Chrétien's Equal: Raoul de Houdenc

By his contemporaries, Raoul de Houdenc was 'mentioned in the same breath as Chrétien de Troyes as one of the masters of French poetry' (Keith Busby, The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia ). The writers of later romances deemed Raoul's work worthy of memory on a par with the Prose Lancelot , and placed Raoul and Chrétien on the same level in terms of authority. Raoul de Houdenc was a major and innovative figure in 13th-century French literature. His surviving works are unusually diverse: they include