‘Que nus contes de ce n’amende’: Chrétien de Troyes and the assertion of copyright

In recent years, there has been a rise of interest in the notion of medieval publishing, a concept aimed at exploring medieval textual culture through the processes used to prepare it for formal ‘release’ or, put more simply, for transmission.^[1] Such modes of enquiry are aimed less at understanding the simple physical production of books or the original creative composition of texts by authors, matters which have been studied at length for decades, and more at the ways in which texts themselves were carefully and specifically prepared, usually on the page as that is the best evidence available to us today, to be accessed by audiences. Scholars of vernacular literature have tended to focus their enquiries on the commercial milieux in which their texts were copied, and which mostly operated without the presence and/or interference of authors. Resulting studies tend to consider matters such as mise-en-page, pointed exercises in ‘branding’ as evidenced by scribal rewriting and editing, and the development of the urban scriptorium and its personnel up to the advent of print.^[2] This approach positions the publishing trade as operating on a kind of continuum, in which improvements in technology responded to existing consumer demand and merely punctuated a movement already in train, rather than seeing technology itself as the catalyst for establishing a publishing trade; in essence, this methodology advocates that the dog actually wagged the tail, rather than vice versa.

Though not in disagreement with this principle, scholars of the Latin historiographical tradition, by contrast, more typically direct their efforts at what they term ‘authorial publishing’, a notion that encompasses the preparation of texts in manuscripts by the authors themselves, usually in monastic settings where authors inscribed their own compositions for the benefit of their (internal and/or external) community.^[3] As a result, studies in authorial publishing, by their very nature, rely heavily upon the existence of autograph copies of texts, or at least of relatively uncorrupted copies of author-supervised exemplars. Those working on vernacular literary texts, and particularly Arthurian ones, rarely find it possible to entertain such an approach, since autographs are in the shortest possible supply and most extant manuscripts were produced at least a generation after a text’s composition. Scholars hoping to access authorial agency in medieval publishing matters thus have to rely on authors’ comments in the main text, sometimes relayed through the narrator, always hoping on the one hand that the hazards of transmission have not distorted whatever it was the author originally wrote, and on the other that any such statement is not a literary device and can be taken at face value.

Our article necessitates taking such a leap of faith, as it proposes to explore a curious statement made by the twelfth-century poet Chrétien de Troyes in his famously unfinished Conte du Graal (c. 1181–90) and its possible relationship to the notion of pre-print publishing, specifically the protection of a work from alteration. The statement in question runs as follows, with the most important lines emphasised with italics:

‘[…] Ces armes, qui les te bailla?

• Li rois, fait il, le mes dona.

• Dona? Coment?’ Et il li conte,

Si comme oï avez el conte.

Qui autre fois le conteroit,

Anuis et oiseuse seroit,

Que nus contes de ce n’amende. (ll. 1377–83)^[4]

[‘These arms – who gave them to you?’ ‘The king gave them to me’, he said. ‘Gave them? How?’ And he told him the story, just as you’ve already heard it. Whoever would tell it again would be tiresome and boring, because no tale improves on the retelling.]^[5]

At first glance, this might seem little more than a standard literary device or formula aimed either at avoiding internal repetition, or at introducing auctoritas, in the vein of the frequent claims found in medieval texts of an often fictitious ‘source book’. Certainly critics such as Katalin Halász have counted it amongst a plethora of examples of tools for ‘conter brièvement’ with little further comment.^[6] However, we shall argue that Chrétien’s especially nuanced expression of what we will show to be a known formula, particularly when combined with his explicitly-stated preoccupation with retelling found in both the Conte du Graal and his other romances, means that we could, and should, see this statement as an attempt to assert something akin to copyright.

