Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished from about 1160 to 1191 and is known for his writing on Arthurian subjects such as Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval and the Holy Grail. Little is known of his life, but he seems to have come from Troyes or to have been closely connected with it, and he served at the court of Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, and later at that of Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders. His five major poems in rhyming eight-syllable couplets, Erec and Enide, Cligès, Yvain, Lancelot and the unfinished Perceval, are written in vernacular Old French and are counted among the best-regarded works of medieval literature. He is credited as the first writer to mention the Holy Grail, Camelot and the love affair of Guinevere and Lancelot, and his handling of structure, especially in Yvain, has been seen as a step toward the modern novel.