the fabliaux, farces, and morality plays, in which courtesy
imposed no restraint. For our poet's lack of sense of
proportion, and for his carelessness in the proper motivation of
many episodes, no apology can be made. He is not always guilty;
some episodes betoken poetic mastery. But a poet acquainted, as
he was, with some first-class Latin poetry, and who had made a
business of his art, ought to have handled his material more
intelligently, even in the twelfth century. The emphasis is not
always laid with discrimination, nor is his yarn always kept free
of tangles in the spinning.

Reference has been made to Chretien's use of his sources. The
tendency of some critics has been to minimise the French poet's
originality by pointing out striking analogies in classic and
Celtic fable. Attention has been especially directed to the
defence of the fountain and the service of a fairy mistress in
"Yvain", to the captivity of Arthur's subjects in the kingdom of
Gorre, as narrated in "Lancelot", reminding one so insistently of
the treatment of the kingdom of Death from which some god or hero
finally delivers those in durance, and to the reigned death of
Fenice in "Cliges", with its many variants. These episodes are
but examples of parallels which will occur to the observant
reader. The difficult point to determine, in speaking of
conceptions so widespread in classic and mediaeval literature, is
the immediate source whence these conceptions reached Chretien.
The list of works of reference appended to this volume will
enable the student to go deeper into this much debated question,
and will permit us to dispense with an examination of the
arguments in this place. However, such convincing parallels for
many of Chretien's fairy and romantic episodes have been adduced