modisque constare dixerat, sed haec exolescere animae ob consortium corporis necessario 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 excitat uitia non numquam, sed in illa diuina, quae numquam a ratione atque intelligentia separetur; hanc enim censet exorbitantes animas a uia recta reuocare demum ad symphoniam ueterem. Optima porro symphonia est in moribus nostris iustitia, uirtutum omnium principalis, 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.Google Scholar

12 Roques (230) glosses this word ‘vertige,’ and Godefroy, F., Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française VII (Paris 1892) 748, adds the synonyms ‘trouble,’ ‘étourdissement’ but cites only the use in Yvain, where the sense is obviously transferred from the primary acceptation, ‘whirlwind,’ as modern French ‘tourbillon.’ See the verb tourbeillier and the adjective torbeilloneus in Godefroy. Chrétien similarly uses tempeste, 2946.Google Scholar

13 11.14 (CSEL 28.346).Google Scholar

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 quinque sepienis seu septenariis 1-4 (PL 175.400-06, 405-10), though by the twelfth century the distinction between superbia and inanis gloria was no longer retained. See in general Bloomfield, M. W., The Seven Deadly Sins … (East Lansing 1952) esp. 69-104, and Wenzel, Siegfried, ‘The Seven Deadly Sins: Some Problems of Research,’ Speculum 43 (1968) 122.Google Scholar

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 Pöschl, Viktor, Die Dichtkunst Virgils: Bild und Symbol in der Äneis (2nd ed; Vienna 1964) 168205. On Vergil's influence on Chrétien, see Ziltener, Werner, Chrétien und die Aeneis: Eine Untersuchung des Einflusses von Vergil auf Chrétien 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. Marti, Berthe M. [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 attribuit, quia inferius leoni comparatur.’ Turnus was interpreted allegorically as Furor by Fulgentius, Vergiliana continentia, Opera , ed. Helm, R. (Teubner Series; Leipzig 1898) 105-06.Google Scholar

16 1977-2038; e.g. 1984, ‘Einz mes, fet ele, n'oï tel …’ Google Scholar

17 See n. 1 supra .Google Scholar

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 Greiner, Walter, ‘Owein-Yvain: Neue Beiträge zur Frage nach der Unabhängigkeit der cymrischen Mabinogion von den Romanen Chrestiens,’ Zeitschrift für celtische Philologie 12 (1918) 1184, esp. 152-159, pointed out long ago, rather disparagingly for Chrétien — the author of the Welsh romance was uninterested in the psychological processes and motivations which seem to constitute Chrétien's most substantial addition to the story.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Cf. esp. 2732-34 and 24-28.Google Scholar

20 The parallels between Yvain's marriage and final reconciliation with Laudine were first emphasized as an important stylistic device by Richter, Elise, ‘Die künstlerische Stoff-gestaltung in Chrestiens Ivain,’ Z(eitschrift für) r(omanische) Ph(ilologie) 39 (1919) 385–97, esp. 393-97.Google Scholar

21 Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 5.15 (CCL 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.’ Gregory, Similarly, Mor. in Job 4.18.33-34, 8.21.37-22.38, 10.44.67 (PL 75.654, 822-24, 896), Hom. in Ezech. 1.10.28, 1.11.45 (PL 76.897, 905); de Lille, Alain, Serm. 4, De pascha (PL 210.209); Lombard, Peter, Comment. in Ps. 101 (PL 191.910); Allegoriae 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 Vetus et Novum 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 68ra (Prov. 31.14), V 22rb (Ezek. 4.10-12), VI 99vb (Mark 6), 323v-324r (John 6). In some MSS and in Foerster's text the bread Yvain eats is identified as barley bread. Coarse bread of barley and oats is also associated with penitence in Perceval , ed. Roach, William (Textes Littéraires Français 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 noteworthy. See Pollmann, Leo, Chrétien de Troyes und der Conte del Graal, ZrPh Beihefte 110 (1965) 5-29. Pollmann concludes that the verses cited here are authentic.Google Scholar

22 Hugh of St. Victor, Exp. in Abdiam (PL 175.401), De quinque septenis 1 (PL 175.405). Gregory, Similarly, Mor. in Job 31.45.89, quoted at n. 14 supra .Google Scholar

