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terms, or certain numbers, animals or gems. But these symbols are handled delicately and naturally, with no continuous system. Chrétien was not writing a sustained allegory, such as the
Romance of the Rose
or the
Divine Comedy
. Contrary to pure allegory, his symbolic mode is discontinuous and polyvalent: it does not function in a single predictable manner in each instance, and one interpretation does not necessarily preclude another. Rosemond Tuve (1966) says, writing of such works: ‘Though a horse may betoken undisciplined impulses in one context, a knight parted from a horse in the next episode may just be a knight parted from a horse’. The symbol may change meaning freely and associatively, or include several meanings in a single occurrence, or even disappear altogether. Where allegory was an organized science in the Middle Ages, symbolism was an art in which poetic sensitivity, imagination and invention played a significant part.
    Among Chrétien’s greatest achievements must be counted his mastery of the octosyllabic rhymed couplet. Although our translations are into prose, our usual medium today for a lengthy narrative, Chrétien naturally employed the medium of his own day, which had been consecrated before him by use in the rhymed chronicles and the romances of antiquity from which, as we have seen, he drew so much of his inspiration. The relatively short octosyllabic line with its frequent rhyme could become monotonous in untalented hands, but Chrétien manipulated it with great freedom and sensitivity: he varies his rhythms; adapts his rhymes and couplets to the flow of the narrative, rather than forcing his syntax to adhere to a rigidly repeating pattern; uses repetitions and wordplay, anaphora andenjambments; combines sounds harmoniously through the interplay of complementary vowels and consonants; and he uses expressive rhetorical figures to highlight significant words. He was fond of rhyming together two words which in Old French had identical spellings but wholly different meanings, and was likewise fond of playing upon several forms of the same or homonymous words, as in the following passage from
Erec
:
    Au matinet sont esvellié
si resont tuit aparellié
de monter et de chevauchier.
Erec ot molt son cheval chier,
que d’autre chevalchier n’ot cure. [ll. 5125–29]
    [They awoke at daybreak and all prepared again to mount and ride. Erec greatly prized his mount, and would not mount another.]
    Perhaps Chrétien’s most spectacular use of vocalic harmonies, repetition and chiasmus is in the following lines from
The Knight with the Lion
, where the repetition of the
ui
and
oi
diphthongs and the high vowels
u
and
i
underscores the mental anguish of the girl caught in a storm in the forest:
    â€¦ tant que vint a la nuit oscure.
Si li enuia molt la nuiz,
et de ce dobla li enuiz
qu’il plovoit a si grant desroi
com Damedex avoit de coi,
et fu el bois molt au parfont.
Et la nuiz et li bois li font
grant enui, et plus li enuie
que la nuis ne li bois, la pluie. [ll. 4840–48]
    [… until the shadows of night fell. She was frightened by the night, but her fright was doubled because it was raining as heavily as God could make it pour and she was in the depths of the forest. The night and the forest frightened her, but she was more upset by the rain than either the night or the forest.]
    Certainly no translation can hope to capture all the subtlety and magic of Chrétien’s art. But one can hope to convey some measure of his humour, his irony and the breadth of his vision. He was one of the great artists and creators of his day, and nearly every romancer after him had to come to terms with his legacy. Some translated or frankly imitated (today we might even say plagiarized) his work; others repeated or developed motifs, themes,structures and stylistic mannerisms introduced by him; still others continued his stories in ever more vast compilations. Already in