1909). All these are extant and accessible. But since
"Guillaume d'Angleterre" and "Philomena" are not universally
attributed to Chretien, and since they have nothing to do with
the Arthurian material, it seems reasonable to limit the present
enterprise to "Erec and Enide", "Cliges", "Yvain", and
"Lancelot".

Professor Foerster, basing his remark upon the best knowledge we
possess of an obscure matter, has called "Erec and Enide" the
oldest Arthurian romance extant. It is not possible to dispute
this significant claim, but let us make it a little more
intelligible. Scholarship has shown that from the early Middle
Ages popular tradition was rife in Britain and Brittany. The
existence of these traditions common to the Brythonic peoples was
called to the attention of the literary world by William of
Malmesbury ("Gesta regum Anglorum") and Geoffrey of Monmouth
("Historia regum Britanniae") in their Latin histories about 1125
and 1137 respectively, and by the Anglo-Norman poet Wace
immediately afterward. Scholars have waged war over the theories
of transmission of the so-called Arthurian material during the
centuries which elapsed between the time of the fabled
chieftain's activity in 500 A.D. and his appearance as a great
literary personage in the twelfth century. Documents are lacking
for the dark ages of popular tradition before the Norman
Conquest, and the theorists may work their will. But Arthur and
his knights, as we see them in the earliest French romances, have
little in common with their Celtic prototypes, as we dimly catch
sight of them in Irish, Welsh, and Breton legend. Chretien
belonged to a generation of French poets who rook over a great
mass of Celtic folk-lore they imperfectly understood, and made of