Gawain: A Casebook 0415971225, 9780415971225

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Series Editor's Preface
Introduction
Select Bibliography
1 Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy, and His Appearance in Chaucer's Squire's Tale
2 Gwalchmei m. Gwyar
3 The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes
4 Gauvain and Fin' Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes
5 Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic "Struggle for Life"? A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century
6 Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances
7 The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472
8 The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances
9 The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan
10 Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain
11 Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry: Gawan in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival
12 Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein
13 The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy
14 Middle English Arthurian Romance: The Repetition and Reputation of Gawain
15 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Poet's Treatment of the Hero and His Adventure
16 Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory
17 Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature
18 Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger's Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel
19 Sir Gawain in Films
About the Contributors
Proper Name Index

Citation preview

Gawain

Arthurian Characters and Themes NORRIS J. LACY, SERIES EDITOR

KING ARTHUR A Casebook edited by Edward Donald Kennedy TRISTAN AND ISOLD A Casebook edited by Joan Tasker Grimbert ARTHURIAN WOMEN A Casebook edited by Thelma S. Fenster LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE A Casebook edited by Lori J. Walters

THE GRAIL A Casebook edited by Dhira B. Mahoney PERCEVAL/PARZIFAL A Casebook edited by Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy MERLIN A Casebook edited by Peter H. Goodrich and Raymond H. Thompson GAWAIN A Casebook edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby

Gawain A Casebook

Edited by

Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby

New York London

Published in 2006 by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 711 Third Avenue New York, NY 10017

Published in Great Britain by Routledge Taylor & Francis Group 2 Park Square Milton Park, Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN

© 2006 by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 International Standard Book Number-10: 0-415-97122-5 (Hardcover) International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-415-97122-5 (Hardcover) Library of Congress Card Number 2005014485 No part of this book may be reprinted, reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying, microfilming, and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gawain : a casebook / edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby. p. cm. -- (Arthurian characters and themes ; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-415-97122-5 (alk. paper) 1. Gawain (Legendary character)--Romances--History and criticism. 2. Gawain (Legendary character) I. Thompson, Raymond H. (Raymond Henry), 1941- II. Busby, Keith. III. Title. IV. Series. PN686.G3G39 2005 809'.93351--dc22

2005014485

Visit the Taylor & Francis Web site at http://www.taylorandfrancis.com Taylor & Francis Group is the Academic Division of T&F Informa plc.

and the Routledge Web site at http://www.routledge-ny.com

Contents

Series Editor’s Preface

vii

Introduction

1

RAYMOND H. THOMPSON AND KEITH BUSBY

Select Bibliography

37

1 Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy, and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale

45

B. J. WHITING

2 Gwalchmei m. Gwyar

95

RACHEL BROMWICH

3 The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes

103

WILLIAM A. NITZE

4 Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes

117

DOUGLAS KELLY

5 Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century

125

FRIEDRICH WOLFZETTEL

6 Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances

139

KEITH BUSBY

7 The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472

157

LORI WALTERS

8 The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances

173

FANNI BOGDANOW

9 The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan KEITH BUSBY

v

183

vi • Contents

10 Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain

209

RAYMOND H. THOMPSON

11 Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry: Gawan in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival

217

ALBRECHT CLASSEN

12 Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein

231

BART BESAMUSCA

13 The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy

239

MARIE-JOSÉ HEIJKANT

14 Middle English Arthurian Romance: The Repetition and Reputation of Gawain

255

PHILLIP C. BOARDMAN

15 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Poet’s Treatment of the Hero and His Adventure

273

W. A. DAVENPORT

16 Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory

287

BEVERLY KENNEDY

17 Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature

297

RAYMOND H. THOMPSON

18 Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger’s Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel

319

KLAUS P. JANKOFSKY

19 Sir Gawain in Films

337

DAVID J. WILLIAMS

About the Contributors

347

Proper Name Index

349

Series Editor’s Preface Gawain is Volume VIII of the Routledge casebook series “Arthurian Characters and Themes.” The series includes volumes devoted to the best-known characters from Arthurian legend: Tristan and Isolde, Arthur, Lancelot and Guenevere, Merlin, and Perceval. One is devoted to Arthurian women in general, and a single volume treats an Arthurian theme—the Grail—rather than characters. Each volume offers an extended introductory survey and a bibliography and presents some twenty major essays on its subject. Several of the essays in each volume are newly commissioned for the series; the others are reprinted from their original sources. The previously published contributions date for the most part from the past two decades, although a few older, “classic” essays are included in several of the volumes—the criterion being the continuing importance of the study. Heaviest emphasis remains on the development of the legend and its characters and themes during the Middle Ages, but each volume gives appropriate attention also to modern, even very recent, treatments. Similarly, the central focus is on literature, but without excluding important discussions of visual, musical, and cinematic arts. Thus, a number of the volumes are intently interdisciplinary in focus. The proliferation of scholarly studies of Arthurian material continues at a daunting rate. When the Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society began publishing annual bibliographies, the first volume (1949) included 226 items (books, articles, and reviews), and some sections of that compilation represented national bibliographies over a full decade. The number of entries has increased regularly and dramatically, to the point that the most recent numbers of the Bulletin list well over one thousand items. Furthermore, the major contributions to Arthurian scholarship are often dispersed widely through North America, Europe, and elsewhere, and in books and articles that are in some instances very difficult to locate. As a result, it is extraordinarily difficult even for the professional medievalist to keep abreast of Arthurian scholarship, and it would be very nearly impossible for the non-scholar with serious Arthurian interests to identify and locate a score of the major scholarly contributions devoted to a particular character or theme. These difficulties surely dramatize the value of the Arthurian Characters and Themes series, but they also remain an insistent reminder that even the most informed selection of major essays requires us to omit

vii

viii • Series Editor’s Preface many dozens, perhaps hundreds, of studies that merit serious attention. Editors have attempted to remedy this situation insofar as possible by providing introductions that discuss numerous other authors and texts and by compiling bibliographies that document a good many important studies that could find no room in these volumes. In addition, many of the contributions that are included here will themselves provide discussions of, or references to, other treatments that will be of interest to readers. This volume, co-edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby, includes a detailed introduction examining the development and character of Gawain. The volume offers nineteen essays, in addition to the introduction and bibliography. Three of these (chapters 11, 13, and 17) are previously unpublished; the remainder are major contributions selected from journals and scholarly volumes. As a service to readers, the editors have provided English translations of quotations from other languages. Because permissions from copyright holders sometimes prohibited us from modifying the texts in any way, there are instances in which notes or documentary form will differ from essay to essay. In addition, style, usage, and even spelling (British vs. American) may vary as well. In a few instances, the editors have been permitted to modify the form in which the essay appears, and in those cases modifications have often gone well beyond the correction of minor and obvious errors. Offsetting the remaining inconsistencies is the advantage of having available, in a single volume, a substantial selection of the finest available studies, new as well as previously published, of the figure of Gawain. Such a volume could not be produced without the generosity of museum officials and editors of presses and journals who kindly gave permission for us to reproduce illustrations and articles. We are pleased to express our gratitude to all of them. Appropriate credits accompany the essays. —Norris J. Lacy

Introduction RAYMOND H. THOMPSON AND KEITH BUSBY

More than that of any other knight of the Round Table, the reputation of Gawain, King Arthur’s favorite nephew, has fluctuated through the extremes of heroism and villainy. The earliest accounts in the chronicles portray him as a mighty warrior who serves his uncle valiantly in battle. When he first appears in French romance during the twelfth century, most notably the poems of Chrétien de Troyes, Gawain is distinguished by his courtesy and sens (discretion) as well as valor, but his reputation suffers from two developments. In the verse romances, he becomes the object of generally affectionate humor and irony as the poets take advantage of his idealism to place him in embarrassing situations. Much more damaging, however, is his decline in the prose romances, where his shortcomings (particularly vengefulness) are contrasted, with increasing severity, to the virtues of newer heroes like Lancelot and Tristan, Galahad and Perceval. He reaches his nadir in the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal and the Prose Tristan. As the Arthurian legend spread throughout Europe, French romance provided models for fresh creative endeavor. Where verse was most influential, as in Dutch and German, Gawain remains an admirable figure; but where the prose romances proved more popular, as in Spanish and Portuguese, his reputation suffers (though Italian seems to be an exception). In English, he is treated favorably for the most part, and he is the attractive (if imperfect) hero of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, one of the greatest works of Arthurian literature. Unfortunately for Gawain, Sir Thomas Malory chose the prose romances as the basis of his Morte Darthur, which was to prove the most influential version of Arthurian legend for later English authors, including Alfred Lord Tennyson and T. H. White. Greater awareness of other sources has, however, yielded more positive portrayals. Thus in an Author’s Note, Gerald Morris observes, “Gawain was still around in the French stories, but he was portrayed as a rude and blustering fellow with few morals and even fewer manners. This is all nonsense, of course. To those of us who have met the courageous, courteous,

1

2 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby and humble hero of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain will always be the perfect knight.”1 This is a tribute to the power, not only of a great work of literature, but of the virtues that have, through the ages, attached themselves to this hero. They provide a welcome balance to the ignominy heaped upon him in the prose tradition. Chronicle The chronicles are impressive for fidelity to their ultimate source, the Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain, 1136) by Geoffrey of Monmouth, which was widely accepted as factual despite some reservations. Since details added by later chroniclers are few and unimportant, Geoffrey’s outline of Gawain’s career remains unchanged, although the attitude towards these events may vary.2 The first mention of Gawain in the chronicles does, however, predate Geoffrey. In his Gesta Regum Anglorum (Deeds of the Kings of the English, ca. 1125), William of Malmesbury describes the discovery of Gawain’s tomb: Tunc in provincia Walarum, quae Ros vocatur, inventum est sepulchrum Walwen, qui fuit haud degener Arturis ex sorore nepos. Regnavit in ea parte Britanniae quae adhuc Walweitha vocatur: miles virtute nominatissimus, sed a fratre et nepote Hengestii, de quibus in primo libro dixi, regno expulsus, prius multo eorum detrimento exilium compensans suum; communicans merito laudi avunculi, quod ruentes patriae casum in plures annos distulerint. Sed Arturis sepulchrum nusquam visitur, unde antiquitatis naeniarum adhuc eum venturum fabulatur. Ceterum, alterius bustum, ut praemisi, tempore Willelmi regis repertum est supra oram maris, quatuordecim pedes longum; ubi a quibusdam asseritur ab hostibus vulneratus, et naufragio eiectus; a quibusdam dicitur a civibus in publico epulo interfectus. Veritatis ergo notitia labat in dubio, licet neuter eorum defuerit famae suae patrocinio. At this time was found in the province of Wales called R(h)os the tomb of Walwen, who was the not degenerate nephew of Arthur by his sister. He reigned in that part of Britain which is still called Walweitha. A warrior most renowned for his valour, he was expelled from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist, of whom I spoke in the first book, but not until he had compensated for his exile by much damage wrought upon them, worthily sharing in the praise of his uncle, in that they deferred for many years the ruin of their falling country. But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere to be beheld, whence ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come. The tomb of the other, however, as I have said, was found in the time of king William upon the sea-shore, fourteen feet in length; and here some say that he was wounded by his foes and cast out in a shipwreck, but according to others he was killed by his

Introduction • 3 fellow-citizens at a public banquet. Knowledge of the truth therefore remains doubtful, although neither story would be inconsistent with the defence of his fame.3 Walweitha has been identified as Galloway in Scotland, and on the basis of this entry and other evidence, Rachel Bromwich argues that the figure of Gawain “belonged originally to north Britain.”4 Gawain’s reputation for valor is given greater substance by Geoffrey, who provides the first extended account of Arthur’s reign. Gawain and Mordred are the children of Loth and Anna, Arthur’s sister.5 Arthur restores Loth to the dukedom of Lothian and later raises him to the throne of Norway. Raised as a youth in the pope’s household, Gawain distinguishes himself in the war against the Romans during both the embassy to the Roman camp and the main battle, and Geoffrey proclaims that he and Hoel are the two finest knights, unsurpassed in later ages. The Britons win the day and are advancing on Rome when they learn that Mordred has usurped the throne and is living adulterously with the queen. They return to Britain, but when they land, they suffer heavy losses, among them Gawain. Arthur pursues Mordred into Cornwall where he slays him, but he receives his own death wound and is borne to the Isle of Avalon to be healed. Later chronicles add only minor details to this account of Gawain’s career. In Pierre de Langtoft’s Chronicle, written in Anglo-Norman around 1300, Gawain assists his father to the throne of Norway, whereas in earlier accounts he is a twelve-year-old youth in Rome at this time. Langtoft also notes that the Roman emperor’s death is attributed to Gawain and that Arthur sends his nephew’s body to Wales, possibly influenced by William of Malmesbury’s mention of his grave there. In his English verse chronicle The Story of England (1338), Robert Mannyng of Brunne follows Langtoft in these last two instances; but in the Prose Brut, an anonymous thirteenth-century chronicle in Anglo-Norman and in English translation, and in the early fifteenthcentury verse Arthur, the body is sent to Scotland. To complicate the issue still further, in the fourteenth-century Myreur des Histors (Mirror of History), Jean de Preis claims that Gawain accompanies Arthur to Avalon. In Le Roman de Brut (1135), Wace introduces a more courtly tone that accounts for Gawain’s appreciation of the social graces during his speech in praise of peace: “Molt sont bones les gaberies E bones sont les drueries. Por amistiez por amies Font chevalier chevaleries.” (vv. 2221–24)6 “Delightful are pleasant conversation and the love of ladies. For love and for their ladies do knights perform deeds of chivalry.”

4 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby Wace praises Gawain’s humility (v. 1318) and courtesy (v. 4203), but when he adds scenes that show him in action, like his defeat of Marcel’s cousin, it is valor that they demonstrate. He also strengthens the bond between Gawain and Arthur: not only does he note in one manuscript how the former strives to serve his uncle,7 but in all versions he comments upon the latter’s grief over his nephew’s death, “Car il n’amoit nul home tant” (for he loved no man so much; v. 4536). Wace’s chronicle was adapted into English alliterative verse in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century by Layamon, who abandons the courtly tone of his source. Thus while he retains Gawain’s speech in praise of peace, Layamon eliminates all reference to love in favor of the more general “gode workes.” He too commends the hero’s virtues, especially valor and liberality, and he places still greater emphasis upon the love between Arthur and his sister’s son. Indeed, so enraged is Gawain at Mordred’s betrayal of his uncle that he vows to hang his brother and use horses to draw the queen in pieces (vv. 28, 207–17), a threat in keeping with the savagery displayed by Arthur and his warriors throughout the chronicle.8 Thus, while they refer to virtues like humility, courtesy, and liberality, neither Wace nor Layamon offer Gawain any more opportunity to demonstrate them than do the other chroniclers. Instead it is his valor that we witness in the course of Arthur’s wars against his enemies; and if his actions seem savage and cruel by modern standards, they are no different in that respect from those of Arthur and his other followers, all of whom view the king’s nephew with admiration and love.9 Even the Scottish chronicles exempt Gawain from the criticism that they level at Arthur in their warning against English imperialist ambitions.10 Indeed, Gawain is treated with unfailing respect in all the chronicles save one. Among the manuscripts collected in the Chroniques d’Anjou is the Liber de Compositione Castri Ambaziae (ca. 1140), and here his impetus et stultitia (impulsiveness and folly) are held responsible for Arthur’s losses in battle against the Romans.11 This one exception, however, serves to make all the more impressive the otherwise universal chorus of approval for his conduct in the chronicles. French12 Tales concerning Arthur and Gawain were apparently circulating in France before the first appearance of the latter in Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace. Evidence from allusions in the poetry of the Occitan (Provençal) troubadours and from onomastics suggests that the Gawain of French romance may have been constructed from a character of oral tradition, whose features and associated tales were gradually melded with the figure of the chronicle tradition.13 How these tales of undoubted Celtic origin actually circulated on the Continent is unclear, although at least one multilingual storyteller from Wales is thought to have visited William IX, Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitiers,

Introduction • 5 the earliest known troubadour, in the eleventh century.14 The tales might have spread thence south to greater Occitania and north to the domain of the langue d’oïl. It is unlikely that this case is isolated or that this was the only means of transmission, for one can hardly discount the role played by the Normans and their descendants. They were, after all, the only people whose language was common to the entire area: from Ireland in the west, through much of Wales and England, to most of France as far east as Lorraine. When Gawain appears as Gauvain (or Gavain and variants) in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes, he is hardly recognizable as the same character from Geoffrey and Wace. Wace’s addition of Gawain’s comments on the relationship between love and chivalry (noted above) is surely significant and was probably inspired by knowledge of the oral tradition, to which he famously alludes when he speaks of the events of the Breton fables which took place during the pax Arthuriana.15 Chrétien (as in so many areas of romance) set the tone for the subsequent evolution of the character of Gawain in Old French. Gawain is Arthur’s closest advisor and, in the absence of a son, his apparent heir and successor. The relationship between nephew and uncle is one of mutual dependence: Gawain advises Arthur, even upbraids him when he believes the king has made an error of judgment, while Arthur for his part exhibits concern for his nephew and protects and supports him where necessary. Structurally, in Chrétien’s romances, Gawain functions as a foil for the heroes (Erec, Cligés, Yvain, Lancelot, and Perceval), whose achievements are measured against his own and who are ultimately destined to surpass him. The comparisons, however, are rarely odious before Perceval. Certainly, his judgments are questioned; but the point of having a hero equal and then surpass him would be rather senseless if he were openly and continually mocked. Chrétien never accords Gawain the status of hero proper, even in Lancelot or Perceval, where the number of lines allotted to him is considerable. This is undoubtedly part of Chrétien’s questioning of the courtly-chivalric ideal, for what better way to do so than by critically examining its foremost representative, Gawain? What Chrétien appears to be saying by his presentation of Gawain is that a code of behavior, as ideally implemented and well-intentioned as it might be, is inadequate in the final instance unless it is applied with thought, forethought, and genuine humanity. In his first four romances, Chrétien seems to present Gawain in an ironic but generally positive light, which suggests a fondness for the character on the part of both himself and his intended audiences. In Erec et Enide, Chrétien tells us that “Devant toz les buens chevaliers / Doit estre Gauvains li premiers” (before all good knights, Gawain must rank first; vv. 1691-92),16 and in Cligés, the hero is Gawain’s blood relative. Close readings of these two romances may already offer hints of criticism on Chrétien’s part, but it is with Yvain and Lancelot (written more or less contemporaneously, it appears) that we begin to notice real signs of questioning the Arthurian ideal as embodied in Gawain.

6 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby Gawain’s advice to Yvain on love and marriage turns out to have disastrous consequences; and he appears to champion an unjust cause, which leads him into a single combat against the hero, interrupted only by a ruse of Arthur’s.17 In Lancelot, Gawain’s quest for the abducted Guenevere fails where Lancelot’s succeeds (for obvious narrative reasons). The implication here and in Yvain is that Gawain cannot be a hero because his understanding of the mutual relationship between knighthood and love (which he appears to appreciate in Wace’s Brut) is deficient.18 Perhaps more significant (for Chrétien’s final romance and for the post-Chrétien romances, verse and prose, Grail and nonGrail) is the related matter of Gawain’s not having a single, true love to provide him with the inspiration required of a true hero. There is no Enide to his Erec, no Fenice to his Cligés, no Laudine to his Yvain, no Guenevere to his Lancelot, and no Blanchefleur to his Perceval. Behind this good man stands no good woman. The introduction into Arthurian romance of the Grail theme by Chrétien in Perceval, his last unfinished romance, had considerable ramifications for his presentation of Gawain. Whereas in the four early romances, the yardsticks had been by and large worldly, the final test in Perceval appears to be spiritual. The parallel quest structure seen in germ in Lancelot is made the very basis of the bifurcated adventures of the Grail romance. The development of Perceval—from country lad, through knight and lover, to a person in possession of all the necessary qualities and knowledge to succeed in a second visit to the Grail Castle—stands in direct and bleak contrast to the circular movement of Gawain. Courteous as ever, Gawain is in Perceval subject to accusations of murder and treason (possibly founded), mocked as a horse dealer and coward, sent off on impossible quests, and involved in several amorous liaisons of a doubtful nature. The Gawain of Perceval and the values he represents are seen as sterile and incapable of dealing with the more spiritual side of human existence. It should be pointed out here that Perceval has been subject to the most extraordinary variety of interpretations and that the character of Gawain has been adjudged variously. Whether it was Chrétien’s intent to condemn as totally inadequate Arthurian knighthood and courtesy is a moot question, but there seems little doubt that his presentation of Gawain leans towards the negative rather than the positive.19 Despite many shared characteristics, the evident differences between Chrétien’s first four romances and his last one were clearly perceived by medieval authors and audiences; and they resulted in a dual romance track as it were, further enabled by the unfinished nature of Perceval. Failures at the Grail Castle, lascivious encounters, fantastic adventures, and a sustained contrast with Perceval—by means of constant linking back to Chrétien’s founding romance and switching of heroes—consolidates the judgment of Gawain as second-best. Yet authors of the four Continuations of Perceval (the anonymous Continuation-Gauvain and Continuation-Perceval, and those by Gerbert

Introduction • 7 de Montreuil and Manessier) remained fascinated by the narrative potential of a figure whose traits are both fixed (brave knight, womanizer, nephew of Arthur, symbol and representative of the court, and so on) and capable of generating almost infinite stories. It should be noted that Gawain is never killed off in romance before La mort le roi Artu; to have done so would have been to deprive authors of a valued source of material. The religious nature of this complex set of continuations, which contain some of the most imaginative storytelling in the whole corpus of Arthurian romance, becomes more pronounced by the third decade of the thirteenth century, when Gerbert de Montreuil and Manessier write independently of one another but probably both with a knowledge of some of the early prose romances. The negative view of Gawain gradually becomes more pronounced.20 The other romance track in the early post-Chrétien period is that of emulation (but not slavish imitation) of the master’s early romances by authors now generally known as the Chrétien epigones. In point of fact, the first two decades after Chrétien’s death (assuming Gerbert de Montreuil is telling the truth) produced no episodic non-Grail verse romances, perhaps because authors were hesitant to expose themselves to comparison with the master. The earliest of the epigonal romances is probably Le bel inconnu by Renaut de Beaujeu (Bâgé), which dates from before the end of the twelfth century. This text is significant for our purposes not only because Gawain features in it, but because its hero, Guinglain, is the son of Gawain and Blanchemal the Fée. Here is another means of exploiting the popularity of a romance character: relating the achievements of his offspring (other possibilities are to relate boyhood deeds [there is a fragmentary Enfances Gauvain] or the history of parents). The general tenor of the epigonal romances (of which there are some twenty) is ironic and parodic, and the character of Gawain is treated accordingly, though generally without malice. In some, however, he is involved in adventures that lead to scenes of broad comedy verging on the obscenity of the fabliaux. Notable among these romances (the study of which was revived beginning in the 1980s) are the short Le chevalier à l’épée and La mule sans frein (the latter by “Paien de Maisières,” punning on Chrétien de Troyes?); the full-length L’atre périlleux, La vengeance Raguidel, and Meraugis de Portlesguez (the last by Raoul de Houdenc), in which Gawain plays a major role; and others, such as Fergus (by Guillaume le Clerc), Yder, and Hunbaut, where his role is less important albeit still significant. There is one romance in Occitan (with Catalan features), Jaufre (ca. 1210?), which clearly responds parodically to Chrétien’s œuvre and demonstrates that the meridional author understood the northern Gawain in the same spirit as the northern epigones. Some of the last French verse romances, such as Le chevalier aux deux épées (Meriadeuc), Les merveilles de Rigomer, Escanor (by Girard d’Amiens), and Claris et Laris, are quite prolix, much longer than the average (some twelve thousand, seventeen thousand, twenty-six thousand and thirty thousand lines, respectively,

8 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby compared with the usual six thousand to seven thousand). It seems clear that these later romances (all post-1240) are written with knowledge of, and influenced by, the great prose cycles; their structure and their presentation of Gawain owe much to them.21 The long and extraordinary prose romance of Perlesvaus (early thirteenth century) draws for its presentation of Gawain mainly on the verse tradition, underlining his great valor (sometimes put to doubtful use) and reputation as a womanizer. Ultimately, his chivalry, courtesy, and amorous proclivities add up to a kind of impotence that humiliates him and bars him from the Grail Castle. The Perlesvaus and the Didot-Perceval (ca. 1200) in many ways anticipate the great Lancelot-Graal (Vulgate) cycle’s (ca. 1225–30) presentation of Gawain. Analysis of the Gawain of the Lancelot-Graal is made particularly complicated by its multiple authorship and spirit. The prose Lancelot is still largely secular in nature, and its Gawain is still the great but flawed knight destined never to achieve the distinction of Lancelot. The Cistercian-inspired Queste del saint Graal, by contrast, roundly condemns Gawain’s knightly and courtly activities as sinful. La mort le roi Artu returns to a degree to the secular inspiration of the Lancelot, but the tragic end of Arthur’s kingdom is seen as resulting from irresolvable conflicts generated by the kind of values Gawain represents.22 Chronologically, the next major prose romance is the Prose Tristan and its derivatives (Meliadus de Loenois, Guiron le courtois, Palamède, etc.), dating from the 1230s onward. If the Vulgate Queste condemns Gawain for his vices when compared to the saintly virtues of Galahad, Perceval, and Bors, the Tristan degrades his character even further, showing him as the intemperate and spiteful leader of a clan set up in opposition to the Grail lineage. Here Gawain openly commits rape and murder, and his deeds are roundly condemned by the other characters (including his own brothers) and by the narrator. For the first time, we encounter a Gawain presented in an entirely unsympathetic light.23 The degradation is complete, and it makes even more remarkable his restoration in medieval English and Dutch literatures. The socalled Post-Vulgate cycle, combining elements and texts from the Vulgate cycle and Tristan romances, generally speaking presents a negative image of Gawain. Chrétien created a Gawain with features that were to become fixed in later romance, some of which were to be developed in directions he may never have envisaged. The advantage (and sometimes disadvantage) for authors was that they did not have to create a new character: Gawain came with a whole corpus of adventures and resulting reputation attached. Within these limits, an author could use Gawain and tweak his features to whatever end he had in view. The major limitation, however, was that, despite a few efforts to the contrary, the character of Gawain could not be made into the kind of hero who underwent a crisis, resolved it, and emerged a wiser and better man. For

Introduction • 9 this reason, he was doomed to remain in French romance a major part of the Arthurian backdrop, indispensable, useful, and largely predictable. Italian and Iberian In Italy, the history of Arthurian romance and consequently of the figure of Gawain, is one of reception of the French prose tradition. Many manuscripts of the Lancelot-Graal and Prose Tristan (and derivatives) were actually copied in Italy in the fourteenth century, and their Gawain is identical, of course, to the French Gawain of the prose tradition. The same result is evident in Italian texts derived directly from the French prose romances, such as the Tristano Riccardiano and the Tristano Panciatichiano, although Marie-José Heijkant argues in her contribution to this casebook that pro-Gawain tendencies emerge, albeit for different reasons, in Italy just as they do in England and the Lowlands. In the Iberian peninsula, as in Italy, there is little penetration of the Chrétien and post-Chrétien verse tradition. Translations and adaptations of French prose romances of the Vulgate, Post-Vulgate, and Tristan cycles are the major witnesses in Castilian, Catalan, and Portuguese. If Jaufre is to be associated with Catalonia as well as regions north of the Pyrenees, then its Gawain must also be part of the Iberian tradition; there are wall paintings depicting it in Saragossa, and a late adaptation, the Tablante de Ricamonte, was known to Cervantes. This would be a unique testimony to the reach of Chrétien de Troyes in the peninsula. Indeed, despite some evident exceptions, medieval Spain and Portugal seem to have been perhaps the least receptive of all regions in Europe to French literature. It is in any case clear that geographical proximity is not a guarantor of influence but rather that cultural conditions make particular situations receptive in varying degrees to the irradiation of French romance. If Gawain was known to readers of the two peninsulae largely through French prose romance, the evidence from the Modena Archivolt (1120–40) and from proper names suggests the circulation of oral tales concerning Gawain and others before Geoffrey of Monmouth in Italy and a little later in Iberia. A Galvam in Portugal from 1208 (presumably born at least two decades earlier) could possibly have been named after Chrétien’s character, but this seems unlikely, and it is in any case too early to argue for the influence of the prose romances.24 Germanic (German, Dutch, and Scandinavian) The presentation of Gawain in Middle High German literature, as in other literatures, takes its cue from Chrétien de Troyes. The adaptations of Erec et Enide and Yvain as Erec and Iwein by Hartmann von Aue and of Perceval in Parzival by Wolfram von Eschenbach constitute a major part of the corpus of classical medieval German romance. As such they set the tone for the further development of the figure in Middle High German. The first appearance

10 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby of Gawain in Middle High German, however, may have been in Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet (between 1194 and 1205), since its author claims that it is based upon a book brought to Germany by Hugh de Morville. This romance contains an episode in which an interrupted combat between Gawain and the hero may recall an episode in Chrétien’s Yvain, and which in any case reflects Gawain’s role as a foil to the hero.25 Despite his many modifications to Chrétien’s romances, Hartmann von Aue radically changes neither the character nor the narrative function of Gawain in Erec and Iwein (ca. 1200–5). Wolfram von Eschenbach, on the other hand, effects a much more substantial transformation (and completion) of Chrétien’s Perceval in Parzival (ca. 1205), as Albrecht Classen shows in his essay in this casebook. Wolfram’s critical stance towards Chrétien in general is reflected in his reworking of the Gawain character. Not only does Gawain free the queens and damsels in Schastel Marveile (Chrétien’s romance breaks off before this adventure is resolved), but the transposition of Perceval to a transcendent Grail realm does not entail a concomitant mocking and downgrading of Gawain. Gawain remains the best knight, but in the Arthurian world only. A number of “post-classical” Arthurian verse romances in Middle High German treat the adventures of Gawain at some length, in particular Wirnt von Grafenberg’s Wigalois (1210–15) and Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône (ca. 1230). Although full of standard adventures told at fast pace, Wigalois treats Gawain with respect. As in Le bel inconnu, Gawain has a son, here the eponymous hero, but this time by a legitimate marriage to Florie. Father and son team up together and both excel in socially beneficial adventures, often against supernatural odds. The absence of a spiritual or Grail dimension essentially requires Wirnt to present an excellent Gawain with an equally excellent and virtuous offspring, though the former still does not achieve the status of central hero. Wigalois (about 11,700 lines) seems to have been enormously popular in medieval Germany, for nearly forty manuscripts survive in complete or fragmentary form. Of all the later German romances, however, the most interesting and significant in this context is Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône (more than 30,000 lines), in which Gawain is, exceptionally, the main hero. Heinrich’s sources are many and varied, both French and German (Chrétien, the Continuations, Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, Hartmann, and Wolfram); but his critical assessment of Parzival’s failure, which may be directed at Chrétien and Wolfram, is largely expressed by the elevation of Gawain, achiever of a kind of secularized Grail, to the rank of best knight in the world. Yet in Diu Crône, as in the other romances that portray him favorably, Gawain undergoes neither evolution nor crisis like Erec, Yvain, Lancelot, or Perceval. Rather than conclude that he is not a hero, we may rather suggest that he is a different kind, one with a preformed character.26 Perhaps the most extraordinary and widespread rehabilitation of Gawain in the Germanic domain is found in Middle Dutch literature, especially in those

Introduction • 11 romances not directly derived from existing French works. In those that are derived from French works, certain adjustments are nevertheless made to the character of Gawain, such as making him more of a courtly lover in Die Wrake van Ragisel (an adaptation of La vengeance Raguidel) or making him a general idealization in the various versions of the Vulgate Cycle. It is in the “original” Dutch romances, nevertheless, that we encounter the most accomplished Gawain of all. In a number of Dutch romances, Gawain (Walewein) is referred to as “der avonturen vader” (father of adventures), and this epithet endows him with a fundamental role in the creation of the Arthurian world even while it elevates him and his adventures to the status of a classic paradigm of the romance hero. Romances such as Walewein ende Keye (before 1320), inserted into the so-called Lancelot-Compilatie, and the independent Roman van Walewein by Penninc and Pieter Vostaert (second half of the thirteenth century) remove all traces of the ironic French treatment of Gawain in their presentation of an excellent knight capable of achieving the most demanding adventures. Most traces of the scurrilous skirt chaser are also excised in the Dutch tradition, in which Gawain is transformed into a faithful lover (to one Ysabele, for example, in the Roman van Walewein). Since it is clear that the Dutch authors and audiences were familiar with the details of the French romance tradition (in part by virtue of French-Dutch bilingualism in certain courts of the Lowlands), it seems equally clear that we are dealing with a conscious response to French romance, a kind of dialogue between the two, as it were.27 This dialogue essentially defines the relationship between the seminal French Arthurian romances and the cultures that received and transformed them, and thus the corpus of romances in each language (Italian, Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, German, Dutch, the Scandinavian languages, Welsh, and English) presents a distinct variant or variants of the figure of Gawain. Once more proving that geographical proximity is not necessarily a factor in the receptivity towards French literature, a considerable number of Arthurian romances survive in Old Norse-Old Icelandic, and one version of the Yvain story survives in Swedish (Ivan Lejonriddaren, 1303). This is not the place for a survey of the Scandinavian Arthurian romances. For the present purposes, it will suffice to note the existence of adaptations of Erec et Enide, Yvain and, more significantly, Perceval (all dating from the mid-thirteenth century, probably from the reign of King Hákon Hákonarson of Norway [r. 1217–63]). Generally speaking, the increased power accorded the female characters has repercussions on the male figures, including Gawain. Particularly significant is the adaptation of Perceval as two separate romances, Parcevals saga and Valvens Þáttr. The latter begins as Chrétien’s narrative returns to Gawain and his encounter with the Male Pucelle, just after the Good Friday episode, and it ends, as does Chrétien, with Gawain sending for Arthur to come to the Castle of Marvels. Gawain’s status is enhanced by the bisection of Chrétien’s romance

12 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby and the consequent dissociation from the Grail theme, where he is compared so disadvantageously to Perceval.28 Welsh As Gwalchmai son of Gwyar, Gawain figures in the tale of Culhwch and Olwen, several of the Welsh Triads, and three romances that tell stories found in the poems of Chrétien de Troyes. Roger Sherman Loomis has argued that Gawain’s Welsh prototype is not Gwalchmai but Gwri Gwallteuryn (Gwri Golden Hair), more commonly referred to as Pryderi, the son of Pwyll, in the pre-Arthurian Four Branches of the Mabinogi. His hypothesis, however, has not won wide acceptance.29 Gwalchmai’s name means “hawk of the plain(s)” or perhaps “hawk of May,”30 and in Culhwch and Olwen we are told that “he never came home without the quest he had gone seeking. He was the best on foot and the best on horseback. He was Arthur’s nephew, his sister’s son, and his first cousin.”31 Despite this promising introduction, however, he plays no independent role in the tale, which suggests that the passage may be a later interpolation. The triads were used “as a means of putting the materials of heroic story into catalogue form,” but dating is problematic because the manuscripts in which the texts are preserved were all copied after the twelfth century.32 This makes it difficult to distinguish earlier native tradition from the contamination of later continental influence. Gwalchmai appears in the oldest collection that mentions Arthur, the Peniarth MS 16, which lists “Gwalchmai son of Gwyar” among the “Three Well-Endowed Men of the Island of Britain” (Bromwich, Triads, p. 8).33 He is also found in three later triads: “Slender-Hard [Meingalet], horse of Gwalchmai” is one of the “Three Bestowed Horses of the Island of Britain” (p. 120); “Gwalchmai son of Gwyar” is one of the “Three Men of the Island of Britain who were most courteous to Guests and Strangers” (p.195); and Gwalchmai is one of the “Three Fearless Men of the Island of Britain” (p. 219). Among the “Three Golden-Tongued Knights” in Arthur’s court is “Gwalchmai son of Llew son of Cynfarch . . . .and there was neither king nor lord to whom those came who did not listen to them; and whatever quest they sought, they wished for and obtained it, either willingly or unwillingly” (p. 252).34 Gwalchmai effectively demonstrates this eloquence by helping Arthur make peace between Trystan and March in the late medieval Ystorya Trystan. The three Welsh romances provide versions of stories told by Chrétien de Troyes: Geraint Son of Erbin-Erec et Enide, Owain (The Lady of the Fountain)Yvain, and Peredur Son of Efrawg-Perceval.35 Despite variation in detail, all three follow the narrative outline found in the French poems, and Gwalchmai plays a similar role in each. Yet while he remains the most courteous knight in Arthur’s court, he is much readier to fight than in the French versions. In Geraint, he jousts with the wounded protagonist before recognizing him and artfully luring him to Arthur’s pavilion; in Owain, he engages in combat

Introduction • 13 with the protagonist for three days, before mutual recognition leads to a contest in politeness as each proclaims the other victor. Gwalchmai is given more opportunity to demonstrate his courtesy in Peredur, however, for not only does he persuade the hero to accompany him to Arthur’s court after Kay and his companions have been unhorsed for their rudeness, but in two of the manuscripts it is he rather than Owain who takes on the role of friend and helper. This increased emphasis upon Gwalchmai’s prowess is in keeping with the marked preference for action over words in the Welsh romances. Some of the differences in the Welsh romances also eliminate hints of criticism found in Chrétien’s versions. Gwalchmai does not fight Owain to support a damsel’s dubious claim to a larger share of her inheritance, and it is not he but Arthur who persuades the protagonist to leave his wife for a year; and the reduction of Gwalchmai’s adventures in Peredur removes any hint of an unfavorable contrast with the protagonist who is, in any case, involved with far more women than is he. Thus, in Welsh tradition, Gwalchmai emerges as an admirable figure, noted both for his eloquence and for his skill as a warrior. English (Medieval) As a consequence of the cultural and linguistic upheaval caused by the Norman Invasion, romances in English are later in date and fewer in number than their French counterparts. Many are based upon French sources, and even those for which none has been found are indebted for familiar motifs, such as the contrast between the courtesy of Gawain and the surliness of Kay.36 As a result, the presentation of Gawain is strongly influenced by the choice of source, since French verse romance is usually more favorable to the hero than prose. Nonetheless, the English romances were clearly aimed at an audience with different tastes from their models, and this is reflected by their choice not only of source but of what material within it to include and what to leave out. This process of selection most often benefits Gawain’s reputation, prompting one scholar to speak of “the hagiology of Gawain.”37 Among the English romances that are based upon French verse romances are a number, all dating from the earlier part of the fourteenth century, in which Gawain plays a minor role as the true friend to the young hero: Sir Percyvell of Gales, which is based upon Chrétien’s Perceval, and Thomas Chestre’s Sir Launfal and the other adaptations into English of Marie de France’s Lanval. In Lybeaus Desconus, which corresponds to the first part of Le Bel Inconnu by Renaud de Beaujeu, Gawain is the hero’s father. He plays a larger role in Ywain and Gawain, which is based upon Chrétien’s Yvain: here too he is a close friend and valiant knight, though his advice proves less helpful than intended.38 These poems praise him as the foremost knight at Arthur’s court, and his friendship/paternity is valued as a mark of distinction. In the remaining romances that draw upon French verse for their story or motifs, Gawain is the central hero.39 Foremost among them is Sir Gawain and

14 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby the Green Knight, which is dated in the late fourteenth century. It combines the motifs of the Beheading Game and Chastity Test so that the outcome of the former is made dependent upon the latter. The poem has attracted more admiration and scholarly attention than any other English Arthurian work. Yet this attention, paradoxically, has had a mixed impact upon Gawain’s reputation, for although the hero performs remarkably well under severely trying circumstances, in the final analysis he is found wanting. In explaining his failure, scholars have found fault with virtually every aspect of his conduct: from undertaking the Green Knight’s challenge to play the Beheading Game without fully considering the consequences, to lying idly in bed while his host engages in the rigors of the hunt; from failing to mention in the confessional that he intends to keep the Green Girdle in violation of his promise, to relying upon it rather than the Virgin Mary to preserve his life; from overreacting when he confesses his fault, to demonstrating absurd petulance in his outburst against the wiles of women. As if the damage were not enough, some even evoke his sins in French romance to detect a sinister sensuality in his response to the hostess.40 By retaining the girdle, Gawain has clearly “lakked a lyttel” (lacked a little; v. 2366),41 but only when judged by “a humanly unattainable standard of perfection” (Spearing, The Gawain-Poet p. 228). Perfection may be expected of the hero of romance, who conventionally commits an error after initial success and then wins forgiveness by a series of good deeds, as in the poems of Chrétien. By taking us inside Gawain’s mind, however, sharing his thoughts and fears as the poem progresses, the Gawain-Poet shifts from what Northrop Frye terms the romance mode to the low mimetic mode: no longer “superior in degree to other men and to his environment,” the hero becomes “one of us: we respond to a sense of his common humanity.” 42 Gawain affirms his humanity and wins our sympathy as we watch him struggle against the many trials set in his path. It is not, after all, his choice to rest in bed while his host goes hunting, nor does a young man facing imminent death need to be “a notorious philanderer” (Barron, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” p. 170) to be aroused by the determined efforts of his beautiful hostess to seduce him. Unlike the Green Knight, Gawain is not superhuman—as he wryly observes, if his head is cut off, he “con not hit restore” (cannot restore it; v. 2283) —and by human standards, as the Green Knight acknowledges, he has proved himself “On þe fautlest freke þat euer on fote ede; As perle bi þe quite pese is of prys more, So is Gawayn, in god faith, bi oþer gay kny tez.” (vv. 2363–65) “The most faultless man who ever lived; as pearl beside white peas is of greater value, so is Gawain, in good faith, beside other gallant knights.”

Introduction • 15 That he takes failure so hard is because he has tried so hard to maintain his chivalric ideals. It is this idealism that enables him to achieve so much against almost impossible odds. The poem reminds us not only that perfection is beyond our grasp, but also that we can achieve so much more if we nonetheless strive to attain it. Though few attain Gawain’s insight into the “faut and þe fayntyse of þe flesche crabbed, / How tender hit is to entyse teches of fylþe” (faultiness and the frailty of the perverse flesh, how liable it is to catch the stains of sin; vv. 2435–36), this reminder of human fallibility is a persistent theme throughout the remaining English romances,43 which are dated in or around the fifteenth century. Three of the poems offer a criticism of pride of conquest, and although it is aimed primarily at Arthur, it also encompasses Gawain as his surrogate. Although the Alliterative Morte Arthure (1399–1402) is based upon the chronicles rather than verse romance, it is convenient to consider it in this group because of its concern with conquest. Pride is a quality that marks all epic heroes and drives them to great achievements, yet it exacts a cost in human lives, as Arthur comes to realize. Gawain is the foremost exemplar of the fierce warriors whose valor wins victory after victory for their king. During the embassy to the Roman camp, the encounter with Priamus, and the landing in Britain, he displays the valor, generosity, and loyalty to Arthur that win the love and admiration of all, even his foes. Unfortunately, the vengeful fury he feels against his brother Mordred for betraying his beloved uncle drives him to a last desperate assault against hopeless odds, and he and his men are overwhelmed. His passing leads to three eulogies: by the poet himself, who sadly observes, “thus sir Gawayne es gonn, the gude man of armes, / Withowttyn reschewe of renke, and rewthe is þe more” (thus sir Gawain is gone, the good man-at-arms, without rescue of man, and more is the pity; vv. 3858–59);44 by the remorseful Mordred, who extols him as “the graciouseste gome that vndire God lyffede” (the most honorable man who ever lived; v. 3877); and, loudest of all, by Arthur, who laments, “Þou was worthy to be kynge, þofe I corown bare” (You were worthy to be king, though I bore the crown; v. 3962). Gawain is guilty of misjudgment when he leads his men in the final assault, but he fails as an impetuous leader, not an overly reckless warrior. As such it serves as a comment upon Arthur’s own failure in leadership, as the king himself states: “He es sakles, supprysede for syn of myn one” (He is guiltless, overcome because of my own sin; v. 3986).45 In The Awntyrs off Arthure, the ghost of Guinevere’s mother offers a dire warning against pride: of her daughter, who is too fond of luxury, and of her son-in-law, who is “to couetous” for conquest (v. 265).46 Although Gawain’s motives in accompanying Guinevere to the secluded spot where the ghost appears have aroused the suspicion of some scholars 47 and although his response to Galeron’s challenge strikes a fiercely aggressive note, his valor, loyalty to Arthur, and generosity to his defeated opponent confirm his

16 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby heroic stature. He demonstrates the same qualities in Golagros and Gawane, another poem that criticizes Arthur’s craving for conquest. Written in Lowland Scots, the poem is based upon Gawain’s encounter with the Riche Soudoier in the First Continuation (Continuation-Gauvain) of Chrétien’s Perceval; but whereas the Riche Soudoier refuses to surrender lest the shock kills his mistress, Golagros believes that his responsibilities as a ruler do not leave him free to accept Arthur’s overlordship without consulting the will of his people. Gawain magnanimously agrees to pretend that he has been defeated in combat so that these problems may be resolved without the death of a valiant foe. Gawain emerges with less distinction, however, from The Jeaste of Syr Gawayne, which is also based upon an episode in the same Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval. Both tell how Gawain seduces a maiden he finds in a tent and then fights her father and brothers. Events culminate in an inglorious conclusion as the combatants painfully hobble homewards on foot, while the damsel is soundly beaten by her brother. The best that can be said for Gawain is that he behaves better than the other figures.48 The remaining romances in which Gawain is the central hero belong to a category that Gillian Rogers calls folk romance, and many are collected as ballads in Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript:49 The Grene Knight, The Turke and Gowin, two versions of the Carl of Carlisle story, two versions of Gawain’s wedding to Dame Ragnell, The Avowynge of King Arthur, and King Arthur and the King of Cornwall (though his role here is minor). In all, Gawain is spared the criticism that is frequently aimed at Arthur and his court. He demonstrates a level of valor, loyalty, and courtesy that breaks magical spells of transformation and wins the admiration of all, particularly in the story of his wedding when he agrees to marry a repulsive hag to save Arthur’s life. As one might expect, Gawain fares less well in works based upon French prose romance, though the selection of material often proves to his benefit. Arthour and Merlin (1350–1400), Henry Lovelich’s Merlin, and the Prose Merlin (both ca. 1450) are all translations of the Vulgate Merlin; Lancelot of the Laik, a Scottish poem from the second half of the fifteenth century, is closely based upon the account of Arthur’s war against Galehaut in the Vulgate Lancelot. They preserve the picture of Gawain found in their sources: a valiant warrior who serves his uncle loyally in the wars against his enemies, though in the Scottish poem his efforts are overshadowed by those of Lancelot. The Stanzaic Morte Arthur (fourteenth century) offers a condensed version of the events leading up to the death of Arthur as told in the Vulgate Mort Artu. Sometimes the omissions favor Gawain: he does not, for example, try to woo the Maid of Astolat as he does in the French romance. At other times they are less helpful: whereas in the Vulgate he reveals what he believes to be Lancelot’s relationship with the Maid only to defend his friend against the charge of treason with the Queen, in the poem he lets the misinformation slip

Introduction • 17 for a less pressing reason, though it does bring comfort to the King. Nevertheless, the poet avoids taking sides in the feud between Lancelot and Gawain. If Gawain is implacable in his desire to avenge the killing of his unarmed brothers, Lancelot for his part has ignored warnings of danger in order to fulfill his desire to be with Guinevere.50 As a result, Gawain is depicted in positive terms for the most part, his faults balanced by virtues. When he makes his last appearance, to his uncle in a dream, he is accompanied by a large company of lords and ladies on whose behalf he had fought, convincing evidence of the good deeds that he has performed. This even-handedness, unfortunately for him, is abandoned by Sir Thomas Malory, who makes Lancelot the hero of Le Morte Darthur (1469–70). Where earlier English writers had drawn their material from those parts of the Vulgate Cycle that viewed Gawain favorably, Malory included among his sources not only the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal but also the Prose Tristan and the Post-Vulgate Cycle, all of which portray him in very negative terms.51 Malory, moreover, modifies his sources so that Gawain appears to even greater disadvantage. Where these sources are generally favorable to Gawain, like the Alliterative Morte Arthure, which is the basis of the section on Arthur’s wars with the Romans, and the lost younger-brother story, which is the basis of the tale of Gareth, Malory reduces Gawain’s role, assigning many of his deeds to Lancelot. Where the sources are already unfavorable, he often presents Gawain in an even harsher light, notably in his betrayal of Pelleas, his murder of Pellinor and Lamorak, and his insistence upon revenge against Lancelot for the death of Gareth.52 Although some of these changes are intended to enhance the status of Lancelot, they go far beyond what is needed, and they were to bequeath to succeeding generations of writers a far less attractive figure than is found everywhere else in Middle English literature. English (Renaissance to Nineteenth Century) With the passing of the Middle Ages, interest in Arthurian legend waned dramatically. Prior to the nineteenth century, Gawain appears only three times. In The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) by Thomas Hughes and in William Hilton’s Arthur, Monarch of the Britons: a Tragedy (1759), two plays based upon Geoffrey of Monmouth, he emerges as a heroic figure, particularly in the latter. In the burlesque opera “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine” (1782), John Seally emphasizes his comic predicament. The nineteenth century, however, witnessed the Arthurian Revival, and with it increased attention to Gawain.53 During the first half of the nineteenth century, he continues to win praise for his courage and courtesy, particularly in Reginald Heber’s “Fragments of The Masque of Gwendolen” (1816), which retells the story of Gawain’s wedding with Dame Ragnell (here called Gwendolen), and in Edward BulwerLytton’s epic poem King Arthur (1848). Despite his comic misadventures in the latter, he remains a witty and attractive figure.

18 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby Gawain’s luck runs out in the second half of the century, however, for Tennyson chose to blacken his reputation even more than did Malory, the prime source for Idylls of the King (1857–85).54 His conduct is most reprehensible in “Pelleas and Ettarre” (1869), where he betrays the trust of Pelleas by wooing Ettarre for himself, and Tennyson leaves him no redeeming features at all. In “The Passing of Arthur” (1833-34, 1842, 1869), even the warning of his ghost is scornfully dismissed by Bedivere: “Light was Gawain in life, and light in death / Is Gawain for the ghost is as the man” (vv. 56–57).55 Nor was Tennyson alone in his hostility to Gawain, for William Morris turned this staunch defender of the Queen’s innocence in medieval accounts into her accuser in “The Defence of Guenevere” (1858).56 During the last decade of the century, Gawain fell foul of no fewer than three playwrights: in “The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy” (1892), Richard Hovey demonstrates his lustful nature, even at the age of sixteen, when he accompanies his mother to Arthur’s court; in Mordred (1893), Wilfred Campbell blames the fall of the Round Table upon his vengefulness; and in Mordred: A Tragedy (1895), Henry Newbolt turns this most loyal of knights into a supporter of Mordred’s rebellion against Arthur. The century thus closed for Gawain on a very low note indeed. English (Twentieth Century) The twentieth century witnessed major shifts in the forms in which Arthurian legend is presented. Plays dwindled in prominence if not in number, to be replaced by films and television presentations; longer poems became rarer, though short verse and sequences continued to appear in the pages of the many magazines that published poetry; prose fiction in the form of novels and short stories, meanwhile, proliferated to achieve a position of dominance. In the process, the legend developed in a variety of genres, the most important of which were fantasy and historical fiction.57 Fiction aimed primarily at younger readers and comics grew in popularity and, like role-playing games and film, exercised an ever-growing influence over new generations of readers. Gawain figures in a number of plays and musical dramas. He is at his worst in Edwin Royle’s Launcelot and Elaine (1920, 1929), a dramatization of Tennyson’s idyll that turns him into a willing puppet of Mordred, and in Rutland Boughton’s Avalon (1945), an unperformed opera in which he betrays Arthur and joins Mordred at the last battle. Malory is the source for Stark Young’s Guenevere (1906), Laurence Binyon’s Arthur: A Tragedy (1923), Georgene Davis’s The Round Table: A History Drawn from Unreliable Chronicles (1930), and David Freeman’s dramatization of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur (1990). In these, Gawain wins some sympathy, but his vengefulness is blamed for the fall of Arthur’s kingdom in all but the first play. Clemence Dane draws upon the chronicles for The Hope of Britain, the second of seven plays collected as The Saviours (1942), in which Gawain plays a minor role as Arthur’s loyal nephew during his wars.

Introduction • 19 When dramatists turned to verse romance for their material, however, Gawain emerges with greater credit, not only in the many plays and operas for children that adapt the stories of his encounter with the Green Knight and Dame Ragnell (by John Chambers, Tim Porter, Richard Blackford, and others),58 but also in the verse drama Gawain (1991) by David Harsent. Based upon Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, this last was developed into a successful opera, with music by Harrison Birtwhistle. Poems that are influenced by Gawain’s role in the chronicles and verse romances usually portray him positively also, though when they draw upon Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, they may note his failings. In two long poems that conclude with the destruction of Arthur’s kingdom, E. H. Tax’s The Wraith of Gawain (1948) and John Heath-Stubbs’s Artorius (1973), Gawain acts with courtesy and valor. In fact, when the former turns from verse and Celtic tale to Malory for the source of plot, it makes changes that show him in a favorable light, even in his conflicts with Pellinore and Lancelot. Such sympathy is rare, however, for most poems that make use of Malory’s account adopt his approach to Gawain, and while they may acknowledge the basic nobility of his character, they focus upon his flaws in the events that unfold. Thus he is condemned for promiscuity in Francis B. Money Coutts’s “Ettard’s Troth” (1912) and for the vengefulness that breaks the Round Table in Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Merlin (1917) and Lancelot: A Poem (1920). An exception to this pattern is “The Breaking of the Links” by John Masefield, one of the poems collected in Midsummer Night (1928), where the high-minded Gawain departs the court, outraged at the accusations of treason against the Queen. It is in prose fiction, however, that Arthurian legend has received fullest attention, and that Gawain’s character is explored most closely. He is found regularly among Arthur’s followers in the historical novels that are based upon the chronicles, but usually in the minor role of a valiant and loyal captain. Only Rosemary Sutcliff provides a fuller picture of the hero, by turning him into a healer in Sword at Sunset (1963). Though no relation to Arthur, Gwalchmai, as he is called here, is as devoted to his leader as he is to the wounded, serving both tirelessly. His self-sacrificing concern for others mirrors that of Arthur, so that this fine novel offers one of the most admirable portraits of both men. Fiction that draws its plots from verse romance and heroic tale, in English and other languages, presents a mixed, albeit generally favorable, image of Gawain. Some novels that include the story of Gawain’s encounter with the Green Knight emphasize his achievements, while others focus instead upon the chastening lesson learned by a flawed hero. Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex (1978), which at the end judges him to be “one of the very greatest knights who ever lived and the finest man of the company of the Round Table (for he had all the virtues and of the vices the most natural),”59 manages to balance

20 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby achievement with a lesson that serves as an important stage in his development. By contrast, Vera Chapman, who follows Malory’s depiction of a Gawain prone to savage rages, replaces him with a nephew of the same name when she adapts the story in The Green Knight (1975). The account of his wedding to Dame Ragnell allows Gawain to demonstrate his courtesy in several novels, including Berger’s Arthur Rex and Gerald Morris’s The Squire’s Tale (1998). When the novels draw from Welsh tradition, as do Nigel Tranter’s Druid Sacrifice (1993) and Sarah Thomson’s The Dragon’s Son (2001), they too usually emphasize his honorable behavior. Richard Monaco’s Grail trilogy (1977–80), which is based upon Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival rather than the Vulgate Queste, presents him as an attractive character despite his many flaws; and Gillian Bradshaw makes Gwalchmai, as she calls him, the admirable central hero of Hawk of May (1980) and Kingdom of Summer (1981), the first two books in her Arthurian trilogy. Her two novels make use of accounts of Gawain’s birth60 and of his encounter with the maiden in the First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval respectively, as they portray his valiant struggle against the forces of darkness within, as well as outside, himself. In Winter’s Shadow (1982), which concludes the trilogy, uses not verse but prose romance as the primary source of the story, and in this Bradshaw aligns herself with the majority of modern authors. Although her choice is appropriate to her darkening vision of the destruction of the Arthurian dream, it does cast Gwalchmai again in the role given him by Malory: that of the champion whose pride, anger, and vengefulness prevent any hope of reconciliation between Arthur and Lancelot. Gawain manages to escape blame in works that do not involve him in the feud with Lancelot; in Firelord (1980), for instance, Parke Godwin achieves this by severing his uncle-nephew relationship with Arthur. Such changes are rare, however, and even novels that do not deal with the fall of Arthur’s realm may prepare us for Gawain’s later role by showing us early signs of his dangerous impulses. Thus while in some accounts of his childhood, like that by Bradshaw, he struggles to escape his mother’s malign influence, more often Gawain shows the rashness and anger that were eventually to prove so fatal, most notably in T. H. White’s Witch in the Wood (1939, later retitled The Queen of Air and Darkness in The Once and Future King, 1958). In The Squire’s Tale (1998), Gerald Morris completely exonerates him of any blame in the episode of Pelleas and Ettarde, whereas John Steinbeck censures him severely in The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976). In The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf (2000), Morris again shows him to advantage in the story of Gareth, but E. M. R. Ditmas gives him a violent temper in Gareth of Orkney (1956). In Arthur Rex, Berger defends Gawain’s conduct in his feud with Pellinore, but most novelists are highly critical, especially Nancy Springer in I Am Mordred (1998). In novels based upon Perlesvaus, like Dorothy James Roberts’s Kinsmen of the Grail (1963), Gawain acquits himself creditably on the Grail Quest;

Introduction • 21 but in the more numerous novels which, like White’s Once and Future King, follow Malory, he reveals himself as badly unsuited for so spiritual a challenge. Since it leads to the downfall of Arthur’s kingdom, Gawain’s feud with Lancelot is the deed that condemns him in the eyes of many authors, though even here views do differ. Some, like Berger and Sharan Newman in Guinevere Evermore (1985), emphasize his nobility and reluctance to perform his duty to avenge his brothers against his good friend. Most who treat the love between Lancelot and Guinevere sympathetically, however, though they may acknowledge Gawain’s positive qualities, blame his pride, as does Nancy McKenzie in The Child Queen (1994) and The High Queen (1995, both revised and issued in 2002 as one novel, Queen of Camelot). The harshest condemnation of his conduct is found in The Wicked Day (1983) by Mary Stewart, who allows him no redeeming features whatsoever. In her efforts to exonerate Mordred of responsibility for the final disaster, she shifts blame onto the rest of the wild, uncontrollable Orkney clan, Gawain included. Gawain’s treatment in the twentieth century thus reflects the influence of the conflicting traditions that authors inherited as well as their own creative needs. Historical novelists who draw upon the chronicles usually portray him as a valiant and loyal follower of Arthur; writers who adapt material from the verse romances, especially Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the story of his wedding to Dame Ragnell, usually praise his courtesy and loyalty; those who follow Malory and the prose romances are usually more critical of his failings, particularly anger and vengefulness. The mingling of traditions, however, can lead to radical reinterpretations of Gawain’s conduct in familiar stories, and this often works to his benefit.61 Non-English Literature (Post-Medieval) After the Middle Ages, interest in Arthurian legend dwindled in all languages of Europe, and when it did revive at the end of the eighteenth century, it never attained the popularity it found in English. Those works that did treat it, moreover, paid more attention to other figures, notably Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guenevere, Parzival and Galahad, Merlin and Arthur himself. Gawain was more likely to appear, therefore, in translations from English of popular novels like White’s Once and Future King (translated into German in 1976 as Der König auf Camelot) and to be treated accordingly. Where authors did draw upon their own indigenous medieval versions, they were inclined to reduce or even eliminate Gawain’s role. Modern French Arthurian literature largely ignores Gauvain, as he is called in French literature, preferring other figures. He is reduced typically to a minor character in works like Le Chevalier de neige (The Snow Knight, 1953), a play by Boris Vian (later developed into an opera) that presents the story of Lancelot and Guenevere as found in the Vulgate Cycle. The exception to this pattern is Gauvain et le Chevalier Vert (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight), one

22 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby of a series of plays under the title Graal Théâtre (1977) by Florence Delay and Jacques Roubaud. This condenses material from not only the English poem, but also Chrétien’s Yvain and Perceval and the First (Gauvain-) Continuation. The play is enlivened by ironic commentary and some nice touches of humor, notably Kay’s incredulity when he hears that most of the army’s supplies have been sent to the very people it is besieging because Gauvain, Yvain, and Arthur gallantly took pity on two hungry damsels, and Flore de Lis’s insouciance when she tells her father and brother that she has just lost her maidenhood to Gauvain. Yet despite the humor at his expense, Gawain remains, as in the verse romances, an attractive and entertaining figure whose fondness for a fair damsel does not prevent him from rejecting the amorous advances of Bercilak’s lady, nor from achieving partial success at the Grail Castle. When interest in medieval culture revived in German-speaking countries after the Romantic Movement, it focused upon their own mythical past in works like the Niebelungenlied rather than upon the Matter of Britain. Whenever it did turn to the Arthurian legend, moreover, it was to Gottfried von Strassburg’s Tristan or Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. Whereas the former excludes Gawan, as he is called in German literature, the latter gives him a major role. Unfortunately, his adventures were the very ones most likely to be cut in later adaptations of the story, especially those for children, with the result that Arthur’s nephew often became a marginal figure, just one more knight of the Round Table. Richard Wagner completely eliminated him from his last opera, Parsifal (1882), which exercised a powerful influence over subsequent reworkings of the story. Only when writers sought more widely for sources did Gawan command attention. He is the central character in Gawan (1901), one of eight Arthurian plays by Eduard Stucken collected under the title Der Gral: Ein dramatisches Epos (The Grail: A Dramatic Epic, 1924); he finds a place in Käthe Recheis’s König Arthur und die Ritter der Tafelrunde (King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table), a novel for younger readers influenced by Malory; and he figures prominently in two of the most important plays in modern Germany, Merlin oder das Wüste Land (Merlin or the Wasteland,1981) by Tankred Dorst and Ursula Ehler, and Die Ritter der Tafelrunde (The Knights of the Round Table, 1989) by Christoph Hein. Gawan also benefited from the appetite for translations of English novels by authors like T. H. White, Mary Stewart, Gillian Bradshaw, and Marion Zimmer Bradley, whose Mists of Avalon was a German bestseller in 1983. During the Middle Ages, the Dutch viewed Walewein, as Gawain was called, favorably, and Penninc and Pieter Vostaert made him the central hero of the Roman van Walewein.62 After the publication of its text in 1848, the poem was adapted in M. C. H. Betz’s verse novel Walewein (1890); and Louis Couperus devised an ironic continuation of the story in Het zwevende schaakbord (The Floating Chessboard, which appeared first in installments, 1917–18, then in a single volume, 1922), though this time the hero achieves less success.

Introduction • 23 Jaap ter Haar, the best-known modern Dutch writer to deal with the legend, separates Walewein into two characters in Koning Arthur (1967, translated into English in 1973 as King Arthur): Welwyn, who is King Lot’s son, is noble and idealistic, whereas Gawain is “a great man, blinded by hatred.”63 Unlike the other post-medieval literatures, Gaelic literature survived in oral tradition. As a result, some of the songs and tales that have been collected may have been handed down from the Middle Ages, often with considerable variations.64 Gawain, whose name appears in various forms, figures in several. In the Irish Eachtra an Mhadra Mhaoil (Adventures of the Crop-eared Dog), Sir Bhalbhuaidh (Gawain) helps the son of the King of India, who has been transformed into a dog, regain his human form. By contrast, in the Irish Eachtra an Amadáin Mhóir (The Adventures of the Great Fool), which has similarities with the story of Perceval, he takes on Kay’s role by mocking the ignorant hero, slapping Arthur’s daughter when she laughs, then being punished severely for his unkindness. In the Scottish Sir Uallabh O’Corn, Sir Uallabh (Gawain) undergoes a series of fantastic adventures before marrying the daughter of the King of India and becoming King of Ireland. In one Scottish variant of the tale of Carados and the serpent found in the First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval, Sheen Billy (Gawain) takes on the role of protagonist. Finally, the Scottish Am Bròn Binn (The Sweet Sorrow) recounts Gawain’s quest for a girl who has visited Arthur, usually in a dream. This exists in three versions, and although Gawain rescues the girl from a giant in one, in another she lulls him to sleep and beheads him. Elsewhere, Gawain has been portrayed mainly in translations from English. The Spanish, for example, have been particularly interested in Tennyson’s Arthurian poems and modern Arthurian fiction.65 When Spanish authors create original works, they focus on other characters, particularly Merlin and Vivien. Gawain makes a rare appearance in Darío Xohán Cabana’s novel Galván en Saor (1989), which shifts between the present and medieval times: Galván (Gawain) travels to Saor (Galicia), where he meets Merlin, now a bus driver. Cabana thus follows a common trend among Galician authors of transporting Arthurian characters and motifs to their home region. In these post-medieval literatures, thus, relatively little attention is paid to Arthurian legend, and when it is, it is to characters other than Gawain. The exceptions to this pattern occur in translations from popular English works and in Gaelic oral tradition. Visual Media 1: Art Arthurian art in a variety of media flourished in two main periods, the later Middle Ages and the Arthurian Revival in Victorian England. Gawain makes a promising start. On the Modena archivolt in northern Italy, the earliest representation of an Arthurian theme in monumental sculpture,66 the name Galvaginus (Gawain) is inscribed above one of the knights who ride to rescue

24 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby Winlogee (Guenevere) from the castle where she is imprisoned by Mardoc, and this has led some scholars to argue that Gawain and not Lancelot was the original rescuer of the abducted queen. Attention, however, soon shifted to figures like Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guenevere, Arthur and Galahad. The most popular subject featuring Gawain in medieval art, especially on ivories, was his adventure in the Perilous Bed, originating in the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes. He does appear, however, in other scenes from the poet’s works, such as his combat with the hero in Yvain, and, in Perceval, his warding off assailants with a chessboard and his encounter with a lion at the Castle of Marvels. He also appears in pursuit of the Floating Chessboard in a miniature at the beginning of the Dutch Roman van Walewein. In illuminations of the highly popular Vulgate Cycle, Gawain figures along with other knights as they ride through forests, approach castles, dine at feasts, and fight in battle or single combat. Such figures are not individualized other than by their coats-of-arms: in earlier manuscripts, Gawain sometimes bore a silver shield with a red quarter in the upper left corner, but in the fifteenth century, this shield became purple with a double-headed gold eagle.67 This was his shield for war. In peace he bore a shield with his personal device, most famously the gold pentangle on a red background in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The four crude illustrations in the manuscript of this poem are a striking contrast to its literary merits, and they confirm “the limitations of English secular illumination ca. 1400” (Whitaker, The Legends of King Arthur in Art, p. 77) in comparison with the work on the Continent. Nor were the earliest Arthurian woodcuts much of an improvement, for when Wynkyn de Worde reissued Caxton’s text of Malory’s Morte Darthur in 1498 with twenty-one illustrations, they were clumsily executed. Gawain does appear with Ector in one, wearing armor in the latest fashion, and it is of interest to observe in Arthurian illustrations how clothing fashions change as well as artistic styles. When English artists returned to the legend during the Arthurian Revival, they exhibited more talent; but the Pre-Raphaelites largely ignored Gawain in favor of an ecstatic Galahad and Elaine of Astolat (or her avatar the Lady of Shalott), whose brightly illuminated dead body floating down the dark river to Camelot appealed to the Victorian taste for morbid and sentimental scenes. Given Gawain’s unflattering portrayal by Tennyson and Morris, it was perhaps just as well he was passed over. William Dyce was commissioned by Prince Albert to paint a series of seven frescoes for the Queen’s Robing Room in the new Palace of Westminster (1848–64), and his earliest design, Piety: The Knights of the Round Table departing on the Quest for the Holy Grail (1849), included an impatient Gawain on his rearing horse. That design was rejected, but Dyce did portray him in a later fresco, Mercy: Sir Gawain swearing to be merciful and never again be against Ladies (1854). 68 Most often, however, Gawain appears as a failed Grail knight, as in Edward Burne-Jones’s “How

Introduction • 25 Gawaine sought the Sangreal and might not see it because his eyes were blinded by thoughts of the deeds of Kings,” one of four stained-glass panels in The Story of the Quest for the Holy Grail (1886), and “The Failure of Sir Gawaine and Sir Ewain,” one of seven tapestries in The Quest of the Holy Grail (1891–94), woven by Morris & Co.69 Since most book illustrations are found in retellings of Malory for children, Gawain appears but rarely, though to judge from Howard Pyle’s depiction of the unsavory seducer in two illustrations for the Pelleas and Ettarde episode in his Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), this was perhaps just as well.70 Elsewhere he figures in one of the illustrations by Dan Beard of Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) and in an illustration by Jessie King for Sebastian Evans’s translation of The High History of the Holy Grail (1903). In the twentieth century, however Gawain is most likely to appear in the illustrations of retellings for children of his encounter with the Green Knight and of his wedding with Dame Ragnell, the Loathly Lady. For example, the former story was retold by Gwyn Jones with illustrations by Dorothea Braby (1952) and by Michael Morpurgo with illustrations by Michael Foreman (2004); and both were retold by Selina Hastings with award-winning illustrations by Juan Wijngaard, the former in 1981, the latter in 1985. 71 Charles Keeping provided powerful black-and-white illustrations for The Tale of Sir Gawain (1987) by Neil Philip, in which the gravely wounded knight recalls a number of adventures, but none picture Gawain himself, interestingly enough. Visual Media 2: Films, Comics, Games To a populace increasingly oriented toward visual media, films, comics, and games have exercised a powerful influence, serving for many as a “gateway” to the Arthurian legend. Thus while they may strike some medievalists as pale imitations, or even trivializations, of a rich heritage, they do have a wider impact on society in general than their artistic merits might recommend. If an author as popular and influential as Marion Zimmer Bradley can speak of the comic strip Prince Valiant as “an early inspiration,”72 clearly we need to take such works into account. Films on Arthurian subjects have proven almost as disappointing as plays, despite some worthy attempts. Only in adaptations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has Gawain attracted much attention.73 Elsewhere, his role has been cut or drastically reduced to focus on the central characters, usually the love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot. The audience would need to be alert to spot him in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981), and First Knight (1995). Gawain plays a minor role in Knights of the Round Table (1953) as a loyal retainer of Lancelot, in the confusing Lancelot: Guardian of Time (1999) as Lancelot’s valiant foe/companion, and in King Arthur (2004) as one of the Sarmatian knights who help the

26 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby Britons defeat the Saxons. He is a good-hearted foil to the hero in two adaptations of Hal Foster’s comic strip Prince Valiant (the first in 1954, the second in 1997) as well as in The Legend of Prince Valiant (1992), an animated series by Sei Young Animation Company for the Family Channel. He is ennobled by his love for Dame Ragnell in the 1985 CBS television film Arthur the King. We see more of Gawain in two impressive French films, Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac (1974) and Eric Rohmer’s Perceval le Gallois (1978), but even they reduce his role from that which he plays in their sources, the Vulgate Mort Artu and Chrétien’s Perceval, in order to focus upon their central hero. His encounter with the Green Knight is included in King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (1981), an animated series, and it is the central plot in three films: Gawain and the Green Knight (1973) and Sword of the Valiant (1983), both directed by Stephen Weeks, and Thames Television’s Gawain and the Green Knight (1991). The first two were not successful, but the third has won praise for its thoughtful approach to the material. The dominant Arthurian figures in the comics and graphic novels have been Merlin, Morgan le Fay, Arthur, and Mordred, joined by a wide variety of newcomers like the Shining Knight, the Black Knight, and the demon Etrigan (Merlin’s half-brother). This reflects the popularity in the medium of figures with supernatural powers (Arthur wields his magical sword Excalibur, while Mordred is taught by Morgan), sharply divided into good and evil. Knights of the Round Table like Gawain often become little more than features to establish the Arthurian setting. Gawain does achieve some prominence in the best-known Arthurian comic strip, Prince Valiant, begun in 1937 by Harold R. Foster and continued first by John Cullen Murphy, then Murphy’s son Cullen. The hero, Val, starts as squire to, and then, after achieving knighthood, becomes the good friend of, Gawain, who is portrayed as a heroic but merry character. Foster emphasized the historical context of fifth-century Britain, but since most comic strip creators prefer superheroes, they usually pay little attention to Gawain. Two exceptions are Mike W. Barr in Camelot 3000 (issued in twelve installments, 1982–85; reprinted in one volume, 1988) and James Calafiore in Camelot Eternal (1990–91). In the former, Gawain is reincarnated as a black South African, closely bound to his family; in the latter, which offers an alternative conclusion to Malory’s story, he still refuses to forgive Launcelot for the death of his brothers and eventually kills him. He does occasionally appear in the comics in other languages: in Dutch, for example, Frank Herzen and Gerrit Stapel created a cartoon strip Gawain en de Groene Ridder (Gawain and the Green Knight, 1980). Gawain’s rare appearances in the comics thus preserve his status as a valiant warrior. In games, Gawain is even less visible. He is not one of the five characters that one can play as in Konami’s video game version of the 2004 film King Arthur, and this is typical of his fate: to be excluded in order to focus upon other

Introduction • 27 figures. Occasionally, however, the game player takes on the role of Gawain: in Brimstone (1985), an early computer game developed by Synapse Software and published by Brøderbund, Gawain encounters both the Green Knight and Morgan le Fay during his adventures in the underworld; and he is the newly created knight who is sent to defeat Morgana in Chronicles of the Sword (1996), an adventure video game from Psygnosis. He is one of the Famous People available to the game master in Greg Stafford’s role-playing game King Arthur Pendragon (1985, 4th edition 1993), which notes that he is gracious and generous, but also lustful and vengeful where his family is concerned. Gawain is similarly characterized in La Table Ronde (n.d.), a French role-playing game designed by Anne Vétillard for Jeux Descartes. In 1989, Stafford also designed a story-telling game based on Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, in which Gawain is described as “a lusty, freedom-loving knight whose only fear is marriage.”74 Because his abilities are so far above those of ordinary characters, he is normally reserved for the game master in role-playing games. He is one of the ancient characters in Duel of the Ages, a card game, and one of the ButtonLords in Pendragon ButtonLords (2000), a board game from Green Knight. Gawain’s portrayal in visual media thus demonstrates a lack of attention. He figures most frequently in illuminations of medieval manuscripts, but less often than knights like Lancelot and Tristan. The English verse romances in which he is the hero were rarely illuminated, and the influence of Malory and Tennyson dampened enthusiasm for him among artists in the nineteenth century and book illustrators in the twentieth. In films, comics, and games his appearances are rare and often fleeting. Only when these media turn to the stories of his encounter with the Green Knight and Dame Ragnell is he given the opportunity to display the courtesy and loyalty for which he was famed in medieval romance. Conclusion The wide fluctuations in the treatment of Gawain offer us a figure that appears full of contradictions. The chronicles praise him as Arthur’s mightiest warrior, unsurpassed in future generations. In French romance, however, this supremacy is increasingly challenged by younger heroes who are attracted to Arthur’s court, and Gawain’s defeats at the hands of Lancelot, Tristan, and others, steadily accumulate until challengers begin to wonder how he ever gained a reputation for prowess in the first place. The earlier French verse romances present Gawain as the standard of courtesy and discretion against whom all others are measured (and almost invariably found wanting), and this image is largely preserved in English, German, and Dutch verse. In later French verse, his idealism often leads to embarrassing situations that create humor at his expense, whereas in the prose tradition his conduct becomes totally reprehensible. The modesty and compassion that serve the hero so well in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and accounts of his wedding to Dame Ragnell are

28 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby replaced by the pride that takes affront at the achievements of others in the Prose Tristan and by vengefulness in accounts of the Death of Arthur by Malory and others. That Gawain’s reputation has recovered from such calumny does suggest that he possesses certain traits that continue to appeal to us down through the ages. First of all, Gawain is unswervingly loyal to Arthur, a trait that commends itself to readers in whom the king’s struggle to build a better world strikes a sympathetic chord. Secondly, once the fashion for courtly love had passed and the clerical exaltation of chastity grown less persuasive, Gawain’s involvement with unattached damsels (always less frequent than often assumed) may seem less offensive than an adulterous relationship that destroys a kingdom or a religious fervor that abandons other responsibilities to seek personal salvation. Indeed, the excesses of religious fanaticism are often condemned as a serious threat to Arthur’s rule.75 Finally, the courtesy for which Gawain is so famed goes beyond polite manners to embrace generosity to the poor (in Chrétien’s Perceval), kindness to the aged (in Claris et Laris), and aid to ladies who need someone to protect their rights. The gratitude for his service wins for his ghost the opportunity to warn Arthur in his dream on the eve of the Battle of Camlann. He is even fond of animals, as is demonstrated by his attachment to his horse Gringalet and his anger at the killing of his dogs on his first quest in Malory and elsewhere.76 Gawain will always find detractors, for authors, like the rest of us, seek a convenient figure upon whom to fasten blame and so excuse the faults of their own hero, whether it be Tristan in the Prose Tristan, Lancelot in Malory’s Morte Darthur, or Mordred in Mary Stewart’s The Wicked Day. Ironically, however, the very contradictions in his conduct that have emerged in different works have also created interesting possibilities for the figure of Gawain. In shedding the perfection that precluded character development and discouraged his adoption as central hero, he has sprung to prominence in some of the finest works of Arthurian literature: Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval in the twelfth century; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the fourteenth; and, in the twentieth, Rosemary Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset, Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, and Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex. Gawain’s heroic struggle against the enemy, both without and (more importantly) within, here and elsewhere, will always win the admiration and touch the hearts of those lured by the Arthurian dream of a better world. Contents of This Volume Of the nineteen essays in this volume, three are new compositions, four are excerpts from books and long articles, and twelve are reprinted articles. Translations of quotations have been provided by the authors or the editors where warranted. The essays trace the evolution of Gawain’s character, from

Introduction • 29 earliest mention in the chronicles to most recent appearance in literature and film. B. J. Whiting’s “Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale,” is the classic wide-ranging survey of the treatment of the hero in French and English literature, from Wace to T. H. White. In this substantial excerpt, Whiting attributes the decline in Gawain’s reputation to the “epic degeneration” that affects all popular heroes, and to his being supplanted in medieval literature by newer champions who follow the dictates of courtly love on one hand and the increasingly ascetic demands of the Grail quest on the other (p. 29). To these impersonal forces Whiting adds deliberate vilification at the hands of two writers in particular: the author of the Prose Tristan and Tennyson. Courtesy emerges as Gawain’s most outstanding characteristic in the Middle Ages. Rachel Bromwich’s “Gwalchmei m. Gwyar” is excerpted from the Notes to Personal Names in the second edition of Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads. She scrutinizes the appearance of Gwalchmei in William of Malmesbury’s chronicle and in Welsh tradition, the variations in his name and parentage, and the courtesy and valor he displays in the three Welsh romances. She speculates that Gwalchmei’s origins, like that of many figures in early Welsh tradition, are probably northern. The next two essays deal with Chrétien de Troyes. In “The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes,” William A. Nitze examines Gauvain’s role in the chronicles before turning to Chrétien’s romances. He concludes that it is to the latter we owe our conception of Gauvain as “an exemplar of perspicacity and judgment, a model of courtesy and understanding, to whom the entire court—ladies as well as knights—is beholden, and never lacking in a sense of reality and humor” (p. 69). While acknowledging Gauvain’s virtues, Douglas Kelly argues in “Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes” that not only is Gauvain an unreliable counselor in matters of courtly love, but that courtly love is superior to “mere chivalry” in Chrétien’s Arthurian world, and this sets the stage for his decline in later romances (p. 78). The next three essays survey French verse romance after Chrétien. In “Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic ‘Struggle for Life’? A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century,” Friedrich Wolfzettel judges that in the works studied Gauvain illustrates not just the comic frustration of his good intentions but also “the tragic inadequacy of the fictional Arthurian world under the real conditions of life” (p. 86). “Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances” by Keith Busby examines Hunbaut, Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, L’Atre Périlleux, and Les Merveilles de Rigomer. Busby concludes that “the overwhelming impression left by these late romances is of the esteem and affection in which Gauvain is held by other characters in the romances, by authors, and,

30 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby above all one must suppose, by their audiences” (p. 110). An example of this response is demonstrated in “The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472” by Lori Walters. After summarizing the nine romances in the manuscript, Walters decides that “the person µltimately responsible for producing the thirteenth-century Chantilly MS 472 seemed to make a conscious attempt to create a multibranch romance centered upon Gauvain” (p. 113). The results are comparable to the Roman de Renart. Moreover, the omission of material from some romances, notably Chrétien’s Lancelot and the Perlesvaus, not only sharpens the focus on Gauvain but also lowers the prestige of competitors by showing their failures rather than successes. This is evidence of a strong partiality for the hero. By contrast, the prose romances demonstrate an inexorable process of denigration. In “The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances,” Fanni Bogdanow traces Gauvain’s sorry decline. Although he remains a generally admirable figure in the earlier Vulgate branches, the Queste del Saint Graal reveals his spiritual limitations and the Mort Artu his vengefulness. The Prose Tristan transforms him into a villainous knight, the very antithesis of his earlier self, and this approach is followed by the PostVulgate Cycle and the Palamedes, which add episodes to demonstrate his treachery and vindictiveness. In “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” Keith Busby examines in detail Gauvain’s crimes in the Prose Tristan, quoting from two manuscripts of the romance (largely unpublished in 1977): Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, fr. 757 and 772. His basic fault is that he “quite simply, wishes to do as he pleases, with no thought of others” (p. 162). Like Bogdanow, Busby believes that the author disgraces Gauvain to make the central hero look better. “Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain” by Raymond H. Thompson examines the story of Gawain’s birth and early years as preserved in the Perlesvaus, Les Enfances Gauvain, and De Ortu Waluuanii (On the Rise of Gawain), a Latin prose romance probably composed in the thirteenth century. The story fits the pattern that is widespread among legendary heroes: the father or his representative tries to kill the infant, who survives in the care of lowly people and returns to punish the father and reclaim his birthright. It explains the hostility between uncle (Arthur) and nephew (Gawain), whose relationship elsewhere is marked by its devotion. French romance provided a model for poets and authors in other countries as well as their own, and the remaining essays trace the spread of Arthurian legend throughout Europe and beyond. “Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry: Gawan in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival,” an essay written specially for this casebook by Albrecht Classen, assesses Gawan’s role in one of the greatest and most influential German poems of the Middle Ages. Wolfram modifies and reinterprets Chrétien’s Perceval,

Introduction • 31 providing Gawan with a much more positive role than he plays in the source. Although Parzival remains preeminent, Gawan is developed into “the human hero, the protagonist who, despite his own shortcomings and failings, fights for those in need and restores justice, happiness, and love to this world” (p. 184). In Dutch romance as in German, Gawain is usually portrayed favorably, as Bart Besamusca demonstrates in “Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein.” Walewein, as the hero is called in this poem by the Flemish poets Penninc and Pieter Vostaert, proves himself “the ideal knight and lover,” lacking not a single virtue in his devotion to the fair Ysabele (p. 191). Besamusca offers two explanations for this treatment: first, Walewein’s favorable image in Flemish oral tradition; and second, the emergence, in literature outside France, of a new type of hero who does not develop but rather illustrates types of ideal behavior. In another new essay, “The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy,” Marie-José Heijkant discusses Gauvain’s appearance on the Modena archivolt as well as in Italian literature. She notes that he is, in general, more positively portrayed in translations of the Prose Tristan than in their French source, and then she provides a close analysis of the Cantare di Ponzela Gaia, where “Gauvain plays a role only rarely assigned to him. He is the hero who, propelled by the force of love, mends his reputation after having damaged it by his own unwise behavior” (p. 205). Phillip C. Boardman’s “Middle English Arthurian Romance: The Repetition and Reputation of Gawain,” marks a shift to English literature, in which the figure of Gawain has received the most attention, both good and bad, since the thirteenth century. Boardman notes that Gawain “gains stature as an individual English hero as the English romances establish an identity separate from the French cycle” (p. 213). Drawing upon the concept of “repetition” as defined by Peter Haidu and others, he surveys the romances in which Gawain figures. He then considers in more detail two examples of what he calls “the romance of contrast,” The Avowing of Arthur and the Alliterative Morte Arthure, as well as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, “a masterfully structured single-hero romance” (pp. 218, 219). It is this last poem, the finest Arthurian romance in English, that W. A. Davenport examines in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Poet’s Treatment of the Hero and his Adventure,” an excerpt from his book The Art of the Gawain-Poet. He argues that “the reader is made conscious of the difficulty of fulfilling a heroic role and is asked to respond to a hero who has sufficient imagination to feel fear and to be sensitively aware that at the end of the road waits death” (pp. 239–240). Despite his failure, Gawain gains our sympathy because we come to view him as a human being rather than the idealized hero of romance. Unfortunately for Gawain, it was not Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but Malory’s Morte Darthur that was to prove most influential for later writers. In

32 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby “Gawain and Heroic Knighthood,” an excerpt from her book Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, Beverly Kennedy offers an explanation for Malory’s decision to present him so negatively. He chose Gawain to represent Heroic knighthood, which defines honor strictly in relation to family, and to show its inferiority to Worshipful knighthood represented by Lamorak, Tristan, and Arthur himself, and to True knighthood represented by Lancelot and Galahad. With the last three essays, we shift out of the Middle Ages. In a new essay titled “Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature,” Raymond H. Thompson conducts a broad survey of the hero’s appearance, and he discerns the persistence of three distinct medieval traditions of the hero: chronicle, verse, and prose. He then focuses on three novels: Rosemary Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset, Gillian Bradshaw’s In Winter’s Shadow, and Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex. These authors mingle elements from the different traditions in order to develop the controlling vision in their own work. This mingling of traditions does mitigate the negative image of Gawain handed down by Malory. In “Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger’s Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel,” Klaus P. Jankofsky offers a detailed analysis of this adventure, which is based, albeit very loosely, upon the story of Gawain’s encounter with the Green Knight. The hero learns that “things are not what they seem,” and this lesson helps him develop into “an ever more congenial foil for Arthur’s self-criticism and a worthy successor on the throne because of his spirit and moral stature” (pp. 288, 290). Finally, in “Sir Gawain in Films,” David J. Williams examines Gawain’s appearance on the screen. His role is invariably curtailed, except in the three adaptations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Of these, the only “conscientious attempt” is Thames Television’s 1991 production, which offers instructive insights into the problems of translating a “verbal text . . . into a visual” (p. 298). Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the authors and the editors of journals and presses who gave permission to reprint previously published material. Full acknowledgement is given with each essay. We also thank the authors who wrote and updated original essays and who provided translations, as well as Norris Lacy, the series editor, for his patience and guidance. On a more personal note, we thank family and friends: in particular, my wife Hilary offered understanding and support during my long hours on the computer, and our son Gawen (unsurprisingly) sent enthusiastic exhortations (Ray Thompson); and, as ever, to José (Keith Busby). Notes Works cited in full in the Select Bibliography appear in these notes in abbreviated form. 1. The Squire, His Knight, & His Lady (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), pp. 231–32.

Introduction • 33 2. See Robert Huntington Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (Boston: Ginn, 1906; 2nd ed., ed. Roger Sherman Loomis, New York: Franklin, 1966); the entries in Lacy, The New Arthurian Encyclopedia; and Edward Donald Kennedy, ed., introduction to King Arthur: A Casebook (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. xv–xxii, which notes the popularity of these usually undistinguished works, pp. xviii–xix. 3. E. K. Chambers, trans., Arthur of Britain (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1927), p. 17. The Welsh Englynion y Beddau (Stanzas of the Graves) mentions that “The grave of Gwalchmai is in Peryddon / as a reproach to men,” which may allude to the story that he was killed by fellow citizens: see Patrick Sims-Williams, “The Early Welsh Arthurian Poems,” in Bromwich, Jarman, and Roberts, The Arthur of the Welsh, p. 50. 4. Bromwich, Triads, p. 372; the relevant passage is excerpted in this casebook. See also Delbouille, “Les Origines du personnage et du nom de Gauvain.” 5. Geoffrey describes Anna as the sister of Aurelius Ambrosius, but scholars agree that this is a momentary confusion on the chronicler’s part: see Madeleine Blaess, “Arthur’s Sisters,” Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 8 (1956): 69–77. There is confusion too in Welsh tradition, where Gwalchmai (as the hero is called) is identified as the son of Gwyar rather than Lleu (Loth). The Brut Dingestow resolves this dilemma by creating two separate characters: see Bromwich, Triads, p. 373, which is excerpted in this casebook, and Brynley F. Roberts, “Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae and Brut Y Brenhinedd,” in Bromwich, Jarman, and Roberts, The Arthur of the Welsh, pp. 112–13. 6. I. D. O. Arnold and M. M. Pelan, eds., La Partie Arthurienne du Roman de Brut (Paris: Klincksieck, 1962). 7. Wace, Le Roman de Brut, ed. I. Arnold (Paris: Société des Anciens Textes Français, 1940), vol. 2, p. 519, note to v. 9862. 8. For a discussion of the “cruelty” of medieval monarchs, including Arthur, see Larry D. Benson, “The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Medieval Tragedy,” Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 76–78. 9. See Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, pp. 35–40 and Shichtman, “Gawain in Wace and Layamon.” 10. See Shichtman, “Sir Gawain in Scotland.” 11. See Fletcher, p. 123. 12. See Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature. 13. See François Pirot, Recherches sur les connaissances littéraires des troubadours occitans et catalans des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Barcelona: Real Academia des Buenas Letras, 1972), pp. 444–45, pp. 476–81, and pp. 520–22. 14. Cf. Pierre Gallais, “Bleheri, la cour de Poitiers et la diffusion des récits arthuriens sur le continent,” in Actes du VIIe congrès national de la Société française de littérature comparée (Paris: Didier, 1967), pp. 47–79. 15. Wace, Le Roman de Brut (see note 6 above), vv. 1247–58. 16. Chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, ed. Wendelin Foerster (Halle: Niemeyer, 1890), vv. 1691–92. 17. Chrétien de Troyes, Yvain (Der Löwenritter), ed. Wendelin Foerster (Halle: Niemeyer, 1887), vv. 2484–538, 5991ff. 18. See Kelly, “Gauvain and Fin’Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes,” reprinted in this casebook. 19. See Busby, Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval (Le conte du Graal) (London: Grant and Cutler, 1993), pp. 51–86. 20. See Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, pp. 152–212. 21. On all of these epigonal romances, see, in addition to the essays in this casebook, Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart: zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980), translated into English by Margaret and Roger Middleton as The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). 22. See Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature, pp. 212–35 and pp. 315–74. 23. See Busby, “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” reprinted in this casebook. 24. The best sources for general information on Italian and Iberian Arthurian literature are articles in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia; Delcorno Branca, Tristano e Lancilotto in Italia; and Sharrer, A Critical Bibliography of Hispanic Arthurian Material, vol. 1. 25. English translation of Lanzelet by K. G. T. Webster (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951).