23 Mor. in Job 12.6.9 (PL 75.990-91). Bede, Similarly, In evang. Luc. exp. 3.10.30, 4.15.22 (CCL 120.222, 291); the second passage is repeated in the Glossa ordinaria, in Biblia sacra cum glossaordinaria … (Venice 1588) V 165va; Zach. Chrys., 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. 101.s.2.3 (CCL 40.1440), Tract. in Joh. 49.24 (CCL 39.431); similarly Gregory, Mor. in Job 22.15.31 (PL 76.231-32), Hom. in evang. 26.6 (PL 76.1200-01). The interpretation does not ultimately depend upon knowledge of an exegetical tradition. According to Marianne Stauffer, Der Wald: Zur Darstellung und Deutung der Natur im Mittelalter (Studiorum romanicorum collectio turicensis 10; Bern 1959) 74, ‘ist nun Yvain jeder Kleidung entblösst, so bedeutet das, dass er gleicherweise jeder Menschlichkeit und menschlichen Würde entblösst ist.’ Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

25 Cook, Robert G., ‘The Ointment in Chrétien'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 for all 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 Chrétien'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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 The earliest studies, like Chotzen, T. M., ‘Le Lion d'Owein et ses prototypes celtiques,’ Neophilologus 18 (1902) 5158, 131-36, and Brugger, E., ‘Yvain and his Lion,’ Modern Philology 28 (1941) 267-87, were content to explain the lion by citing sources and analogues. A Christological interpretation has been offered, incidentally by Alfred Adler, ‘Sovereignty in Chrétien'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 Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain,’ PMLA 64 (1949) 1143-63, both based on Brodeur, A. G., ‘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 Chrétien 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 Chrétien'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 hunc quidam miles a serpente liberavit et a milite recedere noluit. Quid igitur excusacionis habebunt, qui deserentes 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 by Frappier, Étude 214) is the episode from La Queste del saint graal (ed. Pauphilet, A. [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 Chrétien for such a ‘very crude’ allusion.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

The Christological interpretation is based on the consistent allegorization of the lion as Christ in medieval bestiaries (a fact emphasized even by Frappier, Étude 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 Allegoriae in sacram Scripturam (PL 112.983) is representative: ‘Leo est Christus, … Deus judex, … quilibet spiritualiter fortis, … populus Judaicus … Leo, austeritas legis, … imperator Romanus, … quilibet crudelis … Leo, Antichristus in fallacia sua.’ Google Scholar

Leo Spitzer's interpretation (‘Le Lion arbitre morale de l'homme,’ Romania 64 [1938] 525–30) is invalidated by Chrétien's insistence that the lion subordinates its instincts to Yvain's will.Google Scholar

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, Étude 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 Chrétien presents it and on its subordination to Yvain.Google Scholar

27 Mor. in Job 5.46.85 (PL 75.728). Augustine, Enarr. in Ps. 13.4 (CCL 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 / vipereas carnes, vitiorum alimenta suorum; / … lingua est suffusa veneno.’ Google Scholar

28 ‘Fel’ is later applied once each to Laudine's seneschal (3662), whose envy (‘qui grant envie me portoit’ 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).Google Scholar

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 Miniconi, P.-J., Étude des thèmes ‘guerriers’ de la poésie épique gréco-romaine suivie d'un index (Publ. de la Faculté des Lettres d'Alger, 2nd series 19; Paris 1951) 200–01. See also Steele, R. R., ‘The Similes in Latin Epic Poetry,’ TAPA 49 (1918) 90-91.Google Scholar

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

31 See also 4688-89.Google Scholar

32 See also 5012-13, 5032-33, 6661-62.Google Scholar

33 588b-589b, trans. Jowett, B., The Dialogues of Plato (4th ed. Oxford 1964) II 463–64.Google Scholar

34 1.1 (CCL 75.11). Other texts read σνντήρησιν .Google Scholar

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36 Biblia sacra cum glossa IV 210va, on Ezek. 1.10.Google Scholar

