Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes, an old French poet of whose life nothing more is known than that he lived in the second half of the 12th century and was a favourite poet at the court of Mary, daughter of Louis VII. and wife in succession to the Counts of Champagne and of Flanders. He worked up the legends of the Round Table into numerous spirited and yet refined poems in octosyllabic verse, which had a wide literary influence, and were translated by the German minnesingers, Wolfram von Eschenbach, Gottfried of Strasburg, and others. The most important of these poems was Percival le Gallois, or Li Contes del Graal (containing 50,000 verses); Li Romans dou Chevalier au Lyon; Li Contes d'Erec; and Lancelot du Lac, or Le Chevalier de la Charrete. A complete collection of his works was begun by Wend. Förster (vol. i. Halle, 1884). See Paulin Paris, Les Romans de la Table-Ronde (5 vols. 1868-77).