34 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby 26. The best study of these two romances is Christoph Cormeau, Wigalois und Diu Crône. Zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgechichte des nachklassichen Aventiureromans (Munich: Artemis, 1977), to whom I am indebted for the phrase “preformed character.” 27. Middle Dutch Arthuriana has recently been the object of a minor industry, stimulated originally by W. P. Gerritsen and more recently by F. P. van Oostrom, J. D. Janssens, Bart Besamusca, and others. See in particular Besamusca, Walewein, Moriaen en de Ridder metter mouwen: intertekstualiteit in drie Middelnederlandse Arturromans (Hilversum: Verloren, 1993), with a full bibliography, and Marjolein Hogenbirk, “Avontuur en Anti-avontuur een onderzoek naar Walewein ende Keye, een Arturroman uit de Lancelotcompilatie” (Ph.D. diss., Utrecht, 2004). In her recent dissertation, “‘Entie hoofsche Walewein, sijn gheselle was daer ne ghein’: ironie en het Walewein-beeld in de Roman van Walewein en in de Europese middeleeuwse Arturliteratur” (Ph.D. diss., Catholic University of Brussels, 2004), Veerle Uyttersprot nevertheless argues for a somewhat ironic presentation of Walewein. The Walewein has been translated into English by David F. Johnson (New York: Garland, 1992). 28. On the Old Norse-Icelandic romances, see Marianne Kalinke, King Arthur, North-by-Northwest (Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1981). 29. See Roger S. Loomis, “Gawain, Gwri, and Cuchulainn”; cf. Bromwich, Triads, p. 371, n. 2, excerpted in Chapter 2 of this casebook as n. 3. 30. See Bromwich, Triads, p. 369, excerpted in this casebook. 31. Richard M. Loomis, trans., “Culhwch and Olwen,” in The Romance of Arthur: New Expanded Edition, ed. James J. Wilhelm (New York: Garland, 1994), p. 40. 32. Rachel Bromwich, “The Welsh Triads,” in Loomis, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, p. 44; see also Geoffrey Ashe’s entry in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 461–62. For dating, see the introduction in Bromwich, Triads. 33. Bromwich defines the original Welsh word deifnyawc as “important, well-endowed, wealthy, substantial.” 34. See note 5 above. 35. For the relationship between the Welsh and French versions, see the entries in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia. 36. See Boardman, “Middle English Arthurian Romance,” pp. 74–76, reprinted in this casebook. 37. W. R. J. Barron, “Golagros and Gawane,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, p. 157. The volume also provides information on manuscripts, sources, and dating of the English works, and it groups them into categories. 38. See Maldwyn Mills, “Ywain and Gawain,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 120–21. 39. These romances, with the exception of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, have been collected in Hahn, Sir Gawain. 40. Benson, for example, includes in Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a section titled “Gawain’s traditional imperfections,” pp. 104–9; see also W. R. J. Barron, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, who insists that in French tradition “Gawain had long been a notorious philanderer, the skilled seducer who loves and leaves”, p. 170. In examining Gawain’s conduct within the poem itself, some scholars view him with a very severe eye. See, for example, the sections titled “The testing of Gawain” and “The verdict of Gawain’s performance” in Spearing, The Gawain-Poet, pp. 191–236. 41. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, eds., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 2nd ed. revised by Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967). 42. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 33–34. These distinctions date back to Aristotle’s Poetics. 43. See, for example, Thompson, “‘Muse on þi mirrour,’” as well as the essays in Barron, The Arthur of the English. 44. Mary Hamel, ed., Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition (New York: Garland, 1984). 45. Fichte, in “The Figure of Sir Gawain,” adopts a more negative interpretation of Gawain’s conduct: “Gawain, therefore, exemplifies irrational fortitude, whose ill-timed and ill-considered bravado precipitates his and Arthur’s fall”, p. 116; however, cf. Boardman, pp. 81–84. 46. Ralph Hanna III, ed., The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1974). 47. See Rosamund Allen, “The Awntyrs off Arthure,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 154–55 and p. 331, n. 176.

Introduction • 35 48. See Maldwyn Mills, “The Jeaste of Syr Gawayne,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, p. 163. 49. Gillian Rogers, ed., “Folk Romance,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 197–224. 50. See Carole Weinberg, “The Stanzaic Morte Arthur,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 104–5: she observes that “The narrator’s impersonal stance avoids explicit condemnation of either Gawain or Lancelot”, p. 105. 51. See Bogdanow, “The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances,” and Busby, “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” both of which are included in this casebook. In Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, pp. 84–85, Kennedy suggests some of the reasons that may have influenced Malory’s choice of material so unfavorable to Gawain; the passage is reprinted in this casebook. 52. On Arthur’s wars against the Romans, see Mary E. Dichman, “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius: The Rise of Lancelot,” in Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Robert Mayer Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), pp. 67–90. On the tale of Gareth, see P. J. C. Field, “Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” in Barron, The Arthur of the English, pp. 234–35. On the Pelleas incident, see Whiting, “Gawain,” p. 200, excerpted in this casebook. On the murders of Pellinor and Lamorak, see Kennedy, pp. 205–6, excerpted in this casebook. Not only does Malory depict Gawain’s vengefulness as more obdurate (e.g., Gawain refuses to allow Arthur to make peace with Lancelot), but he goes out of his way to win sympathy for Lancelot (e.g., his addition of Lancelot’s offer to endow houses of religion in memory of Gareth). Passages that might have gained sympathy for Gawain are omitted (e.g., the genuine pathos of his grief over his brothers’ death): see Eugene Vinaver, ed., The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, rev. P. J. C. Field (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 1635–39, notes to pp. 1186.22, 1194.20–26, and 1199.5. 53. For a fuller discussion of these and other later texts, see Thompson “Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature,” in this casebook. 54. See Whiting, pp. 200–3 and p. 211. 55. Christopher Ricks, ed., The Poems of Tennyson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), vol. 3, p. 550. 56. Whiting notes that, throughout his poetry, “Morris’s treatment of Gawain is consistently and deliberately unfavorable,” p. 210. 57. For further information, see Thompson’s entry on “English, Arthurian Literature in (Modern),” in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 136–44 and Introductions to its Supplements; see also Thompson, The Return from Avalon. 58. See Dan Nastali, “Swords, Grails, and Bag-Puddings: A Survey of Children’s Poetry and Plays” and Jerome V. Reel, Jr., “Good King Arthur: Arthurian Music for Children,” (both) in Lupack, Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, pp. 190–91 and pp. 231–32. 59. Thomas Berger, Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (New York: Delacorte, 1978), p. 466. For an analysis of this episode, see Jankofsky, “Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle,” reprinted in this casebook. 60. See Thompson, “Gawain Against Arthur,” reprinted in this casebook. 61. See Thompson, “Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature,” in this casebook. 62. For a summary of Walewein’s appearance in Dutch literature, see Bart Besamusca’s entry in Van Aiol tot de Zwaanridder, ed. W. P. Gerritsen and A. G. van Melle (Nijmegen: Sun, 1993), pp. 340–50. 63. Jaap ter Haar, King Arthur, trans. Marian Powell (New York: Crane, 1973), p. 137. 64. See Linda Gowans, “Arthurian Survivals in Scottish Gaelic,” The Arthurian Yearbook II, ed. Keith Busby (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 27–76. 65. See Juan Miguel Zarandona, “From Avalon to Iberia: The Contemporary Literary Returns of King Arthur in the Languages of Spain: An Annotated listing of Arthurian Spanish Literature in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries (February 2003),” http://www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/acpbibs/spanbib.htm. 66. See Heijkant, “The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy,” in this casebook. 67. See Helmut Nickel, “The Arming of Gawain,” Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983): 16–19 and his entry on “Heraldry” in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, pp. 231–33. 68. See Mancoff, “Gawain,” pp. 13–15. In Arthurian Revival, pp. 131–34, Mancoff quotes a letter in which Dyce takes issue with Malory’s hostile characterization of Gawaine, and notes that he planned to include him in another fresco, Courage: The Combat Between King Arthur, Sir Key, Sir Gawaine and Sir Griflet with Five Northern Kings. This was abandoned because of his death in 1864.

36 • Raymond H. Thompson and Keith Busby 69. See Whitaker, The Legends of King Arthur in Art, pp. 201–2, and Mancoff, “Gawain,” p. 14, n. 1. Gawain would appear to be included, however, among the knights in two other tapestries in the series: “The Summons to the Quest” and “The Arming and Departure of the Knights.” All four of Burne-Jones’s images are reproduced in Mancoff ’s Arthurian Revival, plates 80–82. 70. Pyle does, however, retell with warm approval the story of Gawain’s wedding to Dame Ragnell, holding him up to his readers as the model of a good knight and gentleman. 71. For discussions of retellings for children, see Andrew Lynch, “Le Morte Darthur for Children: Malory’s Third Tradition” and Cindy L. Vitto, “Deceptive Simplicity: Children’s Versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” (both) in Lupack, Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, Lupack, pp. 1–49, and pp. 107–21. 72. H. Alan Stewart, “King Arthur in the Comics,” Avalon to Camelot 2.1 (1986): 14. For information on Arthurian comics, see Sally K. Slocum and H. Alan Stewart, “Heroes in Four Colors: The Arthurian Legend in Comic Strips and Books,” in Lagorio and Day, King Arthur Through the Ages, vol. 2, pp. 291–308 and Michael Torregrossa, “Camelot 3000 and Beyond: An Annotated Listing of Arthurian Comic Books Published in the United States c. 1980–1998,” Arthuriana 9.1 (Spring, 1999): 67–109, reproduced on the website of the Camelot Project, http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/acpbibs/comicbib.htm. 73. For a discussion of Gawain’s role in films see Williams, “Sir Gawain in Films,” reprinted in this casebook; and Blanch and Wasserman, “Gawain on Film (The Remake).” 74. Prince Valiant, the Storytelling Game (Albany, CA: Chaosium, 1989), p. 80. 75. See Thompson, “The Grail in Modern Fiction: Sacred Symbol in a Secular Age,” in The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 545-60. 76. See Alvares, “Gauvain, les Femmes, et le Cheval”; Trachsler, “Qui a donné le Gringalet à Gauvain?”; and Hogenbirk, “Walewein en Gringalet.”

Select Bibliography This bibliography does not list primary sources, nor does it include every title cited in the notes. It does, however, include some items not referred to in the individual essays. Articles and books designated by an asterisk (*) are reprinted or excerpted in this volume. The number of studies of some works in which Gawain appears, particularly Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, makes it impractical to include any but those that shed additional light upon the figure of the hero. General Studies and Reference Works Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983). [Special issue devoted to Gawain] Barron, W. R. J., ed. The Arthur of the English. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999. ———. “Arthurian Romance.” In A Companion to Romance: From Classical to Contemporary. Ed. Corinne Saunders. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004, pp. 65–84. Besamusca, Bart, and Erik Kooper, eds. Originality and Tradition in the Middle Dutch Roman van Walewein (Arthurian Literature XVII). Cambridge: Brewer, 1999. Birkhan, Helmut, ed. Die mittelalterliche Literatur in Kärnten. Vorträge des Symposions in St. Georgen / Längse vom 8. bis 13. 9. 1980. Vienna: Halosar, 1980. Blanch, Robert J. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Reference Guide. Troy, NY: Whitston, 1983. Bromwich, Rachel, A. O. H. Jarman, and Brynley F. Roberts, eds. The Arthur of the Welsh: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval Welsh Literature. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1991. Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society / Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne, 1 (1949)–56 (2004). [BBIAS] The Camelot Project. The University of Rochester. http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/cphome.stm Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1986. De Caluwé, Jacques, ed. Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain (Colloque arthurien Belge de Wégimont). Paris: Nizet, 1984. Delcorno Branca, Daniela. Tristano e Lancillotto in Italia. Studi di letteratura arturiana. Ravenna: Longo, 1998. Jost, Jean E. Ten Middle English Arthurian Romances: A Reference Guide. Boston: Hall, 1986. Lacy, Norris J., Geoffrey Ashe, Sandra Ness Ihle, Marianne Kalinke, and Raymond H. Thompson, eds. The New Arthurian Encyclopedia. New York: Garland, 1991. Expanded ed. 1996. ———, and Thompson, eds. “Arthurian Literature, Art, and Film, 1995–1999.” In Arthurian Literature XVIII. Ed. Keith Busby. Cambridge: Brewer, 2001, pp. 193–255. Lagorio, Valerie M., and Mildred Leake Day, eds. King Arthur Through the Ages. 2 vols. New York: Garland, 1990. Loomis, Roger Sherman, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959. Lupack, Alan, and Barbara Tepa Lupack. King Arthur in America. Cambridge: Brewer, 1999. Lupack, Barbara Tepa, ed. Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. Mancoff, Debra N. The Arthurian Revival in Victorian Art. New York: Garland, 1990. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge, 1968. Merriman, James Douglas. The Flower of Kings: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in England between 1485 and 1835. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1973.

37

38 • Select Bibliography Pirot, François. Recherches sur les connaissances littéraires des troubadours occitans et catalans des XIIe et XIIIe siècles. Barcelona: Real Academia de Buenas Letras, 1972. Reiss, Edmund, Louise Horner Reiss, and Beverly Taylor, eds. Arthurian Legend and Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. Vol. I: The Middle Ages. New York: Garland, 1984. Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate. Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart: zur Geschichte einer Gattung. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980. Trans. Margaret and Roger Middleton as The Evolution of Arthurian Romance: The Verse Tradition from Chrétien to Froissart. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Sharrer, Harvey L. A Critical Bibliography of Hispanic Arthurian Material. Vol. I. London: Grant and Cutler, 1977. Simpson, Roger. Camelot Regained: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson 1800–1849. Cambridge: Brewer, 1990. Spivack, Charlotte, and Roberta Lynne Staples. The Company of Camelot: Arthurian Characters in Romance and Fantasy. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1994. Taylor, Beverly, and Elisabeth Brewer. The Return of King Arthur: British and American Literature since 1800. Cambridge: Brewer, 1983. Thompson, Raymond H. The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1985. Whitaker, Muriel. The Legends of King Arthur in Art. Cambridge: Brewer, 1990.

Critical Studies Ackerman, Gretchen P. “Sir Frederic Madden and Arthurian Scholarship.” In King Arthur Through the Ages. Eds. Lagorio and Day. vol. 2, pp. 27–38. Alvares, Cristina. “Gauvain et l’impossible dénouement romanesque.” PRIS–MA 15/1, 29 (Jan–June 1999), Clore le récit: recherches sur les dénouements romanesques, 2, pp. 1–15. ———. “Gauvain, les Femmes, et le Cheval.” In Le Cheval dans le Monde médiéval. Sénéfiance 32. Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, 1992, pp. 29–41. Atanassov, Stoyan. L’idole inconnue. Le personnage de Gauvain dans quelques romans du XIIIe siècle. Orléans: Paradigme, 2000. Barron, W. R. J. “Trawthe” and Treason: The Sin of Gawain Reconsidered. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980. Bartholomew, Barbara G. “The Thematic Function of Malory’s Gawain.” College English 24 (1962–63), 262–67. Bennett, William K. “Sir Thomas Malory’s Gawain: The Noble Villain.” West Virginia University Philological Papers 16 (1967), 17–29. Benson, Larry D. Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1965. Benson, C. David. “Gawain’s Defence of Lancelot in Malory’s Death of Arthur.” Modern Language Review 78 (1983), 267–72. Bergner, H. “Gauvain dans la littérature anglaise du Moyen Age.” In Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain. Ed. De Caluwé, pp. 141–55. *Besamusca, Bart. “Gawain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein.” In The Arthurian Yearbook 2. Ed. Keith Busby. New York: Garland, 1992, pp. 3–12. ———. “Walewein: A Middle Dutch Antidote to the Prose Lancelot.” BBIAS 47 (1995), 301–10. ———. Walewein, Moriaen en de Ridder metter mouwen: intertekstualiteit in drie Middelnederlandse Arturromans. Hilversum: Verloren, 1993. Bindschedler, Maria B. “Der Ritter Gawan als Arzt oder Medizin und Höflichkeit.” In Mittelalter und Moderne. Gesammelte Schriften zur Literatur. Berne/Stuttgart: Haupt, 1985, pp. 207–20. Blanch, Robert J. “The Name and Fame of Gawain in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Studia Neophilologica 64 (1992), 141–47. ———, and Julian N. Wasserman. “Gawain on Film (The Remake): Thames Television Strikes Back.” In Cinema Arthuriana: Twenty Essays. Ed. Kevin J. Harty. Revised Edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2002, pp. 185–98. *Boardman, Phillip C. “Middle English Arthurian Romance: The Repetition and Reputation of Gawain.” In The Vitality of the Arthurian Legend: A Symposium. Ed. Mette Pors. Odense: Odense University Press, 1988, pp. 71–90. *Bogdanow, Fanni. “The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances.” Medium Aevum 27 (1958), 154–61. *Bromwich, Rachel. Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978.

Select Bibliography • 39 Burrow, John A. A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Routledge, 1965; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1966. *Busby, Keith. “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan.” Tristania 2.2 (1977), 12–28. ———. Chrétien de Troyes: Perceval (Le conte du Graal). London: Grant and Cutler, 1993. *———. “Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances.” In The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby. Vol. 2. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988, pp. 93–109. ———. Gauvain in Old French Literature. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980. ———. “‘Moseiner Galvain l’astrucz’ (Jaufre, v. 488): le portrait de Gauvain d’après le roman de Jaufre et quelques troubadours de l’époque.” In Studia Occitanica in Memoriam Paul Remy. Ed. Hans-Erich Keller, Jean-Marie D’Heur, Guy Mermier, and Marc Vuijlsteke. Vol. 2. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1986, pp. 1–11. ———. “Reculer pour mieux avancer: l’itinéraire de Gauvain dans le Conte du Graal.” In Chrétien de Troyes et le Graal, colloque arthurien de Bruges. Ed. Jacques de Caluwé. Paris: Nizet, 1984, pp. 17–26. ———. “‘Uns buens chevaliers’ ou ‘li buens chevaliers’? Perlesvaus et Gauvain dans le Perlesvaus.” In Lancelot,Y vain et Gauvain. Ed. De Caluwé, pp. 29–42. Buschinger, Danielle. “Burg Salîe und Gral. Zwei Erlösungstaten Gaweins in der Crône Heinrichs von dem Türlin.” In Mittelalterliche Literatur in Kärnten. Ed. Birkhan, pp. 1–32. Clark, Susan L., and Julian N. Wasserman. “Gawain’s ‘Anti-Feminism’ Reconsidered.” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 5 (1985), 57–70. Clifton-Everest, John M. “Knights-Servitor and Rapist Knights. A Contribution to the Parzival/ Gawan Question.” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 119 (1990), 290–317. ———. “Ritter as ‘Rider’ and as ‘Knight’. A Contribution to the Parzival-Gawan Question.” Wolfram-Studien 6 (1980), 151–66. Colliot, Régine. “Le voyage de Gauvain à la Roche Champguin chez Chrétien de Troyes et Wolfram d’Eschenbach.” In Voyage, quête, pèlerinage dans la littérature et la civilization médiévales. Sénéfiance 2. Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, 1976, pp. 325–38. Combes, Annie. “L’Atre périlleux: cénotaphe d’un héros retrouvé.” Romania 113 (1992–1995), 140–74. Cormeau, Christoph. Wigalois und Diu Crône: zwei Kapiteln zur Gattungsgechichte des nachklassichen Aventiureromans. Munich: Artemis, 1977. *Davenport, W. A. The Art of the Gawain-Poet. London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1978. Dean, Christopher. “Sir Gawain in the Alliterative Morte Arthure.” Papers on Language and Literature 22 (1986), 115–25. De Bundel, Katty. “Hi sette sijn vechten an hare minne: Love and Adventure in Die Wrake van Rigisel.” Arthuriana 15.2 (2005), 26–38. Delbouille, Maurice. “Les origines du personnage et du nom de Gauvain.” Travaux de Linguistique et de Littérature 11 (1973) [= Mélanges Paul Imbs], 549–59. De Looze, Lawrence. “Chivalry Qualified: The Character of Gauvain in Chrétien de Troyes’s Le chevalier de la charrete.” Romanic Review 74 (1983), 253–59. Dick, Ernst S. “The German Gawein: Diu Crône and Wigalois.” Arthurian Interpretations 15.2 (1984), 11–17. Döffinger-Lange, Erdmuthe. Der Gauvain-Teil in Chrétiens ‘Conte du Graal’: Forschungsbericht und Episodenkommentar. Heidelberg: Winter, 1998. Doner, Janet R. “Gauvain and the Pucelle de Lis.” Romance Philology 46 (1993), 453–63. Dove, Mary. “Gawain and the Blasme des femmes Tradition.” Medium Aevum 41 (1972), 20–26. Ebenbauer, Alfred. “Fortuna und Artushof. Bemerkungen zum ‘Sinn’ der Krône Heinrichs von dem Türlin.” In Österreichische Literatur zur Zeit der Babenberger. Vorträger der Lilienfelder Tagung 1976. Vienna: Halosar, 1977, pp. 25–49. ———. “Gawein als Gatte.” In Die mittelalterliche Literatur in Kärnten. Ed. Birkhan, pp. 33–61. Fichte, Jörg O. “The Figure of Sir Gawain.” In The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Ed. Karl Heinz Göller. Cambridge: Brewer, 1981, pp. 106–16. Finlayson, John. “Sir Gawain, Knight of the Queen, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” English Language Notes 27 (1989–90), 7–13. ———. “The Expectations of Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Genre 12 (1979), 1–24. Foulon, Charles. “Le role de Gauvain dans Erec et Enide.” Annales de Bretagne 65 (1958), 147–58. Frappier, Jean. “Le personnage de Gauvain dans la Première Continuation de Perceval (Conte du Graal).” Romance Philology 11 (1958), 331–44.

40 • Select Bibliography Gallais, Pierre. “Bleheri, la cour de Poitiers et la diffusion des récits arthuriens sur le continent.” In Actes du VIIe congrès national de la Société française de littérature comparée. Paris: Didier, 1967, pp. 47–79. ———. “Gauvain et la Pucelle de Lis.” In Mélanges de philologie romane offerts à Maurice Delbouille. Vol. 2. Gembloux: Duculot, 1964, pp. 207–29. Gerritsen, W. P. “Walewein van Melle (anno 1118) en de middelnederlandse arturliteratur.” In Feestbundel voor Maurits Gijsseling. Ed. W. J. J. Pijnenburg, K. Roelants, and V. F. Vanacker. Leuven: Instituut voor Naamkunde, 1984, pp. 115–34. Gowans, Linda. “Arthurian Survivals in Scottish Gaelic.” In The Arthurian Yearbook II. Ed. Keith Busby. New York: Garland, 1992, pp. 27–76. ———. “Sir Uallabh O Córn: A Hebridean Tale of Sir Gawain.” Scottish Gaelic Studies 18 (1998), 23–55. Hahn, Thomas, ed. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Kalamazoo, MI: TEAMS/Medieval Institute, 1995. ———. “Gawain and Popular Chivalric Romance in Britain.” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance. Ed. Roberta L. Krueger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 218–34. Haines, Victor Yelverton. The Fortunate Fall of Sir Gawain: The Typology of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Washington: University Press of America, 1982. Hale, William C. “Origins: The Enigma of Gawain.” Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983), 24–25. Halpern, R. A. “The Last Temptation of Gawain: ‘Hony soyt qui mal pence.’” American Benedictine Review 23 (1972), 353–84. Harper, R. “Walewein Revisited.” Spiegel der Letteren 41 (1999), 195–203. Harrington, David V. “The Conflicting Passions of Malory’s Sir Gawain and Sir Lancelot.” Arthurian Interpretations 1.2 (1987), 64–69. Hogenbirk, Marjolein. “Avontuur en Anti-avontuur: een onderzoek naar Walewein ende Keye, een Arturroman uit de Lancelotcompilatie.” Diss. Utrecht, 2004. ———. “Intertextuality and Gauvain.” Arthuriana 15.2 (2005), 13–25. ———. “Walewein en Gringalet: trouwe kameraden.” In Hoort wonder! Opstellen voor W. P. Gerritsen bij zijn emeritaat. Ed. Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma, and Dieuwke van der Poel. Hilversum: Verloren, 2000, pp. 85–90. Howard, Donald R. The Three Temptations: Medieval Man in Search of the World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966. Hughes, Linda K. “A Victorian Rake’s Progress.” Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983), 14–15. Hutchings, Gweneth. “Gawain and the Abduction of Guenevere.” Medium Aevum 4 (1935), 61–66. *Jankofsky, Klaus P. “Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger’s Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel.” In Theorie und Praxis in Erzählen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Winfried Herget, Klaus Peter Jochum, and Ingeborg Weber. Tübingen: Narr, 1986, pp. 398–404. Jillings, Lewis. “The Rival Sisters Dispute in Diu Crône and Its French Antecedents.” In An Arthurian Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Lewis Thorpe. Ed. Kenneth Varty. Glasgow: French Department of the University of Glasgow, 1981, pp. 248–59. Johnson, David F. “‘Men hadde niet Arsatere vonden alsoe goet’: Walewein as Healer in the Middle Dutch Arthurian Tradition.” Arthuriana 11.4 (2001), 39–52. Johnson, Sidney. “Parzival and Gawan: Their Conflict of Duties.” Wolfram-Studien 1 (1970), 98–116. Jones, Edward Trostle. “The Sound of Laughter in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Mediæval Studies 31 (1969), 343–45. Jones, Martin. “The Significance of the Gawan Story in Parzival.” In A Companion to Wolfram’s Parzival. Ed. Will Hasty. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999, pp. 37–76. Kalinke, Marianne. King Arthur, North-by-Northwest. Copenhagen: Reitzel, 1981. *Kelly, F. Douglas. “Gauvain and Fin’Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes.” Studies in Philology 67 (1970), 453–60. ———. “The Pledge Motif in the Roman van Walewein: Original Variant and Rewritten Quest.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 29–46. Kendrick, Robert L. “Gawain’s Ethics: Shame and Guilt in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Annuale Mediaevale 20 (1980), 5–32. *Kennedy, Beverly. Knighthood in the Morte Darthur. Cambridge: Brewer, 1985. Kennedy, Elspeth. “Le rôle d’Yvain et de Gauvain dans le Lancelot non-cyclique.” In Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain. Ed. De Caluwé, 1984, pp. 19–27.

Select Bibliography • 41 Kitely, J. F. “The Knight Who Cared for his Life.” Anglia 79 (1962), 131–37. Kittredge, George Lyman. A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1916; rpt. Gloucester, MA: Smith, 1960. Klüppelholz, Heinz. “Die Idealisierung und Ironisierung des Protagonisten in den altfranzösischen Gauvain-Romanen.” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 44 (1994), 18–36. Knapp, Fritz Peter. “L’idéal du chevalier errant dans le Lancelot en prose et dans la Krône de Heinrich von dem Türlin.” In Actes du XIVe Congrès International Arthurien. Vol. 1. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes 2, 1985, pp. 371–78. Lacy, Norris J. “The Character of Gauvain in Hunbaut.” BBIAS 38 (1986), 298–305. ———. “Chivalry in Le Chevalier à l’épée and La Mule sans frein.” Vox Romanica 45 (1986), 150–56. ———. “Convention, Comedy and the Form of La Vengeance Raguidel.” In Arthurian Literature XIX. Ed. Keith Busby. Cambridge: Brewer, 2003, pp. 65–75. ———. “Convention and Innovation in the Middle Dutch Roman van Walewein.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 47–62. ———. “Gauvain and the Crisis of Chivalry in the Conte del Graal.” In The Sower and His Seed: Essays on Chrétien de Troyes. Ed. Rupert T. Pickens. Lexington: French Forum Publishers, 1983, pp. 155–63. ———. “The Uses of Middle Dutch Arthuriana.” Arthuriana 15.2 (2005), 3–12. Larmat, Jean. “Le Personnage de Gauvain dans quelques romans arthuriens du XIIe et du XIIIe siècles.” In Etudes de langue et de littérature françaises offertes à André Lanly. Nancy: Publications de Nancy 2, 1980, pp. 185–202. Levy, Bernard S. “Gawain’s Spiritual Journey: Imitatio Christi in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Annuale Mediaevale 6 (1965), 65–106. Loomis, Roger S. “The Date, Source, and Subject of the Arthurian Sculpture at Modena.” In Medieval Studies in Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis. Ed. Roger S. Loomis. Paris: Champion, 1927, pp. 209–28. ———. “Gawain, Gwri, and Cuchulainn.” PMLA 43 (1928), 384–96. Lozac’hmeur, Jean-Claude. “Origines celtiques des aventures de Gauvain au pays de Galvoie dans le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes.” In Actes du XIVe congrès international arthurien. Vol. 2. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 1985, pp. 406–22. Madden, Sir Frederic, ed. Syr Gawayne. London: Bannatyne Club, 1839; rpt. New York: AMS, 1971. Mancoff, Debra N. “Gawain: A Man Reformed.” Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983), 13–15. Mann, Jill. “Sir Gawain and the Romance Hero.” In Heroes and Heroines in Medieval English Literature: A Festschrift presented to André Crépin on the Occasion of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday. Ed. Leo Carruthers. Cambridge: Brewer, 1994, pp. 105–18. Marx, Jean. “La quête manquée de Gauvain.” In Mélanges offerts à Etienne Gilson. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies; Paris: Vrin, 1959, pp. 415–36. Matthews, John. Gawain: Knight of the Goddess. Wellingborough, England: Aquarian, 1990. Matthews, William. The Tragedy of Arthur: A Study of the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960. Mathewson, Jeanne T. “Displacement of the Feminine in Golagros and Gawane and the Awntyrs off Arthure.” Arthurian Interpretations 1.2 (1987), 23–28. Meyer, Matthias. “It’s Hard to Be Me, or Walewein/Gawan as Hero.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 63–78. Mohr, Wolfgang. “Parzival und Gawan.” Euphorion 52 (1958), 1–22. Morgan, Gerald. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Idea of Righteousness. Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1991. Neugart, Isolde. Wolfram, Chrétien und das Märchen. Erzählstrukturen und Erzähsweisen in der Gawan-Handlung. Frankurt/Main: Lang, 1996. Morgan, Hubert E. “‘To be her servant soþly’: Gawain’s Service.” English Studies in Canada 11 (1985), 263–72. Morin, Lise. “Étude du personnage de Gauvain dans six récits médiévaux.” Le Moyen Age 100 (1994), 333–51. Nickel, Helmut. “The Arming of Gawain.” Avalon to Camelot 1.2 (Winter 1983), 16–19. Nii, Akiko. “‘The Gude Man of Armes’: Gawain in the Alliterative Morte Arthure.” Doshisha Literature 44 (March 2001), 1–13. *Nitze, William A. “The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes.” Modern Philology 50 (1952-53), 219–25.

42 • Select Bibliography Owen, D. D. R. “Burlesque Tradition and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 4 (1968), 125–45. Paris, Gaston. “Les romans en vers du cycle de la Table Ronde.” Histoire littéraire de la France 30 (1888), 1–270. Pastoureau, Michel. “Remarques sur les armoiries de Gauvain.” In Mélanges de langue et de littérature françaises du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance offerts à Charles Foulon. Vol. 2. Liège: Marche Romane, 1980, pp. 229–36. Quéruel, Danielle. “D’un manuscrit à l’autre: variations autour du personnage de Gauvain dans le roman de Tristan en prose.” In L’œuvre de Chrétien de Troyes dans la littétature française: reminiscences, resurgences et réécritures. Ed. Claude Lachet. Lyon: CEDIC, 1997, pp. 149–60. Read, Ralph R. “Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Krône and Wolfram’s Parzival.” Modern Language Quarterly 35 (1974), 129–39. Reinitzer, Heimo. “Zur Erzählfunktion der Crône Heinrichs von dem Türlin.” In Österreichische Literatur zur Zeit der Babenberger. Vorträger der Lilienfelder Tagung 1976. Vienna: Halosar, 1977, pp. 177–96. Ribard, Jacques. “Un personnage paradoxical: le Gauvain du Conte du Graal.” In Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain. Ed. De Caluwé, pp. 5–18. Rogers, Gillian. “‘Illuminat vith lawte, and with lufe lasit’: Gawain Gives Arthur a Lesson in Magnanimity.” In Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative Presented to Maldwyn Mills. Ed. Jennifer Fellows. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996, pp. 94–111. Rossi, Marguerite. “Les duels de Gauvain dans la Première Continuation de Perceval ou les ambiguïtés de la prouesse individuelle.” In Mélanges Jean Larmat. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1983, pp. 275–89. Rupp, Heinz. “Die Bedeutung der Gawan-Bücher in Parzival Wolframs von Eschenbach.” In London German Studies II. Ed. J. P. Stern. London: Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London, 1983, pp. 1–16. Schopf, Alfred. “Die Gestalt Gawains bei Chrétien, Wolfram von Eschenbach und Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In Spätmittelalterliche Artusliteratur. Ed. Karlheinz Göller. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1984, pp. 85–104. Schulze-Busacker, Elisabeth. “‘Gauvain li malparlier’—le rôle de Gauvain dans le roman d’Escanor.” In Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain. Ed. De Caluwé, pp. 113–23. Shichtman, Martin B. “Gawain in Wace and Layamon: A Case of Metahistorical Evolution.” In Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers. Ed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987, pp. 103–19. ———. “Malory’s Gawain Reconsidered.” Essays in Literature 11 (1984), 159–76. ———. “Sir Gawain in Scotland: A Hometown Boy Made Good.” In King Arthur Through the Ages. Ed. Lagorio and Day. Vol. 1, pp. 234–47. Spearing, A. C. The Gawain-Poet: a Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. Spensley, Ronald. “Gauvain’s Castle of Marvels Adventure in the Conte du Graal.” Medium Aevum 42 (1973), 32–37. Takahashi, Isamu. “Courtesy and Obedience: An Aspect of Courtesy in Middle English Gawain Romances.” Colloquia 20 (1999), 183–92. Tax, Petrus W. “Die Liebe zwischen Gawan und Antikonie im 8. Buch von Wolfram’s Parzival: politische und dynastische Gründe.” In Festschrift für Herbert Kolb zu seinem 65. Geburtstag. Ed. Klaus Matzel and Hans Gert Roloff. Bern: Francke, 1989, pp. 702–12. Taylor, Jane H. M. “The Roman van Walewein: Man into Fox, Fox into Man.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 131–45. Thomas, Neil. A German View of Camelot. Wirnt von Gravenberg’s Wigalois and Arthurian Tradition. Bern: Lang, 1987. ———. “Gauvain’s Guilt in L’Atre périlleux: The Subtext of Sexual Abuse.” Reading Medieval Studies 23 (1997), 107–20. ———. “Sense and Structure in the Gawan Adventures of Wolfram’s ‘Parzival.’” Modern Language Review 76 (1981), 848–56. ———. “Sir Gawein’s Interpretation of Iwein’s Transgression and the ‘Mabinogion’ Controversy.” Reading Medieval Studies 13 (1987), 57–69. *Thompson, Raymond H. “Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain.” Folklore 85 (1974), 113–21. ———. “‘Muse on þi mirrour . . .’: The Challenge of the Outlandish Stranger in the English Arthurian Verse Romances.” Folklore 87 (1976), 201–8.

Select Bibliography • 43 ———. “The Perils of Good Advice: The Effect of the Wise Counsellor upon the Conduct of Gawain in Arthurian Literature.” Folklore 90 (1979), 71–76. ———. “The Prison of the Senses: Fin’ Amor as a Confining Force in the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes.” Forum for Modern Language Studies 15 (1979), 249–53. ———. “‘For quenys I myght have inow . . .’: The Knight Errant’s Treatment of Women in the English Arthurian Verse Romances.” Atlantis 4 (1979), 34–47. ———. “‘Fors del sens’: Humour and Irony in Raoul de Houdenc’s La Vengeance Raguidel.” Thalia 2 (1979), 25–29. ———. “Le serviteur de la société: la composition structurale dans Li Chevaliers as Deus Espees.” Studia Neophilologica 49 (1977), 95–100. Trachsler, Richard. “Qui a donné le Gringalet à Gauvain? A propos d’un episode d’Escanor de Girart d’Amiens.” In Le Cheval dans le Monde médiéval. Senefiance 32. Aix-en-Provence: CUER MA, 1992, pp. 527–42. Uyttersprott, Veerle. “‘Entie hoofsche Walewein, sijn gheselle was daer ne ghein’: ironie et het Walewein-beeld in de Roman van Walewein en in de Europese middeleeuwse Arturliteratur.” Diss. Catholic University of Brussels, 2004. Valdés Miyares, Rubén. “Sir Gawain and the Great Goddess.” English Studies 83 (2002), 185–206. Veldhoen, Bart. “The Roman van Walewein Laced with Castles.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 147–67. Vincensini, Jean-Jacques. “Procédés d’‘esthétisation’ et formes de l’‘esthétique’ dans la narration médiévale.” In Actes du XXe Congrès de la Société Internationale de Linguistique et Philologie Romanes Université de Zurich, (6-11 avril 1992). Ed. Gerold Hilty. Vol. 5. Tübingen-Basel: Francke, 1993, pp. 413–26. Vitto, Cindy L. “Deceptive Simplicity: Children’s Versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children. Ed. Lupack, pp. 107–21. Voorwinden, Norbert. “Fight Descriptions in the Roman van Walewein and in Two Middle High German Romances. A Comparison.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 169–87. *Walters, Lori J. “The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472.” Neophilologus 78 (1994), 29–43. ———. “Making Bread from Stone: The Roman van Walewein and the Transformation of Old French Romance.” In Originality and Tradition. Ed. Besamusca and Kooper, pp. 189–207. ———. “Reconfiguring Wace’s Round Table: Walewein and the Rise of the National Vernaculars.” Arthuriana 15.2 (2005), 39–58. ———. “Resurrecting Gauvain in L’Atre périlleux and the Middle Dutch Walewein.” In “Por le soie amisté.” Essays in Honor of Norris J. Lacy. Ed. Keith Busby and Catherine M. Jones. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000, pp. 509–37. Wasserman, Loretta. “Honor and Shame in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” In Chivalric Literature: Essays on the Relations Between Literature and Life in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Larry D. Benson and John Leyerle. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1980, pp. 77–90. Weston, Jessie L. The Legend of Sir Gawain: Studies upon its Original Scope and Significance. London: Nutt, 1897; rpt. New York: AMS, 1971. Wheeler, Bonnie. “Romance and Parataxis and Malory: The Case of Sir Gawain’s Reputation.” Arthurian Literature XII (1993), 109–32. *Whiting, B. J. “Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale.” Mediæval Studies 9 (1947), 189–234. *Williams, David J. “Sir Gawain in Films.” In A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson. Cambridge: Brewer, 1997, pp. 385–92. *Wolfzettel, Friedrich. “Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic ‘Struggle for Life’? A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century.” In An Arthurian Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Lewis Thorpe. Ed. Kenneth Varty. Glasgow: French Department of the University of Glasgow, 1981, pp. 260–74. Wynn, Marianne. “Parzival and Gâwân: Hero and Counterpart.” In Wolfram’s “Parzival”: On the Genesis of its Poetry. Mikrokosmos 9. Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 1984; rpt. in Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook. Ed. Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy. New York: Routledge, 2002, pp. 175–98.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

1

Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy, and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale B. J. WHITING

I. Introduction Although no warrior of Arthur’s host is more deserving of a full-length portrait than is Gawain, the present paper does no more than touch on certain facets of the subject. The writer’s original and innocent intention was to make a brief comment on the opening of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, a passage in which Gawain’s courtesy is thrown into bold relief. Gradually, however, it became evident that the concept of courtesy in Gawain called for more thorough documentation than it had hitherto received, and, closely connected with this, that a concise survey of Gawain’s reputation from Wace to Mr. T.H. White might well be attempted. Neither of these efforts breaks virgin ground, as any student of the literature of Arthurian romance knows perhaps too well, but the present accounts are, for better or worse, more comprehensive, if not more conclusive, than any earlier work.1 For evidence as to Gawain’s courtesy virtually the entire body of French and English poems2 dealing with Arthur and his knights has been drawn upon,3 and the prose romances have been sampled liberally, although it must be confessed that only those passages in the Vulgate versions were read, which, according to Sommer’s index, treated of Gawain. Many of these works, of course, throw light on Gawain’s general reputation and, in addition, representative modern writers, creative and critical, from Malory on have been examined. Gawain’s reputation can hardly be kept completely separate from his courtesy, a fact especially true with regard to his love affairs; in consequence some of his amours appear in one section and some in the other. II. Bibliographies In the bibliographical lists, the documents are arranged alphabetically under the short titles by which they will be cited.

45

46 • B. J. Whiting (A) Works Before Malory Abenteuer Gawains: Die Abenteuer Gawains, Ywains, and Le Morholts mit den Drei Jungfrauen, aus der Trilogie (Demanda) des Pseudo-Robert de Borron—Die Fortsetzung des Huth-Merlin, ed. H. Oskar Sommer, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, XLVII (1913). Arthur: Arthur, ed. F.J. Furnivall (Early English Text Society II, London, 1864). Arthour and Merlin: Arthour and Merlin, ed. Eugen Kölbing (Altenglische Bibliothek, IV, Leipzig, 1890). Atre: L’Atre Périlleux, ed. Brian Woledge (Les Classiques français du Moyen Age, Paris, 1936). Avowynge: The Avowynge of King Arther, Sir Gawan, Sir Kaye, and Sir Bawdewyn of Bretan, ed. John Robson, Three Early English Metrical Romances (Camden Society, London, 1842), pp. 57–93. Awntyrs: The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne, ed. F.J. Amours, Scottish Alliterative Poems (Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1892–97), pp. 117–171. Béroul: Le Roman de Tristan par Béroul, ed. Ernest Muret (Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris, 1903). Carle: Carle off Carlile, ed. John W. Hales and F.J. Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript (3 vols., London, 1867–68) III, 275–294. Charette: Chrétien de Troies, Chevalier de la Charrete, ed. Wendelin Foerster, Christian von Troyes’s Sämtliche Erhaltene Werke (IV, Halle, 1899). Claris: Li Romans de Claris et Laris, ed. Johann Alton (Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, CLXIX, Tübingen, 1844). Cligés: Chrétien de Troies, Cligés, ed. Foerster, Werke (I, Halle, 1884). Deus Espees: Li Chevaliers as Deus Espees, ed. Wendelin Foerster (Halle, 1877). Durmart: Li Romans de Durmart le Galois, ed. Edmund Stengel (Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, CXVI, Tübingen, 1873). Enfances: “Les Enfances Gauvain,” ed. P. Meyer, Romania, XXXIX (1910), 1–32. Epée: Le Chevalier à l’Epée, ed. Edward C. Armstrong (Baltimore, 1900). Erec: Chrétien de Troies, Erec et Enide, ed. Foerster, Werke (III, Halle, 1890). Escanor: Der Roman von Escanor von Gerard von Amiens (Girard d’Amiens), ed. H. Michelant (Bibliothek des Litterarischen Vereins in Stuttgart, CLXXVIII, Tübingen, 1886). Fergus: Fergus, Roman von Guillaume Le Clerc, ed. Ernst Martin (Halle, 1872). Floriant: Floriant et Florete, ed. Francisque-Michel (Roxburghe Club, Edinburgh, 1873). Folie Tristan: Les Deux Poèmes de la Folie Tristan, ed. Joseph Bédier (Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris, 1907). Gawain: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J.R.R. Tolkien and E.V. Gordon (Oxford, 1936). Gerbert: Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, ed. Mary Williams (Les Classiques français du Moyen Age, 2 vols., Paris, 1922–25). Gliglois: Gliglois, ed. Charles H. Livingston (Harvard Studies in Romance Languages, VIII, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1932). Golagros: Golagros and Gawane, ed. F.J. Amours, Scottish Alliterative Poems, pp. 1–46. Graal: Chrétien de Troies, Li Contes del Graal, ed. Gottfried Baist and Alfons Hilka, Werke (V, Halle, 1932). Grene Knight: The Grene Knight, ed. Hales and Furnivall, Bishop Percy’s Folio Manuscript II, 56–77. Hunbaut: Hunbaut, ed. Jakob Stürzinger and Hermann Breuer (Gesellschaft für Romanische Literatur, 35, Dresden, 1914). Jaufré: Jaufré, ed. Clovis Brunel (Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris, 1943). Lancelot: Lancelot of the Laik, ed. Margaret M. Gray (Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1912). Langtoft: The Chronicle of Pierre de Langtoft, ed. Thomas Wright (Rolls Series, 2 vols., London, 1866–68). Lanval: Marie de France, Lanval, ed. Karl Warnke, Die Lais der Marie de France (Bibliotheca Normannica III, 3rd ed., Halle, 1925), pp. 86–112. Lawman: La amon’s Brut, ed. Sir Frederic Madden (3 vols., London, 1847). Le Bel Inconnu: Renaut de Beaujeu, Le Bel Inconnu, ed. G. Perrie Williams (Les Classiques français du Moyen Age, Paris, 1929). Le Morte Arthur: Le Morte Arthur, ed. J.D. Bruce (Early English Text Society, Extra Series, LXXXVIII, London, 1903). Libeaus: Libeaus Desconus, ed. Max Kaluza (Altenglische Bibliothek, V, Leipzig, 1890). Lovelich: Henry Lovelich, Merlin, ed. Ernest A. Kock (Early English Text Society, 3 vols., London, 1904–1932).

Gawain • 47 Manessier: Manessier, Li Contes del Graal (Third Continuation), ed. Ch. Potvin, Perceval le Gallois ou le Conte du Graal (6 vols., Mons, 1866–71) V, 150, l. 34934-VI, 155, 1. 45379. Manning: The Story of England by Robert Manning of Brunne, ed. F.J. Furnivall (Rolls Series, 2 vols., London, 1887). Mantel: Le Conte du Mantel, ed. F.-A. Wulff, Romania, XIV (1885), 343–380. Marriage: The Marriage of Sir Gawaine, in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ed. W.F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster (Chicago, 1941), pp. 235–241. Méliador: Jean Froissart, Méliador, ed. Auguste Longnon (Société des Anciens Textes Français, 3 vols., Paris, 1895–1899). Meraugis: Raoul de Houdenc, Meraugis de Portlesguez, ed. Mathias Friedwagner, Sämtliche Werke (I, Halle, 1897). Morte Arthure: Morte Arthure, ed. E. Björkman (Heidelberg, 1915). Mule: Païn de Maisières, La Damoisele à la Mule (or La Mule sanz Frain), ed. Boleslas Orlowski (Paris, 1911). Perlesvaus: Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, ed. W.A. Nitze and T.A. Jenkins (2 vols., Chicago, 1932–1937). Pseudo-Wauchier: “Pseudo-Wauchier,” Li Contes del Graal (First Continuation), ed. Potvin, III, 47, l. 10601-IV, 59, l. 21916. Raguidel : Raoul de Houdenc, La Vengeance Raguidel, ed. M. Friedwagner, Sämtliche Werke (II, Halle, 1909). Rigomer: Les Mervelles de Rigomer, par Jehan, ed. Wendelin Foerster and Hermann Breuer (Gesellschaft für Romanische Literatur, 19, 39, 2 vols., Dresden, 1908–1915). Robert: The Metrical Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, ed. W.A. Wright (Rolls Series, 2 vols., London, 1887). Sir Launfal: Thomas Chestre, Sir Launfal, in Middle English Metrical Romances, ed. Walter H. French and Charles B. Hale (New York, 1930), pp. 345–380. Sir Perceval: Sir Perceval of Gales, ed. J. Campion and F. Holthausen (Heidelberg, 1913). Sir Tristrem: Sir Tristrem, ed. George P. McNeill (Scottish Text Society, Edinburgh, 1885–1886). Suite du Merlin: Merlin (Huth MS.), ed. Gaston Paris and Jacob Ulrich (Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2 vols., Paris, 1886). The “Suite du Merlin” extends from I, 147 to the end. Syre Gawene: Syre Gawene and the Carle of Carelyle, ed. Sir Frederic Madden in Syr Gawayne (Bannatyne Club, LXI, London, 1839), pp. 187–206. Thomas: Le Roman de Tristan, par Thomas, ed. Joseph Bédier (Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2 vols., Paris, 1902–1905). Tristan: Eilert Löseth, Le Roman en Prose de Tristan, le Roman de Palamède et la Compilation de Rusticien de Pise, Analyse critique d’après les Manuscripts de Paris (Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris, 1891). Tyolet: Tyolet, ed. Gaston Paris, Romania, VIII (1879), 40–50. Vulgate: The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances, ed. H. Oskar Sommer (8 vols., Washington, D.C., 1909–1916). The Vulgate contains the following books: Lestoire del Saint Graal (I); Lestoire de Merlin (II); Le Livre de Lancelot del Lac (III, IV, V); Les Aventures ou la Queste del Saint Graal (VI); La Mort Le Roi Artus (VI); Le Livre D’Artus (VII). Wace: Le Roman de Brut de Wace, ed. Ivor Arnold (Société des Anciens Textes Français, 2 vols., Paris, 1938–1940). Wauchier: Wauchier de Denain, Li Contes del Graal (Second Continuation), ed. Potvin, IV, 59, l. 21917-V, 150, l. 34933. Weddynge: The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, in Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, pp. 242–264. Yder: Yder, ed. Heinrich Gelzer (Gesellschaft für Romanische Literatur, 31, Dresden, 1913). Yvain: Chrétien de Troies, Yvain, ed. Foerster, Werke (II, Halle, 1887). Ywaine: Ywaine and Gawin, ed. Joseph Ritson and E. Goldsmid, Ancient English Metrical Romances (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1884), I, 115–208.

(B) Works After Malory Bensel: Elise Francisca Wilhelmina Maria Van Der Ven-ten Bensel, The Character of King Arthur in English Literature (Amsterdam, 1925). Britannica: “Gawain” in Encyclopedia Britannica (11th ed., 1910). The article is anonymous, but internal evidence suggests that Miss Weston was the author. Bruce: James D. Bruce, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance (2nd ed., 2 vols., Göttingen, 1928).

48 • B. J. Whiting Bruce-Mort: J.D. Bruce, ed., Mort Artu (Halle, 1910). Chambers: E.K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (London, 1927). Cook: Arthur B. Cook, “The European Sky-God,” Folk-Lore, XVII (1906), 338–48. Jones: W. Lewis Jones, King Arthur in History and Legend (Cambridge, 1911). Lewis: Charles B. Lewis, Classical Mythology and Arthurian Romance (London, 1932). Loomis: Roger S. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (New York, 1927). MacCallum: Mungo W. MacCallum, Tennyson’s Idylls of the King and Arthurian Story from the XVIth Century (Glasgow, 1894). Madden: Sir Frederic Madden, ed., Syr Gawayne (Bannatyne Club Publication, LXI, London, 1839). Malory: Sir Thomas Malory, La Mort D’Arthure, ed. Thomas Wright (Library of Old Authors, 3 vols., London, 1865). Maynadier: Howard Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets (Boston, 1907). Morris: William Morris, The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (London, [1858], 1883). Paris: Gaston Paris, in Histoire Littéraire de la France, XXX (1888), 1ff. Ray: B.K. Ray, The Character of Gawain, Dacca University Bulletin, XI (1926). Reid: Margaret J.C. Reid, The Arthurian Legend (Edinburgh, 1938). Robinson: Edwin A. Robinson, Collected Poems (New York, 1921). Contains Merlin and Lancelot. Robinson-Tristram: E.A. Robinson, Tristram (New York, 1927). Schofield: W.H. Schofield, English Literature from the Norman Conquest to Chaucer (London, 1914). Scudder: Vida D. Scudder, La Morte Darthur of Sir Thomas Malory: Its Sources (New York, 1917). Taylor: A.B. Taylor, An Introduction to Medieval Romance (London, 1930). Tennyson: Alfred Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (Works, Riverside Edition IV, Boston, 1904). Vinaver-Malory: Eugène Vinaver, Malory (Oxford, 1929). Vinaver-Tristan: E. Vinaver, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut dans l’Oeuvre de Thomas Malory (Paris, 1925). Wells: John E. Wells, A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050–1400 (New Haven, 1916). Weston-Gawain: Jessie L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Gawain (London, 1897). Weston-Grail: J.L. Weston, The Quest of the Holy Grail (London, 1913). Weston-Lancelot: J.L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Lancelot du Lac (London, 1901). Weston-Perceval: J.L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Perceval (2 vols., London, 1906–1909). Weston-Ritual: J.L. Weston, From Ritual to Romance (Cambridge, 1920). White-Ill-Made: T.H. White, The Ill-Made Knight (New York, 1940). White-Witch: T.H. White, The Witch in the Wood (New York, 1939).

III. Gawain’s Reputation Save for students of medieval literary history, modern readers, if they know about Gawain at all,4 know him mainly from Malory and Tennyson. In Malory they find a Gawain who is sometimes good and sometimes bad; in Tennyson, a frivolous and vicious figure with hardly a redeeming quality. If, in addition, they are familiar with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Gawain embodies nearly all the chivalric virtues, they think they see a progressive degradation of character from the medieval to the renaissance to the Victorian concept, an almost perfect example of epic degeneration. Here, indeed, is something very like Chaucer’s Monk’s definition of tragedy: Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, As olde bookes maken us memorie, Of hym that stood in greet prosperitee, And is yfallen out of heigh degree Into myserie, and endeth wrecchedly. 5

Gawain • 49 Tragedy, that is to say a certain [kind of] story, as old books remind us, of one who had been in great prosperity, and is fallen out of high estate into misery, and ends wretchedly. Beyond the three works already mentioned, the best known reference to Gawain is undoubtedly that found early in the Squire’s Tale: This strange knyght, that cam thus sodeynly, Al armed, save his heed, ful richely, Saleweth kyng and queene and lordes alle, By ordre, as they seten in the halle, With so heigh reverence and obeisaunce, As wel in speche as in his contenaunce, That Gawayn, with his olde curteisye, Though he were comen ayeyn out of Fairye, Ne koude hym nat amende with a word.6 This strange knight, who came thus suddenly, all armored, except for his head, very richly, salutes king and queen and all the lords, in order as they sat in the hall, with such high reverence and deference, as well in speech as in his countenance, that Gawain, with his old courtesy, though he were come again out of the realm of faery, could not improve upon him with a word. Clearly, Chaucer thinks well of Gawain,7 better than he does of Lancelot, for although he mentions Lancelot twice, both the references carry an edge.8 When, for the sake of contrast, we come down to Tennyson’s “Passing of Arthur,” Gawain’s ghost appears to the king in a dream and, after prophesying Arthur’s approaching death, says, Farewell! there is an isle of rest for thee, And I am blown along a wandering wind, And hollow, hollow, hollow all delight! . . .(p. 390) Bold Sir Bedivere dismisses Gawain, man and ghost, with sturdy contempt: Light was Gawain in life, and light in death Is Gawain, for the ghost is as the man; And care not thou for dreams from him . . .(p. 391) To advance still another literary generation, Dagonet, in E.A. Robinson’s Merlin, can say of the Coming of the Light: There was a long to-do, And Gawaine, of all forlorn ineligibles, Rose up the first, and cried more lustily

50 • B. J. Whiting Than any after him that he should find The Grail, or die for it,--though he did neither; For he came back as living and as fit For new and old iniquity as ever. (Robinson, p. 306) In order to explain what happened to Gawain as he moved from an heroic and blameless warrior, as in Geoffrey and Wace, to a “forlorn ineligible,” as in Robinson, we must consider, as summarily as possible, many documents and the motives and mental processes of many authors. Gawain plays a larger rôle in the numerous branches of the Matter of Britain than any actor save Arthur, possibly a larger, and certainly a more varied role than Arthur himself. There are ample materials,9 then, for a biographical study of the hero, but it is not easy or safe to compose the biography of a hero of fiction, especially of a fiction which remains alive and growing, growing quite without regard to normal times and shapes of growth, after eight hundred years and more. To belabor the truism, the hero of fiction cannot be treated, however great the temptation, exactly as though he had been a man of flesh and blood. When a living man does something or has something done to him, what has been done becomes part of his life, influences what he subsequently does, and, if it be recorded, becomes part of his history and shapes whatever may be said or written about him. In saga the case is altogether different, a fact which can easily be illustrated from the matter in hand. Chroniclers of British history pictured the “historical” Gawain as he appeared in Geoffrey long after he had been firmly established as a hero of romance, and long before the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight wrote of the Gawain who was the ideal of chivalry, he had been painstakingly vilified in certain French prose romances. Then, too, the conscientious biographer of Gawain will be somewhat perplexed in dealing with what may be termed his pre-history. If Gawain, before he was Lot’s son and Arthur’s nephew,10 was, in one degree or another, to be identified with Adonis,11 Agamemnon,12 Cuchulinn,13 the Healer,14 a Sun god (solar hero),15 and Tammuz,16 there is an abundant field from which to glean. This paper, despite manifest temptation, will not treat of Gawain before Gawain. Our task is simplified in the present instance by the fact that the medieval Matter of Britain falls easily into three groups, in each of which Gawain, on the whole, is treated differently. We have, first, the chronicle-like accounts of the entire life of Arthur, which show the king conducting a continental campaign against the Roman Empire at the time of Mordred’s revolt; second, the episodic verse romances, which deal with the adventures of knights attached, sometimes only loosely, to Arthur’s court; and third, the prose romances which, if they cover the fall of Arthur, have him waging a desperately ineffective war of vengeance on Lancelot when called home by the rebellion of his nephew and son.17 The first group, whose factual account is essentially that of Geoffrey, presents a simple and consistent picture of Gawain. He is Arthur’s nephew, the

Gawain • 51 son of King Lot and Arthur’s sister, and from his first appearance until his death he is a brave and gallant warrior, second only to Arthur in courage, strength and success. One of his most striking scenes, that at the court of the Roman emperor, does not suggest that he possesses the tact and patience of the professional diplomat, but in fiction no one objects to the man who, surrounded by his foes, refuses to accept tamely an insult to his nation. His death, properly enough, comes in the penultimate act of Arthur’s tragedy, and he dies fighting for right and his king. There are no shades, no subtleties, no implications in this first Gawain, whose fame is not confined to books dealing strictly with British history.18 He is the ideal warrior, the highest type of martial prowess, loyal, courageous, untarnished and undefeated until he meets inevitable death. The verse episodic romances represent a second stage in the development of the Matter of Britain. On the first, or chronicle, level, Arthur was in the thick of things; where there was action, there was Arthur also. He not only led his armies in war, but he achieved single-handed feats of bravery and strength. Significantly, it is Arthur who kills the giant of Mont St. Michel. Arthur is king and hero; no one, not even Gawain, approaches him in fame, ability or accomplishment. In the verse romances, however, Arthur has reached, as it were, middle age,19 and has become an executive rather than an active figure. Arthur’s court is the central office at which knights receive assignments to adventures or quests, to which they send back prisoners and rescued maidens, and to which they ultimately return to tell their stories and gain their rewards of praise or commiseration. The age is that of the Young Hero, and the stories follow an easy and repeated formula. Here Gawain often holds the center of the stage, or, at worst, a position not much less prominent than that of the leading actor of the moment.20 He is the sole hero of many tales, French as well as English, and his adventures and love affairs find their way into many others.21 Damsels in distress ask Arthur to have Gawain assigned to their problems and often greet the younger and less known knights whom they receive in his stead with angry and insulting words. Rarely does a defeated knight express shame or disappointment when he learns that he has been overthrown by the king’s glorious nephew. To be unhorsed by the champion is a glory in itself, and Gawain’s praise is an accolade no less precious than any Arthur can bestow. Women expect him to make love to them and, as we shall see, become doubtful of his identity if he fails to make an amorous gesture. A few quotations reveal the esteem in which he is universally held: Et mes sire Gauvains chaeles, Li frans, li douz, ou iert il donques? A s’aïe ne failli onques Dameisele desconseilliee, Que ne li fust apareilliee. (Yvain, p. 153, ll. 3698–702)

52 • B. J. Whiting And Sir Gawain, pray, the noble, the gentle, where was he then? No damsel in distress ever went without his help. Cil qui ainme desduit et joie Viegne avant si entende et oie Une aventure qui avint Au bon chevalier qui maintint Loiauté, proëce, et anor, Et qui n’ama onques nul jor Home coart, faus, ne vilain– Je cont de mon saignor Gauvain, Qui tant par ert bien ensaigniez Et qui fu des armes prisiez Que nus reconter ne savroit. (Epée, p. 7, ll. 1–11) Let he who loves amusement and joyfulness come forward to listen and hear an adventure which happened to the good knight who maintained loyalty, prowess, and honor, and who never loved a cowardly, false, or churlish man—I speak of Sir Gawain who was so well brought up and so esteemed in arms that no-one can tell of him. Than schir Gawyne the gay, gude and gracius, That euer was beildit in blis, and bounte embrasit, Joly and gentill, and full cheuailrus, That neuer poynt of his prise wes fundin defasit, Egir and ertand, and ryght anterus, Illuminat vith lawte, and with lufe lasit. (Golagros, p. 14, ll. 389–94)22 Then sir Gawain the fair, the good and gracious, who was ever anchored in joy, and filled with largesse, gallant and noble, and most chivalrous, who was never found deficient in any quality of his honor, eager and lively, and very adventurous, radiant with loyalty, and bound up with love. Gawain, in addition to his famed courtesy, has certain distinguishing characteristics, found in the prose romances as well as the poems: He is usually called “messire” or “mon seigneur,”23 a title given only occasionally to other knights; the name of his horse, Gringalet, is known;24 in contrast to the knight errant’s frequent passion for anonymity, Gawain does not conceal his name;25 his strength waxes and wanes during the day in a fashion to suggest some connection with the sun.26 Another trait of Gawain’s which the writers of romance naturally found to their taste was his amorousness.27 Ready as the hero was to joust with a knight at a ford, he was equally ready to dally with a damsel in a pavilion by the road.

Gawain • 53 He offered his love generously and spontaneously, and it was usually accepted with an enthusiasm which matched his own. Episode after episode makes plain that the concept of chastity was foreign to him, but there are few suggestions that he took advantage of his strength or rank to over persuade a reluctant lady. His strong disapproval of rape is brought out by an incident in Claris. Mordred, always a scoundrel, comes upon a girl riding alone through the forest and attempts to violate her. He is prevented by the arrival of her brothers, who seize him and hang him to a tree. At this point Gawain appears, rescues Mordred, and is about to kill the brothers when the girl tells the whole story. Gawain at once forgives the brothers, gives Mordred a scolding (p. 645, ll. 24020–4), and threatens him severely if he tries anything of the kind again. Next day he delivers to Mordred still another lecture on rape: it is the worst thing a gentleman can do, and anyone guilty of it ought to be torn apart by four horses. Women cannot defend themselves, and men’s duty is to protect them: Sachiez, frere, c’est grant dolor De fenme tolir son hennor. (p. 646, ll. 24067–8)28 Know, brother, that it is a terrible thing to rob a woman of her honor. Gawain takes a similar attitude toward a second brother in the VulgateMerlin. Gaheriet and Agravain are talking about some girls whom they have seen recently, and Agravain declares that if he had one of them there in the forest he would not hesitate to use force to win her. Gaheriet replies that he would not act so, “car li gieus ne seroit pas biaus sil ne li souffisoit ausi bien comme a moi” (for the game would not be so enjoyable if she was not as willing as me; II, 351, ll. 11–2). Gawain decides the argument in Gaheriet’s favor, “car il dist quil ne li uoldroit riens auoir fait a forche ne li uint onques fors damors & de courtoisie & gaheriet en dist comme preudome” (for he said that he would not want to have forced her in any way, for he acted only out of love and courtesy, and that Gaheriet spoke nobly; II, 351, ll. 20 ff.). On one occasion, it must be confessed, Gawain seems less than sensitive to a woman’s point of view. Among the many men whom Gawain kills is one whose sister plots murderous vengeance. To carry out her scheme, she conceals a knife in her bed and then invites Gawain to it. Gawain, with a touch of happy, if not completely congruous, piety, makes the sign of the cross as he enters the bed, and the knife is more or less miraculously disclosed to him. 29 He puts the weapon out of reach and “pense a son affaire” (“thinks of his business”; Gerbert, II, 175, l. 12632). The girl is unhappy and no doubt chagrined, but Weille ou non, sosfrir li estuet Le ju de mon seignor Gavain. (II, 175, ll. 12638-9) Whether she wanted to or not, she had to endure Sir Gawain’s game.

54 • B. J. Whiting Then, apparently yielding somewhat her mind as well as her body, she warns Gawain against a vindictive cousin of hers.30 We need not feel too much sympathy for a would-be murderess, but Gawain’s conduct is certainly not marked by finer feeling, however much it exhibits religion and aplomb. After leaving the lady, he meets and, as is to be expected, kills the cousin. What follows makes us feel more distress over his behavior than anything which has preceded. He comes to a castle and there, finding a sizeable and interested audience, he tells the whole story in detail, no doubt in lively expectation of laughter and applause. The audience is more interested than he has foreseen, for his host breaks forth: N’i a mestier celee, Ma fille avez despucelee, Mes fius ocis et mes neveus. (II, 194, ll. 13243–5) There’s no point in hiding the fact; you have deflowered my daughter and killed my sons and nephews. The bereaved father vows vengeance, but Gawain escapes unscathed. The author of the romance does not suggest that he finds Gawain’s conduct other than correct, but we could wish that he had been punished, if only a little bit, for his bad taste, exhibitionism and lack of imagination. A tardy reproof may be administered by relating at this point an affront suffered by Gawain in Raguidel, where he is forced to participate in one of the few fabliaulike incidents in Arthurian romance. He is riding on a mission in the company of a damsel named Ydain and two dogs. As they round a curve they come upon a knight who, evidently thinking himself alone on the highway, si pissa Les le buisson contre les haies. Je ne sai s’Ydain vit ses braies Ne cosse qui au cuer li sist, Ne ço qu’il tint, s’ele le vit, Ne s’ele sa teste i torna. (II, 128, ll. 4494–9) and pissed on the hedge next to the bushes. I don’t know if Ydain saw his pants or anything dear to her heart, or what he was holding, if she saw it, or whether she turned her head that way. At all events, Ydain, probably an emotionally unstable type and certainly not a young lady over impressed by courtesy, immediately abandons Gawain and rides off with the surprised knight, who may very well have had mingled feelings when he discovered whose damsel had attached herself to him so unceremoniously. The dogs remain faithful to Gawain, and the story has a familiar anti-feminist twist: the more I see of women the more I respect dogs.31

Gawain • 55 Certain of Gawain’s amorous passages in the verse romances involve his courtesy and must be postponed, but, despite the lapse already mentioned, it is safe to say of Gawain, as of Tom Jones, that those women are safe with him who choose to be.32 If, now, we turn to the prose romances, in which Gawain’s reputation is to suffer, we find a number of scenes with women treated by their authors with a moral objectivity equal to that of the poets. In the Vulgate-Lancelot, Gawain and Gifflet meet, to their amazement, two damsels waiting for them in a wood. The paired-off couples draw a little apart, and Gifflet and his girl are in complete accord, but Gawain’s lady repulses him, even when he is most attentive, “& mesire Gauuain commenche a rire. si la prent entre ses bras & la commenche a baisier au plus doucement quil puet & le met entre lui & la terre si [le] li velt faire” (and Sir Gawain begins to laugh, and takes her in his arms and kiss her as gently as he can and puts her between himself and the ground and wants to do it to her; III, 365, ll. 30 ff.). She still refuses, and offers him in compensation the sight of her mistress, a much more beautiful lady than herself. Gawain gives over in good natured acquiescence to a girl’s whim. Here we see Gawain’s natural instinct restrained by his sense of propriety. Later he is taken by night into a castle belonging to the king of Norgales, where he finds the king’s daughter asleep in bed. He wakes her with a kiss; at first she is afraid, but her fear changes to joy when he introduces himself, and she readily accepts him as a lover. They go to sleep “bras a bras et bouche a bouche” (arm to arm, mouth to mouth; III, 383, l. 33), in which position the king, rising early and taking a precautionary peek through the window of his daughter’s room, discovers them. Outraged, he calls his men and sends them to kill Gawain, but the hero, aided by the active presence of Saigremor, does great slaughter and escapes. An example of frustration from the Vulgate-Artus may properly be mentioned here. Gawain is put to bed with Helaes, a girl whom he finds even more lovely than his most recent flame. Helaes is asleep, and Gawain, without disturbing her too much, joins her in slumber, “& quant uint un poi apres la mienuit si se prist a esueillier & leua pissier & samie” (and when it was just after midnight, he and his ladylove got up to piss; VII, 175, ll. 17–8). After this delicate interlude they start to make love, but are interrupted by mysterious noises which so distract Gawain that he does not accomplish his purpose, an omission for which he is subsequently mocked.33 Three familiar incidents in the prose romances show Gawain’s behavior toward women in a less favorable light. The first of these events has no hint of love, but since it purportedly fixed one side of Gawain’s attitude as regards women, it belongs here. In the Suite du Merlin, Gawain, angry because of the slaughter of some hounds, fights the knight who has killed the dogs and overcomes him. The knight declares himself defeated and asks for mercy. Despite his pleas and remonstrances Gawain is about to cut off his head when the knight’s amie throws herself across her lover’s body.

56 • B. J. Whiting Gawain is unable to deflect his blow and decapitates the lady. His distress at the act is expressed but not excessive,34 and he sends the knight off to court, wounded as he is, to announce that Gawain has achieved his quest, which was to retrieve the hounds. Punishment follows almost at once: Gawain is attacked by a superior number of knights, wounded by a poisoned arrow, overthrown, and would have lost his own head, had not a lady rescued him. When she discovers his identity, she chides him for his ungentlemanly conduct, and releases him only on condition that he carry the corpse back to court with the head tied about his neck by its tresses, and submit to whatever penalty the queen and ladies of the court may impose for his crime.35 Gawain, thoroughly contrite by this time, carries out her instructions, but it is to be observed that he is concerned to see that he gets the surviving dogs back as proof that he has ended his quest (II, 95–6). The judgment of the ladies is that he must swear never to raise a hand against a woman and always to aid any female who requests his assistance, unless it be against his honor. He swears, “Et pour chou qu’il aida puis toutdis si volentiers et de si boin cuer as damoisieles fu il apielés par tout en la court et aillours li chevaliers as damoisieles, ne chil nons ne li chai tant coume il pot armes porter” (And because he helped damsels so willingly and readily thereafter, he was called in all the court the Knight of the Damsels, and he was called by this name as long as he could bear arms; II, 99).36 This particular quest is Gawain’s first, he is eighteen and still only a squire, but for all that his behavior37 and attitude are highly improper. The circumstances, however, are so peculiar as to deserve mention. Gawain’s pursuit of the hounds is only part of a three-fold adventure foretold by Merlin (II, 76–7), and perhaps arranged by him. The other adventurers are King Pellinor and his illegitimate son Tor, and neither of their exploits turns out well. Tor defeats a knight, but before he can persuade him to cry for mercy, a young woman asks him for a “don.” She has never asked a knight for one before, she says, and Tor, who, by a happy coincidence, had never previously been asked for one, grants it at once. The “don” is the conquered knight’s head. “‘Comment!’ fait il, ‘volés vous dont que je li trenche?’ ‘Oil,’ fait elle” (“What!” he said. “So you want me to cut his head off?” “Yes,” she said; II, 111), and off the head comes, although the knight now cries for mercy and Tor tries to dissuade the damsel. Pellinor, in his haste to be about his quest, refuses aid to a girl, who dies, after wishing that he may have a like request refused (II, 115–6). On his way back to court he finds that the damsel, all save her head, has been eaten by wild animals (II, 125). He takes the head with him, and Merlin reveals later that the girl is Pellinor’s own daughter (II, 128–9, 137). Neither Tor’s nor Pellinor’s behavior is as discreditable to them as Gawain’s is to him, but neither is exactly fortunate, and all three misadventures seem in some way part of the aftermath of the deaths of Balaain and Balaan and adumbrations of the tragic aspects of the quest of the Grail (II, 96).

Gawain • 57 No single act of Gawain’s disgusts modern readers as much as his betrayal of Pelleas.38 The story is too well-known. Gawain, after promising to help Pelleas win his cruel lady’s love, forgets his pledge and takes the lady for himself. Pelleas finds the two in bed together, but so great is his magnanimity that instead of killing them, he only leaves his naked sword lying across their throats. In Malory’s version (I, 157), when the lovers wake, the lady, overlooking that she had made the first advances (I, 155), is bitter toward Gawain for his deception of Pelleas and herself. Gawain puts on his clothes and goes out of the story. The Lady of the Lake frees Pelleas from his infatuation and bewitches his scornful mistress into an unrequited love for him. Pelleas lives happily thereafter with the Lady of the Lake,39 and the mortal woman dies of sorrow (I, 158–9). Tennyson alters Malory’s version in such a way as to deepen Gawain’s guilt. Gawain’s oath of loyalty and aid is more solemn, and even after he has made it Pelleas apprehensively refers to Gawain’s reputation as “lightof-love” and asks that he help and not betray (p. 322). Ettarre’s advances to Gawain are left out, the Lady of the Lake omitted, and Pelleas runs mad. Gawain’s conduct is reprehensible in Malory, despicable in Tennyson. If we examine the story before Malory, we find something quite different. In the Abenteuer Gawains (pp. 29 ff.), Gawain is pictured as a young man, not long a knight, who has never loved a woman (p. 30). The lady, here Arcade, woos him vigorously, especially after she learns his rank, gets him to her bed at the first opportunity, and there, as the author emphasizes, Gawain also suffers loss of virginity in the sinful act (p. 32). When they wake and find evidence of Pelleas’s presence, only Gawain shows compunction and remorse. He then persuades Arcade, rather against her better judgment, that she must accept Pelleas. When told of Arcade’s change of heart, Pelleas goes into an ecstacy of thanks, does not cavil at Gawain’s method of persuasion, and marries Arcade without hesitation. They have a fine wedding and beget a child the first night. Here we have a Gawain seduced in his youthful innocence who manages nonetheless to fulfill his promise to Pelleas. The story has a happy ending for every one, except perhaps Arcade, even though it does not appeal to the modern sense of decorum. The author, whose opinion is important, holds that Gawain and Arcade committed a sin, but he makes excuses for Gawain, and sees nothing offensive in the conclusion. Later versions progressively blacken Gawain, and Tennyson deliberately concocts a tragedy brought about by the faithlessness of an unmitigated libertine. In Abenteuer Gawains and Malory, the responsibility is primarily the woman’s, and Gawain little more than the acquiescent agent of her heartlessness and lust. As a matter of fact, the motif of the man who woos for himself when sent to woo for another is by no means uncommon, nor is it always treated as reprehensible. An American classic, Longfellow’s Courtship of Miles Standish, has the identical theme. Tempted by a woman, John Alden, though less speedily and with more pangs of conscience, betrays his friend and patron. Longfellow does his best to make his

58 • B. J. Whiting lovers appear respectable and Puritan, but the simple fact is clear. Mistress Mullins did not want Miles Standish and she did want John Alden; ArcadeEttarre did not want Pelleas and she did want Gawain. Both women got what they wanted. Gawain, no more responsible, ceteris paribus, than John, is treated as a scoundrel, while “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” and its consequences are among the justly beloved and sentimental cornerstones of young love, female emancipation, free enterprise and the New England way of life. The third incident concerns Gawain’s part in the story of Elaine, the Maid of Astolat, and her love for Lancelot. Of the four versions which we need consider, the stanzaic English poem, Le Morte Arthur, comes from the VulgateMort, or something close to it; Malory knew the English poem as well as a French prose version; and Tennyson seems to have used the earlier poem in addition to Malory.40 Despite the interrelations of the versions, Gawain’s behavior is portrayed on three distinct levels. Malory, either because of the nature of his immediate French source or because he chose to ignore Gawain’s amorous gestures, plays down the hero’s interview with Elaine. He relates that Lancelot comes incognito to Astolat, lodges with a baron, borrows his host’s son’s shield, and leaves his own in the keeping of his host’s daughter, Elaine,41 whose token he wears to the tournament at Winchester (III, 205–7). After the tournament Gawain stops at Astolat, discovers by the shield that it is Lancelot for whom Elaine has an unrequited love—“Yee, truely,” said shee, “my love he is, God would that I were his love” (III, 217). Gawain is interested, but no more,42 and hastens to tell Arthur of his discovery: “the faire maide of Astolat loveth sir Launcelot mervailously well, but what it meaneth I cannot say; and shee is ridden after him for to seeke him” (III, 218). He repeats the story at court, and perhaps adds to it; at all events Guenevere, very much annoyed, denounces Lancelot to Bors, saying: “I heard sir Gawaine say before my lord Arthur that mervaile it were to tell the great love that is between the faire maide of Astolat and him” (III, 219). The Vulgate-Mort 43 had exhibited Gawain as behaving in a more typical fashion. When the Maid serves Gawain at supper, he finds her very attractive and takes the first opportunity to declare his love (p. 216). She expresses doubt that he can really love so poor a girl as herself, but adds that if he does she is sorry for him, since she already loves a knight who is in every way his equal. Gawain then sees the shield, recognizes it as Lancelot’s, and is both surprised and concerned, the latter for fear that Lancelot might learn that he had committed an unconscious act of trespass. He speaks to the Maid flatteringly and declares that had he known Lancelot was her lover, he would have said nothing of his own affection, although that night he cannot help wondering, not without a certain amount of self-revelation, how Lancelot had happened to love so far beneath him (p. 218). Next day, when he rejoins Arthur, the king informs him that Agravain has said that Lancelot stayed away from the

Gawain • 59 tournament in order to be alone with Guenevere. Gawain tells Arthur not to believe Agravain, says that he has learned that Lancelot is in love with a beautiful girl, reminds him of Lancelot’s earlier love for the daughter of Pelles, and offers to fight for Lancelot’s honor (p. 219). Later (p. 220) Gawain unwillingly tells Guenevere that Lancelot had worn another lady’s sleeve in the tournament, but later still (pp. 222–3) he gives Arthur and Guenevere more details about Lancelot and the Maid, and even admits that he himself had made unsuccessful love to her. Gawain’s conduct in the Vulgate-Mort is hardly reprehensible, but the author of the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur softens the picture still more. Elaine tells Gawain that Lancelot is her “leman,” to which he replies: “I Am full fayne That he the wolde to lemman take, And I with alle my myght and mayne Wille be thy knight for his sake.” Gawayne thus spake with that swete wight What his wille was for to say Tille he was to bed I-dighte; Aboute hym was gamme and play. (p. 20, ll. 604–11) “I am very pleased that he would take you for his sweetheart, and I with all my might and main will be your knight for his sake.” Gawain thus spoke to that sweet person whatever he wished to say, until he prepared himself for bed; about him was revelry and frolic. That he proposes love to her is made clear when he recognizes the dead girl in the boat as the Maid of Ascalot, Whiche he som tyme had wowyd faste his owne leman for to be, But she aunsweryd hym ay in haste, “To none bot launcelot wold she te.” (p. 32, ll. 1012–5) Whom he formerly had wooed intently to make her his own sweetheart, but she always answered him quickly, “To none but Launcelot would she attach herself.” On his return to court Gawain had spread the news of Lancelot’s unprecedented love-affair, but once he has read the letter which accompanies Elaine’s corpse, he goes to Guenevere to tell her that the story about Lancelot’s loving the Maid had been untrue. Guenevere is angry with him (p. 37, ll. 1150 ff.), which is unjust, since he, having no reason to doubt Elaine’s story,44 had, at the very worst, done no more than retail a piece of surprisingly novel gossip.45

60 • B. J. Whiting If we grant that Gawain wooed too easily, which is nothing new, and gossiped too freely, which is a not uncommon weakness, we have extracted all possible evil from Le Morte Arthur. Tennyson’s re-working, “Lancelot and Elaine,” however, is a little masterpiece of malice. Arthur sends Gawain in search of the wounded knight, suspected by the king of being Lancelot, in order to give him the diamond prize of victory in the tournament.46 Gawain, characterized as “Nor often loyal to his word” (p. 238), rides away in suppressed wrath at being sent “in quest of whom he knew not.” At Astolat he shows little desire to see the shield, but rather sets about, like the caricature of a city play-boy, to dazzle and seduce the inexperienced country girl, who puts him in his place with her honest innocence and simple loyalty. He alludes meanly to Lancelot’s love for Guenevere, casts doubt on Lancelot’s good faith one way or the other, gives her the diamond with a nasty hint, and says that if she gets a chance to “learn the courtesies of the court, We two shall know each other” (p. 243). So, “all wearied of the quest,” he returns to Camelot, where he is greeted by the anger of the king who, in Le Morte Arthur, had been greatly amused to hear that Lancelot at long last had an amie. Gawain, daunted but not for long, “shook his hair, strode off, and buzz’d abroad About the maid of Astolat and her love” (p. 244). Not even in “Pelleas and Ettarre,” where he had more to build on, does Tennyson picture Gawain with the patent animosity which he shows in “Lancelot and Elaine.” Gawain’s relations with women are sometimes held to have had a profound effect on his general reputation. One school of thought considers him originally a model of chastity and therefore ineligible for any pattern of life fixed by the rules of courtly love.47 Gawain’s character, well-known and fixed, would not permit him to take part in an illicit affair; courtly love presupposed extramarital relations; the current craze was for courtly love, and therefore Gawain must be supplanted by a new hero.48 Against this theory, which is not unattractive, it must be urged, first, that the evidence for Gawain’s chastity is extremely slight, 49 and second, that Gawain’s affairs are most frequent in romances tinged by courtly love. Certain it is, however, that Gawain is not a courtly lover. He is ordinarily too polite and too considerate to be described as animalistic, but he almost never becomes emotionally involved. No one ever found Gawain bewailing to the trees or stars the indifference or cruelty of a lady fair.50 He is never enmeshed in a long drawn out passion, nor, unlike Arthur, Lancelot and Tristram (twice), is he ever guilty of adultery.51 The most courteous of knights, he is a foil to the courtly lover through elasticity rather than chastity. Miss Weston and others have argued that Gawain’s apparent promiscuity is largely due to the failure of the writers of romance to understand his prehistory. Since Gawain’s original mistress was a fairy, queen of the other world, and nameless, it was easy for her to turn up again and again under different names or without a name.52 Fairy mistresses and other-world brides were so

Gawain • 61 prevalent, so much a part of the machinery of medieval romance, that it would be strange indeed if Gawain did not have one or more. To use that fact to regularize Gawain’s liaisons is, at best, a debatable procedure, and illustrates one of the hazards of applying the methods of human biography to a creature of fiction. While the alleged paucity of Gawain’s offspring is of some biological interest,53 its evidence for the number of his mistresses is slight. It is significant that though Gawain often marries, we never read of his married life or of his wives, once the marriage has been consummated. 54 To sum up, in the romances, prose as well as verse, Gawain is the casual, good-natured and wellmannered wooer of almost any available girl. If she acquiesces, good; if not, there is sure to be another pavilion or castle not far ahead. Rarely indeed do the authors pass a moral judgment on the hero’s conduct. From Gawain’s private, or semi-private, affairs we may turn to his public life. In the prose romances he loses his position as Arthur’s chief knight, his invincibility vanishes, and his good faith is destroyed. His degradation is by no means consistent or universal, but in one place or another the most evil qualities appear. The Vulgate-Merlin presents in greater stature and more detail the Gawain of the chronicles. He is never a lover, and his war-like characteristics appear in childhood, when he and his brothers emerge almost from the nursery to do battle on Arthur’s behalf against any who oppose the new king. That Gawain’s father is among Arthur’s foes gives an early indication of Gawain’s devotion and loyalty to his uncle, whom he sees for the first time only when the campaigns are well advanced. In battle Gawain is unconquerable and implacable, so much so that one modern critic has found him “a rather dreadful person,” with a “Berserker rage” and “unendurably vindictive.” 55 This criticism is hardly justified by the attitude of the medieval author, who clearly views Gawain as an ideal fighting man, although he is once reprimanded for using the weapons and methods of battle on the jousting field.56 The Suite du Merlin is sometimes held to mark the beginning of Gawain’s downfall.57 It is true that the Suite tells the story of Gawain’s bad behavior and ill luck on his first adventure,58 but even that is accompanied by warm predictions for his future (II, 94, 100). Merlin tells him that only one knight will be able to defeat him (II, 100), though the author subsequently helps to undermine confidence in prophecy by listing six knights by whom Gawain will be bested (II, 240). A chain of events later used to calumniate Gawain is started in the Suite. King Pellinor kills King Lot (I, 261), and Gawain, then only eleven, vows to avenge his father (I, 262–3). He repeats the vow (II, 73, 75–6, 85), and its fulfilment is prophesied (II, 11, 75, 138), with the addition that he will kill two of Pellinor’s sons (I, 261). Gawain’s assumption of the blood-feud is sanctioned by the current code and by the author’s attitude, and far from there being any suggestion of treachery on Gawain’s part, he is made to state specifically that he will act in the most honorable fashion (II, 76). There is no

62 • B. J. Whiting mention of Lamorak, another of Pellinor’s sons, and Lancelot and Tristram, Gawain’s greatest rivals for glory, appear only in references to future events. Gawain’s death at Lancelot’s hands is foretold (II, 228), but not as it actually took place. Merlin, who prophesies throughout the Suite with more volubility than usual, also announces in a guarded way that Gawain will kill Baudemagus (I, 273–4). In the Abenteuer Gawains, which is a continuation of the Suite, we find the version of the story of Pelleas most favorable to Gawain.59 Further, some Norn-like fairies tell Gawain, Ywain and Le Morholt how they are to die.60 Gawain is informed that his death will come by a wound from the foreigner whom he has most loved “Et ce lui auiendra par son orgueil” (And this will happen to him on account of his pride; p. 63). We expect the Vulgate-Lancelot to exalt Lancelot above Gawain and it does so, but with extraordinary restraint.61 Lancelot has outstripped all other knights, he is invincible in battle, joust or tournament, he is Arthur’s secondin-command, he is Guenevere’s lover,62 he is honorable in all but one respect, a respect condoned by the rules of courtly love, and this single virtue which he does not possess is personified in his son. Lancelot’s preeminence would seem to leave little place for Gawain, but throughout the lengthy work Gawain is second only to Lancelot. Several long episodes recount his adventures, he holds his own in battle and in tournament, he is close friend to Lancelot, and the latter calls him “li mieldres cheualiers du monde” (the best knight in the world; IV, 129, l. 38). Among the many passages in warm praise of Gawain in the romances, one in the Vulgate-Lancelot stands out: Mesires Gauuains fu tous iors loiaus uers son seignor. Il ne fu mie mesdisans ne enuieus. aincois fu tous iors plus cortois que nus & pour chou lamoient plus dames & damoiseles & pour sa cheualerie. Il ne fue mie uantans entre cheualiers de cose quil feist onques. Il fu tous iors sage & atempres & sans vilonnie dire (IV, 358, ll. 38 ff.). Sir Gawain was always loyal to his lord. He was never slanderous or envious, but was always more courteous than anyone else, and because of this and because of his chivalry, ladies and damsels loved him more. He never boasted among knights about anything he ever did. He was always wise and moderate and never spoke discourteously. Here there are no qualifications, no slanders, no hints of evil. Except for a scene in the Grail castle where he is disgraced and misused (IV, 346 ff.), Gawain has yielded the absolute leadership to Lancelot without losing prowess or integrity. The prose Tristan63 gives the most consistently and unrelievedly black picture of Gawain to be found in literature.64 The author65 lacks the sophistication to sneer in Tennyson’s way, but he does what can be done by downright, unmitigated abuse with heavyhanded zeal.66 If, as has been suggested,67 it was the writer’s intention to make Tristram’s position secure by destroying a rival,

Gawain • 63 one must observe that it is still Gawain, not Lancelot, who seemed to offer the most dangerous competition.68 There would be no point in summarizing the Tristan, but some examples of Gawain’s depravity must be cited. He is a traitor (p. 28); he is unfair, cowardly and cruel in battle (pp. 133, 210, 216, 293, 300, 314, 329–30); he was once good but is so no longer (pp. 175–6, 329–30, 439); he is one of the worst knights in the world (p. 133); he kills out of hate, envy or to get possession of a woman (pp. 175–6, 221, 231, 235–6); he is rebuked by Gaheriet (pp. 314, 241), Tristram (pp. 137, 314, 329–30), and Driant (p. 235); he is defeated or discomfited by Arthur (p. 441), Belinant (p. 52), Blioberis (pp. 221, 230–1), Brehus (p. 96), Driant (p. 235), Erec (p. 293), Lamorat (Lamorak) (pp. 167, 168–9, 235–6, 237), Palamedes (p. 271), Perceval (p. 244) and Tristram (pp. 113, 141, 329); he kills, usually treacherously, Bademagus (Baudemagus) (p. 228), Driant (p. 237), Erec (p. 369), Lamorat (pp. 167, 231, 241), Meraugis (p. 331), Pellinor (p. 241), and Yvain l’Avoutre (p. 224); he is cavalier toward the quest of the Grail (p. 396); he hates Lamorat, first, because he fears that Lamorat may discover that he had killed Pellinor (pp. 167, 173–4, 234), second, because Lamorat defeats him (pp. 168–9, 173–4, 235–6), and third, because Lamorat is having an affair with his mother (pp. 167, 173–4, 234); he throws Lamorat’s head down on the path after cutting it off (p. 238); he is worse than Breuz-sans-Pitie (pp. 229–30); he is impolite to a homely girl (p. 453); he makes fun of Tristram’s haircut (p. 95). Surely an abundance of evil for one small man (p. 95)69 to perform! Madden considered the Tristan mainly responsible for Gawain’s ill fame,70 and although Miss Weston thought that the Queste might well be the culprit,71 if sheer weight of calumny be any criterion, then we must agree with Madden. After the Tristan, indeed, the remaining prose romances seem to direct no more than pin-pricks at Gawain. That Gawain was conspicuously lacking in the qualities demanded of the winner of the Grail will be admitted by his most ardent admirers, except perhaps those who know him only in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. At his very best he is a man of war and women, one whose character requires no shading to make him the antithesis of Galahad. We are not surprised, then, that Gawain does not achieve the Grail,72 or even that Perceval, Bors and Lancelot go farther along the road. But he does make more progress than do most of the seekers,73 and we feel that he would have made still more, had it not been for a fault which would have occurred only to the religious authors of the books about the Grail. Without being entirely irreligious,74 Gawain is represented as lacking true contrition and a sense of the immediacy of soul’s salvation.75 On two occasions, at least, he might have redeemed himself, but each time he evaded the opportunity with a frivolous excuse.76 Gawain makes a relatively slight appearance in the Vulgate-Aventures, and modern scholars have differed as to the attitude of its author toward him. For Miss Weston and others77 the work is one of the chief offenders in the blackening of Gawain.78 Conversely it has been urged79 that Gawain’s character here is

