GAUTIER D'ARRAS

died 1185 author of early French romances. He lacked the skill and profundity of his contemporary, Chrtien de Troyes, but his work, emphasizing human action and its psychological foundations, exercized an important influence on the genre known as roman d'aventure (romance of adventure). An official of Philippe d'Alsace, Count of Flanders, Gautier is named in many charters between 1160 and 1185. His romance Eracle, a mythical life of the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, was begun in 117678 for Marie de Champagne and Thibaut V of Blois but was finished, perhaps in 117981, for the young Baldwin V of Hainaut. Ille et Galeron, a Breton romance, was written for Beatrix of Vienne, the wife of Frederick I Barbarossa.