Le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes, une « œuvre ouverte » ?

Abstract

In Chrétien de Troyes' Conte du Graal, a great power is given to the narrator, who often shows it or even uses it in order to make predictions and to pass his own uncompromising jugdement. However, this obtrusive narrator may fail, for different reasons : either he contradicts himself, or events or characters show that he was wrong, or other characters take the story in charge and make it more precise or more complete. But even these casual narrators may be wrong, so that Chrétien de Troyes seems to have made a point of the following idea : to tell the truth, a global and permanent truth, is quite impossible. Facing up this tough and fundamental question, most of the novelists who wanted to continue Chrétien's Conte during the 13th century completely put aside the authors considerations on truth's relativity : their narrators became absolutely omniscient and got helped by hermits or wizards who could give a single precise and steady sense to every sign. Such conclusions either failed to recognise or rejected the original issue contained in the Conte du Graal. In this novel, the ambiguous position of the narrator and also the choice of a « novel » knight like Perceval herald from the beginning the major importance of mystery, the need to seek the truth (which is subtle and always changing), and actually suggest that the Conte must remain unfinished. To compare Perceval's episodes to Gauvain's episodes reinforces this idea. Better than the famous knight Gauvain, the changing young Perceval allows Chrétien de Troyes to express his original conception of the « voir dire », which does not suffer any certainty. However, the narrative peculiarities of Perceval's episodes may be found in a few Gauvain's episodes too. Thus, none of those heroes seems to be destined to end his own quest, and none of them will end the narrator's quest either.