64 • B. J. Whiting admirably, even skillfully, balanced. His good qualities are admitted, his position is acknowledged, but it is recognized that he is unfit to achieve the Grail. An ecclesiastic who tells him that he is not worthy to accompany Galahad uses harsh language, and says “uous estes serians maluais & desloiax” (you are a bad and disloyal servant; VI, 38, ll. 3–4).80 Gawain, however, is here represented as disloyal to the Christian principles of his oath of chivalry and not, as in Tristan, to his fellow men. Even when Gawain has been knocked down by Galahad, the writer of one manuscript adds a consoling eulogy: Gawain is “li plus cortois. li plus dous li plus debonaires del monde & a poures & a rices” (the most courteous, the gentlest, the noblest man in the world, to both poor and rich; VI, 141, n. 15). To repeat, the rules of the game of the Grail are such that Gawain has no chance unless, like Lancelot, he become a repentant sinner.81 Truly repentant he could not be, and there is his fatal flaw, but only in the Tristan (p. 396) is it suggested and in Tennyson (pp. 304–5)82 stated that he is irreverent. He undertakes the quest with enthusiasm; futility and frustration, not cynical weariness, lead him to abandon it. If we shift to another Grail romance, the Perlesvaus, we find that on occasion a sense of consecration can offset Gawain’s strongest instinct. A lady, in whose castle he is passing the night, tells him that her husband, Marin li Jalos, has often told her that Gawain “ne porta foi a dame ne a damoisele qu’il n’en feist sa volenté” (was never honest with any lady or damsel for he always had his way with them; I, 74, ll. 1243–4). In spite of these warnings, or because of them, she is glad to welcome him as her guest. At dinner Gawain observes the lady’s beauty and, if he were willing to believe his heart and eyes, he would change his mind, but he thinks of his “haut pelerinage” (high pilgrimage) and turns away his gaze (I, 74, ll. 1257–61).83 Gawain dominates the latter part of the Vulgate-Mort, which Malory followed together with the earlier English derivative, the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur. In it he completes the destruction of the fabric of Arthur’s court which he had begun unwittingly when he and the other knights pledge themselves to the quest of the Grail. Most readers, feeling their primary concern with Lancelot and Guenevere, do not find Gawain’s behavior sympathetic, and modern authors have treated him rather as a spoil-sport. Scholars have defended Gawain,84 and the text bears them out. Gawain refuses to join his brothers Agravain and Mordred in their desire to reveal Guenevere’s adultery to the king, he advises them against their proposed action, and says emphatically that he will never be hostile to Lancelot.85 In the effort to capture Lancelot in Guenevere’s chamber Agravain is killed and twelve of his raiding party, among them two of Gawain’s sons. Lancelot escapes, and Guenevere is condemned to be burned. Gawain strongly opposes the execution, 86 and when Arthur reminds him that Lancelot killed his brother and his sons, Gawain replies that he is sorry for that, but that he had warned them and that their deaths were their own fault.87 He will not be present at the burning:

Gawain • 65 Gawayne wolde neuyr by nere by-syde There Any woman shuld be brente. (Le Morte Arthur, p. 57, ll. 1938–9) Gawain would never be present where any woman should be burned. His brothers Guerresche (Gaheris) and Gaheriet (Gareth) attend the execution against his will and theirs. In the confusion of the rescue Lancelot inadvertently kills the brothers. From the moment Gawain learns that it is truly Lancelot who killed them, he changes completely. His sole purpose in life becomes vengeance on Lancelot and he never lets up in his pressure on the often reluctant king.88 Although family loyalty has some part in Gawain’s passion, it can be over-emphasized. 89 After all, Gawain had accepted the killing of three members of his family with a regret strongly modified by confirmation. What drove him to monomania was the gratuitous, even if accidental, death of Gaheriet. Not only was Gaheriet Gawain’s favorite brother; he was also a link with Lancelot. Lancelot, too, had loved Gaheriet, and Gaheriet had worshipped Lancelot. Now Gaheriet was dead and Lancelot had killed him. Perhaps Gawain should have fallen back on reason, perhaps he should have forgiven Lancelot’s instinctive and bitterly repented blow, perhaps he should have undertaken the easy task of persuading Arthur to forget his wrongs. He did none of these things, rather he pursued his bitter bloodfeud almost to the end; almost, but not quite, since before he died he wrote Lancelot a letter in which he acknowledged his own partial responsibility for the tragic events.90 All in all, and discounting any predilection for the continued success of adulterous love, Gawain is an honest and heroic figure in the last act of the story of Arthur. The prose romances, as we have seen, differ between themselves in their picture of Gawain; Malory, taking his material from them, differs within himself. That Malory is inconsistent in his treatment of Gawain is obvious and has been often mentioned,91 as has been his responsibility for the unflattering conception of the hero found in later English writers. 92 There is nothing mysterious, however, about Malory’s partial degradation of Gawain,93 nor can he be given much credit for developing a consistent character, an integrated mixture of good and evil. 94 It may be, as Vinaver suggests, that the result agreed with Malory’s preference for the sentimental knight (i.e., Lancelot) rather than the adventurous (i.e., Gawain),95 but the ingredients came directly from his sources.96 Gawain first comes to Arthur’s court with his mother on the unfortunate visit which resulted in the conception of Mordred (Malory, I, 43); he plays no part in the wars of Arthur against the kings, though, young as he is, he plans to avenge his father’s death (I, 75, 97); he is knighted on the day of Arthur’s marriage (I, 94, 96), and is angry because King Pellinor is treated with distinction

66 • B. J. Whiting (I, 97); on his first quest he cuts off a lady’s head and here, as we have seen,97 Malory (I, 101) puts him in a slightly more favorable light than the Suite du Merlin had done; in battle against the five kings (of Denmark, Ireland and so on) he is less heroic, though more sensible, than Kay (I, 120); he goes into voluntary exile with Ewaine (Ywain) (I, 143–4); he fights with Marhaus (Le Morholt), and despite his supernatural strength (I, 147) is more than equalled;98 he is scorned, not altogether justly, and deserted by a lady with whom he rides adventuring (I, 150–2, 166); he meets Pelleas and subsequently Ettarde;99 he has killed, we learn incidentally, a duke’s seven sons (I, 160); he goes on an embassy to Lucius and kills a man who insults the Britons (I, 179–80); he acts nobly in the Roman war (I, 184), fights to a draw with a Saracen (I, 189), who cures his wounds (I, 191), and thereafter becomes a Christian (I, 193–4);100 he is defeated by Lancelot in Kay’s armor (I, 222), but laughs and smiles when he discovers the identity of the victor (I, 231); he is angry with Kay for his ill use of Beaumains (Gareth) (I, 235, 240); he is overthrown in a tournament by Tristram (I, 291), and also by Gareth (I, 292, 293), but shows only brotherly pride in the latter’s supremacy (I, 299). In all these events we have a Gawain who, while distinctly not the first of knights and occasionally imprudent and unfortunate, is almost always correct in victory and magnanimous in defeat. There has been nothing to prepare us for the sudden and calumnious statement that “after sir Gareth had espied sir Gawains conditions, he withdrew himselfe from his brother sir Gawains fellowship, for he was vengeable and unmercifull, and whereas he hated he would be avenged with murther and treason, and that hated sir Gareth” (I, 303). Malory is now following the prose Tristan,101 and we know that there he can find no good of Gawain. We need not rehearse the list of calumnies and misadventures;102 Malory’s process of selection reduced the number but not the nature of the incidents. Malory’s account of Gawain and the Grail is close to his sources and may be recapitulated briefly. Gawain, at Arthur’s command, tries to draw the sword from the floating stone and fails (III, 55),103 in consequence of which he is later wounded by the sword (III, 54, 144); he is first to vow the quest and, to Arthur’s voluble and prophetic distress, most of the knights follow his example, but even in his enthusiasm he adds the proviso, “and if I may not speed, I shall returne againe, as hee that may not bee against the will of our Lord Jesu Christ” (III, 61); he and his fellows slay the seven knights whom Galahad had defeated but not killed (III, 79); he loses track of Galahad, is told by a monk that because he is “wicked and sinfull,” he is unfit for Galahad’s company (III, 78), and has the stricture amplified by a hermit who tells him he must do penance, but Gawain refuses: “‘I may doe no penance, for wee knights adventurous often suffer great woe and paine.’ ‘Well,’ said the good man, and then he held his peace” (III, 80); he finds no adventures, and confesses to Sir Ector that “I am nigh weary of this quest, and loth I am to follow any further” (III, 114),

Gawain • 67 but at the same time he admits the superiority of Lancelot, Galahad, Perceval and Bors; he mortally wounds a knight with whom he jousts, and weeps when he learns that it is his sworn brother Uwaine (Ywain) le Avoutres (III, 117–8); he meets yet another hermit, who interprets a dream for him, and tells him that he is failing in the quest, “for yee are an untrue knight and a great murtherer, and to good men signifieth other things than murther. For I dare well say, as sinfull as sir Launcelot hath beene, sith that hee went in the quest of the sancgreall hee never slew man” (III, 122), but when he urges him to “yeeld unto our Lord,” Gawain, throwing away his second chance of redemption, refuses to continue the talk, because “my fellow here sir Ector is gone before, and abideth me yonder beneath the hill” (III, 123); he is wounded by Galahad, and recovers within a month (III, 144–5); there is a reference to his killing of Baudemagus (III, 175), and then we learn that he and many other knights have come home before Lancelot (III, 175). The magnitude of Gawain’s failure104 lies not in the fact that he did less well than an overwhelming majority of the questing knights, but in that he did not excel them. His eminence makes him, though only to a slightly greater extent than Ector, the typical example of the worldly knights who cannot throw off their old ways even under the inspiration of the Grail. An unsuccessful attempt to poison Gawain leads to Guenevere’s impeachment for murder (III, 191 ff.) and Lancelot’s vindication of her innocence. Then follows the story of Elaine of Astolat (III, 205 ff.),105 with an account of the tournament near Winchester, at which Gawain, defeated only by Lancelot ( I I I , 2 3 8 , 2 3 9 ) , 1 0 6 d o e s g re a t f e a t s o f a r m s ( I I I , 2 3 6 , 2 3 7 ) , a n d Meliagraunce’s abduction of Guenevere (III, 244 ff.) and her rescue, in which, unlike Chrétien’s version, Gawain has no share. We have already covered the events which led Gawain to become Lancelot’s bitter foe and the implacable advocate of war against him.107 During the campaigns Lancelot’s forbearance, magnanimity and repentance (III, 297, 306–8), however much engendered by his sense of guilt, are in sharp contrast to Gawain’s almost insane threats and boasts, 108 but there is no question of the latter’s bravery, and though he is wounded by Bors (III, 301), it is only Lancelot who can defeat him (III, 320, 323). At the moment of death he changes once more, and writes Lancelot a noble and pathetic letter (III, 327–8), which redeems him to the extent that one who has permitted the death of a favorite brother to outweigh all other considerations requires redemption. Save for passing references to the deaths of Pellinor and Lamorak (III, 21, 192, 269, 298), the Gawain of Malory’s last books is the Gawain who is second only to Lancelot, but now mentally unbalanced by cruel grief. Gawain appears seldom and casually in English literature of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,109 and of the later authors who wrote of him we may take space for only a selection. Bulwer Lytton devoted the sixth book of his King Arthur (1848)110 to Gawain and, unlike any other modern

68 • B. J. Whiting author, he attempted to make Gawain completely sympathetic. That it was only an attempt is due not to the author’s intention but to the wordy dullness which marks the entire poem. Gawain wanders about with a raven, inspired by Odin’s, but perhaps not uninfluenced by Grip of Dicken’s Barnaby Rudge. Among other adventures he marries, rather under compulsion, a knight’s daughter, but has his wedding night seriously interrupted by a sword which emerges from the wall of the bridal chamber. Next day he starts on with his bride and a dog; the bride deserts him for a hideous carl, but the dog prefers to remain with Gawain. The story is that of Epée,111 though here treated humorously, since Gawain, who had not wanted the girl in the first place, is relieved, if a little surprised, at her choice. Unfortunately for Gawain, no later author of poetic ability was to imitate Bulwer Lytton’s attitude or method. William Morris was twenty-two when he first came upon Malory’s Morte Darthur in 1855, 112 though he already knew Tennyson’s earlier Arthurian poems.113 Malory was one of the prime forces which drew Morris back to the Middle Ages,114 but the direct influence on his writings is largely limited to The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems (1858).115 Morris’s treatment of Gawain is consistently and deliberately unfavorable. In “The Defence of Guenevere,” he makes Gawain Guenevere’s accuser, indeed public prosecutor (pp. 4, 9, 10, 11, 17), a rôle which he had never filled before.116 In “King Arthur’s Tomb,” Gawain appears along with “handsome Gareth,” “merry Dinadan,” and “great Tristram,” but he is “scowling Gauwaine, like the night in day.”117 Again, “Sir Galahad” contains the slighting statement, “Sir Lionel and Gauwaine have come back from the great quest, Just merely shamed” (p. 56). Maynadier118 points out that Morris’s distortion of Gawain cannot be due to Tennyson, and queries if Tennyson may not have been influenced by Morris. Tennyson119 introduces Gawain in seven of the twelve Idylls of the King;120 in three of the seven the allusions are casual and not unfavorable.121 Gawain, then, appears at some length, always badly, in only four of the individual poems, “Lancelot and Elaine,” “The Holy Grail,” “Pelleas and Ettarre,” and “The Passing of Arthur.”122 In each case Tennyson goes beyond his source to blacken Gawain. “Pelleas and Ettarre”123 and “Lancelot and Elaine”124 have already been discussed in contrast to the earlier versions, and nothing specific need be added to what has been said.125 In Malory, we remember, Gawain is the first to swear to seek the Grail; in Tennyson, however, as Perceval tells the story, he swore first, using some of Gawain’s words (p. 279),126 then Galahad, Bors, Lancelot and “many among the knights,” and finally, “Gawain sware, and louder than the rest” (p. 280). Malory’s Gawain is silent after his return from the quest, but not Tennyson’s. He tells Arthur that a saintly man made clear that the quest was not for him; he then adds that he found a pavilion with “merry maidens in it,” and if a gale had not blown the pavilion away and the maidens about, he would have had a good year (p. 300). Later he makes a boastful and irreverent speech and is soundly chided by the blameless king

Gawain • 69 (pp. 304–5). Everything, except that Gawain was admonished by a saintly man, indeed by two saintly men, that Tennyson states is false to the only account of Gawain and the Grail which he knew. The pertinent passage from “The Passing of Arthur” has been quoted,127 and it remains only to add that in Malory, Gawain, far from being “blown along a wandering wind,” is accompanied by the ladies for whom he did righteous battle while alive, and that no one minimized Gawain or his dream. Tennyson, to give him the slight credit which is his due, does not always use Gawain as a whipping-boy. He omits him from Vivien’s list of naughty knights (pp. 206 ff.), and has him play no part in the separation of Lancelot and Guenevere. The latter, to be sure, is not due to any fondness for Gawain, but to the fact that Tennyson’s tender treatment of the adultery necessitated the omission of most of Malory’s details. Tennyson’s bias against Gawain is not easy of explanation. Had he known more about the hero’s love affairs, we might ascribe his obvious distaste to outraged Victorian morality, but Malory tells little of Gawain the successful amorist. One is tempted to suggest, though the association may be too simple, that Tennyson made Gawain a libertine and cad because sound middle-class distrust of good manners was aroused by the references, few as they are, in Malory, to Gawain’s courtesy. In “Lancelot and Elaine,” for example, the very word becomes a hissing (pp. 241, 244). At all events, Tennyson and the author of the prose Tristan are the two authors whose invention did most to damn Gawain. Edwin A. Robinson’s Gawain differs somewhat from poem to poem. In Merlin, to follow the order of composition, Gawain at the opening of the poem is a thoughtful, inquisitive and friendly figure, friendly to both Lancelot and Dagonet (pp. 235–41). It is Dagonet, indeed, who suggests a weakness in the hero when he fears that Gawain’s “friendly zeal” will one day over match his tact (p. 238). Lamorak refers to Gawain’s memory of the family feud in such a way as to make Gawain appear a little sinister (p. 248–9), although Gawain later is to say that Mordred killed Lamorak (p. 300). Elsewhere Arthur, speaking straight out of Tennyson, says, “Gawaine, I fear, makes light of everything” (p. 255). By the end of the poem, which is broken into three parts by the account of Merlin’s life with Vivien, Lancelot has killed Gareth and Gaheris and rescued Guenevere. Gawain is now the familiar figure of all accounts of the wars with Lancelot: his one thought is to kill Lancelot (pp. 299–300).128 This time, however, he is plainly told by Bedivere and Dagonet that use of his power over Arthur to gain vengeance will destroy the world they know (pp. 298–9, 300–1, 302). Despite their pleas, Gawain holds dourly to his course. Lancelot, which tells the parts of the story left to the reader’s knowledge in Merlin, opens with a conversation between Lancelot and Gawain. Lancelot is about to leave court because of the scandal spread by Agravain and Mordred. Gawain makes light of the rumors, urges him to reconsider and remain, swears elaborate loyalty and friendship, and declares that brothers are nothing

70 • B. J. Whiting to a friend (p. 367). He makes it clear that by “brothers” he means only Agravain and Mordred, and says that if Lancelot were to will harm to Gareth and Gaheris he would welcome his going (p. 368). Lancelot, in his turn, hints strongly that he does not trust Gawain (pp. 366–7) and wonders if Gawain is blind or false or both in making “an evil jest of evidence” (p. 368). When alone with Guenevere, however, Lancelot quiets her fears of Gawain so effectively (p. 372) that she persuades herself out of fear of anyone, and takes advantage of Arthur’s departure on a hunting trip to invite Lancelot to her room that night (p. 382). Arthur returns unexpectedly after midnight, Lancelot cuts his way out of Guenevere’s chamber, and while Gawain and Bedivere wait in the king’s room to see what the new day will disclose, Gawain seems to resolve in his favor any doubts which the reader may have shared with Lancelot and Guenevere. He wishes bitterly and apparently sincerely that his constitutional levity had let him tell Lancelot more of what he knew, and he reveals, something probably due to Robinson’s invention, that he had told Bors, who told Lancelot, of the plot against the lovers (pp. 387–8, 407, 413). Bedivere tries to console Gawain and just then Arthur joins them, announcing that he has ordered the unwilling Gareth and Gaheris to see Guenevere burn at the stake. When Lucan brings news of his brothers’ deaths, it drives Gawain into a frenzy of grief and rage which ends in unconsciousness (pp. 397–401). As in the other versions, Gawain’s hatred drives on the king until the coming of death slackens his thirst for vengeance. But Robinson’s Gawain not only writes to Lancelot, he remains alone, dying, in the deserted camp, for one last meeting with his old friend (pp. 428 ff.). Gawain forgives and asks forgiveness, says that Lancelot’s doubts of him were false, runs through the whole tangled history of his life, touches on the parts played by his mother, Arthur, Merlin, Guenevere, Mordred and his own nature, shows wry humor in which, though he recognizes it, he cannot quite throw off his cynicism, and dies. His last words are to ask Lancelot to stay by him if he sleeps: “I might be glad—Not to be here alone” (p. 435). Robinson’s Gawain, despite early doubts cast on his fidelity and truth, and for all his adherence to the blood feud, is more favorably presented than the Gawain in any other accounts of the intrigues which led to the break between Lancelot and Arthur. His main characteristic, except when tragedy overwhelms it, is his joy of living (pp. 374, 375, 379, 432). In Tristram Robinson presents Gawain the ladies’ knight, Gawain the easy lover, the Gawain of “Lancelot and Elaine” without the meanness which Tennyson supplied. The scene and action are Robinson’s invention, the inspiration for Gawain’s behavior surely comes from Tennyson, yet the character of Gawain is such as Robinson might easily have modified from many episodes in the French romances. As he had come to Astolat looking for Lancelot, so Gawain comes to Brittany to carry Tristram off to Camelot. He sees Isolt of Brittany, finds her beautiful and, although he perceives in her “a continence Too sure for even a fool to ponder twice” (p. 101), he favors her with

Gawain • 71 a smoothly hyperbolical appraisal of her beauty. Isolt’s laughing comment shows her comprehension and appreciation of his technique: You are not making love to me, Gawaine, and if you were it wouldn’t matter. Your words, and even with edges a bit worn By this time, will do service for years yet. (p. 104) She then asks Gawain, saying that she knows him to be light, to tell her on his honor what right she has to hope that Tristram will return (pp. 104–6). Gawain, feeling a “soreness at his heart That he had seldom felt there for another Before, and only briefly for himself ” (p. 106), does his plausible best to convince her that Tristram will come back safely: For Gawaine, Infrequently in earnest, or sincere To conscious inconvenience, was in love, Or thought he was, and would enjoy alone, Without a smile and as he might, the first Familiar pangs of his renunciation. (p. 109) Yet when he sails away with Tristram, his short-lived love is quiet: Gawaine, recovered early from a wound Within a soon-recuperating heart, Waved a gay hat on board for two gray eyes On shore. (p. 122) It is Gawain, again by Robinson’s invention, who brings Tristram the news that Mark has taken Isolt away from Joyous Gard, and who watches over the stricken lover for a week. By the week’s end Gawain “saw fit to feel that his return Was urging him away” (pp. 170–1). He likes Brangwaine, but finds her unresponsive: “Brangwaine, Gawaine, . . . A deal of music in this world is wasted,” He thought, “because a woman cries and kills it.” (p. 171) He cannot understand Tristram’s madness for Isolt: Why must a man, where there are loaves and fishes, See only as far as one crumb on his table? Why must he make one morsel of a lifetime? Here is no place for me. (p. 171) So away he goes since “life, while he could sing, was not very long, And woe not his annoyed him” (p. 172). Two ladies have struck his restless eye and heart, Isolt of Brittany and Brangwaine, the first more strongly, as became her

72 • B. J. Whiting station, and over neither does he waste much emotion. He is light of love, but sensitive and sympathetic to the bent of his nature, and in no way evil. It is pleasantly ironic that a story of Tristram should contain the most appealing portrait of Gawain in modern poetry. T. H. White, who has probably introduced more new readers to Arthurian story than any author since Tennyson, discovered that humor, drawn mainly from an anachronistic perspective, could enliven the old stories for individuals, adults as well as children, who might ordinarily consider themselves too modern for Arthur and his knights. Purists may object to Merlin’s coffee, the giant Galapas as Mussolini, hedgehogs who speak a curious rustic dialect, or even to the appearance of Neptune—chewing tobacco—and Robin Hood, but purists can seldom be completely happy with any age’s creative treatment of ancient stories. Gawain, who does not appear in the first of Mr. White’s stories, The Sword in the Stone (1939), is prominent in the second, The Witch in the Wood, which deals with the boyhood in Lothian of Lot’s sons, the Orkney gang. The boys, to be sure, are overshadowed by the antics of Queen Morgause, Sir Palomides, King Pellinore, Sir Grummore Grummursum and the Questing Beast, but Mr. White manages to suggest their traditional characters. Gawain is passionate (p. 9), loyal to family (pp. 34, 205), accused, not very seriously, of irreverence (p. 53), has an uncontrollable temper (p. 84), is easily repentant and easily recovers (pp. 91–4), loves the idea of war (p. 125), and has a nature “which clung to its injuries” (p. 206). On one occasion he goes into a mad rage and almost kills Agravain (pp. 202–6). On the whole, however, he is a fun-loving, good natured and likably energetic boy. In The Ill-Made Knight Gawain is older and less pleasant, an unattractive foil to Lancelot. Lancelot, the titular hero of the book, rescues Gawain from Sir Carados and a little later, in Kay’s armor, defeats him (p. 68); Arthur tells Lancelot that Gawain will hold both the rescue and the defeat against him (p. 73). There are references to Gawain’s youthful killing of a woman (pp. 25, 27, 171–2),129 to the deaths of Pellinor (pp. 28, 162, 242) and Lamorak (pp. 167–8, 170),130 to his fight at the Roman court (p. 35), and to his alleged statement that Lancelot loved Elaine (p. 260).131 The worst blow Mr. White deals concerns Gawain and the quest for the Grail. Like Tennyson, but unlike Malory, Mr. White has Gawain recount his sorry adventures to Arthur (pp. 180-7), and tell a story which could hardly be outdone in crassness. The facts are fairly close to Malory’s account, but the way of telling exhibits Gawain as an unfeeling and blatant fool, quite impervious to Arthur’s irony and dismay. At the end Guenevere says he was unlucky, to which he agrees. “Gawaine looked into his empty beaker for a moment or two. Then he cheered up. ‘I killed King Bagdemagus,’ he said. ‘I expect you heard about that. I forgot about it in my story’” (p. 187).132 There are a few friendly references: Arthur calls Gawain a “nice fellow” (p. 27) and a “decent chap” (p. 74); he is repentant after his

Gawain • 73 mother’s death (pp. 171–3), “generous in his own heart” (p. 172), and “decent enough to refuse to have a hand in plots against Lancelot’s life” (p. 266). Mr. White even offers in extenuation of Gawain and his brothers that they had had an unhappy home life as children, and that this early lack of security had molded their adult psychology and behavior (pp. 27, 74, 198). Perhaps, after all, we are taking Mr. White’s book too seriously and breaking a diverting butterfly on a pedantic wheel.133 There are three distinct but interwoven causes for Gawain’s loss of reputation. First is the tendency for the hero or heroes of a developing saga to become passive or tarnished. We can see this process, sometimes called epic degeneration, operating on Arthur, Charlemagne and Robin Hood, as well as on Gawain. Indeed, Gawain himself had risen to prominence as a young hero who took over some of his uncle’s more active functions. Then other young heroes assumed the leading rôles in individual episodes and finally one particular new knight, Lancelot, moved into Gawain’s place as Arthur’s lieutenant. Second is the cult of courtly love. Gawain as a lover followed a well-defined pattern: when he met an unattached girl he made love to her; if she rebuffed him he departed; if, as more often, she welcomed his attentions, he also departed, but not as soon. With him, too, out of sight was out of mind. For him a love affair was an exchange of verbal and physical courtesies, and he had no realization of his own unworthiness or the lady’s supreme condescension in granting him her slightest favor. If we also remember that, for whatever reason, he did not make love to married women, 134 we understand that Gawain could not be a participant in any game of love played by the rules of the code. The two leading exponents of adulterous love, though not equals in courtly love, were Lancelot and Tristram, and it was natural that on this score Gawain should be subordinated to them. Third is the Grail. To achieve the Grail required consecration, chastity, spirituality and what for want of a better term may be called discriminating pacificism. Gawain had none of these qualities and was used, in some degree unjustly, to illustrate their opposites. No writer was moved to give Gawain the benefit of the pious sophistry which enabled Lancelot to come closer to the Grail than his previous conduct had warranted. When there is added to these three impersonal forces the deliberate effort of two men of letters, the author of the prose Tristan and Tennyson, to make Gawain a deliberate villain, we may perhaps marvel that the hero comes through the centuries as well as he does. With all the evidence in hand, and making allowances where allowances can fairly be made, Gawain remains the most distinguished and the most human of Arthur’s knights. IV. Gawain’s Courtesy Gawain’s outstanding characteristic, if we may judge from repetition alone, was courtesy. For Chaucer, Gawain was the symbol of courtesy, and most

74 • B. J. Whiting modern authors who have written about Gawain with the advantage of knowing more than Malory and Tennyson tell135 concerning him call him courteous.136 The present survey of courtesy, with special reference to Gawain, covers Arthurian romances in French and English before Malory.137 A comprehensive definition of courtesy, as it is used by medieval authors, is not easy to formulate. M. Dupin, who has made the most exhaustive examination of the term, 138 illustrated the difficulty by the breadth of his conclusion: Pour qu’un homme soit courtois, pour qu’une femme soit courtoise, il est nécessaire qu’ils ne manquent pas à l’obligation du salut, du congé, du baiser, de l’accueil et de l’hospitalité, qu’ils soient loyaux et fidèles, bons et portés à la pitié, doux, libéraux et larges, joyeux, épris de bonne renommée, mesurés, et qu’ils aiment, et que dans leur amour ils observent les grands principes de loyauté et de fidélité, de bonté et de pitié, de joie, de douceur, de mesure. Mais il leur faut encore autre chose, un je ne sais quoi, que l’examen, même minutieux, des textes ne permet pas de préciser, qu’on sent dans ces textes plutôt qu’on ne l’y trouve. La courtoisie est quelque chose de trop complexe et de trop subtil pour se laisser enfermer dans une definition. (pp. 127–8) For a man or woman to be courteous, they must not fail to meet obligations of greeting, leavetaking, kissing, welcoming, and hospitality; they must be loyal and faithful, good and inclined to pity, gentle, liberal and generous, joyful, jealous of their good reputation, and moderate; they must love, and in their love they must observe the great principles of loyalty and fidelity, goodness and pity, joy, gentleness, and moderation. But they must have something else, a je ne sais quoi, that even a close examination of the texts does not allow us to specify, something one feels rather than finds in these texts. Courtesy is something too complex and too subtle to let itself be confined by a definition. Some scattered examples will, perhaps, serve further to suggest the importance and complexity of the concept of courtesy. . . . [See Meraugis, p. 7, ll. 113–29; pp. 38–9, ll. 953–7; p. 41, ll. 1003–23; Vulgate-Lancelot III, 392, ll. 13ff.; Tristan, p. 111; Fergus, p. 90, ll. 16–7.] The first thing to emerge when we bring together the instances of “courteous,” “courtesy,” and “courteously,” 139 is that the concept, far from being applied exclusively to Gawain, is almost a hall-mark of Arthur’s knights, except, save in Escanor, only the sharp-tongued, impulsive and disagreeable Kay. Nor is the quality in any way limited to males. The three words appear 1317 times140 in the works considered, being used of men approximately three and a half times as often as of women.141 To break down the total for Gawain, he is courteous 100 times, shows courtesy 64 times, and acts courteously 14

Gawain • 75 times, or a total of 178. 142 The figures are somewhat weighted in Gawain’s favor by the fact that only those parts of the Vulgate prose romances which deal with Gawain are included. Since Kay may be termed Gawain’s foil in the matter of courtesy, we shall return to him and Gawain later, and list at this point the knights who, in one way or another, are said to exhibit courtesy.143 . . . The list is lengthy and distinguished, but we observe that among the knights most conspicuous for their courtesy are such figures as Claris, Durmart, Laris and Méliador, all invented by the authors of the particular romances in which they appear. Among the traditional knights the leaders in courtesy are Arthur, Lancelot, Perceval and Ywain, and of these only Arthur can possibly be compared to Gawain in number and dispersion of references. Nevertheless it is more than evident that Gawain’s reputation for courtesy makes him only primus inter pares, and suggests strongly that the term was extremely general. Another phenomenon which leads us to conclude that the concept of courtesy was more vague than specific is that the words conveying it are so often combined with others generally indicative of noble character, good breeding, and proper behavior. Of the allied words which turn up more than once twenty-six are used only of men144 and three only of women.145 From the rest we conclude that the world of romance is filled with men and women of homogeneous manners, who are not only courteous, but are imbued with or to be described as, avenant (21), bel (86), beauté (15), bien (5), bien afatiez (9), bien apris (20), bien emparlée (2), bien fait (3), bien parlant (14), bonté (7), cointe (5), debonaire (31), debonaireté (9), dous (9), enseignié (15), fair (2), fine (6), franc (28), free (3), gent (17), gentil (9), gentillesse (4), gracious (5), hende (8), honor (18), large (14), largece (22), net (6), noble (7), pro (77), proece (16), sage (128), savoir (3), senez (11), sens (28), vaillant (sb., 2), vaillant (adj., 17), valor (10).146 In sharp contrast with all these charming and generously endowed people, and especially with Gawain, is Kay, who is singled out for lack of courtesy. The chronicles show Kay as a brave and even courteous147 figure, but even here blame is likely to be mixed with praise. The later romances nearly all paint an unfavorable picture,148 but there is one exception. Kay is the hero of a large part of Escanor, 149 acts bravely and wins a very noble lady, although he is unable to curb his bitter and sometimes indelicate150 tongue. . . . [See p. 12, ll. 435–44; and p. 103, ll. 3896–9.151] On two occasions outside Escanor Kay is said to speak in a courteous fashion,152 but it is significant that each time he is addressing King Arthur. Once Guenevere calls Kay courteous,153 although the circumstances show that she is anything but sincere, and elsewhere when Kay’s courtesy is spoken of it is in open and obvious irony.154 Arthur says that Kay is not courteous,155 and so do Guenevere156 and Gawain,157 the Carl of Carlisle offers to teach Kay some courtesy,158 Ywain says that Kay’s villainy must be answered with courtesy,159 and

76 • B. J. Whiting Gawain tells Kay that his villainy is very unlike courtesy.160 Direct comparisons of Kay and Gawain are not infrequent . . . [see Yder, pp. 33–4, ll. 1144–62; Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 2206–12, Avowinge, p. 70]. A final example shows that the contrast was still alive in the sixteenth century: Where arte thou Gawyn the curtesse and Cay the crabed?161 A few of the references to Gawain’s courtesy call for special notice.162 On occasion Gawain is praised highly without specific reference to his courtesy,163 but ordinarily that virtue is added to his other accomplishments.164 . . . [See Atre, p. 157, ll. 4994-9; Hunbaut, p. 4, ll. 110–3; Escanor, p. 352, ll. 20179-83; Yder, pp. 169–70, ll. 5930-9; Manning I, 373, ll. 10675–84; Lancelot, p. 82, ll. 2753–6.] A fairy at Gawain’s birth promises him beauty, courtesy and honorable estate. 165 He is called the most courteous knight of Arthur’s court, 166 or, indeed, of all the world.167 Courteous often has the force of a fixed epithet, so that “le cortois” becomes almost as much a part of his name as Mesire. There are few things which Gawain cannot do courteously if he sets himself to it. In Epée, when about to go out on an adventure, “cortoisement s’aparella” (he arrayed himself in a courtly manner; p. 8, l. 37), and in Carle: Gawaine hent the hammer in his hand, & curteouslye on the gates dange. (p. 282, ll. 133–4) Gawain took the hammer in his hand, and courteously knocked on the gates. In the latter poem courtesy pays off handsomely. Despite great provocation Gawain is consistently polite and deferential to his rude and violent host. As a final reward for exquisite manners the Carl turns his daughter over to Gawain for the night: saith, “Gawaine, now for thy curtesye; gett thee to bedd to this ffaire Lady.” (p. 289, ll. 353–4) [he] says, “Gawain, now as a reward for your courtesy, go to bed with this fair lady.” Gawain not only practises courtesy, but likes to talk about it as well. He often refers to the courtesy of others or urges others to show courtesy. Sometimes he almost overemphasizes the theme, perhaps a little self-consciously: Et mes sire Gauvains respont Com li plus cortois del mont: “Ma dame la reïne saut Cil sire au cui nus biens ne faut, Et vos come la bien parlant,

Gawain • 77 Et la cortoise et l’avenant! Mout est, ce cuit, la dame sage Quant si cortois sont si message: Ele set bien que a mestier Et qui covient a chevalier.”168 And Sir Gawain replied like the most courteous person in the world: “May that lord in whom no virtue is wanting save my lady the queen and yourself, eloquent, courteous, and fair! The lady must indeed be wise, I think, if her messengers are so courteous: she knows what a knight needs and what is fitting to him.” Naturally enough, it is in his relations with ladies that Gawain’s courtesy flashes most brightly and, often, has the most pleasing results.169 Courteous himself, he demands the same quality in a girl: Car pucele doit courtoise estre, sage et plaisanz et de simple estre et de tout bon affaitement.170 For a maiden should be courteous, wise, agreeable, of simple nature, and gracious. His approach is marked by courtesy; in Epée, for example, he talks with a maiden: Tant l’ot cortoisement parler Et tant lo voit de bones mors, Que ele l’amast par amors, S’ele descovrir li osast. (p. 14, ll. 314–17)171 She heard him speak so courteously and saw him so well mannered that she would have loved him truly if she had dared reveal her feelings to him. Because of Gawain’s reputation as a lover he is the secret passion of many maidens who have never seen him in the flesh, and as such is the medieval prototype of some of our own cherished heroes of radio and film. A few examples will show that there was an active Gawain Club among the young ladies of romance. In Pseudo-Wauchier he meets a damsel whom he addresses as “dame,” but at once, with the smoothness of what appears long usage, he alters his salutation to “pucele.” The poet makes the approving comment, “Cortoisement et biau li dist” (he spoke to her courteously and eloquently; III, 103, l. 12044). The damsel is impressed and, although the knight is unidentifiable in his armor, something leads her to talk about Gawain:

78 • B. J. Whiting Sire, bien a .ii. ans passés, Si com je quic, et plus assés, C’oï primes de lui parler, Et si grans biens de lui conter Qu’en lui a plus sens et proèce, Biauté, cortoisie et largèce, Qu’il n’an en chevalier vivant (III, 104, ll. 12063–69). Sire, I think it was a good two years ago and more that I first heard tell of him, and so many good things, for there is more wisdom and prowess, beauty, courtesy, and generosity in him than in any knight alive. She is too polite to dwell long on an absent ideal: “Dont vos pri-jou par cortoisie Que vos nommés.” “Ma douce amie, J’ai nom Gauwain.” (ll. 12075–7). And so I beg you to reveal your name. “My sweet friend, my name is Gawain.” At first she does not believe it, not apparently so much doubting his word as her own luck. She has once seen a portrait of Gawain, and feels certain that she would recognize Ses bones teces, ses bontés, Ses courtoisies, ses biautés (III, 105, ll. 12103–4). His good traits, his virtues, his acts of courtesy, his good looks. Will the stranger be so kind as to disarm and let her see if he is really and truly Gawain? He will, he does, and he is. Their acquaintance grows by leaps and bounds: Par .i. baisier l’en a saisie; D’amours, de droit, de cortoisie, Ont plus ensamble tant parlé Et boinement ris et jué Qu’elle a pierdu nom de pucele: Sel nomme amie et damosele (III, 106, ll. 12127–32).172 He embraced her with a kiss; they further spoke of love, propriety, and courtesy, laughed and disported themselves until she lost the name of maiden: now she is called beloved and damsel.

Gawain • 79 Soon after Gawain leaves—since he is on a quest he cannot linger—the young lady’s father rides up, and she is so indiscreet as to inform him that she has lost her virginity to Gawain, omitting any mention, however, of her own enthusiastic complicity. Ensuing events are fatal to the father and damaging to her brother. She herself, as it turns out, is pregnant, but Gawain escapes with his courtesy.173 At a time when, according to Deus Espees, a rumor is about that Gawain is dead, he stops at a castle and agrees to assist a harassed knight if the knight’s beautiful seventeen-year-old daughter will give him her love. The father, mother and daughter agree to this not ver y characteristic demand (pp. 139–42). Gawain kills the knight’s oppressor, and he and the girl are brought to bed by her mother (pp. 151–2). They kiss and embrace for a time, and then, all at once, the girl begins to weep (p. 154). Gawain, startled, asks the reason and learns that when the girl was fifteen she first heard of Arthur’s nephew, Gawain: Et ot un neueu si cortois Ke il pasoit de cortoisie, De biaute, de cheualerie Trestout les cheualiers ki sont, Ne ke tuit cil ki soient n’ont De boines teches autretant (p. 155, ll. 4970–5). And he had a nephew so courteous that he surpassed in courtesy, good looks, and chivalry all other knights, none of whom have as many good characteristics as he. She had vowed to yield herself only to him, but now he is dead and it is a sudden memory of him which causes her tears. This confession makes Gawain all the more amorous and he tells her the good news that Gawain is not only alive but present. She refuses to believe him and insists that she will go to Arthur’s court to discover the truth. Despite his anguished protestations she departs, denying him now so much as a farewell kiss. Her going leaves Gawain “Pensis et destrois et ires” (deep in thought and distraught and angry; p. 158, l. 5087), but he has no redress. Five thousand lines and many adventures later, as the story draws to a close, she comes to court and now believes the evidence of her eyes (pp. 362–3). Gawain is so overcome that he kisses her in public, at which the knights laugh. That night they go to bed again, this time without reservations on either side: Tant li souffri la nuit la biele Qu’ele perdi non de pucele, Dont ele gaires n’estriua Ne de lui pas ne s’eshiua Ne de plourer ne s’entremist Quant il de li son uoloir fist. (p. 371, ll. 12051–6)

80 • B. J. Whiting That night, the maid endured his attentions so much that she lost the name of maiden, in the course of which she hardly resisted nor avoided him nor took to weeping when he had his way with her. When he asks her why she had not believed him before, she replies, with a smile, that it was because he had permitted her crying and talking to put him off: Ne dui croire, si dix m’ait, Que ia ior mes sire Gauuains Fust si lasques ne si uilains, Que por plaindre ne por plorer Peust de lui feme escaper, Qu’il eust si en son uoloir Que uous auies moi la endroit. (p. 372, ll. 12072–8) I can hardly believe, so help me God, that Sir Gawain was so cowardly or churlish for any woman, as much the target of his desires as I am of yours here, to be able to escape from him by lamenting or crying. Gawain laughs heartily at her logic; perhaps it reminded him of a passage in Perlesvaus, where some girls had refused to credit his identity because he had gone to sleep when they offered him their services: se ce fust cil Gavains qui niés est le roi Artu, il parlast a nos autrement, e trovissions en lui plus de deduit que en cestui; mes cist est uns Gavains contrefez. (I, 95, ll. 1814–6) if it had been that Gawain who is King Arthur’s nephew, he would have spoken to us differently, and we would have found more amusement in him than in this one; but this is a false Gawain. Again, in the Vulgate-Livre, Gawain rescues a girl from a giant, and accompanies her on her way. They are observed by a friend of Gawain’s named Eliezer: Mais il not granment ale quant il uoit uenir une damoisele qui molt li sembloit de grant biaute & encoste de luj uenoit messires Gauuain parlant damors & dautre chose. & li auoit demande se ele amoit nul home par amors ne auoit ame. (VII, 86, ll. 9–12) But he had not gone far before he saw a maiden approaching who seemed very beautiful, and next to her came Sir Gawain, speaking of love and other matters, and he had asked her whether she loved or had loved any man truly. The damsel replies that she has once heard her father describe Gawain in such glowing terms that she has often wished that he might love her enough to

Gawain • 81 marry her, but she realizes that she is not of sufficient rank or beauty to win Gawain’s love. Either because of her mention of marriage or for some more obscure reason, Gawain does not reveal himself: Bele pucele fait messires Gauuain si uoirement mait diex uostre pensers fu doz & debonaires. & se messires Gauuain sauoit uostre corage & il uos eust sanz plus regardee il ne seroit mie cortois se il ne uos uenoit faire compaignie en aucun tens. & gel conois a tel & a si cortois que se il en sauoit la uerite il uos uendroit ueoir ia si long ne seriez. [The girl speaks:] si mait dex ge [le] uerroie uolentiers car de si preudome com en dit que il est iuennes hom ne porroit en se amender non. & ge ai oi dire que il est le plus cortois cheualiers qui uiue. (VII, 86, ll. 26 ff.) Fair maiden, said Sir Gawain, in truth, so help me God, your thought was gentle and kind, and if Sir Gawain knew your inclination and if he had only seen you, he would not have been courteous if he had not come to keep you company at all, for I know him to be such and so courteous that if he knew the truth he would come to see you, however long the road. [. . .] So help me God, I would see him willingly, for acquaintance with such a worthy man as he is said to be can only benefit a young man, and I have heard it said that he is the most courteous knight alive. Gawain promises to give Gawain her message, for which she thanks him, and then, with notable selflessness, tells him of another girl who loves Gawain as much as she does. Later Gawain stops at the second girl’s castle, does a little fighting, and retires. The girl, whose name is Floree, comes to his room, finds him “entre ueillant & dormant” (half awake, half asleep; p. 109, l. 27), and asks him if he is well covered and wants a drink. He is well covered and wants no drink. She kneels beside the bed and talks about the fight; he kisses her, notices that she is cold, and suggests that she undress and get into the bed where she will be warm. She replies that she must go back to her own bed, but if he chooses he may follow her there. He does so and, lestoire says, she loses her virginity. She goes to sleep and has a dream which Gawain later interprets as meaning that she will have a son. Not unnaturally, she asks his name and he tells her, after swearing her to secrecy. She is very happy to discover the identity of her lover: car ge me suj fait ele prise au meilleur cheualier qui uiue si com len dit & au plus cortois. (p. 111, ll. 1–2) for I have been taken by the best and most courteous knight alive, so they say. It was this side of Gawain’s courtesy which moved John Gower to use him as an example in his Traitié for the instruction of married lovers:

82 • B. J. Whiting N’est pas compaigns q’est comun a chascune; Au soule amie ert un ami soulain: Mais cil qui toutdis change sa fortune, Et ne voet estre en un soul lieu certain, Om le poet bien resembler a Gawain, Cortois d’amour, mais il fuist trop volage: A un est une assetz en mariage.174 He is not a companion who is shared by all women; to a single lady a single lover will suffice: but he who changes his lot and does not wish to be for sure in a single place could be compared to Gawain, courteous in love but too frivolous: one woman is enough for one man in marriage. The most succinct summation of Gawain as a courteous lover is made by the Loathly Lady in Weddynge: A, Sir Gawen, syn I haue you wed, Shewe me your cortesy in bed. (p. 258, ll. 629–30) Ah, Sir Gawain, since I have wed you, show me your courtesy in bed. Gawain is seldom accused of lack of courtesy. Once he is charged with using improper weapons in a joust and told “vous nestes mie si courtois ne si preudomme comme len tesmoigne” (you are not so courteous or worthy as they say).175 On another occasion he is so deep in thought that he fails to salute a passing damsel. She says indignantly that though “on dist apres que tu es li plus courtois & li plus frans del monde” (they say that you are the most courteous and noblest man in the world), she thinks him “li plus vilains cheualiers del monde” (the most churlish knight in the world).176 To implement her displeasure she decrees that for a time he must take the semblance of the first man he meets—a dwarf, as it happens. Again, a lady tries to persuade Gawain to kill her husband, and when Gawain prefers to believe the husband’s story, she calls him lacking in sense and courtesy.177 Arthur says to him, “S’onques fustes frans ne cortois” (If ever you were noble or courteous),178 but the king plainly does not mean it very seriously, and the Green Knight tells Gawain that though Of curtesie thou might haue woon the crowne aboue both free & bound,179 You might have won the crown of courtesy, over both free and unfree, he has now forfeited his highest reputation because of concealing the scarf. Finally, Guenevere declares that Gawain’s “curtessy was All be-hynde”

Gawain • 83 (courtesy was [left] behind),180 when he reported that Lancelot had been the Maid of Astolat’s lover, but we know that her anger was not wholly justified.181 Obviously, none of these charges carries very much weight.182 Before leaving Gawain’s courtesy it might be well to notice the English word which was gradually supplanted by “courteous.” This native word is “hende,”183 memorable from “hende Nicholas,” the hero of Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale. Nicholas is hende even as Gawain is courteous, and both are amorous, but there the resemblance ends, for Nicholas is an adept at “deerne love”184 (secret love) in which Gawain, as we have seen, had no interest. Lawman, who employs relatively few words of Romance provenience, never uses “courteous.” Where Wace has cortois, and in other places as well, Lawman has “hende,” but he applies it to Gawain only once and then not by name.185 He calls Gawain “kene,” and “sele,” and once seems to discriminate: Þat Geren & Beof þe hende, and Walwain þe balde. (III, 44, ll. 26275–6) That Geren and Beof the courteous, and Gawain the bold Sir Tristrem also has “hende” rather than “courteous,” but neither with Gawain. Arthour and Merlin has both “hende” and “courteous,” but only the latter for Gawain. Robert of Gloucester speaks once of Gawain’s courtesy and calls him hende three times. He is neither courteous nor hende in Morte Arthure, where his epithets are determined by alliteration and he is “Sir Waywayne þe worþye” (worthy), “Sir Gawayne the gude” (good), or “Sir Gaweayne the gracious” (gracious). Sir Launfal has Gawain courteous twice and hende once, while Le Morte Arthur goes the other way, with hende three times and courteous (or courtesy) twice. Chaucer calls his Nicholas hende more often than all the authors do Gawain, but it would be unfortunate to forget that Gawain has been hende as well as courteous. V. Gawain in the Squire’s Tale Why did Chaucer bring Gawain into the Squire’s Tale at the place where he did? Was it solely because of Gawain’s well-established reputation for courtesy, or was there some more specific reference in Chaucer’s mind? The English poet, who must have read more romances than those to which he refers directly,186 could have read about Gawain’s courtesy in many of the works already cited in this paper187 and in more besides, but a case of sorts can be made for his familiarity with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. No one seems to have made public reference to the general similarity between the opening scenes of the Squire’s Tale and Gawain,188 and yet the similarity is marked. Each poem opens with a king holding high festival on a special occasion. Both kings are famous, strong and in the prime of life . . . [see Gawain, p. 115, stanzas 2, 3, 5; and Squire’s Tale, V(F), ll. 12–24].

84 • B. J. Whiting Each monarch has in his household one of the most beautiful of women . . . [see Gawain, p. 115, st. 4; and Squire’s Tale, ll. 32–36]. The feasts are described in considerable detail, but in each case the author makes a conventional excuse for not telling more . . . [see Gawain, pp. 115–6, sts. 4, 6, 7; and Squire’s Tale, ll. 58–79]. At a specified time in each meal, during the first course in Gawain (p. 116, st. 7) and after the third course in the Squire’s Tale (ll. 76 ff.), an unexpected and extraordinary guest suddenly enters the hall, and in each instance the newcomer’s steed is unusual. In Gawain, the stranger is an unarmed man of gigantic stature, green in color and clothing and riding on a green horse; in the Squire’s Tale, he is a normal man, armed except for his head, carrying a glass mirror, with a noticeable gold ring on one thumb and with a naked sword by his side, riding on a horse made of brass. The behavior of the two visitors is very unlike. The green knight is anything but polite at the outset, and before long he proves rude and insulting; the knight on the steed of brass is, as we noted earlier,189 a model of good manners. These parallels are striking, but they would be far more striking if Gawain and the Squire’s Tale were the only romantic stories which survive from the Middle Ages. Everybody knows, however, that romances, especially those of the Matter of Britain, have a way of beginning with a feast at a king’s court, usually at Pentecost, which is interrupted by the entrance of a suppliant damsel or a challenging knight. In most examples, the king, as in Gawain but not the Squire’s Tale, has refused to eat until some adventure has occurred. Also, knights, and sometimes ladies or dwarfs, riding into the king’s hall on horseback or muleback are so numerous as to be almost a commonplace. No one would argue that Chaucer owes the machinery of the beginning of the Squire’s Tale to Gawain. There are too many openings of the same general sort to permit even the most optimistic source-hunter to light with confidence on any one. What can be argued, however, is that Chaucer, whatever his own source, if he had a concrete source, was reminded after he had written the first ninety or so lines of the Squire’s Tale of a very similar scene in which courtesy was talked about, even though the visitor himself was hardly courteous. He would have been further reminded that in the other story the courtesy of Gawain was strongly emphasized, and from this recollection would have come the reference to “Gawayne with his olde curteisye.” We may now profitably consider the rôle of courtesy in Gawain. When the Green Knight appears there is a stone-still silence in the hall, in explanation of which the author, anxious for the reputation of Arthur’s knights, adds I deme hit not al for doute, Bot sum for cortaysye. (p. 8, ll. 246–7) I judge it not all for fear, but some for courtesy.

Gawain • 85 The Green Knight answers Arthur’s question by saying that he has heard much good of Arthur’s realm, among other things, “And here is kydde cortaysye, as I haf herd carp” (and here is shown courtesy, as I have heard tell, p. 9, l. 263). In reply, Arthur calls his visitor “Sir cortays kny t” (Sir courteous knight, p. 9, l. 276), a compliment which the Green Knight is speedily to belie. After the Green Knight’s departure, Arthur attempts to remove the queen’s fears with “cortays speche” (courteous speech, p. 15, l. 469), and when, the following autumn, as Gawain is about to depart on what seems certain to be his last adventure, the king holds a feast on All Saints Day, although “kny te ful cortays and comlych ladies” (very courteous knights and fair ladies, p. 17, l. 539) grieve at the hero’s impending fate, they are considerate enough to hide their emotion. On the day before Christmas, when Gawain, anxious lest he be deprived of the proper religious observances for our Saviour’s birth, comes at last in sight of a handsome castle, he removes his helmet and gives due thanks to Jesus and sayn Gilyan, þat gentyle ar boþe, Þat cortaysly had hym kydde. (p. 24, ll. 774–5) Jesus and Saint Julian [the Hospitaller, patron and protector of travellers], both of whom are kindly, and who had shown him courtesy. We first heard of Gawain’s courtesy in the account of the pentangle, where we learn that “His clannes and his cortaysye croked were neuer” (his purity and his courtesy never failed, p. 20, l. 652). At the Green Knight’s castle, in answer to discreet questions put to him by his host, Gawain “beknew cortaysly of þe court þat he were” (courteously avowed that he was [a member of Arthur’s] court, p. 28, l. 903), and the next day, when seated at table by the Green Knight’s lady, who is later to cause him so much embarrassment, they both converse “Wyth clene cortays carp closed fro fylþe” (with pure courteous conversation, free from sin, p. 31, l. 1013). His reputation for courtesy begins to plague Gawain as soon as his hostess invades his bedchamber. Gawain comports himself with perfect decorum, but this behavior does not altogether satisfy the lady, who expresses her doubt as to whether he is really Gawain.190 The hero, greatly alarmed lest he have not evaded her with complete politeness, asks the reason for her doubt, and she responds: So god as Gawayn gaynly is halden, And courtaysye is closed so clene in hymselven, Couth not ly tly haf lenged so long wyth a lady, Bot he had craued a cosse, bi his courtaysye. (p. 40, ll. 1297–1300) As good as Gawain is rightly considered, in whose person courtliness is so entirely embodied, he could not easily have

86 • B. J. Whiting stayed so long with a lady, but that he had begged for a kiss, out of his courtesy. Since there seems no suitable retreat for a master of courtesy, he kisses her, but is careful to pass the kiss on to her husband that night, as the terms of their bargain require. The next morning the lady goes forward from the position already prepared, or taken, and immediately chides him for not having learned from the lesson of the day before that, where kissing is concerned, to take advantage of a favorable look “bicumes vche a kny t þat cortaysy vses” (is fitting for each knight who practises courtesy, p. 46, l. 1491), and so, cornered again, he forces himself to another kiss. She goes on to ask him why, being so young, so brisk, “So cortayse, so kny tyly, as ye are knowen oute” (So courteous, so chivalrous, as you are known far and wide, p. 47, l. 1511), he has not talked to her about love; surely one who is “so cortays and coynt of your hetes” (so courteous and polite in your assurances of knightly service, p. 47, l. 1525) ought to show himself an eager instructor to a young thing who is ever and ever so anxious to learn the ways of true love. Gawain is well aware of the dangers inherent in conversation about love, no matter how theoretical, in a bed-chamber, and succeeds in putting her off, but not without being driven to sacrifice still another kiss. However, faithful to the letter of his bond, he gives the husband both the kisses when he returns from the hunt. On the third morning the lady is even more insistent and persistent than before, and Gawain finds himself in his most trying predicament. Shall he yield to her advances, which are pressing, as a sociable man might be expected to do, or shall he reject her and be loyal to his host and to his religious code? He cared for his cortaysye, lest craþayn he were, And more for his meschef, if he schulde make synne. (p. 55, ll. 1773–4) He was concerned for his courtesy, lest he were a boor, and even more for the disaster to himself, if he should commit sin. He denies himself her body, but accepts her protecting girdle, and this he does not give to her husband. As a result, his reputation for absolute truth is somewhat tarnished, but so perfect are his manners that even after he has been told the nature of the trick to which he has been subjected, he can say to the Green Knight, “And comaunde3 me to þat cortays, your comlych fere” (And commend me to that gracious lady, your fair wife, p. 74, l. 2411). The reader has already been patient, or perhaps impatient, with “statistics,” but he must now be burdened with something more of that order. A good number of the romances have more uses of courteous, courtesy and courteously than has Gawain so far as actual numbers go, but all of these are longer than Gawain by from one thousand to twenty-seven thousand lines. When we come

Gawain • 87 to Gawain’s courtesy we find that only Deus Espees, five times its length, surmounts Gawain in actual number of references by twelve to nine, and those which equal Gawain, namely, Atre, Escanor and the Vulgate-Merlin, are all many times longer. Hunbaut, only a thousand lines longer, and the Vulgate-Livre tie for third place with seven each. So far as Gawain’s courtesy, to differentiate the noun from the adjective and adverb, is concerned, only Deus Espees with seven has more occurrences than Gawain’s five, and only Pseudo-Wauchier, five times as long, has as many as four. We may conclude, then, that even one who read widely in Arthurian romance would come away from no other work with as clear and concentrated an impression of Gawain’s courtesy as he would have after putting down Gawain. When one adds to this the marked similarity of the openings of the Squire’s Tale and Gawain, shared though the details may be with other romances, the theory is inviting, and certainly not incredible, that Chaucer had read Gawain at some time before he began the Squire’s Tale, and thus was moved to use Gawain as the model and touchstone of courtesy in that poem. There is reason to think that Cléomadès, possibly introduced to him by Froissart years before,191 gave Chaucer the horse of brass, and if we are willing to credit him with reading that lengthy and rather indifferent poem, how much better to have cause for feeling that he also knew the best romance written in any language during his lifetime! Notes

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

Reprinted from Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947), 189–234, by permission of the publisher. © 1947 by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, Toronto. English translations have been provided by the editors. Because material has been omitted, the numbering of endnotes differs from that of the footnotes in the original article. For one of the best short accounts of Gawain, see Paris, pp. 29 ff. An unpublished thesis of the University of Chicago, M. Pitkin’s The Biography of Sir Gawain in Mediaeval French Literature (1928), is cited by Alfred Adler, “Sovereignty in Chrétien’s Yvain,” PMLA, LXII (1947), 288, n. 40. Accounts of Gawain in other European languages are omitted with regret in order to keep the paper within reasonable limits. In the case of chronicles which tell the whole history of Britain, only the sections covering Arthur’s life are included. Cf. Taylor, p. 79. Canterbury Tales, VII, 1973-7 (B 3163-7) (The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F.N. Robinson [Boston, 1933], p. 226. All subsequent citations of Chaucer are from this edition). CT, V(F), 89–97 (p. 155). A passage in the Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 2206–12, in which Gawain is contrasted to Kay will be considered later; see below. That there was a tradition for Gawain’s presence with Arthur in “Fairye” has been shown by Professor R.S. Loomis, “Gawain in the Squire’s Tale,” Modern Language Notes, LII (1937), 413–6; cf. Madden, p. xxxvi, and Weston-Gawain, p. 39. From a subsequent allusion in the Squire’s Tale (ll. 283–7 [p. 157]), we must infer that Lancelot was a keen judge of the latest steps and an adept at carrying on clandestine communications on the dance floor, while the Nun’s Priest’s Tale (VII, 3210–3 [B, 4400–3] [p. 242]) first casts an indirect but obvious slur at the truth of Lancelot’s “book” and then says baldly that it is the kind of thing women like. Of course, if we remember the women present when the Nun’s Priest says this, we know that he is only joking, or, at the very least, willing to give that impression. Cf. Weston-Gawain, pp. 11–2.

88 • B. J. Whiting 10. Lot, to be sure, has been connected with the British sky-god Lud (Cook, p. 343), and Arthur with a culture hero (Bensel, pp. 132 ff., 141). 11. Weston-Perceval I, 330. 12. Lewis, p. 252. 13. Cook, p. 338; Loomis, p. 65. 14. Weston-Ritual, pp. 100–4. 15. Bensel, pp. 132–3, 141; Cook, p. 343 (“sun-king married to the goddess of a sun-tree”); Loomis, pp. 63 ff.; Weston-Gawain, pp. 12–3; see below. 16. Weston-Perceval I, 330. 17. A fourth group consists of Malory and those English writers who used him as their source; on occasion it will be convenient to consider these later authors along with the earlier versions. 18. Cf. Chambers, p. 151. 19. The ages, individual or comparative, of personages of romance are a matter for amusement rather than concern. Some accounts have Lancelot bring home Arthur’s bride, while others, doubtless earlier, do not have him born until after Arthur’s marriage. Elsewhere we are told that Arthur, Gawain, Lancelot and Guenevere were all well over seventy when the regime collapsed. 20. Perhaps Chrétien was partly responsible for this pattern; certainly Gawain, though the titular hero of no one of Chrétien’s poems, appears prominently in nearly all of them; see Bruce I, 249–50; Hertha Königer, Die Darstellung der Personen bei Chrétien de Troyes (Munich, 1936), pp. 25–39. 21. Adequate summaries of most of the romances are given by Paris, Bruce and Wells. 22. See also Atre, p. 16, ll. 496–501; Lovelich II, 229, 364; Rigomer I, 389, l. 13189, 390, l. 13220. 23. Cf. Paris, p. 36. Lewis has a ready explanation for the honorific: “The identification of Gauvain with Agamemnon, if correct, sufficiently explains why Gauvain is nearly always addressed in the poems as ‘mon seigneur’” (p. 252). 24. Cf. Paris, pp. 36–7; see Escanor, p. 534, for one account of how Gringalet came into Gawain’s possession. There may be some significance, not immediately discernible and therefore perhaps occult, in the fact that Tristram’s dogs are known by name. 25. Cf. Paris, pp. 37–8; see also Abenteuer Gawains, p. 10; Atre, p. 196; Claris, p. 196; Deus Espees, pp. 128–9, 314–5, 331; Epée, p. 24; Fergus, pp. 183–4; Gerbert I, 143; Graal, p. 727; Manessier V, 38, 85, 97, 265; Perlesvaus I, 83; Suite du Merlin II, 83; Pseudo-Wauchier III, 59, 189, IV, 19; Yvain, p. 251. 26. In addition to the references cited in n. 15, above, see Paris, pp. 35–6; Wells, p. 51; Taylor, p. 78; Chambers, p. 151; Reid, p. 64; Bruce-Mort, pp. 287–8; Scudder, pp. 6–7, 116; and Abenteuer Gawains, p. 8; Arthur and Merlin, pp. 135, 147; Atre, p. 49; Escanor, pp. 75, 561; Le Morte Arthur, pp. 84–5, 87; Lovelich II, 332; Suite du Merlin II, 239–41; Tristan, pp. 206, 221; Wauchier III, 334. The accounts are by no means consistent, and the subject needs further consideration. For another knight with the same peculiarity, see Malory I, 262. 27. Cf. Madden, p. xxxiii; Donell Van de Voort, Love and Marriage in the English Medieval Romances (Nashville, Tennessee, 1938), pp. 70–1. 28. See pp. 706–8 for an echo of this affair. 29. Both Perceval and Bors are saved from succubi by well-timed acts of blessing (Malory III, 102, 134–5). 30. On another occasion Gawain sleeps with a girl, and the author comments that the “book” did not say whether or not the act was with her consent: Se Gawains forche li fesist, Dont ne fust-il mie cortois Et si ne fust raisons ne drois (Wauchier V, 58, ll. 32197–9). If Gawain had forced her, he would not have been courteous, nor would it have been right or proper. 31. The canine motif is also found at the end of Epée. For another knight who preferred his dogs to his faithless paramour, see Malory II, 160–1. 32. Chrétien’s Graal even shows Gawain in an idyllic, big-brother relationship with a little girl in an old-fashioned gown; cf. Weston-Gawain, pp. 19-20, 26; Maynadier, pp. 73–5.

Gawain • 89 33. VII, 182. Later (pp. 275–6) he seems to redeem himself, but the author and reader have nearly as much trouble in keeping the ladies distinct as does Gawain. If Helaes is “Hellawes the sorceresse,” see Malory I, 225–6, for another connection with Gawain. 34. Malory (I, 101) makes Gawain more repentant. 35. In Malory (I, 103) this “trial” originates at the court after Gawain’s return. 36. He is not sworn to become a universal lover, but perhaps that was a natural development of his oath. Gawain forgot his vow in Raguidel to the extent of threatening to kill a woman (p. 111, ll. 3880 ff.), which moved the editor of the poem to note, with conscious understatement, that Gawain was “nicht sehr gallant” (p. 272). Again in Tristan (p. 95; cf. Malory II, 129), he uses the threat of death to extract the truth from one of Morgan le Fay’s tricky damsels. 37. To cut off a lady’s head was not as unusual as one could wish: Tristram does it (Malory II, 49), so does Arthur (Malory II, 110), and Gaheris beheads his own mother (Malory II, 219). 38. Cf. Maynadier, p. 429; Reid, p. 59; Scudder, pp. 207, 208, 210. 39. We learn later that “sir Pelleas loved never after sir Gawaine. . . . But oftentimes, at the justs and turneyments, sir Pelleas quited sir Gawaine, for so it is rehearsed in the French book” (Malory I, 167). 40. Cf. Maynadier, p. 428. If Tennyson did not know Le Morte Arthur, he achieved a striking coincidence with it. The poem had been published for the Roxburghe Club as Le Morte Arthur. The Adventures of Sir Launcelot du Lake (London, 1819), and was summarized with quotations in George Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances (3 vols., London, 1805) I, 328–386. 41. Not to be confused with Elaine, daughter of King Pelles and mother of Galahad, though White-Ill-Made (p. 262) has the wrong Elaine float down the river. 42. The only possible hint of slander against Gawain, and that rather comic, is that Elaine’s father is careful not to let her take Gawain to her chamber to see the shield (III, 217). 43. VI, 215 ff. 44. Cf. Bruce II, 371. 45. Wells is even harsher and more unjust than Guenevere: “He is represented as attempting to beguile the Maid of Ascolot, as lying about Launcelot to the Queen, and as compelled to acknowledge his guilt” (p. 51) and “Gawain is guilty of duplicity in his relations with Launcelot and the Maid of Ascolot, and lies and acknowledges his lie” (p. 53). That Gawain should have flirted with Elaine, Lancelot or no Lancelot, is in keeping with his character; it was clearly on a bantering level and did not disturb the poet. Gawain did not lie, unless to repeat an untruth in honest ignorance be to lie, and the acknowledgement, which Wells seems to stress, was a laudable attempt to correct a false report. 46. The main function of the diamond, which was Tennyson’s invention (cf. Maynadier, p. 428), seems, despite a certain muddled symbolism, to have been to give Gawain an opportunity to disobey and anger the king; cf. p. 244. 47. Rhys, cited in Weston-Gawain, pp. 45–6; Taylor, pp. 79–80; Wells, p. 53. 48. “To high-born ladies, like the countess Marie, Gawain would appear a dangerous character, since the stress upon his chastity might at any time endanger the popularity of courtly love” (Taylor, p. 79). 49. Even in the late Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain is characterized not by chastity, but by a continence induced by his sense of social and personal obligation. The test is not of Gawain’s chastity, but of his honor and in Gawain’s case, as in medieval romance generally, the two virtues are distinct. 50. Gawain would have applauded warmly Sir Dinadan’s mocking description of a lover (Malory II, 281–2). 51. This statement is dangerously broad, in view of the number of women with whom Gawain is intimate, but no case comes to mind. 52. Weston-Gawain, pp. 44–7. The most eloquent and persuasive statement of this position is by Loomis, p. 301. To Loomis’s list of Gawain’s wives or loves may be added Blanchandine (Floriant, pp. 172, 219) and Venelas (Mantel, p. 369). 53. Weston-Gawain, p. 55. 54. An unimportant exception is the statement at the end of Weddynge that Dame Ragnell dies five years after the marriage. 55. Scudder, p. 115; but see Britannica.

90 • B. J. Whiting 56. II, 327, ll. 38 ff. On another occasion, an inadvertent lack of civility gets Gawain into trouble (II, 459; Scudder, p. 169); see below. 57. Britannica; Wells, p. 53; Taylor, pp. 80–1. 58. See above. 59. See above. 60. The scene is indebted in part to Meraugis; see William Roach, ed., The Didot Perceval (Philadelphia, 1941), p. 111, n. 4 61. Madden, pp. xvi–xvii; Weston-Lancelot, p. 184. Some general references to Gawain’s bad reputation in the Vulgate-Lancelot (Britannica; Wells, p. 53; Taylor, pp. 80–1) are hardly substantiated by the text. 62. This place is as good as any to mention that Miss Weston believed that Gawain was Guenever’s first lover and supplanted by Lancelot because the French poets “would scarcely have admitted such a flaw in his reputation, even if they knew the story” (Weston-Gawain, p. 78). Later she convinced herself of even more: “I think now that Gawain and Mordred really represent the two sides of one original personality; and that a personality very closely connected with early Celtic tradition. . . . I think that the earlier Gawain was at once Arthur’s nephew and son by his sister, adventurous hero of the court, lover of the queen, and eventually slayer of his father-uncle” (Weston-Lancelot, pp. 109–110). Apparently the bad parts of Gawain’s schizophrenic nature were shifted to Mordred very early, and later Gawain had to develop some new unpleasant traits. This theory of Miss Weston’s has not been widely accepted. 63. In the absence of any modern edition, one must rely on Löseth’s full summary of the Tristan and allied works. See Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis, Tristan and Isolt (2 vols., Frankfurt and London, 1913) I, 137, for Gawain in the verse Tristan. 64. The only passages noted where Gawain is not altogether evil are on pp. 95–6, 141, 149. 65. No doubt more than one author was involved, but it is convenient to use the singular reference. 66. It is amusing, and perhaps instructive, to note that the owner, or a reader, of one manuscript, distressed at the treatment of Gawain, painstakingly rectified the text by scratching out the hero’s name in most of the unfavorable episodes and substituting Agravain’s, or if Agravain was already present, another’s, in its place. See Tristan, p. xxi, n. 1 and notes passim. 67. P. Paris, Les Romans de la Table Ronde (5 vols., Paris, 1868–77) V, 153, n. 68. Madden (p. xxvii, n.) and Chambers (pp. 162–3), put the Tristan after the Vulgate-Lancelot. 69. That there was a tradition for Gawain’s slight stature is borne out by Suite du Merlin, II, 246. 70. Madden, pp. xxvii–xxviii. 71. Weston-Gawain, p. 10; Weston-Lancelot, p. 137, n. 1. 72. Miss Weston believed, of course, that Gawain was the original pre-Christian Grail winner (Weston-Perceval II, 303–5; Weston-Grail, pp. 25–6, 118–9; Britannica; Jones, p. 107), and found strong support in the fact that Gawain is actually the winner in Heinrich von dem Türlin’s Diu Crône. Bruce (I, 285) dissented strongly from Miss Weston’s theory, and argued that Heinrich, far from preserving an old tradition, was an innovator (I, 349–50). 73. Madden, p. xvii. 74. He is described as attending divine services as often as most of his fellows. 75. Even the pious writers of the sections about the Grail did not venture to make Gawain a knightly theologian. 76. Malory III, 80, 122–3. 77. Weston-Gawain, p. 9, Weston-Lancelot, p. 184, Weston-Grail, pp. 25–6; Britannica; Taylor, p. 81; Jones, pp. 110–1; Reid, p. 133; Vinaver-Malory, pp. 73, 81. 78. Miss Weston (Weston-Lancelot, p. 184) would transfer the passage in the Vulgate-Mort in which Gawain confesses having killed eighteen of his fellow seekers to the Vulgate-Aventures. Bruce (Bruce-Mort, p. 266) calls this unnecessary, since the fact that Gawain ascribes the killings to his misfortune shows that the author has no intention of degrading Gawain’s character. 79. Madden, p. xvii; W.A. Nitze, Arthurian Romance and Modern Poetry and Music (Chicago, 1940), pp. 94–5. Cf. Vinaver-Malory, p. 73. 80. Cf. Malory III, 79–80. 81. Vinaver-Malory, p. 81. 82. Cf. Reid, p. 140. 83. Despite Gawain’s forbearance, the lady gets into trouble with her husband.

Gawain • 91 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111.

112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

Bruce II, 371; Chambers, pp. 162–3. See Bruce II, 374. Bruce II, 374. Scudder, pp. 338–9. Madden, pp. xvi–xvii; Maynadier, p. 429; Bruce II, 375–7; Bensel, p. 141; Chambers, p. 163. As by Scudder, pp. 188, 335, 336. Vulgate-Mort VI, 350, ll. 6 ff.; Malory III, 327–8. Weston-Gawain, pp. 9–10; Britannica; Maynadier, p. 234. Reid, p. 59; Schofield, p. 215. Cf. Scudder, p. 173. Cf. Scudder, pp. 281, 337. Vinaver-Tristan, pp. 117, 121; Vinaver-Malory, p. 22. On Malory’s sources, see H. Oscar Sommer, Le Morte Darthur III, Studies on the Sources (London, 1891), pp. 6 ff; Scudder, passim; Vinaver-Malory, pp. 128 ff. See above. Here (I, 148) Malory lists five knights who had the better of Gawain: Lancelot, Tristram, Bors, Perceval and Marhaus. See above. This episode is highly reminiscent of a favorite theme in the Matter of France. Cf. Vinaver-Tristan, p. 121. See above, and Malory II, 18, 34, 52, 79, 129–30, 131, 167–8, 175–6, 181, 213, 214–5, 257, 260–1, 267, 284, 290–1, 302, 310, 315. For Gawain’s lack of success in two other competitive feats, see III, 2, 267. Some of the prose romances grant him a certain degree of spiritual experience, and its absence here may be due either to Malory or to his immediate source. See above. We had already been told that Lancelot always bested Gawain in the field (III, 208). See pp. 207–8 above. Cf. Bruce-Mort, p. 287. See Maynadier, pp. 257–334. 2 vols., Philadelphia, 1851, I, 211 ff. On the poem as a whole, see Maynadier, pp. 351–2. See below, and cf. above. The use of a source in addition to Malory is to be particularly noted. No other of our modern authors, save Tennyson in “Lancelot and Elaine,” is guilty of so much originality. Bulwer Lytton (p. 237, note) says that he took the story, with modifications, from Le Grande’s Fabliaux. Although he does not say so, a few verbal echoes suggest that Bulwer Lytton took the story not from the French original but from Fabliaux or Tales, Abridged from French Manuscripts of the XIIth and XIIIth Centuries by M. Le Grand, Selected and Translated into English Verse, by the late G.L. Way, Esq., with a Preface, Notes and Appendix by the late G. Ellis, Esq. (new edition, 3 vols., London, 1815) II, 1–31. J.W. Mackail, The Life of William Morris (2 vols., London, 1899) I, 81. Mackail I, 38, 45, 63. Mackail I, 105, 114, 115, 118, 127, 132, 136. Years later, he was to list some of the sources of his medievalism without including Malory (Mackail I, 198). Cf. MacCallum, p. 259; Maynadier, pp. 357–8. P. 38. This must be the passage to which Miss Weston refers when she says that Morris calls the hero “gloomy Gawain” in The Defence of Guenevere (Weston-Gawain, p. 11; cf. Britannica). P. 358, n. 2. For Miss Weston’s opinion of Tennyson’s Arthurian poems, see Weston-Lancelot, p. 114, n. 1. For Swinburne on the Idylls, see Under the Microscope (Complete Works, ed. E. Gosse and T.J. Wise, Prose Works, VI [1926] 404 ff., esp. pp. 407–8). Gawain does not appear in “The Marriage of Geraint,” “Geraint and Enid,” “Balin and Balan,” “Merlin and Vivien,” or “Guinevere.” “Coming of Arthur” (pp. 15, 18), “Gareth and Lynette” (pp. 30, 41, 45, 49), and “The Last Tournament” (p. 332). We have followed here the final arrangement of the poems. To take them in the order of composition would not alter the picture materially: “The Passing of Arthur” was the first written, “Lancelot and Elaine” appeared in 1859, and “The Holy Grail” and “Pelleas and Ettarre” in 1869. It may, perhaps, be worth noting that Tennyson does not abuse Gawain in

92 • B. J. Whiting

123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131.

132. 133. 134. 135.

136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144.

145. 146. 147. 148.

149. 150.

the three idylls (“The Last Tournament,” “Gareth and Lynette,” and “Balin and Balan”) written after 1869. See above. See pp. 202–3. Perhaps the juxtaposition of “meek Sir Percivale,” “pure sir Galahad,” and “fine Gawain” in “Lancelot and Elaine” (pp. 264–5) was suggested by Morris’s “King Arthur’s Tomb.” Cf. Malory III, 61. See above. He would even like to damn Lancelot’s soul, something which would never have occurred to the earlier Gawain. See above. Mr. White has Agravain, rather than Gaheris, kill the mother. As Mr. White cheerfully combines the two Elaines, there is no opportunity for Gawain to visit Astolat. In fact, Mr. White’s Gawain has no interest in women. In John Erskine’s Galahad: Enough of his Life to Explain his Reputation (Indianapolis, 1926) a rumor confuses the two Elaines (pp. 334–5). Mr. Erskine, by the way, adds to Gawain’s misdeeds: his Gawain tells Guinevere that Lancelot is infatuated with Iseult (pp. 51, 59), he has a child by a girl who then kills herself (pp. 237–9), and he informs Galahad that his mother is not married to Lancelot (p. 241). In another context, Gawain’s disgusted comments on Galahad could be highly diverting. The conclusion of the book suggests another installment, but none has appeared. See above for a case of temptation successfully avoided. Malory refers to courtesy in connection with Gawain very seldom, whereas he often calls other knights, notably Lancelot, Gareth and Tristram, courteous. Tennyson, as we have seen above, makes Gawain’s courtesy an evil quality, and reserves the word in its complimentary sense for Lancelot. Later English versions of Arthurian stories ignore courtesy almost altogether, probably because the word’s twentieth century connotations are a trifle precious; the phrase “old-world courtesy” is not without significance. Coleridge’s memory failed him when he said of characterization in the romances, that “Tristram is always courteous, Lancelot invincible, and so on” (Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge [2nd ed., London, 1836], p. 68 [May 12, 1830]). See Bibliography A above. Henri Dupin, La Courtoisie au Moyen Age (Paris, 1931). Another study, C.B. West’s Courtoisie in Anglo-Norman Literature (Oxford, 1938), takes “courtoisie” as essentially the equivalent of “courtly love,” an identification which certainly excludes Gawain. The modern English forms stand for their Old French and Middle English equivalents. It should be noted that figures are used here and throughout for their indicative rather than their absolute value. The writer has no confidence that he has noted every example of the words. The English works account for 154 of these instances, 17 of them referring to women; in total lines the English poems are outnumbered by 300,000 to 90,000. In English alone we have courteous (24), courtesy (19) and courteously (6), for a total of 49. Failure to say more about the ladies must not be ascribed to anti-feminism. To give names to the numerous dames and damoisels who wander so freely through the French poems would have taxed Merlin’s magic. Adroit (6), afatiez (3), amoureux (2), bien entechié (3), bele parlier (3), bon (2), chevalerie (10), enseignement (2), envoisié (4), fière (4), franchise (7), frice (3), hardi (13), hardiment (4), bonnête (4), honorable (3), joli (2), kind (2), loyal (4), loyauté (2), noblesse (3), pitié (3), raisonnable (3), sagement (2), vrai (2), wi tschippe (2). Plaisant (3), simple (2), simplesse (2). M. Dupin’s book (see above) is a valuable commentary on many of these qualities. Morte Arthure, p. 7, l. 209. Lovelich (II, 253–4) mingles good and bad, and in Méliador (III, 115 ff.) he is thoroughly agreeable; cf. Malory I, 120–1. The standard explanation of Kay’s ill-nature is that he was nursed by a woman of inferior rank; see Merlin (ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich, Société des Anciens Textes Français, Paris, 1886) I, 140 and Lovelich I, 195. In this romance Gawain is falsely accused of treachery and undergoes a certain amount of unmerited abuse; cf. p. 558. Cf. pp. 9, 594.

Gawain • 93 151. Kay’s courtesy is spoken of without qualification: p. 42, ll. 1550–1, p. 236, l. 8938, p. 641, l. 24345. Gawain once speaks slightingly of his courtesy (p. 10, ll. 343–5), but he also praises him, except for his language (pp. 15–6, ll. 545–64). 152. Golagros, p. 3, l. 53; Pseudo-Wauchier III, 124, l. 12624. 153. Charette, p. 172, ll. 4859–61. 154. Fergus, p. 168, ll. 20–5; Gerbert I, 48, l. 1513; Pseudo-Wauchier III, 94, ll. 11784–7. 155. Raguidel, p. 10, ll. 241–2. 156. Charette, p. 5, ll. 140–1. 157. Raguidel, p. 120, ll. 4196–8. 158. Syre Gawene, p. 196, ll. 328–30. 159. Yvain, p. 25, ll. 635–6. 160. Yvain, p. 90, ll. 2212-4. See also Awntyrs, p. 122, l. 97; Fergus, p. 21, ll. 28–9; Graal, p. 183, ll. 4078–9; Pseudo-Wauchier III, 255, l. 16800 (but cf. variant); Yvain, pp. 4, 5, ll. 73–4, 77–9, 98–9. 161. A New Enterlude called Thersytes (c. 1550), Tudor Facsimile Texts, 1912, sig. Aiiiv. 162. Gawain will be discussed in Part V. 163. See above. 164. The books on our list which do not refer to Gawain’s courtesy are Arthur, Cligés, Folie Tristan, Lanval, Lawman, Libeaus, Mantel, Méliador, Morte Arthure, Mule, Sir Tristrem, Thomas, Vulgate-Mort and Yvaine. Lawman, Mule and Sir Tristrem do not mention courtesy at all, and it is worth observing that whereas Lanval and Yvain do not call Gawain courteous, Sir Launfal and Ywaine both do. 165. Escanor, p. 74, ll. 2799–800. 166. Carle, p. 278, ll. 29–30; Vulgate-Merlin II, 303, ll. 10–12. 167. Atre, p. 31, ll. 956–8; Rigomer I, 424, ll. 14365–6; Vulgate-Merlin II, 314, ll. 15–17. 168. Graal, p. 357, ll. 7969–78. 169. We are already prepared (see above) to find Gawain’s courtesy unmixed with chastity. 170. Escanor, p. 78, ll. 2929–31. 171. The girl’s courage is aided by the fact that her father is an imperious host, although the affair is complicated by the disconcerting appearance of a magic sword from the wall above the bed; see above. Magic once came between Gareth and his lady; see Malory, I, 275–8. 172. The power of heredity appears in a similar scene in Le Bel Inconnu, where Gawain’s son Guinglan is in bed with the fée; the author observes Je ne sai s’il le fist s’amie, Car n’i fui pas, ne n’en vi mie, Mais non de pucele perdi La dame dalés son ami (p. 147, ll. 4815–8). I do not know if he made her his beloved, for I was not there and did not see it, but the lady lost the name of maiden next to her lover. 173. This episode, which is told more than once and with varying details, is the source of the Jeaste of Syr Gawayne; see Madden, pp. 349–51; Weston-Perceval I, 285; Bruce II, 93–4. 174. The Complete Works of John Gower, ed. G.C. Macaulay (4 vols., Oxford, 1899–1902) I, 390, xvii, 2. Earlier Gower had pointed out Lancelot and Tristram as warnings to others (I, 389, xv, 1). 175. Vulgate-Merlin II, 327, ll. 38–9; cf. p. 328, ll. 8–9. 176. Vulgate-Merlin II, 459, ll. 11–12. 177. Vulgate-Lancelot V, 459, ll. 39–40. 178. Erec, p. 147, l. 4078. 179. Grene Knight, p. 75, ll. 473–4. In Gawain there is no reference to courtesy at this point. 180. Le Morte Arthur, p. 37, l. 1150. 181. See p. 202 above. 182. See also Claris, p. 73, ll. 2666–7. Gawain’s manners, if not his courtesy, are put to a severe test in Atre when, in the midst of dinner, a knight rides into the hall and carries off a maiden whose adventure has just been assigned to Gawain (pp. 5 ff.). Should Gawain jump up from the table to rescue the maiden, or should he finish his meal like a proper courtier? His decision to continue eating and then trust to the speed of his horse is in accord with the rule of table manners laid down by Merlin in Suite du Merlin II, 78–9. 183. For the history of the word, see NED, s.v. hend.

94 • B. J. Whiting 184. Canterbury Tales I(A), 3199–200, and note, p. 787. In Chaucer’s certain works he uses “hende” only twice save in connection with Nicholas, and one of the two (III[D], 628) may well be an echo; in the other instance the Host bids the Friar be “hende And curteys” (III[D], 1286–7). If Chaucer wrote Fragment A of the Romaunt of the Rose, there are two more examples (ll. 285, 1306). 185. “the king nom thas threo cnihtes hende” (III, 43, l. 26249) of whom Gawain was one. 186. See Howard R. Patch, “Chaucer and Mediaeval Romance,” Essays in Memory of Barrett Wendell (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), pp. 95–108. 187. The almost proverbial nature of Gawain’s courtesy appears in Sir Perceval: Scho calde appon hir chaymbirlayne, Was called hende Hatlayne, The curtasye of Wawayne He weldis in wane (p. 41, ll. 1261–4). She called upon her chamberlain, who was called courteous Hatlayne; the courtesy of Gawain he demonstrates in the dwelling. That Chaucer knew Sir Perceval is suggested by the closing lines of Sir Thopas (Canterbury Tales VII, 915–6 [B 2105–6] and note, p. 846). 188. The fact that both the Squire’s Tale and Gawain describe knights riding into a hall is mentioned by J.M. Manly, Canterbury Tales (New York, 1928), p. 599. 189. See above. 190. See above, for similar doubts. 191. See Whiting, “Froissart as Poet,” Mediaeval Studies, VIII (1946), 195, n. 29.

