by students of Irish and Welsh legend that one cannot fail to be
impressed by the fact that Chretien was in touch, either by oral
or literary tradition, with the populations of Britain and of
Brittany, and that we have here his most immediate inspiration.
Professor Foerster, stoutly opposing the so-called Anglo-Norman
theory which supposes the existence of lost Anglo-Norman romances
in French as the sources of Chretien de Troyes, is, nevertheless,
well within the truth when he insists upon what is, so far as we
are concerned, the essential originality of the French poet. The
general reader will to-day care as little as did the reader of
the twelfth century how the poet came upon the motives and
episodes of his stories, whether he borrowed them or invented
them himself. Any poet should be judged not as a "finder" but as
a "user" of the common stock of ideas. The study of sources of
mediaeval poetry, which is being so doggedly carried on by
scholars, may well throw light upon the main currents of literary
tradition, but it casts no reflection, favourable or otherwise,
upon the personal art of the poet in handling his stuff. On that
count he may plead his own cause before the jury.

Chretien's originality, then, consists in his portrayal of the
social ideal of the French aristocracy in the twelfth century.
So far as we know he was the first to create in the vulgar
tongues a vast court, where men and women lived in conformity
with the rules of courtesy, where the truth was told, where
generosity was open-handed, where the weak and the innocent were
protected by men who dedicated themselves to the cult of honour
and to the quest of a spotless reputation. Honour and love
combined to engage the attention of this society; these were its
religion in a far more real sense than was that of the Church.