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38 8.19.49.Google Scholar

39 Met. 15.85-87.Google Scholar

40 2.16.1.Google Scholar

41 De consol. philos. 4 pr. 3 (CCL 94.71).Google Scholar

42 Commentum … super sex libros Eneidos Virgilii, ed. Riedel, Wilhelm (Greifswald 1924) 22. Bernard also has ‘truculentos leones, iracundos apros’ in a longer catalogue of animals linked with various sins (62).Google Scholar

43 Ibid. 35.Google Scholar

44 Allegoriae super Ovidii Metamorphosin 14.3, ed. Ghisalberti, Fausto in an appendix to 'Arnolfo d'Orléans: Un cultore di Ovidio nel secolo xii,’ Memorie del R. Istituto Lombardo di Scienze e Lettere 24 (15 of series 3, 1932) 227. Cf. also Wolfram, , Parzival 42.13-14, ed. Lachmann, Karl, Wolfram von Eschenbach (6th ed. Berlin and Leipzig 1926): ‘Sîn zorn begunde limmen / und als ein lewe brimmen.’ Google Scholar

45 C. 195 p. 217.Google Scholar

46 C. 198 p. 219.Google Scholar

47 Calcidius 232-33, 267 pp. 246–47, 272; Apuleius 1.13; both based on Republic 439d-448e.Google Scholar

48 Mor. in Job 5.45.82-83 (PL 75.726-27).Google Scholar

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 amplificatio 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 implies is embodied in the lion rather than in the Chevalier au Lion, that is, in Yvain and his lion.Google Scholar

50 Hist. nat. 8.19.49.Google Scholar

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53 1.204-12, ed. Housman, A. E. (Oxford 1926), italics added.Google Scholar

54 From Dietrich Ulsen, Speculator consiliorum enigmaticus microcosmi protheati torrens 138-39, ed. Lawn, Brian, The Salernitan Questions: An Introduction to the History of Medieval and Renaissance Problem Literature (Oxford 1963) 164.Google Scholar

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62 Katzenellenbogen 63-67.Google Scholar

63 PL 176.1000.Google Scholar

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 explanation 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 tristitia .Google Scholar

65 150-54.Google Scholar

66 160-61.Google Scholar

67 On Ira's suicide see Katzenellenbogen 8 n. 1,83 n. 1. Mâle, Émile, Religious Art in France of the Thirteenth Century, trans. Nussey, Dora (New York 1913) fig. 54, reproduces a window of the choir apse of the Lyons cathedral (c. 1220) which represents ira as a knight committing suicide with his own sword. The image reflects the iconographical traditions of the twelfth century.Google Scholar

68 Cf. Silvestris, Bernard, Comment. super Eneid. 62, ‘iracundos apros’; Vincent of Beauvais, Spec. nat. 18.5 (1328), ‘[Aper] est autem periracundus et insipiens, nec bonorum doctrinam morum recipiens, nullaque mutatio accidit in eo etiam si castretur.’ Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

70 1000.

71 Ed. Roques, Mario (CFMA 86; Paris 1958) 3725, 3790.Google Scholar

72 2670, 6076, 6098, 8857.Google Scholar

73 Acceptance of God's will is a distinctive leitmotif of the second half of Yuain, 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 quinque septenis 3 (PL 175.407-08), ‘Tertia petitio est contra iram, qua dicitur: Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in coelo et in terra. Hac sibi placere indicat, quidquid voluntas Dei sive in se, sive in aliis secundum arbitrium suae dignationis dispensat. 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 compunctionem cordis, quae spiritu scientiae operante interius ex humilitate nascitur, ira et indignatio animi mitigatur.’ Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

75 Curtius, E. R., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. Trask, W. R. (New York 1953) 173–76.Google Scholar

76 4470-502, 5572-623; e.g. 4493-94: ‘li donent granz cos anbedui, / mes plus granz reçoivent de lui,’ and 5612-13: ‘Moet i avoit cos andurez / et randuz, tant com il plus pot.’ Google Scholar

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 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.Google Scholar

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.Google Scholar

79 4758-60; cf. 4784-85.Google Scholar

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

81 In Owein (172) Gwalchmei by chance wears a new cloak which conceals his identity.Google Scholar

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