2

Gwalchmei m. Gwyar RACHEL BROMWICH

Gwalch ‘hawk’ is employed in a number of instances by the Gogynfeirdd (bards) as an epithet for their patrons . . . . It is therefore not surprising to find this word employed as an element in a personal name: the occurrence of Brân ‘raven’ as a personal name is analogous . . . . It is unlikely, however, that Gwalchmei means ‘Hawk of May.’ Professor Jackson has suggested (Language and History in Early Britain [Edinburgh, 1953], p. 449, n.) that Medieval Welsh Gwalchmei’ British *Ualcos Magesos, meaning ‘The Hawk of the Plain,’ in which -mei represents an oblique case (genitive singular or plural) of -ma ‘field, plain’ < *magos.1

*** Culhwch ac Olwen: . . . Galw (o arthur) gvalchmei mab gvyar cany deuth attref eiroet heb y neges yd elhei oe cheissyav, goreu pedestyr oed a goreu marchavc. Nei y arthur uab y chwaer ay gefynderw oed. ‘Arthur called on G. son of Gwyar, because he never came home without the quest he had gone to seek. He was the best of walkers, and the best of riders. He was Arthur’s nephew, his sister’s son, and his first cousin.’ The tradition that Arthur included a sister’s son among his most prominent warriors is alluded to by William of Malmesbury, writing in 1125 (De Rebus Gestis Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, III, § 287): Tunc (1066–87) in provincia Walarum, quae Ros vocatur, inventum est sepulchrum Walwen, qui fuit haud degener Arturis ex sorore nepos. Regnavit in ea parte Britanniae quae adhuc Walweitha vocatur: miles virtute nominatissimus, sed a fratre et nepote Hengestii, de quibus in primo libro dixi, regno expulsus, prius multo eorum detrimento exilium compensans suum; communicans merito laudi avunculi, quod ruentes patriae casum in plures annos distulerint. Sed Arturis sepulchrum nusquam visitur, unde antiquitatis naeniarum adhuc eum venturum fabulatur. Ceterum, alterius bustum, ut praemisi, tempore Willelmi regis repertum est supra oram maris, quatuordecim pedes longum; ubi a quibusdam asseritur ab hostibus vulneratus, et naufragio eiectus; a

95

96 • Rachel Bromwich quibusdam dicitur a civibus in publico epulo interfectus. Veritatis ergo notitia labat in dubio, licet neuter eorum defuerit famae suae patrocinio. At this time was found in the province of Wales called R(h)os the tomb of Walwen, who was the not degenerate nephew of Arthur by his sister. He reigned in that part of Britain which is still called Walweitha. A warrior most renowned for his valour, he was expelled from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist, of whom I spoke in the first book, but not until he had compensated for his exile by much damage wrought upon them, worthily sharing in the praise of his uncle, in that they deferred for many years the ruin of their falling country. But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere to be beheld, whence ancient ditties fable that he is yet to come. The tomb of the other, however, as I have said, was found in the time of king William upon the sea-shore, fourteen feet in length; and here some say that he was wounded by his foes and cast out in a shipwreck, but according to others he was killed by his fellowcitizens at a public banquet. Knowledge of the truth therefore remains doubtful, although neither story would be inconsistent with the defence of his fame.2 The Walwen of this passage is clearly the same person as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Gualgua(i)nus, (Gualgwinus, Walwan(i)us), who is represented as Arthur’s nephew by his sister Anna (Historia Regum Britanniae, ed. Griscom [London, 1929] IX, 9)—and the Gauvains of French romance, English Gawain. In the passage quoted from Culhwch ac Olwen, Gwalchmei mab Gwyar is described as standing in an identical relation to Arthur. There can be no doubt as to the ultimate identity of all the characters referred to by those names. Although there is not a complete correspondence between the forms, yet Gwalchmei and (G)ualgua(i)nus are sufficiently close by Arthurian standards (cf. Peredur, Perceval; Myrddin, Merlin) to offer no obstacle to this identification. The name Gwalchmai is first attested in Welsh sources as that of the north Welsh poet who flourished circa 1130–80, but there is evidence that the cognate Old Breton form Walcmoei was known in Brittany in the ninth century.3 For the forms Walwainus, Gualgua(i)nus, Galvaginus (Modena archivolt), attested on the Continent in the first half of the twelfth century, see R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes [New York, 1949], p. 146. These would appear to be derived from a contamination of the name in its Old Breton form Walcmoei, as was argued by Loth (Revue Celtique XIII, p. 495) and Zimmer (Zeitschrift für französische Sprache und Literatur, XII, pp. 234–5); either under the influence of the ending of Yvains (< Ewen, Owein, see note), or of some quite different name. The relation between a man and his sister’s son was an important one in early Celtic society (examples: Math-Gwydion, Bran Vendigeit-Gwern, MarchDrystan, Conchobor-Cúchulainn), and therefore it is not surprising to find that

Gwalchmei m. Gwyar • 97 pre-Geoffrey tradition gave Arthur a nephew among his chief warriors (though not perhaps Welsh tradition of the oldest stratum, in which Cei and Bedwyr are Arthur’s foremost associates: note that in Culhwch ac Olwen Gwalchmei ap Gwyar is not mentioned again after he has been introduced in the passage quoted above, and that it is Cei and Bedwyr who are most prominent in the tale). And the importance attached to this relationship in the pre-Geoffrey tradition is in itself sufficient to account for the pre-eminence of Gauvain in the earlier Continental romances. I am not aware that any evidence has been adduced which proves the William of Malmesbury passage to be a post-Geoffrey interpolation into the De Rebus. It is out of the question that the redactor of Culhwch ac Olwen should have known of the passage, and it is far more natural to conclude that the nugae Britonum to which William refers elsewhere included the tradition about Arthur’s sister’s son, which we find preserved independently in Culhwch ac Olwen. What William says about the grave of Walwen is suspiciously reminiscent of the traditions as to the sites of burial of early heroes which are incorporated in the Beddau stanzas; and the passage quoted does in fact suggest a knowledge of the Welsh tradition about Arthur’s unknown grave which is referred to in them (J. G. Evans, The Black Book of Carmarthen [Pwllheli, 1906] 67, 13). Unfortunately bet gwalchmei ym peryton cannot be identified with the cantref of Rhos in Pembroke to which William refers as the place of Walwen’s grave (see Ifor Williams, Armes Prydein o Lyfr Taliesin [Cardiff, 1955] xxx–xxxiv, where it is shown that Peryddon, Periuon, is to be identified with a stream running into the Monnow at Monmouth). Nevertheless the name of Kastell Gwalchmai, as that of one of the three commotes of Rhos, is recorded in The Red Book of Hergest and elsewhere . . . . This seems to provide independent evidence for the tradition recorded by William (who must have had a precedent for employing Walwen as a latinization of Gwalchmai). After referring to William’s account, Lewis Morris remarks that the site of the grave of Gwalchmei ‘is shown between the Isles of Skomar and Skokham in Pembrokeshire’ (Celtic Remains [Cambrian Archeological Association, 1878], p. 213). Further, the significance of William’s statement that Walwen ‘reigned’ in Galloway should not be overlooked. Any phonetic association between the two names may be set aside as late antiquarian speculation, yet the importance of the statement that Walwen belonged originally to north Britain still stands. One has only to compare the parallel instances of Owein ab Urien, Drystan, Llywarch Hen, and perhaps Arthur himself—characters of whom the earliest traditions come from the north, though they became subsequently localized in Wales—and it becomes clear that it is entirely reasonable to conclude that Gwalchmai also belonged originally to the Gwyr y Gogledd, although the tradition about him to which William refers was already partly localized in Wales. And Geoffrey of Monmouth tacitly recognizes this association by giving his

98 • Rachel Bromwich Gualguanus as father the northern ruler Lot of Lothian. It is not without importance in this connection to note that in Continental sources beginning with Chrétien, but surviving in England into the late Middle Ages, Gawain is persistently associated with Galloway (J. D. Bruce, Evolution of Arthurian Romance [2nd edition, Göttingen, 1928] II, 98–9; Weston, Sir Perceval I, 186 ff.; see also note to triad 4).4 From the passage in Culhwch ac Olwen one would naturally be led to conclude that Gwyar (lit. ‘blood’) was the name of Arthur’s brother-in-law. But the instance of Gwydion vab Don cited above reminds us that a matronymic was possible in early Welsh sources, as in Irish (Conchobor mac Nessa, Fergus mac Roich): and although the only certain instances in Welsh—Mabon ap Modron and certain members of the family of Dôn—belong to the realm of mythology rather than to that of early heroic tradition, the possibility that Gwyar represents a woman’s name cannot be excluded, even though it seems contrary to the normal usage of the triads. And in one version of Bonedd y Saint, Gwyar is given as the name of a daughter of Amlawdd Wledic; see note to Gereint ab Erbin. Considerable confusion prevails in Welsh sources owing to the fact that Geoffrey of Monmouth gives Gualguanus a different parentage (see above). In the fourteenth-century Birth of Arthur (Y Cymmrodor XXIV, pp. 250 ff.) an attempt is made to reconcile the native tradition with that of Geoffrey by substituting the name of Gwyar for that of Anna as Arthur’s sister: Dwy verchet (a oeddynt i Wrleis) o Eygyr nit amgen (Gwyar a Dioneta. Gwyar) a oedd yn weddw (yn llys i that a Hywel y mab) y gyt a hi gwedy (marw Ymer llydaw i gwr) priot. Ac Uthyr (a beris i Leu vab Kynvarch) i phriodi a phlant (a gowsant nit amgen no) deu vab Gwa(lchmei a Medrawt a thair mer)chet Gracia G(raeria Dioneta). ‘Gwrleis and Eigyr had two daughters, Gwyar and Dioneta. Gwyar was (living as) a widow in her father’s court, and Hywel her son with her, after the death of Ymer Llydaw her husband. And Uthyr caused Lleu ap Cynfarch to marry her, and they had children: that is two sons Gwalchmei and Medrawd, and three daughters, Gracia, Graeria, and Dioneta.’ (It should be noted that the words in brackets in this passage have been supplied from the transcript made by John Jones in 1611 (Pen. 215), as the original had become too indistinct to read. These words include the name of Gwyar. Nevertheless there seems no reason to reject their authenticity.) This simple expedient did not suggest itself to the earlier redactor(s) of the Brut, who render Geoffrey’s Gualguanus by Gwalchmei, but conform to Geoffrey’s account with respect to this hero’s parentage (Henry Lewis, Brut Dingestow [Cardiff, 1942] 152, 154). But the native tradition appears to have been so strong that they were obliged to divide Geoffrey’s character into two: the boy Gwalchmei who is son of Anna and Lleu ap Kynuarch (= Lot de

Gwalchmei m. Gwyar • 99 Lodonesia), and Gwalchmei ap Gwyar, whose name is used to represent that of Gualguanus in the later battle scenes in which he figures (Brut Dingestow 171, 175, 179). But in one instance the relationship is reaffirmed exactly as in Culhwch ac Olwen; see Brut Dingestow, p. 183: Gualchmei uab Guyar nei y brenhin.5 Gwalchmei uab Gwyar is named in Breudwyt Rhonabwy (J. G. Evans, The Text of the Mabinogion from the Red Book of Hergest [Oxford, 1887] 159, 19). Of the Three Romances, that of Owein differs from the others in that it depends upon the account given in the Brut with respect to the parentage of Gwalchmei, i.e. no patronymic is given, but the hero of the tale states that he and Gwalchmei are first cousins (J. G. Evans, The White Book Mabinogion [Pwllheli, 1907] 248, l. 35; Lleu and Urien were both sons of Kynvarch). In both Gereint and Peredur, Gwalchmei uab gwyar is named specifically (White Book Mabinogion 411, 28; 118, 20). So also the Ystorya Trystan (B, V, 123, ll. 2–3): gwalchmai fab Gwyar dafod aur; but this late text still adheres to the tradition of Culhwch ac Olwen, for later we have: mi yw Gwalchmei nai Arthvr (118, 1. 12=123, 1. 15). The Continental conception of Gauvain as a paragon of courtesy and valour is reflected in the portrayal of Gwalchmei in these Welsh romances; cf. the description at the beginning of Gereint: Naw eglvys ereill a uydei yrwg nav penteulu ac y walchmei yn bennaf canys ef o arderchogrvyd clod (a) milvryaeth ac urtas boned oed bennaf ar nav penteulu (White Book Mabinogion 385, 27–32) ‘Nine other churches would be between nine captains of the warbands, and for Gwalchmei above all, for he by excellence of renown, for feats of arms and dignity of noble birth was chief of the nine captains of the war-bands’. And in each of these romances Gwalchmei figures in a scene of meeting with the hero of the tale, who has just engaged incognito in single combat with a series of Arthur’s warriors. In each case Gwalchmei is the means of bringing about a reconciliation with Arthur, either as a sequel to single combat (Owein and Gereint), or as a result of his courteous intercession (Peredur and Trystan). In Peredur Arthur’s words on this occasion are significant: M(i) a wydvn na bydei reit y walchmei ymlad ar marchavc. A diryfed yv idav kaffel clot. Mvy a wna ef oe eireu tec no nini o nerth an harueu (White Book Mabinogion 144, 21–4) ‘I knew it would not be necessary for Gwalchmei to fight with the knight. It is no wonder that he wins fame, for he does more with his fair words than we by force of arms.’ This was the reputation of Gauvain in the Continental romances, and it accounts for the epithet dafod aur ‘golden tongue’ which Gwalchmei bears in the late Welsh texts, Ystorya Trystan and the Pedwar Marchog ar Hugain (see App. IV, 1). A further instance of Gwalchmei’s reputation for extreme courtesy appears in the fragment of Peredur preserved in Pen. 14 (printed White Book Mabinogion, p. 286). Here Gwalchmei fulfils the role of Owein in the corresponding passage in the White Book Mabinogion text, in patiently explaining to the boy Peredur the use of a knight’s armour and equipment; later again, it is he and not Owein who follows Peredur from Arthur’s court when Peredur sets out to fight with the

100 • Rachel Bromwich knight who has insulted Gwenhwyfar. Since precisely the same role is played by Gawayne in the corresponding passage in the English Sir Perceval, it seems likely that there may have been early authority for this in the Peredur-Perceval romance—especially as in all the pre-Galahad Continental versions of the Grail romances, Gauvain plays a part which is second only in prominence to that of Perceval himself. In our extant text of Peredur it may well be that Owein was substituted for Gwalchmei in this role—either by the final redactor of the tale, or by whoever of his predecessors was the first to draw together the three Welsh romances—because he figured as the hero of Iarlles y Ffynnawn. Whoever was responsible for making this change, he failed to make the parallel alteration of substituting Owein for Gwalchmei in the later scene of reconciliation between the hero and Arthur’s knights. Gwalchmei is alluded to by Cynddelw, by Einion Wan, by Y Prydydd Bychan, and by Casnodyn; but in each case without patronymic. However, Dafydd y Coed addresses Hopkyn vab Thomas as eil gvalchmei uab gvyar. Einion Offeiriad describes Rhys ap Gruffudd as Ail Gwalchmai difai difefl fonedh (circa 1320, Y Cymmrodor XXVI, 135); Dafydd ap Gwilym to Rhys Meigen: Nid un swydd â Gwalchmai (Thomas Parry, Gwaith Dafydd ap Gwilym [Cardiff, 1952] 21, 2). Additional references by the cywyddwyr are listed in J. Lloyd-Jones, Geirfa Barddoniaeth Gynnar Gymraeg (Cardiff, 1931–63). The sixteenth-century account of the Giants in Pen 118 summarizes a folk-tale telling how Gwalchmai killed three witches (Y Cymmrodor XXVII, p. 130). Notes Reprinted with permission from Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads, ed. Rachel Bromwich, 2nd ed. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1978), pp. 369–75. Abbreviations have been expanded in the text. The numbering of endnotes differs from that of the footnotes in the original text. 1. In a long note (Llên Cymru vi, 241–3), E. R. discusses the problems presented by the constituent elements in this name. He regards mai in place-names as more likely to be a pl. ‘fields, meadows’ than a gen. sg. (as advocated by Ifor Williams). He suggests tentatively that the name may after all be a close compound, and for this he draws support from the (conjectural) Breton cognate *Ualcmoe(i); but proposes as an alternative derivation a cmpd. of gwalch with a second element cognate with Old Irish smech ‘chin’, giving some such meaning as ‘Hawk-Beak.’ For a discussion of the confusion in the Bruts concerning Gwalchmai’s patronymic—ap Gwyar or ap Llew ap Kynvarch, see now Brynley Roberts, The Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies xxv (1973), 287–8. 2. Trans. E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain, p. 17. 3. In an eleventh-century copy of a ninth-century charter, the Cartulaire de Redon (ed. Courson, pp. 60, 76) gives the two forms Uualcmoel and Uualtmoe in reference to the same person. These may confidently be emended to Uualcmoe, which represents the ninth-century Breton spelling of Medieval Welsh Gwalchmei (see Zimmer, loc. cit., and Loth, Chr. Br., p. 152, note 5). I find myself quite unable to accept Professor Loomis’s contention (Arthurian Tradition, p. 149, et passim) that Walwainus and the other forms of this name derive, not from Gwalchmei but from Gwrvan gvallt auvyn, a name which is attested only once in Welsh sources (White Book Mabinogion 466, 13 = Red Book Mabinogion 110, 14). In the same text (Culhwch ac Olwen) in which the single reference to this character occurs, we already find Gwalchmei mab Gwyar established in the role of Arthur’s nephew. And in the Black Book of Carmarthen text of Trioedd y Meirch the equation between Gwalchmei and

Gwalchmei m. Gwyar • 101 Gauvain is implied as being already in existence by the correspondence between the names of Kein called, Gwalchmei’s horse, and Guingalet, the horse of Gauvain in the Continental sources, who appears first in Chrétien’s Erec (see introduction, pp. civ–cvi). Nor can I regard Gwalchmei as a loose approximation made in Wales of a name already known to a name of different origin introduced from without, since the Breton evidence proves the existence of this name in Celtic sources at a date much earlier than is attested for any of the Continental forms. 4. In the Awntyrs of Arthur it is Galeron of Galloway whose lands have been given to Gawain; in the romance of Dame Ragnell Gromer Somer Joure is represented as making a similar complaint. In the ninth century the term Gall-Gaidil (= Galloway) was used in a much wider sense than in later times: it included all the islands and coastlands on the west side of Scotland. (Chadwick, Early Scotland, p. 127.) 5. In the late Brut Tysilio the native tradition has prevailed, and the inconsistency has been removed. The following passage may however be influenced by the Birth of Arthur: Ac y roes Arthyr . . . y Elw (= Lew) ap Cynvarch iarllaeth Lindessi cans ef oed vrawd ynghyfraith y Arthur, ac y Wyar mam Walchmai amherawdr (MA 463–4). ‘And Arthur gave the earldom of Lindsey to Llew ap Cynfarch, since he was his brother-in-law, and to Gwyar the mother of Gwalchmai the emperor.’ This passage corresponds with Brut Dingestow 152. It is not paralleled in the corresponding passage in Parry’s Brut y Brenhinedd (p. 163), but cf. Griscom, Hist. Reg., p. 444, for translation of Jesus College MS. 61.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

3

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes WILLIAM A. NITZE

No character holds a higher rank among the knights of King Arthur’s court than Gauvain. In the list given in Chrétien’s Erec (vss. 1691 ff.) the poet says: Devant toz les buens chevaliers Doit estre Gauvains li premiers; Before all good knights, Gawain should be [mentioned] first; and, accordingly, as the favorite nephew of Arthur, he gives him the title of mes sire or mon seignor. It is natural, then, that Gauvain is held up as a model of what other knights should be. Yet none of Chrétien’s works bears his name. He plays a prominent role in Erec, Cligés, Lancelot, Yvain, and especially Perceval, but always as a contrasting figure with whom the title-hero is compared or associated. It is interesting, therefore, to learn how he acquired this position and what particular traits of knighthood he illustrates. The date of the Erec is approximately 1170, but antecedent to it the name and qualities of Gauvain occur in various places, quite apart from the general Celtic background to which Gauvain may belong.1 Let us see what these previous references are. As a name, split into Gau-vain, the form Walwen appears in 1125 in William of Malmesbury’s De rebus gestis regum Anglorum. Again, as Walwanius about 1135 in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae (see Griscom ed. for variants) and as Walwein in 1155 in Wace’s Roman de Brut. On the other hand, Rajna (Rom., XVII [1888], 362) found it as Walwanus in an Italian document of 1136, and Loomis (see below) regards the Galvagin inscribed on the archivolt of Modena (after 1110), together with Artus, Isdernus, and Che, as obviously the Gauvain of romance. What may the meaning of the name be?

103

104 • William A. Nitze Starting with the form Galvagin, Loomis (Celtic Myth, pp. 63 ff., and Arthurian Tradition, pp. 149 ff.) proposes Welsh Gwallt-avwyn, “hair like reins,” a sporadic substitute for Gwallt-euryn, “golden hair,” as the origin. He outlines ten points in support of his theory, endeavoring to show that W. Gwri, whose epithets these are, has traits suggesting both Gauvain and Gareth in Arthurian romance. While epithets with Gwallt are not infrequent in Welsh legend, Brugger (ZFSL, LIV [1930], 106 ff.) rejects the possibility that Gauvain or Galvagin came from Gwallt-avwyn. The -wen of Walwen may represent Bret.-Welsh guin (“fair” or “white”), and Wal might stand for gual(l)t (“hair”), as in Bret. Guin-gualt-uc. But there are no instances of Gualt-guin, and the romances never refer to Gauvain’s hair as Irish saga does to the golden hair of Cuchulainn (cf. Táin, ed. Windisch, p. 388). In short, the origin of the name remains obscure, though the probability is that it had a Celtic source. Fortunately, however, William, Geoffrey, and Wace throw light on Gauvain’s deeds and character which help to explain the background on which Chrétien drew. William (III, § 287), referring to an account of the last half of the eleventh century (1086), says: At this time was found in the province of Wales called Ros the tomb of Walwen, who was the not degenerate nephew of Arthur by his sister. He reigned in the part of Britain which is still called Walweitha (Galloway). A warrior most renowned for his valour [virtute nominatissimus], he was expelled from his kingdom by the brother and nephew of Hengist, of whom I spoke in the first book, but not until he had compensated for his exile by much damage wrought upon them, worthily sharing the praise of his uncle, in that they deferred for many years the ruin of their falling country. But the tomb of Arthur is nowhere beheld, whence ancient ditties [antiquitas naeniarum] fable that he is yet to come. The tomb of the other, however, as I have said, was found in the time of King William upon the sea shore, fourteen feet in length; and here some say he was wounded by his foes and cast out in a ship wreck, but according to others he was killed by his fellow-citizens at a public banquet. Knowledge of the truth therefore remains doubtful, although neither story would be inconsistent with the defence of his fame.2 Since the Annales Cambriae for the year 547 refer to the death of Maelgwn, who can be connected with regia Ros, it is possible that Holtzmann (Germania, XII [1867], 277 ff.) is right in thinking that William confused the two heroes. However that may be, William makes Arthur the contemporary of Vortigern and the ally of Ambrosius in fighting Hengist and the Saxons, and thus renders plausible that Gauvain fought against Hengist’s nephew in Galloway, difficult as it is to reconcile this with his death in Wales.

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 105 It is clear, then, that by 1125 William’s chronicle establishes the fame of Gauvain (1) as Arthur’s sister’s son, (2) as noted for his valor (virtus), and (3) as connected with Galloway in Scotland. There is little to show that Geoffrey in his Historia drew any part of his account from William. Geoffrey first mentions (ix. 9) Gauvain as the son of Loth, ruler of Lothian, qui tempore Aurelii Ambrosii sororem ipsius [i.e., Arthur] duxerat, ex qua Walguanum et Modredum genuerat (who in the days of Aurelius Ambrosius had married that king’s own sister and had had two sons by her, Gauvain and Modred). This sister was Anna, the second child of Uther and Igerna and the wife of Loth. Beside Gauvain and Modred, Geoffrey gives Arthur a third nephew, Hoel, ex Budicio rege Armoricanorum Britonum generatus (the son of Budicius, King of the Armorican Britons), who plays even a greater part in the Historia than Gauvain. Both are noted for their warlike exploits, but of Gauvain it is said (x. 10) semper recenti virtute exaestuans (still glowing with the fire kindled by his former exploits), and Geoffrey stresses this trait—a combination of courage and cool defiance—as his quality. In his combat with Lucius Hiberius, the latter is aware of his fame (quia tantam famam de eo audierat; because he had heard such renown of him). Accordingly, he becomes—as in some chanson de geste—Arthur’s emissary to the Romans in Gaul, and, taunted by Gaius Quintillanus, he kills the latter by cutting off his head (x. 4) and then reminds Marcellus Mucius, whom he also kills, of the boasts of the Bretons. Lucius and Gauvain are unable to prevail against each other, and their strife is arrested only when Arthur rides up with his own forces to aid the wavering Armoricans. In the final campaign of Arthur against Modred, Gauvain is slain (xi. 1) together with many others (innumerabilibus aliis) at Rutupi Portus, but no reference is made to Arthur’s grief at his death. Incidentally, Geoffrey had said (ix. 11) that Gauvain received his early military training from Pope Sulpicius in Rome, whither Arthur had sent him. The striking thing is that Geoffrey, who dwells on Arthur’s largitas et probitas (liberality and honesty) and created in the crowning at Caerleon the courtois setting for most of Chrétien’s romances, nowhere refers to Gauvain’s cultural traits. Nor does Gauvain, though a member of the king’s household like Kay and Bedivere, ever appear as a counselor to Arthur.3 Inevitably one thinks of the famous passage (ix. 13): Quicumque vero famosus probitate miles in eadem erat, unius coloris vestibus atque armis utebatur. Facetae etiam mulieres, consimilia indumenta habentes, nullius amorem habere dignabantur, nisi tertio in militia probatus esset. Efficiebantur ergo castae quaeque mulieres et milites pro amore illarum nobiliores, Every knight in the country who was in any way famed for his bravery wore livery and arms showing his own distinctive color; and women of

106 • William A. Nitze fashion often displayed the same colors. They scorned to give their love to any man who had not proved himself three times in battle. In this way the womenfolk became chaste and more virtuous and for their love the knights were ever more daring, which establishes the Three Days’ Tournament as the test of chivalric honor and leads Cador to deride a system whereby the Britons would become slothful (ignavos), subject to otium (leisure) and mulierum inflammationes (burning up their strength with women). Obviously, Geoffrey knew his Ovid or Virgil, who had prescribed the cure (Remedia amoris, vss. 135 ff., or Aeneid iv. 569) for such dalliance. Yet Geoffrey leaves Gauvain out of the picture, clearly because to him Gauvain was a military leader unconcerned with the cultural or chivalric setting decried by Cador. It remained for Wace to correct Geoffrey’s neglect of Gauvain. The Roman de Brut follows the Historia so far as the main events are concerned. But Wace rarely mentions Gauvain without some comment on Gauvain’s character. And this comment so alters our concept of him that, as Fletcher noted,4 Wace must have known about Gauvain from other sources than Geoffrey—just as in his introduction of the Round Table he justifies himself by saying (vss. 9747 ff.): Pur les nobles baruns qu’il out .......... Fist Artur la Roünde Table Dunt Bretun dïent mainte fable. On account of his noble barons [. . .] Arthur made the Round Table, of which the Bretons tell many a tale. Two passages in particular reveal Wace’s richer conception of Gauvain. Geoffrey (ix. 11) had referred incidentally to Gauvain’s education at Rome. Wace amplifies this with a long passage mentioning Gauvain’s distinguishing traits (vss. 9853 ff.): De saint Soplice, l’apostoire, La ki aume ait repos en gloire, Ert Walwein nuvelment venuz, Chevaliers pruz e cuneüz. Cil li aveit armes dunees, Mult i furent bien aluees. Pruz fu e de mult grant mesure, D’orguil ne de surfait n’out cure; Plus volt faire que il ne dist E plus duner qu’il ne pramist. From Saint Sulpicius, the Pope, may his soul enjoy peace in glory, Gawain had recently come, a worthy and well-known

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 107 knight. Sulpicius had given him arms, which were well employed in him. He did not care for pride or excess; he would do more than he said and give more than he promised. Here Gauvain is no longer a simple warrior but endowed with the courtois traits from which the romances could have taken their cue. Certainly the features mentioned are significant. His mult grant mesure (very great moderation)—a personal virtue again praised by Wace in his Roman de Rou, III, vss. 2639–40—is thoroughly French and its mention may well have fallen on receptive ears. One is at once reminded of Oliver’s dictum in the Chanson de Roland (vs. 1725): “Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie” (Moderation is worth more than arrogance). It is thoroughly in line with the sens given Gauvain in the later romances—the motif of so many delightful episodes. As for his largess—the fact that he always gave more than he promised places him in the forefront of those to whom knights and ladies alike are devoted. Most impressive of all, however, is the passage in Wace (vss. 10739 ff.) on Cador’s diatribe against sloth and the reply Wace lets Gauvain make to it. Enlarging on Geoffrey, Wace reports Cador as saying: “Uisdive met hume en peresce, Uisdive amenuse prüesce, Uisdive esmuet les lecheries, Uisdive esprent lé drüeries. Par lunc repos e par uisdive Est juvente tost ententive A gas, a deduit e a tables Et a altres geus deportables.” “Sloth makes man lazy, sloth reduces prowess, sloth awakes desires, sloth kindles love affairs. From long rest and sloth, youth is given to joking, pleasure, chess, and other amusing games.” To which, in a speech lacking in Geoffrey, Gauvain replies (vss. 10765 ff.): “Sire cuens,” dist Walwein, “par fei, De neient estes en effrei. Bone est la pais emprés la guerre, Plus bele e mieldre en est la terre; Mult sunt bones les gaberies E bones sunt les drüeries. Pur amistié e pur amies Funt chevaliers chevaleries.”

108 • William A. Nitze “Sir count,” said Gawain, “in faith, be afraid of nothing. Peace is good after war, the land is fairer and better for it; amusement is good and so are love affairs. For love and for their ladies knights do knightly deeds.” Here, then, Gauvain appears as a counselor, advocating peace and the social relationships to which it leads. So Wace reiterates (vss. 12762 ff.) in linking Gauvain with Hoel: Tel dui vassal ne furent ainz. Unkes el siecle trespassé N’orent tels dous baruns esté De bunté re de curteisie Ne de pris de chevalerie. There never were two such vassals. Never before in the world were there any two barons of such goodness or courtesy or worth or chivalry. Unlike Geoffrey, he adds Arthur’s lament (vss. 13145 ff.) at the death of so worthy a nephew: D’Auguissel ot grant doel eü E de Walwein qu’il ot perdu; Grant fud li dols de son nevou, Le cors fist mettre re sai u He was very sad because of Auguissel and Gawain, whom he had lost; he was extremely sad on account of his nephew, whose body he had put I know not where. —belying the testimony of William of Malmesbury as to his burial place. In coming now to the main subject of our inquiry, Chrétien de Troyes’s concept of Arthur has little to suggest the active, protean ruler of Geoffrey’s Historia. Only in the Cligés does Arthur wage war personally in the campaign against Engrés, the Ganelon or Modred of that romance. Arthur presides over a court at Caradigan, Carduel, Carlion, famed for its munificence, its gathering of high-born knights and ladies (Erec, vs. 30), and its zest for adventure (Perceval, vs. 2824). Laconically the poet says (Yvain, vs. 37): Si m’acort de tant as Bretons, Que toz jorz mes vivra ses nons. In this I agree with the Bretons, that his name will live forever.

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 109 But Chrétien’s Arthur is not only a figurehead, a static monarch, but a “roi fainéant” (enfeebled king) whose weakness the poet mentions again and again, and not without humor. He is overcome with sleep in the opening episode of the Yvain, allows Kay to outwit him in the Lancelot, and is powerless against the inroads of the Red Knight in the Perceval. Plaintively—the poet says par san—he appeals to Gauvain to settle the dispute about the kiss accorded the fairest in Erec, vss. 308 ff.: “Biaus niés Gauvains conselliez m’an Sauve m’enor et ma droiture! Car je n’ai de la noise cure.” “Fair nephew Gawain, advise me. Save my honor and my reputation for justice! I care not for the dispute.” As a consequence, it is Gauvain who, according to Chrétien, supplies the strength and judgment that Arthur lacks. He is, therefore, the central figure in most of the poet’s works, and his character traits—however incidentally or casually set forth—are pointed up to make Gauvain the exemplar and model of the court; this despite the fact that Arthur remains (Yvain, vs. 2370) li sire Des rois et des seignors del monde. the lord of kings and of worldly lords. Let us now see what particular attributes Chrétien emphasizes. While the adjective preu is not attached to Gauvain’s name, doubtless because preu et cortois, “noble and courtly,” are the qualities given Arthurian society in general (Yvain, vs. 3), his proesce, “valor” (William’s and Geoffrey’s virtus), is lauded by Kay, seldom inclined to flattery, in no uncertain terms, when he tells Erec (vs. 4062): “An cel cheval gié n’i ai part; Ainz est au chevalier el monde An cui graindre proesce abonde, Mon seignor Gauvain, le hardi.” “This horse is not mine; rather, it belongs to the knight in whom the greatest valor abounds, my lord Gauvain, the brave.” And whenever Gauvain is involved in combat in Chrétien’s works, he lives up to this attribute. An exception to the rule may be thought to be his refusal to follow Lancelot (Lancelot, vs. 392) in mounting the “disgraceful cart in order to rescue Guenevere,” and there the poet implies that it is reason (raisons, vs. 369)

110 • William A. Nitze that governs his action. Clearly, no such blemish can be allowed to mar his fame. So, too, the epithet, large, “bountiful,” applied to both Erec and Arthur (Erec, vss. 3182 and 6667), is not used of Gauvain. Yet Gauvain’s bounty is an outstanding trait; note his defense of the dispossessed Damsel of the Black Thorn (Yvain, vss. 4705 ff.) and her counterpart, the Maid of the Short Sleeves (Perceval, vss. 4989 ff.), and the regret of les povres janz (the poor people, Perceval, vss. 9209 ff.) that they have lost Gauvain, their benefactor: “Qui por Deu toz nos revestoit Et don toz li biens nos venoit Par aumosne et par charité.” “Who for God’s sake clothed us, and from whom all good things came to us out of alms and charity.” No statement could be more explicit. In harmony with this is Gauvain’s modesty in refusing credit to which he thinks he is not entitled; see Lancelot, vs. 5341: “Seignor, de neant m’alosez, Del dire hui mes vos reposez, Qu’a moi nule chose n’an monte.” “Lord, you praise me for no reason; speak thus no more today, for I have no part in it.” This brings us to the trait which Chrétien sets forth episodically in at least three of his romances: Gauvain’s sens or wisdom and “thoughtfulness.” Chrétien elaborates the trait so effectively that the prose-romance Perlesvaus—a sequel of the Perceval—designates Gauvain as apensé (thoughtful). Historically, the trait goes back, as Curtius has shown,5 to antiquity: to the topos fortitudo et sapientia (fortitude and wisdom), as reflected in the Chanson de Roland, vss. 1724–25: “Kar vasselage par sens nen est folie; Mielz valt mesure que ne fait estultie.” “For a vassal’s reasoned loyalty is not foolish; moderation is worth more than arrogance.” Obviously Chrétien regarded mesure as subordinate to sens, for, unlike Wace, he never attributes it to Gauvain, although he uses mesure elsewhere in his works. The three romances in question are the Erec, Yvain, and Perceval, in all of which Gauvain’s sens is a factor—indeed, a turning point—in the plot. In each instance the trait is used in order to circumvent the hero and bring him back

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 111 into the purlieus of the court. Roughly speaking, each of these romances falls into six parts: (a) an adventure to avenge a wrong, (b) a fight with a Red Knight, (c) the rescue and wooing of the heroine, (d) the recovery of the hero through Gauvain’s intervention, (e) the denunciation of the hero by a messenger or companions, and (f) the mad ride of the hero and final appeasement. It is unnecessary to dwell here on Chrétien’s competence as a writer. The poet has so arranged his episodes as to bring out the dramatic effect of success, failure, and recovery in the careers of Erec, Yvain, and Perceval. And Gauvain’s role in each case is to swing the action into its appointed course. In Erec, part d is placed toward the end of the story after Erec’s encounter with Guivret (vss. 3970 ff.), when Erec needs to be healed of his wounds. Unable to escape Gauvain’s entreaty, Erec exclaims (vs. 4149): “Haï! Gauvains!” fet il, “haï! Vostre granz sans m’a esbaï” “Ha! Gawain!” he said. “Ha! Your intelligence has fooled me.” and willingly he follows him to be cured by Arthur’s sister, Morgan. The parallel to this occurs in the Yvain when Gauvain cautions his companion against the dangers of sloth, in the words (vss. 2484 ff.): “Comant? Seroiz vos or de çaus,” Ce disoit mes sire Gauvains, “Qui por lor fames valent mains? Honiz soit de sainte Marie Qui por anpirier se marie! Amander doit de bele dame, Qui l’a a amie ou a fame, Ne n’est puis droiz, que ele l’aint, Que ses pris et ses los remaint.” “What? Will you be one of those,” said Sir Gauvain, “who are less worthy because of their wives? May he be shamed by holy Mary who marries, only to go downhill! He who has a fair lady, as lover or wife, should be the better for it, nor is it right that she love him whose worth and fame are found wanting.” Here, again, as in the main theme of the Erec, Chrétien emphasizes a motif found in Geoffrey and Wace, vividly recalling the Irish “Sick-bed of Cuchulainn” and the plea against uxoriousness in Virgil and Ovid6—in short, one of the wellsprings of Arthurian story. But, with a glint of humor characteristic of Chrétien, Gauvain adds, turning his san upon himself:

112 • William A. Nitze “Se j’avoie si bele amie, Con vos avez, sire compainz! ........................ Mout a anviz la leisseroie! Mien esciant fos an seroie. Mes tes consoille bien autrui, Qui ne savroit conseillier lui, Aussi con li preecheor, Qui sont desleal tricheor: Ansaingnent et dïent le bien, Dont il ne vuelent feire rien.” “If I had such a beautiful love as you, sir companion [. . .], I would leave her reluctantly! I would consider myself a fool. But one can offer advice to another one would not give to oneself, just like preachers, who are faithless scoundrels: they teach and preach good deeds with which they want to have nothing to do themselves.” Here his ability to see another’s point of view is admirably set forth. Finally, Chrétien’s use of d in the Perceval, vss. 4133 ff., is both masterful and poetic. Arthur has vowed that he will not rest two nights in one place until he has recovered the knight who has vanquished so many of his foes. Accordingly, the court moves out of Carlion to find Perceval. During the night it has snowed, and the hero is arrested by a strange sight. A falcon has wounded a wild goose, and three drops of red blood have fallen on the white snow. This semblance of the red and white on his lady’s, Blanchefleur’s, cheeks throws the hero into a trance, from which Sagremor—who has arrived with the court—tries to rouse him. Eventually he attacks and is worsted by Perceval. Then Kay makes an assault and has his arm broken and his collarbone dislocated. Meantime the sun has melted the snow under two of the blood-drops, and Perceval has recovered sufficiently to allow Gauvain—in his understanding of the situation—to lead him off to Arthur. Here again Gauvain’s approach is skilfully managed. He conciliates the hero by drawing near to him softly: Sanz feire nul felon sanblant [vs. 4434], Without appearing to be wicked, and inquiring about the thought that holds him. When Perceval tells him, he expresses his approval in sympathetic terms: “Cist pansers n’estoit pas vilains [vs. 4458], Einz estoit mout cortois et douz; Et cil estoit fos et estouz

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 113 Qui vostre cuer an removoit.” “This thought was not unworthy, but rather courtly and gentle; and he who distracted your heart from it was foolish and arrogant.” This pleases Perceval, who, learning that his interlocutor is none other than the famous Gauvain, is delighted to go with him. The blood-on-the-snow comparison occurs in the Irish Book of Leinster (before 1164) and in the Welsh Mabinogion, and has long been recognized as of Celtic origin.7 But Chrétien’s climactic use of it is significant. It rounds out Gauvain’s career as Arthur’s guide and counselor: an exemplar of perspicacity and judgment, a model of courtesy and understanding, to whom the entire court—ladies as well as knights—is beholden, and never lacking in a sense of reality and humor. Thus it is Chrétien to whom we owe the literary conception of Gauvain. Dependent on stray references in Wace and possibly in the popular tales on which he drew, he created a character whose traits inspired the writers of the Chevalier à l’espee, the Meraugis, the Chevalier as deus espees, and, last but not least, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Nonetheless, Chrétien has his imperfections, especially as regards the structure of his narratives, and one of these concerns the purport of the Gauvain episodes at the end of the Perceval. They cover some 3,278 lines or over one-third of the romance. Becker (ZRPh, LV [1935], 385 ff.) was inclined to attribute them to a later author. And Pauphilet (Legs du moyen âge, p. 202), who accepts Chrétien’s authorship, says: “Ce sont des épisodes très arbitrairement juxtaposés, sans vrai lien narratif entre eux [a striking admission] mais tous destinés à illustrer, par un exemple parfait, les divers aspects de l’idéal courtois” (these episodes are juxtaposed arbitrarily, with no real narrative link between them, but all intended to illustrate, by means of a perfect example, the various aspects of the courtly ideal), as a contrast, he implies, to Perceval’s own boorish behavior. Certainly, Gauvain is courtois, makes love readily, is helpful to the afflicted and unfortunate, intrepid, and ready to reveal his identity (vss. 5622 and 8831): “Onques mes nons ne fu celez An leu ou il me fust requis, N’onques ancores ne le dis, S’ainçois demandez ne me fu.” “My name was never kept hidden wherever it was asked of me, but neither did I speak it unless it was requested.” But do these traits serve the purpose Pauphilet assigns to them? And are not the Guinganbresil and Marvellous Castle episodes, of which Gauvain is the

114 • William A. Nitze hero, irrelevant to a romance, the purpose of which is to render Perceval alert and compassionate in order to cure the Fisher King? The fact that Wolfram’s Parzival, Book VIII, replaces Vergulaht by Gauvain in the quest of the Grail—thus, as in Yvain (vss. 5991–6313), bringing Gauvain into combat with the hero until they recognize each other as friends—is an attempt to overcome the obstacle and integrate the narrative as a whole. Had Chrétien employed this device, he might have let Gauvain subsequently assist the hero in the achievement of his aim. All of which does not detract from Gauvain’s position as the standardbearer of the Arthurian order. If, aside from the dubious Guinganbresil and Marvellous Castle episodes, Chrétien fails to make him the subject of a separate romance, that is because Gauvain was attached to Arthur’s household constantly in need of his presence and support. Thus Chrétien brought to life a character whom Wace had sketched in outline but not approaching the vivid and varied portrayal due to Chrétien himself. His Gauvain belongs to “the best pictures which exist of the upper classes in France in the Middle Ages.”8 It is striking that in the Queste del Saint Graal (ed. Pauphilet, CFMA, pp. 15 and 16), when the Grail covers d’un blanc samit (covered in cloth of white samite) appears to the knights of the Round Table and supplies them with food, it is Gauvain who points out to King Arthur that they have not seen the Grail “face-to-face” (apertement)9 but have missed its vraie semblance (real appearance). That is probably the supreme instance in literature of his innate power of discernment—for it carries him into the realm of the mystical and sublime. Thus, while Gauvain is in no respect an arbiter elegantiarum (judge of taste) like Petronius, he represents an ideal of conduct to which the French have again and again appealed. Notes Reprinted with permission of the University of Chicago Press from Modern Philology 50 (1952–53), 219–25. English translations have been provided by the editors. 1. Gaston Paris, Hist. litt., XXX (1888), 29 ff., noticing that in the First Continuation of the Perceval (see Roach’s ed., I, 26, and II, 47) Gauvain’s strength increases after noon (midi or tierce), thought (p. 35) that this had “une base celtique et une origine mythologique” (a Celtic basis and a mythological origin). This particular trait is not recorded of any Celtic hero, although as Windisch (Táin ed., p. vii) observes, “Cuchulinn klagt wiederholt, dass er von Montag zu Anfang November bis zu Frühlingsanfang ganz allein gegen die vier Provinzen von Irland gekämpft habe (s.S. 668). Sieht das nicht aus wie der Kampf des Sonnenheros!” (Cuchulinn repeatedly complains that from Monday to the beginning of November to the beginning of Spring he fought single-handed against the four provinces of Ireland [p. 668]. Does that not seem like a fight of the sun-hero?) On the other hand, it is Perceval and not Gauvain whose boyhood exploits recall those of Cuchulainn (cf. Nitze, Perceval and the Holy Grail [“University of California Publications in Modern Philology,” Vol. XXVIII (1949)], p. 313). For a discussion of the possible Celticity of le guingalet or gringalet (Erec, vs. 3957; Perceval, vs. 6209), the name of Gauvain’s horse, see Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York, 1949), pp. 158–59. I am indebted to Margaret Pitkin’s unpublished Chicago dissertation on “The Biography of Sir Gawain in Medieval French Literature” (Chicago, 1928), for the general plan I follow and many of my references. Her material, however, has been checked and considerably amplified. On the use of messire in Chrétien, see Lucien Foulet, Rom., LXXI (1950), 16–22.

The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes • 115 2. From E. K. Chambers, Arthur of Britain (London, 1927), p. 17. The OF. for Walweitha is Galvoie; see Chrétien’s Perceval, vs. 6602 (la bosne de Galvoie), and the note to Hilka’s edition (p. 745): “Gewiss ist der südwestliche Teil Schottlands = Galloway gemeint” (the southwestern part of Scotland [= Galloway] is surely meant). Hilka cites Giraldus Cambrensis, Topogr. Hibern., ed. Dimock, p. 22: “Scotica Galwedia,” and Matthew Paris, Hist. Angl., ed. Fr. Madden, I, 33: “inventio corporis Walwani” (discovery of the body of Gawain), who corroborates William. See, further, Brugger, Kastner Miscellany (Cambridge, 1932), pp. 100 ff. 3. Sister Imogene Baker, The King’s Household in the Arthurian Court (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1937), p. 26. 4. The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (“Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature,” Vol. X [Boston, 1906]), p. 139. 5. ZRPh, LVIII (1938), 205 ff. 6. See the discussion in Cross and Nitze, Lancelot and Guenevere (“Modern Philology Monographs” [Chicago, 1930]), p. 87, n. 1. 7. See my Perceval and the Holy Grail, p. 311. 8. Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets (1907), p. 70. The Guinganbresil episode is treated by me in Rom., LXXII (1951), 373-80. Marie de France mentions Gauvain only in her Lanval (Warnke, Lais [2nd ed.], p. 95): Ceo dist Walwains, li franz, li pruz, ki tant se fist amer a tuz. Thus spoke Gawain, the noble, the worthy, who was loved so much by all. On the occurrence of the name Gawain in Middle English see Robert W. Ackerman, An Index of the Arthurian Names in Middle English (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1952), pp. 101–2, an indispensable book. 9. Cf. I. Cor. 13:12, “Videmus nunc per speculum in aenigmate; tunc autem facie ad faciem” (Now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face), and see Nitze-Jenkins (ed.), Perlesvaus, II, 84.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

4

Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes DOUGLAS KELLY

Almost immediately after the marriage of Yvain and Laudine had been celebrated, Gauvain started encouraging Yvain to leave his wife and seek fame and honor in tourneys. His exhortation is based essentially on the following arguments: one, love cannot prosper if the worth or renown of one of the partners declines (vv. 2491–501);1 two, the esteem one enjoys and one’s own inner worth are enhanced by active participation in tournaments and in the life of court (vv. 2502–11); three, if Yvain is willing to accompany Gauvain himself to the tournaments, their companionship will be maintained in spite of the marriage (vv. 2512–6); four, the joy of love is greater when there are impediments to its realization (vv. 2517–40). In short, Yvain is warned against slipping into recreantise, that is, the neglect of the very activities which it behooves a good knight to engage in—for example, tournaments. If Yvain becomes recreant, he will lose his reputation for prowess, chivalry, and courtliness. Gauvain’s admonition has generally been considered an expression of Chrétien’s own opinion regarding the desirable balance between the respective demands of love and of knighthood. Conjugal affection, which Chrétien seems to have admired, destroys the desirable harmony if it leads to neglect of chivalric and courtly obligations. But Yvain and Laudine do heed the lesson Gauvain gives. Yvain tells his wife that he must leave her for a time “que l’an ne l’apialt recreant” (so that he be not called a coward; vv. 2563), so that he may not be accused of shirking his duty. And so, after only one week of wedlock—a week given over more to entertaining Arthur’s court than to the joys of honeymooning—Yvain takes leave of his wife and accompanies Gauvain and the court on a round of tourneys that is to last a full year. There is certainly no recreantise here! One might well conclude that compagnonnage requires even more time and attention than fin’amors. Indeed, later, Gauvain does not even bother to remind Yvain that his year is over and that he should return to Laudine.

117

118 • Douglas Kelly But there are even more astonishing repercussions following upon Gauvain’s advice. First, after Yvain has unwittingly overstayed his leave, Laudine sends a maiden to reproach her husband publicly for his lack of fidelity. The consequences for Yvain are disastrous. Having lost the love of his lady, he withdraws secretly and in shame from the court, and alone in the wilderness, goes mad. Might one not have expected more strength of mind from Yvain, aware as he must have been of his worth as a knight? In following Gauvain’s advice, one may apparently go wrong by courtly conventions in matters of love. The problem presented by Gauvain’s counsels in Yvain, and the effect of those counsels on the knight who heeds them, would certainly justify reconsideration of the role of Arthur’s nephew in Chrétien’s poems, and especially reconsideration of his attitude to love. Let us begin by considering Gauvain’s place at Arthur’s court and in the overall scheme of Chrétien’s poems. It is clear that, as a knight, Gauvain has no equal: “Cil qui des chevaliers fu sire / et qui sor toz fu reclamez” (he who was lord of all knights and acclaimed above all of them), Chrétien says of him in Yvain (vv. 2402–3). Por mon seignor Gauvain le di, que de lui est tot autresi chevalerie anluminee, come solauz la matinee oevre ses rais, et clarté rant par toz les leus ou il s’espant. (vv. 2405–10) I say this on account of my lord Gawain, for chivalry is illuminated by him just as the sun reveals its rays in the morning and sheds light everywhere it spreads itself. Gauvain’s preeminence as a knight is also acknowledged in the catalogue of knights in Erec, where he is named the best knight of the Round Table (vv. 1671–2); and in Cligés, the Charrette, and Perceval Gauvain’s exemplary courtliness is given special emphasis. Indeed, his perfect courtesy elicits the friendship and admiration of all the outstanding knights in Chrétien’s poems: Erec, Alexandre, Cligés, Lancelot, Yvain, and Perceval. One specific role that Chrétien assigned to Gauvain from his very first Arthurian poem was that of counselor. Arthur decides at the beginning of Erec to renew the custom associated with the hunt for the White Stag. Gauvain cautions the king against reviving this custom because of the troubles it will provoke at court. Arthur does not follow this advice, but the troubles do arise and threaten to destroy the unity and equanimity of the court, as Gauvain warned. And Arthur comes running to Gauvain immediately for help in resolving the problem.

Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes • 119 Similarly, in the Charrette, Gauvain is the only knight with enough selfpossession to propose a suitable course of action after Keu duped Arthur into letting him lead Guenevere into sure captivity. Gauvain’s calm good sense here and elsewhere, as in the way he handles Perceval in the episode of the blood drops in the snow, provides striking contrast to the excessive self-assurance and discourtesy characteristic of knights like Keu and Sagremor. So far, there is nothing untoward in Gauvain’s conduct or person. But we have not yet touched on Gauvain and love, or rather on Gauvain and his loves. For unlike any other knight in Chrétien’s poems, one must speak of Gauvain’s loves in the plural. He protests constant devotion to Lunete in Yvain (vv. 2435–44), although nothing comes of it after he leaves her a week later. And in the Conte du graal, Gauvain falls in love first with the sister of the king of Escavalon, then with the Orgueilleuse of Logres; the poem is incomplete and therefore breaks off before Chrétien can reconcile this conflict, or add any other maidens to Gauvain’s conquests. So far, however, Arthur’s nephew will hardly serve as an example of the faithful courtly love Chrétien presents for our admiration elsewhere in his poems. Gauvain’s apparent indifference to the fact that Yvain fails to return to Laudine after a year is therefore not so surprising. Furthermore, when Gauvain is pitted against a knight particularly prominent because of his love, he comes off second best. The most obvious example of this is in the Charrette. Here Lancelot takes the more difficult route to rescue Guenevere yet arrives before Gauvain, virtually defeats Meleagant twice in combat, and is then instrumental in saving Gauvain from drowning at the Underwater Bridge. And it is Lancelot who, replacing Gauvain, fights and slays Meleagant at the end of the poem, thus definitely saving Guenevere from captivity. Yet Lancelot’s superiority stems from his love for Guenevere, not from inherent knightly virtues that would have existed in spite of that love (vv. 1097–1125, 3720–27, 3748–55). A similar contrast is evident in Yvain, and I shall now discuss this poem in more detail, as it constitutes the crux of our problem here. As we have seen, Gauvain advised Yvain against tarrying by his wife in preference to participating in tourneys. On the face of it, this is good advice. At least Yvain decides to follow it, whether it be wise or not: “ou face folie ou savoir” (whether he commits an act of folly or of wisdom; v. 2546). Yet because Yvain forgot his love in pursuit of knightly glory, and because Gauvain was not so assiduous in upholding the rights of love as opposed to those of chivalry, the crisis ensued. Laudine denied Yvain her love and refused to have anything more to do with him. We know the effect this had on Yvain. Deprived of his love, he was no longer courtly or chivalrous, he was not even human, but rather, having lost all manners and reason, he wandered in the wilderness like an animal.

120 • Douglas Kelly And there is more. When Yvain does finally recover his sanity, we find him doing Gauvain’s work for him. Laudine accused Lunete of having duped her into marriage with Yvain and threatened to have her put to death at the stake. Lunete sought Gauvain’s help at Arthur’s court, but he was not there and it is Yvain who came to her rescue. Almost simultaneously, he freed some of Gauvain’s relations from the terror imposed by the giant Harpin de la Montagne; they, too, had sought in vain Gauvain’s aid at Arthur’s court. On both occasions Gauvain was away on his unsuccessful quest of Guenevere. Now Yvain, like Lancelot, was in quest, not of knightly adventures, but of his lady. ce n’iert hui que je me remaingne an cest point tant que ma dame me pardoint son mautalant et son corroz. Lors finera mes travauz toz. (vv. 4582–6) I cannot rest here a single day until my lady forgives me her displeasure and anger. Then will my task be over. In Chrétien’s poems, it is clearly the knight inspired by love who is most successful in his undertakings. Later, of course, Gauvain does return to court, ready and willing to help the next damsel in distress who presents herself. And the next damsel is, in fact, the elder daughter of the Sire de la Noire Espine; she is looking for a champion of her unjust appropriation of the inheritance which rightly belonged to her sister after the death of their father. Gauvain agrees to support her action, with no questions asked (vv. 4720–6)! His opponent will be Yvain. Three facts must be emphasized regarding the combat between Yvain and Gauvain. First, Gauvain is obviously defending wrong. Second, although the combat as such is a draw, Yvain is in reality the victor in so far as the elder sister is forced to return the younger sister’s share of the inheritance. Third, after this combat, Yvain leaves the court to return to Laudine and remain with her. For Laudine does pardon him, and the goal of Yvain’s quest is achieved: reconciliation and reunion with his lady in the same circumstances and on the same terms as before he left her for the tournaments. There is no more question of tournaments or recreantise, of Arthur’s court or the companionship of Gauvain.2 The finality of this conclusion is stressed by the last lines of the poem: Del Chevalier au lyeon fine Crestïens son romans ensi; N’onques plus conter n’en oï ne ja plus n’en orroiz conter s’an n’i vialt mançonge ajoster. (vv. 6804–8)

Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes • 121 Of the Knight of the Lion Chrétien thus concludes his romance; I never heard any more told about it and neither will you, unless someone wishes to add a lie. We may now draw some general conclusions about the role Chrétien assigns to Gauvain in his poems. As Arthur’s nephew Gauvain represents ideal knighthood and serves as counselor in matters of custom, chivalry, and love. But on the last subject, neither his conduct nor his success is as exemplary as is the case in his other fields of competence. The long-term effects of his advice to Yvain—madness and separation from his wife for Yvain, for Gauvain himself the shameful defense of wrong-doing before Arthur’s court and virtual defeat at Yvain’s hands—do not admit of any other interpretation. His poor showing by comparison with Lancelot’s achievements in the Charrette also permits one to doubt the wisdom of his counsel regarding the effects and value of courtly love in relation to knighthood. But let us go even further, since the evidence of the texts permits it. We do not have here the simple equality of love and chivalry. That is in effect what Gauvain proposed to Yvain. Rather, we find in Gauvain’s failures and shortcomings evidence for the superiority of the chevalier-amant over the knight pure and simple, that is, the qualitative supremacy of love—courtly love—over knighthood or courtliness alone. Indeed, what other conclusion may we draw from the results of the quests in the Charrette and in Yvain? Had Chrétien replaced Lancelot and Yvain by a Perceval, and thus contrasted, to use the terminology of the Queste del saint Graal, the Terrestrial Knight with the Heavenly Knight, no one would have doubted that the latter, in outdoing Gauvain in combat or quest, stood for a higher order of value. The same must be true in a similar contrast between courtly love and knighthood. Not that Gauvain and his values are evil or wrong; but they possess obvious limitations when compared with what the values of a Lancelot and an Yvain permit these two knights to achieve. The demands of ideal love supersede and are superior to those stemming from knighthood alone. Chrétien’s first Arthurian romance, Erec et Enide, would seem to contradict this interpretation of Chrétien’s scale of values. I cannot go into this poem in detail here,3 particularly since it ascribes to Gauvain no significant place in the love-knighthood conflict. Yet the accusation of recreantise leveled at Erec by his companions and by Enide herself certainly suggests that too much of the right kind of love is a bad thing. However, Erec’s anger when Enide accuses him of recreantise, his striking victories throughout the quest despite the alleged degeneration that comes from too much love, Enide’s oft-repeated admission that she erred in condemning her husband’s great love for her, and the pardon that Eric grants his wife at the end of the quest—all this evidence militates against the contention that Erec was wrong to have spent so much time with his wife. And it suggests the same standards in judging love and knighthood that we discovered in the examination of Gauvain.

122 • Douglas Kelly Finally, the superiority of courtly love over mere chivalry in Chrétien’s Arthurian world is illustrated by the beneficial effects of love in the province of chivalry itself. In the Charrette, we learn that everything done for love is pardonable, that all that is done in the name of love is good (vv. 4393–6). The good effects can indeed include the very accomplishments Gauvain feared love would preclude if carried to an extreme: knightly prowess and chivalric glory. Erec’s, Lancelot’s and Yvain’s achievements bear witness to this. But in love chivalrous acts, combats, and the resulting glory are not absolutely essential. The distinction may not be readily apparent to the uninitiated, as Lancelot admits (vv. 4384–92), and as Fénice contends as well in Cligés (vv. 5257–8); but that is of little matter to the lovers themselves. Lancelot says in reflecting on the public shame he has endured for love: Et tote voie ses amis fist ce don maint li ont amis por li honte et reproche et blasme; s’ai fet ce geu don an me blasme et de ma dolçor m’anertume, par foi, car tex est la costume a cez qui d’amor rien ne sevent et qui enor en honte levent. (vv. 4379–86) And nevertheless, her lover did for her that which brought him shame, reproach and blame from many; and I have done that for which I am blamed, and become bitter from my sweetness, in faith, for such is the way of those who know nothing of love and wash honor in shame. But as long as the loved one understood the intention, everything was all right. And, in the long run, the very deeds performed for love, despite the initial shame they caused Lancelot in the eyes of the non sachants (those not in the know), brought him fame as a knight and the love of his lady. This is precisely what Gauvain did not perceive when he gave Yvain the broad advice to leave his wife immediately after the marriage celebration to participate in tournaments; and it is the way we might expect a knight to think whose adventures in love are, by courtly standards, not particularly edifying anyway. There is no intention to minimize the role of Gauvain within the Arthurian world as conceived by Chrétien. He is an accomplished knight, in combat, at court, and as a companion to other knights. But he is not a qualified speaker in matters of courtly love. Like Keu, Guenevere, and Arthur himself, Gauvain represents a certain conception of chivalric and courtly ideals. But that particular conception does not preclude other inferior or superior values that may well complement or complete it. Gauvain speaks and acts as a knight and for knights, and as such he is to be heeded by the typical Arthurian knight who

Gauvain and Fin’ Amors in the Poems of Chrétien de Troyes • 123 aspires to chivalric fame. In matters of courtly love, however, Chrétien meant for his readers to look to other counselors and examples. Notes From Studies in Philology, Volume 67. Copyright © 1970 by the University of North Carolina Press. Used by permission of the publisher. English translations have been provided by the editors. 1. Citations from Erec, Cligés, the Charrette, and Yvain are based on Les Romans de Chrétien de Troyes, ed. M. Roques, A. Micha, CFMA (Paris, 1955–60). 2. Of course, Yvain will still have one important task to perform as a knight: the defense of the fountain. He reminds Laudine of this, and of the fact that she does need him for this purpose, by unleashing a series of storms from the fountain upon his arrival after the combat with Gauvain. 3. I have analyzed the problem in detail in “La Forme et le sens de la quête dans l’Erec et Enide de Chrétien de Troyes,” to appear shortly in Romania. [92 (1971), 326–58.]

Page Intentionally Left Blank

5

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century FRIEDRICH WOLFZETTEL

Since the beginnings of mediaevalism in the Enlightenment, literary history has mostly been conceived unilaterally, as if the literary process was itself subject to a mysteriously organic law of progress and ultimate decay. From this evolutionary perspective,1 it seemed particularly difficult to account for certain anachronistic phenomena of mediaeval literature and to find adequate means of judging them. The popularity of the chanson de geste in the century of prose romance and vast compilations, the survival of seemingly traditional Arthurian material in those prose romances, the obsession with certain standard types of the courtly lyric throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, are these simply examples of decadence, formalism, or ideological “mauvaise foi”? One way of avoiding the dilemma has so far been a sort of immanent structural approach or, more often, the philological examination of sources, textual reminiscences, and thematic analogues. Differences were reduced to analogues or similarities alone, and ultimately there was still time to ask the relevant questions regarding an author’s originality. Guided by predominantly genetic interests, the traditional historical method could not but link surviving examples of the genre to its mainstream, which originated in the twelfth century. And since it is generally accepted that the thirteenth century in France is the period of allegorical, didactic, and bourgeois moralizing literature, a comprehensive history of epic and romance in this century does not yet really exist, and it is only recently that the prose romances have become a fertile field of study. Thus at least a historically neglected area is being investigated, while the apparently traditional Arthurian romances in verse have not benefited from this same revival in thirteenth-century studies. In this respect, it is interesting to note that between R. S. Loomis’s compendium of Arthurian literature and the new Grundriss der romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters

125

126 • Friedrich Wolfzettel nothing has really changed: there is still the same stopgap chapter by A. Micha on the so-called “Miscellaneous French Romances in Verse,”2 whereas other genres are integrated in a “courant littéraire.” In order to avoid the evolutionary dilemma, Alfred Adler 3 proposed a simultaneous, structuralist reading of the equally problematic chansons de geste which, in his view, constitute a sort of synchronic fictional space or reference system mirroring feudal issues and, in the last instance, a vast pattern of mutual questions and responses. Probably for the first time, epigonal chanson de geste may thus assume a pertinent meaning and function in the thirteenth century and a place in its literary history. On the other hand, Adler’s approach cannot really account for possible functional changes during a given period, although the idea of a “division of labour” between the different genres seems implicit in his method.4 What may appear as static and immutable literary forms may thus respond to changing social conditions, public expectations, and above all, to evolving roles within the contemporary literary genre system. Epigonality5 would then become equivalent to redefining accepted conventions in an accepted mould and to rewriting the same themes under different circumstances and from a different point of view. If, as Erich Köhler6 (who was one of the first to sketch a system of the possible functions of narrative in the thirteenth century) suggests, the growth and irradiation of twelfth-century Arthurian literature were related to the political and socio-economic situation at the end of the “second feudal epoch,”7 and if the mutual interests of the feudal lords and the lower ranks of knightly society (as opposed to the king and the bourgeoisie) were for a time symbolized by the ideal of the Round Table, the dialectics of the quest for adventures, and the “Joie de la Cort,” Arthurian literature at the beginning of the new century, after the decisive social changes under Philippe-Auguste, was bound to redefine implicitly its moral aims and literary values. “The historical phase of social mobility and, consequently, the period of social advancement of the lower knightly ranks came to an end, together with the relative freedom to choose between the centralized monarchy and those feudal lords in opposition to it, i.e. the attempt of intermediary social groups to express their own social claims regarding the various sociological issues and through an independent literary genre.”8 The fashion for “compensatory” genres, such as the ancestral and hagiographical romance, alongside the so-called “roman réaliste,” has been interpreted by Köhler as a stabilizing factor in the rapidly evolving literary system of the century and as an answer to the social challenge. Adventures and personal destiny are now defined as symbols of strictly individual errantry in an anonymous world, but this errantry remains fundamentally positive in nature. The errant Arthurian knight, linked to a very special social group without its representative social value, must appear in a nostalgic light and gradually lose its specific ideological connotations. At the hands of clerical bourgeois authors, the chivalric ideal could only be mirrored by an indirect and broken mode of adaptation

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 127 informed by a more or less didactic attitude. As opposed to the eschatological perspective of the prose Grail romances, traditional Arthurian verse romance adheres closely to established norms and literary formulae, but this conservatism may be seen either as nostalgic protest or as parody and burlesque. Chrétien himself, as studies by J. Frappier, P. Gallais and others have suggested, seems to have anticipated this kind of tendency. In Köhler’s view, the burlesque adventures of Gauvain in the Conte du Graal are contrasted with, and paralleled by, the serious quest of Perceval, who essentially brings Arthurian quest as a whole to an end.9 Later Gauvain romances have obviously adapted a great deal of those traditional motifs, but are those “realistic” elements, emphasized by Micha in his succinct survey as characteristics common to nearly all thirteenth-century verse romances, to be identified with satirical or burlesque leanings of the authors towards their heroes? It seems at least doubtful whether a whole genre could survive merely as a more or less open parody of older traditions. Had it been an author’s intention to satirize Arthurian ideals in the name of a particular kind of realism, it should be asked why the virtues of the Arthurian world needed to be rejected or questioned, by comparison with contemporary (and later) social reality. Moreover, some scholars have increasingly stressed the problems of irony and perspective, even in classical Arthurian literature, and have made a plausible case for Arthurian literature from its very beginnings—and romance in general—being an expression of subjective irony.10 If fictionalization and irony are really mutually dependent, it seems futile to gauge various degrees of irony in subsequent romance. The critic might rather investigate, for example, the reasons which made only Gauvain, the exemplary and sometimes comic deliverer of damsels in distress, so popular with thirteenth-century authors, and why the image of the perfect knight continued to obsess this period. In order to offer a partial answer to this question, I shall concentrate on a few aspects of four important romances: Le Chevalier à l’Epée, La mule sans frein (both written before 1210),11 L’Âtre Périlleux,12 and La Vengeance Raguidel13 (both of which probably date from the early part of the thirteenth century). In all these romances, Gauvain’s relationships with women and his amorous problems prove central to the main plot. Renunciation, moreover, is almost universally tinged with resignation. Chrétien had treated sexual and matrimonial problems in quite a different way. His heroes had had irreversible and existential adventures, i.e., a sort of individual biography; Gauvain, however, seems to be seen as a shadowy hero who, from one romance to the other and even in the course of one single work, has fundamentally to repeat the same things over and over again. He may be thought of as a recurrent character rather like some of Balzac’s. There are no serious arguments in these romances about either marriage or courtly love; the real problem seems to be Gauvain’s inability to cope with the outcome or the implicit scale of his own adventures. Since his constant occupation of saving lonely damsels from

128 • Friedrich Wolfzettel distress springs from his courtly code of honour, it is obvious that his very problems result from the profound incompatibility between this courtly ideology and the possible exigencies of real life. There is hardly any explicit psychology in these romances, and in any case much less than in Chrétien’s classic works, but the behaviour of the protagonist seems to suggest that some sort of psychological explanation is wanting here, and that the apparent mystery of the plot is largely attributable to this lack of psychology. There is a sort of tragic superficiality in the Gauvain romances. In order to understand what I mean here, it is necessary to go into some detail. The prologue of Le Chevalier à l’Epée unquestionably creates a courtly ambiance, and through a reference to Chrétien the author also advocates literary justice for Gauvain. However, the adventure which follows resembles more a fait divers than an Arthurian quest. Gauvain simply loses his bearings while hunting in a wild forest and is obliged to accept the insidious offers of a seemingly kind, but actually brutal, chastellain to spend the night in his castle and sleep with his daughter. The father’s role as a pimp would demand special commentary, yet basically we are witnesses to a perverted scene of hospitality, just as the preceding scene in the forest had been a perverted form of chivalrous adventure. The conscious and voluntary quest has been completely superseded by pure accident, which, moreover, has nothing in common either with the mysterious destiny in Marie de France’s lays or with the kind of chance found in the roman d’amour. On the contrary, the reader cannot see any logic in these adventures at all. Consequently, Gauvain’s reaction to what happens to him is one of utter bewilderment: Si que il ne sot ou aler (so that he did not know where to go; v. 69); later on in the castle he does not grasp his host’s intentions; nor does he understand the ordeal of the threatening sword above his bed, believing rather in a subterfuge on the maiden’s part: Gauvain remest tot esperdu Si a son talant tot perdu, Lez li se jut tot esbahi. (vv. 605–7) Gauvain was quite shocked, and lost all his desire, lying beside her quite astonished. or: Gauvain remest pensis et morne, Qu’il ne set conment se contiegne (vv. 622–23) Gauvain was pensive and downcast, not knowing what to do. or: Mout est dolanz, ne set que fere, Et anui a de son deport. (vv. 668–69)

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 129 He was very sad, did not know what to do, and was annoyed by the delay. When he has finally won his host’s daughter and sets out to ride home with her, the damsel leaves him for an unknown rival, and Gauvain remains alone with her greyhounds. He gives vent to his anger, shame and frustration in a violent anti-feminist diatribe, which seems to be the moral lesson of the story. Yet this exemplary moralization of a well-known proverbe au vilain seems to be only one of the tale’s meanings. The proverbial sentence in fact functions as the equivalent of everyday experience and normal life by means of which the ideology of chivalric adventure is called into question. The scurrilous ordeal itself is explained by the host as a conscious challenge to Arthurian values: Savez conment j’é esprovez / Trestoz les chevaliers do mont / Qui aventures querre vont? (Do you know how I have tested all the knights in the world who are seeking adventures? vv. 752–53). Although the host is just one more representative of non-courtly manners, Gauvain does not really defeat him. He is a winner and a loser at the same time, just as his host reveals a rather ambiguous character. It is this in-between that destroys the traditional moral dichotomy of the Arthurian world and replaces adventure with the unreliability of fate. Avient, ensi com veut Fortune, / U boine ou mauvaise aventure (good or bad adventure happens, just as Fortune wants), runs a key line from Amadas et Ydoine, cited by Erich Köhler14 in order to emphasize the new meaning of aventure in thirteenth-century romance. Unable to understand what has happened to him, Gauvain tries to console himself on his return journey by making a similarly ambivalent statement: adventure was A premiers bele et perillose / Et aprés laide et anuiose (First good and fraught with challenge, then unpleasant and irksome; vv. 1202–3). In L’Âtre Périlleux there is an echo of this general idea in Gauvain’s comforting of the damsel: Bele, fait il, n’i a que dire; Del desconforter n’i a rien. Une fois mal et autre bien Couvient a prodome avenir. (vv. 2754–57) Fair one, he said, there’s nothing to be said; there’s no point in being upset. Now evil, now good just happen to virtuous men. This moralizing tendency points to a breakdown in integrative courtly ideology. Significantly, this general challenge functions by means of a sexual and erotic lure, and this suggests an anthropological type of human experience beyond the virtual range of the Arthurian hero. Gauvain endures his ordeal and wins the battle with his rival, he is noble-hearted, sincere and plays fair, but he is doomed to failure when confronted by psychological problems. He is

130 • Friedrich Wolfzettel therefore easily trapped by his own value-system as symbolized by the jeu parti proposed to him by the unknown rival. In later romances, this trick of the jeu parti becomes a current theme, probably because it was so admirably suited for showing the ultimate perversion of manners which were initially courtly. Freedom of choice is thus turned into a means of fraud and deception. Once more, the author indirectly stresses the ambivalence and unreliability of fate. By sticking to his old set of values, Gauvain becomes a prisoner of his own chivalric code, because he misinterprets as his own code what is in fact a mere legalistic trick on the part of his rival. At the beginning of the thirteenth century15 there is no more room for the representation of pre-established harmony between personal valour and social status by means of the Arthurian ideal. Competition makes its appearance in all ranks of contemporary society: feudal nobility, knighthood, the clergy, and the bourgeoisie; the all-pervading obsession with money seems only to reflect the constant fear of becoming a déclassé. Not that Gauvain is ridiculous, but in reality he illustrates the tragic inadequacy of the fictional Arthurian world under the real conditions of life: Quant messire Gauvains ce voit, Sachiez qu’il en fu mout marri Qu’ele l’ot de son gré guerpi; Mes tant estoit et preu et sage Et si cortois et si resnable Que onques mot ne li sona, Ja soit ce que mout li pesa. (vv. 1002–8) When Sir Gawain saw this, know that he was most dismayed that she had abandoned him of her own will; but he was so worthy and wise and so courteous and so sensible that he never said a word to her, much as he was upset. Courtly values are here almost identical with resignation. Bewilderment, pensiveness, and sadness are psychological equivalents of the inanity and simultaneous sublimity of a courtly code which makes the real world impenetrable. The frustrated hero anticipates typical traits of Don Quixote.16 This tendency is even more explicit in the complicated plot of L’Âtre Périlleux, whose inconsistencies seem to result from the incompatibility of two different modes of thinking. I shall now examine some of its episodes. After the struggle with the devil in the Perilous Cemetery, Gauvain encounters the knight Espinogre who, after being vanquished by Gauvain, tells him his sentimental love-story (vv. 3735 ff.). He is in love with his lord’s daughter and has sworn eternal faith to her; but he was repudiated by her father who wants her to marry uns rices hom de cest païs (a rich man of this country; v. 3785) instead of the poor idealistic vavassor. The novelistic impression seems dependent on the realistic setting of an urgent social problem within the feudal hierarchy.17

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 131 The knight’s only hope lies in his idealization of Arthurian values: he will be prox et hardi like Arthur himself and Gauvain, whose identity is still unknown to him, and he even cites the example of Roland and Oliver. Gauvain—and again this is significant—sides with the poor lover against the established authority of the girl’s father and begins to resemble a patron saint of romantic love. However, the romantic exultation is abruptly broken by the intrusion of the damsel from earlier in the Âtre Périlleux: Sire, se ja Dix bien me dogne, ... Il m’est prise si tres grant fain Ke me verrés ja erragier Se je n’ai moult tost a mangier. (vv. 3930–34) Sire, if God keep me well [. . .] I have become so hungry that I will go mad if I do not get anything to eat soon. In vain does Gauvain try to make her realize his urgent chivalric obligations and the impossibility of finding any food: Gardés que ne me soit de pis, Et que n’i aie deshonor, Por le francise et por l’onor Que vous avés en moi trové. (vv. 3958–61) Be careful that I do not suffer or acquire dishonour on account of the nobility and honour you have found in me. Again honour and dishonour are paradoxically interchangeable. The initial argumentum degenerates into a real débat, and finally Gauvain is forced to yield: Mais ains m’estuet tant porcacier Que la pucele ait a mengier Ke jou face nule autre rien. (vv. 4039–41) But I shall have to look for something for the damsel to eat before I do anything else. Once more, Gauvain exchanges his courtly register for rude popular wisdom: Li asnes ciet par la sorsomme (the ass falls down when overburdened; v. 4004). At this point, the author himself takes the opportunity of inserting some general misogynistic remarks. Fate is comically incarnated in the unpredictable whims of a woman whose very deliverance had just been one of Gauvain’s major exploits. This fundamental stylistic unevenness points to the parallelism of two different modes and visions of life that continually overlap and cross each other. Instead of becoming part of the integral courtly vision as in Chrétien’s work, material needs constitute an opposing world of their own,

132 • Friedrich Wolfzettel virtually independent from, and ironically contrasted with, the chivalric code.18 When it comes to the worst, Gauvain himself does not behave very differently from his damsel. When he is rudely challenged by the mysterious Noir Chevalier in an apparently empty castle, he stipulates the right to finish eating and drinking before the combat. Thus, if eating, drinking, sleeping, and so on play a prominent part in all Gauvain romances, the well-known theme of King Arthur’s refusal to take food before the arrival of a new adventure (at the beginning of La Vengeance Raguidel, for example) might be read as the symbolic expression of an ideal that has become unnatural and strange. The misogyny common to our four romances likewise functions as part of the code of reality: in psychoanalytical terms, misogyny signifies precisely the principle of reality in its alienated, that is to say hysterical and repressed, form. The incompatibility of both worlds seems even more obvious in La Vengeance. Here, the romantic courtly love of the Dame du Gautdestroit turns into a perverse hatred of Gauvain and his brother Gaheriet, when she feels spurned by the former. Later, the theme of unrequited love is comically repeated in Gauvain’s helpless and hapless love for Ydain, whom he had rescued and who comes to dominate him: Qui plus l’amoit que ele lui (who loved her more than she him; v. 3653). It is true, nevertheless, that the deliverance of the damsel had by no means been a matter of course: before engaging in the combat, Gauvain and his brother quarrel as to whether the risk would be worthwhile. Shortly afterwards, a messenger from Arthur’s court relates the fabliau-like mantle episode which unmasks the crude reality behind the idealised pretence of the Arthurian world.19 The romance concludes with a variation of the central theme of Le Chevalier à l’epée. Gauvain has just arrived at the court, when an unknown knight arrives and asks Arthur for a don (boon): this turns out to be Ydain herself. Again, the Round Table is unable to react adequately to his perversion of their rule. The mysterious custom serves those who take advantage of it for their own egoistic needs. Once more, Gauvain yields and departs with Ydain, but on the way they meet with a knight who is urinating against a tree. This is unparalleled in courtly fiction, especially since the author does not omit to mention the damsel’s curiosity. It is even more incongruous that this knight should ride after the two protagonists in order to provoke Gauvain and lay claim to Ydain. Gauvain again leaves the decision to her and proposes a giu parti. The reaction of the girl, however, has an existential and very personal ring: “Conment, fait ele, est il ensi? Avés vos moi ici parti? Avés me vos misse en balance? Mult ai en vos povre fiance! Or sai je bien, se m’amissiés, Ja ju parti n’i éussiés.

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 133 Tos vos estes de moi partis, Qui en faites vos jus partis. Vilainement vos en partés, Quant vos de moi vos jus partés, Certes, je pren ceste partie: M’amors est de vos departie, Or en alés, de vos me part, Car en moi n’arés .i. part:” (vv. 4553–66) What, she said, is this how it is? Did you bet me here? Did you use me as a pledge? I cannot trust you! Now I know, for if you had loved me, you would never have had a bet. You soon abandoned me whom you used in the bet. You leave in bad odour, when you used me for a bet. To be sure, I’ll take this other side. My love has abandoned you, so go away now, leave me, for you will never have any part of me. The courtly game of the giu parti and the seriousness of her departie (departure) are furiously and brilliantly confronted in this rhetorical firework of annominatio wordplay, characteristic not of courtly romance, but of clerical literature (Rutebeuf, for example). In contrast to the parallel scene in Le Chevalier, we may detect here a concrete psychological meaning. Ydain revolts against the idea of being transformed into an object and a pledge of chivalric contests by opposing her feminist self-consciousness to the alienating ritual of courtly play. The subsequent trivial quarrelling of the two after the rival’s death underlines the realistic level of this episode. After avenging Raguidel and defeating the brutal Guengasoin, Gauvain is significantly once more obliged to renounce his legal rights to Guengasoin’s daughter, who loves Yder. As Ydain had done before, she says to him: Vos méismes, à cui je sui, Ne me plaissiés tant com il (sc. Yder) fait. ... Car je li sui del tot amie, Et il del tot li miens amis. (vv. 5970–71, 74–75) You yourself, whose I am, do not please me as much as he does [. . .] For I am completely his lover and he mine. Gauvain’s military competence and valour are thus strictly separated from his personal psychological problems. At this point, the Gauvain romances seem to anticipate traits of the Romantic novel of disillusion as interpreted by critics such as Georg Lukács.20 Thematic variation and repetition have always been main structural elements of Arthurian romance, but in Chrétien’s work they generally remain

134 • Friedrich Wolfzettel integrated into the typological pattern of the double cursus, whose gnostic dimension presupposes a strict correlation between event and experience. Adventures and quest are thus inseparable from the double circle of deed and redemption.21 It suffices to look at La Vengeance to realize how this connection has been split. The real aim of all feats of arms is hardly more than the consolidation of a precarious status quo. “Aventure and queste,” writes Erich Köhler, “are poetic undertakings of chivalric reintegration which aim to realize an ideal which encompasses total reality.”22 It is this total reality that Gauvain fails to re-establish in his quixotic quest. Ne set quel part ne en quel tere Aventure veut aler querre, Si ne set ne conment ne queles; Mais volentiers les queïst teles, S’il onques faire le peüst. (L’Âtre Périlleux, vv. 2765–69) I do not know where or in what land he wants to seek adventure, nor what kind; but he would willingly seek them if ever he could. The Arthurian world is changed into a domain of passive expectation. It preserves its function of creating symbols for ideal values as opposed to evil, but it proves more and more incapable of adjusting to reality as a whole. Originally, chivalric adventures were meant to break the spell of a non-courtly supernatural world. Now, adventures become part of the general fatalism of that same world. The loss of theological meaning leads to a series of stereotyped events that denote a sort of hidden compulsion towards repetition in the psychoanalytical sense. Their very absurdity may function as a guarantee of survival in a fragmented world. Almost every single adventure in fact depicts the incongruous aspects of reality as seen by the Arthurian knight errant, but masks the ultimate futility of the quest. Köhler’s remarks concerning the Gauvain part of the Conte du Graal seem pertinent to our problem: “In Perceval the ideal has moved away so far from reality that it leaves its purest image, the courtly community of King Arthur’s kingdom, in a state of unholiness scantily covered by the aesthetic prestige of the courtly existence.”23 Consequently, and contrary to what Köhler himself implies, our Gauvain romances constitute neither an anachronistic literature of ideal escapism nor a mere parody; a visible nostalgia for traditional values is tested against a reality that has not yet attained literary respectability or independence. Triviality has thus to be measured against idealism. Moreover, the compulsion towards repetition signifies a never-ending errantry and points to a fundamental lack of reality behind and beneath the Arthurian text. In the terms of Jacques Lacan’s structuralist psychoanalysis, the chain of adventures constitutes a sort of verbal chain of signifiants that paradoxically hide and denote the underlying lack

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 135 (manque, absence).24 Thus the ever-frustrated sexual aspirations of the hero could be interpreted as a symbolic transposition of factual and textual impotence, in the nominalistic perspective of the thirteenth century, which no longer warrants a broader significance behind the words. Trying to adjust Arthurian romance to his own vision of life, the thirteenth-century clerical author cannot but visualize this tragic absence by the traditional means of comic inversion. For, let us repeat, Gauvain, “la flor de chevalerie” (the flower of knighthood; L’Âtre, v. 500) still represents positive and necessary values. The possibility of his death (the rumour of his having been slain by Li cuivert felon desloial [the cowardly wicked traitors], v. 5802) constitutes a significant leitmotif of L’Âtre Périlleux and may well indicate the moral disaster of an imminent post-Arthurian world. The state of paralysis has even reached the inner circle of this world. Thus, the beginning of L’Âtre cannot be sufficiently explained by a simple conflict of courtly values; Gauvain’s passive penser (thought) in the strange knight’s defying Arthur is symbolic of the tragic impotence noted above. Yet the final political meaning of our romances seems to be found in the encounters between noble heroes and the non-aristocratic world. While the Dame du Gautdestroit or the host in Le Chevalier willingly undermines Gauvain’s set of values, the bourgeoisie and peasants may function as “helpers” in his perilous quest. In L’Âtre, Gauvain is led into the house of un borgois / Qui est rice et sage et cortois (a bourgeois who is rich and wise and courtly; vv. 1669–70), and who, as it were, represents courtly qualities in the face of a decadent feudal world. The low social position of the poor knight who rides with Gauvain and who introduces him to the bourgeois would, incidentally, be worthy of more detailed comment. This vavassor, originally belonging to an intermediate feudal class, has become a déclassé in consequence of the obligation to find husbands for his sisters. Real economic problems are discernible behind the moralizing discourse. Impoverishment, expropriation, abduction, robbery, and murder form the shadowy background of this romance in particular. No wonder, then, that bourgeois and knightly virtues taken together are presented as a positive diptych in contrast to the disorder of the feudal world. The bourgeois remains deferential towards Gauvain, while the latter cannot but admire the fabulous beauty of the weapons and panoply offered him by his host: Onques Gavains si rices armes / N’ot mais veü en son aé. (Gauvain had never seen such rich arms in his life; vv. 2020–21)! In comparison with L’Âtre, La Vengeance seems to present a less fragmented feudal order within which artisans and merchants occupy their allotted positions. The bourg of the Castle of Gautdestroit, whose numerous practical activities are circumstantially described by the author, has hardly any function within the plot of the narrative, but the author’s enthusiasm endows it with a symbolic value. There may even be some indication of a moral opposition

136 • Friedrich Wolfzettel between the perverse way of life of the Lady and the happy and healthy life of the burghers. In any case, the author reveals a substantial picture of them before Gauvain’s eyes: Et se je fail au reconter Ne vos en devés mervillier, Qu’il i a gens de maint mestier, En la vile, qui ouvres font. (vv. 1810–13) And if my story is wanting, you need not be surprised, for there are people of many trades in the town, making artefacts. There is no trace of comic intention here. The digression stresses the general notion of bustling life, variety, plenty, and the picturesque nature of this world of activity. It is the plenty of an environment that is manufactured and may be bought or sold instead of being conquered: Unques riens qui ne fust à vendre / Que on ne trovast en cel castel. (Nothing was ever for sale that could not be found in this castle; vv. 1836–37). The prologue of La Mule adopts a somewhat nostalgic perspective. Arthurian fiction only seems possible here in a mode of reminiscence and evocation of an earlier state of society. All the ingredients of Arthurian adventure—wild forests, wasteland, ferocious beasts, magic castles, and so on—are to be found in this short romance. And yet the necessary redemption from the satanic sphere depends indirectly on the aid of a churl who still bears traits of the traditional ogre in the Calogrenant-episode of Yvain. His narrative function is rather contradictory. On one hand, he is compelled to propose to Gauvain the well-known giu parti in order to determine which of them is going to cut off the other’s head. On the other hand, when it is his turn to slay Gauvain, he magnanimously spares his life because he admires his chivalric virtues. In contrast to the Calogrenant scene, a real conversation springs from their encounter, and from now on the hero cannot bring his task to an end without the churl’s help. The giu parti is thus redefined as a means of unmasking the weakness of the courtly partner and as a means of mutual social levelling. The churl promotes himself to an important auxiliary function in the Arthurian fight against evil. Similarities with Gauvain’s being aided by a churl in Le Conte du Graal (vv. 7851 ff.) have been rightly suggested by the editors.25 What is really important is less the fact that the whole story is based on a “faux jeu parti,” but that this motif indicates the possible re-evaluation of the respective roles of knight and churl in thirteenth-century romance. Neither of them is independent, and the fascination of the Arthurian world is still strong enough to counteract and neutralize the real world. Part of the historical and literary truth of our Gauvain-romances seems to lie in this very intermediary status between opposite social spheres and values. Stylistic and thematic

Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic “Struggle for Life”? • 137 inconsistencies may reflect the fundamental openness of an outlook that on the one hand reveals the Arthurian world in its tragi-comic quest for reality, but perhaps on the other, the real world in search of a lost ideal. Notes

1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

Reprinted with permission from An Arthurian Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Lewis Thorpe, ed. Kenneth Varty (Glasgow: French Department of the University of Glasgow), pp. 260–74. Revisions and English translations have been made by the editors, and these have changed the endnote numberings from the original article. See for instance the genetic literary history of J. D. Bruce, The Evolution of Arthurian Romance, Göttingen, 1923, 2 vol. Cf. generally Daniel Poirion, “Romans en vers et romans en prose,” in GRLMA, IV, 1, pp. 74 sq., who speaks of a “mythe évolutionniste” (p. 74). In Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. by R. S. Loomis, Oxford, 1959, 1969, pp. 358–92, and GRLMA, IV, l: Le Roman jusqu’à la fin du 13e siècle, Heidelberg, 1978, pp. 380 sq. Episches Frage und Antwortspiel in der “Geste de Nanteuil”, Frankfurt, 1974 (cf. my review in Romanische Forschungen, 87, 1975, pp. 529–30), and Epische Spekulanten, Preface by H. R. Jauss, Munich, 1975. We are here following the terminology of the so-called School of Constance and its structuralist approach to the idea of a literary system. Cf. H. R. Jauss, Alterität und Modernität der mittelalterlichen Literatur, Munich, 1977, esp. pp. 309 sq. “Zur Theorie der literarischen Gattungen,” and Rainer Warning, Funktion und Struktur. Die Ambivalenzen des geistlichen Spiels, Munich, 1974. [An epigone in this context could be generally defined as an author writing in the tradition of a well-established and well-known predecessor (or genre), aware of the dangers of emulating and imitating too closely, and therefore making a conscious effort to demonstrate independence at the same time as acknowledging indebtedness.] GRLMA, IV, 1, pp. 82 sq. “Literatursoziologische Perspektiven,” esp. p. 102. According to Marc Bloch, La Société féodale, Paris, 1939, nouv. éd. annotée 1968, esp. pp. 110 sq. Cf. E. Köhler, Ideal und Wirklichkeit in der höfischen Epik, Tübingen, 1956, second enlarged edition 1970, esp. pp. 181 sq. E. Köhler, loc. cit. Cf. Rainer Warning, “Formen narrativer Identitätskonstitution im höfischen Roman,” GRLMA IV, 1, pp. 25 sq., esp. 49 sq. Also Peter Haidu, Aesthetic Distance in Chrétien de Troyes: Irony and Comedy in “Cligès” and “Perceval”, Geneva, 1968, and Vladimir R. Rossman, Perspectives of Irony in Medieval French Literature, Paris and The Hague, 1975, esp. ch. IV. Two Old French Gauvain Romances: Le Chevalier à l’Epée and La Mule sans frein, ed. with introduction by R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen, Edinburgh and London, 1972. Cf. p. 7: “The Chevalier and the Mule lie, then, directly downstream from Chrétien’s later romances and follow a current of burlesque that he himself has initiated.” Ed. by Brian Woledge (CFMA), Paris, 1936. See his complementary study L’Âtre Périlleux. Etude sur les manuscrits, la langue et l’importance littéraire du poème, Paris, 1930. For recent criticism see Alice Dingemans-Zuurdeg, “Les Thèmes unifiants de L’Âtre Périlleux,” BBSIA, 31 (1979) p. 317. Ed. by M. Friedwagner, Halle, 1909. Our quotations follow the edition by C. Hippeau, Caen and Paris, 1852–1877, Slatkine Reprint, Geneva, 1969. Cf. A. Micha, Romania 68 (1944–5) pp. 330–60. After the research done by Alexandre Micha, op. cit., and by Anthime Fourrier, Mélanges Maurice Delbouille, Gembloux, 1964, II, pp. 165–93, the hypothesis of Raoul de Houdenc’s authorship should definitely be discarded. GRLMA, IV, 1, p. 99. See Jacques le Goff, La Civilisation de l’Occident médiéval, Paris, 1964, II, 8, and Henri Pirenne, Histoire économique et sociale du moyen âge, Nouv. éd. revue et mise à jour par Hans van Werveke, Paris, 1963, ch. V. and VI. We are following Georges Duby, “Au XIIe siècle: les ‘jeunes’ dans la société aristocratique,” Annales 19 (1964) pp. 835–46.

