I don’t know quite how I came to the conclusion, but I believe I finally “get” the main thematic device that Chrétien is using in Erec and Enide. The text itself is ostensibly shallow; a knight’s tale of winning the heart of a beautiful maiden, love lost, and a happy ending with banal imagery throughout matching the apparent simplistic plot. Luckily, Chrétien lends a hand to the unobservant or unimaginative reader in the first sentences of his story, the peasant’s proverb. In it, Chrétien tells us we must look past our first estimation of the story and peer deeper if we’re to find any appreciable meaning. So we do, and we see that he is actually writing sardonically about the social construct of masculine honor and authority. The stylistically dull narrative circularly mocks the intellectually devoid culture of kings and knights and tournaments; men scurrying over each other in a rat race of empty accomplishments and little humanistic progress. See how Erec’s character changes not one instance throughout the story, there is no moral lesson attached to his journey. Enide, likewise, does not progress as a character, but is merely sad and then happy again. What has she learned, not to speak? The story begins as it ends, a joyous celebration of a morally/culturally/intellectually empty ceremony.
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