Thomas Chestre

Generally conceded to be the author of Libeaus Desconus and Sir Launfal. Libeaus Desconus is a late fourteenth-century stanzaic tail-rhyme version of the Fair Unknown story. The English version includes more motifs than Renaut de Beaujeu's Le Bel Inconnu, and Chestre probably used several variant versions of Fair Unknown romances. Though not always highly regarded by modern critics, Chestre's text survives in one seventeenth- and five fifteenth-century manuscripts.

Lybeaus is announced by the narrator to be Gawain's son, Gyngalyn, but he himself remains ignorant of his identity in a solitary rural upbringing, in which his mother calls him Bewfiz. He is named Lybeaus Desconus by King Arthur when he requests knighthood and the next Arthurian adventure. Initially scorned by this adventure's maiden and dwarf messengers, Lybeaus nonetheless successfully undertakes an escalating series of prowess-testing encounters en route to rescuing the Lady of Synadoun from imprisonment. He defeats Sir William Salebraunche, William's three brothers, and two giants, sending them vanquished to Arthur's court. His messenger-damsel fails to win a beauty contest, but he defeats the winning lady's knight in combat and sends Arthur the prize gerfalcon. He also fights to retain the hound of Sir Otes de Lyle the huntsman, thus indicating competence for another chivalric pursuit.

Lybeaus further experiences the interrelations of knightly prowess and love in a long recreantise from his quest with the Ile d'Or sorceress Dame Amoure. Rebuked by his messenger-damsel, Lybeaus re-proves himself, in a long joust with the steward of Synadoun, as being worthy of hospitality, worthy of the quest, and worthy of being Gawain's kin. He then tackles the two clerks oppressing the Lady of Synadoun; after earthquakes, other deceptive appearances, and difficult combats, he prevails and with his kiss frees the Lady of Synadoun from existence as a lamia. The romance concludes with their bridal feast and Arthurian rejoicing.

Sir Launfal is a fourteenth-century lay of 1,044 lines that survives in a single manuscript. It is the work of a minstrel who identifies himself at the conclusion of the piece as Thomas Chestre. Though is primary source was an English couplet version of Sir Landeval, Chestre recounts his lay in the stanzaic form characteristic of the English tail-rhyme romances - i.e., in twelve-line stanzas rhyming aabccbddbeeb, aabaabccbddb, or aabaabccbccb.

From Sir Landeval, Chestre derived the rudiments of his narrative of the magnanimous young Sir Launfal, who leaves Arthur's court in disgrace, takes a fairy mistress during his absence from Carlisle, loses his mistress as a consequence of boasting about her to Guenevere, and is ultimately reunited with his lover and vindicated by her of the false charges leveled against him by the Queen. As all students of the poem have recognized, Chestre's indebtedness to Sir Landeval is marked: the later poet omits few of the details found in his original and in some passages takes over whole lines and fragments of lines from his primary source. Indeed, the verbal similarities between Chestre's poem and Sir Landeval are such that it would appear that Chestre was working with a version of Sir Landeval very similar to that which survives in Bodl. Libr. MS Rawlinson C 86.

To the version of the Launfal story preserved in Sir Landeval, however, Chestre added a good deal of material borrowed from other sources. From the anonymous lay of Graelent, for example, Chestre derived the motif of Guinevere's animosity toward Launfal, most of the incidents that take place at the mayor's dwelling during Launfal's exile from Arthur's court, and the account of the disappearance of Gyfre after Launfal's fateful encounter with the amoral Guinevere. According to Roger Sherman Loomis, the tournament and Sir Valentine episodes in Sir Launfal are also borrowed, in this case from a source or sources no longer extant. In short, the only parts of the poem believed to be of Chestre's own invention are the episodes concerning Launfal's relations with Sir Hugh and Sir John and with his former servant, the mayor.

Interestingly, however, it is not Chestre's lack of originality but his lack of refinement that has most frequently occasioned comment by critics of Sir Launfal. With only a few exceptions, studens of the poem have charged that the work is unsophisticated and that, given the behavior of its principal characters, its moral tone is dubious at best. Although there is an element of validity in thse charges, particularly when Sir Launfal is compared with extant romances intnded for an aristocratic audience, we ought always to bear in mind that this lay was almost certainly composed for and recited to a popular audience acquainted only through fiction with the principles of chivalric action and decorum.