The Roman de Thèbes and Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide are romances of an Anglo-Norman tradition, which were crafted during the second half of the 12th-century. The Roman de Thèbes, most probably created during the 1150s, is an anonymous reworking of Statius' first-century Thebaïd and relates the story of the battle between Greeks and Thebans, which breaks out because Oedipus' sons fight over their inherited lands. Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, an Arthurian romance, was created in ca. 1170 and culminates with the coronation of Erec as the new king of his lands. Both of these texts therefore deal with questions of land inheritance and were, very significantly, written during important stages in Henry II's career, as it was during this time frame that Henry II (1133-1189) gained dominance in the British Isles as well as in western continental Europe. My thesis will discuss these works separately, devoting the subsequent section to the ekphrastic accounts featured in the Roman de Thèbes. This chapter will focus on mappa mundi and Amphiareus' chariot and will discuss how these moments mirror the ambitions of Henry II during the early stages of his reign. Moreover, the penultimate section will then move on to discuss the coronation scene featured in Chrétien de Troyes' Erec et Enide, with a special emphasis on Erec's robe. This discussion will also examine how this scene mirrors the historical occurrences in of the late 1160s, during which time Henry tried to establish his authority in Brittanny. Ultimately, I will attempt to weave these moments together to provide a comprehensive reading of these ekphrastic accounts.

This thesis provides a reading of Chrétien de Troyes' Arthurian romances that reflects the cultural and intellectual context of twelfth-century Christianity. The impact of this context on Chrétien's romances is examined by identifying the influence that contemporaneous biblical expository texts, hagiography, and the material culture of the cult of saints had upon his work. Although scholars have devoted much attention to the study of Chrétien's romances, and some have examined the potential influences of various medieval Christian beliefs, practices, and symbols on his work, none have yet to produce a thorough study of these elements while focusing specifically on the female characters. Scholars have identified the influence of the cult of saints on the depiction of Guinevere in The Knight of the Cart, but have not examined this influence on the depictions of the ladies in the other four romances in detail. I look beyond Guinevere, examining all of the female protagonists in the Arthurian romances, comparing their attributes and actions to those of biblical women in contemporaneous biblical exposition and those of saints in hagiography. At the heart of this comparison is the relationship between the lady and her knight, a relationship that is described in similar terms to that between a biblical woman and God and that between saint and devotee.

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