Arthurian Romances
Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Little is known of his life, but he seems to have been from Troyes, or at least intimately connected with it, and between 1160 and 1172 he served at the court of his patroness Marie of France, Countess of Champagne, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine, perhaps as herald-at-arms (as Gaston Paris speculated).[1] His work on Arthurian subjects represents some of the best regarded of medieval literature. Chrétien de Troyes is generally considered as the first identified major French Language novelist.