Chrétien,--de Troyes,--active 12th century--Criticism and interpretation

Well anchored in the romance tradition, the binary nature of the medieval text seems to lend itself to a bipartite structure. Chretien de Troyes is a master of duality. The reader has no sooner established a premise than suddenly Chretien implies its opposite. Likewise, Renaut de Beaujeu gives to his text a perpetually changing dual perspective. In both texts the hero's quest is embodied in two female characters who appear to be each other's counterpart. Like all the other characters, they participate in the overall pattern or play of opposites in the two romances. Like the structure of the text, they can be seen as their own mirrored reflections. In these two works, the duality that characterizes the medieval text leads not only to bipartition but to the reversibility of characters and narrative plot.