As the first three lines hint, the statement comes in a passage where the main character, Perceval – the would-be Grail knight – meets a new mentor, Gornemant. Perceval, a naïve, sheltered character, is still in the earliest stages of his knightly education: Gornemant will train him in combat and chivalry. Perceval is, though, already wearing armour and Gornemant asks where he got it from. The audience has already heard the story (at ll. 96–306), where Perceval, having seen knights wearing what he thought were attractive, shiny ‘clothes’, asked them where he could get such things, evidently having no understanding of their significance. The knights told him that they acquired them from King Arthur. Perceval sets off for Arthur’s court, where (at ll. 900–1196) he demands his own set of pretty ‘clothes’. He is laughed out of court for his naivety, but told that if he can kill the Red Knight who took Arthur’s cup, he can have that knight’s armour. Perceval then meets the Red Knight immediately outside and demands his armour. The Red Knight clearly underestimates the boy and refuses, at which – in a fit of petulant anger – Perceval launches a javelin and skewers the Red Knight through the eye. Perceval then attempts to remove the Red Knight’s armour as if he were skinning an animal, and it is only with the help of a squire that he is able to remove the armour and put it on.

As a result, and as noted above, Chrétien’s warning does seem at first to be about avoiding repetition within the narrative – and, indeed, the statement works perfectly as a device to prevent the audience from having to listen to Perceval retelling a story they have already heard. That it should function well in this guise is not surprising, for it makes use of at least two commonplace constructions, at least one of which is found in multiple examples of medieval literature. The first of these two constructions is ‘anuis seroit’, which Pierre Gallais notes is used by the author(s) of the First Continuation (c. 1200) of the Conte du Graal in an echo of Chrétien on twelve occasions. Gallais argues that the phrase is an example of what he calls a ‘refus de description’, used where ‘les “auteurs” nous déclarent qu’ils ne veulent pas, ne savent pas ou ne peuvent pas nous faire telle ou telle description ou relation que nous serions en droit d’attendre’ because the subject is deemed by those authors to be ‘superflue’.^[7] The author(s) of the First Continuation may thus use ‘anuis seroit’ as an echo of Chrétien, but he overlooks, or at least disregards, Chrétien’s marked manipulation of the phrase (discussed below), and it falls back into line with our usual expectations for such a formula. It is also Pierre Gallais who picks up on the second commonplace construction, though in a different article which considers a much broader textual corpus. Gallais explains that the phrase ‘avez oï’ is used frequently at moments of transition or in conclusions precisely for the purposes of avoiding repetition, and that this is something almost exclusive to romance, for he does not find it in didactic literature or hagiography.^[8] Raoul de Houdenc, for example, provides a case in point in his Vengeance Raguidel (first decade of the thirteenth century):

Lors lui reconta tot le conte

issi com je vos ai conté,

Mais ja li conte reconté

N’ierent escouté volentiers (ll. 2772–75)

[Then they told him the whole story, just as I have told you, but if I retell the tale, no one will listen willingly.]^[9]

In semantics, Raoul and Chrétien’s words do bear some similarities, so what is it that makes Chrétien’s deserving of greater scrutiny? We alluded above to the notion that Chrétien subtly adjusts the formula for his purposes, and Raoul’s version of it helpfully illustrates that assertion: Raoul is specific that the risk of boring listeners arises if he repeats himself. Chrétien’s comment, by contrast, is directed outwardly at others who might retell the tale (qui = whoever). This, we argue, is significant: Raoul’s designation of an internal person as the perpetrator of repetition represents the archetypal manner in which this formula is expressed.^[10] In this case, the internal person is the narrator, though sometimes it can be a character, and we will see a relevant case of both of these below. In the present example, though, Chrétien makes a careful yet important adjustment to the subject, extending his gaze outside of the narrative, which we contend is indicative of Chrétien commenting, albeit subtly, on the practice of retelling more generally. We are not, of course, proposing that Chrétien’s statement does not also function in its traditional guise as a tool for avoiding internal repetition; we are suggesting that the two functions are not mutually exclusive.