138 • Friedrich Wolfzettel 17. Cf. D. D. R. Owen, “Burlesque Tradition and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Forum for Mod. Lang. Studies 4 (1968) pp. 125–45: “In the French romances, Gauvain had taken a step or two towards becoming a medieval Don Quixote.” 18. Contrary to the mythic interpretation of the romance by Régine Colliot, “Un visage de la ‘demoiselle arthurienne’ du 13e siècle d’après les neuf recontres de Gauvain dans L’Âtre Périlleux . . .,” BBSIA 31 (1979) pp. 255–6. 19. Cf. P. E. Bennett, “Le Lai du cort mantel et la critique de la courtoisie,” Lettres romanes 32 (1978) pp. 103–21. 20. Die Theorie des Romans. Ein geschichtsphilosophischer Versuch über die Formen der großen Epik, Berlin, 1920. 21. See the first systematic investigation of these problems by Wilhelm Kellerman, Aufbaustil und Weltbild Chrestien von Troyes im Percevalroman, Tübingen, 1936, reprint 1967. Cf. E. Köhler, note 8, and R. Warning, note 9. 22. Köhler, op. cit., p. 249 (translated by FW). 23. Op. cit., pp. 248 sq. (translated by FW). 24. See for instance Lacan’s famous analysis of Poe’s The Purloined Letter in: Ecrits, Paris, 1966. 25. Notes, p. 110.

6

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances KEITH BUSBY

The chronology of French romance is notoriously vague, and recent contributions have shown that not even the dates of the romances of Chrétien himself are beyond dispute.1 Short of clues in the texts themselves, there is precious little to go on, especially as the habits and practices of scribes, and the lateness of most of the manuscripts, often render the evidence of the language untrustworthy. It is probably on the whole not worthwhile devising complex and speculative arguments for the precise dating of this or that romance; we should abandon the passion for precise dating where it can only remain speculative and be glad to free ourselves of the pitfalls inherent in it. Not the least of these pitfalls is the danger of allowing a neat hypothesis on the development or evolution of some aspect of Arthurian romance to impose an equally neat, but artificial, order on a corpus of texts. I shall therefore not lay much stress here on whether the author of one text knew another or not, except insofar as the general chronology of the genre renders this indisputable. On the other hand, the notion of generations of romances seems to be a more useful one, one which may prove more useful than attempts to date individual texts.2 It is, of course, one of the prime contentions of these volumes that the romances of Chrétien de Troyes are to be regarded as the first generation of fully-fledged Arthurian verse romances, and that they are crucial for the later evolution of the genre. On the one hand, Chrétien gives rise to the Grail continuations, which develop in a very specific direction, and on the other, to a large body of texts now generally known as the epigonal romances. This latter group is itself susceptible of division into at least three generations: those poems composed shortly after Chrétien (say, before 1200), those written in the first three decades of the thirteenth century (contemporaneous with the great prose romances), and those written thereafter. The significance of the approximate date of 1230 is that any author subsequently writing an Arthurian romance had a particularly large body of material to draw upon and a wide variety of forms, styles, and treatments to pick up and develop. An author

139

140 • Keith Busby could choose to write about the Grail or not; he could write in verse or prose; he could make his romance episodic or cyclical; he could treat the Arthurian ideal and its stock of characters and motifs with varying degrees of seriousness or burlesque. The texts I have chosen to consider here, and with particular respect to their treatment of the figure of Gauvain, were all written, as far as we can tell, after 1230. They are among the last French Arthurian verse romances, of which there is no example extant from after 1300, with the exception of Froissart’s anachronistic Meliador.3 Such poems as Hunbaut, Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, L’Atre Périlleux and Les Merveilles de Rigomer form, then, the end of the tradition, although I shall purposefully avoid talking in terms of disintegration and decay, an attitude which has until recently bedevilled the study of postChrétien verse romance (cf. our Preface to vol. I). However, the odious comparison with Chrétien is only one reason why these texts are still by and large neglected. Most of them are still available in old, often inadequate editions, frequently difficult of access outside major libraries, and I think it would not be over-cynical to suggest that the length of some of them may also be partly responsible for the neglect. In other studies of Gauvain, I have been unable to take these very late texts into consideration, and so this contribution forms a kind of final chapter, as it were.4 A brief sketch of earlier Gauvain tradition will put these later romances in their context, and provide an inventory of the possibilities open to authors of the period in their portrayal of the figure of Arthur’s nephew. By the time these late texts were composed, the figure of Gauvain had already undergone a complete degradation. Chrétien, following upon Geoffrey of Monmouth and Wace, established Gauvain as the first and greatest of the knights of the Round Table, and the same Chrétien shows in Perceval the limitations of the courtly and knightly codes represented by him. Chrétien’s successors, Renaut de Beaujeu and especially Raoul de Houdenc, continue the gently burlesque treatment of Gauvain, taking pleasure in placing him in all kinds of difficult situations, from which he usually manages to extract himself with varying degrees of difficulty. The prose romances, perhaps taking their cue from the more serious criticism to be found in Perceval and the early continuations, are more earnest in their questioning: La Queste del saint Graal shows Gauvain as an unrepentant sinner, although the author of the Mort Artu restores him somewhat at the end of the great prose cycle. If there is still something noble and sympathetic about the Gauvain of the Mort Artu, such is certainly not the case in the Prose Tristan, where he is an out-and-out villain, whose list of crimes includes pillage, rape and cold-blooded murder.5 The Prose Tristan seems to have taken shape in its first redaction about 1230, and it is verse romances written in its wake that I now wish to consider. The efforts of the authors of La Queste del saint Graal and the Prose Tristan to dispose of Gauvain as an admirable literary figure were, despite

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 141 their vehemence, doomed to failure. The fact seems to be that Gauvain was far too useful to writers of Arthurian romance to be “written out” in this way. Whilst it does not seem that many authors express unreserved admiration for the courtly and chivalric way of life that Gauvain came to stand for, there is a great reluctance to blacken his reputation completely. It is true, however, that as time passes authors treat the figure with more freedom and less respect, and that the various inherent possibilities are exploited for different moral and narrative ends. The Prose Tristan represents the extreme development of just one of the many potential directions, and whilst no romance before or after it shows quite such a degraded reprobate, it is arguable that the very fact of its existence increased the freedom with which authors felt they could treat the figure. Some authors (and, we must suppose, their audiences) seem to have felt that enough was enough, and the Prose Tristan may have had a backlash, providing a catalyst in attempts to restore Gauvain to his former position of pre-eminence. The four romances mentioned above, Hunbaut, Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, L’Atre Périlleux and Les Merveilles de Rigomer, I have chosen to discuss in detail simply because, of the late romances, they are the four in which Gauvain plays the largest role.6 He also appears in another four, namely Fergus, Floriant et Florete, Claris et Laris, and Escanor, but which I shall not refer to here due to limitations of space. As regards my four main texts, there is no self-evident order in which they should be discussed, although there seems to be general agreement that Les Merveilles de Rigomer is the latest of them, and I shall therefore discuss it last. On Hunbaut I shall be brief, as I have studied this romance separately elsewhere.7 It makes a useful starting point, however, as it seems to raise most of the issues that also arise in connection with the other texts. Because Gauvain is in many ways a pre-formed character, that is to say, one who already has a number of set features when he first appears in a given romance, authors are largely prevented from showing him undergoing any form of psychological evolution such as that of an Erec or an Yvain.8 Another consequence of the fixity of the figure is that the question of his reputation often occupies romancers a good deal, and they often set his reputation up and test it by means of events within their own poems. With the aid of this device, they are enabled to question not just the figure of Gauvain, of course, but more particularly the ideal of Arthurian knighthood that he embodies. When deciding to send Gauvain as his ambassador to the rebel Roi d’Entre les Illes, Arthur refers to Gauvain’s fame thus: “Gauvain mes niés est de grant pris Et conneüs de mainte gent, Et si est preus et biaus et gent, Bien parlans et cortois et sage.” (110–13)

142 • Keith Busby “My nephew Gawain is much esteemed and known to many people, and he is brave and handsome and noble, well-spoken and courteous and wise.” The author, too, praises him: “Roumans a faire m’aparel / De celui qui ainc n’ot parel / De pris ne de valor el mont” (I am about to compose a romance about one unequalled in esteem and valor in the whole world; 145–47). The frequent repetition of such formulae suggests one of two things: stylistic infelicity or an ironic intention. A clue may be found in Hunbaut’s words to Arthur when discussing the diplomatic mission they are preparing: “Il est cortois et sage et cointe Et preus d’armes et talentis, Mais je sai bien estre arestis En liu u force n’a mestier, Et je sai bien que teus mestier Li vaura ains qu’il soit venu.” (266–71) “He is courteous and wise and noble and brave in arms and eager, but I know him to be at a disadvantage where force is of no avail, and I know well that force will serve him before he arrives.” The modern dislike of didactic literature may render Hunbaut’s constant sermons and finger-wagging irksome to readers of the late twentieth century, but there is no doubt that he is here cast in the role of mentor to Arthur’s nephew, and it can be argued that in some respects he represents the author’s voice. In the first part of the romance, Gauvain consistently ignores Hunbaut’s advice, particularly when he is advised by his companion not to flirt with the daughter of their host. Gauvain’s amorousness is almost proverbial in Arthurian romance, although the tally of broken hearts is not as large as might be expected in the light of the frequent evocations of it. It is more often a question of reputation rather than action. Here, the girl is in love with Gauvain because of what she has heard about him (541 ff.), and Keu later refers in rather indelicate terms to something similar: “Molt est fols mauvais qui lui prise, Ce vos vel bien entreconter, Se n’est de ses putains torser; De cel mestier est il tot baut.” (3180–83) “He is a fool who praises him, I will tell you that much, unless it is for lifting the skirts of whores; he is all eager to do that job.” In the second half of the romance, however, there is an indication that Gauvain has learned to exercise mesure, and a series of deeds renders the

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 143 previously ironic praise a good deal more credible. He frees the lover of a damsel in distress, chastises a knight who has betrayed his amie and reconciles them, etc. Despite this, I think there is no question of considering these events as constituting a crisis in the life of Gauvain, and therefore little possibility of seeing him as the hero of the romance. A complicating factor is, of course, the fragmentary state of the text, which breaks off at a point which suggests that another lengthy series of adventures is about to begin. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Hunbaut was meant to be the hero, and that Gauvain would have played an important, but subsidiary, role. In this respect, comparisons suggest themselves with such romances as Meraugis de Portlesguez and La Vengeance Raguidel by Raoul de Houdenc, both of which the Hunbaut-poet seems to have known. It was clearly not the intention of the author to debunk the reputation of Gauvain completely, and despite some serious doubts cast at the beginning of the romance, the figure emerges intact. This attitude seems characteristic of many romances of the period, where Gauvain is mocked more or less gently, but much beloved of authors and audiences. A shift away from this relatively disrespectful attitude towards Gauvain and the Arthurian court, universal in romances of the early thirteenth century, can be discerned in the romance of Meriadeuc, Le Chevalier aux deux Epées. In this romance, as in Hunbaut, it is clear that the author intends his audience to draw comparisons between his hero and Gauvain. That an audience would have done this is, I think, beyond dispute, as practically every Arthurian romance from Erec et Enide onwards makes use of the device in one way or another. The companionship of Gauvain and the hero evident in Cligés, Yvain and part of Lancelot, may ultimately have suggested the joint adventures in Hunbaut which the author uses to express his view of Gauvain. In other parts of Lancelot and in Perceval, Chrétien uses quite a different device in which he sends the hero and Gauvain off separately, either on the same quest, as in Lancelot, or on different ones, as in Perceval. The authors of the various continuations of Perceval clearly use the device for similar purposes and even modify it so that Gauvain and Perceval do seek the same object. Later verse romances make considerable use of multiple or parallel quests, and Raymond H. Thompson has rightly argued that the meaning of Le Chevalier aux deux Epées emerges only when the comparison of the adventures of Meriadeuc and Gauvain is seen as the basis of the poem’s structural composition.9 Much is made in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées of Gauvain’s supreme reputation, but on the whole his deeds in the romance bear this out rather than belie it. Indeed, the amie of Brien des Illes will only accept him if he can prove himself superior to the great Gauvain by bringing her the latter’s head as proof: “Mes sire Gauvains ki au roi Artu est niés, assés miex vaut N’a grignor biauté pas ne faut

144 • Keith Busby Ke la vostre, ains le passe assés; Et por ce ke il a passés Tous cels que je onques connui Et tous le autres, et je sui La plus biele et la miex vaillans Du monde et por ce a mon tans N’ert ja par moi autres amés.” (2852–61) “Sir Gawain, who is King Arthur’s nephew, is worthier than you and is much more handsome; and because he is better looking than anyone else I have ever known, and because I am the most beautiful and worthiest woman in the world, I will never love anyone else.” Brien’s quest for Gauvain, the combat and conviction that he has killed him, and the subsequent confusion and involvement of Meriadeuc, form the basis of a large part of the action of the romance. Nor is Brien’s amie the only woman in the poem to have vowed to love only Gauvain. The Damoisele du Castiel du Port heard aged fifteen that King Arthur “. . . ot un neveu si cortois Ke il pasoit de cortoisie, De biauté, de chevalerie Trestous les chevaliers ki sont.” (4970–73) “. . . had a nephew so courteous that he surpassed in courtesy, beauty, and chivalry all living knights.” Upon this news, she vowed that no one but Gauvain would have her virginity. She relates this story in bed to a knight who has just freed her and her family from Gernemans of Northumberland, and who has been rewarded for his trouble by being put to bed with the young lady. After much kissing and cuddling, she refuses the knight the soreplus, telling him of her vow, and also of her disquiet at the rumour that Gauvain has been killed by Brien des Illes. This confession only increases the ardour of her bedfellow, who reveals himself to be none other than Gauvain. Unfortunately, however, the girl refuses to believe this and says she will only grant his desire when she has obtained proof of his identity from Arthur’s court. Faced with this disappointing response, Gauvain passes a rather distraught night: Pensis et destrois et irés Est mes sire Gauvains remés Dedens la cambre trestous seus, Mout escauffés et angousseus Et se retorne toute nuit. (5087–91)

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 145 Pensive, distraught, and irritated, Sir Gawain remained all alone in the chamber, wound up and upset, tossing and turning all night. This particular episode is unquestionably burlesque and much in the vein of such earlier romances as Le Chevalier à l’Epée and La Vengeance Raguidel. The use of the idea of Gauvain’s reputation is neat, however, for it is his fame that involves him in the first place in the unsavoury affair with Brien des Illes, and in the unfortunate combat with the latter that causes the rumour of his death and prevents him from deflowering the Damoisele du Castiel du Port. Just as his fictional past is responsible for this frustrating experience, so his adherence to a particular aspect of Arthurian moeurs is the cause of a cooling-off in his relations with Meriadeuc. It is revealed in the course of the poem that Gauvain himself had killed Meriadeuc’s father, Bleheri. Arthur had granted a boon to Brien de la Gastine that consisted of Gauvain’s unconditional help in his war against Bleheri; in order to preserve Arthur’s honour, Gauvain was forced to disguise himself as Brien and fight Bleheri. It is not Gauvain who is being critically examined here, nor even Arthur, but rather the unquestioning granting of the don contraignant.10 At no point in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées does the author seem seriously to question the Arthurian ideal as such by means of his treatment of Gauvain; he does, however, seem to suggest that the ideal in practice is far from perfect and takes delight in showing how unthinking application of conventions may cause momentary embarrassment. As Thompson suggests, the key to the poem lies in a comparison of the careers of Meriadeuc and Gauvain. Whilst Gauvain is established as the finest of the Round Table, Meriadeuc at the beginning of the romance is an apprentice who must aspire to the status of a Gauvain. That this is so is suggested by the fact that Meriadeuc had been Gauvain’s squire, although he had not then been known under the name of Meriadeuc. Whilst Gauvain has to avenge himself upon Brien des Illes, Meriadeuc has to settle a score with Brien de la Gastine; whilst Gauvain aids Meriadeuc’s mother, Meriadeuc helps the Dame de Caradigan; both generally carry out deeds which are in the interest of society as a whole. Meriadeuc’s apprenticeship is not quite complete, however, even when he has proved himself the equal in terms of prowess, for valour and justice must be tempered with mercy, and as Gauvain had pardoned Brien des Illes his transgression, so Meriadeuc, considering the succour Gauvain brought to his mother, pardons him his part in the murder of his father. No romance which sets Gauvain up as an ideal to which a young knight aspires can present him in anything other than a favourable light, but even then, Meriadeuc must be considered as the true hero, not Gauvain. Meriadeuc it is whose education and development form the subject of the poem, whose search for an identity is eventually successful, whilst Gauvain’s identity is already well-established when the poem opens. The search for an identity,

146 • Keith Busby symbolised by a name, is a commonplace of romance, but it may be used here further to stress the similarity in the careers of Meriadeuc and Gauvain, for whilst Meriadeuc is known as “cil as .II. espees” (the one with the two swords) until he discovers his name, Gauvain, in the fragmentary Enfances Gauvain, in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées itself, and in the De Ortu Walwanii, is known as “cil sans nom” (the one without a name, “puer sine nomine” in the Latin romance).11 More interesting, perhaps, is the fact that Meriadeuc, wishing to conceal his name from Arthur, calls himself (10767) “le chevalier as dames.” It can hardly be coincidental that this is also Gauvain’s epithet in Meraugis de Portlesguez and the prose romances Guiron le Courtois and the Huth-Merlin.12 The epithet is an ambiguous one, for while Gauvain’s amorous past may endow it with rakish overtones when it is applied to him, for Meriadeuc it is clearly meant to indicate “the knight who serves ladies.” The question of Gauvain’s relationship with women in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées is itself curiously ambiguous, for whilst he puts a good deal of time and effort into fighting on their behalf, the intensity of his passion for the Damoisele du Castiel du Port is hard to reconcile with the reference to Guinloie at the beginning of the poem: “Ma damoisiele Guinloie / Ki loiaus drue et fine amie / A mon seigneur Gauwain estoit” (my damsel Guinloie, who was the loyal lover and courtly beloved of Sir Gawain; 91–93). Guinloie may well be the same figure as Guilorete (or Guinloiete), the Pucelle de Lis, from the Continuation-Gauvain, but it is hard to know how much to make of this.13 On the other hand, there is no mistaking the part of the Gauvain-tradition being evoked here when the Damoisele du Castiel du Port explains to Gauvain why she could not believe that he was Gauvain when they first met: “Ne dui croie, se Dix m’aït, Que ja jor mes sire Gauvains Fust si lasques ne si vilains, Que por plaindre ne por plorer Peüst de lui feme escaper, Qu’il eüst si en son voloir Que vous aviés moi la endroit.” (12072–78) “I cannot imagine, so help me God, that Sir Gawain would ever be so cowardly or churlish that he would let any woman he had at his mercy (as you had me here) escape from him by merely lamenting and crying.” This is typical of the technique of the author of Le Chevalier aux deux Epées: he takes part of the established Gauvain-tradition and gives it a slight twist. Behind these remarks of the Damoisele du Castiel du Port are such episodes as that of the Pucelle de Lis from the Continuation-Gauvain (especially that of MSS. PU, TV, MQE, where he claims he raped her) and the bedroom-scene

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 147 from Le Chevalier à l’Epée, where Gauvain himself is worried about what would be said of him if it were discovered that he had spent the night with a girl without having made love to her. This is also the tradition which will strike a chord in students of the Middle English Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.14 However, despite these lingering implications of promiscuity, it seems evident that the author of Le Chevalier aux deux Epées is intent on holding Gauvain up as an example to be emulated, and is nowhere near as critical as the Hunbaut poet. This tendency to portray an admirable Gauvain, visible in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, is not as advanced as in L’Atre Périlleux. Models for emulation, however, do not generally make romance heroes, and in order to make a hero of Gauvain, the author of L’Atre Périlleux has him commit a fault at the beginning of the poem which has to be expiated.15 The opening lines of the romance are: “Ma dame me conmande et prie / Que une aventure li die / Qu’il avint au Bon Chevalier” (My lady orders and requests me to tell her an adventure that befell the Good Knight; 1–3). The epithet “bon chevalier” applied to Gauvain here and elsewhere in L’Atre Périlleux recalls the opening of Le Chevalier à l’Epée, and it is possible that this phrase may have been generally associated with him in the non-Grail verse romance.16 A damsel now arrives at Arthur’s court, and asks to be put under the protection of the best knight there; when Arthur grants her the protection of Gauvain, she reacts by alluding to his reputation: “Sire, fait el, quant je vinc ça, Me fu forment Gavain loé, Et g’i remain par vostre gré, Car ne vous demant se lui non.” (96–99) “Sire,” she said, “when I came here, people sang Gawain’s praises to me, so I will remain here if you permit, for I ask you only for him.” During dinner, a knight enters the hall, abducts the damsel (whom he claims is his amie) and leaves, saying that if any knight dare challenge him, he may expect a joust. A dilemma now clearly faces Gauvain: Gavains fu dolans et pensis, Qui les le roi sist au mengier: Ne se set pas bien consellier Li quex li ert plus honerable U salir par desor la table Por parsuïr le chevalier, U a seoir tant au mengier Que le service soit finé. (208–15)

148 • Keith Busby Gawain, sitting next to the king at table, was sad and deep in thought: he could not decide which was the most honourable course of action, to jump over the table to pursue the knight, or to remain seated at table until the meal was over. Deciding to remain seated in order to preserve the decorum is clearly the wrong choice, as the mischievous Keu does not fail to point out. Keu then pursues the abductor and is duly defeated, following an established pattern of Arthurian romance. 17 In the meantime, Arthur upbraids Gauvain for his remissness, with the result that Gauvain rather tetchily excuses himself on the grounds of only having been polite, arms himself, and sets out to amend his fault. It might be argued that the initial motivation of Gauvain’s setting forth is inherently ridiculous, but it may also be viewed as an extreme form of the kind of device used in many Gauvain texts, where authors show Gauvain (and others) getting into tight corners as a result of slavish adherence to the courtly code. Normally, however, this technique is only used incidentally to comment on the Arthurian way of life, but here it is used exceptionally to constitute the hero’s fault and to set the narrative moving. The net effect of this, I have suggested, is that Gauvain becomes for the first time in Old French literature the hero of a romance. Clearly, this contention depends on the definition of a romance hero, and the strictness with which it is applied, but one of the conditions must be that the hero commits a fault (or undergoes a crisis) which he expiates (or resolves) during a quest or series of adventures. I can think of no other Arthurian verse romance where this is as incontestably so for Gauvain as L’Atre Périlleux, and few where a case could even be made at all. On his search for the damsel and her abductor, Gauvain becomes involved in a side-adventure when he meets three lamenting damsels and a vaslet who has just had his eyes put out by two other knights. The damsels also believe that another knight who was killed was Gauvain. Gauvain, without revealing his identity, assures them that Gauvain is still alive, and is clearly most upset that the damsels and the vaslet be suffering on his account: Se Gavains ot ire et anui Del vallet qui si ert destroit Et des puceles que il voit Por lui si grant dol demener, Il ne fait mie a demander. (626–30) If Sir Gawain was angry and upset on account of the young man who was so distraught and of the maidens he saw lamenting for him, it is no surprise.

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 149 What is particularly interesting about this episode is that it is presented by the author as a second dilemma for Gauvain, and whereas he made a wrong decision the first time, his resolve here to carry on with his quest and return to this affair later seems to indicate that this time he has chosen well. Similarly, the episode of the Perilous Cemetery itself contributes to the positive picture of Gauvain that begins to dominate the romance. In view of the great embarrassment caused Gauvain in Perceval by the loss of his horse, his refusal to part with it here must be seen intertextually, standing him in good stead during his encounter with the devil. The words of the liberated damsel provide a suitable comment on Gauvain’s messianic achievement: “Bien puet trestox li mondes dire Que c’est ici le Bon Chevalier, Et cil qui tox jors seut aidier As damoiseles au besoig.” (1410–13) “The whole world might well say that this is the Good Knight, he who always helped damsels in need.” This particular episode cannot really be regarded as a digression since it occurs overnight when the abductor (now revealed as Escanor de la Montagne) and the damsel are obliged to stay in a neighbouring castle. Thus Gauvain loses no ground in his pursuit. During the actual combat between Escanor and Gauvain it transpires that the arrival of the damsel at court and her subsequent abduction formed part of an attempt by Escanor to prove himself a better knight than Gauvain. In the words of the damsel: “Il cuidoit estre bien certain, Se il Gauvain vaintre peüst, Que en tout le siecle n’eüst Chevalier qui l’osast atendre.” (2402–05) “He thought he was sure that if he could defeat Gawain, there was no knight in the world who could best him.” Because his mother has told him when he was young that he could only be killed by one knight, and because the damsel tells him that knight is Escanor, Gauvain kills his defeated opponent without much ceremony and without any scruples. The fact that the Escanor episode has been cleared up and the girl liberated from the Perilous Cemetery effectively means that Gauvain is now free to go to the aid of a damsel he hears lamenting in the forest. Sending the others back to Carduel, he goes to investigate, for although it might be argued that he has already regained his honour, the poet uses the rest of L’Atre Périlleux to underline his hero’s role as defender of damsels and guardian of morality.

150 • Keith Busby Space does not permit a running commentary on all of the events in the rest of L’Atre Périlleux, but it seems that they are all linked by two themes, namely that of knights desiring to prove to their amies that they are better than Gauvain, and that of Gauvain’s own role as marriage broker. Not only Escanor, but also Espinogre, and Goumerés and li Orguellous Faé, are urged by their respective amies to attempt to conquer Arthur’s nephew. Gauvain effectively teaches all of them a lesson before reuniting all of the various pairs of lovers in a mass wedding at the end of the romance. In addition to this, the Faé uses his supernatural powers to restore the vaslet’s sight and bring back to life the Cortois de Huberlant whom he and Goumerés had palmed off as Gauvain. The question of the “scheintote” (seemingly dead) Gauvain also played a considerable part in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, it will be recalled.18 In both of these romances, the theme is combined with that of Gauvain’s reputation, but in slightly different ways. Whereas in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées the reputation remains constant and unwavering, and the rumour of his death merely part of the plot mechanism, it can be argued that Gauvain’s error at the beginning of L’Atre Périlleux, reflected in his supposed demise, symbolises a temporary lapse which Gauvain himself is ashamed of and wishes to repair. This also explains why Gauvain, significantly separated from his Gringalet, refers frequently to himself in the second half of the poem as “cil sans nom,” for only after he has recovered his own steed, and his self-esteem through various acts of altruism, is he fit to reassume his old identity: “Par foi, fait il, je sui Gavains. Ja mon nom ne vous ert celé Puis que j’ai par armes prouvé Ke je suis delivres et sains. Anïex seroie et vilains, Se jou a vous ni a autrui Celoie ja mais qui je sui, Des que par terre ai tant esté Que je ai mon non recouvré Que j’avoie piecha perdu, Il doit estre par tout seü.” (5734–44) “In faith,” he said, “I am Gawain. My name will not be kept from you since I have proved by arms that I am well and in good health. I would be wicked and churlish, if I henceforth concealed my identity from you or anyone else; now that I have traveled so much that I have regained my good name which I had previously lost, it should be known everywhere.”

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 151 The author of L’Atre Périlleux makes original use of these two common aspects of the Gauvain tradition—reputation and namelessness—in his depiction of an admirable Gauvain who can lay claim to the status of true hero of the romance. It appears, however, that even in L’Atre Périlleux, Gauvain’s reputation as a ladies’ man still prevents him from experiencing a real love, which might inspire great deeds of chivalry. A brief encounter with a girl he meets in the forest, however, is all that suggests the author’s interest in this part of Gauvain’s renown: the girl’s lover, finding her in Gauvain’s company, becomes jealous and steals their horses, leaving them to spend the night together. The night is stormy, but an aside by the author suggests that the lover’s jealousy was not altogether unfounded: Je ne vous di rien du sorplus, S’il i orent autre delit, Mais itant vous di que lor lit Fu moult durs et mesaaisiés. (2804–07) I will tell you nothing about the other thing, whether they had any other pleasure, but I will tell that their bed was very hard and uncomfortable. There is no indication that the author expected his audience to raise so much as an eyebrow at this, and no censure of Gauvain is intended. In another, more burlesque context, this might well have been the case, but it is in fact the girl who subsequently loses our sympathy by her incessant nagging to Gauvain about the empty state of her stomach. Again, what is elsewhere used to cast the figure in a poor light is here used to bolster his image and create sympathy.19 It would, I think, be misleading to suggest that the pro-Gauvain tendency dominates French Arthurian verse romance of this final generation. If anything, it is the critical view of him, implemented by a strong use of burlesque and odious contrast with others, that leaves the stronger impression. It may not be entirely coincidental that the romances that continue the burlesquing of Gauvain and use him as part of the background in this conventional way are the very latest of all—Les Merveilles de Rigomer, Escanor, and Claris et Laris, all written well into the second half of the thirteenth century, all enormously long, and all showing very strong influences of the prose romances. It is perhaps the fact that these three texts are as much like prose romances in verse as verse romances proper that has led to their proliferation of adventures being condemned as prolix and rambling. Scholars might do well in the future to consider the various series of adventures in the light of our knowledge of entrelacement and other results now emerging from the renewed interest in the prose romances noticeable over the last decade; if they were to do this, the evaluation of these texts might arguably be carried out more according to

152 • Keith Busby the aesthetic standards which governed their composition. A reappraisal of them here is out of the question, but I intend to examine briefly the nature of the figure of Gauvain as he appears in Les Merveilles de Rigomer by Jehan. Although Les Merveilles de Rigomer is unfinished, it is possible to argue that the hero was meant to be Lancelot (Guenièvre maintains, for example, that there is a better knight than Gauvain) and that Gauvain is used as a foil to him. The first part of the romance is concerned with Lancelot’s adventures on the way to Rigomer and his capture by a magician (1–6428), the second with the efforts of the other knights to find and liberate him (6429–15922), and a third with the restoration to the heiress of Quintefuele of her inheritance (15923–end). Structurally speaking, Les Merveilles de Rigomer clearly owes a good deal to the Prose Lancelot, and Gauvain’s role in this verse text closely resembles that he plays in the prose romance. In both he is set up as the best knight of the Round Table, but one destined to be surpassed by Lancelot: Ausi vos di jou que Gavains Est li abres et foille et rains, C’est la seve, c’est li racine, C’est li flors qui tot enlumine, C’est li fruis tous mëurés; Car mesire Gavains est tes Qu’en lui ne faloit nule rien; Enluminés ert de tous bient. (10605–12) And I tell you that Gawain is the tree and the leaf and the branch, the sap, the root, the flower which illuminates everything, and the fully ripe fruit; for Sir Gawain is such that nothing is lacking in him; he will be resplendent with all good things. On his way to look for Lancelot, Gauvain is imprisoned by Gaudionet, whose brother he had killed. These accusations of murder levelled against Gauvain have a history that goes back to Chrétien’s Perceval, and those intent on criticising Gauvain in subsequent romances make good use of the theme. This particular episode recalls Gauvain’s abduction and imprisonment by Carados in the Prose Lancelot, but whereas there he is freed by the hero, here he escapes thanks to the good offices of an amie, Lorie de la Roche Florie.20 Gauvain’s amorous activity in Les Merveilles de Rigomer is much in the style found in L’Atre Périlleux. Here, too, he seems to have a permanent association with a lady (Lorie), but still finds the time for a little dalliance. The references to Gauvain as Lori’s ami and vice-versa are sufficient to indicate something more than a passing fancy, and even the temporary sojourn in another woman’s bed is the result of pure chance rather than conscious skirt-chasing. I cite this episode here not only because of its evident relation to a particular aspect of the Gauvain tradition, but also because its crude and burlesque,

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 153 arguably parodic, style seems to me typical of the treatment of the Arthurian world generally in this romance. Liberated by his amie, Gauvain presses on to Rigomer, where he hopes to find Lancelot. He first of all frees a girl from her captors merely by naming himself (10924 ff.), and is then forced to fight a lord and twelve knights because he had picked a flower out of the former’s garden and custom requires the combat (11011 ff.). Both of these episodes, not to mention that of the polyglot bird, Willeri (11603 ff.), are patently absurd pastiches of commonplaces of Arthurian romance, Gauvain’s habit of naming himself and the evil custom, and the brief amorous encounter (11917 ff.) is in much the same vein. Assailed by a number of knights, Gauvain retreats through an arch where he thinks he may be better able to defend himself; he is forced into a trap, however, and retreats unknowingly into the rung of a millwheel; as soon as he steps on it, the wheel revolves, catapulting him way up into the sky. The narrator remarks: “Uns autres hom i fust peris, / Diex nel vout ne sains Esperis” (any other man would have perished, but neither God nor the Holy Ghost wished it; 11951–52). Whilst Gauvain is completing his trajectory, a boat comes floating down the river, on the deck of which is placed a luxurious bed, and on the bed a beautiful damsel. Gauvain, of course, lands on the bed next to the damsel, who greets him warmly, perhaps with more enthusiasm than is strictly necessary: “S’avoit de pucele deduit” (11993). Cheered by his success, Gauvain continues on his way to Rigomer, where he breaks the enchantment and frees the captives. This brief analysis of a few episodes ought to suffice to give some idea of the tenor of Les Merveilles de Rigomer as a whole. The burlesque of Raoul de Houdenc has been heightened and the various adventures fitted into a framework derived from the prose romance. The one thing seemingly lacking in the romance is a sen, for although there is a visible narrative structure, it seems to carry no evident message. Les Merveilles de Rigomer draws upon a large number of aspects of earlier Arthurian tradition, but combines them into something approaching pure entertainment, for despite its unfinished state, it does not seem as if Jehan is inviting his audience to draw any real lessons from the romance. The treatment of the figure of Gauvain forms part of this overall design. The idea of Gauvain’s reputation is again a motif, and he is often shown being deflected from his main course on minor matters, which inevitably cause him a little embarrassment. Jehan, however, does not seem to use this in order to question the way of life of which Gauvain is the representative par excellence. Indeed, it looks as if Jehan is writing a simple and effective fantasy, where the tried and trusted figures and episodes of Arthurian romance are used as vehicles of unashamed comedy. The final chapter of Gauvain’s career in Old French romance is characterised by a wide diversification of treatment. Whereas in the earlier stages the development of a critical stance vis-à-vis Arthurian moeurs had led to a double articulation—in the episodic romances by means of burlesque, and in the

154 • Keith Busby Grail romances by means of moral disapproval—the total destruction of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan was apparently counter-productive. The reaction to it was partly responsible for the chastised Gauvain of Hunbaut, the epitome of knighthood in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées (perhaps the quintessential Gauvain romance), the hero of L’Atre Périlleux, and the insouciant buccaneer of Les Merveilles de Rigomer. Whatever path they choose, however, the overwhelming impression left by these late romances is one of the esteem and affection in which Gauvain is held by other characters in the romances, by authors, and above all, one must suppose, by their audiences. Indeed, as one character in Le Chevalier aux deux Epées remarks: “Je ne quic k’il soit hom en vie, / Ki n’aint et lui et sa maniere” (I do not think there is a man alive who does not love him and his ways; 3840–41). Notes

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

Reprinted with permission from The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), Vol. 2, pp. 93–109. Translations have been provided by the author. Claude Luttrell, The Creation of the First Arthurian Romance (London: Edward Arnold, 1974), pp. 26–33. See also Tony Hunt, “Redating Chrestiens de Troyes,” BBIAS, 30 (1978), 209–37, and Luttrell’s reply, “Chrestien de Troyes and Alan of Lille,” BBIAS, 32 (1980), 250–75. See especially Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart. Zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980), pp. 16–19. For Meliador, see Jane H. M. Taylor in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, vol. I, pp. 267–332. See especially my Gauvain in Old French Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980). See my “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” Tristania, II, ii (1977), 12–28, reprinted in this casebook, and on the Prose Tristan in general Emmanuèle Baumgartner, Le Tristan en prose (Geneva: Droz, 1975). I refer to the following editions: Hunbaut, ed. Margaret Winters (Leiden: Brill, 1984); Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, ed. Wendelin Foerster (Halle: Niemeyer, 1877); L’Atre Périlleux, ed. Brian Woledge (Paris: Champion, 1936); Les Merveilles de Rigomer, ed. Wendelin Foerster (Dresden: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1908–1915), 2 vols. “Caractérisation par contraste dans le roman de Hunbaut,” Studia Neophilologica, 52 (1980), 415–24. On the “präformierter Karakter,” see Christoph Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Krône’: zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans (Munich: Artemis, 1977), pp. 124 ff. On multiple quests, see Douglas Kelly, “Multiple Quests in French Verse Romance: Merveilles de Rigomer and Claris et Laris,” ECr, 9 (1969), 257–66, and on Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, Raymond H. Thompson, “Le Serviteur de la société: la composition structurale dans Li Chevaliers as Deus Espees,” Studia Neophilologica, 49 (1977), 95–100. Recent articles on the don contraignant are Philippe Ménard, “Le don en blanc qui lie le donateur: réflexions sur un motif de conte,” in An Arthurian Tapestry, ed. Kenneth Varty (Glasgow: French Department, 1981), pp. 37–53, and Antoinette Saly, “Le motif du don contraignant dans la littérature du moyen âge,” TLL, 7, 2 (1969), 7–63. Les Enfances Gauvain, ed. Paul Meyer, Romania, 39 (1910), 1–32; the De Ortu Walwanii has recently been re-edited with a translation by Mildred Day (New York: Garland, 1984). See the invaluable indices of G. D. West, An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Verse Romances (Toronto: Toronto Univ. Press, 1969), and An Index of Proper Names in French Arthurian Prose Romances (Toronto: Toronto Univ. Press, 1978). See the Continuation-Gauvain, ed. William Roach, The Continuations of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chrétien de Troyes, III, i (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1952), MS. L 777, ASP 6727.

Diverging Traditions of Gauvain • 155 14. For a discussion of the various versions of this first episode, see Pierre Gallais, “Gauvain et la Pucelle de Lis,” Mélanges Maurice Delbouille (Gembloux: Duculot, 1964), II, pp. 207–229. Cf. also Le Chevalier à l’Epée, ed. R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen in Two Old French Gauvain Romances (Edinburgh and London: Scottish Academic Press, 1972), and Owen’s commentary, pp. 171 ff. 15. On L’Atre Périlleux, see Brian Woledge, Etude sur l’Atre Périlleux (Paris: Champion, 1930), and Atie Dingemans Zuurdeeg, “Les thèmes unifiants de l’Atre Périlleux,” Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society, 31 (1979), p. 317. 16. See my “‘Li Buens Chevaliers’ ou ‘uns buens chevaliers’? Perlesvaus et Gauvain dans le Perlesvaus,” Revue Romane, 19 (1984), 85–97. The opening lines of L’Atre Périlleux are also strongly reminiscent of the prologue to Chrétien’s Lancelot. Given the strong intertextual links between L’Atre Périlleux and Chrétien’s oeuvre in general, this must be a conscious association. 17. The pattern was used, for example, by Chrétien himself in Erec et Enide and Perceval, and by the author (who, punning on Chrétien’s name, calls himself Paien de Maisières!) of La Mule sans Frein. 18. See Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann (n. 2), pp. 100–06. 19. In a perceptive article to appear in Medieval Connections: Art and Literature, ed. Elaine Whitaker (Birmingham, AL: Univ. of Alabama Press), Lori Walters comes to similar conclusions about the status of Gauvain in L’Atre Périlleux; she further suggests that the placing of the romance immediately after Yvain in MS. Paris, BN, fr. 1433 is aimed at restoring his loss of face incurred in Chrétien’s text. The location and subjects of the miniatures in the same MS. are also attributable to the same purpose. [This article, “The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472,” has since been published in Neophilologus 78 (1994), 29–43, and is reprinted in this casebook.] 20. See Lancelot, ed. A. Micha (Geneva: Droz, 1978), I, p. 17.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

7

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 LORI WALTERS

In Gauvain in Old French Literature Keith Busby1 treats an extensive corpus of works dealing with the figure of Gauvain which appeared in the wake of the romances of Chrétien de Troyes. The great interest in this character, however, was not limited to individual texts. The person ultimately responsible for producing the thirteenth-century Chantilly MS 4722 seemed to make a conscious attempt to create a multi-branch romance centered upon Gauvain. Thirteenth-century romancers either developed the tendency to view Gauvain with a critical eye implicit in the later romances of Chrétien de Troyes or tried to restore him to the glorious position he had occupied in Erec et Enide as well as in the works of Wace and Geoffrey of Monmouth.3 The texts in MS 472, which include three of Chrétien’s own narratives, reflect these trends. The conceptualizer sought to give the “full story” of Gauvain: a drawn-out portrait complete with family history. Like a typical multi-branch work, MS 472 is organized along the principle of narrative interlace. The adventures of Gauvain alternate with those of other knights on the level of the individual text and on that of the manuscript as a whole. MS 4724 contains nine Arthurian romances followed by a fragment of the Perlesvaus (in prose) and several branches of the Roman de Renart. 5 The Arthurian romances appear in the following order: Rigomer, the Atre périlleux, Erec et Enide, Fergus, Hunbaut, the Bel Inconnu, the Vengeance Raguidel, the Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), and the Chevalier de la Charrete (Lancelot). The manuscript is unusual in that it contains two unica, Hunbaut6 and the Bel Inconnu. Although the decoration of MS 472 indicates a unified overall conception, the collection seems to have been assembled in a rather bizarre fashion. A title in alternate red and blue letters heads many of the works. In some cases the title has been partially cut off. This raises the possibility that some or all of the other works originally had similar titles that were later completely cut away from the text. Frequently alternating blue and red

157

158 • Lori Walters capital letters characterize all the works. Larger decorated capitals, some more ornate than others, mark the beginning of each text. Although the pattern of initial letters and titles implies that the manuscript was conceived as an entity, works that break off in mid-transcription, the lack of explicit for many texts, and the presence of cut-off sheets of vellum following several works suggest that the texts were transcribed separately and assembled at a later time. Hunbaut is the only work to come directly after the preceding one on the same page; 7 all the other texts begin on a separate folio. The Bel Inconnu is completely detached from surrounding pieces and its final verses are included on a small sheet of parchment. Many folios of the Renart are missing from the manuscript. Wilson Frescoln has commented on the unusual way in which this manuscript was put together. The conceptualizer seems to have made a special effort to have each text begin on the first folio of a gathering in spite of the fact that the romances vary greatly in length.8 The transcription and ornamentation of the manuscript leads to the assumption that the conceptualizer initially gave direction to several different scribes.9 Editors of the various works in MS 472 have commented on the lack of care with which this manuscript was transcribed.10 All of the verse romances are copied in three columns to the page, each generally of 52 lines. The Perlesvaus was transcribed in double columns of the same number of lines; this variation can be attributed to the fact the work is in prose rather than in verse. From the unusual organisation of the manuscript we can surmise that for some reason the conceptualizer did not closely survey the scribes working under him, and was subsequently forced to put together the various sections in an unorthodox fashion. No information exists concerning MS 472 between the period of its assembly (the manuscript dates from the last third of the thirteenth century)11 and 1654, at which time records indicate that it was found in the Hôtel de Condé.12 Let me summarize the observations about MS 472 I have made elsewhere.13 Recurrent themes, characters, and episodes confer unity on the Arthurian matière. Five texts (Rigomer, the Atre périlleux, Hunbaut, the Vengeance Raguidel, and the Perlesvaus) feature Gauvain as the main character or one of several major characters. Moreover, Guinglain, Gauvain’s son, is the protagonist of the Bel Inconnu. Gauvain plays a determinant role in the manuscript: all the Arthurian works mention him, and he forms the material link between the “twin romances” of Yvain and Lancelot.14 Recent studies confirm once again the preponderant influence of Chrétien de Troyes on thirteenth-century romance.15 The proliferation of works about Gauvain suggests that writers were responding to a perceived gap in Chrétien’s treatment of that character. The author of the thirteenth-century Chevalier à l’Epée, a tale in 1,206 verses, declares that Chrétien’s body of works seems incomplete because the figure of Gauvain did not receive sufficient development:

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 159 L’en ne doit Chrestien de Troies, Ce m’es vis, par raison blasmer, Qui sot dou roi Artu conter, De sa cort et de sa mesniee, Qui tant fu liee et prisiee, Et qui les fez des autres conte Et onques de lui [Gauvain] ne tint conte. Trop ert preudom a obliër; Por ce me plest a reconter Une aventure tot premier Qui avint au bon chevalier. (ll. 18–28)16 It is not reasonable, it seems to me, to fault Chrétien de Troyes, Who knew how to tell great tales of King Arthur, Of his followers and his court, Which was so joyous and esteemed, And recounts the deeds of others And never wrote a tale about him [Gauvain].The latter was too great a man to be forgotten: For this [reason] it pleases me to recount First an adventure That happened to the good knight. The structure and content of MS 472 as well as those of the individual thirteenth-century romances it includes are greatly indebted to Chrétien’s achievement. In Erec et Enide Chrétien explored the use of narrative interlace. He intertwined the episodes of the Hunt of the White Stag and the Sparrow Hawk, making the outcome of Arthur’s beauty contest dependent on that of the Sparrow Hawk competition. In his last three romances Chrétien employs Gauvain’s adventures as counterpart to the protagonist’s.17 Whereas Erec et Enide offers the example of interlace inside one discrete text, Yvain and Lancelot evidence interlacing across textual boundaries. The adventures of Gauvain, the character who plays the novel role of intermediary between the two partner romances, assume unusually large proportions at the end of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. Some would say Gauvain even steals the show from Perceval, the proclaimed protagonist. Romancers composing continuations, sequels, and complete recastings of Chrétien’s unfinished text found in Gauvain fertile ground for the structural patterning and thematic development of their own works. Interlace of the protagonist and another knight, usually Gauvain himself, became a regular feature of narrative elaboration. Thirteenth-century portrayal of Gauvain took several different directions. Writers alternately portrayed him as a burlesque figure, an out-and-out villain, or a rehabilitated hero.18 In the first work in MS 472, Rigomer (also known as the Merveilles de Rigomer),19 an author who refers to himself merely as “Jehan” gives a portrait of a swashbuckling Gauvain whose adventures have more value as entertainment

160 • Lori Walters than as inspiration.20 This 17,271-line romance is made up of 3 parts,21 each treating a different knight: first Lancelot, then Gauvain, and finally King Arthur. Following a seventeen-verse prologue that mentions both Gauvain and Lancelot, a female messenger arrives at Arthur’s court to enlist the help of .a champion to deliver her lady Dionise from a spell that prevents her from marrying. In the first part of the work (ll. 18–6402), Lancelot, after undertaking the quest, is put under an enchantment whereby he loses his memory. In the second part of the romance (ll. 6403–15916), Gauvain succeeds in freeing both Lancelot and Dionise. The narrator speaks of the new section of the work as if it were an entirely new romance (l. 6421, “Chi commence nostre romans”).22 In fact, lines 6403–6444 virtually constitute a second prologue to the work. Following this passage the action begins anew with the arrival of a second female messenger bringing news of Lancelot’s imprisonment to Arthur’s court. Although with the freeing of Lancelot and Dionise and Dionise’s marriage to a knight named Midomidas all the narrative threads announced at the beginning of Rigomer have been tied up, the work contains a later development, called the Quintefeuille episode, dealing with King Arthur who helps a young woman regain her inheritance. Another passage resembling a prologue, shorter than the two previous ones, begins this section: Ciste aventure est a fin traite, Qui de Miraudiel fu estraite. Mais or me samble en mon mimore Qu’el cief de l’an, en cel tempore Avint une aventure grans Dont jou vos conterai par tans. (ll. 15917–15922) This adventure that was taken from [a story] about Miraudiel Has been taken to its conclusion. But now it seems to me in my memory That at the beginning of the year, at that time A great adventure took place That I will recount to you at this time. The Quintefeuille episode, which breaks off unfinished at line 17271, was present separate from the rest of Rigomer in a Library of Turin manuscript destroyed in the fire of 1904. Many critics point out that the Quintefeuille episode has a decidedly different flavor from that of the rest of the romance.23 The unique character of the episode may indicate that it circulated independently prior to Jehan’s amalgamation of it to his own work on the adventures of Lancelot and Gauvain. On the other hand, the Quintefeuille episode presents many similarities with the main body of the romance. The narration starts up again when a third female messenger comes to court to announce that a young woman is in need

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 161 of a champion. This time it is Arthur himself in the company of Lancelot who sets off to rescue the young woman. If the first two parts of Rigomer evoke the multiple quests of Lancelot and Gauvain in Chrétien’s text, the Quintefeuille episode recalls at once Arthur’s resolution of the inheritance dispute of the two sisters in Lancelot’s partner romance, Yvain, and Godefroy de Leigny’s continuation of Lancelot that introduces Lancelot’s rescue by Meleagant’s sister. Rigomer, a romance in which a quest successfully completed by Gauvain follows upon one that Lancelot was unable to accomplish, serves as introduction to the ensuing works in the anthology. In this manuscript Gauvain is often shown in a good light at the expense of other knights. The prologue to Rigomer, which begins with an encomium to Gauvain, functions as a prologue to the entire collection. In the body of the romance the author emphasizes Gauvain’s importance and has Gauvain’s adventures alternate with those of other knights, tendencies seen throughout the manuscript. The Atre périlleux,24 the second work in the collection, is one of the few thirteenth-century romances to depict Gauvain as a true hero.25 Concern for his knightly reputation is a major theme of the work. When Gauvain commits a fault at the beginning of the narrative, he becomes “cil sans nom” until he clears himself of charges made against him. The same epithet is applied to Gauvain in the Chevalier à l’Epée and the fragmentary Enfances Gauvain,26 and its Latin equivalent appears in the De Ortu Walwanii.27 Gauvain is clearly the main object of interest in all these texts. A consideration of the plot of the Atre reveals its connections with other pieces in the anthology. The action begins with the arrival at Arthur’s court of an arrogant knight, later identified as Escanor de la Montagne, who abducts a young woman serving as Arthur’s cupbearer. After Keu fails to recover her, Gauvain undertakes the quest. Before managing to bring her back to court, Gauvain rescues other damsels in distress, the most important a woman put under a spell by a devil whom he delivers from the cemetery from which the work gets its name. Other episodes treat Gauvain’s false death and an ensuing incognito battle, both motifs made famous by Chrétien de Troyes. Brian Woledge points out that a passage in Hunbaut virtually reproduces one in the Atre.28 Even the marvelous elements recur frequently in MS 472. A dangerous cemetery figures in Rigomer and at the end of the Perlesvaus fragment, and the spell cast on Lancelot dominates the plot of Rigomer. A survey of the relationships between the various texts in the collection is beyond the scope of the present study, but it would appear that it could easily form the subject of an entire monograph. The Atre poet clearly modeled his narrative on Chrétien’s partner romances of Lancelot and Yvain. The plot recalls Meleagant’s kidnapping of Guinevere that leads to the successive rescue attempts of Keu and Lancelot. The Atre’s prologue echoes Lancelot’s. The narrator claims that in telling this story about Gauvain he is responding to his lady’s expressed wishes:

162 • Lori Walters Ma dame me conmande et prie Que une aventure li die Qu’il avint au Bon Chevalier, Et je nel puis mie laiscier Quant ele le m’a conmandé. Des qu’il li plaist et vient a gré. Or oiiés com il li avint (ll. 1–6) My lady commands and entreats me To tell her a story That happened to the Good Knight, And I cannot fail to do anything When she has commanded me to do it. As soon as it pleases her and she desires it. Now hear how it happened to him. The term “Bon Chevalier” was also applied to Gauvain in the opening of the Chevalier à 1’Epée, and may have been generally associated with him in the nonGrail verse romances.29 Its use here suggests that Gauvain has gained the prestige formerly accorded to Lancelot. The copyist of Lancelot in MS 472 does not transcribe its prologue, perhaps because a similar one appears in the Atre, perhaps for other reasons that I shall deal with later. It is apparent that the Atre poet has appropriated material associated with Chrétien’s characters of Lancelot and Yvain in order to restore the reputation Gauvain was beginning to lose in the romances featuring those protagonists. Gauvain’s quest for Guinevere, mentioned in both Lancelot and Yvain, was unsuccessful. At moments in the two romances he becomes a comic figure, for example, when others have to fish him out of the water after the fiasco at the Water Bridge in Lancelot. Both Lancelot and Yvain assume other sobriquets when their reputation is in doubt; Lancelot, the “Knight of the Cart,” Yvain, the “Lion Knight.” The Atre poet patterns Gauvain’s rehabilitation on that of Yvain who must forego the identity he has at Arthur’s court and win back his good name through a series of good works largely undertaken to aid the oppressed. The program of illumination of Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS 1433, an early fourteenth-century manuscript that couples the Atre périlleux and Yvain, further brings out the parallelism between the careers of Yvain and Gauvain. The Atre poet counteracted negative traits in Gauvain’s character, which can be ultimately traced to his depiction by Chrétien de Troyes, by constructing a positive image of the knight based at least in part on other elements in Chrétien’s oeuvre. In turn, the tradition of portraying Gauvain as a true hero inaugurated by the Atre poet may have inspired the conceptualizer of MS 1433 to accent the similarities between Yvain and Gauvain.30 Although Jehan regards his protagonist with a humorous eye, Gauvain’s successful attempts to rescue Lancelot as well as Dionise in Rigomer betray a related desire to rehabilitate Gauvain. Gauvain plays a minor but important part in the third and fourth works in MS 472, Chrétien de Troyes’s Erec et Enide and Guillaume le Clerc’s Fergus.31 In his first extant romance Chrétien presents Gauvain as the standard against

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 163 which other knights are measured: “Devant toz les boens chevaliers/doit estre Gauvains li premiers” [ll. 1671–2]. Fergus, like Erec, is the best knight of the realm but for Gauvain. Fergus is a neo-Perceval who is destined to transcend Perceval as a knight.32 As opposed to what we see of Perceval in the Continuations of the Conte du Graal, Fergus engages on a quest for a wondrous shield instead of the Grail and Lance, and makes an advantageous marriage at the work’s conclusion. Guillaume draws elements for his portrait of Gauvain from several of Chrétien’s romances. Like his predecessor, Guillaume’s Gauvain is famous for rebuking Keu’s dangerous suggestions. Chrétien’s Gauvain can act variously as a wise advisor or an irreflective meddler. Whereas in Erec et Enide he sagaciously warns King Arthur of the hazards involved in reinstating the Hunt of the White Stag, in Yvain he is responsible for persuading the newlymarried protagonist to abandon his wife and home in order to engage in a round of rather gratuitous tournaments, with disastrous consequences for his marriage. The Gauvain of Fergus is clearly an avatar of his namesake in Yvain. When Fergus marries Galiene at the end of the romance, Gauvain warns him against uxoriousness and enacts a promise from him not to abandon chivalric pursuits. Other aspects of the episode indicate that Guillaume le Clerc puts into question Chrétien’s view that chivalry must be subordinate to love. He stresses the comradeship of Gauvain and Fergus throughout the romance, and gives their mutual affection more prominence at the conclusion than the love that exists between Fergus and Galiene.33 Fergus, then, represents a re-casting of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal through the intermediary of Yvain, but an Yvain that exhibits a more traditional romance structure ending in marriage while questioning the place of marriage within the chivalric universe. For Guillaume le Clerc, arms are superior rather than subordinate to love. Guillaume le Clerc’s vision of chivalry may indicate a return to the epic ideal out of which romance developed, in which male comradeship is preferable to romantic love. It may also represent a concession to the antifeminist strains implicit in the tradition of the portrayal of Gauvain as a womanizer. Hunbaut 34 occupies the fifth place in the anthology. Its author, who remains anonymous, seeks to counteract some of the negative traits that had come to be associated with the character of Gauvain in the early thirteenth century. In the romance Gauvain receives an education in true courtliness from his friend Hunbaut. Taking over the role of Arthur’s critic assumed by Gauvain himself in Erec et Enide and the Conte du Graal, Hunbaut contests the wisdom of Arthur’s decision to send Gauvain to demand the submission of the King of Isles. He explains that Gauvain’s talents are sometimes insufficient in situations requiring more than superior physical prowess. Arthur permits Hunbaut to join Gauvain who counsels the latter in a series of dangerous situations. To cite an important example, Hunbaut advises Gauvain that rather than paying attention to his host’s beautiful daughter at dinner, he should eat a copious meal to prepare himself for the following day’s

164 • Lori Walters journey through a wasteland. Gauvain ignores this advice with consequences that would have been calamitous were it not for Hunbaut’s subsequent intervention. After Gauvain and Hunbaut go their separate ways, Gauvain demonstrates he has learned his lessons well by becoming a guarantor of true courtliness. When he decides to punish a young man for his lack of politeness, his opponent turns out to be his own brother Gaheris, a fitting image of his former self. In the last section treating the quest for Gauvain’s sister, the writer tries to put to rest Gauvain’s reputation as a ladies’ man, of which his dalliance with the host’s daughter has already provided a pertinent example. Arthur and his knights stay at the Castle of Gaut Destroit whose chatelaine has placed a lifesize statue of Gauvain next to her bed. Those who believe the figure to be Gauvain in the flesh neglecting his chivalric duties in order to engage in a love affair with the lady are proven mistaken. There are numerous examples in which the author contrasts the traditional portrait of Gauvain with his later behavior in Hunbaut. As the defender of morality and the punisher of pride, he becomes a model of chivalric conduct.35 Since the romance is incomplete, evaluation of the author’s ultimate intentions is hazardous. The story breaks off after Gauvain defeats Gorvain,36 the abductor of Gauvain’s sister, in battle and sends him to Arthur’s court in order to recount what has happened. The last lines of this 3,618-verse romance (making it half as long as a “normal” romance) indicate a new development of the action. Keith Busby argues that the author would have later shown Hunbaut to be the true hero of the romance, with Gauvain playing a subsidiary role.37 Be that as it may, at the point at which the transcription of the romance terminates, Gauvain has been rehabilitated whereas Hunbaut has not yet had the opportunity to realize his potential as hero. A consideration of the endings of several works in the collection will tend to confirm the hypothesis that the conceptualizer was interested in providing a complete and rather appealing image of Gauvain. The Bel Inconnu,38 the middle work in the collection, can be seen as metaphorically figuring both the process of perpetuating the composition of works about Gauvain and the whole notion of poetic continuation in general in several ways. The hero in effect becomes the text itself. The Bel Inconnu is devoted to the adventures of Guinglain. The midpoint episode, that of the “Fier Baiser,” like many midpoint episodes in Old French romance, concerns the revelation of the hero’s identity.39 Indeed, this work recalls the midpoint of both Yvain and Lancelot in which Chrétien has his protagonist undergo a symbolic name change. Guinglain turns out to be the son of Gauvain and of Blancemal the fairy. It is a commonplace of Old French romance that lineage goes hand-in-hand with literary paternity. Thus at the heart of this collection largely concerning Gauvain we encounter Gauvain’s offspring, Guinglain, and a work spawned by the whole tradition of Gauvain sequels, a tradition that

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 165 receives an apotheosis in this manuscript. Although the Bel Inconnu appears as an independent work in Old French only in MS Chantilly 472, elements of the story are found in the Second Continuation in which a character named the Bel Inconnu later reveals himself to be Gauvain’s son. Although English, Italian, and German versions of the story exist,40 the only complete version of the tale about Guinglain in Old French is found in MS 472, a manuscript that glorifies Gauvain. In a move that parallels the extended development of the adventures of Guerrehés, Gauvain’s brother, in the First Continuation, Renaut de Beaujeu in the Bel Inconnu transfers interest from Gauvain to his son. Significant also is that the author of the First Continuation makes a reference in passing to another son of Gauvain with whom the father engages in an incognito combat. The use of other family members provides an excuse for further narrative elaboration. Although the mutilated state of the manuscript makes it virtually impossible to calculate the midpoint of the manuscript based on the number of folios, the conceptualizer seems to have chosen the Bel Inconnu, the sixth of a total of eleven texts, as the central work in the manuscript. Besides being metaphorically depicted as the production of an entirely new text closely related to earlier works, the notion of continuation in the Bel Inconnu is also represented as the possible extension of existing narrative lines. At the end of the work the narrator tells his lady that if she so desires, he will change the poem’s ending and have his protagonist leave Blonde Esmeree, whom Guinglain has just married, and return to his mistress, the Fée aux Blanches Mains. The ending, which seemed a closed ending typical of romance—a marriage—becomes, through the romancer’s art, an open ending in which elements of the previous narrative are capable of extended development. The Bel Inconnu is “about” the dynamism implicit in the romance genre that stimulates, indeed necessitates, continual participation in the process of poetic continuation. In particular, the romance celebrates narrative elaboration centering on Gauvain. The Vengeance Raguidel, 41 the next work in the collection, concerns Gauvain’s avenging of the death of a knight named Raguidel. The author, who may be Raoul de Houdenc, inserts two independent narratives treating Gauvain’s misadventures with two not very noble ladies into the main story line. At the beginning of one of these subordinate tales, the narrator acts as if he were beginning a totally new story (l. 3356, “Ci commenche Raols son conte”), a procedure similar to that seen in Rigomer. After considering several works in the anthology, we are beginning to realize, I think, that the processes of compilation used by the conceptualizer resemble to a large degree processes employed by “authors” of individual works.42 Both discrete texts and the collection in its entirety are loosely drawn together around organizing principles such as the alternation of a Gauvain quest with the quest of another knight. Although the conceptualizer seems to view Gauvain with an indulgent rather than a critical eye, he is interested in presenting a complete picture of his

166 • Lori Walters character. Thus he includes works that explore Gauvain’s unreflective involvement with women, many of whom, like Ydain in the Vengeance, have unsavory characters, as well as those that emphasize Gauvain’s strength and valor. The author of the Vengeance, for instance, even casts into doubt Gauvain’s capacities as a lover. In MS 472 Gauvain’s portrayal runs the gamut from the paragon of knighthood to the buffoon. Chrétien’s Yvain43 and Lancelot44 follow the Vengeance Raguidel. The placement of the two romances together in this order, as well as certain aspects of their presentation, seem to reflect conscious decisions on the part of the conceptualizer. We recall that Yvain contains three allusions to the plot of Lancelot, and that Chrétien uses Gauvain as a material link between the two works. The omission of the Lancelot prologue serves to accentuate the similarity of the two romances. Since Yvain lacks a formal prologue, both works begin in a similar way with the recounting of an event that took place at Arthur’s court. The separate texts thereby acquire the appearance of two parts of the same romance, recalling at once Rigomer, with its separate sections devoted to Gauvain and Lancelot, and the Bel Inconnu, with its double ending, especially since Godefroy’s continuation is also absent from MS 472. The similar blue and red initial letter “A” that heads both texts further heightens the impression that they constitute a single two-part romance. The conceptualizer may have also consciously modified the ending of Lancelot. Since no other technical problems are evident in the transcription, and since no other manuscript of the romance ends so soon, it is fair to assume that the conceptualizer’s changes were deliberate. The omission of Lancelot’s final folios accords with the tendency to feature Gauvain seen in other Arthurian pieces in the collection. The transcription of Lancelot ends at l. 5853 immediately after Guinevere has told Lancelot to fight “au noauz.” The conceptualizer may have wanted to leave his or her readers with the image of Lancelot’s humiliation so that Gauvain’s insufficiencies in the same work would be viewed less unfavorably. Chrétien’s Yvain and Lancelot are followed by a fragment of the prose Perlesvaus45 that represents a recasting of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal. At the beginning of the work we learn of the existence of problems in Arthur’s realm caused by Perceval’s failure to ask questions in the Grail castle. The major part of the Perlesvaus concerns the Grail quest of Gauvain, Lancelot, and Perceval. Only the last is successful in completing the quest. The fragment of the Perlesvaus contained in MS 472 breaks off in the middle of line 5195. This is almost exactly at the midpoint of the most complete version of the Perlesvaus, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 82. The great majority of the first half of the Perlesvaus concerns Gauvain’s quest. At the end of the transcription of the text found in MS 472, no knight has completed the Grail quest. After Lancelot learns in Branch 7 that he too will never be successful, he and Gauvain set out to seek Perceval. That character, who had only entered the action in Branch 7,

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 167 is at this time on his way to help his mother. At the point at which the work terminates, Perceval has just encountered his sister who is herself engaged on a quest. In the version of the Perlesvaus found in MS 472, the conceptualizer puts the emphasis on Gauvain in several ways: first, most of the work deals with his adventures, and second, when the work breaks off, Perceval has not yet accomplished the Grail quest and thus is not seen in a much more heroic light than Gauvain. The mention of Perceval’s sister is another example of the use of family members to facilitate continuation of a narrative. Perceval’s sister’s quest evokes not only Gauvain’s rescue of his own sister seen at the end of Hunbaut, but also the quest of Meleagant’s sister for Lancelot that Godefroy de Leigny made up (perhaps on Chrétien’s suggestion) in order to continue the original author’s incomplete story line. The mention of Perceval’s sister’s quest at the end of the Perlesvaus in MS 472 points to the absence of the story of Godefroy’s heroine at its rightful place at the end of Lancelot in the same manuscript. The evocation of a sister’s quest here points to its omission in another Arthurian story in the collection while emphasizing its artificiality as a poetic device ensuring continuation of the narrative. In order to elucidate further the organization of MS 472, we need to examine the cyclic structure of the Perlesvaus. The term “branch,” originally referring to a subdivision of a work, was soon adopted by the copyists of the prose romances who used it to designate the major divisions of the entire composition. The Merlin, for instance, is called a branch of the Vulgate cycle.46 It is perhaps worthy of note that each branch of the Perlesvaus begins with a blue and red initial letter resembling the ones that announce the individual works in the collection.47 A cyclic work, divided into branches or separate books, derives its very existence from the same structural principles—continuation of undeveloped narrative lines, the use of the same characters and situations, the interlacing of story lines (as in multiple quests)—that led to the formation of MS 472. Like the Perlesvaus of which Branch I forms the “prologue” to the entire work, 48 Rigomer functions as the prologue to the entire anthology. Although the term itself is not employed to refer to each individual text in MS 472,49 each one can, I believe, be considered a branch of the manuscript. The conceptualizer of MS 472 seems to put together a cycle based on Gauvain, a type of “geste de Gauvain.” Not only are Gauvain’s many adventures played off against the exploits of other famous and less famous Arthurian heroes, but Gauvain’s family history is likewise represented in the collection. The Atre périlleux informs us that Gauvain’s mother was a fairy. The Bel Inconnu recounts the exploits of Guinglain, son of Gauvain and of Blancemal the fairy. Gauvain’s brother, Gaheris, and Gauvain’s sister, unnamed, figure in Hunbaut. Even the Gringalet, Gauvain’s horse, appears in the Atre périlleux, Erec et Enide, the Vengeance Raguidel, and Fergus.50

168 • Lori Walters The realization that the manuscript is an example of cyclic structure may go a long way towards explaining the inclusion of several branches of the Roman de Renart at the end of the collection. The work, composed of comic animal fables, has a different character from that of the rest of the anthology and of course does not mention Gauvain. Many of the Renart episodes do, however, present burlesques of Arthurian themes, characters, and situations.51 Furthermore, the Roman de Renart presents a striking example of cyclic structure. Begun around 1175 by Pierre de Saint-Cloud, the story of Renart was augmented by the addition of other branches composed by a series of generally anonymous authors over the course of the following century. Mario Roques explains how each manuscript collection represents a different elaboration of the Renart matière. Le nombre des branches y varie, et les différences sont dues à la fois à des additions et à des suppressions: la distribution des branches dans l’ensemble de la collection diffère et surtout la façon de raccorder les branches ou les parties de branches entre elles, ou au contraire de les séparer, ou même de les dépecer.52 The number of branches varies, and the differences are due both to additions and to omissions: the distribution of the branches in the entirety of the collection differs and especially the way that the branches, or the parts of the branches amongst themselves, are put back together, or on the contrary are separated, or even broken up. The conceptualizer of each manuscript contributes greatly to the character of the work presented to the audience. The conceptualizer of MS 472 seems to play an analogous role in the diffusion of matière dealing with Gauvain. In this manuscript Gauvain becomes a type of Renart, a ubiquitous figure with qualities often touching on the burlesque. Besides prose romances and the vernacular beast fable in verse, cyclic structure characterizes the formation of the chanson de geste.53 Although different authors at various time periods wrote the parts of a geste, compilers later assembled the texts in large collections, often composing additions to tie the sections together. The unity of the collections resulted from the recurrence of essential themes as well as biographical and genealogical principles. In the chanson de geste sons spawn fathers.54 The contrary is the case in MS 472: the Bel Inconnu, like the Enfances Gauvain, appears to have been engendered by the wealth of literature concerning Gauvain. The chanson de geste does also evidence “des suites latérales” analogous to the episodes dealing with Gauvain’s siblings: chansons are devoted to brothers, nephews, and nephews’ children of epic heroes.55 Another major difference between the manifestation of cyclic structure in MS 472 and that found in the chanson de geste is that the latter is marked by

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 169 linear development. Rather than following a narrative line from beginning to end, in MS 472 we encounter a “cluster” work. Many parallel adventures about Gauvain are grouped around a text treating his son Guinglain. The identity of the person who gave MS 472 a decidedly marked character will undoubtedly always remain a mystery. One of the five or six scribes of MS 472 probably copied the signature “Colin li Fruitiers” appearing in the colophon of Fergus from another manuscript.56 As was often the case, a patron could have dictated the character of the collection to the conceptualizer. The only possible hint to the planner’s identity is the inclusion of the lyric-type prologue of the Atre périlleux in the manuscript coupled with the suppression of the prologue to Lancelot. Besides the hypotheses already advanced, the conceptualizer could have removed the prologue mentioning Chrétien’s poetic service to Marie de Champagne for fear of offending another patroness. On the other hand, the patroness might have wished to remain anonymous, in which case the inclusion of the prologue to the Atre would serve to pay her a compliment without revealing her identity. It does seem fitting that a lady would request the production of an entire anthology about Gauvain, a success with women as a lover and as a perpetual source for new stories. The conceptualizer of MS 472 or its patron(ess) evidently thought that Gauvain was worthy of having an entire collection devoted to his adventures. An analogous impulse is seen on the part of the early thirteenth-century anonymous author of the First Continuation who brought together within a single text a vast amount of material about Gauvain. It is obvious that the early fourteenth-century conceptualizer of MS 1433 viewed Gauvain as the organizing principle upon which to base the coupling of Yvain and the Atre périlleux. Like the conceptualizer of MS 472, the planner of MS 1433 sought to emphasize the importance of Gauvain, and used the program of illuminations to further make the point. MS 472 presents late thirteenth-century testimony to the dynamism of the protean figure of Gauvain, forever capable of generating new avatars of himself. Notes Reprinted, with permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers, from Neophilologus 78 (1994), 29–43. Translations have been provided by the author. 1. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980). I am grateful to Professor Busby for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. 2. Hereafter I shall refer to this person as the “conceptualizer” (“le concepteur”) or “planner” of the manuscript. The conceptualizer sometimes also serves as a scribe and/or illuminator. In this case, for reasons that will become clear in the course of this study, I do not believe that any of the scribes also planned the layout of MS 472. For a study of the role of the conceptualizer, see Beat Brenk, “Le texte et l’image dans la Vie des saints au Moyen Age: rôle du concepteur et rôle du peintre,” Texte et image: Actes du Colloque international de Chantilly (October 13–15, 1982) (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1984), 31–40. Brenk treats the case of a female conceptualizer. 3. Keith Busby, “Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances,” The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Norris J. Lacy, Douglas Kelly, and Keith Busby, Faux Titre 37 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988) 2:95; reprinted in this casebook.

170 • Lori Walters 4. For descriptions of MS 472, consult the following authors: Alexandre Micha, La Tradition manuscrite des romans de Chrétien de Troyes (1939; Geneva: Droz, 1966) 39; Wilson Frescoln, The Romance of Fergus of Guillaume le Clerc (Philadelphia: William H. Allen, 1983) 2–5; Margaret Winters, ed., The Romance of Hunbaut: An Arthurian Poem of the Thirteenth Century, Davis Medieval Texts and Studies 4 (Leiden: Brill, 1984) x–xiv; Françoise Gasparri, Geneviève Hasenohr, Christine Ruby, “De l’écriture à la lecture: réflexion sur les manuscrits d’Erec et Enide,” The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. Keith Busby, Terry Nixon, Alison Stones, and Lori Walters (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993). 5. The sections of the Renart found in MS 472 correspond to the first third of Branch II, Branches III a and b, and Branch IV of Mario Roques’s edition of the work, 6 vols., CFMA 78, 79, 81, 85, 88, 90 (Paris: Champion, 1948–1961). See p. 430 of Jean R. Scheidegger’s Le Roman de Renart ou le texte de la dérision (Geneva: Droz, 1989) for a list of the Renart stories included in MS 472 (MS K). 6. A fragment of Hunbaut also exists. See Winters xiii–xiv. 7. Winters xiii. 8. Most, but not all, of the works begin a new signature. See Frescoln 2–3. 9. The most recent estimate is five or six. See Gasparri et al. One person (identified as hand 4) probably did the greater part of the transcription. Two scribal colophons appear in the manuscript. At the conclusion of Erec et Enide a copyist adds several verses not found in any other manuscript of the romance: Bien les sot Crestïens descrivre Qui ensi les escrist el livre Et bien les i sot deviser. Ci volons no romant finer Et i doit finer par raison. Dius nos doi[n]st sa beneïçon. Chrétien, who knew well how to describe them Wrote them down in this way in the book And he knew how to arrange them well. We want to end our romance here And it is natural that it ends here. May God give us his blessing. A scribe reveals his name to be “Colin li Fruitiers” at the end of Fergus: Ici est la fin del roumans. Grans joie viegne as escoutans Et a celui qui l’escrivist. Car au faire s’entente mist. Colin li Fruitiers a non. Jesus li face vrai pardon De ses peciés! Mestiers li est Car certes moult pechieres est. Here is the end of the romance. May great joy come to those listening to it And to the one who wrote it down. Because he applied himself to the task. His name is “Colin li Fruitires” (=Colin the Fruit man; the greengrocer; the fruit merchant; the orchard keeper; the man who brings things to fruition; etc.). May Jesus grant him true pardon Of his sins! It is truly necessary Because he [Colin] certainly is a great sinner. Frescoln 4 argues convincingly that this colophon has been copied from another manuscript. Winters xiii. Gasparri et al. Others have said the end of the thirteenth century. See Winters xi. Winters xi. Lori Walters, “Le Rôle du scribe dans l’organisation des manuscrits des romans de Chrétien de Troyes,” Romania 106 (1985): 303–25. 14. For a study of the function of Gauvain in Chrétien’s “twin romances,” consult Karl D. Uitti’s chapter on the Chevalier au Lion (Yvain) in Douglas Kelly, ed., The Romances of Chrétien de 10. 11. 12. 13.

The Formation of a Gauvain Cycle in Chantilly Manuscript 472 • 171

15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

Troyes: A Symposium, The Edward C. Armstrong Monographs on Medieval Literature 3 (Lexington, Ky.: French Forum, 1985). This is one of the major themes expressed in the 2-volume Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes. Armstrong, Edward Cooke, ed., Le Chevalier à l’Epée, Diss. Johns Hopkins U, 1897 (Baltimore: John Murphy, 1900). In his “Multiple Quests in French Verse Romance: Mervelles de Rigomer and Claris et Laris,” Esprit créateur 9 (1969): 257–66, Douglas Kelly contends that the notion of multiple quests originated in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal and Lancelot. The latter was largely a reaction to the dark portrayal of Gauvain in the prose Tristan. See Busby, “Diverging Traditions” 109. Wendelin Foerster and H. Breuer, eds., Les Merveilles de Rigomer, 2 vols. (Dresden: Gesellschaft für romanische Literatur, 1908–1915). Busby, “Diverging Traditions” 106–9. Foerster, 2:55–61, divides the work into three parts: The Romance of Lancelot, ll. 18–6402; the Romance of Gauvain, ll. 6403–14774; the Romance of Dionise, ll. 14775–15916. He then considers separately the Quintefeuille episode, ll. 15917–17271. I think that Parts Two and Three can more logically be seen as constituting a section on Gauvain. See Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, “Untersuchungen zur Typik des arthurischen Romananfangs,” Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 31 (1981): 1–13. Alexandre Micha, “Le Moyen Age,” in the Dictionnaire des lettres françaises (Paris: Fayard, 1964) 509; J. Markale, Le Roi Arthur et la société celtique (Paris: Payot, 1976); Thomas E. Vesce, “Rigomer, édité d’après le ms. de Chantilly 472 (606),” Diss. Abstracts XXVIII, 1967–8, 1067 A. Brian Woledge, ed., L’Atre périlleux (Paris: Champion, 1936). Busby, “Diverging Traditions” 96–109. Busby contends that the other conspicuous example is the Chevalier aux deux Epées. Paul Meyer, ed., Les Enfances Gauvain, Romania 29 (1910): 1–32. J. D. Bruce, ed., De Ortu Walwanii (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1913). Busby, “Diverging Traditions,” 100. Brian Woledge, L’Atre périlleux: Etudes sur les manuscrits, la langue et l’importance littéraire du poème, avec un spécimen du texte (Paris: Droz, 1930) 93. Busby, “Diverging Traditions” 102. See also his “‘Li Buens Chevaliers’ ou ‘un buens chevaliers’? Perlesvaus et Gauvain dans le Perlesvaus,” Revue Romane 19 (1984): 85–97. See my “The Creation of a ‘Super Romance’: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français, MS 1433,” The Arthurian Yearbook 1 (New York: Garland, 1991): 3–25, with accompanying plates. Frescoln. D. D. R. Owen, “The Craft of Guillaume le Clerc’s Fergus,” The Craft of Fiction: Essays in Medieval Poetics (Rochester, MI: Solaris, 1984). See also Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann, “Der französischen Artusroman in Versen nach Chrétien de Troyes,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 57 (1983): 415–30. Owen 76–7. Winters. See Norris Lacy’s “The Character of Gauvain in Hunbaut,” BBIAS 38 (1986): 298–305. Lacy affirms that Gauvain appears to evolve—albeit rather abruptly—in the work. Busby, on the other hand, stresses Gauvain’s lack of development in the tradition and in Hunbaut in particular. See his “Diverging Traditions” 96–7, as well as his “Caractérisation par contraste dans le roman de Hunbaut,” Studia Neophilologica 52 (1980): 415–24. The episode recalls Raoul de Houdenc’s Meraugis de Portlesguez which deals with the rivalry between Meraugis and Gorvain Cadrut for the love of a woman. Busby, “Diverging Traditions” 96–7. G. Perrie Williams, ed., Le Bel Inconnu de Renaut de Beaujeu, CFMA 38 (Paris: Champion, 1978). See Uitti’s remarks concerning the midpoint on p. 207 of his chapter on Yvain in The Romances. Williams x. M. Friedwagner, ed., La Vengeance Raguidel (Halle, 1909). See Sylvia Huot, From Song to Book: The Poetics of Writing in Old French Lyric and Lyrical Narrative Poetry (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987).

172 • Lori Walters 43. Mario Roques, ed., Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), CFMA 89 (Paris: Champion, 1978). 44. Mario Roques, ed., Le Chevalier de la Charrete (Lancelot), CFMA 86 (Paris: Champion, 1981). 45. W. A. Nitze and T. Atkinson Jenkins, eds., Le Haut Livre du Graal: Perlesvaus, 2 vols. (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1932). 46. For a discussion of the term “branch,” consult C. E. Pickford, L’Evolution du roman arthurien en prose (Paris: Nizet, 1960) 145ff. 47. A similar initial letter also marks the beginning of episodes in the Perlesvaus introduced by the formula “Or dist li contes.” 48. Nitze and Jenkins, vol. 1, 14. 49. An example does exist of a manuscript containing works other than prose romances in which each constituent text is referred to as a “branch” of the whole. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français, MS 375, bearing the date of 1288, represents a collection of texts belonging to different genres. It includes several romans antiques and Chrétien’s Cligés and Erec et Enide. See my “Le Rôle du scribe,” Micha 29–32, and The Manuscripts of Chrétien de Troyes for detailed descriptions of the manuscript. 50. The processes at work in MS 472 are similar to those found in the First Continuation, a work about Gauvain that ends up introducing the reader to many members of his family. 51. See Scheidegger 293–304, “Le chevalerie en renardie,” especially 302 where he cites a similarity between Renard and Gauvain. 52. Roques, Renart, vol. 1, 5. 53. On p. 39 of Les Chansons de geste du cycle de Guillaume d’Orange. 2 vols. (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignment supérieur, 1955), Jean Frappier compares the composition of the Renart to that of the cycle of Guillaume d’Orange. 54. Frappier, vol. 63. 55. Frappier, vol. 63. 56. See n. 9 above.

