ABSTRACT
In his Etude sur la Mort le Roi Artu, Jean Frappier has suggested that the “… thème de Fortune—du Destin—est sans doute le thème majeur de La Mort Artu” (“… theme of Fortune—of Destiny—is undoubtedly the major theme of La Mort Artu”). 1 Elsewhere he restates this conviction when he refers to the “… cercle de fatalité qui pèse sur son [Arthur’s] royaume terrestre” (“circle of fatality that weighs heavily upon his [Arthur’s] terrestrial kingdom”). Everything, he insists, gives the impression of tragic inevitability so that at times Fortune even seems to acquire a force all its own: “… le destin est comme l’âme du roman; le thème en est traité avec assez de force et de profondeur pour que la Mort Artu… puisse faire penser par endroits aux tragiques grecs ou au drame élisabéthain” (“destiny is, as it were, the soul of the romance. The theme is treated with enough force and profundity that the Mort Artu reminds one in places of Greek tragedy or Elizabethan drama”). 2 There is no doubt about the importance of fate in the Mort Artu, but to suggest, as Frappier and others have done, that the role of this one motif is so striking that it dominates all others would seem to place too great an importance upon its function to the detriment of other important themes in the story. 3 Indeed, consideration of the work essentially as a fate-tragedy is to ignore, or at least to play down, certain essential characteristics which contribute not only to the superb psychological portraits of which the mediaeval author has proved himself a master, but also to the very structure of the romance itself.