More concrete evidence that we should embrace the idea of reading more deeply into Chrétien’s statement in the Conte du Graal is found in the late thirteenth-century verse romance, Sone de Nansay, apparently written for Adélaïde de Bourgogne. It is a roman d’aventure that follows the eponymous Sone as he defends Christianity in territories such as Norway, Italy, and the Holy Land. Its focus on relics, including the Grail, connects it firmly with crusading culture. The text’s editor, Claude Lachet, has demonstrated the narrative’s extensive borrowing from Chrétien, as well as from other Arthurian romances such as the Perlesvaus and Robert de Boron’s Grail cycle.^[11] Sone’s borrowings, though, are not only on the level of content. Linguistically, the text makes almost verbatim references to its predecessors. For our purposes, Sone’s author echoes our lines from the Conte du Graal on two occasions.^[12] The first is when Jofroi arrives back in Norway from Scotland, where he relays the message sent by the Scots to Alain, which the listener has already heard. The text states:

C’autre fois le vous conteroit,

Anuis et wiseuse seroit,

Car contes ne puet amender

D’une cose tant recorder (ll. 4229–32)

[It would be tiresome and boring if he [Jofroi] told you this again, because stories do not improve by the whole thing being retold.]

The second occasion occurs when Sone’s answer to a request from the Pope, which has already been detailed, is under discussion; it reads:

C’autre fois le recorderoit,

Anuis et wiseuse seroit (ll. 17868–69)

[If he [Sone] retold it a further time, it would be tiresome and boring.]

Here the referencing of Chrétien’s statement is undeniable, but nonetheless, the criticism of repetition is adjusted subtly, such that the formula loses its dual purpose and returns to a state of being nothing more than a device for avoiding internal duplication. At the heart of this regression is that instead of Chrétien’s outward-facing ‘qui’ [whoever], we have specifically internal subjects (Jofroi and Sone respectively), and it is they who risk monotony if they repeat the story.

That Chrétien is making dual use of this formula, we contend, is further supported by the number of times he refers in some of his narratives, to the evils of repetition committed specifically by others, in cases where the statement is not hidden behind a device performing an additional function. One well-studied example is found in the prologue to his first romance, Erec et Enide (c. 1170):

D’Erec, le fil Lac, est li contes,

Que devant rois et devant contes

Depecier et corronpre suelent

Cil qui de conter vivre vuelent. (ll. 19–22)^[13]

[This is the tale of Erec, son of Lac, which is regularly mangled and corrupted before kings and counts by those who wish to live by storytelling.]

The target of the criticism here is explicit: it is specifically the professional storytellers who retell, or republish even, narratives in court orally, to the point where, in Chrétien’s eyes at least, the stories become distorted and unrecognisable. We neither wish to reopen the Pandora’s Box of transmission theories related to Breton storytellers,^[14] nor to speculate on unprovable theories about the exact event that prompts Chrétien’s anxiety here.^[15] What is important is to understand Chrétien’s concern as related not solely to a desire for his work to remain true to his own original creative impulse, even though that probably formed part of it. After all, just as Gallais persuasively asks through an analogy with composers of music at court who would surely have taken issue if their scores were rewritten or improvised upon, why would we think that composers of texts would have felt any differently to other creative artisans?^[16] What seems likely to be at play in addition to this desire for the faithful preservation of the narrative’s integrity is a question of audience. Chrétien, just like many medieval storytellers, wrote for patrons who enabled him to live by the pen. The two we know about in Chrétien’s case are Marie de Champagne (for Le Chevalier de la charrette) and Philippe de Flandre (for Le Conte du Graal), and Chrétien tells us in some detail in his prologues about their personal intellectual investment in, and influence on, his compositions.^[17] Of course, such odes are likely exaggerated for the purposes of flattery, but nonetheless Chrétien keenly foregrounds his and his patrons’ enterprise as specifically collaborative, though he is evidently keener on his work with Philippe than with Marie, as is discussed below.

Importantly for this discussion, these patrons will likely have been present at court when these stories were performed, even if not on every occasion. Surely, therefore, authors like Chrétien might have felt a twofold sense of embarrassment where a performance deviated from his (and therefore his patron’s) original, collaborative design. Such a feeling could even have tipped over into a fear that the patron would believe that Chrétien, rather than the performer, was to blame for the creation of a less-than-perfect story, thus showing the patron in an equally bad light. It also cannot be insignificant that this example of Chrétien’s preoccupation with the retelling of tales comes in the very first romance we know him to have written, suggesting that he was already firmly established on the storytelling scene before he came to write down (or have written down) his narratives. As a jobbing writer, possibly working without a patron in his early days (Erec et Enide makes no mention of a particular individual), one can fancifully imagine Chrétien attempting, and often failing, to exert his influence over wilful performers who did not yet see themselves as working under a master.^[18]

