Thinking Through Chrétien de Troyes (review)

This volume of essays proposes a fascinating, not uncontroversial, theoretical reappraisal of the Chrétien corpus. In order to include the chronically neglected Guillaume d'Angleterre, Philomena, and the Chansons, the collection relinquishes the traditional construction of a literary-historical figure with a unique authorial style (hence the non-genitival reference to 'the Chrétien corpus'). In lieu of the traditional vision of a single-handed authorship, this long-awaited, innovative theoretical approach reconceptualizes the Chrétien corpus as a repository of modes of thinking, mirrors of political situations, and examples of the mouvance and variance of a manuscript tradition (associated with the work of redactors, copyists, scribes, and compilers). Engaging with Lacan's concept of logical time (simplified as 'thinking on the spot' or 'thinking in an emergency' (p. 3)), Chapter 1 sets the analytical framework for the whole collection while focusing on how the lyric poems distinguish themselves from the narrative thrust of the romances. This falls short of a circular argument thanks to the explanation that the Chrétien lyric poems tend to circle around a problem instead of plotting towards a solution as do the romances. Following up on the concept of a lyrical 'marching on the spot', Chapter 2 devises the working concept of the 'psychologic' to demonstrate how shame, pride, and folly thwart the linear, logical, and narrative progression of poetic imagination and creativity. One wonders nonetheless whether the psychologic does not in fact work in tandem with classic narrative progression when, put on the spot, 'the knight imagines a mission to accomplish' (p. 59). In Chapter 3 adventure poses challenges to comprehending what is happening in the romance. Against the grain of the conventional understanding of adventure, this chapter redefines it as an event that forces the knight to think on the spot, irrespective of prior knowledge or experience. Chapter 4 piggybacks on the concept of adventure, examining the romance quest for 'la plus belle' (p. 113), the knight's relationships with women, and female subjectivity. This chapter reassesses the role women played in 'shared ruler-ships' (p. 119) in the twelfth century, proposing Guenevere as the model female counsellor in the Chrétien romances. It presents Énide and the Lady of Landuc as agents of social responsibility and feudal governance and examples of women thinking on the spot. In Chapter 5, in an analysis of remembering and forgetting, which labours on Perceval's mnemonic shortcomings, the modus operandi of the Chrétien oeuvre is evinced through its failure to reach a conclusion. The inability of some of the Chrétien works to articulate a definitive meaning or ending has given way to glosses, exempla, continuations, adaptations, imitations, compilations, and instances of mise en prose. The planks of this collection remain the theoretical reconceptualization and the approach taken to reappraise the Chrétien corpus in terms of modes of medieval thinking that bring into question paradigms of universal knowledge.