8

The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances FANNI BOGDANOW

In Malory’s Arthurian Tales Gauvain is found in two entirely different roles: in some of the Tales he is the model of chivalry, while in others he is treacherous and vindictive. These inconsistencies, as Professor Eugène Vinaver has shown in a number of illuminating studies, were not introduced by Malory himself, but were already in his French sources.1 There are, in fact, two distinct traditions concerning Gauvain. In the twelfth-century verse romances Gauvain was the embodiment of all chivalric virtues. Though never the title hero, he is represented as the best of Arthur’s knights: Devant toz les buens chevaliers Doit estre Gauvains li premiers (Erec, ll. 1691–2) Among all the good knights Gauvain must be considered the most outstanding He is renowned for his courtesy, his modesty and above all his sens or wisdom. In battle he is practically invincible, and the greatest honour that could befall any knight was to avoid being defeated by Gauvain. He is also the perfect lover. In the thirteenth-century prose romances, however, his character is modified until finally he assumes the role of a villain and becomes the most cruel and treacherous of all knights.2 How did this change come about? The Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romances, written between 1215 and 1230, was not conceived as a whole, but grew up in stages.3 The original romance, the Roman de Lancelot, consisting of the Lancelot proper, the Queste del Saint Graal, and the Mort Artu, centres on the life and adventures of Lancelot. Subsequently were added two more branches, the Estoire del Saint Graal, a prehistory of the Grail, and the Estoire de Merlin, an account of the story of Arthur’s kingdom before the birth of Lancelot. It has been said that the author of the Roman de Lancelot began by presenting earthly chivalry in an attractive light in order to condemn it the more effectively in the Grail section; those who have risen highest in the world of Arthur’s court will sink lowest in the

173

174 • Fanni Bogdanow world of the Grail.4 Hence a certain modification in the treatment of the characters, including Gauvain. In the greater part of the Lancelot proper, Gauvain preserves his traditional character of the perfect knight and lover. Though he no longer serves as in Chrétien as a model for others, he remains one of the best knights, second only to Lancelot whose devoted friend he is. He is ever ready to champion the cause of the poor and the oppressed, and is merciful to his defeated opponents. He is neither envious nor proud and boastful, but courteous, humble and restrained.5 But since God has no place in his life, his earthly virtues cannot help him, and a number of passages foreshadow his ignoble role in the Queste, where he typifies the hardened sinner, whose misfortune is symbolized by his involuntary slaying of his best friends. When one Saturday evening he arrives at a hermitage, he is rebuked for riding on the eve of a holy day. 6 Later on, when he comes to Corbenic, even greater shame befalls him. While he is talking to King Pelles and the other knights in the main hall, a white dove flies in bearing a censer, whereupon all kneel down in prayer except Gauvain, who is highly amused and laughs: ‘De ceste aventure fu mesires Gauvain moult esmerveilliés, si s’assist avec les autres et s’en rit de chou qu’il les vit en proieres et en orisons’ (Gauvain was greatly amazed at this adventure; he sat down with the others and laughed because he saw them praying).7 Similarly, when shortly afterwards a beautiful damsel enters carrying the Grail, all bow their heads except Gauvain who fails to understand the significance of the holy vessel and admires only the precious metal of which it is made and the beauty of the damsel who bears it. Consequently he alone is not fed by the grace of the vessel, and when the knights have left the hall, a dwarf insults him, calling him ‘malvais chevalier’ (evil knight) and bidding him flee, ‘quar trop a en vous vil chose’ (for there is immense evil in you).8 Finally, after witnessing the adventures of the palais aventureux, Gauvain is carried out into the courtyard and bound to a cart drawn by an emaciated horse. The following morning an old woman drives him round the town, and the people throw refuse at him. He is freed at the bridge and goes away cursing the hour that he was born, ‘quar ore est il li plus vils chevaliers del monde’ (for now he is the vilest knight in the world).9 In the Mort Artu Gauvain recognizes that he has slain in the Quest of the Grail many knights, not through his valour, but because of his sin.10 He is partially rehabilitated, but a new trait is added to his character, which will reappear in the later prose romances, that is his démesure—an inordinate desire for vengeance. After Lancelot has inadvertently killed Gauvain’s beloved brother Gaheriet, Gauvain’s love for his best friend turns to hatred. It is he who urges Arthur to besiege Lancelot in Joieuse Garde and carry the war thence to Gaunes.11 But his outrage is inspired solely by his grief, and he is ready to meet Lancelot in single combat. Shortly before his death he has the humility to recognize his felonnie and begs Lancelot’s forgiveness. He dies mourned by all, for in the words of the author, ‘mesire Gauvains avoit esté li chevaliers el monde

The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances • 175 plus amés de diverses gens’ (my lord Gauvain had been the knight most loved by various people).12 In the Prose romance of Tristan, the First Version of which was written about 1230 and the Second Version probably after 1250, Gauvain again is condemned, but on other grounds than in certain sections of the Vulgate Cycle.13 The redactor of the Prose Tristan introduces a strict division of the characters into heroes and villains. Just as Tristan is exalted and Mark degraded, so Galaad, Lancelot, Palamedes, Lamorac and Drian are represented as the best knights in the world, while Brehus sans pitié and Gauvain and all his brothers with the exception of Gaheriet are treated as the enemies of true knighthood.14 The author’s purpose is to enhance the prestige of his title hero. Whereas the Lancelot describes Gauvain as ‘moult biaus chevaliers de cors’ (a very handsome knight),15 the Prose Tristan refers to him as small and insignificant, especially by the side of Tristan: ‘car trop estoit petis au resgart de lui’ (for he was very small as compared to him).16 We are told that as Gauvain grew old he became ‘uns des plus felons chevaliers ki fust en la court le roi Artu’ (one of the most treacherous knights there ever was in King Arthur’s court).17 His career is one long record of the blackest misdeeds. Instead of fulfilling his duties as a knight of the Round Table and aiding widows and damsels in distress, he is discourteous and even cruel to them. Hence he is hated by many and frequently humiliated and discomfited. Once, after he has taken a beautiful damsel by force from an unarmed knight, Drian challenges him and tells him in Yvain’s presence what he thinks of him: ‘Trop estes plus felon cruel que je ne cuidoie. Si m’aïst Diex, je vos ai jusquez ci tenu a cortois et a debonaire, mais certes j’ai orez tant trové en vos a cestui point que je voi bien que vos estes vilain chevalier et plain de trop grant felonnie, si ne vos en porroit venir se honte non’ (You are more felonious and cruel than I thought. So God help me, until now I considered you courteous and considerate, but to be sure I have now found in you such discourtesy that I realize that you are the most villainous and treacherous knight, so much so that only shame could befall you).18 Gauvain, ashamed to be reprimanded in front of his cousin, gives up the damsel and goes away. On another occasion Tristan, having defeated Gauvain, advises him to mend his ways.19 Gauvain ignores the advice. One day, coming to the pavilion where Yseut was alone with her damsels, Gauvain, out of spite against Tristan, rides straight up to her and tells her without greeting her that she is not as beautiful as people say. Erec immediately fetches his armour and inflicts a grievous wound on Gauvain. He then removes Gauvain’s helmet and makes him feel thoroughly ashamed that all should know who he is: ‘Et saciés bien vraiement que plus li poise de sa vergoigne qu’il ne fait de la plaie qu’il avoit receue a cestui point’ (And know in truth that the shame he felt hurt him more than the wound that had been inflicted on him at that point).20

176 • Fanni Bogdanow Above all, Gauvain is envious of every good knight, and cannot bear to be outshone by anyone without seeking vengeance. On one occasion, after Gauvain and Agravain had been unhorsed by Blioberis who had not recognized them, the two brothers decide to kill Blioberis if they find him asleep by a fountain. When they arrive Blioberis is already on horseback, and Gauvain cannot refrain from expressing his disappointment, for he knows that they will not be able to overcome Blioberis now that he is armed: ‘Gauvain qui trop est dolanz de ce que il ne l’ont trouvé a pié et aucquez desarmé, parole molt iriez et dit: “Ha! Diex . . . tant il nos est mescheoit. Trop avons demoré” (Gauvain who is deeply distressed because they did not find him on foot and without armour, utters in his distress the words: “Ah! God . . . things have turned out so badly for us. We have stayed here too long”).21 But the knights whom Gauvain hates most are Pellinor’s four sons, in particular Lamorat and Drian. The ostensible reason is that Pellinor had slain Gauvain’s father, King Lot. Gauvain has already killed Pellinor to avenge his father’s death, but this does not suffice him, for he really hates Lamorat and Drian because they are better knights than he is: ‘Il [i.e. Gauvain] . . . dit qe il ne reçoit en lieu ou il viengne honte ne corroz fors par les fiz Pellynor. Seux trove il en quelquez lieu que il viengne, et Lamorat plus qe nuls des autres. Se il celx peust metre a mort, il li est avis qe il adonc peust fere par le monde tote sa volenté, car il ne trove oncques autre gens qui honte li face fors seulement celle lignee’ (Gauvain . . . said that never in any place where he had been did he receive shame and dishonour except at the hands of Pellinor’s sons. Them he encountered wherever he went, and Lamorat more than any of the others. If he could kill them, it seems to him that he could do then everything in the world that he wanted, for he had never found any people who had done him so much shame as that lineage only).22 Agravain and Mordred share Gauvain’s feelings. Only Gaheriet is more charitable, and begs Gauvain to remember how on more than one occasion Lamorat had risked his life for his sake.23 But all this is of no avail, for Gauvain is determined to kill Lamorat and Drian. He seeks them for many years, and at long last, after joining Agravain and Mordred, he finds Drian in the forest of La Cenne. Drian succeeds in unhorsing Agravain and Mordred, but is mortally wounded by Gauvain. Soon Lamorat arrives on the scene and Drian begs him to avenge his death. Though suffering from wounds received in a recent combat, Lamorat goes after his brother’s aggressors. He finds them in a valley and challenges Gauvain. The latter is unhorsed, but Agravain and Mordred strike down Lamorat. Gauvain then tears off Lamorat’s helmet, and as the latter refuses to declare himself vanquished, beheads him after having told him that he has done the same to his father.24 A long romance, beginning with the Estoire del Saint Graal and followed by the Suite du Merlin and the Post-Vulgate versions of the Queste and Mort Artu, was written after the Vulgate Cycle and the First Version of the Prose Tristan,

The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances • 177 but before the Palamedes. This work, which used to be called the ‘pseudoRobert de Borron Cycle’, but which I should prefer to call the Roman du Graal, 25 deals with the story of the rise and fall of Arthur’s kingdom, the roiaume aventureux, and derives much of its material from the earlier cyclic compositions. Gauvain is presented in much the same light as in the Prose Tristan, but the author attempts to build up a more consistent picture of him. But he does so, as Professor Vinaver alone has realized, in a manner characteristic of thirteenth-century writers, by supplying ‘motive and circumstance’, where the sources fail to do so.26 For instance, the Prose Tristan, as we have just seen, mentions that one of the reasons for the feud between Gauvain and Pellinor’s lineage was that Pellinor had slain King Lot, the father of Gauvain and his brothers. It does not explain, however, in what circumstances Pellinor slew Lot, and it was left to the author of the Suite du Merlin, who took over from the Prose Tristan the feud theme, not only to relate in detail the fatal battle in which Lot was killed, but to invent the sequence of events leading up to the battle. After King Arthur has been told that a child born on May Day will cause his death and destroy Logres, he has all the children born that day assembled at Camelot and put in a rudderless boat. Arthur’s brother-in-law, King Lot, sends his child too, and although the infant escapes by a lucky accident, Lot thinks it has perished with the other children and makes war on Arthur. In the battle Pellinor kills Lot. At Lot’s funeral, Gauvain, then a small boy of eleven, swears to take vengeance.27 Later, when Pellinor is given a seat at the Round Table, Gauvain renews his vow and is spurred on by his younger brother Gaheriet.28 But this is not all. The Suite predicts also the circumstances in which Gauvain will slay Pellinor. Shortly after Arthur’s marriage, Merlin tells Arthur in confidence that twelve years from now the son of the dead king will meet Pellinor and vanquish him, leaving him on the ground ‘aussi comme demi mort’ (half-dead).29 At noon or in the evening Keu will pass by pursued by Tor. Pellinor will cry out for help to his son Tor, but the latter will not recognize his father and will pass on. A little later, as mischance would have it, Gauvain will return and, recognizing Pellinor, will behead him.30 The other Gauvain episodes in the Suite likewise serve to foreshadow the vindictive and merciless knight of the later portions of the romance. Shortly after being knighted Gauvain takes part in the quest of the white stag. He is accompanied by his young brother Gaheriet who serves him as squire. On the way Gauvain comes to a river guarded by a knight who forbids him to cross, and Gauvain kills him outright: ‘Teuls fu li premiers caus que Gavains fist, li fius le roi Loth d’Orkanie, apriés chou qu’il ot recheut l’ounour de chevalerie’ (This was the first blow struck by Gauvain, the son of King Lot of Orkney, after he received the honour of knighthood).31 Soon after Gauvain, still in pursuit of the white stag, comes to a castle where the dogs kill the stag. A knight within, who is greatly grieved at the death of the stag, kills two of the dogs. Then he challenges Gauvain, and there follows a long combat. At last the

178 • Fanni Bogdanow knight falls down from exhaustion, and begs Gauvain for mercy, but Gauvain, angered because the knight had killed the dogs, refuses to spare him: ‘. . . “Je n’avrai ja de toi merchi”, fait Gavains; “car tu m’as trop courechié de mes brakés que tu m’as ochis”. “Se je ne truis en toi merchi”, fait li chevaliers, “puis que je le te demanch, on te devera tenir au plus desloial et au plus felon chevalier qui onques portast armes”. “Che n’a mestier”, che dist Gavains; “ja pour chose que tu me dies n’escaperas, ains i morras orendroit”’ (“I shall never have mercy on you,” said Gauvain, “for you have angered me greatly in having killed my dogs.” “If, since I beg you, I do not find mercy in you,” said the knight, “one must consider you the most disloyal and felonious knight who ever bore arms.” “That is of no avail,” Gauvain responded; “no matter what you are saying to me, you will never escape, but die forthwith”).32 Gauvain raises his sword to behead the knight, but at that very moment the knight’s damsel enters and interposes herself between him and Gauvain. And Gauvain, to the horror of his brother, slays the damsel: ‘Ha! frere, que es che que vous avés fait, qui ceste damoisiele avés occhise? Certes ja chevaliers ne deust tel vilonnie faire pour courous ne por haine qu’il euust a homme né’ (Ah, brother, what have you done, you who have killed this damsel? Most certainly a knight should never commit such villainy on account of anger or hate that he feels for any man).33 When Gauvain realizes what he has done, he is grieved and spares the knight. Soon after, four knights appear. Gauvain and Gaheriet are imprisoned, but freed the following morning by the mistress of the castle on condition that Gauvain returns to court with the head of the damsel. As was the custom, Gauvain relates all his adventures, ‘qu’il ne laissa riens ne pour honte qu’il euust ne pour cruauté que on i peuust entendre’ (for he does not omit anything, either for the shame he felt or for the cruelty of which he could be judged guilty).34 The Queen and all her damsels make Gauvain swear never again to lay hands on a damsel, and Merlin makes him promise to be in future more merciful to defeated knights.35 But Gauvain soon breaks his oath and in the Post-Vulgate Quest section he slays many knights treacherously, including Palamedes and Erec.36 The Palamedes, which was in existence by 1240,37 contains a large amount of material adapted from the earlier Arthurian prose romances. It relates the history of Tristan’s ancestors, and the real heroes of the work are the knights of the older generation—Tristan’s father Melyadus, King Lac, Le Bon Chevalier sans peur, Pellinor and the Morholt. Arthur is represented as a newly-crowned king and his young knights, of whom Gauvain is one, play a comparatively minor part. The author is aware of the two conflicting traditions concerning Gauvain and attempts to reconcile them by saying that Gauvain became treacherous only as he grew older. Frequent comments on the change in Gauvain’s character are inserted into the narrative. We are told that he was full of courtesy and valour until the time of the war between Arthur and Galehaut. Gauvain exerted himself so much in this war on Arthur’s behalf that he never

The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances • 179 fully recovered his strength afterwards. Out of grief and envy he then began to commit treachery: Missire Gauvain se tint bien en un estat en force et en bonté de chevalerie et de cortoisie dusqu’a l’assemblee de Galehot et del roi Artus. Mes illuec soffri tant et tant fist d’armes qu’il i perdi molt grant partie de sa force si qu’il ne fu puis de la bonté ne de la valor qu’il avoit devant esté. Et del duel qu’il en ot fist il puis maintes grant vilainies et mainte grant felonie que la Table Reonde achaita molt cherement.38 My lord Gauvain remained a good and valiant and courteous knight until the conflict between Galehot’s and Arthur’s men. But there he suffered so greatly and exerted himself to such an extent that he lost so much of his strength that he never again was able to display the same valour as before. And on account of the distress he felt, he committed subsequently so many deeds of villainy and treachery for which the Round Table paid dearly. To make the change in Gauvain’s character appear plausible the author indicates moreover, at several points, how already the young Gauvain became readily angered if defeated in a combat. At the beginning of his reign, Arthur used to go in quest of adventures like an ordinary knight to test his strength. On one occasion he took stand by a ford, and made all who wished to pass joust with him. Gauvain and his three companions are all unhorsed, but Gauvain alone is angered: ‘Missire Gauvain en est tant durement iriez qu’a poi qu’il ne crieve de duel’ (My lord Gauvain is so greatly angered that he almost bursts for grief).39 Equally significant is the account of the first tournament in which Gauvain takes part. Gauvain does well, but Blioberis does even better, and when Gauvain hears everyone praising Blioberis and there is not a word for him, he tries at first to exert himself more, but when he sees that it is in vain, he begins to cry out of grief and anger: Molt s’esforce durement de pris avoir et conquester. Et quant il voit que noiant estoit quant qu’il faisoit avers ce que faisoit missire Blyoberis de Gaunes, et que tout li mondes vait loant Blyoberis et nuls ne le loe, ce est une chose qui le fait morir de duel, et qui li met tel dolor el cuer que les lermes li viegnent as oilz.40 He strives greatly to gain recognition and to triumph. And when he recognises that whatever he did was in vain in comparison to Blyoberis de Gaunes, and that everyone was praising Blyoberis but no one him, this is something that made him almost die of grief and causes him such sorrow in his heart that tears come to his eyes. All this seems to suggest that the transformation of Gauvain’s role in the prose romances is due to the differences in the nature and structure of the

180 • Fanni Bogdanow successive works in which Gauvain appears. The Vulgate Cycle condemns Gauvain on religious grounds; the Prose Tristan, on the other hand, taking up the theme of Gauvain’s démesure first introduced in the Mort Artu, makes him into a villain for the benefit of the title hero; the Suite du Merlin and the longer romance of which it forms part take over from the Prose Tristan the conception of a treacherous and vindictive knight, but invent numerous new adventures to elucidate those adapted from the Prose Tristan. Finally, the Palamedes attempts to reconcile the two different traditions by supplying reasons for the change in Gauvain’s character. And perhaps the most significant thing of all is that the explanation comes at the very end of the process, as is natural at a time when later writers consistently rationalize and elucidate the work of earlier ones. The successive attempts to account for Gauvain’s character and to motivate his behaviour are among the best examples of this characteristic tendency of thirteenth-century romance writers. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Reprinted with permission from Medium Aevum, 27 (1958), 154–61. Translations have been provided by the author. On the character of Gauvain in Malory, see E. Vinaver The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Oxford 1947) III 1423, and ‘A romance of Gaheret’ Medium Aevum I (1932) 157–67. Cf. W. A. Nitze ‘The character of Gauvain in the romances of Chrétien de Troyes,’ Modern Philology L (1952–3), 219–25 [reprinted in this casebook]; B. K. Ray ‘The character of Gauvain’ Dacca University Bulletin XI (1926). The whole Vulgate Cycle has been edited by H. O. Sommer (The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances Washington 1909–16). The Queste del Saint Graal has been edited separately by A. Pauphilet (Paris 1927), and the Mort Artu by J. Frappier (Paris 1936 and 1954). Cf. E. Vinaver Malory (Oxford 1929) pp. 72–5; also A. Pauphilet Études sur la Queste del Saint Graal (Paris 1921) pp. 126–7. See Vulgate Version IV, 358, 20–42. In particular note p. 358, 39–42: ‘Il ne fu mie mesdisans ne envieus, ainçois fu tous jors plus cortois que nus. . . . Il ne fu mie vantans entre chevaliers de cose qu’il feist onques. Il fu tous jors sages et atemprés et sans vilonnie dire’ (He was neither ill-spoken nor envious, but was always more courteous than anyone else. . . . He was not boastful among knights about anything he had ever done. He was always wise and temperate and never made a villainous comment). Ib. p. 148. 8–14: ‘Certes, sire, fait li freres, jou ne vous tieng mie a si sage comme maintes gens vous em portent le renon et comme jou ai oï dire par maintes fois, quant vous chevalchiés le samedi aprés nonne a si haut jor comme il est hui. . .’ (“Certainly, my lord,” said the hermit, “I do not consider you as wise as many people judge you to be and as I have often heard say, since you ride on a Saturday evening on so holy a day as today”). Ib., 343. 26–7. Ib., 344. 25. Ib., 348. 1–2. La Morte le Roi Artu, ed. Frappier (Paris 1936) pp. 4–5. Ib., p. 163. Ib., p. 195. 17–18. The Vulgate Merlin continuation (Vulgate Version II) preserves the traditional character of Gauvain as a model knight: cf. A. Micha ‘La Suite-Vulgate du Merlin, étude litteraire’ Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 71 (1955) 46–7. On the two versions of the Prose Tristan, see E. Vinaver Études sur le Tristan en prose, les sources, les manuscrits, Bibliographie critique (Paris 1925). The Prose Tristan has not yet been edited in full, but for a good summary see E. Loeseth Le Roman en prose de Tristan, le roman de Palamède et la compilation de Rusticien de Pise, analyse critique d’après les manuscrits de Paris (Bibl. de l’École des Hautes Études, fasc. 82 (Paris) 1891). In 1905 Loeseth gave a summary of the Tristan MSS. in the British Museum, and in 1924 of those of Rome and Florence.

The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances • 181

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

On the character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan, see E. Vinaver ‘A Romance of Gaheret’ Medium Aevum I 163–5; and The Works of Sir Thomas Malory III 1423. A later hand has eradicated in MS. B.N. fr. 772 the name of Gauvain whenever he appears in an unfavourable role (see Loeseth Analyse § 449b p. 309 n. 1 and § 296 p. 224 n. 1). Vulgate Version IV 358. 25–6. Vienna, Bib. Nat. MS. 2542, f. 144 v. 2 (cf. Loeseth § 116). Ib., f. 10 r.3 (cf. Loeseth § 37). MS. B.N. fr. 757, f. 57c (cf. Loeseth § 304). Vienna, Bib. Nat. MS. 2542, f. 419 v. 2–3 (cf. Loeseth § 474). Ib., f. 391 v. 1 (cf. Loeseth § 421). MS. B.N. fr. 757, f 50b (cf. Loeseth § 297). Ib., f. 62a (cf. Loeseth § 306). Ib., ff. 59b–60d (cf. Loeseth § 305). See Loeseth § 307. The Suite du Merlin has been preserved partially in MS. Brit. Mus. Add. 38117 (‘Huth MS.’), Cambridge University Library MS. Add. 7071, MS. B.N. fr. 112, Sienna, State Archives (unnumbered fragment of 2 folios). The Huth MS. has been edited by G. Paris (Merlin, roman en prose du XIIIe siècle, SATF, 2 vols. Paris 1886), and the 112 fragment by H. O. Sommer (Die Abenteuer Gawains, Ywains und Le Morholts mit den drei Jungfrauen, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie, Beiheft 47 Halle 1913). The Post-Vulgate versions of the Queste and Mort Artu, of which I am preparing a critical edition [this edition has since been published as La Queste del Saint Graal et la Mort Artu Post-Vulgate, Troisième Partie du Roman du Graal (Paris, SATF, 1991)], have been preserved in MSS. B.N. fr. 112, 343, and certain MSS. of the Second Version of the Prose Tristan. A translation of them is found in the Portuguese Demanda do Santo Graal (ed. A. Magne, Rio de Janeiro 1944). The Works of Sir Thomas Malory III 1265–73; ‘La genèse de la Suite du Merlin’ Mélanges de Philologie romane et de Littérature médiévale offerts à Ernest Hoepffner (Paris 1949) pp. 296–8; Introduction to Le Roman de Balain (Manchester 1942) pp. xi–xxii. Huth Merlin I 261–3. Ib., II 75–6. Ib., II 138. Ib., II 138–9. Ib., II 85. Ib., II 88–9. Ib., II 89. Ib., II 98. Ib., II 100. For the death of Palamedes, see Loeseth § 565; for the death of Erec, MS. B.N. fr. 112, Livre IV, ff. 110b–114b. On the date of the Palamedes, see J. D. Bruce The Evolution of Arthurian romance (Göttingen and Baltimore 1923, II, 21, n. 4. The Palamedes has so far not been edited. For the most upto-date list of Palamedes MSS., see B. Woledge Bibliographie des Romans et nouvelles en prose française antérieurs à 1500 (Genève 1954) pp. 87–8. MS. Brit. Mus. Add. 12228, ff. 81d–82a. Cf. also f. 71a, and Loeseth p. 441, n. 1, and p. 439, n. 4. MS. Brit. Mus. Add. 12228, f. 82c. Ib., f. 152a.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

9

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan KEITH BUSBY

It is a well known fact that the Gauvain of the Prose Tristan is quite a different figure from the one of the earlier romances, but since so little of this important text is available outside the manuscript rooms of major libraries, it has been until now difficult to support this assertion by quotation. It is the aim of this article to sketch the character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan by reference to two manuscripts of the romance, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MSS.fr.757 and 772, and if, on occasions, this article seems to consist of a brief statement followed by a lengthy quotation, this is precisely because so little of the text is yet in print. It is hoped that students of Malory will find something of interest here, as well as students of French literature, since the Prose Tristan is one of the sources of Malory’s Book of Sir Tristrem.1 Gauvain’s status in this work is often referred to in critical studies without the possibility of giving a quickly verifiable source, and it is therefore hoped that this article will go some small way to remedy that situation. The general outline of the rise and fall of Arthur’s nephew as a respected and beloved figure in the French romances is sufficiently well known not to necessitate repetition here,2 but it would be as well to put the Prose Tristan in some kind of literary context. Probably because of the large number of manuscripts and their complex interrelationship, the Prose Tristan has been largely ignored by modern scholars, and for many years the only real work on the subject was the Analyse of Löseth.3 This is, to say the least, a confusing book to use, as Löseth’s folio references are sporadic, and the actual layout of the book, with all the narrative variants, has certainly not encouraged scholars to give the romance more than a passing glance. But now that the work of Professors Vinaver and Pickford and Dr. Bogdanow4 has enabled us to see just how the later prose romances were constructed, progress is beginning to be made. Mme. Baumgartner’s recently published study of the romance5 is a contribution of the first order to Arthurian scholarship, and should help us to work much more confidently with the text.

183

184 • Keith Busby Chronologically speaking, the Prose Tristan is the next major Arthurian romance after the great Lancelot-Graal cycle. Although it can be dated about 1230–40, a major problem for editors is trying to decide which of the manuscripts preserves the earliest version. It was for many years thought that there were two distinct redactions, a first version and a second longer one, but this does not now seem to be the case. Mme. Baumgartner, after having considered the theories of Löseth and Vinaver, who both uphold the notion of a first and second version, comes to the conclusion that the manuscripts cannot in fact be classified in this way.6 Although they may be grouped into small families, the divergences between the families are so great that it is impossible to choose a base manuscript as one might do for, say, a romance by Chrétien. All an editor can hope to do, therefore, is to reproduce what his manuscript contains. The question then arises whether we can actually speak of the Prose Tristan at all. To answer in the negative would be to take an extreme standpoint, one which I doubt would be helpful, and since most of the redactors of the various versions use Gauvain in a very similar way, I shall continue to refer to the Prose Tristan as one romance. Anyone reading these texts, even coming fresh from a study of Gauvain in the Lancelot-Graal, will be surprised by the change in the qualities attributed to him here. I think it is safe to say that romancers saw opportunities for criticizing the figure of Gauvain right from the very outset: Chrétien de Troyes exercised his gentle sense of humour at Gauvain’s expense, and his successors in the field of “secular” romance took the direction pointed out by the master. “Secular” here may be equated with verse, so long as one excludes the various continuations of the Conte du Graal. None of these secular romances do any more than make fun of Gauvain, and he always emerges a sympathetic figure, despite his faults. Only when the moralists take hold of the Arthurian legend to show the limitations of the chivalric code, and to suggest an alternative to it, or perhaps extension of it, does the attitude to Gauvain begin to harden. Without going into detail about the multiple or double authorship of the Lancelot-Graal, it seems that the unbending author of the Queste del Saint Graal is hardest on Gauvain. His tendency to see things in black and white, and rarely in shades of grey, obliges him to consider Gauvain a lost soul, despite his positive qualities. Oddly enough, though, it is upon the Gauvain of La Mort le roi Artu that the author of the Prose Tristan seems to have drawn most. This final part of the cycle is unquestionably a more “human” work than its predecessor and was certainly written by a different man. La Mort le roi Artu refuses to condemn any of the characters outright, save those elements consciously bent on destroying the authority of Arthur. Gauvain in the Mort Artu possesses a tragic stature: we see a man of extraordinary grandeur and nobility, fidelity and prowess, but one who falls prey to an obsession he cannot control. In certain versions of the Prose Tristan, Gauvain may actually seem to become less unpleasant towards the end, but this is because the compilators of

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 185 the romance have interpolated, albeit with some modification, the Mort Artu wholesale into the body of their text. The obsession with vengeance and concern for the family honour is perhaps the main feature that the Prose Tristan has taken over from the Mort Artu, and it becomes the motivating factor of many of Gauvain’s blackest misdeeds in the later romance. Family honour turns into a vendetta against the lineage of Lancelot in the Mort Artu, but whereas the Gauvain of this romance finally repents and asks forgiveness of Lancelot, no such saving grace is accorded him in the Prose Tristan. He is an out and out villain, pursuing his vendetta against the sons of Pellinor with a savagery inconceivable in the Gauvain of any previous romance. The causes of the feud between the sons of Pellinor and those of Lot are several: the murder of Lot by Pellinor, the love of Lot’s widow for Lamorat, and Gaheriet’s subsequent murder of his own mother: Messire Gauvains et tuit si autre frere, fors seulement Gaheriés, haoient de mortel haine les quatre filz au roi Pellinor, et estoit cele haine venue de plusieurs achoisons. Ele estoit premierement venue du roi Pellinor et estoit celle haine qui avoit ocis le roi Loth d’Orcanie qui estoit pere Gauvain et aux autres freres. Més tele vanjance avoit ja esté prise que messire Gauvains avoit ocis de ses mains le roi Pellinor. De ceste chose ne savoient riens li enfans le roi Pellinor, car se il eussent seu, il eussent vengié la mort leur pere, que il ne lessassent ne por le roi Artu ne por autre chose. Aprés ces deuz morz estoit la haine renovelee por la royne de Cornoaille qui mere estoit Gauvain et aux autres freres, car la roine avoit en Lamorat si mis sen cuer por la proesce que elle savoit en lui que elle n’amoit riens du monde autant conme elle fesoit lui. La royne estoit de grant biauté et por ce l’amoit Lamorat de tout son cuer. Tuit li frere monseigneur Gauvain qui ceste chose savoient vraiment en estoient courrociez, et a grant desdaing lor tornoit de ce que lor mere s’estoit abandonee au filz de celui qi / lor pere avoit ocis. Més il n’en i avoit nul si dolent come estoit Gaheriés, et li gentix chevaliers, li plus vaillant chevaliers et li plus cortois et li plus prisiez en toutes choses de tous les cinq freres. Cil en avoit vers sa mere trop grant cuer, ne il ne haoit pas de cestui fet si durement Lamorat conme il haoit sa mere et en lesa aller. Que vous diroie je? Assez dura ceste rancune et tant que Gaheriés trouva sa mere avec Lamorat. Il fu tant yriez de ceste chose que il en ocist sa mere et en lessa aler tout quite Lamorat que mal ne li fist.7 Sir Gauvain and all his other brothers, except Gaheriet, hated the four sons of King Pellinor with a mortal hatred that had several causes. It came first from King Pellinor who had killed King Loth of Orkney, who was the father of Gauvain and the other brothers, but such vengeance had already been wrought because Sir Gauvain had killed King Pellinor

186 • Keith Busby with his own hands. The children of King Pellinor knew nothing of this, for if they had known, they would have avenged the death of their father, and would have pesisted in spite of King Arthur or anything else. After these two deaths, the hatred was reborn towards the Queen of Cornwall, who was the mother of Gauvain and the other brothers, for the queen had so set her heart on Lamorat on account of the prowess she knew to be in him that she loved nothing more than him. The queen was very beautiful and for this reason Lamorat loved her with all his heart. All of Sir Gauvain’s brothers who knew this were truly upset about it, and they resented the fact that their mother had given herself to the son of the man who had killed their father. But there was none so sad as Gaheriet, the gentle knight, the bravest, the most courteous and most esteemed in everything of all the five brothers. He felt so strongly about his mother that he did not hate Lamorat as much as he hated her and let him leave. What can I tell you? This rancour lasted until the day Gaheriet found his mother with Lamorat. He was so angry at this that he killed his mother because of it and let Lamorat go scot-free, doing him no harm. This last point brings us on to an interesting differentiation that the author makes between Gaheriet and the other brothers. As Gauvain, Agravain and Mordret grow steadily more and more unpleasant, the sympathetic side of Gaheriet’s character becomes increasingly apparent. His refusal to take part in the persecution of Pellinor’s sons out of his love for Lamorat is at the same time admirable and perplexing. Admirable because it portrays one of the greatest chivalric virtues—loyalty to a fellow knight he loves and respects—and perplexing because it leads him to kill his own mother.8 The author’s treatment of the figure of Gaheriet leaves us in no doubt as to what he considers the preferable course of action. Mordret and Agravain, equally obsessed by the family honour and the desire for vengeance, are Gauvain’s accomplices in the disgraceful murders of Driant and Lamorat. Agravain even stresses his willingness to kill Gaheriet rather, it would seem, because of the latter’s love for Lamorat than for the murder of their mother: Et messire Gauvains lor dit: “Se nous encontrions Gaheriet par aucune aventure, bien vois gardez qe vous de ceste chose qe vous avez ainssi porpensee ne li feissiez riens asavoir. Il ayme tant Lamorat de grant amor qe je sai veraiement qe a sa mort ne se porroit il acorder. Se a la mort de Lamorat venoit, il se troveroit ançois de sa partie qe de la nostre.” “En non Dieu, fet Agravains, doncques poons nous avoir mauvese fiance en lui. Si m’aist Diex, tant m’en avez dit qe se nous venions demain a tel point et je veoie qe Gaheriés se tornast encontre nous pour l’amor de Lamorat, je ocirroie plus volentiers Gaheriet qe nus des autres. Sanz

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 187 faille, se il venoit contre nous de tout ce qe nous avons dit, ne li feroie ge riens savoir.”9 And Sir Gauvain said to them: “If by any chance we meet Gaheriet, take care not to let him know about what you have just planned. He loves Lamorat so much that I know truly that he will not agree to his death. If it came to the death of Lamorat, he would find himself on his side rather than ours.” “In God’s name,” said Agravain, “we can therefore not trust him. So help me God, you have told me so much that if tomorrow I see Gaheriet turn against us for the love of Lamorat, I will kill him more willingly than any of the others. Without fail, if he came to us as we have said, I will tell him nothing.” It is Agravain, too, who first suggests that they kill Perceval and be rid once and for all of the threat from Pellinor’s lineage: “Seignours, fet il, ne vous sovient il des paroles qe li roi a hui dites de Perceval qui doit venger ja si durement la mort de Lamorat et de Driant? En non Dieu, je veill que vous me conseilliez de ceste chose et que me diez que j’en pourrai fere, car vous savez bien que ceste chose appartient plus a moi que a autre.” Agravains respont tout premiers et dit: “Frere, fet il, se Dieux me conseult, je n’i voi autre conseill que nous ocions Perceval. Adont si serons tuit delivré de ces menaces que li rois nous fet.” “Et conment le porrions fere de le metre a mort?” fet messire Gauvains. “Nous nous partirons de cort, fet Agravains, ausi que nous avons ja fet par plusors fois, et ferons entendement au roi que nous nous voulons metre en la queste de monseigneur Lancelot. Et quant nous nous serons mis en la queste de monseigneur Lancelot, nous cercherons tant unes terres et autres que nous troverons Perceval (MS. Lancelot). Se nous veons nostre point de lui occirre, si l’occirrons. Se non, si atendrons tot que nous voions leu et tens.” “En non Dieu, fet messire Gauvains, vous en dites le miex que je voie et a ce m’acor je. Or le faisons tout ensi, car en autre maniere ne nous pourrions vengier si bien de Perceval.” (68 c. Löseth § 313). “Lords,” he said, “do you not recall the words that the king today said to Perceval, who wants so badly to avenge the deaths of Lamorat and Driant? In God’s name, I want you to advise me in this matter and tell me what I can do, for you know that this is more my affair than anyone else’s.” Agravain answered first and said: “Brother,” he said, “if God advises me, I see no other option than to kill Perceval. Thus will we be free of these threats the king casts at us.” “And how can we put him to death?” said Sir Gauvain. “We will leave court,” said Agravain, “as we have done several times before, and give the king to understand that we want to go in search of Sir Lancelot. And when we have set out to look

188 • Keith Busby for Sir Lancelot, we will look far and wide until we find Perceval. If we find the opportunity to kill him, we will do so. If not, we will wait until we see the right time and place.” “In God’s name,” said Sir Gauvain, “what you say is best as far as I can see, and I agree to it. Now let’s do it thus, for in no other way will we be able to avenge ourselves so well upon Perceval.” Mordret, as elsewhere, is shown to be headstrong and impetuous, as witness his desire to decapitate Driant.10 There is perhaps one mitigating factor in all this unpleasant business of feuds and vendettas, a factor which seems hitherto not to have been remarked upon, and that is the trace of humanity remaining in Gauvain from the “old days.” Lamorat, motivated by love of Gaheriet and fellowship of the Round Table, frees Gauvain from the clutches of the Damoiselle de la Montagne, for: “ne plus beau service n’en porroit il fere, ce li semble, qe cestui seroit” (he could not do him a kinder service, it seemed to him than this would be; 59d. Löseth § 305). Later, with a touching but misplaced faith in Gauvain’s goodness, he denies all responsibility for saving him, saying that God did not yet desire Gauvain’s death. Gauvain later admits to Gaheriet that he is grateful to Lamorat, but cannot bring himself to love him, so strong is his hate of Pellinor’s lineage: “Baux freres, fet Gaheriés, aassez fet Lamorat por vous et vous en loez moult.” “Se je ne l’oure,11 fet messire Gauvains, si m’aist Diex, dont seroie je le plus mauvés chevalier du monde, car se Diex me conseult, il a tant fet por moi qe nus n’en porroit plus fere. Il m’a tout plainement delivré de mort. De ce qe je vis, doie je solement Dieu mercier et lui aprés et nul autre non.” “Si m’aist Diex, biau frere, fet Gaheriés, autretel vous redi ge de lui. Sachiez vraiement q’il abandona son cors a mort por ma vie sauver. Nus ne peust plus fere por moi qe il a fet, ne je ne cuidasse q’il se meist en aventure con il se mist por moi garantir la moitié du roiaume de Logres.” Et lors li conte tout ce qe Lamorat avoit fet por lui et por si povre bonté conme Gaheriés li avoit fet aucunes fois. Messire Gauvains s’enseigne de la merveille qe il en a, et qant il parole a chief de piece, il dit: “Par Dieu, fet il, or voi ge bien qe Lamorat est tote le plus merveilleux chevalier qe je oncques veisse et tout le plus cortois. Certes bien s’apareille sa courtoisie et sa bonté qe se il est plus cortois qe autre, je ne sai orez meillor chevalier de son aige nul, et se Diex me conseult, je voudroie qe je amasse son lingnage de si bone amour come j’aing le parenté au roi Ban.” “Conment, biax frere, fet Gaheriés, n’aimez vous pas dont son lignage?” “Certes, fet il, nanil; oncques ne l’amai ne ja ne l’amerai por aventure qi aviegne. Li rois Pellinor lor pere ocist le roi Loth. Par quoi je n’aimai oncques le roi Pellinor ne ja n’amerai ses enfans por chose qe il me facent. De ceste volenté ne me porroit tout li

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 189 monz removoir tant con je fusse vif.” “Si m’aist Diex, biax frere, fet Gaheriés, vous dites trop mal. Se Lamorat de ses propres mains eust ocis le roi Loth nostre pere, si a il tant fet por vous et por moi qe vous le deussiez be bon cuer amer et tous ses freres.” “Certes, fet messire Gauvains, je ne le hai pas, et ne por qant je vous di bien conme a mon frere qe ne le porroie vraiement amer, ne lui ne ses freres.” “En non Dieu, fet Gaheriés, donc a il trop mauvesement enploié le service qe il vous a fet et moult est sa pensee divisé de la vostre qant il vous ayme de tot son cuer et vous le haiez si durement. Si m’aist Diex, il mostre miex qe il soit estrez de gentil lignee et de lignee roial qe vous ne mostrez, qe il est cortois et debonairez et vous estez trop felon et trop cruex.” (60d. Löseth § 305) “Fair brother,” said Gaheriet, “Lamorat has done enough for you, and you should praise him.” “If I do not,” said Sir Gauvain, “so help me God, I would be the worst knight in the world, for as God is my advisor he has done so much for me that no one could have done more. He simply saved my life. That I live, I should thank God alone, then him, and noone else.” “So help me God, fair brother,” said Gaheriet, “I’ll tell you something else about him. Know that he put his own body at mortal risk to save my life. No one could have done more for me than he did, and I do not believe he would have put himself more at risk to win half the kingdom of Logres.” And then he told him everything Lamorat had done for him because of the small kindness that Gaheriet had sometimes done him. Sir Gauvain was astonished at this and when he finally spoke, said: “By God,” he said, “now I see that Lamorat is the most wondrous and most courteous knight I have ever seen. Certainly if his courtesy and goodness render him more courteous than anyone else, I do not know a better knight his age, and as God is my advisor, I would like to love his lineage as much as I do that of King Ban.” “What, fair brother,” said Gaheriet, “do you not love his lineage then?” “I certainly do not,” he said; “I have never loved and never will, whatever may happen. King Pellinor killed King Loth. For this reason I have never loved King Pellinor, nor will I ever love his children, whatever they may do for me. No one will make me change my mind so long as I live.” “So help me God, fair brother,” said Gaheriet, “you speak wrongly. Even if Lamorat had killed our father King Loth with his own hands, he has done so much for you and for me that you ought to love him and his brothers with all your heart.” “Certainly,” said Sir Gauvain, “I do not hate him, but nevertheless I tell as brother to brother that I cannot truly love him or his brothers.” “In God’s name,” said Gaheriet, “then he has ill employed the service he has done you and you disagree so much if he loves you with all his heart and you hate him so much. So help me God, he shows much better that he is descended from a noble and royal

190 • Keith Busby lineage than you do, for he is courteous and kind while you are wicked and cruel.” This is really where Prose Tristan has picked up and extended a major trait of the Gauvain of the Mort Artu. Note once again the fairness and justice attributed to Gaheriet. The author’s insistence on this vendetta is such that, in order to maintain the emphasis he lays on his priorities, I feel I should include another extract on the subject. The following is typical: Gauvain, just defeated by Lamorat, rides away cursing Lamorat and Driant when he meets Agravain and Mordret: Li dui frere demandent a monseigneur Gauvain: “Sire, conment vous a puis esté qe nous ne nous veismes? Conment vous vait des aventures du roiaume de Logres?” “Certes, fet il, m’a bien esté, més mielx m’alast assez encore se ne fussent li fils le roi Pellinor qi trop me nuisent et trop me grevent en toutes mes choses. Cil m’ocient et cil me font nuire a duel et a honte. Je ne puis venir en leu ou en place qe je ne trove ou Driant ou Lamorat. Cil dui m’ont mort, cil dui m’ont pris a honor. De ces deux me plaigne a Dieu et a vous. Et se de ces deux ne sui vengiez en tele guise qe il en soient mort, jamés n’avrai ne bien ne joie por aventure qi aviegne.” “En non Dieu, fet Mordrés, se vous vous en plaigniez, je m’en plain bien autant ou plus, car il m’ont mort en ceste queste.” “Et autretel,” dit Agravains. “An non Dieu, biax seignors, fet messire Gauvains, puisqe il est ainssi qe cil dui nous nuisent si durement, dont serons nous li plus mauvés et li plus recreant chevalier du monde se nous ne nous en vengerons.” Et cil dient: “Sire, nous sommes apparilliez de fere tout ce qe vous en vourroiz.” (62b. Löseth § 307) The two brothers asked Sir Gauvain: “Sire, how have you been since we last saw each other? How do you fare in the adventures of the Kingdom of Logres?” “To be sure,” he said, “I have been well, but I would have been better had it not been for the sons of King Pellinor who hurt and harm me in all my affairs. They are killing me and causing me sorrow and shame. I cannot go anywhere without encountering Driant or Lamorat. Those two are killing me and taking my honour away. And if I am not avenged on these two by killing them, I will never have ease or joy whatever adventure may occur.” “In God’s name,” said Mordred, “if you can complain, I can, as much or more, for they have put an end to my part in this quest.” “And the same here,” said Agravain. “In God’s name,” said Sir Gauvain, “since these two are hurting us so badly, we will be the worst and most cowardly knights in the world if we do not take vengeance on them.” And they said: “Sire, we are ready to do anything you want.”

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 191 This passage is also indicative of the secretive plotting of the three brothers, with which the author stresses the evil nature of their designs. I should like, by way of conclusion with regard to the vendetta, to analyse the actual murders of Driant and Lamorat. This will not, however, be the end of the matter, as the feud will crop up again in association with other specific traits of Gauvain’s character. Gauvain escapes from the Château aux Dix Chevaliers and finds Mordret and Agravain asleep by a fountain. He asks them for any news they may have: “Et des filz le roy Pellinor, fet il, savez vous nulles novelles?” Et il respont: “Certes, ouil. Nous encontrames hier Lamorat et le cuidames desconfire, més nous ne peusmes, ainz nous desconfit. Bien poons nous dire qe c’est le chevalier du monde qi plus nous fet piz.” “Encore nous feroit il piz, fet messire Gauvains, se il longuement vivoit. Més non fera, car li cuers me dit qe nous nous en vengerons prochainement.” (62d. Löseth § 307) “And the sons of Pellinor,” he said, “have you any news of them?” And he replied: “Certainly, yes. We met Lamorat yesterday and thought to defeat him but could not, rather he defeated us. We can say that he is the knight in the world who does us most harm.” “And he will do us more harm still,” said Sir Gawain, “if he lives long. But he will not, for my heart tells me we will soon be avenged.” They stay the night in an abbey built by Arthur where they are well received by the brothers. Having heard mass, they leave the next morning, only to meet Driant in the forest. Mordret voices the opinion that if they can kill Driant, they should have little trouble with Lamorat. Gauvain, inciting his brothers, says that he thinks Agravain a better knight than Mordret, and urges him to attack Driant in order to avenge their shame. Agravain attacks and is unhorsed. Mordret decides to avenge his brother’s defeat, manages to break Driant’s sword and unhorse him. His horse falls on top of him, and Gauvain says: “Li filz le roi Pellinor ne furent nés fors por mener chevalerie ausi con le pere fesoit. Or ne sai q’il m’en avendra, més puis qe ceste chose a ainssi eté enprise par mon conseill, il convient qe je m’en mete en aventure. Ou ge auroi del tout l’onor ou je morrai.” Lors lesse corre a Driant a moult grant doute et a moult grant paor, car ce connoisoit il bien ja avoit grant tens qe Driant estoit meillor chevalier qe lui. (63a. Löseth § 307) “The sons of Pellinor were born only to carry out the kind of chivalric deeds their father did. I do not know what will happen to me, but since this affair has been undertaken on my advice, I must put myself at risk.

192 • Keith Busby Either I will reap all the honour or I will die.” And he charged Driant in fear and dread, having known for a long time that Driant was a better knight than he. This makes it clear that Gauvain is quite aware of the nature of the plan he himself has put into action and of his responsibility for it. Two of his prime motives also emerge clearly here—his desire for honour, and his jealousy of any knight supposedly better than himself. He fatally wounds the already injured Driant and says to his brothers that he would be even happier if he could deal with Lamorat in the same way. Mordret wants to decapitate Driant, but Gauvain discourages him, saying that they would be shamed if the news leaked out. Mordret is not over-concerned about the world’s opinion, whereas concern with his and the family’s reputation plays a large part in Gauvain’s actions. The three brothers leave Driant on the ground and depart quickly, not wishing to be found at the scene of the crime. Driant is quite clearly about to die, but taking him to a priest so that he can confess has not entered their minds. The three then come across Lamorat, exhausted and injured after having beaten Dodinel le Sauvage. He notices his dead brother’s body, and loudly laments his death. As he swears vengeance, his wounds re-open, but he still defies Gauvain and unhorses him. Mordret and Agravain both rush at him, but he unhorses them, too. Gauvain has in the meantime remounted and attacks Lamorat again. Lamorat, now more exhausted than ever, refuses to cry for mercy and loses consciousness several times. He dies at the hands of Gauvain, repeating his wish to avenge the deaths of his father and brother, and making a moving plea to Christ: “Ha! Jhesu Christ, aiez de moi merci a cestui point qu’il mestuet m’ame issir du corps. Ne ne me jugiez pas selonc la multitude de mes pechiez, més selonc la bonté de ta misericorde. Regarde par pitié et par douçor moi chetis, qui sui plus perchieres qe autre, qe bien sens qe ma fin aproche, car mes cuers me le vet disant.” Et quant il a dit ceste parole, il s’estant une autre fois du grant duel qe il a et se pasme. Et messire Gauvains, qui trop mortelement le haoit et trop avoit grant doutance qe encore nel’oceist Lamorat, en fist adonc une cruauté moult grant qe nul prudome ne feist por nulle aventure, car il hauce l’espee et li done si grant cope q’il li cope le chief et chiere, la teste envoie, et dit qe or li est avis qe il ait bien vengié la mort de son pere. (63c. Löseth § 307) “Ha! Jesus Christ, have mercy on me at this moment when my soul must leave my body. Judge me not according to the multitude of my sins but by the goodnessess of your misericord. Look in pity and kindness upon the wretch I am, more sinful than any other, for I feel my end approaches, since my heart tells me so.” And when he said these words,

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 193 he stiffened again from the great pain he felt and fainted. And Sir Gawain, who hated Lamorat mortally and was greatly afraid that he might still kill him, then committed a great act of cruelty such as no worthy man had ever done for whatever reason, for he raised his sword and gave Lamorat such a great blow that he severed his head, threw it away, and said that now he knew he had well avenged the death of his father. The man of religion arrives and bemoans the death of Lamorat. He asks the names of the murderers and the brothers let him bury the body. Upon the return to court, Lamorat’s head is presented to Arthur, who is blamed for the conduct of his nephews, although the hermit does not actually specify that it was they who killed Lamorat. Arthur, however, knows of Gauvain’s feelings toward Pellinor’s lineage and suspects that his nephews were responsible. Arthur’s shame and the evil of the three brothers is again stressed by what seems to be a technique typical of the author of the Prose Tristan, namely the clear opposition of good and evil. There is no ambiguity, especially in this last episode, about the valiant and worthy Lamorat, or, for that matter, about the unscrupulous Gauvain. It is also worth pointing out here that, as well as having set Gauvain up in opposition to all the worthy elements of Arthurian society, the author has even made him an embarrassment to his uncle. If it seems that the black and white opposition of good and evil is reminiscent of the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal, it might also be said that the seeds of Arthur’s embarrassment over his nephews were certainly present in the feud between Gauvain and Lancelot in the Mort Artu. The treatment accorded to Gauvain there was such that, although Arthur might have wished that the feud had never begun, Gauvain’s behaviour was never downright evil (ill-advised and uncontrolled, perhaps), and never gave Arthur cause to be ashamed. Several other features of the traditional Gauvain are used to degrade him in the Prose Tristan. It is a commonplace that Gauvain be accused, in the earlier romances, of the murder of someone’s brother or cousin (cf. the Guingambrésil episode of the Conte du Graal or the Pucelle de Lis story from the Continuation-Gauvain). Although the justice of these accusations is left in some doubt, there can be none here in the episode of the Damoiselle de la Montagne, who accuses him of having killed her brother. Gauvain is to receive the just deserts for his treachery, for when he asks what she plans to do with him, she replies: “Certes, messire Gauvains, fet la damoisele, je ne ferai de vous autre chose fors tant qe vous feistes de mon frere. Vous l’oceistes de vostre espee et je vous ferai morir de vostre espee meismes. Tiex sera le garredon qe vous recevroiz de vostre felonie. Vous oceistes ou pié de ceste montagne mon frere et illeuc meismes vous ferai ge morir.”

194 • Keith Busby Messire Gauvains vouloit merci crier de ceste chose, més la demoisele ne l’en vieult oir, car trop estoit courrouciee vers lui. (59b. Löseth § 305) “To be sure, Sir Gauvain,” said the damsel, “I will do to you exactly what you did to my brother. You killed him with your sword and I will have you killed with the selfsame weapon. Such will be the reward you will receive for your wickedness. You killed my brother at the foot of this mountain and I will have you killed in that very spot.” Sir Gauvain wanted to beg for mercy in this matter, but the damsel would not listen, for she was too angry with him. This episode is nicely motivated by the damsel’s love for Brunor, and in turn further helps to emphasise Lamorat’s goodness and Gauvain’s brief crisis of conscience. Nor is it surprising that Gauvain, the ladies’ man of the earlier romances, be shown in connection with women. But the author of the Prose Tristan has again used this feature to show Gauvain in an unfavourable light. Whereas previously he had been criticised by Chrétien and his successors for his lighthearted attitude towards love, he is here shown to be covetous and lustful, with no respect at all for the opposite sex. Take this scene where he forcibly takes a damsel from an unarmed knight. His reaction at seeing the damsel is predictable: Tout maintenant que messire Gauvains voit la demoiselle et il l’a bien regardee et ele li plest tant et atalente que il dit que il ne leroit en nule maniere que il ne l’enmenast avec lui, car c’est toute la plus bele demoisele que il veist més pieça. (56c. Löseth § 304) As soon as Sir Gauvain saw the damsel and had looked at her properly, he decided that she pleased him and was to his taste so much that he would not fail to take her away with him, for she was the most beautiful damsel he had seen in a long time. He rides off with the loudly lamenting damsel, after having defeated the unarmed knight. Driant catches them up and lectures Gauvain on the ideals of chivalry, all to no avail. He then unhorses Gauvain, who gets up and states his desire to fight again. Quant Drianz entent ceste parole, il descent trop courrouciez de ce que a force li convient conbatre encontre celui dont il ne quesist ja avoir la merlee et prie por l’amor le roi Artu et de celui lignage, et prie por l’amor de ce que il estoient andui conpaignon de la Table Reonde. Et quant il est descendus, il dit a monseigneur Gauvain: / “Trop estés plus felon cruel que je ne cuidoie. Si m’aist Diex, je vous ai jusques ci tenu a cortois et a debonaire, més certes, j’ai orez tant trové en vous a cestui point qe je voi bien que vous estés vilain chevalier et plain de trop grant felonie, si ne vous en porroit venir se honte non.” (57b–c. Löseth § 304)

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 195 When Driant hear these words, he dismounted, angry at having to fight on foot against him with whom he had not sought battle, and prayed for the sake of Arthur and his lineage, and for the sake of their companionship of the Round Table. And when he had dismounted, he said to Sir Gauvain: “You are more wickedly cruel than I thought. So help me God, until now I considered you courteous and noble, but to be sure, I have today found you to be a churlish knight, full of great wickedness, and only shame can befall you because of it.” Gauvain once more attacks Driant treacherously, but Yvain comes along and gives the two of them a lesson. Ashamed to be upbraided in front of his cousin, Gauvain abandons the girl and rides away. Two themes are united in the next passage I should like to discuss, and they are Gauvain’s disagreeable habit of gratuitously killing unarmed or exhausted knights, which we have encountered before, and his lack of respect for women. What is equally interesting about this piece is Gauvain’s admission of his failure to keep his promise to a damsel, and his excuse, namely that so many adventures happen to him in the Kingdom of Logres that he forgets one because of the others. This might well serve as a prefatory remark to many of his adventures in the corpus of Arthurian literature. He addresses the damsel, who replies: “Biau sire, fet ele, qi estés vous qi de mon estre demandés?” “Damoisele, fet il, je sui un chevalier errant de la meson le roi Artu qi vois cerchant les aventures du roiaume de Logres ainssi conme chevalier errant doivent fere.” “Et conment avez vous non?” fet ele. Et il se / nome. “Ha! messire Gauvains, fet ele, bien soiez vous venuz. Si m’aist Diex, vous estés un des chevaliers du monde a qi je desirroie plus a parler. Je fis ja moult por vous, ne sai si vous en sovient.” “Et qe feistes por moi, fet il, ma demoisele? Certes, il ne m’en sovient pas se vous ne le me fetes entendre. Tantes aventures m’avienent par le roiaume de Logres qe j’entr’oblie les unes por les autres.” “Bien puet estre, fet ele, de ce ne merveille je pas.” (61 a–b. Löseth § 306) “Fair sir,” she said, “who are you who inquire of me?” “Damsel,” he said, “I am an errant knight of the house of King Arthur who is seeking the adventures of the kingdom of Logres as errant knights ought to.” “And what is your name,” she said. And he gave his name. “Ha! Sir Gauvain,” she said, “welcome. So help me God, you are one of the knights in the whole world with whom I most desired to speak. I once did you a great service, I don’t know if you remember.” “And what did you do for me,” he said, “my damsel? To be sure, I will not remember if you do not tell me. So many adventures happen to me in the kingdom of Logres that I forget some because of the others.” “That may well be,” she said, “and it does not surprise me.”

196 • Keith Busby The seneschal, in whose conduct she is, returns with Lamorat, and tells Gauvain to leave her be. He refuses, and attacks the unarmed seneschal, wounding him mortally, and says to the damsel: “Damoisele, or poons nous tenir nostre parlement entre moi et vous, s’il vous plaist, car de cestui qi de nostre parlement se corroçoit sommes nous ores delivré, ce me semble.” (61d. Löseth § 306) “Damsel, now we can speak alone, if it please you, because we are now rid of him who grew angry at our conversation, it seems to me.” Gauvain tells Lamorat, who reprimands him, that he is a better knight, and forces him to fight. Lamorat defeats him twice and he slinks away, only to meet Agravain and Mordret. What emerges so far, then, is that Gauvain is a jealous coward who insists on fighting knights who are often injured or unarmed. These same scenes are also used by the author to show him constantly being defeated at the hands of worthier knights, who unfailingly take the opportunity to lecture him on the ideals of chivalry. The author’s careful motivation of all Gauvain’s misdeeds is made clear by the way in which all these features of his character are combined in another scene where he is contrasted with a better knight and lectured to by Tristan. Gauvain and Gaheriet come upon a wounded knight. Gauvain insists that the knight fight with him, despite the other’s protestations as to his poor state of health. Were he as well as he had been earlier in the day, he would easily have put Gauvain in his place: Messire Gauvains entent ceste chose / a grant despit, car il li semble bien qe li chevaliers voille dire q’il soit meillor chevalier de lui, et qe legierement s’en delivrast s’il fust haitiez. Por ce corroce messire Gauvains et por le grant corroz q’il en a, dit au chevalier: “A joster vous estuet, sire chevalier, se Diex me saut. Ne vous paroles ne vous en porront delivrer. Il est mestier qe li faiz vous en delivre.” “Il est mestiers Diex aie.” fet li chevaliers. (206c–d. Löseth § 450) Sir Gauvain heard this with displeasure, for it seemed to him that the knight was saying that he was a better knight than he was, and that he would easily be rid of him if he were healthy. Sir Gauvain grew angry at this and, because of his great anger, said to the knight: “You must joust, sir knight, God save me. Nor will your words get you out of it, only your deeds will.” “I need God’s help,” said the knight. The knight’s simple reply and the final outcome of the combat leave us in no doubt as to who is right in the sight of heaven and the author. In the meantime, however, having lost much blood from his previous fight, the other knight is easily unhorsed by the uninjured Gauvain, and faints:

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 197 Et qant messire Gauvains, qi a trop grant depit tenoit les paroles q’il li avoit dites, le voit isint a terre, il ne se tient pas a bien paié de ce q’il li avoit fait. Ainz lesse corre sor lui a cheval isint con il estoit et il le fet le cheval passer par dessus le cors deux fois, si qe li chevaliers s’estent de la grant angoisse qe il a. Ausi fust morz et giete un grant cri et moult douloureux. Quant Tristans voit ceste oultrage, a poi q’il n’enrage d’ire et de maltalent. “Diex, fet il, qe porrai ge dire? Or me tienge a desonoré qant je voi qe l’en fait honte a si prodome comes est cil qi orendroit m’abati.” Et lors hurte cheval et s’en vient a monseigneur Gauvain et li dit: “Traiez vous arrierre, sire chevalier. Si m’aist Diex, vous ne moustrez mie qe vous soiez chevalier, ainz moustrez bien apertement qe vous soiez chevalier vaincu et recreant qi un chevalier si prodom conme cestui est menez si feleneusement com nous veons. Certes, il est a mon escient plus prodome qe vous ne nous ne somes.” Messire Gauvains respont atant et dit: “Sire chevalier, vous parlez plus orgoillousement qe vous ne deussiez. Vous veez bien apertement conment li faiz est alez de nous toz. Tote ceste partie mostre apertement la proesce de chascun de nous, et qu’en diriez / vous, il vous moustra bien q’il estoit bon chevalier et meillor de vous, et je li mostrai qe j’estoie plus puissant des armes q’il n’estoit.” “Certes, fet messire Tristans, il puet bien estre que vous estés bon chevalier, més se Diex me saut, se vous estiez orendroit ausi bon chevalier come est messire Galaad, qe l’om tient orez au meillor chevalier del monde, si avez vous fet trop vilenie et trop vilaine chevalerie et trop vilain fet.” “Conment? fet messire Gauvains, dites vous donc qe messire Galaad soit le meillor chevalier du monde?” “Oïl, certes, fet messire Tristans, je le die voirement.” “Certes, fet messire Gauvains, qi bien voudroit cerchier le reaume de Logres, il troveroit de plus prudomes et de meillors chevaliers, et de ce ne vous croirai ne hui ne demain.” (206d–207a. Löseth § 450) And when Sir Gauvain, who was offended by the words he had addressed to him, saw the knight thus on the ground, he did not consider himself well rewarded for what he had done. So he charged him on horseback just as he was, and rode over him twice on his horse, so that the knight shuddered from the pain he felt. Thus he died, uttering a loud and painful cry. When Tristan saw this outrage, he almost went wild with anger and spite. “God,” he said, “what can I say? I now consider myself dishonoured when I see that they shame such a worthy man as this who just defeated me.” Then he spurred his horse and came to Sir Gauvain and said: “Withdraw, sir knight. So help me God, you do not show that you are a knight, rather that you are a defeated and cowardly knight who treats such a worthy knight as this in the wicked manner that we see. To be sure, he is worthier than you or we are.” Sir Gauvain

198 • Keith Busby replied straightaway and said: “Sir knight, you speak more poudly than you should. You can see clearly how things went between us. This whole encounter clearly illustrates our relative prowess, and whatever you say, he showed that he was a good knight and better than you, and I showed him that I was stronger in arms than he was.” “Certainly,” said Sir Tristan, “you may be a good knight, but if God save me, if you were once as good a knight as Sir Galahad, who is now considered the best knight in the world, now you have committed a heinous act of villainous chivalry.” “What?” said Sir Gauvain, “are you saying that Sir Galahad is the best knight in the world?” “Yes, certainly,” said Sir Tristan, “that is what I am saying.” “To be sure,” said Sir Gauvain, “anyone who wanted to search the kingdom of Logres would find worthier men and better knights, for I will never believe you today or tomorrow.” The other knight, however, is not quite finished, and expresses a desire to teach Gauvain a lesson. He unhorses Gauvain, but refuses to kill him, or even go any further, on the grounds that he would be degrading chivalry: “Certes, fet il, dan malvés chevalier, si ge ne cuidasse fere ma honte, je feisse orendroit de vous autretant conme vous feistes ores de moi, més non ferai, car j’ai plus chier l’onor de ma chevalerie qe je n’auroie a deshonorez un si vil con vous n’estés.” (207a. Löseth § 450) “To be sure,” he said, “sir wicked knight, if I did not think it would cause me shame, I would do to you what you just did to me, but I will not, for I hold my knightly honour more dear than to dishonour such a vile creature as you.” Tristan, looking on, is delighted by the knight’s reproaches to Gauvain, and adds some comments himself: “Et conment Diex donne a chascun guerredon ainssi de l’onor conme de la vilenie et trop grant oultrage. Et certes, il vous en est avenu qe vous en avés auques le guerredon selont l’outrage.” (207b. Löseth § 450) “How God rewards everyone for honour as well as wickedness and great outrage. And to be sure, it happened to you that your outrage has been rewarded.” And when Gaheriet, somewhat embarrassed, reveals his brother’s name to Tristan, the latter comments on Gauvain’s reputation, past and present: “Certes, fet messire Tristans, monseigneur Gauvain ai je maintes fois veu, et il fu ja aucun tens qe l’en li donoit moult grant pris de chevalerie et de courtoisie. Més, se Diex me saut, il ne fu oncques tant loez q’il ne soit orendroit blasmés d’estranges chevaliers et despisez de dames et de damoiseles.” (207b. Löseth § 450)

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 199 “To be sure,” said Sir Tristan, “I have often seen Sir Gauvain, and there was a time when he was said to enjoy great esteem in chivalry and courtesy. But, if God save me, he was never as praised as he is now blamed by foreign knights and despised by ladies and damsels.” The author’s attitude could not be clearer: if Tristan is the defender of chivalry, and its judge too, then Gauvain is its enemy. Because Gauvain used to be a good knight, and because others have now surpassed him in terms of prowess and chivalry, he is often seen to be jealous of the reputations of younger and better knights (especially Perceval and Galaad). This, together with the revenge motif, is one of the causes of the murders of Lamorat and Driant, and is especially noticeable in the plot against Perceval. It must also be one of the reasons for his constant challenging of knights, his denigration of others and his refusal to admit defeat. If further proof were required, Tristan’s comparison and condemnation of Gauvain and Bréhus sans Pitié is an excellent example of the judgments passed upon Gauvain by Tristan and others. Tristan is talking about Bréhus in front of Gauvain: “Més il est fort et preuz et hardi la ou il voit q’il n’est trop au / desoz, et par la foi qe je doi a vous, il n’a entor lui gaires moins bone chevalerie q’il a en monseigneur Gauvain, le niés le roi Artus. Certes, s’il estoient en un champ mis ensemble et li uns devoit sa mort conbatre encontre l’autre, ce seroit grant bien por chevalerie, car li uns et li autres est assez vilain et ennuioux.” A ceste parole se corrouce moult messire Gauvains et dit: “Sire chevalier, qe dites vous de Gauvain?” “Certes, sire, fet messire Tristans, je di q’il est felon chevalier et outrajoux, et qe sis cuers n’est mie sans felonie dient cil qi plus l’ont acointié qe je n’ai. Ne je ne sai deulz chevaliers en tot le reaume de Logres qi si bien deussent aler ensamble comes ces delz, car se contendroient par raison a ce qe messire Gauvains est felon et Bréhus est traitre, car traïson et felonnie sont deulz seurs qi bien se conviennent ensamble. Et por ce cil dui seroient bon conpaignon d’armes, car aucques sont d’une loee et d’un pris.” (227d–228a. Löseth § 474) “But he is strong and valiant and brave when he sees he is not losing too badly, and by the faith I owe you, his chivalry is only marginally below the standard of Sir Gauvain, King Arthur’s nephew. To be sure, if they were pitted against each other, and the one had to fight to the death against the other, it would be of great benefit to chivalry, they are both churlish and obnoxious.” At these words, Sir Gauvain grew very angry and said: “Sir knight, what are you saying about Gauvain?” “To be sure,” said Sir Tristan, “I am saying that he is a wicked and outrageous knight, and those who are better acquainted with him than me say that his heart is never without wickedness. Nor do I know two knights in all the kingdom of Logres who go together as well as these two, for they are rightly

200 • Keith Busby compatible because Sir Gauvain is wicked and Bréhus a traitor, for treason and wickedness are two sisters which fit together well. And for this reason, these two would be good companions in arms, for they enjoy the same esteem and reputation.” Tristan’s subsequent defeat of Gauvain adds salt to the verbal wound. Needless to say, a little lecture follows in which Tristan tries to persuade him to mend his ways: Messire Tristans prent le cheval et li maine et li dit: “Montez, messire Gauvains, et laissiez des ores més vostre felonie, qe tost vous en porroit mal venir. Et sachiez tot vraiement qe se ne fust por l’amor le roi Artu vostre oncle et por l’amor de la Table Reonde, se Diex me doint bone aventure, je vous en feisse encore greignore [honte] qe ge ne vous ai fete maintenant.” (228b. Löseth § 474) Sir Tristan took the horse and led it to him and said: “Mount, Sir Gauvain, and abandon henceforth your wickedness, for ill could soon befall you because of it. And know truly that had it not been for love of King Arthur, your uncle, and love of the Round Table, if God give me good adventure, I would have done you greater shame than I have just done.” Gauvain’s jealousy of Tristan may be part of the reason for his inexcusable behaviour towards Iseut: Et non mie q’il vousist grant mal a la reine, et ne por quant a voir dire, il ne li vouloit nul bien, car messire Tristans n’avoit encore mie granment de tens li avoit fete une grant deshonor. (177d. Löseth § 421) Not that he especially wished the queen ill, but nor, to tell the truth, did he wish her well, for Sir Tristan had not long ago done him a great dishonour. Contrary to all rules of common courtesy, he approaches her, despite Erec’s protestations, on horseback. No doubt he is spurred on by spite of Erec, for: de l’autre part il vouloit grant mal de mort a Erec, et il li estoit bien avis q’il estoit meillor chevalier de totes chevaleries qe n’estoit Erec. (177d. Löseth § 421) On the other hand, he wished Erec dead, and he thought he was a better knight in all respects than Erec. Although he is forced to admit Iseut’s beauty, he tells her that she is by no means as beautiful as people say, and the fact that her charms are comparable only with those of Guenièvre, his own aunt, no doubt intensifies his jealousy and hatred. Iseut’s reply to his insults is a model of humility and self-effacement:

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 201 Et quant il la voit, il conoist bien par soi-meesmes qe c’est elle sanz doute la plus belle dame q’il veist oncques més, fors que la reine Guenievre, et auques sont per de biauté. Et ne por quant, si ceste fust liee et joieuse et ele ne fust un pou descoloree del grant duel q’ele avoit eu por la demore de Tristan, ele fust outrageusement bele com cele a la verité / dire [qui] estoit fontaine de toute biauté et mireor del monde. Messire Gauvains, qi un pou la voit descoloree, ne si bele ne li samble com il avoit ja veue aucunes fois, est liez de ce q’il voit en lui, car bien vousist por corroz de Tristan q’ele fust une des plus laides dames del monde. Si li dit sanz saluer la: “Dame, dame, se Diex me saut, je nel leurrai qe je ne le vous die: uns chevaliers aventurex sui, et sachiez que por ce qe je vous avoie oïe loer de beauté sor totes les dames del monde, estoie ge ceste part venus por vous voir et por savoir meesmes s’il estoit verité ce qe l’om disout de vous. Or m’est einssint avenu qe veue vous ai, la Diex merci. Bele estez, je ne le desdi mie, et une des plus belles du monde, més certes, qi voir voudroit dire et regarder vostre beauté et de juger puis selon raison, troveroit on plus bele el monde.” La reine, qi assez estoit cortoise et saige, respont a monseigneur Gauvain, et si ne cuidoit ele mie qe [ce] soit il. “Sire chevalier, fet ele, si en ceste monde en a plus bele de moi, autresint i en a qi ont moins de beauté de moi. Se cuidoie avoir en moi toute beauté, j’auroie fole esperance, més certes, s’il n’avoit en moi plus de beauté q’il n’a en vous cortoisie, je m’en tendroie a mal paiee, qe a voir dire ne feistes mie trop grant cortoisie quant vous sor le deffens del chevalier qi me gardoit (MS. gardoient) vous meistes jusques devant nous.” “Dame, dame, fet Gauvains, or sachiez qe je ne voudroie bien qe je n’eusse pas esté si desirant de vous voir com g’estoie, qe l’ai plus chierement achatee qe ge ne vousisse. Navrez en sui, ce poise moi.” “Certes, fet la reine, encor n’ai ge veu cortoisie granment se pis vous en venoit, car vous n’avez mie fait come chevalier cortois.” (177d–178a. Löseth § 421) And when he saw her, he knew for sure that she was the most beautiful lady he had ever seen, except for Queen Guenevere, and they were equals in beauty. And nevertheless, if she had been happy and joyful and not a little pale because of the great sadness she felt because of Tristan’s absence, she would have been excessively beautiful, like one who, to tell the truth, was the fountain of all beauty and mirror of the world. Sir Gauvain noticed she was a little pale, for she did not seem to him as beautiful as he had seen her sometimes in the past, and he was glad because out of spite for Tristan he would have wanted her to be one of the ugliest women in the world. And so he said without greeting her: “Lady, lady, I cannot help telling you: I am an adventuresome knight,

202 • Keith Busby and know that because I had heard your beauty praised above that of all other women in the world, I came to this region to see you and to discover whether it was true what they said about you. Now it so happens that I have seen you, thank God. You are beautiful, I do not deny it, and one of the most beautiful women in the world, but to be sure, to tell the truth, whoever looked at you and judged rationally would find a more beautiful woman somewhere.” The queen, who was quite courteous and wise, replied to Sir Gauvain, not knowing who he was: “Sir knight,” she said, “if there are more beautiful women in the world than I, there are as many who are less so. If I believed I possessed all beauty, I would hope in vain, but to be sure, if there were not more beauty in me than there is courtesy in you, I would consider myself ill rewarded, for in truth you were not very courteous when you approached us against the warning of the knight who was protecting me.” “Lady, lady,” said Gauvain, “now know that I wish I had not been so desirous of seeing you as I was, for I have paid for it more dearly than I would have wanted. I am wounded, I am sorry to say.” “Certainly,” said the queen, “I would not have seen courtesy in you if you had been worse off, for you have not acted like a courteous knight.” Gauvain’s words and actions here are typical of his denigration of others, be they knights or queens. These remarks should be compared with those made about Galaad on fol. 207a, the substance of which is the same: “I admit that this knight / queen is valiant / beautiful, but if you look hard enough, you will find plenty of others more valiant / beautiful.” Grudging, spiteful and jealous praise, stemming no doubt from Gauvain’s opposition to everything worthy in Arthurian society—Tristan, Iseut, Erec, Galaad, and the sons of Pellinor. His opposition to the sons of Pellinor, however, is more than just evil pitted against good. As well as a vicious personal vendetta, it is a feud against the lineage of one destined to achieve the Grail (as the feud against Lancelot in the Queste had been against a lineage which had achieved the Grail in the persons of Galaad and Bohort). As if to emphasise this, the author of fr. 772 adds to Gauvain’s jealousy of Galaad and Perceval by showing him in an unmitigated failure at the Grail Castle. I quote the whole of this important text, from the approach to Corbenic to the ignominious exit of the two brothers: Si n’orent (Gauvain and Gaheriet) granment alé qu’il virent devant eus Corbenyc. “Ha! Diex, fet messire Gauvains, lessiez moi, s’il vous plest, de leenz issir a greigneur honeur que je ne fis puis que je n’en issi més.” Gaheriés li demande: “Conment? vous fist l’en deshoneur?” “Oïl, fet il, si grant c’oncques en leu ou ie fusse ne trouvai qui si grant la me feist.” “Or ne vous chaille, fet Gaheriés, s’il vous meschei a cele fois, car or vous avendra mieuz a ceste fois.” Lors entrerent enz qu’il ne trouverent qui la porte leur contredist, et s’en alerent parmi les rues droit a la mestre

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 203 forteresce. Et quant il vindrent devant le palés aventureus, il ne porent enz entrer, car il troverent les huis et les portes closes. Quant Gaheriés vit ce, il set bien a ce que Hector dist, que dedenz n’entroient il mie. Si en est si dolenz qu’il voudroit estre morz. Et messire Gauvains, qui estoit a la porte au palés aventureux, conmence a huchier seure la porte. Aprés ce ne demoura guieres que une demoiselle vint a lui qui li dit: “Qui estés vous, sire, qui leenz voulez entrer?” Et il se nome et ele li redit: “Biau sire Gauvains, or vous en poez aler, car ceenz n’enterez vous ne vostre compainz. Vous trouverez qui bien vous hebergera.” “Conment, fet cil, ne pourrons nous leenz entrer?” “Nanil, fet ele, car a Nostre Seigneur ne plest mie que vous i entrez, et par ce poez vous connoistre que vous ne l’avez mie si bien servi en ceste queste con vous deussiez.” Il respont tout dolenz: “Damoiselle, ce poise moi.” Lor dit a Gaheriet: “Biau frere, que ferons nous?” “Sire, fet il, il n’i a fors del retourner el chastel. Ci ne demoureroie je en nule maniere, puis qu’entrer ne puis au palés.” Lors s’en retournent. La demoiselle demande a Gaheriet: “Sire, conment avez vous non?” “Demoiselle, fet il, vous le me demandez pour neent et si le vous dirai: j’ai non Gaheriet.” Lors s’en vet aprés monseigneur Gauvain qui s’en aloit grant oirre, et trouverent chevaliers et dames qui s’aloient gabant de ce que si tost s’en aloient et se partent du palés aventureus. Quant messire Gauvains fu hors du chastel, il conmença a maudire l’eure qu’il fu nés et porta premiers armes et se clainme: “Las et chetis quant j’ai failli a ceste aventure.” “Ha! fet Gaheriés, vous feites trop mal. Ja savez vous que li Sainz Graaus i est, pour qui honeur Nostre Sire a fet tanz biaus miracles par tout le monde.” Et il respont: “Du saint Vessel ne voudroie je fors tout bien, més je voudroie que je fusse morz sanz faille, car je n’i poi oncques venir que je ne m’en partisse a honte.” “Sire, fet Gaheriés, vous ne devez pas nului blasmer fors nous meesmes qui les malesoeures felons [sommes], par coi nous n’i poons avoir honeur nule foiz.” “Que ferons nous?” fet messire Gauvains. “Pour neent irion plus en la queste du Saint Graal, car je voi bien que nous en sommes venu a toute deshoneur. Pour ce loeroie que nous retournissons a Camaalot.” “Sire, fet Gaheriés, ce seroit nostre honte, car nus des compaignons n’est encore retournez. Et se nous donc premerain revenions, a vilenie nous seroit tourné.” “Que ferons nous donc?” fet il. “Sire, fet Gaheriés, nous irons querant aventures ausi con nous fesion devant. Demoureron un an ou deux, et quant nous orron dire que de nos compagnons seront revenu une partie a cort, adont pourron nous aler sanz blasme.” Endementres qu’il parloient ainsi a conseill, atant ez vous une damoiselle, et la ou elle vit Gauvain (MS. Gaheriet), ele dit: / “Gauvain, Gauvain, or aperent vos pecchiés si grans. Assez avez maus feinz en

204 • Keith Busby ceste queste et mains chevaliers mis a mort si conme on dist, et certes, se cil de cest chastel seussent les pecchiés que vous avez fais puis qe vous partistes de court, ja de leenz ne fussiez issu sanz hontes. Et sachiez que Percevel le bon chevalier qui est moult preudons en istra de leenz mout a greigneur honeur que vous ne feites, et si aperra plus sa bonté que ne faist la vostre, car vous couvrez vostres pecchiés au plus que vous poez, et sa bone vie ne se pourra couvrir que Nostre Sire ne le face conoistre.”12 And they had not travelled far when they saw Corbenic before them. “Ah, God!” said Sir Gauvain, “if it please you, let me leave here with greater honour than I did before.” Gaheriet asked him: “What? Did they dishonour you?” “Yes,” he said, “so much so that no one anywhere else ever dishonoured me as much.” “Do not be concerned,” said Gaheriet, “if misfortune befell you on that occasion, for this time it will go better.” Then they entered, finding no one barring the door, and passed through the streets straight to the main citadel. And when they came to the adventurous palace, they could not enter, for they found the gates and the doors closed. When Gaheriet saw this, he knew from what Hector said that they would never enter. And he was so upset that he wanted to die. And Sir Gauvain, who was at the door of the adventurous palace, began to shout. Shortly afterwards, a damsel came to him and said: “Who are you, sir, who wishes to enter here?” And he gave his name and she replied: “Sir Gauvain, you may leave, for neither you nor your companion will enter. You will find someone to give you shelter.” “What,” he said, “can we not enter here?” “No,” she said, “for Our Lord does not wish you to, and so you may know that you have not served him as well in this quest as you should have.” He replied sadly: “Damsel, I am sorry.” Then he said to Gaheriet: “Fair brother, what shall we do?” “Sire,” he said, “there’s nothing for it but to return to the castle. I will not remain here for anything since I may not enter the palace.” Then they turned away. The damsel asked Gaheriet: “Sire, what is your name?” “Damsel,” he said, “you ask to no purpose, yet I will tell you: my name is Gaheriet.” Then he turned after Sir Gauvain who was riding away at great speed and they encountered knight and ladies who were laughing that they were going away so soon and leaving the adventurous palace. When Sir Gauvain was outside the castle, he began to curse the hour he was born and first bore arms and called himself “unfortunate and wretched that I have failed in this adventure.” “Ah,” said Gaheriet, “you act badly. And you know that the Holy Grail, in whose honour Our Lord has wrought such beautiful miracles over the world, is there.” And he said: “I would only want good from the holy vessel, but now I wish I were dead without fail, because I could never come to it without leaving

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 205 in shame.” “Sire,” said Gaheriet, “you should not blame anyone except ourselves, wicked miscreants that we are, for this is why we can never achieve honour.” “What will we do?” said Sir Gawain. “In vain would we go on the quest for the Holy Grail, for I see we have come to all kinds of dishonour. For this reason, I advise we return to Camelot.” “Sire,” said Gaheriet, “it would be to our shame, for none of the companions has returned yet. And if we were to be the first to return, it would be seen as shameful.” “What will we do, then?” he said. “Sire,” said Gaheriet, “we will go in search of adventures as we used to before. We will wait a year or two, and when we hear that some of our companions have returned to court, we can go back without blame.” While they were conferring on this, a damsel approached, and when she saw Sir Gauvain, she said: “Gauvain, Gauvain, now your great sins are apparent. You have done many misdeeds in this quest and killed many knights, so they say, and to be sure, if the people in this castle had known the sins you had committed since you left court, you would never have left here without shame. And know that Perceval, the good knight, who is a worthy man, will leave here in much greater honour than you. And his goodness will be more evident than yours, for you cover your sins as much as you can, and he cannot conceal his virtuous life without Our Lord revealing it.” The words of the damsels must be the final and irrevocable condemnation of Gauvain, for the revelation of his name alone is sufficient to debar him from entering. The words of the second damsel must be particularly hard for him to take, not only because she chastises him, but also because she praises Perceval, one of the lineage of Pellinor. In the Lancelot-Graal, the sins which prevent him from achieving the Grail are his long list of murders, his “luxure” (lechery, in the broad sense), and his inability to repent. Nevertheless, he is at least given a glimpse of the sacred vessel, but here, the nature and extent of his sins, stressed in religious terms, cause a total exclusion from the secrets of the Grail. And is the author of fr. 772 telling us that the lineage of Lot can no longer boast of any good knights? Gaheriet seems to have absorbed some of his brother’s less desirable attributes when he suggests that they refrain from returning to court until other companions of the quest have done so, in order to avoid shame. La conduite de Gauvain, tout comme celle de ses frères qui ne sont guère dans le Tristan que ses pâles répliques, acquiert ainsi une valeur exemplaire. Elle permet en somme à l’auteur de démontrer que des principes, en eux-mêmes excellents, laissent à des êtres dénués de toute moralité la possibilité de se livrer impunément aux pires violences et de tenir finalement à leur merci des chevaliers qui leur sont moralement et physiquement supérieurs.13

206 • Keith Busby Gawain’s conduct, like that of his brothers (who in the Tristan are scarcely even pale imitations of him), acquires an exemplary value. It basically allows the author to show that principles, excellent in themselves, offer to those devoid of all sense of morality the possibility of abandoning themselves with impunity to the worst kinds of violence and to have at their mercy knights who are morally and physically superior. I cannot agree entirely with Mme. Baumgartner’s appraisal of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan, for there are places where his behaviour is simply not according to the book—for example, his trampling on horseback of the knight he had unfairly beaten, and particularly the scene with Iseut. Nevertheless, Mme. Baumgartner does seem to have pinpointed a central issue of the romance, and one which deserves further study, namely that the author is intent on showing both the strengths and weaknesses of the chivalric code. Whatever the protagonists may do is, in a sense, only incidental to their motives and their morality. A final quotation from fr. 757 should make this clear. Talking to himself about Driant and Lamorat, Gauvain says: Se il celx peust metre a mort, il li est avis qe il adonc peust fere par le monde tote sa volenté.14 He thought that if he could put them to death, he could do whatever he wanted anywhere. This is perhaps the crux of Gauvain’s behaviour in the Prose Tristan, from which all the motives of jealousy, spite, vengeance and so on, are derived. Gauvain, quite simply, wishes to do as he pleases, with no thought of others. When he is not able to impose his will, the results that we have seen ensue. The reasons for Gauvain’s total disgrace in the Prose Tristan are complex, and I have only been able to hint at some of them here. He suffers at the expense of Tristan: the author made Tristan his hero, and his mentality required that he balance him with a villain. Gauvain had had his day, and certain features of his character in the Lancelot-Graal lent themselves only too easily to the kind of results we have seen.15 The Prose Tristan took over wholesale certain parts of the earlier cycle, although not without some modification. Yet if the spirit of the earlier work is didactic, then no such claims can be made for our text. If didactic tendencies remain, then it is because they were present in the sources and because the author had to show some kind of conformity with the tradition he so extensively drew upon. Unlike the authors of the Lancelot-Graal, the author of the Prose Tristan had no real axe to grind and no ulterior motive for destroying the character of Gauvain. The radical modifications he introduced were necessitated by the demands of storytelling.

The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan • 207 Notes 1. 2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

Reprinted with permission from Tristania 2.2 (May 1977), 12–28. Translations have been provided by the author. See Eugène Vinaver, Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut dans l’Oeuvre de Thomas Malory (Paris, 1925). Professor Vinaver has described our two manuscripts in his Etudes sur le Tristan en Prose (Paris, 1925), pp. 42–44. See W. A. Nitze, “The Character of Gauvain in the Romances of Chrétien de Troyes,” Modern Philology, L (1952–3), 219–25 [reprinted in this casebook]; Jean Frappier, “Le Personnage de Gauvain dans la Première Continuation de Perceval,” Romance Philology, XI (1957–8), 331–44, and Fanni Bogdanow, “The Character of Gauvain in the ThirteenthCentury Prose Romances,” Medium Aevum, XXVII (1958), 154–61 [reprinted in this casebook]. E. Löseth, Le Roman en prose de Tristan (Paris, 1891). Eugène Vinaver, The Rise of Romance (Oxford, 1971). Cedric E. Pickford, L’Evolution du Roman Arthurien en prose (Paris, 1960). Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail (Manchester, 1966). Emmanuelle Baumgartner, Le Tristan en Prose (Paris, 1975). Mme. Baumgartner devotes the first part of her study to this problem. fr. 757, fol. 54b–c. Löseth § 302. Dr. Bogdanow has printed another version of the feud from fr. 112 in La Folie Lancelot, Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie (Beiheft 109, 1965). fr. 757, fol. 62b. Löseth § 307. Hereafter, unless otherwise indicated, all prose quotations are from Löseth, Le Roman en prose . . . , with the corresponding reference immediately following. See 63a. Löseth § 307. At first sight, “se je ne me l’oure” presents something of a problem. “l’oure” seems to be related to the “loez” of the previous sentence, but if “loure” were read as a first person of “loer,” the phrase would mean “if I do not praise myself.” The sense, however, is clearly “if I do not praise him.” I would therefore suggest that “oure” is a first person of the verb “ourer,” a form of “eurer” (< Lat. “augurare”), meaning “to bless,” or “to praise.” The sense would therefore be “if I do not praise him to myself,” i.e. “if I do not admit to myself that I should be grateful to him.” The possibility of scribal error cannot of course be ruled out, although the scribe of fr. 757 makes remarkably few serious mistakes. fr. 772, fol. 407c.–408a. Löseth § 558. Baumgartner, op. cit., p. 197. fr. 757, fol 62a. Löseth § 306. It is clear, though, that at least one reader of fr. 772 still felt uneasy about it, for as Löseth and Vinaver have both pointed out, the name of Gauvain has been scratched out and replaced by that of Agravain in some places where he plays a particularly villainous role.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

10

Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain RAYMOND H. THOMPSON

Of the many tales linked with Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, few are more curious than those describing his birth and his career before joining the Round Table, for this stage in his life bears the unmistakable stamp of a more primitive concept of heroism than that ordinarily found in the medieval romances. The story of Gawain’s birth shares many characteristics with similar stories told of culture heroes from widely scattered lands, and, like these, belongs properly to the realm of mythology rather than romance. Although attempts have been made to aduapt the tale to the world of medieval romance, incongruous features remain, the most important of which is the mutual hostility that exists between Gawain and his uncle, King Arthur. Elsewhere in the Arthurian cycle the relationship between the two is distinguished by its warmth and devotion. The most serious quarrel between Arthur and his nephew occurs in Le Livre d’Artus when the king decides to support Kay in a dispute with Gawain and Sagremor. For a while Gawain talks of leaving the court, but the genuine love between uncle and nephew cannot long be clouded by misunderstanding. When Arthur learns that Kay was at fault he kneels before Gawain to seek forgiveness: Q[u]ant messires Gauuain uit son oncle agenoillier si ne li pot li cuers soufrir ainz le cort embracier & tenir & li dist . ne faites sire geluos pardoing & uos & Keu.1 When sir Gawain saw his uncle kneel, his heart could not endure it; he ran to him, took him in his arms and held him, and said, ‘Do not do this, sire; I pardon both you and Kay.’ A more typical example of conflict between Arthur and Gawain occurs in Claris et Laris. When they engage in combat during a tournament it is only

209

210 • Raymond H. Thompson because each is unaware of the other’s identity, and the episode actually serves to emphasize the devotion which exists between the two. The king and his nephew knock each other to the ground, whereupon the former, seeing his forces in disarray, laments the absence of Gawain, his staunchest supporter. ‘Mesire Gauvains l’escoutoit, / Cui trop grant pitie en est prise’ (Sir Gawain heard him, and he has taken very great pity on him).2 He identifies himself to his uncle and the two are reunited with great joy. Apart from such brief misunderstandings, the relationship between Gawain and Arthur is exemplary. In the Vulgate Merlin, Gawain not only takes arms against his own father, King Loth, on behalf of Arthur but even threatens to slay him should he refuse to be reconciled with his brother-in-law. Thus the prolonged antagonism between uncle and nephew appears nowhere else in Arthurian literature, and it indicates the presence of a tradition alien to the regular development of the cycle in the Middle Ages. The story of Gawain’s birth is preserved in three separate romances: the French prose Perlesvaus,3 a fragmentary French poem entitled Les Enfances Gauvain,4 and the Latin De Ortu Waluuanii.5 The details in each romance vary, but the basic pattern is unchanged. Gawain is born out of wedlock from a union between Loth and Arthur’s sister. To conceal the fact of his birth, the mother arranges for the disposal of the child. Together with certain precious articles and a letter indicating his noble origin, the infant is placed in a cradle and comes into the keeping of a man of lowly station. Years later the hero is brought to Rome by his guardian, and there is taken into the custody of the pope or emperor, who completes his education. He is eventually knighted and earns great renown before winning the recognition of his parents and uncle, King Arthur. This outline recalls that distilled by Rank from a survey of tales dealing with the birth of heroes: The hero is the child of most distinguished parents, usually the son of a king. His origin is preceded by difficulties, such as . . . secret intercourse of the parents due to external prohibition or obstacles. During or before the pregnancy, there is a prophecy, in the form of a dream or oracle, cautioning against his birth, and usually threatening danger to the father (or his representative). As a rule, he is surrendered to the water, in a box. He is then saved by animals, or by lowly people (shepherds). . . . After he has grown up, he finds his distinguished parents in a highly versatile fashion. He takes revenge on his father, on the one hand, and is acknowledged, on the other. Finally he achieves rank and honors.6 The fidelity with which the story of Gawain’s birth corresponds to Rank’s formula emerges even more strikingly when the three versions of the former are collated to fill in the salient features of the outline.

Gawain Against Arthur • 211 Although the Perlesvaus does not name Arthur’s sister, the French poem identifies her as Morcades, the Latin romance as Anna, the names assigned to Gawain’s mother in the romances and chronicles respectively. The Latin version explains that the lovers are unable to marry since Loth is a hostage at the court; no reason is offered in the French versions, though in the poem Loth’s position as Morcades’ ‘vallet’ (page, First Fragment, v. 7) suggests that he is as yet too unimportant to win Arthur’s permission to marry the lady. The princess withdraws from public view so that her condition is not perceived, gives birth to a fine boy, then decides to dispose of him to conceal her deed. The motif of infanticide is clearest in Perlesvaus, where the mother gives the child to a knight to be exposed; but though the relevant section in the other French version is missing, ensuing events demonstrate that here too the parents decide to abandon the unwanted infant. Only the Latin romance mentions that the parents act out of fear of the king, here Uther, who is still alive, rather than Arthur. However, it is unlikely that fear of regal displeasure did not influence the lovers in the French versions also. In the Perlesvaus, the child is taken by a knight overland to a vavasor who dwells ‘en .i. petit plaiseiz’ (in a little hedged field, l. 7315); in Les Enfances Gauvain, the knight is also entrusted with the task of disposing of the child, but here he sets his charge adrift in ‘.j. tonelet’ (a small cask, First Fragment, v. 147); in De Ortu Waluuanii, the motif of infanticide is muted, since the mother gives the child, along with a great quantity of gold, to some merchants to bear over the sea and rear in their own land. Not only do two of the versions have the child delivered to the waters, but all three place special emphasis upon the cradle in which he rests. The French prose romance mentions that the infant was placed ‘en .i. mout bel vaisel’ (in a very beautiful vessel, l. 7308), to which were added gold, silver, ‘.i. mout riche paile’ (a very rich silken cloth, 1. 7314), and letters indicating his royal parentage. The French poem refers to the cask in which the child is exposed upon the sea, and to les besans Et 1’anel ki n’est pas pesans, Le drap de soie et le fremail: [Second Fragment, vv. 33–35] the gold coins and the ring, which is light in weight, the cloth of silk and the clasp. With these is included a letter indicating royal parentage. The Latin romance links both a cradle and a box with the child. A fisherman discovers the infant ‘in cunis’ (in the cradle, p. 391) aboard the merchants’ vessel, and he sees ‘thecam ad caput eius stantem in qua pallium anulus et carta continebantur’ (the coffer placed at his head that contained the cloth, the ring, and the document, p. 392).

212 • Raymond H. Thompson The foster-father in Perlesvaus is a vavasor, though of limited means if his residence may serve as a guide. However, a humble fisherman fulfils this role in the other two narratives. In the Latin story the fisherman steals the child from the merchants. Eventually, the foster-father takes the boy, aged ten or twelve, to Rome, where his condition is brought to the attention of the pope. In both French versions, the Holy Father adopts him as a nephew. The Latin version has the youth taken into the household of the Roman Emperor, who is in the company of the pope when the letter relating the hero’s history is read. In the light of this connection between Gawain and the Emperor of Rome, it is interesting that in Perlesvaus the former is eventually elected to the imperial throne, but refuses the honour, while in Les Enfances Gauvain the death of the emperor at the end of the fragment paves the way for a similar development to take place. The Perlesvaus adds nothing more to the tale; and, after praising the great prowess and courtesy demonstrated by the hero when he attains knighthood, Les Enfances Gauvain breaks off incomplete. The Latin romance alone gives a detailed description of Gawain’s feats of valour. He eventually earns the recognition of his parents and uncle, but not before some sharp exchanges with the latter: the hero knocks the king from his horse into a river, leaving him to walk home in the darkness, soaked to the skin, and the two later exchange heated and insulting remarks. Rank does not include Gawain among the heroes whose birth he describes, but he does mention the legend of St Gregory on the Stone to which the story of Gawain’s birth is related.7 Certain features are common to both narratives: the hero is exposed by the mother in a cask upon the sea; he comes into the care of a fisherman who rears him during his earliest years; he becomes a knight and wins a great success in combat. The presence of the pope in Gawain’s story recalls Gregory’s later education in a convent and his ultimate succession to the holy see. For the basic pattern in the legends examined, Rank offers an interpretation based upon the teachings of Freud. However, to a reader at a loss to account for the untraditional friction between Gawain and Arthur, the most illuminating section of Rank’s work is that which focuses upon the hostility between the hero and the monarch-father figure. For in De Ortu Waluuanii the relationship between Arthur and his nephew, acrimonious enough on the surface, hints at even deeper hostilities in earlier stages of the legend. It is fear of Uther’s wrath, rather than Arthur’s, which prompts the lovers to conceal the hero’s birth, but in the French versions the event takes place during Arthur’s reign. The first physical encounter between uncle and nephew precedes recognition. By means of her gift of foresight, Guenevere informs her husband that a knight who is his superior in valour is approaching the kingdom. Arthur is prompted to meet the hero secretly, not out of jealousy, but rather to test his

Gawain Against Arthur • 213 own skill at arms. However, the king’s challenge to the knight is unnecessarily insulting, for he asks, ‘Exulne es, predo an insidiator?’ (Are you a fugitive, a bandit, or a spy? p. 425). When Gawain replies that he is none of these, Arthur accuses him of lying. In the ensuing combat, Arthur and his companion, Kay, are knocked into the water, but ‘ipsos uero incolumes noctis seruauit obscuritas’ (the darkness of the night saved them from being harmed, p. 425). As it is, the king is obliged to walk home ‘cum non paruo dedecore’ (with no little disgrace, p. 425). Thus, the uncle threatens the hero, but is defeated and humiliated by him. Moreover, it is implied that Arthur’s fate would have been more severe had not darkness intervened. Even when Arthur learns that his opponent was none other than his own nephew, the hostility between the two does not disappear. Since Gawain remains unaware of their kinship until the conclusion, he may be forgiven his exasperation when Arthur refuses to admit him to the Round Table before receiving proof of his valour. The king’s decision can also be justified, especially since he exhibits delight when he learns the young man’s identity. However, the insistence upon proof of a valour which he himself has good reason to respect hints at a reluctance to acknowledge the hero, and this sinister undertone is magnified when the two next engage in discourse. Gawain is following along behind the king’s army when he meets them all in full flight: Quos ubi fuga lapsos comperit, Arturo cum prioribus fugienti obuiauit, atque ei subridendo insultans ‘Numquid’ ait ‘O rex, ceruos an lepores agitis, qui sic passim dispersi per auia tenditis?’ Cui Arturus indignatus respondit: ‘Hic tuam satis probitatem expertam habeo, qui, aliis pugnam adeuntibus, te nemoris abdidisti latebris’ [p. 429]. When the retreat revealed the disaster to him, he confronted Arthur fleeing with the first wave, and laughing at him, shouted insultingly, ‘Tell me, O King, do you pursue deer or rabbits that you go scattered this way along the paths?’ To him Arthur replied indignantly, ‘I have sufficient proof of your great prowess that you, while others are involved in battle, have removed yourself to some secret hiding places of the forest.’ Single-handed, Gawain defeats Arthur’s pursuers and thus earns the public recognition of his uncle. The romance speaks of Arthur’s joy in his nephew, but the actual encounters between them are symptomatic of a jealous antagonism. It seems likely that the work endeavours to diminish the argument between the two in an effort to avoid such an untraditional enmity between Arthur and Gawain, but that the character of the original story cannot entirely be suppressed, especially in such elements as the plot.