That Chrétien’s anxiety towards retelling continued beyond this first work can be found in varying degrees in his subsequent romances. His last, the Conte du Graal, is already under consideration here, and we return to it again below. After Erec et Enide came Cligès (c. 1176), another work without mention of a patron, but in which Chrétien makes a particularly strong appeal in his prologue, first, to his credentials and authority as an author through an enumeration of the tales for which he is already known (some of which are without witness today):

Cil qui fist D’Erec et d’Enide

Et Les comandemanz d’Ovide

Et L’art d’amors an romans mist

Et Le mors de l’espaule fist,

Del roi Marc et d’Ysalt la blonde

Et De la hupe et de l’aronde

Et Del rossignol la muance,

Un novel conte recomance (ll. 1–8)^[19]

[He who wrote Erec et Enide, who put Ovid’s Commandments and the Art of Love into French, who created The Shoulder Bite and wrote about King Mark and Iseut the Blonde, as well as of the hoopoe and the swallow, and the transformation of the nightingale, starts a new tale.]

Second, Chrétien emphasises the authority of the origins of the narrative that he will rework:

Ceste estoire trovons escrite,

Que conter vos vuel et retraire,

En un des livres de l’aumaire

Mon seignor saint Pere a Biauvez.

De la fu li contes estrez

Don cest romans fist Chrestïens.

Li livres est molt ancïens

Qui tesmoingne l’estoire a voire;

Por ce fet ele mialz a croire. (ll. 18–26)

[We find this story, which I wish to relate to you, written in one of the books in the book cupboard of St Peter’s in Beauvais. That is whence the story came from which Chrétien created this romance. The book is very old, which provides testimony of its truth, which makes it more believable.]

There is no trace here of the very explicit warning against future retelling that we saw in Erec et Enide, but Chrétien is nonetheless clear in his statement that his tale can be counted on as accurate and truthful thanks to the pedigree of both its author and the narrative itself, which together make it beyond reproach. Chrétien’s preoccupation with the integrity of tales upon their retelling thus finds an alternative mode of expression here, one which does not go so far as to advise against retelling, but which leaves the reader in no doubt that this version of the story should be taken as authoritative, and the final word.

Chrétien reverts to more explicit expression of his concerns in Le Chevalier au lion, or Yvain, which seems to have been written at roughly the same time as Le Chevalier de la charrette, or Lancelot (both c. 1177–81), possibly with Chrétien swapping back and forth between them. In Yvain, Chrétien names no patron, though Lancelot is clear in its indebtedness to the patronage of Marie de Champagne. Since Chrétien seems likely to have written them side-by-side, it is probable that both were composed in some way under the patronage of Marie, but that Lancelot may have a been a special, personal commission. Much has been made of Marie’s patronage of Chrétien’s Lancelot, with some suggesting that Chrétien felt uncomfortable with the subject matter.^[20] Often cited as evidence of this are the text’s opening lines, in which Chrétien appears to distance himself from the creative impulse driving the narrative’s composition:

Del Chevalier de la charrete

Comance Crestiiens son livre;

Matiere et san l’an done et livre

La contesse, et il s’antremet

De panser si que rien n’i met

Fors sa painne et s’antancion; (ll. 24–29)^[21]

[Chrétien begins his book of the Knight of the Cart. Both its material and its treatment are given to him by the countess, and he merely attempts to relay these without adding anything other than his effort and his attention.]

In addition, the text’s closing lines reveal that Chrétien did not complete the narrative, but rather that one Godefroi de Leigni, under Chrétien’s supervision, undertook to finish it:

Ci faut li romanz an travers.

Godefroiz de Leigni, li clers,

A parfinee la charrete;

Mes nus hon blasme ne l’an mete

Se sor Crestiien a ovré,

Car ç’a il fet par le buen gre

Crestiien qui le comança: (ll. 7124–29)

[The romance stops here without resolution. Godefroi de Leigni, the clerk, has completed the Story of the Cart, but no man should blame him for having continued Chrétien’s work because it was done with the approval of Chrétien who started it.]

