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Abstract
Contrary to traditional criticism of Chrétien de Troyes, the thesis posits that his romances are a veiled criticism of the social and moral conduct, as well as spiritual beliefs, of twelfth-century Christian society. In Chrétien's romances, the protagonist finds only the worst aspects of twelfth-century “chevalerie” and “clergie”, represented by King Arthur's court, which must be transcended through a spiritual quest for Divine knowledge, expressed in mystical Islamic terms. Chrétien uses veiled allusions to mystical Islam and alchemy to transform the meaning of the symbols and motifs found in the traditional religious doctrines and literary canons of his time. The narratives which constitute his romances are expressed in terms of an amorous discourse in which the female figure's central role is that of spiritual guide. Chrétien's characterization of the female protagonists in his romances reflects the kind of mystical Islamic ideas—especially Sufi and alchemical—found in the writings of certain Islamic writers having lived, or had an influence in, Andalusia. Indeed, Chrétien's repeated references to Spain throughout his romances at key moments in their plots would seem to corroborate this theory of an Andalusian origin of the Oriental themes and motifs he uses.
These Spanish Arabic influences could have conceivably found their way into his romances through two channels: (1) Arabic texts translated into Latin and circulated among the numerous Benedictine, and specifically Clunisian, monasteries and abbeys established along the pilgrimage routes to and from Spain. It is known that Cluny, in particular, played a partial role in the transmission of Arabic texts; or (2) the numerous workers' confraternities in Champagne and Flanders, which may have allowed Chrétien to gain access to the kind of mystical and alchemical doctrines reflected in his work.
Finally, my thesis re-contextualizes the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, and shows his notion of conjointure to be not only the recurrence of certain themes and motifs from one romance to the next, but a highly syncretic mode of literary composition, which takes the most important literary and religious canons of the twelfth century, and reinterprets them through the prism of a rich matière d'Orient.