The Arthurian romances of Chrétien de Troyes: once and future fictions (review)

158 Reviews Maddox, Donald, The Arthurian romances of Chritien de Troyes: once and future fictions, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xii, 180; R.R.P. AUS$95.00. In his Arthurian romance, Erec et Enide, Chrdtien de Troyes compares his storytelling ability to those of his less-skilled predecessors by saying that, unlike those lesser practitioners of the art, he will create of the story familiar to his audience, une mout bele conjointure, a term generally understood to mean a coherent blend of content and theme. Donald Maddox in this book of Arthurian criticism has in his turn presented a conjointure of Chr6tien's romances based on the reiterated device in the romances of the 'custom'. The role of various types of custom in the romances has already been the subject of an article by Kohler in Romania in 1960, and Maddox is careful to pay tribute to this and to give an extended discussion of Kohler's treatment, especially in the latter section of the book. In his interpretation of the use of 'customs' in Chr6tien's romances, Maddox posits 'a textuality of crisis, according to which each poem relates two Active phases through a median crisis '(p. 16). In seeking to analyse the relationship between hero and monarch in romance, he invokes the model of the six categories of 'actants' identified by Greimas. Further, Maddox also posits 'an intertextuality of crisis' (p. 121) and his discussion returns frequently to the first section of Erec et Enide, at the end of which he sees a double bind (p. 32), which 'holds Arthur captive to two contradictory ideas of order'. These arise from the obligations posed on die one hand by hereditary monarchy and on the other by the feudal court. Arthur is thus caught between that which he considers he owes to his father and that which he owes to his baronial court. Maddox quotes in evidence one of Arthur's early speeches and, after the excellent exhaustive analysis of the passage on pages 25 to 26, concludes that 'duty and desire, devoir and vouloir coincide' (p. 29). The crucial passage occurs at line 1769 where Arthur concludes his speech about 'L'usage Pandragon, mon pere', by using the term 'voelje garder et maintenir . . . ' . This 'voeT, however, cannot be read as meaning an obligation. It is a wish, a desire of Arthur's that the customs maintained by his father should be continued. Arthur's so-called 'double bind' has less to do with conflicting obligations than with the conflict between his private wish (voel) and his feudal duty. Maddox uses the tension between two forms of obligation, expressed as custom, as the unifying device in all the romances and concludes that the observance of these various forms of custom marks the decline of the Arthurian ideal, and the beginning of a new order based on the values established by each individual hero. It is rare to take into account the form of a book, but in the case of this intensive study by Donald Maddox, some comment on the physical aspect of the Reviews 159 book is necessary. This is a slim book, largely because there are on average 630 words to a page, in a typescript small enough to cause the reader some discomfort. The author has been badly served by his publisher and the contents merit a more generous treatment. N o matter how persuasive the contents, the physical access to them must also be of concern to author, publisher, and reader. Margaret Burrell Department of French University of Canterbury Mansfield, Bruce, Interpretations of Erasmus, c. 1750-1920: Man on his own, Toronto/Buffalo/London, University of Toronto Press, 1992; cloth; pp. x, 512; 12 plates; R.R.P. CAN$75.00. This is the second volume of Professor Mansfield's study of the interpretations of Erasmus from c. 1550 to 1920. The first volume was also published by Toronto University Press as Phoenix of his Age: interpretations of Erasmus c. 1550-1750 (1979). It continues the survey of the main interpretations of Erasmus where the first volume left off. The book is divided into two main parts, namely 'Enlightenment, Romanticism, and Revolution' and...