Continuation is, of course, a form of rewriting/retelling,^[22] though one that usually frames itself as especially faithful to an original (even where, in some cases, that is demonstrably not the case); Godefroi’s appearance is thus pertinent to our discussion here. There is some debate as to whether Godefroi was a real continuator or just a literary device used by Chrétien to put space between himself and the narrative.^[23] In some senses, it does not matter. If Godefroi was real, his resumption (and by his own admission, not entire completion) of a narrative written for a designated patron of considerable status is no less awkward than if Chrétien had invented Godefroi as a means to cover up his lack of investment in the work. For our purpose, most significant here is the self-conscious line that Godefroi should not be scorned for his act of continuation. If on the one hand this is Godefroi (i. e. a real continuator) speaking, then it seems he is aware of Chrétien’s aversion to the recasting of his tales, so viscerally stated in Erec et Enide and therefore also known to audiences, and thus wants to be absolutely clear that on this occasion, the continuation is authorised by the man himself. If, on the other hand, it is Chrétien who is speaking through the persona of Godefroi, then the effect is not entirely different: having already stated his distaste for retelling so publicly, if he is to step away from the narrative for his own personal reasons at the same time as give the impression of another author completing his work, presumably to satisfy the patron, then he has to set that continuator up as operating under his instructions. To do otherwise would suggest to audiences who know Chrétien’s other works that the story could have become mangled in the act of its continuation.

The Lancelot’s sister text, Yvain, provides a case in point in terms of underlining that there was likely to have been a public awareness of Chrétien’s difficult relationship with the retelling of his tales. The statement on this occasion is just as clear, though the target of his criticism is vaguer, than that seen in Erec et Enide:

Del Chevalier au lion fine

Crestiiens son romanz einsi;

Qu’onques plus conter n’an oï,

Ne ja plus n’an orroiz conter,

S’an n’i viaut mançonge ajoster. (ll. 6814–18)^[24]

[Chrétien thus finishes his romance of the Knight of the Lion; I have heard nothing more told about him, and neither will you unless someone chooses to add lies.]

The second ‘an’ here appears to refer not specifically to jongleurs, but rather to anyone who retells the tale, or who adds to it: whoever they are, they will be telling untruths. As a result, we could justifiably read this barb as meant just as much for copyists as for storytellers at court, or even for other authors rewriting the story, such as the Continuators. No wonder, perhaps, that Godefroi was ill at ease with his continuation of the Lancelot (or at least that Chrétien was meticulous in his presentation of it as an act of continuation), for according to Chrétien’s own words, ‘adding’ to an existing narrative, which must surely encompass acts of continuation, is equivalent to fabrication.^[25]

In a sense, in an age where rewriting was the modus operandi, practically a requirement, it is actually remarkable – paradoxical even – for an author to warn against forms of the practice. This is especially so when that author seems to have wholeheartedly ascribed to it. Of course, it is important to distinguish between the integrity of the stories and that of the text – in Érec et Énide, it is clear that Chrétien’s main concern is with the first, but it is also evident that such matters of authorial codification and textual transmission are entwined on occasion, and certainly blur in Chrétien’s expressions of the issue, as is shown by the much vaguer target of his criticism in Yvain. Chrétien, after all, is not at all modest about the quality of his art, describing the value he adds as a storyteller to be bound up with his craft of ‘bele conjointure’.^[26] This is a term that is difficult to translate (possibly because Chrétien may himself have coined it),^[27] but which appears roughly to mean that he takes existing material and skilfully renews and rewrites it, bringing contrasting elements together and giving the narrative a new, aesthetically pleasing structure, such that the result is better than its Ur-Text progenitor. Scholarly attention to the mechanics and poetics of Chrétien’s bele conjointure is almost without end,^[28] but far more fleeting has been any close consideration of the question as to why Chrétien displays a fierce attachment to it as a core part of his own craft at the same time as a robust aversion to the use of it by others. The short, and possibly the only, answer is that Chrétien seems to believe that the art of retelling is all well and good, but only if he is the one doing it.