214 • Raymond H. Thompson As the pattern established by Rank shows, some measure of conflict between the hero and king is essential to the birth tale. The hero must first punish his parents for the initial rejection, then win their recognition of the rights that are truly his. If it seems strange that hostility should be directed against the uncle rather than the actual father, the explanation is not far to seek. Rank observes that when a son resents his father, he usually experiences guilt feelings. In the forms of the hero myth, this guilt seeks alleviation through ‘the mechanism of separation or dissociation’.8 He continues: In the original psychologic setting, the father is still identical with the king, the tyrannical persecutor. The first attenuation of this relation is manifested in those myths in which the separation of the tyrannical persecutor from the real father is already attempted, but not yet entirely accomplished, the former being still related to the hero, usually as his grandfather.9 The hostility of Uther towards the parents of Gawain in De Ortu Waluuanii is a manifestation of this trend, which is found in the majority of hero myths. However, Rank also notes that the uncle occupies the role of the tyrannical father figure in the Hamlet saga. Much of a child’s hostility towards the father stems from competition for the love and attention of the mother. In the stories of the hero’s birth, this love for the mother is rarely as obtrusive as in the Oedipus myth, where parricide is followed by incest with the mother. However, it is interesting that vestiges of the special friendship which exists between Guenevere and Gawain in many Arthurian romances should occur in De Ortu Waluuanii. The latter sends gifts to the queen before he even arrives at court. Moreover, it is the queen who prophesies the approach of a knight superior in valour to the king, and thereby induces her husband to set out to challenge his nephew. The author attributes Arthur’s action to his desire to measure his own prowess, but the situation would suggest that his original motive was jealousy. It is significant that in analogues to this situation cited by the editor of the Latin romance, the knight so highly praised should be a former lover of the queen.10 To these hints of intimacy between Gawain and Guenevere should be added the presence of what seems to be an extraneous incident in De Ortu Waluuanii.11 En route to Jerusalem with a Roman fleet, Gawain stops at an island ruled by an enemy of the emperor. This king has carried off the emperor’s niece and made her his queen. Although well treated, the lady resents her abduction, and in order to work her husband’s downfall, sends to Gawain invaluable aids: Ensem regis preterea ac eius arma ei contulit aurea, de quibus fatatum erat quod ab eo deuictus rex regali spoliaretur apice qui preter ipsum ea primitus induisset [p. 406].

Gawain Against Arthur • 215 She then bestowed on him the king’s sword and his gilded armour on which lay the curse that the king, having been overcome, would be stripped of the royal crown by the one who first wore it save for the king himself. Though shaken by the loss, the king puts up a brave resistance, and after a long struggle succumbs to his own sword wielded by the hero. I would suggest that, at an earlier stage of this tale, possibly before it is attached to Gawain, this episode formed the conclusion of a story much more primitive than that related in De Ortu Waluuanii. The king escapes from the initial encounter at the ford because he can only be slain with his own magic weapons. However, by his own failure to defeat the hero, the old king forfeits the right to rule over the realm and its queen. Just as he had won this right by defeating the previous king (hence, perhaps, the allusion of the island king’s abduction of a lady betrothed to another), so must he, in the fullness of time, yield to a younger and stronger champion. The queen conspires to send the magic sword and arms to the hero. Thus equipped, he slays the king, succeeds him as the lady’s consort and rules over the land.12 However, such a conclusion is inappropriate to the Gawain of developed Arthurian tradition, and so the story was altered. Parts of the conflict between uncle and nephew remain, though the antipathy between the two is muted. However, a joyous recognition scene replaces the final confrontation, the details of which are adjusted to enable its retention in another context. Some of these changes affect the figure of the queen. No longer identified as Guenevere, she becomes the victim of abduction rather than the willing consort of the champion best able to defend her domain. Thus, after the death of her husband, she conveniently resumes her interrupted journey to marry the King of Illyria. However, like Guenevere, she exhibits admiration for the hero’s valour, and her appreciation of his physical beauty may be the vestige of a more intimate relationship. Thus, it is difficult not to suspect the presence of the incest theme lurking in the story of Gawain’s birth. Just as the figure of the father may go through the process of separation, so may that of the mother. Nevertheless, the existing narrative conforms to Rank’s observation that this erotic relation with the mother, which predominates in other mythological cycles, is relegated to the background in the myths of the birth of the hero, while the opposition against the father is more strongly accentuated.13 Thus Gawain, like most other heroes, punishes the father figure who is at least partly responsible for his banishment, and it is this feature of the myth which accounts for the strange antagonism between Arthur and his nephew. This I believe to be the answer to a problem that mystified Bruce when he edited De Ortu Waluuanii:

216 • Raymond H. Thompson in the episode of Arthur’s encounter with Gawain we have evidently some of the traits which usually characterize the seneschal in the romances here transferred to the king in a way which I am at a loss to parallel from works of this kind. This characterization of Arthur being essential, however, to the story here related, it must have constituted already a part of the original on which this portion of our Latin romance is based. The same is true of the ascription of prophetic powers to the queen [pp. 381f.]. The king’s role in the story of the hero’s birth is as fixed as is that of the hero himself. The traditional devotion between Arthur and his nephew does influence the story in that it attributes motives other than jealousy to the king. Arthur is not held personally responsible for the banishment of the child; he is unaware of their kinship when he fights his nephew, and his behaviour is motivated by the desire to exercise his skill at arms, not by jealousy; he withholds recognition of Gawain in order to give the young man a chance to prove his quality; and he welcomes his nephew at last with great rejoicing. And yet the pattern of events indicates that antipathy between the two runs deeper than these facts imply. Hostility between the king and the hero cannot be entirely suppressed in the story of the latter’s birth, hence Gawain’s untraditional conduct towards his uncle. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Reprinted with permission from Folklore 85 (1974), 113–21. See http://www.tandf.co.uk/ journals. Translations have been provided by the author. Le Livre d’Artus, ed. H. O. Sommer as Vol. VII of The Vulgate Version of the Arthurian Romances (Washington, 1909–16), p. 54. Li Romans de Claris et Laris, ed. J. Alton (Tübingen, 1884), vv. 1338 f. Le Haut Livre du Graal, Perlesvaus, ed. William A. Nitze and Thomas Jenkins (Chicago, [1937]). ‘Les Enfances Gauvain, fragment d’un poème perdu,’ ed. P. Meyer in Romania 39 (1910), 1–32. ‘De Ortu Waluuanii: An Arthurian Romance now first edited from the Cottonian MS. Faustina B. VI., of the British Museum,’ ed. J. Douglas Bruce in PMLA 13 (1898), 365–456. Otto Rank, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero and Other Writings, ed. Philip Freund (New York, 1959), p. 65. P. 22. Bruce discusses the relationship between the two stories, pp. 372–7; cf. Roger S. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (New York, 1927), pp. 331–8. Rank, p. 79. Rank, p. 79. Bruce, pp. 379f. See Bruce, pp. 383–6. As Bruce rather drily anticipated, folklorists have not missed the opportunity ‘to point out parallels . . . to the conception of the charmed arms . . . on the possession of which depended the possession of the kingdom’ (p. 384, n. 2); see Roger Sherman Loomis, ‘The Latin Romances,’ in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis (Oxford, [1959]), p. 476. Readers of J. G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Study of Comparative Religion, 2 vols. (London, 1890), will be familiar with the identification of events, such as those described above, with vegetation rites. Rank, p. 78; see especially the footnote on the same page.

11

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry: Gawan in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival ALBRECHT CLASSEN

Gawan, King Arthur’s nephew and the second most important protagonist in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (ca. 1205), appears rather late in the story. Let us first consider the context. Because his teacher Gurnemanz instructed him to speak in the presence of lords only after he was approached by them, Parzival fails to ask the crucial question at Castle Munsalvæsche and hence fails to end the suffering of his uncle Anfortas. Thereafter follow several important encounters. First, he meets his aunt Sigune, who deeply laments that he did not ask the question: “ze Munsalvæsche an iu verswant / êre und rîterlîcher prîs” (knightly honor and esteem vanished with you at Munsalvæsche!; 255, 26–27; p. 135).1 Next, Parzival meets Orilus and his wife, Jeschute, from whom Parzival had taken a ring and a brooch and had rudely grabbed some food, all of which led her husband to believe she had had an affair behind his back. As punishment, Orilus mistreated Jeschute ever since, but now Parzival defeats him and reveals his own guilt. Through an act of public penance (269; p. 141), he convinces the duke of his wife’s innocence. Because it was beyond his comprehension at the time, Parzival did not know how to act during the religious experience at Munsalvæsche, but here he demonstrates true chivalry by defending an innocent woman against her husband’s abuse. Roaming the country alone, Parzival arrives at a spot near King Arthur’s camp, which is covered by snow from an unusual storm. When he observes three drops of blood in the snow, his mind turns to his wife, Condwirarmurs, whom he had left to visit his mother: “sus begunder sich verdenken, / unz daz er unversunnen hielt” (he became lost in thought till he fell into a trance; 283, 16–17; p. 148).2 In this trance, he does not notice that first Segremors and then the steward Keie approach him and challenge him to joust. Without really

217

218 • Albrecht Classen knowing what is going on, Parzival defeats both. Keie breaks an arm and leg when he falls off his horse, but this is a fair punishment for his ill treatment of two members of the court who had laughed at Parzival’s first clumsy appearance at Arthur’s court. This, however, had signaled Parzival’s designation as the savior of the Arthurian world (151, 11–20; p. 86). In fact, no knight ever defeats Parzival throughout the romance, with the possible exception of his half-brother Feirefiz. In contrast to his predecessors, Gawan does not even equip himself with weapons and armor when he leaves camp to discover the identity of the stranger. At first he cannot understand why Parzival fails to respond to his entreaties to accompany him to see King Arthur. Guided by wisdom and courtly manners, however, he recognizes that Parzival is under a love spell: dó dâhte mîn hêr Gâwân “waz ob diu minne disen man twinget als si mich dô twanc, und sîn getriulîch gedanc der minne muoz ir siges jehen?” (301, 21–25) “What if Love is now oppressing this man as once me,” my lord Gawan mused, “and his loyal heart has had to yield to her?” (p. 157)3 To awaken him from his trance, Gawan flings his cape over the drops of blood. This differs from the situation in Chrétien’s Perceval, where Gauvain arrives just before the sun melts the snow with its blood drops. His action enables them to exchange greetings and to strike up a friendship. Both knights prove to be equals to some extent, and they take their places at the Round Table as its most honored members, sharing equally in a brief moment of glory within the traditional context of chivalry and knighthood. Disaster strikes them both at almost the same moment, however, for they are accused of having committed evil deeds that tarnish their knightly honor: the Grail messenger Cundrie publicly charges Parzival with having forgotten to ask the required question and thus having failed to display basic human sympathy for the ailing king (312–18; pp. 165–66); Gawan stands accused of having murdered a knight and is called upon to defend himself in single combat within forty days (319–22; p. 167)—a number with highly religious connotations. As a matter of fact, neither hero is personally responsible for these alleged shortcomings and misdeeds, but they are both deemed guilty until they can prove their innocence through public acts of chivalry. Parzival eventually learns crucial lessons from his uncle Trevrizent, then encounters his halfbrother Feirefiz, and finally is invited to return to Castle Munsalvæsche to ask his uncle the reason for his suffering. Gawan, for his part, undergoes a very different experience, more mundane, yet equally challenging and dangerous.

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 219 Not only does he free a large group of women from captivity, but, still more important, he helps Lady Orgeluse overcome the deep grief caused by the death of her husband and develops a new love relationship with her. In fact, both Parzival and Gawan fulfill vital healing roles in their respective societies (the Grail and King Arthur’s court), and thus they prove to be complementary figures in Wolfram’s romance, even though their paths rarely cross. In order to understand Parzival, we must examine Gawan’s experiences, and in order to understand these, we need in turn to understand Parzival’s growth in character, intellect, and spirituality. Wolfram considerably expanded his source, Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval. Although he made little change in the overall structure, he did add narrative elements, characters, and a unique perspective on Parzival’s ultimate goal. In his finely tuned innovation process, the poet relied heavily on Gawan, developing him into a figure parallel to the main hero, yet situating him on a different plane where he pursues worldly ideals. Gawan knows little about the mysteries of the Grail and can only guess what its meaning might be since it always remains elusive for him. Nevertheless, it is he who reminds his friend of God and wishes that he might receive His mercy, and it is Parzival who rejects God, placing himself outside of the bounds of the Christian Church (332; p. 172). Gawan will never experience such a fundamental crisis. He has to prove his manly virtues frequently during a number of life-threatening challenges, but he is not the predestined King of the Grail: that position is reserved for Parzival alone. Cundrie, however, links both protagonists together in the course of her diatribe against Parzival, during which she mysteriously laments the fate of four queens and four hundred ladies at Schastel Marveile. She thus piques Gawan’s interest without urging him directly to free them from their imprisonment; indeed, their condition is only revealed later. As Martin Jones points out, Parzival “is so profoundly shaken by Cundrie’s accusations as to sever his contacts with society and to rebel against God . . . . Gawan experiences no such existential crisis, even though he is genuinely the victim of injustice.”4 Throughout Gawan’s adventures, there are repeated brief appearances by Parzival, though each character pursues his own goals and is governed by a different destiny.5 Gawan’s quest is motivated by a desire to exonerate himself of the charge that he has transgressed one of the basic rules of chivalry by killing a helpless knight. But as soon as he leaves Arthur’s court, he experiences a series of amorous adventures appropriate for the almost “classical” erotic hero of medieval literature. At first, Gawan, in a facetious though endearing gesture, submits to the request of the young girl Obilot to accept her love in return for his service. Her older sister Obie had earlier mocked her own lover, Meljanz,6 who then declared war against their father. When Obie observes Gawan and realizes that her sister admires him, she mocks him also, calling him a coward merchant who foolishly employs knightly trappings but would not know how to use

220 • Albrecht Classen them. Although no fully fledged and mature love develops between Gawan and Obilot, the latter personifies, in contrast to her sister, the true spirit of love despite her extraordinary youth. Gawan realizes the purity of her emotions: “[I]n iwerre hende sî mîn swert. ob iemen tjoste gein mir gert, den poynder müezt ir rîten, ir sult dâ für mich strîten.” (ch. 370, verses 25–28) “Let my sword be in your hand,” he went on, “and if anyone wishes to joust with me, you must ride to the attack and fight there in my stead.” (p. 191)7 Obie’s aggressiveness, on the other hand, results from her frustration with her lover, which is identified as “tumbiu lôsheit” (childish petulance; 386, 17; p. 198), and it makes Obilot’s courtship with Gawan seem all the more graceful. In the subsequent battle, Gawan decisively defeats Meljanz, and this allows Obilot to tease her sister for her presumptuous behavior. In the end, however, Obilot forces Meljanz, whom Gawan had turned over to his young mistress as her prisoner, to pay homage to Obie. She helps them resolve their conflict and recover their happiness. By the same token, Gawan emerges as a peace-maker whenever he shows up. He truly is, in Wolfgang Mohr’s words, a catalyst of humanity.8 Gawan had demonstrated this ability already with the day-dreaming Parzival, and now he helps rescue Obie’s love affair with Meljanz.9 Subsequent events confirm that Gawan indeed fulfills this most important task for society, particularly with respect to Orgeluse, who is a major source of conflict and sorrow affecting the entire Arthurian world.10 First, however, other character traits in Gawan emerge, and these are his overarching interest in women and his own erotic attractiveness, which are identity markers of his masculinity.11 As soon as he arrives in Ascalun to defend himself against the charge of having slain the father of King Vergulaht, Gawan embarks on a new love affair. Preoccupied with falconry, Vergulaht refers Gawan to his sister Antikonie, who resides in Castle Schampfanzun. They fall immediately in love, but at the crucial moment, they are interrupted by a knight; he accuses Gawan of trying to rape the king’s sister and then alerts the city troops. Because he is without armor and weapons, the hero desperately defends himself with a chess board and a door bolt while Antikonie hurls chess pieces at the soldiers, proving that women can transform themselves into mighty warriors under special circumstances (408, 28–409, 21; p. 210). During this struggle Gawan is not properly armed, whereas in Chrétien’s Perceval he has his sword and lacks only his shield, which explains why he makes use of the chess board. Another major difference is that Chrétien’s knight who discovers Gauvain with Antikonie (here unnamed) accuses the

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 221 latter of lasciviousness and of ignoring her lover’s alleged responsibility for the death of her father. Wolfram, in contrast, injects a heavy dose of comedy into this entire scene: the townspeople try to fight against a skilled knight, and Antikonie is described as the crown of virtues, although she does not hesitate for one moment to invite Gawan to make love to her. Also, whereas Chrétien only identifies the knight who discovers the couple as a “vavasor,” Wolfram deliberately characterizes him as an old man (“ein ritter blanc: wand er was grâ;” hoary with age; 407, 12; p. 209), which implies an element of jealousy at Gawan’s youthfulness and erotic prowess. The situation grows even worse when Vergulaht returns from his hunting party and joins the fight against Gawan. Fortunately, the land’s duke, Kingrimursel, intervenes and rescues the innocent victims. After lengthy negotiations, Gawan is set free on condition that he seek the Grail—this in close parallel to Parzival, who regularly orders defeated opponents to go on the same quest. Gawan’s adventure reveals a number of political conflicts between King Vergulaht and the Landgrave Kingrimursel. The latter rightly defends Gawan, who had been guaranteed safe conduct until the day of combat, and he goes so far as to threaten Vergulaht with open revolt against his rulership: “kunnet ir niht fürsten schônen, / wir krenken ouch die krônen” (If you do not know how to treat your great lords with due consideration, we shall diminish the Crown; 415, 21–22; p. 213). Eventually, however, the court council establishes peace, and Gawan continues on his journey, this time pursuing the same goal as Parzival does: the Grail. Ironically, it is precisely because Vergulaht had been defeated by an anonymous knight (Parzival) who charged him with this duty (425; p. 217) that he asks Gawan to undertake it on his behalf. Recognizing that they share the same courtly values and are in the service of courtly love,12 Gawan and Vergulaht then depart on their quest using separate paths. Gawan will never reach the Grail, but he does achieve his own destined goal. Although it differs from Parzival’s, it brings satisfaction to all involved, and they express profound gratitude for his long-needed help in liberating them and their country. After these two complicated and even dangerous erotic affairs, the hero encounters the third woman, Orgeluse de Logroys. Whereas Gawan had no difficulty in winning a woman’s love before, he now encounters resistance from Orgeluse, who has been deeply wounded by tragic experiences. She resists Gawan’s wooing until he can finally melt her heart and make her accept him, initially as lover, then as husband.13 Gawan must first overcome numerous obstacles, however, all of which prove him to be an ideal knight who knows how to defend those in need and protect his friends from dangers. He starts by saving a badly wounded knight, showing his lady how to suck out blood from his windpipe and thereby demonstrating an impressive medical knowledge. 14 Gawan’s help earns him not gratitude, though, but the very

222 • Albrecht Classen opposite. His patient turns out to be Urjans, who had raped a maid and then been apprehended by Gawan. King Arthur wanted to hang him for his crime, but Gawan, after being reminded by Urjans that he had surrendered to him and had requested his knightly assistance, begged for his life. Since Queen Ginover intervened on behalf of her nephew, the death penalty was transmuted into a highly humiliating imprisonment, during which Urjans had to eat with the dogs for four weeks. Now, however, he confirms his evil nature and takes revenge upon his benefactor by stealing his horse. Gawan is forced to resort to a lame mare that Urjans had taken from the disfigured squire Malcreatiure, Cundrie’s brother. Orgeluse shows no pity for Gawan, and she ridicules him for engaging in activities outside the traditional sphere of knighthood: “für einen rîter ich iuch sach: dar nâch in kurzen stunden: wurdt ir arzet für die wunden: nu müezet ir ein garzûn wesn” (523, 6–9) “I took you for a knight. Soon after, you turned surgeon. And now you are reduced to a footman.” (p. 265) Gawan has to go through other humiliating experiences while he woos Orgeluse, and many people entreat him to abandon her, believing that she will bring him only trouble and possibly death. She continues to belittle him with her sarcasm, comparing him to a merchant and a doctor (531, 15; p. 269). This recalls Obie’s behavior: both women were deeply hurt by a lover or by society, and they vent their frustration and misery by pouring scorn on this model knight. Nevertheless, the opportunity arrives soon enough to break through her wall of hatred. First, Gawan is challenged by and defeats Lischois Gweljus, another wooer of Orgeluse. Then he accepts the challenge posed by Schastel Marveile, in which the sorcerer Clinschor keeps four hundred highranking ladies as prisoners. Among them are four queens, including King Arthur’s mother, Arnive, and it is this adventure that Cundrie alluded to during her brief visit to Arthur’s court.15 In Chrétien’s version, the castle is called La Roche de Chanpguin. Within live five hundred maids and five hundred squires, and they await liberation from a magic charm so that they may get married or be knighted, respectively. Chrétien has Gauvain succeed not only because he is bold and strong, but also because he displays the highest chivalric virtues. Wolfram, however, does not discuss his qualities explicitly. Instead he emphasizes the hardship that Gawan endures in three extremely dangerous situations: the ride on an uncontrollable bed, the wild bombardment with arrows and pebbles, and the attack by a huge lion. Gawan almost dies and actually faints after he has killed the animal. Chrétien, in contrast, has Gauvain recover quickly since he suffers no major wounds. Hailed as victor by the ferryman, then by all the squires and maidens, he finally assumes lordship of the castle and the surrounding lands.

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 223 Wolfram pursues a different strategy, complicating Gawan’s wooing still further despite all his suffering. Through a magical pillar with optical qualities, he observes Orgeluse again, this time in the company of the knight Florant the Turkoyt (here identified only by the second name). Although still weak from his previous ordeal, Gawan orders his armor and weapons and leaves the castle against his grandmother’s advice. He defeats Florant but receives only scorn from Orgeluse, though she does allow him to ride with her. She even promises her love if he can meet the last challenge, to win a garland from the twig of a tree in a garden on the other side of the river Sabins. Trying to jump across it, Gawan and his horse almost drown. Surprisingly, Orgeluse weeps for the first time out of grief for Gawan: “der sprunc mit valle muoste sîn. / des weinde iedoch diu herzogîn” (so the leap ended in a spill, at which [though it may surprise you] the Duchess wept; 602, 17–18; p. 303). Gawan then enters the garden, which is owned by King Gramoflanz. Gramoflanz had once loved Orgeluse, but because he slew her husband Cidegast and then abducted her, she rejected his wooing and expressed nothing but hatred for him. He realizes that Gawan is more fortunate than he was in winning Orgeluse’s love, but he does not fight with him because of his sworn pledge only to accept the challenge of two knights at once. Although he now loves Gawan’s sister Itonje, he erroneously believes that their father murdered his. Because he wants revenge, however, he offers to meet Gawan in single combat later. The latter returns to Orgeluse, who now breaks down and begs his forgiveness because she knows only too well that she has been unfair and rude to him, that he has risked his life many times for her, that he is absolutely to be trusted as her lover and protector, and that he has avenged her against Gramoflanz: “. . . hêrre, solher nôt als ich hân an iuch gegert, der wart nie mîn wirde wert. für wâr mir iwer arbeit fueget sölich herzeleit, diu enpfâhet sol getriwez wîp umb ir lieben friundes lîp’” (611, 24–32) “My lord, you never deserved the hardships I asked you to undergo,” she said. “Truly, your trials afflicted me with such heartfelt suffering as a faithful woman must feel for her dear friend.” (p. 307) The ensuing discussion between them might be one of the most important in the entire romance, since Gawan emphasizes how severe her mistreatment of knighthood at large, as represented by him, has been and how she has betrayed the basic ideals of chivalry through her disrespect.16 Nevertheless, he forgives her out of love, although he warns her that he will no longer tolerate her insults. She now reveals the true extent of the suffering she has undergone as a

224 • Albrecht Classen result of the slaying of Cidegast by Gramoflanz, and she sings an epithalamium on the deceased, whom she recalls as a paragon of a husband. This moving confession rekindles Gawan’s love for Orgeluse, and he invites her to make love with him then and there. She declines because he is in armor, wounded, and in need of rest, but she does accompany him to Schastel Marveile, where in all likelihood their erotic union will take place at the appropriate time. On their way, she reveals another secret that tragically holds the entire Grail romance together. In the past, Orgeluse had accepted the wooing of King Anfortas, the ruler of the Grail, in an attempt to gain revenge against Gramoflanz. Anfortas, unfortunately, was seriously wounded in the testicles by Gramoflanz, and this led to the sorrowful state of Castle Munsalvæsche: “nu jeht, wie solt ich armez wîp, sît ich hân getriwen lîp, alsolher nôt bî sinne sîn?” (616, 27–29) “Now tell me, how am I, poor woman, with my faithful heart, to keep my reason in the face of such afflictions?” (p. 309) She relates how she reached an agreement with Clinschor concerning the enormous treasures that she, together with Gawan, now can keep because he overcame the sorcerer’s magic contraptions.17 She also reveals that at one point she had pleaded with the Red Knight to accept her love and to fight on her behalf against Gramoflanz. This knight was Parzival, but he rejected Orgeluse’s offer on the grounds that he was married to a woman many times more beautiful than she was and whom he loved more than he ever would love Orgeluse. This proved a most painful experience for Orgeluse since she had been wooed by almost every man she encountered (618, 19–20; p. 310). Moreover, Parzival refused to challenge Gramoflanz because he would not deviate from his quest for the Grail (619; p. 310). Nothing could make clearer to the audience the difference between Parzival’s religious and Gawan’s erotic quests and purposes in life. Both are undoubtedly paragons of chivalry, but Wolfram clearly positions Parzival as the predestined successor to the throne of the Grail kingdom. As such, Parzival has little interest in the mundane business of secular knighthood. This does not make Gawan less important, especially since he is as successful as Parzival in accomplishing his own tasks, but they differ in their goals and so truly belong to two separate levels of chivalric existence. Gawan has brought healing to the world of chivalry by helping suffering ladies and reconstituting happiness in the lives of his fellow knights.18 Gawan’s love affair with Obilot, if that is what we may call it, demonstrates his high degree of chivalry, sensitivity, and kindness; his love affair with Antikonie illustrates how much erotic passion lies behind his courtly behavior and restrained comportment; and his love affair with Orgeluse proves that he

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 225 is much more than simply a ladies’ man. Love drives Gawan, but it is love intimately coupled with chivalry and spirituality. He never forgets his public honor, his duty to serve his king, and his obligation to help people in need. Now, as the new lord of Schastel Marveile, he attains the highest development of a true knight, ruling as a just, generous, graceful, and respected ruler of his country and his subjects. He knows how to celebrate and to represent the ideals of the Round Table in public festivities and by providing support, help, and material assistance to those in need.19 Most important, in these festivities, Gawan establishes peace among the various groups, joins lovers who had been separated, and reconstitutes joy and happiness for the entire Arthurian world. The parallels to the world of Munsalvæsche are unmistakable: the procession of maids and squires; the display of precious objects; the union of men and women in communal celebration of the joys of courtly love, leading to the joining of many hands; and ultimately the sense of a general healing of many rifts between former enemies. Gawan’s victory over Clinschor’s spells has made it possible for the two genders to meet again and experience fundamental happiness. Whereas under the castrated sorcerer’s rule the knights and ladies had lived entirely separate lives, dô schuof mîn hêr Gâwân daz diz volc ein ander sach; dar an in liebes vil geschach (637, 24–26) Gawan now made it possible for this company of knights and ladies to meet, and this afforded them much pleasure. (pp. 319–20) By the same token, Gawan’s family is finally reunited, signaling that this burning conflict affecting the entire society has also been overcome: Gâwân und Sangîve unt diu künegîn Arnîve sazen stille bî des tanzes schar (640, 1–3) Gawan, Sangive and Queen Arnive were sitting quietly beside the dancing company. (p. 320) Gawan’s happiness results not only from having accomplished all his chivalric goals and from having saved many ladies from their bitter suffering, however, for he at last receives his well-deserved (erotic) reward from Orgeluse, by now his wife, as the narrator indicates quite openly (643, 28–644, 11; pp. 322–23). On the one hand, Gawan has freed Orgeluse and other women from their personal grief, and on the other, he has also overcome Clinschor’s hatred of the world, which resulted from the loss of his masculinity. As Arnive informs Gawan, before the sorcerer learned his magic arts, he was castrated by King Ibert of Sicily, who caught him in flagrante with his wife Iblis. As a eunuch,

226 • Albrecht Classen Clinschor bore a deep grudge against the entire courtly society, especially happy lovers: Durch die scham an sîme lîbe wart er man noch wîbe guotes willen nimmer mêr bereit; ichmein die tragent werdekeit. swaz er den freuden mac genemn, des kan von herzen in gezenn (658, 3–8) Because of the dishonor to his body he no longer bears good will to man or woman, I mean those of worthy disposition, for it gratifies his heart to deny them any happiness he can. (p. 329) Since Gawan is the new ruler of Schastel Marveile, he has the authority to release large numbers of people, both Christian and non-Christian, whom Clinschor’s spells had forced to live there. Gawan thus assumes the role of savior for all of mankind, irrespective of their religion. Whereas Parzival will eventually release Anfortas from his pain, and hence liberate Castle Munsalvæsche and with it the entire religious community of the Grail, Gawan is entitled to comparable fame because he frees this world from the sorcerer’s magic spells against the happy fulfillment of erotic love. In this sense, Gawan’s sexual union with Orgeluse symbolically reintroduces gender harmony and individual happiness to human existence, indirectly overcoming Clinschor’s loss of sexuality.20 Finally, as a reflection of the ultimate intersection of the spiritual-religious dimension represented by the Grail and the courtly-erotic dimension represented by Schastel Marveile, Parzival’s eponymous hero and Gawan fight each other by accident. One morning, before Gawan can engage in the longplanned duel with Gramoflanz, he runs into a strange knight. Unaware of each other’s identity, they joust with deadly fury; Gawan assumes that he is facing Gramoflanz. Significantly, and for the first time in his life, Gawan might almost have been defeated by his opponent’s superior strength, had not Arthur’s messengers come across them and desperately shouted out Gawan’s name. This so deeply shocks his opponent that he immediately stops fighting. He is none other than the long-lost Parzival. Deeply ashamed of his foolhardiness, Parzival accuses his old misfortune which regularly causes him to fight against his own relatives and friends without knowing their names (ch. 689, verses 5–8; p. 344). Eventually, it so happens that Parzival encounters and defeats Gramoflanz, but Gawan himself never fulfils the engagement because intensive negotiations between King Arthur, Orgeluse, and others lead to a peaceful settlement. After all, Gramoflanz loves Gawan’s sister Itonje and has no good reason to regard her brother as his enemy, while Gawan is ready to abandon the joust for

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 227 Orgeluse’s sake. Thus, Gramoflanz promises to let go his hatred against Lot of Norway, “als in der sunnen snê, / durch die clâren Itonjê” (like snow in sunshine for lovely Itonje’s sake; 728, 15–16; p. 362). For her part, Orgeluse forgoes her hatred of Gramoflanz and even kisses him, though she still mourns her deceased husband.21 Subsequently many knights and ladies are married, restoring peace and harmony to the entire courtly world of King Arthur. In other words, under Gawan’s leadership, courtly society is restored to its previous splendor, and love reigns supreme among its members once again.22 This leaves out Parzival for the time being, but he still has to encounter his half-brother Feirefiz and learn his last lesson of humility by being almost defeated by him. Only then is he called back by the Grail to assume the throne, after he has asked the decisive question and relieved Anfortas of his suffering. Gawan’s tale, however, has come to a conclusion, and there are no significant problems left that would require the narrator to explore his chivalric life further. Certainly, Parzival outshines his friend in many respects, but he operates on a different level of religious chivalry and cannot simply be compared with Gawan. Whereas the former belongs to the Grail family and has to live his own destiny apart from King Arthur and the Round Table, the latter proves to be the Round Table’s paragon and absolute champion. Gawan demonstrates that human society, frail as it may be, can be reformed, changed, and healed because love ultimately dominates all human affairs. Through the account of Gawan’s life, the narrator argues strongly in favor of peaceful settlements of military conflicts, of an improved communication system, and of giving women a powerful, if not equal, role within courtly society. In addition, Gawan illustrates the various stages and degrees of intensity of love throughout his life. Finally, he sheds the last vestiges of the lighthearted, perhaps even superficial, ladies’ man and grants his total loyalty, service, and love to Orgeluse, risking both his honor and his life on her behalf. It would not do justice to Gawan to see him as merely playing second fiddle in Wolfram’s romance. His performance almost always proves to be outstanding and impeccable, but he has to encounter the sternest challenge, to win Orgeluse’s love, before he can understand how to channel all his energies into service for her and for his people.23 She, on the other hand, lost her respect for knighthood and manhood because of her husband’s violent death at Gramoflanz’s hands, yet she learns to overcome her grief with Gawan’s help. The same process of reconciliation takes place in many male figures, most notably Gramoflanz, who profit from Gawan’s human, diplomatic, circumspect, but also resolute, energetic, and bold handling of problems between men and women. Gawan does not abandon his role as a knight and as King Arthur’s primary champion in military and political affairs; but he also pursues his own course and centrally concerns himself with how to help people realize their longing for love, maintain their honor, and enjoy peace and happiness.24

228 • Albrecht Classen Just as Parzival restores harmony and unity to the Grail society, so does Gawan return true love, friendship, trust, and forbearance to chivalric society. In fact, Wolfram’s Parzival without the Gawan books would fall short of its ethical and spiritual goals. After all, Parzival basically ignores the social world around him. He remains uninvolved as he passes through the various scenes in which acrimonious conflicts between individual knights, lovers, and family members threaten the well-being of the entire society. At such moments, Parzival reminds the audience that his ultimate goal is the Grail, but the ordinary characters do not face this challenge. They struggle with more mundane tasks, conflicts, and problems. Without Gawan’s appearance, then, the fundamental human dimension would be missing: erotic love, fear, hatred, anger, passion, and hope. Parzival would never help those like Orgeluse, whose offer of love he rejects contemptuously. Gawan, on the other hand, comes to her rescue because he falls in love with her and fully understands the crisis she is in. In fact, both here and elsewhere he invariably shows sympathy for others. He is the human hero, the protagonist who, despite his own shortcomings and failings, fights for those in need and restores justice, happiness, and love to this world. And this world is the better for his compassion. Notes 1. All quotes are taken from Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival (Studienausgabe. Mittelhochdeutscher Text nach der sechsten Ausgabe von Karl Lachmann. Übersetzung von Peter Knecht. Einführung zum Text von Bernd Schirok) (Berlin and New York: de Gruyter, 1998). The text is divided into individual books, which I disregard here for the identification of specific passages, and chapters. Each chapter consists of thirty verses, so all citations refer to the chapter first and then the verse or verses. For the English translation, see Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. A.T. Hatto (London: Penguin, 1980), which I cite only by page number. 2. Joachim Bumke, Die Blutstropfen im Schnee: Über Wahrnehmung und Erkenntnis im “Parzival” Wolframs von Eschenbach. Hermaea. Germanistische Forschungen, NF 94 (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001), pp. 1–14. 3. Bumke, Die Blutstropfen, pp. 158–61. 4. Martin Jones, “The Significance of the Gawan Story in Parzival,” in A Companion to Wolfram’s Parzival, ed. Will Hasty. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999), pp. 37–76; here p. 42. 5. Marianne Wynn, “Parzival and Gâwân: Hero and Counterpart,” in Wolfram’s “Parzival”: On the Genesis of its Poetry. Mikrokosmos 9 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1984); here quoted from Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook, ed. Arthur Groos and Norris J. Lacy (New York and London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 175–98; here p. 177. 6. Neil Thomas, “Sense and Structure in the Gawan Adventures of Wolfram’s ‘Parzival’,” Modern Language Review 76 (1981): 848–56. 7. For the concept of pure, childish love in medieval German literature, see Albrecht Classen, “Wolframs von Eschenbach Titurel-Fragmente und Johanns von Würzburg Wilhelm von Österreich: Höhepunkte der höfischen Minnereden,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 37 (1993): 75–102. 8. Wolfgang Mohr, “Parzival und Gawan,” Euphorion 52 (1958): 1–22; here 14: “gleichsam als Katalysator der Menschlichkeit.” 9. Christopher Young, “Obie und Obilot: Zur Kultur und Natur der Kindheit in Wolframs Parzival,” in Natur und Kultur in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, ed. Alan Robertshaw and Gerhard Wolf (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999), pp. 243–52. 10. Joachim Bumke, Wolfram von Eschenbach. 7th compl. rev. ed. Sammlung Metzler 36 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1997), p. 64.

Crisis and Triumph in the World of Medieval Knighthood and Chivalry • 229 11. Thomas Hahn, “Gawain and Popular Chivalric Romance in Britain,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 218–34; here p. 220. 12. Herta Zutt, “Gawan und die Geschwister Antikonie und Vergulaht,” in Gotes und der werlde hulde: Literatur in Mittelalter und Neuzeit: Festschrift für Heinz Rupp zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Rüdiger Schnell (Bern: Francke, 1989), pp. 97–117. 13. Friedrich Michael Dimpel, “Dilemmata: Die Orgeluse-Gawan-Handlung im ‘Parzival,’” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 120 (2001): 35–59; Barbara S. Dieterich, “Das venushafte Erscheinungsbild der Orgeluse in Wolframs von Eschenbach ‘Parzival,’” Literaturwissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 41 (2000): 9–65; Walter K. Francke, “Orgeluse’s Predicament,” Michigan Germanic Studies 9.1 (1983): 18–32. 14. This reflects Wolfram’s own familiarity with the most recent medical learning that had been introduced into Europe: see Bernhard Dietrich Haage, “Methodisches zur Interpretation von Urjans’ Heilung (Parzival 505, 21–606, 19),” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 111.3 (1992): 387–92. 15. Lotte Boigs, “Gawans Abenteuer auf Schastel Marveile: Beobachtungen zur Unterscheidung jüngerer und älterer Textstrecken in Wolframs ‘Parzival,’” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 106.3 (1987): 354–79. 16. Albrecht Classen, Verzweiflung und Hoffnung: Die Suche nach der kommunikativen Gemeinschaft in der deutschen Literatur des Mittelalters, Beihefte zur Mediaevistik 1 (Frankfurt/ Main: Peter Lang, 2002), pp. 221–78. 17. Walter Blank, “Der Zauberer Clinschor in Wolframs ‘Parzival,’” in Studien zu Wolfram von Eschenbach. Festschrift für Werner Schröder zum 75. Geburtstag, ed. Kurt Gärtner and Joachim Heinzle (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1989), pp. 321–32; Stephan Maksymiuk, The Court Magician in Medieval German Romance, Mikrokosmos 44 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1996), pp. 105–9. 18. Heinz Rupp, “Die Bedeutung der Gawan-Bücher in Parzival Wolframs von Eschenbach,” in London German Studies II, ed. J. P. Stern (London: Institute of Germanic Studies, University of London, 1983), pp. 1–16; here p. 12. 19. Thomas, “Sense and Structure,” p. 848. 20. Sidney Johnson, “Parzival and Gawan: Their Conflict of Duties,” Wolfram-Studien 1 (1970): 98–116. 21. Jones, “Significance of the Gawan Story,” p. 70. 22. Joachim Bumke, “Geschlechterbeziehungen in den Gawanbüchern von Wolframs ‘Parzival,’” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 38/39 (1994): 105–21. 23. Ulrike Draesner, Wege durch erzählte Welten: Intertextuelle Verweise als Mittel der Bedeutungskonstitution in Wolframs ‘Parzival’, Mikrokosmos 36 (Frankfurt/Main: Peter Lang, 1993), pp. 376–77. 24. John M. Clifton-Everest, “Knights-Servitor and Rapist Knights. A Contribution to the Parzival/Gawan Question,” Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 119 (1990): 290–317; here pp. 315–17.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

12

Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein BART BESAMUSCA

Ever since Gauvain was presented as the embodiment of ideal knighthood in Chrétien de Troyes’s first Arthurian romances, this character underwent an impressive development in Old French literature. In this development, the flaws in Gauvain’s character, which are already present in Chrétien’s texts, play an important part. Arthur’s nephew, after all, is not just the preeminently heroic and courtly knight, but to an equal extent a paragon of fickleness and frivolity. For example, he rarely succeeds in completing a task without being distracted; in addition, his irresistible appearance serves him well when it comes to keeping up his reputation as ideal lover. Understandably, these qualities offer ample occasion to the Old French poets to ironize Gauvain’s conduct. The authors of certain prose romances, such as La Queste del Saint Graal and the Tristan en prose, do not restrict themselves to irony: in these texts, Gauvain has been downgraded to a depraved sinner and a villain.1 Because this article deals with the Middle Dutch Gauvain romance Walewein, I will first focus on those verse romances written after Chrétien in which Gauvain plays the main part. As Beate Schmolke-Hasselmann has shown, in many of these works Gauvain’s role as the ideal lover is under discussion.2 In Gliglois, for example, Gauvain the frivolous charmer is turned down in favor of his squire, who appears to be capable of sincere love. Furthermore, Gauvain is quite often portrayed as a womanizer (and as such denounced by the male characters) who cannot live up to his reputation of the ideal man when actually encountering women. In Le Chevalier aux deux Epées, Gauvain spends a sleepless night in the bed of a maiden who is hopelessly in love with Arthur’s nephew, although she has never seen him before. She refuses to comply with her bedfellow’s wishes, as she does not believe his assertion that he actually is Gauvain, of whom she has heard that he is dead. In a number of cases, even his erotic capacities are doubted. After all, in Le Chevalier à l’Epée and La Vengeance Raguidel he is traded in for another knight, from whom the women in question expect a superior bedroom performance.3 On the basis of examples

231

232 • Bart Besamusca like these, Schmolke-Hasselmann comes to the following conclusion about Gauvain’s behavior when it comes to matters of the heart: “In fast allen Romanen der Gauvain-Gruppe wird seine Eigenschaft als idealer Liebhaber in Frage gestellt.”4 When one reads the Middle Dutch Walewein against the background of this characterization of Gauvain in the Old French Arthurian romances written after Chrétien, one soon realizes that one is dealing with a different type of Gauvain romance.5 Penninc and Pieter Vostaert, the Flemish poets who wrote this text around 1250, present their principal figure without a trace of irony. Walewein, as Gauvain is called here, makes his appearance as the ideal courtly knight, who does not lack a single virtue. He is strong, courageous, courtly, generous, merciful, loyal, just, and full of self-control.6 It is therefore not surprising that the poets repeatedly assert that not a single knight is a match for Walewein. At the beginning of the romance, for instance, they already assure the reader that “Sijn gheselle was daer ne ghein” (42), which can be translated “He was without peer.” A second example is provided by the narrator’s comment when Walewein, half way through the story, spares the life of Roges, the talking fox (5268–72): Doe liet hine levende daer Deer Walewein die noit zijns ghenoot Ne vant: al hadde een man doot Sinen vader, badi ghenaden Hi vergavem die mesdaden. (Then Sir Walewein, who did not have a peer, let him live. Even if a man had killed his father and were to beg for mercy, he would forgive him his crimes.) In the course of this article, I will show how this model of chivalry behaves in an equally exemplary way where love is concerned. As Maartje Draak has shown convincingly, the poets who wrote the Walewein borrowed the structure of their story from a fairy tale.7 This fairy tale, which, just like Grimm’s Der goldene Vogel, must have been a variant of AarneThompson 550, was made into a romance by being provided with a knightly and courtly setting, and by the addition of chivalric episodes. The romance is constructed round a threefold quest. Our hero leaves the court to find for Arthur a chessboard that floats through the air, which, after having appeared briefly before the king and his knights, has disappeared again. After a perilous pursuit, Walewein tracks down the Floating Chessboard with King Wonder, who is only willing to hand it over in exchange for the Magic Sword with the Two Rings. Walewein continues his quest, and eventually finds the sword. Its possessor, King Amoraen, only agrees to give Walewein the sword on the condition that he abduct a damsel, Ysabele, King Assentijn’s daughter. Assisted by

Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein • 233 the fox Roges, who is in fact an enchanted young man, Walewein manages to capture Ysabele, who lives with her father in distant India. The two fall in love, which places Walewein in a difficult position, as he has to hand over his beloved to Amoraen. Fortunately though, the king turns out to have died, so that Walewein can return to King Wonder with Ysabele and the sword. There the fox is disenchanted. Together with Ysabele and Roges, Walewein returns to Arthur’s court, where he gives an account of his adventures and presents Arthur with the chess set. From this summary, it is clear that the love theme, which I will now analyze in more detail, plays an important role, especially in the second half of the romance. In the fairy tale that the Walewein-poets adapted, the hero’s attempts to carry out the first two assignments fail because he does not follow the fox’s advice. He is then assigned a new task: he is to seize a princess. The attempt to abduct the princess is successful, just like Walewein’s effort to carry off Ysabele. However, the actual course of events in the Middle Dutch romance cannot be ascribed to the fairy tale in this case. In the romance, the third and final part of the quest is described in such a way that Walewein and Ysbele’s falling in love forms the center of attention. For this description, the poets have made use of an episode in Gerbert’s Continuation of Perceval. This I will now demonstrate. Trying to find Ysabele, Walewein succeeds in forcing his way into King Assentijn’s castle, which is surrounded by twelve walls and moats. However, when he loses his magic sword, he can no longer hold out against the superior forces, and Assentijn captures him. As soon as Assentijn shows his prisoner to Ysabele, she reminds her father of how he had promised her a favor, earlier on in the story, for having told him about the dream she had had, in which Walewein’s coming was foretold. Assentijn now has to keep his promise, by placing Walewein in Ysabele’s custody for one night. She will torture him, so she assures her father, but the fact is, she desires to make love to him. This scheme has been derived from the only long episode about Gauvain in Gerbert’s Perceval (12,381–4073).8 In the episode in question, one of Gauvain’s amorous adventures is described. On his way to the Pui de Montesclaire, he finds shelter with a fair lady, Bloisine, daughter of Urpin de la Montaigne Irouse. In order to revenge herself on Gauvain for having killed one of her brothers, she lures all passing knights into her bed, only to kill them with a knife. After Gauvain has discovered her true intentions, he makes love to her. Initially, Bloisine passively endures what fate has bestowed on her, but soon she falls in love with Gauvain so passionately that she comes to her lover’s aid later on in the story, when her father has taken him prisoner. She suggests to her father that she might avenge herself on Gauvain that night. Just like Assentijn in the Walewein, Urpin is fooled by his daughter and gives his consent. I will come back to this borrowing later.

234 • Bart Besamusca Bloisine and Gauvain, as well as Ysabele and Walewein, have an enjoyable night. In the Middle Dutch romance, the love theme develops as follows: Ysabele has found out about Walewein’s feelings for her because she eavesdropped on him when, alone in the dungeon, he expressed his love for her. She, burning with passion, has him taken out of the dungeon and brought up to her room, where the lovers enjoy each other’s company. Ysabele’s passion is so overwhelming, the narrator tells us, that she would prefer her father’s death to the loss of her lover (7950–54). However, their happiness does not last very long: they are betrayed by a perfidious knight. When Assentijn surprises them, Walewein refuses to use a secret tunnel and leave his beloved behind. When he loses the battle against the superior forces, Ysabele, too, decides not to use this opportunity to escape and both end up in the dungeon. Here, too, the Walewein-poets use this particular setting to develop the love theme further. The lovers movingly lament each other’s fate. The third and final stage of the quest ends with Walewein and Ysabele’s escape, thanks to the aid of a supernatural helper—it is the ghost of a knight who was killed by Walewein earlier on in the story. The hero gave him a Christian funeral, in return for the promise that he would one day come to his aid. After this miraculous rescue, Walewein, Ysabele, and the fox Roges set out on their journey home. In the following episode, which has been added to the fairy-tale structure, the poets once again concentrate on the love relationship, in their by now familiar way, for again they borrow from Gerbert and again they include a dungeon scene in their story. The episode begins with the appearance of a young and shameless knight, who claims Ysabele. For this provocation, he must pay with his life. Shortly afterward, without realizing it, Walewein and Ysabele find shelter with the father of the slain knight. When his son’s body is carried in and the wounds start to bleed again, it is clear to everyone that the culprit is present. The father does not respect the right of hospitality and throws Walewein and Ysabele into the dungeon. The two motifs, the body that starts to bleed again and the nonobservance of the right of hospitality, have both been borrowed from the same episode in Gerbert’s Perceval as that of Ysabele’s scheme, which I discussed earlier on. In the Old French text, Gauvain finds shelter with Urpin, after having left Bloisine and killed her brother. It is customary in Urpin’s castle for the guests to give an account of what happened to them during the previous day and night. In other words, Gauvain is forced to relate his adventures at Bloisine’s tent, much to Urpin’s horror. When the bodies of Bloisine’s brother and cousin, who had been killed by Gauvain before, are carried in, the wounds start bleeding again, whereupon Urpin, in a frenzy, infringes on the right of hospitality. He wants to kill Gauvain on the spot, but Bloisine manages to prevent this, by means of the scheme already discussed. This second borrowing from Gerbert too is used to support the love theme in the Walewein. Due to the non-observance of the right of hospitality, the

Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein • 235 lovers find themselves once more in the dungeon, where they comfort each other as well as they can. Ysabele even swears that she would not want to be in paradise if Walewein were still in the dungeon. The prisoners escape with the unintentional help of the guard, who takes great pleasure in beating up Walewein. When he accidentally hits Ysabele, love gives Walewein the strength to break his chains with superhuman exertion. He kills the guard, frees his beloved, and escapes. I hope to have demonstrated convincingly that the Walewein-poets work with the well-known principle of analogy. Twice, the motifs they borrow from Gauvain’s amorous adventures in Gerbert’s romance lead to a dungeon scene. The recurring imprisonment of the lovers is preeminently effective to demonstrate just how true their love is. The structure of the fairy tale offered another ideal opportunity to the Walewein-poets to elaborate on the love theme. After all, the hero of the fairy tale must part with his beloved in order to carry out his task. He manages to keep her with him by means of trickery, which of course is out of the question in the case of Walewein. In the Middle Dutch romance, Walewein is torn between his love for Ysabele and his honor. At this point, the love theme reaches its climax.9 In accordance with the traditional image of Gauvain in the Arthurian romances, Walewein is very anxious to avoid disgrace. Nevertheless, he chooses Ysabele when he has lost the Sword with Two Rings. He vows that he will not give her up, although this will mean losing his honor. Even when after a while he finds the sword, he chooses Ysabele. He resolves to give back the sword to Amoraen, and keep Ysabele for himself (9452–67). By doing so he will uphold his honor before this king, but the chessboard he will not be able to obtain. After all, its owner, King Wonder, will give it up only in exchange for the sword. Thus, the quest threatens to become a failure, which will yet cause Walewein to lose his honor. The passage analyzed here leaves no room for doubt about the sincerity of Walewein’s feelings. He prefers a disgraceful return to Arthur’s court to losing his beloved. Fortunately, everything takes a turn for the better, as I have said before, for it appears that Amoraen has died, so that Walewein can set out for King Wonder with Ysabele and the sword. This analysis should have given an impression of the love theme in the Walewein. Walewein’s portrayal as Ysabele’s lover is unmistakably positive. There is not a trace of his traditional frivolity. In this Middle Dutch Gauvain romance, the hero is indeed capable of more than a casual love affair. Still, the poets of the Walewein must admit, at the end of their romance, that they do not know whether their hero ever married Ysabele. Apparently, the end of the fairy tale, which mentions the marriage of the hero to the princess, was too much in conflict with the traditional image of Gauvain. In conclusion, I would like to discuss briefly the question of why the Walewein-poets present their hero as the ideal knight and lover, in contrast with the

236 • Bart Besamusca Old French tradition. It will be clear that this portrayal is only partly linked with the structure of the fairy tale, for the poets developed the love theme by using story elements that do not occur in the fairy tale. I will now offer two explanations. In the first place, it is possible that the oral tradition of the matière de Bretagne has influenced the image of Walewein in the romance. The existence of such an oral tradition in Flanders is confirmed by the occurrence of personal names like Walewein and Iwein in official texts. We know, for instance, about a document from 1118, in which one of the Flemish lords mentioned is called Walawainus.10 From this we can deduce that long before Geoffrey of Monmouth Arthurian stories were circulating in Flanders. In those stories, Walewein must have played quite a favorable role; otherwise it is hard to imagine children being named after him. This favorable image of Walewein in the oral tradition may have had its effects on subsequent Arthurian romances, such as the Walewein.11 The second explanation, which supplements, rather than supplants, the first, takes into account the literary development in the thirteenth century outside France. Walter Haug has pointed out that in many German Arthurian romances written after Hartmann and Wolfram a new type of hero appears. In those cases, we are dealing with perfect, courtly knights who, in contrast with characters like Erec and Yvain, do not undergo any development.12 In the Middle English romances, we find a similar picture. The following quotation from Joerg Fichte will illustrate and support this contention: While the characterization of the hero of the classical Artusroman is always kinetic, i.e. a development in his personality takes place, expressing itself by the hero’s progress from innocent ignorance to guilt, personal crisis, penance, and finally perfection, the Middle English Arthurian romances, on the contrary, present a hero whose characterization with few exceptions is always static. There is no development of his personality; rather, the protagonist is the perfect representative of his social class and as such he rushes along from one success to the next.13 It goes without saying that Gauvain as a character is eminently suitable for this type of hero. After all, despite the imperfections in his character, which are amply exploited in the Old French Arthurian romances, he had been the paragon of valor and courtliness ever since Wace’s Roman de Brut. He was, as it were, predestined to take the leading role in the numerous Middle High German and Middle English Gauvain romances from the thirteenth and following centuries.14 The authors of these romances only seldom had the intention of demonstrating psychological and moral changes in their protagonists. They nearly always used their hero to illustrate types of ideal behavior. The Walewein fits perfectly in the literary development outside France that I have just sketched. Around 1250, the poets of this romance present Arthur’s

Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein • 237 nephew as the ideal knight and lover. The negative character traits that are traditionally linked with his conduct, his fickleness and his frivolity, are missing altogether in the Middle Dutch romance. Just like many heroes from nonFrench Arthurian romances and which were written after Chrétien, Walewein, to use a characterization by Haug, is “ein krisenloser Träger von Normen.”15 Notes

1.

2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

This article is a revised version of a paper presented at the XVIth International Arthurian Congress, Durham, August 11–18,1990. Copyright 1992. Reproduced by permission of Routledge/Taylor & Francis Books, Inc. from The Arthurian Yearbook II, ed. Keith Busby (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 3–12. For the development of Gauvain’s character, see K. Busby, “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” Tristania, 2 (1977), pp. 12–28 [reprinted in this casebook]; idem, Gauvain in Old French Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980); idem, “Diverging Traditions of Gauvain in Some of the Later Old French Verse Romances,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. N. J. Lacy, D. Kelly, and K. Busby, II (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), pp. 93–109 [reprinted in this casebook]. See B. Schmolke-Hasselmann, Der arthurische Versroman von Chrestien bis Froissart. Zur Geschichte einer Gattung (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980), pp. 86–115. Cf. also N. J. Lacy, “Chivalry in Le Chevalier à l’Epée and La Mule sans Frein,” in Vox Romanica, 45 (1986), 150–56. Schmolke-Hasselmann, p. 115. The text has been edited by G. A. van Es, De jeeste van Walewein en het schaakbord van Penninc en Pieter Vostaert. Artur-epos uit het begin van de 13e eeuw, 2 vols. (Zwolle, 1957; rpt. of text: Culemborg: Tjeenk Willink, 1976). See T. Verhage-Van den Berg, “Het onderschatte belang van de nevenepisoden in de Walewein,” Nieuwe Taalgids, 76 (1983), 225–44. A. M. E. Draak, Onderzoekingen over de Roman van Walewein (Met aanvullend hoofdstuk over “Het Walewein onderzoek sinds 1936” (Haarlem, 1936; rpt. Groningen: Bouma’s Boekhuis/ Amsterdam: Bert Hagen, 1975). Ed. M. Williams and M. Oswald, 3 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1922–1975). Cf. Verhage-Van den Berg, pp. 240–42. Cf. W. P. Gerritsen, “Walewein van Melle (anno 1118) en de Oudnederlandse Arturliteratuur,” Naamkunde, 16 (1984), 115–34. See J. D. Janssens, “The Influence of Chrétien de Troyes on Middle Dutch Arthurian Romances: A New Approach,” in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. N. J. Lacy, D. Kelly, and K. Busby, II (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1988), pp. 285-306 (esp. pp. 295–98). Cf. W. Haug, “Paradigmatische Poesie. Der spätere deutsche Artusroman auf dem Weg zu einer ‘nachklassischen’ Asthetik,” in Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 54 (1980), 204–31 (esp. pp. 207–16). See also idem, Literaturtheorie im deutschen Mittelalter. Von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts. Eine Einführung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1985), Ch. XIV. J. O. Fichte, “The Middle English Arthurian Verse Romance: Suggestions for the Development of a Literary Typology,” Deutsche Vierteljahrschrift, 55 (1981), 567–90, p. 583. Cf. also H. Bergner, “Gauvain dans la littérature anglaise du Moyen Age,” in Lancelot, Yvain et Gauvain (Colloque arthurien Belge de Wégimont), ed. J. de Caluwé-Dor (Paris: Nizet, 1984), pp. 141–55. Haug, Literaturtheorie, p. 251.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

13

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy MARIE-JOSÉ HEIJKANT Translated by Thea Summerfield and Debora Schwartz

Originally, Gauvain is an exemplary knight, the unsurpassed embodiment of such virtues as courage, courtesy, wisdom, and loyalty. However, his frivolous ways make him the butt of irony of poets like Chrétien de Troyes. From allusions by troubadours, the oldest of which dates from before 1150, it can be deduced that they must have known the ambivalent figure of Gauvain from Northern France. Studies by Fanni Bogdanow, Jean Larmat, and particularly Keith Busby have shown that Gauvain as a literary character was subject to a negative development in Arthurian romances that ran parallel to the erosion of the ideal of the chevalerie terrienne. 1 According to Emmanuèle Baumgartner, this “champion de la répétition à l‘identique,” who traditionally seems to be in search of knightly adventure, is more than anything else a victim of the tendency to reread/rewrite the Arthurian pre-text in the prose romances with their pronounced tendency toward allegorization.2 Despite his noble characteristics, Gauvain is devalued in the Queste del Saint Graal as he is unable to repent his sinful life. As a consequence, he is excluded from the elite of the chevalerie célestielle, which is granted a glimpse of the Grail. In La Mort le roi Artu, he is obsessed by a thirst for revenge; this is elaborated further in the Tristan en prose, where Gauvain’s cruelty reaches unprecedented heights.3 In this essay, I want to survey the way in which King Arthur’s famous nephew has been portrayed in Italy, to see whether he is degraded there too or treated more leniently. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Italian documents record baptismal names that derive from Gauvain: Walwanus, probably born circa 1120 (Fiesso, 1136); Johannes Galvanus (Genoa, 1158); Galvagno di Castronovo, born circa 1150 (Feltre, 1182); Guolguano et Thome filiis Gualguani (Frosinone, 1207); Bernardus filius quondam Galvantis (Como, 1216); Galvagnus (Turin,

239

240 • Marie-José Heijkant Alessandria, Cuneo, Genoa, and Pavia); and Galvanus (Vercelli, Tortona, Padua, and Treviso).4 They suggest that Gauvain was already well known on the peninsula before the matière de Bretagne was given its fixed form in the courtly romances, probably by way of stories told by Breton conteurs or by giullari from Southern France. The high relief sculpture on the outside of the archivolt above the Porta della Pescheria of the cathedral of Modena (1090–1106), which has inscriptions dating from 1120–40, is especially interesting in this context.5 The name Galvaginus is inscribed above one of the besiegers of a fortress inhabited by a distraught Winlogee and a threatening Mardoc. It is assumed that this depicts an old story about the abduction of Guenevere, some elements of which can be found in the Vita sancti Gildae (1130), the Roman d’Yder, Durmart le Gallois, and the episode of the Doloreuse Garde in the Lancelot en prose. The same scene without the inscriptions, a possible model for the archivolt of Modena, can be found above a portal of San Nicola at Bari (1087–1148). In this town, a contingent of Breton knights gathered in 1096–97 to set sail for the First Crusade, and there may well have been storytellers among them. In any case, a Breton conteur was responsible for the exceptional form of the queen’s name. The place assigned to Gauvain in the sculpture is remarkable. Artus de Bretania comes charging toward the left barbican where stands Burmaltus, a churl or dwarf with a pickaxe, while behind him Isdernus grapples with a nameless knight. In the company of Galvariun and Che, Gauvain is engaged at the right barbican in a fight with the main antagonist, Carrado; both men are armed with lances. Gauvain is clearly winning and is the only one to bear a decorated shield. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that it is Gauvain rather than Arthur who has the role of liberator. According to Jessie Weston in her book The Legend of Sir Gawain, this was the case originally (pp. 73–83); for instance, in Chrétien’s Yvain (vv. 3706–15), allusions are made to Gauvain’s quest to rescue the abducted queen. It should also be noted that the fortress in the sculpture is surrounded by water, suggesting a trip to the Other World, with which Gauvain is traditionally associated. In addition, Galvariun may be his brother: another similarity can be found in the names of two other members of the family, Gaheriet and Guerrehet (known in Italy as Garies and Gariet). Beside the cathedral is the Tower of Ghirlandina. On the second floor are a number of interesting high-relief sculptures in marble (1169–79) in which the three worthies, David, Arthur, and Roland, have been recognized. On account of the marked resemblance to the well-known depiction on the mosaic floor of the cathedral of Otranto (1163–65), the man riding a monstrous horned animal has been identified as King Arthur. The young man with the stick next to him could be Gauvain since it is he who comes to the rescue in the Occitan romance Jaufré when King Arthur is carried off by the animal. It may seem surprising to find these legendary characters in a religious context, but it

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 241 should be borne in mind that the conquerors of evil serve here as the emblem of the Redeemer.6 Proof that Gauvain’s fame and the knightly ethos connected with it had even reached the area around Siena is provided by the legend of San Galgano, a hermit who became the subject of a great cult immediately after his death in 1181. The name Galgano was probably derived from that of Gawain, whom Geoffrey of Monmouth calls Gualguanus (the variant form Galganus occurs in Poitou and Anjou, and Pierre de Blois refers to him as Gaugano).7 In his introduction, Franco Cardini draws attention to the many archetypical and mythical elements of the legend, which is based on a knightly vocation and a peregrinatio spiritualis, an initiation journey into the Other World.8 Starting in the second half of the thirteenth century, the matière de Bretagne takes firm root in Italy as a result of the success of the French prose romances. These were translated into the vernacular for prosperous merchants and bankers in the Italian city-states, who liked to imitate aristocratic cultural models. The prose Tristan was particularly popular with this audience. In the Tristano Riccardiano (end of thirteenth century), a conventional Gauvain plays a modest subsidiary role.9 The first representative of Arthur’s court met by Tristan on the occasion of a tournament in Ireland, he is described, following Chrétien de Troyes’s formula, as a paragon of courage and courtesy (“pro e valente cavaliere e cortese”). He is accompanied by a squire who wants to be knighted by him. Young men’s admiration of the exemplary Gauvain had been a traditional theme ever since Cligès, as had been the fact that he is subsequently overshadowed by the hero of the story. Here, the squire ultimately prefers to be made a knight by Tristan (p. 93). A little later, Gauvain appears in yet another stereotypical situation when he is searching for Lancelot, conqueror of the Doloreuse Garde, and wrongly thinks to recognize him in Tristan (p. 101).10 Gauvain is given the epithet “leale” (loyal), and his actions stand in stark contrast to those of Brehus-sans-Pitié, the anti-knight par excellence. When the latter rudely robs a lady of a shield, Tristan sends him to Gauvain as a prisoner, by way of punishment (p. 132). The French text, by contrast, gives a totally different reason for Tristan’s conduct: there Brehus is sent to Arthur’s nephew to see “coment felonie se mentendra encontre trahison” (how wickedness will behave against treachery) since the two knights are equally renowned for discourteous behavior.11 Of the relentless degradation of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan, Keith Busby observes, “He is an out and out villain, pursuing his vendetta against the sons of Pellinor with a savagery inconceivable in the Gauvain of any previous romance.”12 Gauvain’s hatred, which according to Emmanuèle Baumgartner had been interpolated from the Post-Vulgate Cycle, is not found in the Italian translations. Although Gauvain seeks to avenge his father’s death when he first encounters Lamorat in the forest of Darnantes,13 the two are reconciled in an episode sui generis in the Tristan fragment of Panciatichiano MS 33 of the

242 • Marie-José Heijkant Biblioteca Nazionale of Florence. Although Gauvain is not really depicted in a negative way in the other fragments of this compilation, which is derived from the Queste and the Mort Artu, he is clearly inferior to both Lancelot and Galahad on account of his violent, impulsive, and frivolous character.14 In the Tavola Ritonda (first half of the fourteenth century), Gauvain is called “a great lover” (p. 26); he is given the epithet “Innamorato” (the lover) in contrast to Breus, who is “Disamorato” (the anti-lover, p. 71).15 In his diatribe against all amorous, unreliable knights, the latter lists Gauvain in one breath with Tristan and Lancelot because Gauvain has carried Pulzella Gaia away from her mother, Morgan le Fay (p. 311). The narrator does not elaborate upon this depiction, which is atypical since Gauvain is known as a lady-killer whose heroic deeds do not tend to be the result of service to a lady.16 Negative aspects of Gauvain’s character appear, however, in the final part of the cyclic romance for which not only the Prose Tristan was used, but also fragments of the Queste and the Mort Artu. The deterioration of his character is motivated by the fact that he is not allowed to see the Grail: “At this Sir Calvano felt great disgust, because he had been the first to begin the quest but was one of those left behind because of carnal sin. He became very cruel because of his disappointment, and in scorn of the quest killed more than thirty knights errant” (p. 304). In the epilogue, Gauvain’s hatred of Lancelot assumes such proportions that it is he, rather than his brother Agravain as in the French text, who spies on Lancelot and his beloved and casts slanderous aspersions on the couple. Having caught them in the act, he disappears into the dark of the night (pp. 335–38). It is also Gauvain who succeeds in persuading Arthur to destroy Joyeuse Garde and avenge himself on Lancelot, even though the latter has in the meantime been forgiven. The rivalry between Gauvain and Lancelot culminates in a judicial combat structured on the David and Goliath pattern. It has been stressed several times that Gauvain’s powers wax and wane according to the position of the sun: “between the hours of sext and nones . . . Sir Calvano had three times his normal strength. This special power had been given him by the holy hermit who baptized him, and it lasted for one hour between sext and nones” (p. 222). It is assumed that this mythical privilege, which is first mentioned in the Continuation-Gauvain, is part of the original concept of this Celtic hero, who must at one time have been a sun god. In Escanor by Gérard d’Amiens (1280), we are told that Gauvain was given this magical power at birth by benevolent fairies.17 In the Italian romance, as in the Mort Artu, the theme has been Christianized. In contrast to the latter, however, Lancelot is aware of his opponent’s magical power, and he detains him in conversation until the moment that Gauvain’s physical powers begin to decline. Only then does he attack and mortally wound him. Thus one could say that cunning is worth more than brute force (p. 342). As a model of the old

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 243 order, Gauvain has to bow to the representative of the new chevalerie, who couples fortitudo with sapientia. In the fourteenth century, Gauvain was one of the set characters of the cantari, narrative poems recited or sung by professional storytellers in the squares of Italian cities for a mixed audience. The Cantare dei Cantari, a kind of catalogue of suitable subjects for the cantastorie, refers to the treacherous deeds of Gauvain (“E po’ e tradimenti di Calvano,” stanza 43). The Cantari di Lancillotto are a concise but accurate version of the Mort Artu. Gauvain is an anti-hero on account of his unsuccessful courting of the Lady of Escalot and his desire to avenge his brothers’ deaths. In the Cantari di Carduino (which belongs to the Bel Inconnu corpus of texts), Gauvain plays a subsidiary, but not unimportant, role. His brothers Mordred and Guerrehet are responsible for the death of Dondinello, Carduino’s father. To assuage Carduino’s thirst for revenge, Gauvain begs for forgiveness on his knees, thereby accomplishing a reconciliation between the two families. The theme of peace, which plays a similarly important role in other cantari and in the Tristan translations, reflects the desire for law and order of the inhabitants of the city-states, which were racked by the bloody violence of rival parties. One canzone morale depicts “il buon messer Chalvano” as a paragon of courtesy because he is capable of properly appreciating the hospitality offered by the lord of a castle (a simplified variant, without the erotic test, of the theme of the imperious host which also occurs in Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle).18 Much more interesting than these poetical works, in which Gauvain’s role is fairly modest and unsurprising, is the Cantare di Ponzela Gaia (or Miser Galvano e la Ponzela Gaia, as it is titled in the fifteenth-century manuscript).19 It tells the story of the love between a mortal being and a fairy, a theme common to lais like Graelant and Lanval (in which Gauvain plays an important secondary part) and Italian cantari such as Liombruno and Bel Gherardino. A number of details indicate that this story was already well known a hundred years earlier. A fragment concerning Pulzella Gaia in Tuscan prose has been preserved in a fourteenth-century manuscript, and she is referred to in the poem Sala di Malagigi and in the Tavola Ritonda.20 The account given by the notary Nicola de Martoni of his journey to the Holy Land in 1394–95 refers to the castle of Morgan, described as “matris Pozelle Gage”; the fairy’s residence is localized by his probably Venetian source in Eubea, where Gauvain is said to have been captive: “dicitur fuisse captivum dominum Calvanum” (a fact which does not agree with the story of the cantare).21 Ponzela Gaia belongs to the oldest cantari, which according to Vittore Branca clearly express the fascination with magic and the nostalgic longing for a knightly ideal, that was typical of the new civic audience with its anachronistic aristocratic tastes: “una sensibilità di tono gotico, di ‘cortesia’, stilizzata in motivi decorativi o fiabeschi.”22

244 • Marie-José Heijkant Maria Bendinelli Predelli has shown that the first part of Ponzela Gaia is remarkably similar to the lais mentioned earlier, while the second part contains folktale elements and episodes from romance tradition.23 According to Pierre Gallais, “l’homme à la recherche de son épouse disparue” (husband in search for his missing wife) type of folktale (Aarne-Thompson 400), to which Partonopeus and Yvain also belong, serves as the ground plan.24 Another striking aspect is the similarity to the schematic representation that Laurence HarfLancner has drawn up of the “conte mélusienne”: a fairy has a romantic relationship with a knight in human society but returns to the Other World when her lover transgresses a prohibition (to speak).25 The cantare begins in an original fashion with a bet between Gauvain and Troiano: each stakes his head that he will bring back the finest hunting trophy to the court.26 While the latter is catching a white stag, Gauvain finds himself confronted in the forest by a hideous serpent (stanza 4). Although generally the fight between a knight and a serpent, a symbol of the devil or of lechery, is won by the knight (as in Yvain and Bel Gherardino), in this case he is ignominiously defeated. Feeling humiliated, Gauvain hides behind Lancelot’s identity. However, the serpent praises him as “zilio d’orto” (lily, stanza 6) and “fiore” (flower, stanza 8) among knights. It insists that he is stronger and more intelligent than Lancelot, who is usually considered to be the best knight.27 After these words of praise, the knight makes himself known as “lo liale e lo aventuroxo chavalier Galvano” (the loyal and adventurous Gauvain, stanza 12), using the conventional epithet from the Italian Tristan romances (Tristano Riccardiano, p. 132). At once, the hideous serpent changes into a “donzela dilicata” (tender damsel, stanza 13), who declares she has been waiting for him, hopelessly in love, for a long time. It is not unusual in courtly romances for Gauvain to be the object of an amour de loin. According to Philippe Ménard, this is so that Gauvain is not seen purely as a libertine or seducer, but rather as someone who accepts the hearts and bodies that are offered to him.28 The combination woman-serpent, like woman-fish (mermaid), is conventional for the semi-diabolical Mélusine type. The motif of the fier baiser (the daring kiss, assigned to Lancelot in the German Lanzelet), usually connected with the metamorphosis, however, has rather surprisingly been replaced in the cantare by a heroic fight.29 The young woman introduces herself as Pulzella Gaia, daughter of the fairy Morgan. Her father is never mentioned, but in the Tavola Ritonda, he is Huneson, who is slain by Tristan using the same lance with which Tristan himself will ultimately be killed (p. 292). She promises to bring Gauvain “zoia” (happiness, stanza 15), a capacity to which her name alludes. Without hesitation, the couple starts making love, in the course of which the girl (in whose confident behavior the archetype of the Celtic heroine may be recognized) loses her virginity. Jessie Weston has pointed out that Gauvain is often associated with fairies, as in Rigomer, Le Bel Inconnu, and The Carle of Carlisle, for example.30

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 245 At about three o’clock in the afternoon, Gauvain, pale with fright, starts to weep when he recalls the bet and death penalty awaiting him at court. That he should have forgotten the passage of time in the pleasant company of the fairy is part of the pattern of the “conte morganien,” in which the fairy abducts the knight to the Other World.31 In response, before changing back into a serpent, Pulzella Gaia gives Gauvain a ring, a magical object also found in the lai Désiré and Liombruno. This will provide him with everything he could possibly want, so long as he remains silent on the subject of their sexual intercourse. As an example of this ancient taboo, Harf-Lancner cites the Hymne à Aphrodite, in which the Goddess gives her love to Anchises on the condition that he will remain silent.32 Gauvain asks the ring for a horse, a squire, a hundred knights, ten captured barons, and a monstrous prey, suggesting that in the original story the knight left the court in poverty, as in Lanval, Graelant, and Bel Gherardino. The bestowal of material wealth is typically one of the fairy’s most important powers. With his impressive spoil, Gauvain returns to the court where he is admired by one and all and declared the winner of the bet. Gauvain continues his relationship with Pulzella Gaia, calling her to his side with the help of the ring. In accordance with the rules of the “conte mélusinien,” knight and fairy enjoy paradisiacal happiness in the real world, although it all happens with the utmost secrecy and there is no question of a marriage: Da poi ch’a lui fono in piazere ch’ela vegnise, e la Ponzela ne fono in le suo braze, intranbiduo parevano che morise; . . . e la Ponzela Gaia a lui quivi sì disse: “Fa che lo nostro amore non se descaze; non lo manifestare ad altrui e non lo dire, se questa zolia tu non vogli perdire.” (stanza 27) As it pleased him that she should come to him, Pulzella threw herself into his arms, and both of them thought to die; . . . and Pulzella Gaia said to him next: “Make sure that our love does not vanish; do not talk about it with any one, if you do not want to lose this happiness.” But the radiant appearance of the lover betrays his secret liaison (as it does in the lai Yonec) for it attracts Guenevere, who attempts to seduce him but fails. The queen, whose behavior is identified as “vil piaquimento” (lust, stanza 29), is depicted in a negative way. In the cantare, little remains of the Potiphar’s wife theme, a commonplace in the lais of the Lanval cycle, since the spurned Guenevere fails to denounce the knight in front of Arthur. But it has been suggested that originally the relationship between Gauvain and Guenevere may well have been less platonic than it is in the courtly romances.33 The cantare assigns to the queen the role of the antagonist who induces the hero to

246 • Marie-José Heijkant infringe the agreement with the fairy. She orders all those present on the occasion of a tournament to vie with one another as to who possesses the greatest treasure and to prove this three days later. Initially Gauvain refuses to take part, but when the queen accuses him of cowardice, he risks his life a second time by rashly boasting (an epic characteristic present as early as Geoffrey of Monmouth’s description of his character34) that he possesses the loveliest creature on earth. Consequently, he cannot keep his bargain with the queen without breaking his earlier agreement with the fairy. According to Jean-Jacques Vincensini, the opposition between two pacts, of which one is negative (prohibition) and erotic, and the other positive (proposal) and social, is the quintessential mark of the “conte mélusinien.”35 At once, the ring loses all its magic powers, and Gauvain, no longer able to bring back his beloved, is condemned to death. Dressed in black, the color of mourning and of penitence, he is taken to the scaffold to be beheaded. The “prode chavaliero” (brave knight) resigns himself courageously to his punishment and is contrite: “merita morire la mia persona prava” (my bad person deserves to die, stanza 43). In the nick of time, Pulzella Gaia, dressed in black silk, appears, saving him from certain death by revealing her beauty. At the same time, she levels bitter accusations at her lover: “Ho desliale, perché me ài tu apalentata? Mala ventura abia chi te zense spada. La più zentil donzela tu ài inganata che mai se trovaseno per ogni contrada; honde per te io sono inprixonata. Ben voio morir da poi ch’el te agrada, La mia madre mi darà prixon sì forte che meio mi saria avere la morte.” E l’uno e l’altro sì forte pianzea e intranbiduo sì se abrazava. Lo re con tuta la corte li vedea, de le suo beleze i se ne meraveiava. E la Ponzela Gaia in quela dea da miser Galvano sì se aconbiatava. E dise: “Un’altra amanti ti convien trovare: mai più tu non me potra’ vedere né parlare.” (stanzas 49–50) “Oh faithless one, why have you revealed me? May misfortune afflict him who girded you with your sword. You have deceived the noblest lady that can be found far and wide. For you I am taken prisoner. Willingly I shall die, as that is what pleases you. My mother will give me a dungeon so harsh that it would be better to die.” And they both shed

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 247 bitter tears and embraced. The king and the whole court saw them and they marveled at her beauty. And that day Pulzella Gaia bid the good Gauvain farewell. And she said, “You will have to find yourself another beloved: me you shall never see again, nor speak to.” By revealing what should have been kept secret, Gauvain has not only damaged his reputation, but has also mobilized the second female antagonist, Morgan.36 Only now does the reason for the prohibition become clear. Morgan calls her daughter a whore and locks her up in a subterranean dungeon, where the light of neither sun nor moon can penetrate and which is filled with water up to the level of the girl’s breasts. Pulzella Gaia is likened to a fish, which brings to mind the image of the mermaid. She calls herself “avara” (stanza 89), probably a misreading by the copyist of “avana,” the Venetian variant of “a(n)guana” (water snake).37 In L’Atre Périlleux, Gauvain liberates a damsel from just such a curious punishment instituted by Brehus-sans-Pitié.38 In the episode of the Pucelle de Lis in the Continuation-Gauvain (Branch 2), the father of the girl (a rationalization of the fée-amante) attacks when he learns that she has surrendered her virginity to Gauvain.39 Morgan’s punishment initiates a new set of chivalric events more in line with Arthurian romance. Thus far, Gauvain has not needed to achieve anything to merit Pulzella Gaia’s love; his fame was sufficient. Her liberation will be a trial of strength demonstrating that he was, after all, worthy of her and that she was wrong to call him “desliale” (faithless one). He refuses to eat at table or to cut his hair and beard until he has found his beloved. In this form of self-chastisement, Gauvain resembles knights like Yvain, Partonopeus, and Tristan, who roam the forests like wild men, driven out of their minds by grief for their lost loved ones.40 Gauvain’s search for the unknown residence of the fairy takes over six months of the kind of aimless wandering habitual for him ever since Chrétien’s romances. By means of ever-more-impressive heroic deeds, which include defeating Brehus-sans-Pitié, Gauvain restores his traditional image as a paragon of loyalty and courage. Twice he arrives at a castle where the locus amoenus, absence of people, and readily set table indicate the Other World. There women bewail the fate of Pulzella Gaia and attribute bad qualities to her lover, such as “malvaxio” (bad), “desliale” (stanza 60), “mesliale” (faithless; stanza 63), “mescredente” (unbelieving, stanza 64). The hero, who once was so proud of his reputation, now hides behind the incognito of a “povero chavaliero” (poor knight-errant; stanza 71). In the first instance, the lady of the castle intends to imprison Gauvain, but when he dauntlessly defeats over a hundred knights, she offers him her body and her wealth. A wiser man after his experiences, the hero withstands this temptation but leads the woman to believe that he will be her lover as soon as he has liberated Pulzella Gaia. The lady of the castle, deeply in love, reveals that the girl is being kept prisoner in the town of Pela-Horso, in an enchanted castle with thousands of windows

248 • Marie-José Heijkant made of crystal and walls of diamonds. In the Tavola Ritonda, Morgan’s castle (Palaus) is also built mainly from crystal and glass (p. 190). Gauvain tries but fails to enter Pela-Horso disguised as a merchant. Then, after subjecting the surrounding territory to his rule, he besieges the town for four years, thus proving his determination (stanza 79). When Morgan finally opens the gate in a fit of recklessness, Gauvain succeeds in capturing the town. The inhabitants kneel before him, assuming the position of vassals, and enthusiastically greet him as a “povero chavaliere, nobele e veraze” (poor, but noble and true, knight; stanza 84). Then follows the siege of the castle, which is taken by means of a ruse. Pulzella Gaia’s hopes are restored when she hears from a trusted friend that Gauvain has come to her rescue like an “anzolo da Dio” (heaven-sent angel; stanza 88). By means of a letter, she advises him to dress in a red garment and to have his companions disguise themselves in green women’s clothes, resembling the attire of the Lady of the Lake and her companions. Believing that her sister has come for a visit, Morgan falls for the deception and opens the castle gates. 41 Transvestism is not exactly what is expected of a bold and daring knight. It seems better suited to a trickster like Tristan, who is renowned for his disguises: in the Prose Tristan, he gains access to Isolde by dressing in women’s clothes.42 This sexual role-changing might be seen as a rehabilitation of the female principle. In his Jungian interpretation, Jean-Claude Aubailly says apropos of the individual initiation of the knight in the lais: “It’s another image of knighthood which they attempt to promote, a knighthood less uniformly virile, dominating and preoccupied with warrior prowess. This new sort of knight is more open to internal promptings, capable of recognizing and embracing his essential femininity; he allows himself to be guided by intuition rather than exclusively by reason. It is the result of a certain softening of habits.”43 At the same time, Pulzella Gaia’s cunning initiative prevents her from being transformed altogether from the dominating, active fairy of the first part of the cantare to a passive female object in the second part: Miser Galvano stava di buon cuore, leta la letera che lo fo tanto sazente. Amaistrato da la Ponzela Gaia, hobedire la vuole e più non abaia. (stanza 99) Sir Gauvain was full of high spirits when he had read the sensible letter. Instructed by Pulzella Gaia, he desires to obey her and speaks no more. Once Gauvain has forced an entry into the castle, Morgan is rendered harmless and is locked up in her own dungeon. Only by defeating the terrifying tyrannical mother can Gauvain win his beloved.44 Having freed Pulzella Gaia from the depths of the dark underworld, Gauvain takes her first to the locus amoenus that forms part of the castle, an intermediate world that is the ideal

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 249 place for the good life at the fairy’s side. Then he returns with her to Arthur’s court, where the court’s collective joy is a mirror image of the hidden, individual “joie” of the lovers earlier in the poem. In this regard, the cantare is in marked contrast to the lais, most of which (with the exception of Desiré) end with the departure of the fairy and the knight to the Other World, in other words, with exclusion rather than integration. Later variations of the legend can be found in the Innamoramento di Galvano (Gauvain’s Falling in Love, 1494–97) by Evangelista Fossa da Cremona, in which the Cantare di Ponzela Gaia material is combined with that of the Cantare di Astore e Morgana about Morgan’s revenge on Arthur’s court, and in the Innamoramento di Lancillotto e di Ginevra (1521–26) by Niccolò degli Agostini.45 I feel justified in concluding that the pro-Gauvain tendency prevails in the Italian texts, as is the case elsewhere outside France. 46 Even in Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, Gauvain is considered on a par with the Round Table worthies who test their valor in the forest of Darnantes: “here Tristan, Galahad, Gawain, / Lancelot, Galasso, Arthur foes have slain.”47 It is possible that the oral tradition of the matière de Bretagne had influenced the positive image of Gauvain, a character of chivalric excellence often linked with a journey of initiation to the Other World. He is the representative par excellence of King Arthur’s court, which is considered a paradigm of law and order. As a result of the influence exerted by the Queste and Mort Artu, however, Gauvain was devalued in relation to other knights. This was occasioned not so much by a thirst for revenge as by the fact that Gauvain, precisely because he embodied “pro e valente” (the traditional knightly virtue of proeza), was defeated by the new generation of knights who, acting on the basis of a spirited kind of ingenuity, gained great popularity in Italy. The Cantare di Ponzela Gaia is of particular interest as Gauvain plays a role only rarely assigned to him. He is the hero who, propelled by the force of love, mends his reputation after having damaged it by his own unwise behavior. There is no sign of his traditional frivolity. In the course of his quest, which is both altruistic and egoistic, he assumes almost messianic traits. 48 Here, Gauvain is not a static hero, as he is in Chrétien’s works, but gains insight into his own actions and repents his lapse, which makes a moral and social progression possible. The self-centered isolation of secret love is replaced by a fully realized knighthood that allows the lovers’ integration into courtly society. Like the hero of the classical Arthurian romance, he develops from personal crisis and guilt to penance and happiness. Notes 1. Fanni Bogdanow, “The Character of Gauvain in the Thirteenth-Century Prose Romances,” Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 154–61, and reprinted in this casebook; Jean Larmat, “Le personnage de Gauvain dans quelques romans arthuriens du XIIe et du XIIIe siècles,” in Etudes de langue et de littérature françaises offertes à André Lanly (Nancy: Publications de Nancy 2, 1980), pp. 185–202; Keith Busby, Gauvain in Old French Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980).

250 • Marie-José Heijkant 2. Emmanuèle Baumgartner, “Retour des personnages et mise en prose de la fiction arthurienne au XIIe siècle,” Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 43 (1991): 297–314. 3. For discussions of Gauvain’s reputation, see the essays reprinted in this casebook, as well as the following: Larmat, “Le personnage de Gauvain”; Busby, Gauvain; Busby, “‘Monsieur Galvain l’astruez’ (Jaufré, v.488): Le portrait de Gauvain d’après le roman de Jaufré et quelques troubadours de l’époque,” in Studia occitanica in memoriam Paul Remy, ed. Hans-Erich Keller, Jean-Marie D’Heur, Guy R. Mermier, and Marc Vuijlsteke (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 1986), vol. 2, pp. 1-11; Baumgartner, “Retour des personnages”; Lisa Morin, “Étude du personnage de Gauvain dans six récits médiévaux,” Le Moyen Age 100 (1994): 333–51; Bart Besamusca, “Gauvain,” in A Dictionary of Medieval Heroes, ed. Willem P. Gerritsen and Anthony G. van Melle, trans. Tanis Guest (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), pp. 113–20. 4. Pio Rajna, “Contributi alla storia dell’epopea e del romanzo medievali: Gli eroi brettoni nell’onomastica italiana del sec.XII,” Romania 17 (1888): 161–85, 355–65; Giandomenico Serra, “Le date più antiche della penetrazione in Italia dei nomi di Artù e di Tristano,” Filologia Romanza 2 (1955): 225–37; Manlio Pastore Stocchi, “Le fortune della letteratura cavalleresca e cortese nella Treviso medievale e una testimonianza di Lovato Lovati,” in Tomaso da Modena e il suo tempo. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi per il VI Centenario della Morte (Treviso: Comitato per le Celebrazioni, 1980), pp. 201–17; Gianfranco Folena, Culture e lingue nel Veneto medievale (Padova: Ed. Programma, 1990), p. 207. 5. For an extensive bibliography, see Roberto Salvini, Wiligelmo e le origini della scultura romanica (Milan: Martello, 1956), pp. 178–88. See also Jessie L. Weston, The Legend of Sir Gawain (London: Nutt, 1897), pp. 68–76; R. Loomis, “The Date, Source, and Subject of the Arthurian Sculpture at Modena,” in Medieval Studies in Memory of Gertrude Schoepperle Loomis, ed. R. Loomis (Paris: Champion, 1927), pp. 209–28; Edmund Gardner, The Arthurian Legend in Italian Literature (London: Dent, 1930), pp. 4–5; Gweneth Hutchings, “Gawain and the Abduction of Guenevere,” Medium Aevum 4 (1935): 61–66; Jacques Stiennon and Rita Lejeune, “La légende arthurienne dans la sculpture de la cathédrale de Modène,” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 6 (1963): 281–96; R. Loomis, Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance (New York: Haskell House, 1967), p. 8; and Linda M. Gowans, “The Modena Archivolt and Lost Arthurian Tradition,” in Arturus Rex: Volume II, Acta Conventus Lovaniensis 1987, ed. Willy Van Hoecke, Gilbert Tournoy, and Werner Verbeke, pp. 79–86 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1991), pp. 79–86. 6. See Stiennon and Lejeune, “La légende arthurienne,” pp. 294–95. 7. Léopold Sudre, “Les allusions à la légende de Tristan dans la littérature du Moyen Age,” Romania 15 (1886): 547; Rajna, “Contributi alla storia,” p. 172; Pierre Gallais, “Bleheri, la cour de Poitiers et la diffusion des récits arthuriens sur le continent,” in Actes du VIIe Congrès National de la Société Française de Littérature Comparée (Paris: Didier, 1967), pp. 47–79. 8. See Franco Cardini, San Galgano e la spada nella roccia con testo volgare inedito del XIV secolo a cura dell’autore (Siena: Cantagalli, 1982), pp. 77–88. The sword inserted by Galgano into the hard rock resembles Excalibur. Gauvain is the possessor of Excalibur even in Chrétien’s Conte du Graal, but how he came by it is not revealed there. See Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, pp. 15–17 and Eugène Vinaver, “King Arthur’s Sword or the Making of Medieval Romance,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 40 (1957–58): 513–26. See also Michel Stanesco, “Un avatar de Gauvain. Saint Galgano chevalier de Dieu,” in D’armes et d’amours. Études de littérature arthurienne (Orléans: Paradigme, 2000), pp. 313–24. 9. Ernesto G. Parodi, ed., Tristano Riccardiano (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1896; repr. Parma: Pratiche, 1991). See Daniela Delcorno Branca, I romanzi italiani di Tristano e la Tavola Ritonda (Firenze: Olschki, 1968); Delcorno Branca, Tristano e Lancillotto in Italia. Studi di letteratura italiana (Ravenna: Longo, 1998); and Marie-José Heijkant, La tradizione del ‘Tristan in prosa’ in Italia e proposte di studio sul ‘Tristano Riccardiano’ (Nijmegen: Katholieke Universiteit, 1989). 10. For these stereotypical situations, see Busby, Gauvain, pp. 316–18, pp. 321–25, and p. 383. 11. Renée L. Curtis, ed., Le Roman de Tristan en prose (Munich: Hueber, 1963), vol. 1:207. 12. K. Busby, “The Character of Gauvain in the Prose Tristan,” Tristania 2.2 (1977): 14, reprinted in this casebook. 13. E. Baumgartner, Le Tristan en prose: Essai d’interprétation (Geneva: Droz, 1975), p. 42; Heijkant, La tradizione, pp. 70–71.

