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Thomas Chestre was the author of a 14th-century Middle English romance Sir Launfal, a verse romance of 1045 lines based ultimately on Marie de France's Breton lay Lanval. He was possibly also the author of the 2200-line Libeaus Desconus, a story of Sir Gawain's son Gingalain based upon similar traditions to those that inspired Renaut de Beaujeu's late-12th-century or early-13th-century Old French romance Le Bel Inconnu, and also possibly of a Middle English retelling of the mid-13th-century Old French romance Octavian.Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1969. Lybeaus Desconus. Oxford University Press for the Early English Text Society. Geoffrey Chaucer parodied Libeaus Desconus, among other Middle English romances, in his Canterbury Tales of Sir Thopas.Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1972. Six Middle English Romances. Everyman's Library, p xxvi.eChaucer – texts: http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/texts/ct/18thop07.txt line Thop 900.
In both Sir Launfal and Libeaus Desconus, story elements from more than one romance have been stitched together to make the tale as a whole,Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1969, p 50. and some allusions to his sources are very condensed.”Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1969, p 55. Like many Middle English poets working with older material, he shows a preference to reduce moral ambiguity and to avoid any great agonising over love.Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1969, p 63.
Octavian is a tale of a young prince who is taken as a baby by an animal and reared as the son of a merchant, before displaying his noble qualities, fighting with a giant, winning great martial acclaim and finally being reunited with his real family again. It has many of the traits of folk-tale or Breton lai.Brewer, Derek. 1983. History of Literature Series: English Gothic Literature.Schocken Books, New York, pp 81–82. Following this in the manuscript, Sir Launfal is an Arthurian tale in which King Arthur's steward is reduced to dire poverty, meets with an Otherworld Fairy in a woodland whom he falls in love with and is magically restored to great wealth again. It is based ultimately upon one of the 12th-century recorded by Marie de France, the lay Lanval, via a Middle English romance Sir Landevale, an Old French lay of Graelent and a lost romance that might have included a giant named Sir Valentyne. Following this, Libeaus Desconus is another Arthurian tale., in which a young man who does not know his own name journeys from King Arthur's court to a city in which a lady is kept prisoner. She is finally rescued by him with a kiss, upon which she changes from a snake into a beautiful maiden. On the way to her city, the hero has already encountered another lady of enchantments, an elf-queen, and defeated a giant who was guarding her. The ultimate sources for this tale might be a lost 12th-century Old French romance upon which Le Bel Inconnu was based, and Chrétien de Troyes' Erec and Enide.Schofield, William Henry. 1895.Mills, Maldwyn (Ed). 1969.
Geoffrey Chaucer's parody of tail-line romance in his Canterbury Tales of Sir Thopas, has the hero Sir Thopas begin a fight with a giant in order to try to reach an elf-queen with whom he wishes to fall in love. It mentions Libeaus Desconus in its list of excellent romances, or “romances of prys”.eChaucer – texts: http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/chaucer/texts/ct/18thop07.txt lines Thop 897–900. Perhaps in riposte, Thomas Chestre names in Sir Launfal an invisible squire, a gift to the hero from his elf-queen and in her own words: "Gyfre, my owen knave."Laskaya, Anne and Salisbury, Eve (Eds). 1995. Sir Launfal. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/launffrm.htm line 327.
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