Both authors of this article have turned to Chrétien’s cautions against retelling on more than one occasion, though only in passing. Leah Tether, for example, has described them as ‘warning remanieurs against the recasting of Chrétien’s material’,^[29] while Keith Busby has argued that Chrétien’s various statements are meant as admonitions:

Pour Chrétien, la transmission d’une histoire peut occasionner une trahison au niveau de l’auteur et du conteur, tandis que celle de ses propres textes reste exposée aux caprices et aux idiosyncrasies de jongleurs incompétents et de générations de copistes.^[30]

Here our proposal, as stated in our introduction, is to nuance such readings further: Chrétien’s words – particularly those in his prologue to Erec et Enide – can hardly be denied as indicating a considerable preoccupation with those who retell his stories, suggesting perhaps he had endured bad experiences just as – centuries later – it appears Chaucer did when he famously suffered his scribe Adam Pinkhurst’s unwanted, egregious emendations to his works.^[31] But Chrétien’s issue appears not to be just with ‘incompetents’, but rather with anyone who would retell the story, precisely as he intimates in the closing lines of Yvain. Indeed, even though the context of Chrétien’s statement in the Conte du Graal suggests that an internal function is intended, the actual words point at an external target. Chrétien not only refers to ‘qui’ [whoever], rather than to a character or narrator within the story, but also states ‘Que nus contes de ce n’amende’ [because no tale improves on the retelling]. In other words, for Chrétien, there are no exceptions: the retelling of any kind of his story risks a poor outcome, no matter how competent the reteller.

With these arguments in mind, we contend that Chrétien’s clear preoccupation with the importance of his authority over a narrative and his concurrent wish not to be dispossessed of that, which undergoes various changes of expression from the explicit declaration of an aversion to the abuses of retelling (in Erec et Enide and Lancelot) to more general appeals to authority (in Cligés) and to the claim of a continuator to be working with Chrétien’s consent (in Yvain), finds its acme in our statement from the Conte du Graal. Chrétien’s varied allusions to this matter in the first four of his romances do range widely in their subtlety, but he is master enough of his craft for us to be sure that he is deliberate and calculated in what he says. Why, therefore, should we not assume he is once again making a similar point, this time trying yet another mode of delivery (the subtle, yet evident adjustment of a known formula for avoiding internal repetition), in his fifth and final romance? If that can be accepted, then the question remains as to what the statement is for.

We hinted at the outset of this article that we wanted to argue that Chrétien’s statement should be seen as a rare opportunity, thanks to the lack of autographs of his work, to gain insight into authorial publishing in vernacular literary culture. Specifically, we suggested that Chrétien’s warning not to retell his story should be taken as a primitive attempt at protecting his work, something that might today be seen as akin to the practice of asserting copyright. The analogy is not perfect, of course, since modern copyright is always accompanied by the threat of legal and/or financial consequences in the case of a breach, and in no way are we suggesting that Chrétien’s statement might have intended such an action to ensue if infringed. Nonetheless, the protective stance that it appears to promulgate, in which alteration, adaptation, and use without permission (all core tenets of modern copyright law) appear expressly to be discouraged, still carries with it a threat of consequences of a different kind, perhaps most crucially reputational ones.^[32] If this interpretation of Chrétien’s statement is to be accepted, then the important question to ask is whether there is any evidence that his warning was heeded by those who assisted in its transmission. The fact is that Chrétien’s tale, despite his warning, was retold multiple times, probably orally of course, and certainly by rewriters proper of his stories, like the anonymous authors of the later Arthurian prose romances, but also by scribes copying Chrétien’s narratives, whose work we can still access in the surviving manuscripts. As far as vernacular literary narratives go, indeed, Chrétien’s Arthurian romances were especially widely transmitted. On the basis of the extant manuscripts and fragments alone, of which there are at least forty-five, there is plentiful evidence of the texts’ widespread dissemination.^[33] Chrétien’s influence is also seen in many other contemporary works meaning we can be sure, for instance, that his oeuvre reached Germany and the Low Countries soon after its composition, before filtering out to England, Wales, and Scotland, as well as to the Nordic territories and the Mediterranean, all within little more than a generation.^[34] Chrétien’s work was, therefore, retold on a massive scale.

