Chretien De Troyes' Yvain: Grey Knights

Before we explore how Yvain is a tale of chivalrous exploits and a romance from which chivalry as an ideal and concept is separated and examined, we ought to attempt to understand the basis from which medieval knighthood and chivalry were understood. We have previously discussed how such a structure such as chivalry grew out of a feudal necessity but this ideal, through which men ought to find their own identity, needs some clarification so as to ensure a common understanding. Jeremy DuQuesnay Adams, in his essay, “Modern Views of Medieval Chivalry,” takes a panoramic view of one hundred years of scholarly research of chivalry. He gives the disclaimer of his argument as follows:

Exploring the resonance of such terms involves a good deal more than mere definition, but some precision is necessary. When educated speakers of current English mention “chivalry” in a discussion of the European Middle Ages, it is safe to assume that they are referring to one or more of three connected phenomena:

(A) the expert horsemanship of the military landed aristocracy and, by extension, its mode of making war; (B) the class which developed and was at least partly defined by that expertise and its consequences, cultural as well as political and economic; or (C) the codes of behavior developed by that class as self-definition, especially from the twelfth century onward. (43)

Cross-cultural understanding of chivalry, even that which exists in the same hemisphere, may differ. Referring to his own three-point method of defining chivalry, he continues:

Comparison with the current French usage of chevalerie provides some perspective on modern American usage. The latest Grand Dictionnaire Encyclopedique Larousse (1982) gives a definition that corresponds neatly to our three chivalries, but Chevalerie B retains a prominence that its English counterpart has lost. This emphasis was even stronger in Georges Duby's 1968 article on chevalerie in the Encyclopaedia Universalis. Although Duby grants that “a certain lifestyle and the ethic which is bound up in it do indeed constitute the essence of chivalry,” he is clearly more interested in chevalerie as a “category of feudal society.” (43)

Adams, unlike Georges Duby, may be attempting to define chivalry outside of its feudal context. Adams' focus is primarily on chivalry as a “category” of thought, much more so than as a historical concept. His response to the scholarship on chivalry centers on ideas, rather than on the physical or historical manifestations of those ideas. Chivalry to some ought to be something grander, more transcendent. Regretfully, for many critics and authors any definition of chivalry appears too elusive or too limiting.

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