ABSTRACT
Despite the veneer of orthodoxy under which Chretien de Troyes presents his first romance, Erec et Enide, to the reader, through his use of a matiere d'antiquite and certain motifs from troubadour lyric poetry, familiar to his contemporaries, the manner in which he uses them reveals an influence beyond the usual literary canons of twelfth-century French romance. Through unorthodox associations, veiled allusions, linguistic riddles, and etymological ambiguities, Chretien subverts familiar twelfth-century literary themes and tropes, progressively initiating the reader into his idiosyncratic world of exegesis. Oriental themes and motifs, developed more fully in Chretien's later romances, are already present in Erec et Enide, and it is there that he introduces many of the narrative and rhetorical devices which become his stylistic trademark in the subsequent romances.