However, despite wide transmission, Chrétien’s works – and especially the Conte du Graal – are exceptional for their textual stability across the full two hundred and fifty or so years of their transmission. Busby, who edited the Conte du Graal, has remarked on this constancy, saying that it reveals ‘only the kind of details that produce variants in the form of a critical edition’.^[35] In short, ‘real’ variants that make differences to plot and meaning are in short supply, and this is true over both time and territory. Can we take from this, then, that copyists did respect at least the spirit if not the letter of Chrétien’s ‘copyright notice’?

Perhaps the strongest evidence that this may be true is provided by a set of other texts contained within many of the same manuscripts that host Chrétien’s works. Chrétien’s Conte du Graal was famously unfinished – supposedly he died before completing it^[36] – and this, perhaps ironically given our subject in this article, is likely to be the single most important factor in the proliferation of multiple rewritings of the Grail legend from the twelfth century to the current day. Chrétien never explained his Grail, so other authors tried to, including, in the immediate wake of Chrétien’s demise, a set of four so-called ‘Continuators’. These writers set about picking up Chrétien’s narrative thread, one after the other, in an attempt to push the Conte du Graal towards an ending. Tether has written at length about rewriting practices in these texts,^[37] so a single observation will suffice here. The Continuations appear in multiple sequences and, importantly, in highly varied redactions across the manuscripts. On the one hand, we should understand their presence alongside Chrétien’s Ur-Text in a majority of manuscripts as an indicator that audiences understood these texts as belonging together.^[38] On the other, however, their differentiated editorial treatment suggests they were not handled by copyists with the same reverence as Chrétien’s originating narrative. Whilst Chrétien’s Conte du Graal (and his other Arthurian romances, where present) remain textually stable in the manuscripts, within the same manuscripts the Continuations are subjected to extensive mouvance. The First Continuation alone, for example, has at least three distinct redactions, ranging quite remarkably in length from 9456 to 19606 lines.

The manuscript evidence thus certainly suggests that Chrétien’s ‘copyright notice’ might have enjoyed considerable success in protecting his works from alteration – at least in written form – though of course the question will always be whether this is less because Chrétien demanded it than because Chrétien simply was who he was. Scholars such as Busby have suggested that the mere presence of Chrétien’s name and authority might have been fear-inducing enough to prevent significant scribal intervention in the copying of his works and even to reduce the risk of overly liberal adaptation by later authors;^[39] Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann studies this at length in relation to the response to his works by ‘epigonal’ authors, arguing for a kind of ‘Chrétien-complex’.^[40] Indeed, it is perfectly plausible that a ‘lesser’ author making a similar statement might not have been taken as seriously. Ultimately, we cannot know, but even if we can accept that Chrétien’s formula does constitute a form of copyright assertion, possibly even a fairly successful one, this still raises an important and, possibly, unanswerable question: at whom was the notice actually aimed?

Surely, Chrétien cannot have wanted to prevent the transmission of his narrative entirely, so was it scribes who formed his target audience, many of whom apparently actually took note of his warnings, since it is only as a result of their work that his narratives could travel and survive beyond his own generation? Or was it storytellers, at whose negligence he explicitly takes aim in Erec et Enide? If the latter, then what did Chrétien hope they, in encountering the statement, would do with it? Recite it as part of their oral performance? Perform the story and just leave that part out? These seem unlikely options. So how should we interpret the paradox we witness here of an author who, on the one hand, was clearly conscious of the fact that the immediate publication, and thus the success and prestige, of his work depended fundamentally on oral modes of publication, but who, on the other hand, had such reservations about this oral milieu that he seems to have appealed to the integrity of those whose primary medium of communication was the written, not the spoken word? Rather than confront those whose behaviour he actually wanted to change, Chrétien seems to have sought and found, if the manuscript evidence is any indication, allies amongst those who found themselves spatially and chronologically removed from the hustle and bustle of court.