Guiot de Provins

Who is Guiot de Provins?

Guiot de Provins was a French poet and trouvère from the town of Provins in the Champagne area. A declining number of scholars identify him with Kyot the Provençal, the alleged writer of the source material used by Wolfram von Eschenbach for his romance Parzival, but most others consider such a source to be a literary device made up by Wolfram. At any rate, Guiot was a popular writer in his day.

As a trouvère, Guiot probably wrote dozens of songs, though only six survive, all from around 1180. He traveled widely, visiting Germany, Greece, Constantinople, and Jerusalem, and may have participated in the Third and perhaps Fourth Crusades. Guiot eventually joined a cloister as a Cluniac monk. He wrote two satirical works concerning morality, the more famous of which is La Bible Guiot, which includes an early reference to the magnetic compass.

As to Guiot's connection with Kyot the Provençal, most scholars believe Wolfram was not being truthful in his account of a source for Parzival outside of Chrétien de Troyes's Perceval, the Story of the Grail. If this is so, then even had Wolfram intended for his character to be identified with the historical Guiot de Provins, he was attaching to him fictitious information. Conflated with Wolfram's Kyot, the poet appears as a companion of the title character in Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino, where he argues over the nature of the Holy Grail with Robert de Boron.