Gautier d’Arras

Gautier d’Arras (died 1185) was an author of early French romances. He lacked the skill and profundity of his contemporary Chrétien de Troyes, but his work, emphasizing human action and its psychological foundations, exercised 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...