Erec and Enide

One of the main themes explored throughout Erec and Enide is that of romantic love, a theme explored by numerous poets who were contemporaries of Chrétien. However, Erec and Enide is unique in its exploration of romantic love in the context of marriage. While many medieval romances focused on unrequited love or the illicit affair between a knight and a woman married to someone else, Erec and Enide focuses on the love between two individuals who are wed to each other. Like many marriages during the Middle Ages, Erec and Enide’s is in some respects an arranged one, with Erec promising Enide’s father that she will become a “queen of ten large towns” if he agrees to the marriage (20). Enide, in turn, is jubilant at the thought of marrying into a life of royalty and nobility: “with silent joy she was abrim / that she was granted thus to him […]. / and she herself would be renowned / and as a rich queen would be crowned” (21).

However, though Erec and Enide’s relationship might seem initially based on what they can gain through the marriage, they are soon depicted as falling deeply in love with each other.