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 251 14. For the contents of this manuscript, see Heijkant, La tradizione, p. 38 and pp. 45–47. See also D. Delcorno Branca, “La tradizione della Mort Artu in Italia,” Critica del testo 7.1 (2004): 317–39. 15. Anne Shaver, trans., Tristan and the Round Table: A Translation of “La Tavola Ritonda” (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983). For the original, see Filippo L. Polidori, ed., Tavola Ritonda (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1864–66; repr. Milan-Trento: Luni, 1997). 16. Busby, Gauvain, pp. 279, 290, and 305. 17. Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, pp. 12–13; Jean Frappier, “Le personnage de Gauvain dans la Première Continuation de Perceval (Conte du Graal),” Romance Philology 11 (1958): 343. 18. P. Rajna, I cantari di Carduino giuntovi quello di Tristano e Lancielotto quando combattetero al petrone di Merlino (Bologna: Romagnoli, 1873); Rajna, “Intorno a due canzoni gemelle di materia cavalleresca,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 1 (1877): 381–87; Rajna, “Il Cantare dei Cantari e il Serventese del maestro di tutte le Arti,” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 2 (1878): 425–37; E. T. Griffiths, ed., Li Chantari di Lanciellotto (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924). For the contents of these texts, see Gardner, Arthurian Legend, pp. 239–72; for the structure of Carduino, see Antonio Pioletti, Forme del racconto arturiano. Peredur, Perceval, Bel Inconnu, Carduino (Napoli: Liguori, 1984), pp. 179–94. See also Michelangelo Picone and Maria Bendinelli Predelli, eds., I Cantari. Struttura e Tradizione. Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Montréal (19-20 marzo 1981) (Firenze: Olschki, 1984). A new edition of the Cantari di Carduino is provided by D. Delcorno Branca, Cantari fiabeschi arturiani (Milan-Trento: Luni, 1999), pp. 39–64. 19. Published in the original Venetian dialect as Ponzela Gaia. Cantare dialettale inedito a cura di Giorgio Varanini, Scelta di curiosità letterarie inedite o rare dal secolo XIII al XIX, disp. 252 (Bologna: Commissione per i Testi di Lingua, 1957, 1958 with additions and corrections). See also Giorgio Varanini, “Il manoscritto quattrocentesco della Ponzela Gaia,” Scriptorium 13 (1959): 70–79. The cantare was first published in a reconstructed Tuscan version by P. Rajna, La Pulzella Gaia, cantare cavalleresco, per nozze Cassin-D’Ancona (Firenze: Bencini, 1893; repr. by Ezio Levi, in Fiori di Leggende, Bari: Laterza, 1914). Riccardo Ambrosini has put forward a number of linguistic arguments to assign the cantare to the fourteenth century in his review Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, Serie 2, 27 (1958), pp. 143–44. A new edition of Ponzela Gaia in Venetian dialect is provided by Beatrice Barbiellini Amidei, Ponzela Gaia. Galvano e la donna serpente (Milan-Trento: Luni, 2000). 20. Varanini, “Ponzela Gaia,” pp. 25–28; Ezio Levi, “I cantari leggendari italiani nei secoli XIV e XV,” Giornale storico della letteratura italiana, supplemento 16 (1914): 37. See also Amidei, Ponzela Gaia, appendice, pp. 165–66. 21. Silvia Poli di Spilimbergo, “Un ricordo della Pulzella Gaia in Eubea,” Lettere Italiane 25 (1973): 356–60; G. Varanini, “A proposito della Pulzella Gaia in Eubea,” Lettere Italiane 26 (1974): 231–33. 22. D. Delcorno Branca, “Nostalgie tardogotiche e gusto del fiabesco nella tradizione narrativa dei cantari,” in Studi in onore di Francesco Flora (Milan: Mondadori, 1963), pp. 88–108. 23. See Maria Bendinelli Predelli, “Fonti e struttura: il caso del cantare fiabesco italiano,” in I Cantari, pp. 127–41. 24. P. Gallais, “Les fées seraient-elles nées au XIIe siècle? (A propos d’un ouvrage récent),” Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale 29 (1986): 335–71; and Gallais, La fée à la fontaine et à l’arbre. Un archétype du conte merveilleux et du récit courtois (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1992), pp. 35–99. 25. See Laurence Harf-Lancner, Les Fées au Moyen Age: Morgane et Mélusine. La naissance des fées (Geneva: Droz, 1984), pp. 113–14. See also Claude Lecouteux, “La structure des légendes mélusiniennes,” Annales: Économies, Sociétés, Civilisations 33 (1978): 294–306; and Claude Luttrell, “From Traditional Tale to Arthurian Romance: Le Chevalier au Lion,” Nottingham Mediaeval Studies 12 (1978): 36–57. A model of agency is provided by Jean-Jacques Vincensini, “Le motif mélusinien et la transgression (analyse narrative),” in Amour, Mariage et Transgressions au Moyen Age, ed. Danielle Buschinger and André Crépin (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1984), pp. 225–37. 26. As early as 1150, Gauvain is hailed as a great huntsman by the troubadour Guerau de Cabrera: “Ni de Gualvaing / qui, ses compaing, / fazia tanta venaizon” (Ensenhamen, ll., pp. 187–89). See Busby, “‘Monsieur Galvain.’”

252 • Marie-José Heijkant 27. See Busby, Gauvain, p. 327. 28. Philippe Ménard, Le rire et le sourire dans le roman courtois en France au moyen âge (1150–1250), Publications Romanes et Françaises 105 (Geneva: Droz, 1969), p. 266. 29. See William Henry Schofield, Studies on the Libeaus Desconus (Boston: Ginn, 1895), pp. 199–208; and Beatrice Barbiellini Amidei, “Il tema del Fiero Bacio nel Bel Inconnu e la sua permanenza nella tradizione canterina,” Carte Romanze, serie 1 (1995): 9–38. For an interpretation of the single combat between a knight and a serpent as the hero’s struggle with his own primitive impulses, see Gérard Chandès, Le serpent, la femme et l’épée. Recherches sur l’imagination symbolique d’un romancier médiéval: Chrétien de Troyes (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1986), p. 292. 30. Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, pp. 27–28. 31. Harf-Lancner, Morgane et Mélusine, pp. 212–13. 32. Harf-Lancner, Morgane et Mélusine, p. 94. 33. Weston, Legend of Sir Gawain, p. 76. 34. Busby, Gauvain, p. 34. 35. Vincensini, “Le motif mélusinien.” 36. Since the Lancelot en prose, Morgan has been reputed to be a malicious fairy. Closely associated with the idea of imprisonment, she tends to isolate the hero from the human world. See Fanni Bogdanow, “Morgain’s Role in the Thirteenth-Century French Prose Romances of the Arthurian Cycle,” Medium Aevum 38 (1969): 123–33. Michael W. Twomey, “Morgain la Fée in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: From Troy to Camelot,” in Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 91–115, argues that Gauvain may be counted as one of her victims; see also Martoni’s account in Poli, “Un ricordo” and Varanini, “A proposito.”. 37. See André Pézard, review in Romania 80 (1959): 95–109. 38. Brian Woledge, ed., L’Atre Périlleux, appendice (Paris: Champion, 1936), p. 213. See Mireille Demaules, “Gauvain et la sirène,” in L’Hostellerie de pensée. Études sur l’art littéraire au Moyen Age offertes à Daniel Poiron par ses anciens élèves, ed. Michel Zink and Danielle Bohler (Paris: Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 1995), pp. 129–39. For the motif of “la demoiselle plongée dans l’eau,” see Françoise Clier-Colombani, La Fée Mélusine au Moyen Age. Images, mythes et symboles (Paris: Léopard d’Or, 1991), pp. 171–81. 39. See Frappier, “Le personnage;” P. Gallais, “Gauvain et la Pucelle de Lis,” in Mélanges de linguistique romane et de philologie médiévale offerts à Maurice Delbouille, ed. Jean Renson (Gembloux: Duculot, 1964), vol. 2, 207–29. 40. For the characteristic features of knightly madness, see Cesare Segre, Fuori del mondo. I modelli nella follia e nelle immagini dell’aldilà (Torino: Einaudi, 1990), pp. 91–93. 41. In a digression, the narrator explains that the Lady of the Lake is a wise sorceress who has brought up Lancelot and has buried Merlin alive. Morgan and the Lady of the Lake, usually seen as opposites (Harf-Lancner, Morgane et Mélusine, pp. 272–88), are often confused in the Italian tradition, as is the case in Martoni’s travel report, in which Morgan is called “domine Laci” (see Poli, “Un ricordo,” p. 358 and Varanini, “A proposito,” p. 232; also Delcorno Branca, I romanzi italiani di Tristano, p. 97). For the color symbolism, see Anne Paupert-Bouchez, “Blanc, rouge, or et vert: les couleurs de la merveille dans les lais,” in Les couleurs au Moyen Age, Sénéfiance 24 (Aix-en-Provence: Publications du CUER MA, Université de Provence, 1988), pp. 303–28. 42. R. Curtis, ed., Tristan (Leiden: Brill, 1976), vol. 2, pp. 140–41; Parodi, Tristano Riccardiano, p. 167. See Merritt R. Blakeslee, “Tristan the Trickster,” Cultura Neolatina 44 (1984): 167–90; and Danielle Buschinger, “Le motif du déguisement de Tristan dans les oeuvres médiévales allemands des XIIe et XIIIe siècles,” in Masques et déguisements dans la littérature médiévale, ed. Marie-Louise Ollier (Montréal: Université de Montréal, 1988), pp. 35–41. 43. Jean-Claude Aubailly, La fée et le chevalier. Essai de mythanalyse de quelques lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles (Paris: Champion, 1986), p. 143. Similarly, Karl Meuli writes of shamans who dress like women when they enter a matriarchal realm of the dead; see his “Scytica,” Hermes 70 (1935), pp. 121–76 (especially p. 129). 44. For the semantic connection between the subterranean, somber water and the woman of darkness (mother or seductress), see Chandès, Le serpent, pp. 125–39. 45. See D. Delcorno Branca, “Vicende editoriali di due poemi cavallereschi: Buovo d’Antona e Innamoramento di Galvano,” in Tipografie e romanzi in Val Padana fra Quattro e Cinquecento (Ferrara 11–13 feb.’88), ed. R. Bruscagli and A. Quondam, pp. 75–83 (Modena: Panini,

The Transformation of the Figure of Gauvain in Italy • 253 1992); Marco Villoresi, “Niccolò degli Agostini, Evangelista Fossa, Cieco da Ferrara. Il romanzo cavalleresco fra innovazione e conservazione,” Schede umanistische n.s., no. 2 (1996): 5–54; and Oriana Visani, “L’Innamoramento di Galvano: un caso particolare di intertestualità,” Schede umanistische, n.s., 2 (1997): 85–111. The name of Morgan’s daughter “Gaggia” is very similar to the “Gage” registered by Martoni; see Varanini, “A proposito,” p. 233. See also Amidei, Ponzela Gaia, appendice, pp.167–75. 46. See Christoph Cormeau, ‘Wigalois’ und ‘Diu Crône’. Zwei Kapitel zur Gattungsgeschichte des nachklassischen Aventiureromans (Munich: Artemis, 1977), p. 227; Heinz Bergner, “Gauvain dans la littérature anglaise du Moyen Age,” Studi medievali 26 (1985): 781–97; and Bart Besamusca, “Gauvain as Lover in the Middle Dutch Verse Romance Walewein,” in The Arthurian Yearbook II, ed. K. Busby (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 3–12, reprinted in this casebook. 47. Barbara Reynolds, trans., Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando) (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975–77). 48. He also plays a heroic part in L’Atre Périlleux. See Busby, “Diverging Traditions,” p. 103.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

14

Middle English Arthurian Romance: The Repetition and Reputation of Gawain PHILLIP C. BOARDMAN

There are close to 120 romances in Middle English (not counting those in Chaucer and Gower). Of these some thirty are Arthurian—more than one fourth. These range in length from extensive reworkings of the French Vulgate like Lovelich’s Merlin at nearly 28,000 lines, down to ballads of a few hundred lines. Some versions are in alliterative verse, others are in couplets or in tailrime stanzas, and, of course, Malory’s cycle is in prose. While most are anonymous, one is by the greatest Middle English poet, Chaucer. While many exist in several versions and manuscripts, some survive to us miraculously in single copies. The study of a chronological list of the earliest Arthurian romances traces a movement from France and then Germany in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, to treatments in many languages in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. England, with only Arthour and Merlin and Sir Tristrem by the end of the thirteenth century, seemingly shows a characteristic insular lateness, for its greatest Arthurian works are of the late fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries. When we remember, however, that the early courtly audience for romance in England would have been French (an audience suitable for writers like Marie de France), 1 we can see that the development of Arthurian romance in England is complex, representing both the growth of English as a literary language and a likely shift in the audience—or audiences—for romance. Given the fact that they are part of the “Matter of Britain” and therefore, however distantly, reviving a native tradition, the English romances are extraordinarily derivative. Nearly all are retellings of French stories, sometimes whole works, as in Malory’s translation of the Queste del Saint Graal, but often built from single episodes, as in the use made of small pieces from the first Perceval continuation in some of the Gawain romances. Given the importance of Chrétien’s romances as material for translators, it is surprising that only Ywain and Gawain is a translation from Chrétien. Some of the writers

255

256 • Phillip C. Boardman were so unskilled that the current critical fashion for preferring texts to writers becomes attractive, although one is tempted to say that many of these works have more “inter-” than “textuality” about them. Nevertheless the English tradition also rose to undoubted masterpieces, chief among them Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure and Malory’s works. Many would add, as well, Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Ywain and Gawain. Because of the conventionality of the romances, even these masterpieces, it is not surprising that much of the scholarship in this field has attempted to circumscribe these conventions, to define the genre and set out what writers and audiences expected when they embarked on a romance quest.2 In a symposium devoted to the vitality of the Arthurian legend, however, we must look in a different direction, for we want to seek a center, a point of life, in the English works in this tradition. I would like to come at this by looking first at the most recent study, Christopher Dean’s Arthur of England, published just a few months ago.3 Dean’s work has a fairly straightforward thesis—that the Arthurian legends as a force in English medieval and Renaissance culture and literature aren’t as important as they have been made to seem by several generations of enthusiastic scholars. He shows this by examining all English Arthurian works, by outlining all references to Arthur in “Non-Arthurian Literature,” and also by listing all the early works in which there are simply no references to Arthur. He also demonstrates that Arthur’s appearance does not always spell celebration, for the tradition includes a continuing critical treatment of Arthurian chivalry and a sometimes surprisingly negative treatment of Arthur and his court. Dean shows us, I think, not that the Arthurian legends were not popular, but that Arthur was not always respected and that the uses to which Arthurian materials were put could vary quite widely. Thus we can say that the variety of subjects, forms and treatments in Middle English romance up through Malory’s encyclopedic gathering together represents a drying up, in England, of the Arthurian stream. Indeed, Caxton’s making available in print a complete account of the legends may have helped stop the flow, so that in spite of the popularity of Caxton’s Malory, the legend of Arthur has almost no place in Renaissance English Literature. This process has been well described for later writers by Walter Jackson Bate in The Burden of the Past and the English Poet, and we can ask his eighteenth-century question of the Renaissance as well: After Malory, what was left to say about Arthur?4 Dean, of course, also shows the complicity of the humanists and their attitudes toward chivalric romance, summed up in Ascham’s well-known view of the Morte Darthur as “open manslaughter and bold bawdry.”5 The upshot was that the Renaissance treatment of Arthur was slim and niggling: Arthur became a figure, in almost schematic terms, of Elizabethan pictorial mythography or of an allegorical system of values, but with very little vitality.

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 257 Spenser’s Faerie Queene is the single Renaissance work of Arthurian inspiration, which is energetic and accomplished. But the Faerie Queene is not usually taken seriously as Arthurian. It is not, after all, a version of any of the stories. Its authentication comes only through the appearance of Arthur, and thus it stands rather at the head of a line of modern works which are Arthurian because Merlin comes back to life or Excalibur is dug up somewhere.6 Yet the Faerie Queene helps define the earlier tradition in a way that Malory or the modern works do not. Spenser’s Faerie Queene, and not Malory, represents the culmination of the structural pattern of Arthurian romance, in which a knight rides out on a quest, but the quest reflects the growth and development of the knight himself. Spenser’s knight-heroes learn, are tested and finally triumph, achieving perfection in individual virtues which, taken together, yield a pattern of courtesy. The visible standard of courtesy throughout the poem is Arthur, whose prowess measures out the virtues. In the Middle English romances, Arthur is not the usual standard of courtesy. That role falls to Gawain, and it is in Gawain, I think, that we can find the vital center of English Arthurian romance. Helaine Newstead, in her survey of Arthurian romance in Burke Severs’s Manual of Writing in Middle English, identifies twelve romances as Gawain romances, and she is counting neither Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, which surely retails a version of Gawain, nor works like the Alliterative Morte Arthure, which are about other characters but in which Gawain plays a central role.7 The Gawain romances tend to be relatively short and they come into increasing prominence late in the period, so we can say that Gawain himself, while always centrally present in the Arthurian materials, gains stature as an individual English hero as the English romances establish an identity separate from the French cycle. The Gawain romances display what seem to be characteristic English attitudes toward the legends. W. R. J. Barron summarizes these in “largely negative” terms based on the various superficial ways of classifying the romances; he finds: that English audiences preferred Gawain to Lancelot, that the Grail made little appeal to them . . . That English redactors fought shy of Chrétien, preferring the prose Vulgate and the Perceval continuations . . . That the English could not comprehend Courtly Love and preferred action to emotional analysis.8 These conclusions are augmented by a general sense of English moralism. Velma Richmond notes “the English regard for moral value”;9 Dieter Mehl, making the usual allowance for “freshness, charming simplicity and native rigour,” also identifies a “strongly homiletic strain” which causes the English romances “almost from the beginning [to be] used as illustrations of certain moral and religious precepts.”10

258 • Phillip C. Boardman The Gawain romances participate in this Englishness in a rather specific way. As Lee Ramsey says in his recent book on Chivalric Romances: The usual story line shows Arthur’s court, which represents the courtly establishment, subjected to a test or series of tests in which the chivalric Gawain takes up the main challenge. The significance of the tests varies considerably, but it is usually obvious. These are stories that express specific, though various, social doctrines or ideas.11 The plot, then, is an expression of idea. The English were comfortable with the romance structure, but as a model in which the quest is a search for meaning, or in which, as Peter Haidu says, “the hero rides out in search of semantic solutions.”12 Beneath the umbrella of the quest-meaning, the familiar romance form—“a sequence of minor adventures leading up to a major . . . adventure, usually announced from the beginning,”13—developed an episodic structure. The individual episodes are able to tease out meaning through two temporal structures: interrupted time and parallel time. Interruption is one meaning underlying episodic structure. Within the romance the culminating adventure, the goal of the quest, provides a kind of temporal urgency for the hero, whose prowess is usually not in doubt. Interruptions shift the issue from his prowess to his judgment, which very well may be in doubt. The interruption in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the stay in Bercilak’s castle, which, as an idyllic delay, in reality offers more opportunity for failure than does the apparent test facing Gawain, the inevitably fatal stroke of the Green Knight. In the Alliterative Morte Arthure, the interruption of Arthur’s triumphant conquest of Europe is the demise of his fortunes at home, prepared for much earlier in the work. In Ywain and Gawain, the hero, whose marriage is interrupted by the call of chivalry, simply forgets to return home, choosing to live in the interruption. Parallel movement is the more common way of investing episodic structure with meaning. Gawain’s role in the romances was always intimately tied to a structure of contrast and juxtaposition. Through all the romances in the early Arthurian tradition, Gawain filled a structural role as foil or standard against which other knights could be measured. This was, indeed, part of his character, implicit in his heroism in the chronicle tradition (Geoffrey of Monmouth), and carried over into the structure of contrast in the earliest romances. It is interesting to note that both Gawain and Kay early developed identities which allowed them to stand as foils. Bedivere, who was also there from the Welsh beginnings, never really caught on and indeed he has only become important as a replacement for Lancelot or as a narrator in modern novels by, say, Rosemary Sutcliff, Catherine Christian or Mary Stewart.14 In fact, in the chronicle tradition, as represented in the Alliterative Morte Arthure, Kay and Bedivere are killed early, in the campaign against Lucius, while Gawain is reserved for a hero’s death near the end, fighting the archenemy.

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 259 Kay and Gawain were assigned their roles by the French and German writers. In the hands of Chrétien, Kay and Gawain come to serve thematic ends. Gawain’s virtues are, in W. T. H. Jackson’s words, “entirely secular—courage, loyalty, good breeding and chivalry both to men and women.”15 Kay, on the other hand, represents an opposing field of values, for most often he is pretentious, bullying, small-minded and incompetent. These sets of values are entirely schematic: Gawain and Kay represent Arthurian chivalry at its best and at its worst. In the form of the works, Gawain and Kay are like polar magnets which exert the force of their values on the hero-knights whose characters are being defined and refined in the works. Kay propels the adventure out of the court as surely as if Chrétien wanted to show that adventures start through a failure in chivalry. In Knight of the Cart, Kay cynically manipulates Arthur into entrusting the Queen into his hands and thus into hazard. In Perceval, Kay sends the unlikely young rustic in dangerous pursuit of the Red Knight. Gawain, in both works, stands over against the title heroes during the quests, performing parallel actions so that the status of the hero can be measured. Kay and Gawain, it must be understood, represent aspects of Arthur himself, the contradictory impulses present in chivalry from the beginning. Kay, as the false Arthur, usurps Arthur’s role as husband and protector in Knight of the Cart, and in Perceval stands in Arthur’s place as sanctioner of quests. Gawain, a kind of true Arthur—truer, in fact, than Arthur himself—assumes in Chrétien the role Spenser assigned to Arthur in the Faerie Queene, a role actually implicit in the figure of Arthur from his very first appearance in the Gododdin (c. 600), when Aneirin praises the hero Gwarddur, but finds that “he was not Arthur.”16 Gawain represents for the individual knight both the belief in perfectibility and the standard of perfection. The displacement of Arthur by Kay and Gawain itself serves a thematic function in the works. The essential absence of Arthur in Knight of the Cart allows Lancelot, the lover of the Queen, to seem wedded to her morally. In these terms love, and not simply the prowess figured in Gawain, becomes the true issue for judgment in the romance. In the crucial episode of the three-day tournament, Lancelot’s willingness to humiliate himself, to place prowess entirely at the service of love, redefines knightly success in terms that are beyond the capacity of Gawain to understand, and therefore beyond his figural meaning. In Perceval, the absence of Arthur redoubles the meaning of the elaborate contrast of Perceval with Gawain. Against Perceval’s naiveté, Gawain exemplifies perfection of martial techniques, the reputation of accomplishment, and experience in love. But he cannot represent fatherhood, as Arthur could, and Arthur’s virtual absence enforces a recognition of the spiritual lineage that is missing to the fatherless Perceval. Nowhere is the polarity between Kay and Gawain clearer than in the bloodin-the-snow episode. In all versions of this story a surly Kay is unseated by the

260 • Phillip C. Boardman pensive Perceval, while a courteous Gawain considerately talks him back into court. Even the English Sir Perceval of Galles, which lacks the blood-in-the-snow episode, makes up the lack by establishing the contrast at the start of the romance. The god-like knights whom the young Perceval meets in the forest include “Gawaine with honour” and “Kay, þe bolde baratour” [bully] (261–62).17 The text then reinforces the contrast by countering Kay’s insolent speech to the boy with Gawain’s courtesy: Sir Gawain answers “faire and curtaisely,” he is called “meke and mylde / And softe of ansuare” (291–92), and he rebukes Kay for his “prowde wordes” (306). In The Green Knight, a late and imperfect condensation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the Bishop Percy Folio MS, Kay is given an expanded role, to heighten the effect of Gawain’s assumption of the Green Knight’s challenge. When Kay immediately accepts the contest the Green Knight proposes, he is rebuked by the other knights as a swaggerer, as if this were the way he always foolishly talked. At the beginning of the work, the Green Knight has, in fact, already announced to us his intention to test Gawain, not Arthur or the court, so we are aware of Kay’s disruption of narrative focus even as he opens his mouth and even though his words are not particularly brash, by saga standards. The Carl of Carlisle could be seen as a virtual transformation into boisterous English action of what is static and emblematic in the French blood-inthe-snow episode. Kay, Gawain, and the Bishop Baldwin ask to spend the night with the churlish Carl. Bishop Baldwin, checking on his horse, impetuously pushes the Carl’s foal out of the stable where his horse is feeding. Sir Kay is once again surly and mouthy, and he beats the foal and drives it away from his own horse. Kay’s behavior is intended to illuminate Gawain’s perfect courtesy, which extends to people and animals alike. Gawain courteously takes the foal back into the stable where his horse is feeding. Furthermore, Gawain responds to all the host’s demands with perfect obedience, which fulfills the terms of an earlier vow of the host. For his reward, after he is tempted in bed by the host’s wife in a strangely misguided test, Gawain is given the Carl’s daughter, both as bed-partner and as wife. Even while they demonstrate the continuity of the contrast between Kay and Gawain, these English works are no longer like the French ones. In their similarities we see how deeply embedded in Arthurian romance is the role of Gawain, so that a repetition of the form calls forth a repetition of the character. But “character” as such is not really at issue: it is meaning that is being made manifest in the repetition of Gawain. It is this strong sense of the formal and functional in Gawain that causes readers to find the abstract, the exemplary, even the allegorical in Gawain.18 Yet a close look at the differences in these English and French manifestations of Gawain shows that his reappearance is not a serial activity, the simple borrowing or translating of something

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 261 from an earlier work in a chronological development. The repetition of Gawain is rather more a vertical than a horizontal process. Literary theorists have recently begun to specify the significance of repetition in a medieval context. Peter Haidu, for instance, has seen medieval repetition taking the form of a further concretization, a further incorporation and revelation of the abstract and the Idea. Repetition is referred not to the chain of history but to the chain of being. It is referred to the abstract Form that gives meaning and validity to each of the particular concretizations; each repetition therefore constitutes a further revelation of value, since it brings before our eyes again that aspect of the abstract Form that can be concretized and visualized.19 This is a highly Platonic subscribing of genre: an idea or story—or in this case, a figure—is repeated because in its form it is true, and its repetition both reveals and reinsures its value. The range of ideas of Gawain can then be disclosed through a reexamination of some key texts. In the structure of the French romances, first of all, a thematic pattern of growth and development fosters the increasing coherence in the career of the hero-knight. The structural pattern of contrast also supports this theme, for we see the incomplete hero always in the light of the finished knight, Gawain. But of course, contrast cuts both ways, and the growth of Lancelot and of Perceval exposes the limitations of the secular courtliness of Gawain. Lancelot’s chivalry refined by love-service is superior (in the morally circumscribed world of the text) to Gawain’s simple martial values, which leave him floundering in the water while Lancelot crosses the sword bridge. That Gawain’s contrast with Lancelot is limited and does not effect a complete denigration of the chivalric values figured in Gawain is clearly shown by the additional contrast between Lancelot and Meleagant. Meleagant is an unscrupulous knight whose deep insecurity leads to his failure in the basic commitments of chivalry. These commitments, we are to understand, are shared equally by Lancelot and by Gawain. Gawain, whatever his failure, would never fall short of the ideals in that way. Perceval’s special destiny with respect to the Grail transforms his chivalry in spiritual terms increasingly superior to the grounds of Gawain’s actions. Excluded from the realm of spiritual meaning, Gawain undertakes a series of parallel adventures, which, in the light of the redefined ethos, seem increasingly aimless and time-bound. In these French romances, then, chivalry is refined and redefined in the meaning of the title hero. His values come to surpass the standard chivalry of the static Gawain through an identification with what we might call a religious dynamic, if we are willing to accept the refined religion of love which informs Lancelot’s worship of his lady as a syntactic equivalent to Perceval’s slow recognition of the meaning of his quest. That the two are not semantically

262 • Phillip C. Boardman equivalent is exposed in the fact that the two Gawains are not really the same—they are, rather, repetitions of Gawain, each asserting only an aspect of the failure of Arthurian chivalry. The devaluation of Gawain in Knight of the Cart is comic, revealing the rejection of self-centeredness in the textual world of love. In Perceval, Gawain’s failure is existential and potentially tragic, as the self-centeredness of his values is weighed against the spiritual call of the Other in the Grail. The English repetitions of Gawain transform these meetings, as I have suggested. In the first place, the narrative focus shifts away from a young hero, intent on his quest and enacting an education into redefined chivalry. In the English romances, the episodes implying a contrast entangle Arthur’s companions, and Gawain is made the standard by which we judge other “finished” knights of the Round Table. As we saw earlier, the contrast with Kay is most common, but Gawain also shows Arthur to bad advantage in Golagros and Gawain and in the Avowing of King Arthur. Bishop Baldwin, as we saw, is exposed in Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle. That they are “finished” means that these knights do not grow or even change, but are themselves cardboard representations. In this way the English romances become an examination of behavior pure and simple: courtesy itself, and its public projection, reputation, are at issue in these romances. When there is only a single hero, as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Green Knight, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, and The Adventures at the Tarn Wadling, to name a few, this emphasis on courtly behavior causes the hero, Gawain, to be measured against his own standards, or against his reputation. This emphasis on behavior is made all the more striking in that for both structures—the single hero romance and the romance of contrast—there is an example of an inversion, which manifests Gawain in thoroughly negative terms. In Malory’s story of Pelleas and Ettarde, for instance, Gawain offers to help Pelleas win the woman of his dreams. Pelleas’s former strategy, gaining her attention by public humiliation in a series of daily battles he deliberately loses, has not worked. Gawain the go-between, entering the castle supposedly on Pelleas’s behalf, ends up in Ettarde’s bed, seriously betraying his trust. The story ends in a nice combination of Sir Launfal and Midsummer Night’s Dream, for the Lady of the Lake, admiring Pelleas’s qualities, takes him off to a lover’s fantasy otherworld, but not before causing Ettarde to love him in turn, now without hope. Gawain, adopting the familiar structural position of exemplar, turns out to be the one weighed, and we see his scale fall in contrast with the true and gentle Pelleas. The inversion played on Gawain as hero of his own romance occurs in the strange little work, The Jest of Gawain. For virtually the entire text, Gawain is making love to an unnamed girl, leaving her bed only to fight with her father and each of her brothers in turn. While we may at first find our sympathies engaged on the side of the family who are offended at the couple’s behavior,

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 263 we soon abandon sympathy altogether. Gawain, who defeats the father and the first two brothers, fights to an ignominious draw with Sir Brandles, the third brother. As Gawain trundles abashed out of the romance in one direction, Brandles beats his sister up and drives her off in the other direction as a strumpet, a conclusion which finds little favor with the very small modern audience for this tale. As with Pelleas and Ettarde, this slight romance follows closely the debased view of Gawain in its French sources. The conventionality of the structural forms of these repetitions, and the loss of the “growth of the hero” as a thematic focus, should not cause us to miss the subtlety of meaning which English texts derive from the figure of Gawain. To demonstrate this point, let me conclude this paper by looking in more detail at three complex repetitions of Gawain. The first two occur in examples of the structural pattern I have been calling the romance of contrast, The Avowing of Arthur and the Alliterative Morte Arthure. The third repetition is the narrative center of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a masterfully structured single-hero romance. The meaning of Gawain in each of these works illuminates English romance more generally. In The Avowing of King Arthur, the first part of the text is a very conventional set of romance adventures, motivated by the boasting vows made by Arthur, Kay and Gawain. Arthur vows to kill a boar, Kay to ride around Inglewood Forest, and Gawain to keep watch all night at the Tarn Wadling. The fulfillment of the boar hunt is the kind of Celtic heroic action which clings to Arthur from primeval times. Kay’s action characteristically lands him on the ground, the captive of the potent knight, Sir Menealfe of the Mountain. Gawain spends his part of the adventure rescuing both Kay and a young lady from the clutches of Sir Menealfe, whose martial qualities Gawain recognizes, and whose services he gains on Arthur’s behalf. The second part of the romance is devoted to the fulfilling of the rather complicated set of three vows made at the start of the poem by the fourth member of Arthur’s party, Sir Baldwin of Britain. As the poem’s most recent editor, Roger Dahood, has pointed out, the second part is very different from the first in that Baldwin does not seek adventure and in that the six episodes showing him first being tested against his vows and then recounting the explanations for the three vows are heavily didactic, with an emphasis on proverbial wisdom and philosophical meaning.20 For our purpose, two points are important. First, Arthur and Kay themselves set out to test Baldwin, who has vowed never to suspect his wife, by “planting” a naked knight in her bed while Baldwin is away and pretending to hold him there until Baldwin’s return. This bed test, in its comic preoccupations and its portrayal of the king himself as a kind of roisterous practical joker, is out of keeping with the philosophical significance which the text attaches to Baldwin’s vows. Because the bed test has parallels involving Gawain himself in Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, we are reminded,

264 • Phillip C. Boardman second, that Gawain is absent from this part of the poem. This absence is particularly significant since Gawain’s usual place would be in the bed with the wife, an association the text suppresses by making Arthur’s pawn in this game an unnamed lackey. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this text, having in the first part shown the prowess of the romance Gawain, believes him to be above the shenanigans of the second part. These same games, however, are quite in Celtic keeping with the exploits of a boar-hunting king. The significance of Gawain’s absence here can remind us similarly that other of the repetitions of Gawain are not Gawain. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale, focusing on a hero who is a repetition of Gawain, suppresses the identification, perhaps because of the rape which sets events in motion, but also because the long speech on “gentilesse” delivered by the hag on their wedding night would seem inappropriate addressed to the English exemplar of courtesy. The analogue in The Wedding of Gawain and Dame Ragnell, it should be remembered, shows Gawain as a figure of magnanimity, who takes on both the question-quest and the marriage to the hag on Arthur’s behalf. Libeaus Desconus, I would argue, is also a Gawain romance. The story of the “fair unknown,” with versions in French and Italian, its hero is Gingalyn, Gawain’s son. Here Gawain does not take on his usual structural role through a series of parallel adventures. Instead he arms the boy at the beginning and sends him out on adventure. We can interpret the quest as a projection forward onto his son of Gawain’s own enfances, necessary because Gawain’s textual form is completeness, not growth. Among his adventures is an enchanted stay for a year with the Dame de l’amour, a magical reification of the forward ladies common in Gawain’s own adventures and from whose spell Gingalyn must free himself before he can, like Odysseus escaping from Circe, achieve the wife at the end of his quest. The Alliterative Morte Arthure, now generally acknowledged to be a masterpiece of Middle English literature, poses an unusually rich set of meanings for a work which depends heavily upon the chronicle tradition. In Dean’s view, the Alliterative Morte Arthure is “a chronicle-type romance” that “uses much of the chronicle subject matter and that shares something of that tradition’s view of Arthur.”21 Arthur is the clear hero of the poem, but Gawain’s role is so significant, especially in the last half of the poem, that Thorlac Turville-Petre sees Arthur and Gawain as protagonists.22 Jörg Fichte has studied the figure of Gawain in some detail,23 and he sees the meaning of Gawain in essentially negative terms: a comparison with Geoffrey, Layamon, and Wace, Fichte argues, shows that the poet has taken great pains to narrow Gawain’s range of values and to strip him of any possible reliance on wisdom and counsel. Fichte notes the continual associations of Gawain with violence and impetuosity. In the medieval model which sees the ideal hero as balanced between sapientia and fortitudo, Fichte believes that Gawain figures forth an unmixed fortitudo and thus stands as a figure of contrast by which we can judge the wisdom of

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 265 Arthur himself, especially near the end of the poem when Arthur has the potential of rising to a kind of redeemed tragic stature. Fichte is correct, I believe, in noting the changes from the sources, which seem to narrow Gawain’s range of values; he also rightly assesses Gawain’s association with impetuosity. Nevertheless, I think Gawain’s role in the poem is more complex and his meaning more ambiguous than Fichte allows. The playoff between sapientia and fortitudo in earlier heroic literature is usually structured in one of two clear ways. In the first, the qualities are split between contrasting characters like Roland and Oliver. As the Song of Roland itself says, “Roland is fierce and Oliver is wise / And both for valour may bear away the prize.”24 As we saw earlier in the comparison between Gawain and Lancelot, simple valor is not the point of comparison; rather we are concerned with the source of judgment and control, the mediation of reason and passion. The poem Beowulf figures the two qualities—sapientia and fortitudo—in the single hero, and not only shows us the mix at the prime age of the young hero in his most glorious exploit, but also contrasts his impetuous youth (the swimming contest with Breca) and his old age, when as king he must face the dragon of his death. The Alliterative Morte Arthure shows the balance of the two forces in the figure of Arthur. But as critics have long noticed, the degree of sapiential control exhibited by Arthur varies quite widely, from the figure of wisdom in the council, to the Beowulfian hero on St. Michael’s Mount, to the aggressive and vindictive warrior during the siege of Metz. The rash extreme playing off against the changing Arthur is not Gawain, but Sir Cador, I believe. Cador, as Arthur’s heir, speaks first in the council, expressing his unabashed joy that war has finally come again. Arthur upbraids him, but with good humor: “Sir Cador,” quod the king, “thy counsel is noble; But thou art a marvelous man with thy merry wordes! For thou countes no case ne castes no further But hurles forth upon heved, as they herte thinkes.” (259–62)25 [“Sir Cador,” said the King, “your counsel is worthy; What a wondrous one you are with your glad words, For you reckon no risk nor reflect any further, But rush forth to the fore, as your heart bids.”] The true sign of Cador’s rashness comes, however, when he is entrusted with the hostage party and foolishly engages the enemy who are waiting in ambush. Cador’s motive for risking his men is unselfconsciously announced: It were shame that we sholde shoun for so little! Sir Launcelot shall never laugh, that with the king lenges, That I sholde let my way for lede upon erthe. (1719–21)

266 • Phillip C. Boardman [It would be shame for us to shrink for so little; Sir Lancelot, back with the King, shall never laugh, That I quit my path for any person on earth!] Cador speaks of shame in the old heroic way, and his fear of the laughter of the fellowship of knights forces his choice. Arthur attacks his decision: Sir Cador, thy corage confoundes us all! Cowardly thou castes out all my best knightes! To put men in peril, it is no pris holden, But the parties were purveyed and power arrayed; When thou were stedde on a strenghe thou sholde have withstonden, But yif ye wolde all my steren stroy for the nones! (1922–27) [Sir Cador, your courage will ruin us all! Basely you are bringing down all my best knights; To put men in peril is prized as no virtue, Unless both sides be ready with forces arrayed. Safe in a stronghold you should have taken your stand, Unless you wish to destroy all my stalwarts for good!] Gawain’s performance must be seen not only in the light of Arthur’s transformation in the poem, but also in contrast to Cador. Gawain is shown acting four times in the poem. At the beginning of the poem, after the banquet for the ambassadors, the party is returning to chambers, and “Sir Gawain the worthy Dame Waynor he ledes” (233). In his second appearance, Gawain is himself leading the embassage to Lucius. After an exchange of taunts, Gawain rashly lops off the head of Sir Gayous in the presence of the Emperor. In his third major action, Gawain is sent on a foraging party to plunder food for the hungry troops. Discovering a knight at a stream, Gawain quickly engages him in the kind of meaningless single combat common in the romances, a dangerous flexing of muscles to determine masculine dominance. Through this combat Gawain enlists Sir Priamus in Arthur’s cause against the Duke of Lorraine. Gawain’s fourth appearance is his landing on the shore of Britain and his premature engagement with Mordred, who slaughters him slyly. These four episodes are not of a kind; they are, rather, four different repetitions of Gawain representing four different aspects of Arthurian heroism. A complete argument is not possible here, but I would suggest that Gawain figures forth the hero in four generically different traditions related to the story of Arthur. When he accompanies Guinevere to the banquet, he is the knight of courtesy, the special protector of the Queen, and the pair of them contrast with the coupling of treachery Mordred and Guinevere make near the end. The rash attack upon Gayous in Lucius’s court is the action of the impetuous hero of the saga or chanson de geste. If Gawain shares qualities here with

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 267 Roland, he also partakes of the impetuosity of Malory’s Balin, who smites down the Lady of the Lake in Arthur’s presence, without forethought and without regard for consequences. The episode with Sir Priamus is a pure romance interlude, placed in a landscape which is incongruously idyllic and removed from the conflict of larger social forces in the poem. Jousting with an unknown opponent is a typically aimless and irrational romantic action, and in the context of this poem it is difficult to account for. It is only incidental to the impending battle with the Duke of Lorraine, although Gawain’s enlisting of Priamus on Arthur’s side is its putative justification. It also functions to create a romance-in-small, in which the larger defeat of the forces of Lorraine is foreshadowed in the exquisite game of two exemplars of chivalry, the epic battle pre-staged in the refined realm of romance. But the episode is also like a medallion, set directly parallel to Arthur’s single combat earlier in the poem, when he defeats the giant of St. Michael’s Mount. The Priamus episode enforces a comparison of the two heroes, the aimlessness of Gawain’s romance adventure pointing up the Christian purpose with which Arthur engaged the giant. That the comparison is intended by the poet is shown in the earlier episode. Kay and Bedivere—not Gawain—accompany Arthur on his solitary mission, but when the old lady tries to warn Arthur away, she says: Weenes thou to britten him with thy brand rich? Were thou wighter than Wade or Wawain either, Thou winnes no worship, I warn thee before. (963–65) [Do you hope to slay him with your stout sword? Be you stronger than Wade or even than Gawain, You will reap no renown, I warn you beforehand.] The fourth appearance, Gawain’s death at Mordred’s hands, mirrors Arthur’s death and thus thematically links the two in the fated world of the tragic hero. Certainly the long eulogies over the dead Gawain delivered by both Mordred and Arthur have the effect of raising him to that stature: there will, after all, be no one to speak at Arthur’s death. Even the poet’s interjection that Gawain would have been luckier had he kept to his strong position on the hilltop (3768–69) can be read, not as an attack upon Gawain’s strategy in the battle, but as a bewailing of the misfortune which inevitably follows. These appearances of Gawain, in which he enacts the varieties of chivalric action, reinforce the generic shiftiness of this remarkable poem. Gawain can be seen to represent, within the text, the possibilities of significant action in the Arthurian world, and the quest of meaning for generic form.26 While Gawain’s reputation is a force in all these works, no romance makes the issue of reputation so explicitly a part of the action as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Each stage of the narrative is propelled by a challenge based on the failure of Arthur’s knights to live up to their renown. The Green Knight,

268 • Phillip C. Boardman seeing no response to his first offer of a game, asks whether he is really in Arthur’s court, a humiliating jibe that brings the shamed king to his feet. During the three days of temptation, the lady shames Gawain into kissing her by suggesting: Bot þat e be Gawan hit got in mynde . . . Sir, if e be Wawen, wonder me þynkke Wy e þat is so wel wrast alway to god And conne not of compaynye þe coste vndertake. (1293, 1481–83)27 [But that you are Gawain ceases to exist in (my) mind . . . Sir, if you are Gawain, (it) seems amazing to me (That a) knight who is so much inclined always toward good deeds Also can not comprehend the customs of courtesy.] The same challenge is used by the Green Knight at the end when Gawain is seen to flinch from the first blow: “Þou art not Gawayn,” quoþ þe gome, “þat is so goud halden, Þat neuer ar ed for no here by hylle ne be vale, And now þou fles for ferde er þou fele harme .” (2270–72) [“You can not be Gawain,” said the man, “who is considered so great, Who never shuddered before any group on hill or in vale, If now you flinch with fear before you feel injuries.”] The challenge for Gawain is not simply behaving courteously. It is rather living up to the expectations of those whose standards have been set by his reputation. When Gawain first arrives at Bercilak’s castle, he is welcomed by the provincial knights as the very standard of courtesy. At last they can see how table manners and conversations are conducted at the king’s court: Now schal we semlych se sle te of þewe , And þe teccheles termes of talkyng noble; Wich spede is in speche vnspurd may we lerne, Syn we haf fonged þat fyne fader of nurture. (916–19) [Now we shall properly perceive modes of chivalrous acts, And the flawless phrases of noble conversation; We may learn without inquiring what power (there) is in speech, Since we have received that fine father of good breeding.] If the poet shows us the insecurity of these country courtiers who are trying to pull on the fashionable garments of an alien behavior, he also shows us that Gawain’s courtesy and reputation have become his integrity. When the guide

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 269 leading him to the Green Chapel offers him the chance to escape with his life and his reputation, Gawain refuses, saying: Bot helde þou hit neuer so holde, and I here passed, Founded for ferde for to fle in fourme þat þou telle , I were a kny t kowarde; I my t not be excused. (2129–31) [But (even if) you kept it ever so loyally, and I now departed, Traveling in fear to flee in (the) way that you say, I would be a cowardly knight; I could not be excused.] The public shame that propelled Arthur early in the poem or Sir Cador in the Alliterative Morte Arthure is here a matter of private conscience. Gawain’s view of himself, his reading of his own meaning, arises from a necessary integrity of performance, in which reputation has been internalized and raised into a standard of behavior. This may explain why Gawain unleashes his vitriolic and discourteous attack upon feminine wiles when he discovers he has been tricked. Gawain was aware of two tests, really: first, the private test of courtesy with the forward lady, and, second, the dispiriting public test of prowess with the Green Knight, which will lead to his certain death. His moment of greatest triumph comes—so he believes—when, the first test behind him, he thinks he has also passed the second test: he joyfully draws his sword for what will finally be an even fight. Gawain has not, after all, been like Perceval; he has not been simply muddling through. He has done well because he knows what he is doing, because they all were right when they said those wonderful things about him. And then the ground shifts. It is the student’s double nightmare: he had taken a test he didn’t know about, and the exam he prepared for didn’t count! At this moment of exposure, Gawain takes his place among other romance heroes. Looking at traditional romance heroes, Frederic Jameson has suggested: that the hero’s dominant trait is naiveté or inexperience, and that his most characteristic posture is that of bewilderment. Surely, far from being an emissary of the ‘upper world,’ the hero of romance is something closer to an observer, a mortal spectator surprised by supernatural conflict, who then himself is gradually drawn in, to reap the rewards of victory without even quite being aware of what was at stake in the first place.28 Jameson’s identification applies pointedly to Gawain, who is suddenly “a mortal spectator surprised by supernatural conflict.” This Knight of the Virgin and the Pentangle, the Knight of Certainty, is forcibly transformed at the end of the poem into the first Knight of the Green Sash, the Knight of Bewilderment. Because we are all—we moderns—fully invested members of the Order of Bewilderment, this Gawain is, for most of us, the most vital of Middle English

270 • Phillip C. Boardman Gawains. But I hope I have shown the extent to which he is a repetition, a reenactment of complex meanings. Some of these meanings seem inextricable from the form and structure of romance. Others draw their life from a tradition of expectations, which grew up around Arthur and his companions. And finally, some of these meanings are notably English, and make Gawain the central figure in the English imagination of Arthur. In Gawain’s repetitions we can trace the vitality of the English Arthurian legends. Works Cited Ascham, Roger. “The Schoolmaster.” The Golden Hind. Revised Edition. Ed. Roy Lamson and Hallett Smith. New York: Norton, 1956. 79–112. Barron, W. R. J. “Arthurian Romance: Traces of an English Tradition.” English Studies 6 (1980): 2–23. Bate, Walter Jackson. The Burden of the Past and the English Poet. Harvard University Press, 1970 [rpt. New York: Norton, 1972]. Benson, Larry D., ed. King Arthur’s Death: The Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Alliterative Morte Arthure. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974. Boardman, Phillip C. “Arthur Redivivus: A Reader’s Guide to Recent Arthurian Fiction.” Halcyon 2 (1980): 41–56. Brunner, Karl. “Middle English Metrical Romances and Their Audience.” Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor Albert Croll Baugh. Ed. MacEdward Leach. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961. 219–27. Christian, Catherine. The Pendragon [British title: The Sword and the Flame]. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979. Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Dahood, Roger, ed. The Avowing of King Arthur. New York: Garland, 1984. Dean, Christopher. Arthur of England: English Attitudes to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987. Everett, Dorothy. Essays on Middle English Literature. Ed. Patricia Kean. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955. Finlayson, J. “The Expectations of Romance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” Genre 12 (1979): 1–24. French, Walter Hoyt, and Charles Brockway Hale, eds. Middle English Metrical Romances. 2 Vols. New York: Russell and Russell, 1964 [1930]. Frye, Northrop. Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Göller, Karl Heinz, ed. The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981. Haidu, Peter, ed. Approaches to Medieval Romance. Yale French Studies 51 (1974). Haidu, Peter. “Repetition: Modern Reflections on Medieval Aesthetics.” MLN 92 (1977): 875–87. Hume, Kathryn. “The Formal Nature of Middle English Romance.” Philological Quarterly 53 (1974): 158–80. Jackson, W. T. H. “The Arthuricity of Marie de France.” Romanic Review 70 (1979): 1–18. Jameson, Fredric. “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre.” New Literary History 7 (1975): 135–63. Jost, Jean E. Ten Middle English Arthurian Romances: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986. Krishna, Valerie, trans. The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A New Verse Translation. Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1983. Laubenthal, Sanders Anne. Excalibur. New York: Ballantine, 1973. Lewis, C. S. That Hideous Strength: A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-ups. London: The Bodley Head, 1945. Mathewson, Jeanne T. “Displacement of the Feminine in Golagros and Gawane and the Awntyrs off Arthure.” Arthurian Interpretations 1.2 (1987): 23–28. Mehl, Dieter. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968 [German Edition 1967].

Middle English Arthurian Romance • 271 Nichols, Stephen G., Jr. “Solomon’s Wife: Deceit, Desire, and the Genealogy of Romance.” Space, Time, Image, Sign: Essays on Literature and the Visual Arts. Ed. James A. W. Heffernan. New York: Peter Lang, 1987. 19–40. Norman, Diana. King of the Last Days. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981. Pearsall, Derek. “The Development of Middle English Romance.” Mediæval Studies 27 (1965): 91–116. Pearsall, Derek. “The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century.” Essays and Studies 29 (1976): 56–83. Ramsey, Lee C. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. Richmond, Velma Bourgeois. The Popularity of Middle English Romance. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975. Sayers, Dorothy, trans. The Song of Roland. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957. Severs, J. Burke, ed. A Manual of Writings in Middle English 1050–1500. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967. Stewart, Mary. The Wicked Day. New York: William Morrow, 1983. Sutcliff, Rosemary. Sword at Sunset. New York: Coward-McCann, 1963. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977. Wilhelm, James J., and Laila Zamuelis Gross, eds. The Romance of Arthur. New York: Garland, 1984. Wittig, Susan. Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English Romances. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978.

Notes

1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

Reprinted, with permission from the University Press of Southern Denmark, from The Vitality of the Arthurian Legend: A Symposium, ed. Mette Pors (Odense: Odense University Press, 1988), pp. 71–90. In Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), Susan Crane notes the close connection between Anglo-Norman romance and the Middle English romances about English heroes. She generally ignores Arthurian legend, but does treat Thomas’s Tristan and Sir Tristrem. For examples of sometimes striking approaches to these traditional questions, see cited works in the Bibliography by Barron, Brunner, Everett, Finlayson, Frye, Hume, Jameson, Nichols, Pearsall, and Wittig. Jean E. Jost, in Ten Middle English Arthurian Romances: A Reference Guide (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986), provides an annotated survey of criticism for the most important Middle English romances, excluding Chaucer, Malory and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. These last have been widely surveyed in a number of sources, including annual bibliographies, individual reference guides, and handbooks. Arthur of England: English Attitudes to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987). The Burden of the Past and the English Poet (New York: Norton, 1972). “The Schoolmaster,” in The Golden Hind (Rev. edition), ed. Roy Lamson and Hallett Smith (New York: Norton, 1956): 107. In C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength (London: The Bodley Head, 1945), for instance, Merlin returns frighteningly to life when his cave is excavated in the gardens of a provincial college. Diana Norman’s King of the Last Days (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1981) shows Excalibur found at Glastonbury during the reign of Henry II, while in Excalibur (New York: Ballantine, 1973), by Sanders Anne Laubenthal, it appears much more recently in Mobile, Alabama. For a discussion of these tangential Arthurian works, see Phillip C. Boardman, “Arthur Redivivus: A Reader’s Guide to Recent Arthurian Fiction,” Halcyon 2 (1980): 41–56. “Arthurian Legends” in J. Burke Severs, ed., A Manual of Writings in Middle English 1050–1500 (New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967): 53–70. “Arthurian Romance: Traces of an English Tradition.” English Studies 6 (1980): 5. Velma Bourgeois Richmond, The Popularity of Middle English Romance (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1975): 121. The Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968 [German Edition 1967]): 1–2, 19.

272 • Phillip C. Boardman 11. Chivalric Romances: Popular Literature in Medieval England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983): 200. 12. “Introduction,” Approaches to Medieval Romance (Yale French Studies 51): 5. 13. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism: Four Essays (Princeton: Princeton University Press): 186–87. 14. Bedivere is the narrator in Christian’s The Pendragon (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1979). In both Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset (New York: Coward-McCann, 1963) and Stewart’s The Wicked Day (New York: William Morrow, 1983), Bedwyr replaces Lancelot as Arthur’s closest friend and lover of the queen. 15. “The Nature of Romance” in Haidu, ed., YFS 51: 20. Elsewhere, Jackson says of Chrétien’s Gawain: “He is brave, generous, and always ready to recognize the good in other people. He is devoted to the code of love-supremacy and the pursuit of individual honor” (“The Arthuricity of Marie de France,” Romanic Review 70 [1979]: 3). 16. The relevant passage, in a translation by John K. Bollard, is excerpted in The Romance of Arthur, ed. James J. Wilhelm and Laila Zamuelis Gross (New York: Garland, 1984): 14. 17. “Sir Perceval of Galles” in Middle English Metrical Romances, ed. Walter Hoyt French and Charles Brockway Hale (New York: Russell and Russell, 1964 [1930]): II.540. 18. Jeanne T. Mathewson, for instance, argues in “Displacement of the Feminine in Golagros and Gawane and the Awntyrs off Arthure” (Arthurian Interpretations 1.2 [1987]: 26) that Gawain and Arthur are “allegorical figures in a morality play” in Golagros and Gawain. 19. “Repetition: Modern Reflections on Medieval Aesthetics,” MLN 92 (1977): 880. 20. The Avowing of King Arthur (New York: Garland, 1984): 36–37. 21. Dean: 70. 22. The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977): 102. 23. “The Figure of Sir Gawain” in The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem, ed. Karl Heinz Göller (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981): 106–16. 24. Chanson de Roland, Laisse 87; here trans. Dorothy Sayers, The Song of Roland (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1957): 94. 25. All passages from the Alliterative Morte Arthure are from the Middle English text in Larry D. Benson’s King Arthur’s Death (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974) and are cited parenthetically in the text by line number. Translations of those cited lines are given from Valerie Krishna’s The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A New Verse Translation (Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1983). 26. The poem thus bears some comparison with Chrétien’s Erec, about which Peter Haidu says, “the story of the hero’s adventures on a quest for his lady is doubled by the quest of the text for its own generic identity” (“Narrativity and Language in Some XIIth Century Romances” in Haidu, ed., YFS 51 [1974]: 135). 27. All Middle English passages from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and the associated translations, are taken from Volume 2 of The Pearl Poems: An Omnibus Edition, ed. William Vantuono (New York: Garland, 1984) and are cited in the text by line number. 28. “Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre,” New Literary History 7 (1975): 139.

15

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Poet’s Treatment of the Hero and His Adventure W. A. DAVENPORT

It was possibly in pursuit of his interest in the ‘difficult case’ that the poet turned, in Sir Gawain, to secular material. God is a tricky subject and the poet has to contend with greater resistance in both material and audience when he deals with scriptural and doctrinal matter. If instead of codes of universal justice and belief, one starts from the earthly code of chivalry, then the values are more ambivalent. It is possible for the poet to set up oppositions between a hero and his challenger without a clear identification of the moral agency which that challenger represents. And so, around the central concept of a traditional hero undertaking a romance quest, the poet creates a shifting, hazardous world, where the ideas which in many other romances are taken for granted are explicitly or implicitly questioned. The poet’s choice of a literary form with a well-defined tradition could be assumed to arouse certain expectations in his audience; it is the poet’s ingenious pleasure to attempt to satisfy his reader’s interest in adventure while partly frustrating such expectations by eschewing the easy romance path and attempting a more penetrating treatment of the knight, showing him as an individual struggling to accomplish an impossible task. The poet also avoids the hero’s easy triumph and colours his ‘happy ending’ with a sense of partial failure and anticlimax, placing idealism in the light of unheroic reality and deflating comedy. Again, he chose a hero who would already be known to his hearers, and the existence of conflicting traditions of Gawain’s nature may well have been something which the poet wished to exploit.1 The resistance to sexual temptation of a hero who elsewhere in Arthurian tales acts as an impulsive libertine seems a particularly teasing example of moral conduct, intended to surprise the audience as much as the failure of this exemplar of courage completely to pass his more traditional test. The ‘dangerous edge of things’ is offered for our interest as much as with Jonah, though more lightly, and, like

273

274 • W. A. Davenport Jonah, Gawain eventually appears as something of an heroic fool who thought wrongly that life played fair and according to the rules, even while he fails to conduct his own life according to them. Unlike Jonah, however, Gawain is indisputably a hero, though the result of the poet’s complex and equivocal treatment of his adventure is that the nature of the heroic role is continually in doubt, and the ending of the poem is designed to make us wonder whether Gawain has fulfilled such a role or not. We are certain, at least, that Gawain is hero in the sense of the central figure of the narrative; once he enters the action in the fifteenth stanza, he is present in every stanza except six scattered verses describing the hunts. Further, once he has left Camelot, the poet shows more and more of his thoughts and feelings, and often, though not always, focuses scenes from Gawain’s point of view. He is identified as ‘our luflych lede’ (our gracious prince) and the idea of ‘our’ hero implicitly calls for the reader’s sympathetic involvement. It is also clear that he is considered within the world of the poem as a model of noble behaviour, who performs actions fitting to the traditions of chivalry. He is presented in traditional heroic situations such as being equipped in armour and riding alone into danger. He is given words which ring with echoes of epic stoicism, and he is even accompanied by epic epithets: Gawayn the gode, Gawayn the hende (courteous), gode Gawan. He is associated throughout with high ideals and standards of behaviour, even if at times ironically; he is praised by the poet and by his opponent. But, of course, the model proves to have a flaw, and the outcome of the story displays the idea of the hero as a model of behaviour in conflict with the idea of the individual who is our emotional concern. This is the poet’s major change in the traditional beheading tale. Whereas in the analogues the keeping of the promise alone proved the hero’s courage and saved his life, the author of Sir Gawain portrays a hero who shows courage, keeps his promise, saves his life, and yet does not end with the conventional hero’s triumph. Gawain possesses the necessary qualities for the fictional automaton which the hero of romance often seems, but these are played off against ordinary human, even unchivalrous, qualities, particularly fear, to create a figure who eventually seems to possess character and not just characteristics. The change of ending is a turning towards both realism and comedy, for Gawain’s failure is no tragic fall, but an anticlimax. Hence from the start the tone of the poem is intermittently and insidiously comic, and indicates to us that the outcome, though it may be unexpected, is not to be serious. This is of a piece with the poet’s other uses of levelling realism and marks Sir Gawain, from one point of view, as a romance moving in the direction of Don Quijote.2 But the poet’s basic choices, the choice of a testing story and the choice of treatment, indicate not so much a desire to deflate romance as that same interest in the antithesis of opposites, and in the inter-play of ideal behaviour and actual experience, that one can observe, in various ways, in the other three poems. The Beheading Game measures Gawain against the heroic figures of legend, and in following

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 275 their path, Gawain partakes of their heroic stature. The poet wants us to respond to the elevated, romantic aspects of his tale. At the same time the poet’s treatment brings Gawain, like Jonah, to the reader’s level of experience. So, although Gawain fulfils a hero’s role, the hero himself is continually being diminished. He is shown repeatedly as subordinate, and therefore being obliged to be deferential, and as passive. At Camelot he appears as liege, nephew and inferior; he is subject to the approval of Arthur and the court, advised and, at the close of the scene, patronised by the King, lectured on his obligations by the Green Knight, and even warned by the narrator, who, by the end of Part I, has left his pretended role of the minstrel repeating a tale, and has turned into the all-seeing, ironic commentator on the action. In Part II Gawain is shown setting out on an adventure in which he is doomed to be the passive recipient of a death-blow, and in which, in the court’s eyes, he is the victim of kingly pride and folly. In the arming scene he is presented as a lay figure being accoutred in equipment whose heroic associations have to contend with a sense of its irrelevance and uselessness in the particular quest he is undertaking. The elaborate explication of Gawain’s device accompanies praise of the hero with emphasis on his reliance on forces outside himself and on his possession of virtues which are gentle and mild and show deference to the feelings of others, and this is followed by an account of Gawain’s journey which gives a brief summary of his acts of valour but enters in detail into his experience of loneliness, cold and anxious uncertainty. The poet thus begins to establish a distinction between the hero’s humanity and the heroic pattern of behaviour expected from him; this distinction forms the basis of the complex treatment of the hero, whereby the poet repeatedly reduces Gawain’s heroic quality in a variety of related ways, while maintaining in the reader’s mind elevated senses of his nature and behaviour. Much of the time we are asked not to look at him but to perceive through him; as he is faced by unknown places, an unfamiliar society and startling and unnerving experience, so we live through it with him as impressions are presented in the order in which he receives them. This is strikingly so in the last part of the poem, where the poet builds up the suspense preceding the Green Knight’s reappearance and the delivery of the blow. The careful focusing through Gawain’s perception of the scene in which he first hears and then sees the Green Knight again is characteristic of the way in which the poet creates a bond of sympathy between reader and hero, which is implicitly identifying the hero as an ordinary man, who reacts to the unfamiliar with embarrassment and fear, and whose limitations are inevitably exposed. His ‘inadequate’ reactions are among the effects in the poem of which the reader can be most sure, because the poet tells us of Gawain’s inner thoughts, reminding us from time to time of his fear of the encounter with the Green Knight, and identifying his embarrassment by the Lady of Hautdesert and his sense of the dilemma in which he is placed. On the last day at the Castle, the poet enters into his hero

276 • W. A. Davenport with particular point and emphasis, first identifying his preoccupation during sleep and ominously reminding us of the passive, doomed role which Gawain has yet to fulfil: In drey droupyng of dreme draveled that noble, As mon that watz in mornyng of mony thro thoghtes, How that destiné schulde that day dele hym his wyrde At the grene chapel, when he the gome metes, And bihoves his buffet abide withoute debate more. (1750–4) Deep in the dreams of his troubled sleep that noble one muttered, like a man who was mourning over many oppressive thoughts, of how destiny should deal him his fate that day at the Green Chapel, when he would meet the man and must abide his blow without further resistance. The hero is shown, that is, at his most vulnerable. Then, as he hastily recovers his wits to deal with the laughing and alluring Lady, bending over him with her fair face, throat and breast enhanced in beauty by jewels and fur, Gawain’s instinctive sexual response is indicated both directly and by innuendo:3 He sey hir so glorious and gayly atyred, So fautles of hit fetures and of so fyne hewes, Wight wallande joye warmed his hert. With smothe smyling and smolt thay smeten into merthe, That al watz blis and bonchef that breke hem bitwene, and wynne. Thay lanced wordes gode, Much wele then watz therinne. (1760–7) He saw her so glorious and gaily attired, so faultless in her features and of so fine a colour, [that] a strong welling up of joy warmed his heart. With courteous and gentle smiling they fell into merry speech, so that all that was spoken between them was joy and happiness. They uttered courteous words, much delight was then therein. Beneath the decorous surface description of conversation runs the current of sexual, physical nuance, identified clearly in ‘Wight wallande joye’ and obliquely suggested in the physical verbs, smeten, breke and lanced. The threat that the warm courtesies of speech may burst into the hotter pleasures of physical contact is then made explicit by the voice of the all-seeing poet, who states Gawain’s moral dilemma, shows his hero suppressing his sexual arousal and at last recognising that he can no longer go on temporising with the Lady without being false to her husband:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 277 Thay lanced wordes gode, Much wele then watz therinne. Gret perile bitwene hem stod, Nif mare of hir knyght [hym] mynne. For that prynces of pris depresed hym so thikke, Nurned hym so neghe the thred, that nede hym bihoved Other lach ther hir luf, other lodly refuse. He cared for his cortaysye, lest crathayn he were, And more for his meschef, yif he schulde make synne And be traytor to that tolke that that telde aght. ‘God schylde,’ quoth the schalk, ‘that schal not befalle!’ (1766–76) They uttered courteous words, much delight was then therein. There was great danger if Mary should not take care of her knight. For that noble princess pressed him so continually, urged him so near to the limit, that he was obliged either to accept her love there, or to refuse offensively. He cared for his courtesy, lest he behave like a churl, and even more for the disaster to himself if he should commit a sin and betray that knight who owned that house. ‘God forbid,’ said the knight, ‘that shall not happen!’ This is, of course, a disputed and much discussed passage and one which several critics have seen as central to one’s understanding of the moral sense of the tale.4 It seems to me that the poet is ingeniously combining his reducing and his enhancing of the hero. Gawain’s thoughts are on a level of plausible feeling; he wants to maintain a reputation for courtesy to women, but he comes to a moment of self-knowledge in recognising that he cannot, in his situation, both do that and maintain faith to his host. He is a normal male and his physical reactions to the Lady declare (Nurned) that he is shamefully near crossing the boundary of another man’s territory (thred), and so, because faith is more important than courtesy, he forces down, subdues and checks (depresed) his urgent sexual desire. The physical undertones of the passage make one view the hero in ordinary terms and enjoy his comic struggle between being a gentleman and avoiding adultery. The morality by which Gawain acts also seems to emphasise common-sense ideas at the expense of romantic notions of knightly conduct; Gawain is no dashing blade, but a cautious man who realises that being polite to a woman stops short of going to bed with her, if one is a guest in her husband’s house. The diminishing of the chivalrous hero to bourgeois standards of social behaviour is, however, counter-acted by the sense of a real struggle against temptation and of a decisive act which is ideal in social terms rather than those of either amour courtois or Christian celibacy. The decision of a prynce of pris to respect the rights of a social inferior, even at the

278 • W. A. Davenport expense of his own reputation for courtliness, is a piece of ideal behaviour which displays Gawain as one of those who have that true ‘gentillesse’ of which another bourgeois character, the Wife of Bath, so eloquently speaks, through the lady in another intimate bedroom scene, in Chaucer’s version of the tale of the Loathly Lady. Again we have a moment in the poem where beneath the surface is a debating point about knighthood, as to which of the two, courtesy to a woman or loyalty to one’s host, is the more important. The emphasis on the hero’s own overcoming of temptation in lines 1770–91 seems to make the idea of the intervention of the Virgin Mary, which most editors curiously prefer to emendation in line 1769,5 quite out of keeping with the rest of the section; the poet is thinking more in social than in religious terms. Gawain’s resistance to temptation and his loyalty to his host occur, with an irony which comes to seem typical of the poet, just before the crucial scene in which he yields to the Lady’s persuasion and commits himself to an act of disloyalty. The alternation of building-up and letting-down is present throughout the poem and is a second way in which the heroic aspect of Gawain and his enterprise is diminished. The Castle itself, which at first sight seemed full of rich potentiality, is, in romance terms, an anti-climax. There are no besieged maidens, no predatory giant; its inhabitants turn out to be, apparently, normal, concerned with sensible matters such as food, warmth and Christmas entertainment. Gawain is, on his arrival, rapidly disarmed, domesticated, led to the lulling comfort of fine fresh clothes, fire, food and drink. What have pentangles and high courage to do in such a setting? It is no surprise that the Green Chapel turns out to be just around the corner. The whole business of Gawain’s quest is deflated and made to sound ridiculously easy: ‘The grene chapayle upon grounde greve yow no more; Bot ye schal be in youre bed, burne, at thyn ese, Quyle forth dayez, and ferk on the fyrst of the yere, And cum to that merk at mydmorn, to make quat yow likez in spenne. Dowellez whyle New Yerez daye, And rys, and raykez thenne. Mon schal yow sette in waye; Hit is not two myle henne.’(1070–8) ‘[The whereabouts] on earth of the Green Chapel let it trouble you no more; but you shall be in your bed, sir, at your ease, until well on in the day, and ride on the first of the year and come to that appointed place at midmorning, to do whatever you please there. Remain until New Year’s day, and rise and depart then. A man shall put you on the right road; it is not two miles hence.’

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 279 Gawain will not even need to get up early! When he comes to depict the actual fulfilment of the quest, the poet again builds up a sense of climax in the account of Gawain’s setting forth, his rejection of the Guide’s advice, and the description of the desolate valley. The Chapel itself is a let-down, but Gawain’s imaginings invest it with eerie force and lead to a further build-up of suspense with the Green Knight’s re-appearance and the preliminaries to the blow. After the cut all is, for Gawain, bathos. The revelation of the Lady’s deceit, of the meaning of the challenge and of the identity of the agent leads to the ultimate insulting cosiness of Bertilak’s invitation to Gawain to come back and stay with his elderly aunt. The poet thus seems to take pleasure in putting his hero in false positions and it is in the scenes at the Castle that he most ingeniously devised ways of doing it. In this part of the poem Gawain is imagined as a kind of Wimbledon champion of chivalry, who has to find again those qualities that made him champion. Since there is no question that Gawain will, if challenged to direct knightly contest, display superlative powers, his humbling has to be achieved by guile. Hence the methods at the Castle are devised to subject him to what is in essence a psychological trial. He is first encouraged by comfort and relief to relax and to consider himself off duty, but, at the same time, is placed beneath a weight of obligation by the overwhelming hospitality which puts him into the role of grateful and deferential guest; the weight grows heavier as he finds himself expected to put on a performance worthy of the reputation accorded to him. Then the Lord deprives Gawain of the opportunity to show his masculine, active qualities of courage and strength in the field. This is typically justified in naturalistic terms: Gawain needs rest and food after his long winter journey. But it reduces him to a passive role and this is highlighted by the constrast of the vigorous, active Lord, fulfilling the role of a leader of men, the ‘lowande (brilliant) leder of ledez,’ which Gawain might have been, in a realistic picture of the activities of the rural nobility. So Gawain is held within a pleasant prison, reduced to inactivity. Then he is further placed in a false position and further imprisoned by the Lady, who takes on the lover’s role, captures him naked and flat on his back, disarmed in every sense of the word. This double reversal of roles is made ingeniously comic and subtle by the Lady’s use of Gawain’s own reputation as a weapon against him. The juxtaposition of the romantic and the real is expressed in their conversations almost in terms of a distinction between literature and life: Gawain appears to have read fewer romances than the Lady and to be ill-versed in the role which is persuasively thrust upon him. This twist of the situation works both to convince the reader of Gawain’s reality, since we sympathise with the one who appears the imperfect actor on the stage, struggling to keep up with a plot he is unaware of and to improvise appropriate lines, and further to draw a distinction between the limited, actual man and romantic conceptions of a knight as an idealised being.

280 • W. A. Davenport Measured against the example of the hunting Lord and against the Lady’s picture of a prototype lover-hero, the real Gawain is continually disconcerted and his standards are questioned by being deliberately confused. On the one hand he is presented with an exaggerated model of fine breeding and courtly expertise by the flattery of the Lady and the courtiers, against which he is forced to demur and to counter over-praise with modest disclaimers; on the other hand, he is forced to defend himself against undervaluation when the Lady accuses him of failing to do what a gentleman ought. The disconcerting of Gawain takes place in a situation where he is constantly under obligation to express courtly sentiments of service to the Lady, and to defer to his host. He is forced to receive repeated generosity in the form of the Lord’s winnings and to give little in return—a situation repeated in the symbolic moment when Gawain confesses himself bankrupt of courtly gifts and the Lady in reply presses him to accept a valuable ring. He is further put out of countenance by the Lord’s teasing and by the Lady’s embarrassing hints in her husband’s presence. Another element in the concerted attack on him is the attempt to catch him off guard by the exertion of pressure just when the situation might allow him to relax: so the Lord proposes the exchange-bargain just when Gawain has been relieved of anxiety about finding the Green Chapel; the Lady first persuades him to accept a kiss just as she seemed on the point of leaving; the Lady starts the crucial discussion about giving love-tokens only when she appears to have given up her attempt to make Gawain act as lover. Such strategy contributes to an overall sense of deliberate displacement in the poem, whereby not only is the hero continually caught off-guard, but also the reader is cleverly confused and challenged to read the situation truly. Trapped at the centre of a web of invidious comparison and subtle teasing attack, Gawain is shown to us from within and without. We are given an intimate, identifying knowledge of him: a knowledge both comic, since we share his experience of embarrassment and uncertainty, and also serious, since we are given private access to his fear, his resistance to temptation and his singlemindedness and determination. But this view of the hero is not consistently maintained, and we are shown Gawain’s acts at times as they appear to others, the courtiers at Hautdesert, the Lord, the Lady, the Green Knight in the valley, and the Round Table. The outer view of him also has a comic and a serious aspect. His improvised displays of elegant words for the Lady’s benefit and his returning of the kisses to her husband are conceived as dramatic scenes offered for the reader’s detached, amused enjoyment; the serious aspect is his performance as a keeper of promises, shown mainly in dramatic externalised terms. The effect of the combination of points of view is to create a division between Gawain’s thoughts and his acts, so that the hero’s actual conduct is presented as a performance of what is fitting to the moment, whether, in other terms, it is genuine or false. The poet most significantly chooses to withdraw knowledge of Gawain’s inner mind in the scenes immediately after his acceptance of the green belt, so that we are shown his going to confession, his mirth, and the

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 281 last exchange of winnings, from outside. These acts exist in the poem as a performance of virtue, a completely convincing appearance of truth. As we know later, Gawain is here at his most wrong and that he should show at this moment the greatest self-confidence that he displays anywhere in the poem is another of the poet’s ironies. The fact that the author makes so little of the matter of Gawain’s confession is a sure indication that he is more interested in creating an effect of dramatic irony than in making the moral point which so many commentators have tried to elicit from the scene. 6 Gawain is later blamed for lack of loyalty to a fellow man, not for false religious observance, and the sensible conclusion is that the poet wears his religion, as so many other things, lightly and comfortably, recognising that this tale is not the place for making points about whether an unconfessed intention to commit sin is to be added to the list of Gawain’s failings. The poet remains, interestingly and effectively, vague, leaving us either to assume that ‘the more and the mynne’ did really include everything and that the priest belongs to the ‘good face’ of Hautdesert uninvolved in the plot, or that Gawain with sensible practicality went to confession before he had actually done anything wrong and even, if we care to press it that far, before he had finally made up his mind. But the reader is not actually invited to consider such questions: his attention is directed to enjoyment of the performance and the ironic confrontation between a confident, joyful, truthful, open-handed hero and a crest-fallen Lord apologising for his measly fox-pelt. That Gawain’s deeds and words should, in part, be presented to us in terms of putting on an act is the inevitable product of the antitheses basic to the whole poem, between ideal and actual, between the reputation and the real man, between mystery and explanation, between anonymity and identification. Gawain is repeatedly measured against models of behaviour. He is measured against an archetypal sense of the hero’s role in a setting with the authority of historical tradition. He is measured in Christian and partly allegorical terms as an Everyman existing in a world of mutability and human weakness. He is measured in terms of a social, courtly, romance ideal of knighthood. Most subtly he is compared to the idea of himself, since the poet offers us definitions of what a Gawain should be, or might be considered to be. Teasingly he is accused of being an impostor, of not really being Gawain at all, first by the Lady: ‘Bot that ye be Gawan, hit gotz in mynde.’ ‘Querfore?’ quoth the freke, and freschly he askez, Ferde lest he hade fayled in fourme of his castes. (1293–5) ‘But that you are Gawain, it is a matter of doubt.’ ‘Wherefore?’ said the knight, and quickly he asks, afraid lest he had failed in the manner of his speech.

282 • W. A. Davenport The phrase ‘in fourme of his castes’ places emphasis on the idea of the performance which Gawain is managing to put on, and this performance is again questioned by the Lady on the next day (1481–3). It is left to the Green Knight to make the strongest accusation of imposture: And thenne repreved he the prynce with mony prowde wordez: ‘Thou art not Gawayn,’ quoth the gome, ‘that is so goud halden, That never arwed for no here by hylle ne be vale, And now thou fles for ferde er thou fele harmez! Such cowardise of that knyght cowthe I never here.’ (2269–73) And then he rebuked the prince with many haughty words: ‘You are not Gawain,’ said the knight, ‘who is accounted so good, who never quailed for any host by hill or by vale, and now you flinch for fear before you feel injury! Such cowardice of that knight could I never hear.’ In the face of these challenges that he is failing to deserve a famous name, Gawain is required to define his own nature, to reply in effect: ‘I am Gawain, but Gawain is other than you think.’ No other hero of medieval romance is so frequently shown as talking about himself, first with modest, conventional self-depreciation: ‘I am the wakkest, I wot, and of wyt feblest, And lest lur of my lyf, quo laytes the sothe: Bot for as much as ye ar myn em I am only to prayse; No bounté bot your blod I in my bodé knowe.’ (354–7) ‘I am the weakest, I know, and feeblest of understanding, and (there would be) the least loss in my life, whoever wishes to know the truth: I am only to be praised inasmuch as you are my uncle; no worth but your kinship do I recognize in myself.’ This courtly modesty gradually becomes more than conventional as selfdepreciation becomes necessary in the face of too great generosity and praise: ‘In god fayth,’ quoth Gawayn, ‘gayn hit me thynkkez, Thagh I be not now he that ye of speken; To reche to such reverence as ye reherce here I am wyye unworthy, I wot wel myselven.’(1241–4) ‘In good faith,’ said Gawain, ‘it seems to me an advantage, though I am not now he of whom you speak; to merit such

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 283 honour as you describe here I am an unworthy person, I know well myself.’ From this the poet is able to move his hero to a real recognition of limitation, first in response to the Green Knight’s scornful words: Quoth Gawayn, ‘I schunt onez, And so wyl I no more; Bot thagh my hede falle on the stonez, I con not hit restore.’ (2280–3) Said Gawain, ‘I flinched once, and so will I no more; but though my head fall on the ground, I know not how to restore it.’ This ruefully humorous and true declaration that the comparison between the Green Knight and Gawain is unfair and unreal, rescues Gawain in the reader’s eyes from any accusation of cowardice and prepares for the fuller acknowledgement of human frailty which Gawain is later obliged to make: ‘For care of thy knokke cowardyse me taght To acorde me with covetyse, my kynde to forsake, That is larges and lewté that longez to knyghtez. Now am I fawty and falce, and ferde haf ben ever Of trecherye and untrawthe . . .’ (2379–83) ‘Out of anxiety over your blow, cowardice taught me to associate with covetousness and forsake my natural character, which is the generosity and loyalty that belong to knights. Now am I faulty and dishonest, and have ever been afraid of treachery and perfidy . . .’ The contest remains an unfair one, and one inducing cynical disillusion with women, if nothing else, but all men must accept the heritage of sons of Eve. The hero’s answer to the question ‘What is Gawain?’, which the poem implicitly poses, is humble, and his verdict on the quality of the performance of Gawain which he managed to produce, uncharitable, but the poet’s combination of inner and outer senses of his hero forces the reader to take a larger view. We have been shown by the end a hero subordinate, deferential, nervous, who is tested, tempted and tricked, and whose difficult path is overhung by reminders of idealistic and romantic conceptions of knighthood. Treading between quicksands, Gawain shows his positive qualities by his ad hoc behaviour in the peculiar situations in which he is unexpectedly placed. The poet gives us dramatised instances of his resistance to sexual temptation, his refusal of rich gifts and his rejection of the opportunity to run away. Throughout, the reader is made conscious of the difficulty of fulfilling a heroic role and is asked to respond to a hero who has sufficient imagination to feel fear and to be

284 • W. A. Davenport sensitively aware that at the end of the road waits death. In a difficult place Gawain acts with modesty, courtesy, quick-wittedness and discretion, even to the extent of knowing when to pretend; he has a sympathetic lack of aggressive self-confidence, a capacity for civilised pleasure, a stern sense of duty, and sensible, conventional moral standards. His morality fails him only when basic self-protection is at issue, when he acts, in a way with which the reader is encouraged to sympathise, with sudden irrationality and gullibility. The picture created by the poet amounts to a characterisation of Gawain, a portrait complex enough to have a kind of realness uncommon in romance literature. The journey in Sir Gawain is a journey inward, into the nature of the hero, a journey in which a young, over-serious, inexperienced Gawain, armed with ideal standards of heroic conduct, is gradually transformed through struggling against fear, by resistance to psychological trial, and by discovered weakness, into the experienced and self-condemning figure at the close. The comic conception of the poem is based on the idea that such a voyage of discovery is inevitable for all men, leaving us with the sense that Gawain fulfils the role of hero essentially in surviving, particularly since he has survived an unfair trial with honour dented no more than can be accepted as the inevitable price of experience. The world which the poet has created to embody this experience is a maze through which the bewildered hero has to pick a path. The only way we can account for the figures whose ambiguous faces make up the labyrinth, and can relate to the literal story the nebulous suggestions of allegorical figures, of a masque of testing and temptation, of the fable as a schematised abstraction and so on, is to see the poet’s intention as that of creating images and figures who are, in various ways, manifestations of the shifting powers which operate in the sublunary world, the powers of fortune, mutability, hazard, time and mortality. The images of youth and age, of good and bad fortune, of the passing seasons, of the new and old year, fuse together to form a broad, shadowy backcloth to the action. Against this backcloth Gawain’s test may be seen as a test not only of knighthood but of humanity, but the poet, having made use of shadows and suggestions as part of the suspense and mystery of his tale, seems to dismiss them as illusions at the end, when the adventure is seen simply. As we read there is no danger of the poet’s ingenuity over-reaching itself, because, first, we go through the maze with the hero, and have the shadows and complexities focused for us through his eyes or by having our attention continually directed to him, and, secondly, we are given an over-all, distanced sense of the poem as something belonging to the legendary past, something completed and, therefore, following a course whose conclusion we, in a sense, know in advance; the details may be surprising but, whatever the particular outcome for Gawain, we know that it will be something which we can absorb into our existing knowledge of Arthurian history.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight • 285 Though I have referred to the ending of the poem as ambiguous, it is not really so; rather it is humanely ironic. Gawain at the end is powerfully abashed and overcome by his failure, as he sees it. What Gawain feels ashamed of is the result of his weakness, that because of fear he was led to act in a way unworthy of his code, and be false to his nature as a knight. His fault is not that of feeling fear but allowing fear to pervert his judgement, allowing human instinct to overcome the acquired ideals of perfect behaviour. But the poet makes it clear that for this result Gawain has been punished, and therefore left subsequently free of guilt; the green band is a reminder of the punished fault. The actual weakness, instinctive love of life, Gawain is not blamed for and Gawain himself, though naturally enough with some rueful bitterness, accepts it. His antifeminist cynicism is implicitly as much an acceptance of his share in the Fall as the explicit statement a few lines later of human frailty, and the poet’s choice of this way of recognising one’s limitations clearly identifies wry and worldly humour as his conception of a mature attitude to life. Gawain’s sorrow and shame convey the bitter sadness of recognizing limitation and uphold the value of the romantic ideals with which literary knighthood is identified. What else can men do but build civilisations, establish standards of fair dealing, affront destiny, and attempt to surpass the boundaries of man by creating ideals, orders and structures? The beauty of an ideal life, such as i t can be in the world, remains. But the poet persuades us that the joyous assembly at the end is right, even if in all human dealings there is an element of folly, to laugh and to honour Gawain and the belt. By the standards of common sense what matters is that Gawain ‘the grace hade geten of his lyve’ (had been granted the gracious gift of his life). The cause of Gawain’s failure is itself the reason for going on, absorbing experience and joyfully continuing to pursue ideals which will inevitably have to combat the mutations of time and human nature. The view the poem represents is an essentially generous and comic sense of life, a sympathetic, mature view, containing a dash of cynicism as to whether honour can set to a leg, which accepts the weakness of men but shows the pain of living with intelligence and sympathy. Gawain’s progress through the courtly maze of experience to a kind of bittersweet maturity seems, eventually, to be a fair enough fictional image of one part of life. Notes Reprinted with permission from The Art of the Gawain-Poet (London: University of London, Athlone Press, 1978), pp. 180–94. Quotations are from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon. Second edition revised by N. Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967). Spelling has been modernized by eliminating obsolete letters (thorn and yogh) and by adopting modern practice in the use of i/j and u/v. Endnotes have been modified slightly, and their numbering differs from that in the original text. Translations are by the editors. 1. See B. J. Whiting, ‘Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale’, Medieval Studies 9, 1947, 189–234 [reprinted in this casebook], Gordon M. Shedd, ‘Knight in Tarnished Armour: The Meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Modern Language Review 62, 1967, 3–13, and comments in Two Old French Gauvain Romances ed. R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen (Edinburgh and London, 1972).

286 • W. A. Davenport 2. See D. D. R. Owen, ‘Burlesque Tradition and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’, Forum for Modern Language Studies 4, 1968, 125–45. 3. I have argued the point more fully and commented on this passage as a whole in ‘The Word norne and the Temptation of Sir Gawain’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 78.3, 1977, 256–63. 4. See J. A. Burrow, A Reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London, 1965), pp. 99–101, and Spearing’s detailed discussion of the question of Gawain’s chastity (A. C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet [Cambridge, 1970], p. 194ff.), with specific comments on Burrow’s view of the passage at pp. 204–6. Also Ian Robinson, Chaucer and the English Tradition (Cambridge, 1972), p. 231. 5. See the note on lines 1768–9 in the text, p. 121. 6. Especially Burrow, Reading, pp. 104–10. See also G. J. Engelhardt, ‘The Predicament of Gawain’, Modern Language Quarterly 16, 1955, 218–25.

16

Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory

BEVERLY KENNEDY

Each of Malory’s three basic types [of knighthood] has obvious affinities with one or more of the ideal types previously portrayed in medieval epic and romance. In fact, one could argue that his Morte Darthur offers a kind of summa of medieval chivalry. For it incorporates exemplars of every conceivable type of knightly excellence to be found in the literature of the previous five hundred years, compares them to one another in a lengthy series of knightly adventures and in this way creates a three-tiered typology of knightly types based on the relative ethical, social and political value of each by contemporary standards. Malory’s first type, hitherto represented by Gawain, has the longest literary history, stretching back as far as Beowulf and Roland. We may call it the Heroic type of knighthood because it is the ideal celebrated in heroic poetry from Homer’s Iliad to the anonymous fourteenth-century English alliterative poem, the Morte Arthure, Malory’s source for Arthur’s Roman campaign. Above all else, heroic poetry in medieval Europe celebrates the loyalty of the fighting man to his lord. During the early period when the clan-based political organization of society was slowly being replaced by the newer feudal organization, a common topic of heroic poetry was the tragic conflict between a man’s duty to his kinsmen and his duty to his feudal lord. When the sacred duty of revenge, the lex talionis, came into conflict with the equally sacred duty to be loyal to one’s feudal lord, there was no way to resolve the conflict. It is surely more than coincidence, therefore, that the greatest culture heroes of this period, both French and English, are preserved from such conflict by the fact that their feudal lords are also their kinsmen. Beowulf is the nephew of Hygelac, Roland is the nephew of Charlemagne, and Gawain is the nephew of Arthur. Moreover, they are their lords’ sisters’ sons, which we have reason to believe was the nearest and dearest of all kinship ties between men in the patrilineal clan societies of early medieval Europe.1 The qualities admired and cultivated by the Heroic type of knight are those of a man who expects to spend most of his life fighting. Along with loyalty to his lord, his most important virtues are courage, or boldness, and prowess,

287

288 • Beverly Kennedy which includes both strength and skill in the handling of weapons. We have seen how Gawain was able to kill his opponent in a casual encounter with one blow of his sword to the head and how his younger brother, Gaheris, admired him for that ‘myghty stroke’. Gawain routinely deals blows as hard as he can, and, therefore, when he encounters knights who are less strong and skillful than himself, he routinely kills them. Thus far the only knight he has encountered who is a match for him, even during the hours between nine in the morning and noon when his strength increases threefold, is Marhalt.2 Therefore his encounter with Marhalt is the only one which has lasted long enough to test Gawain’s devotion to courtesy and the rules of fair play. He has proved to be much less courteous than his opponent. When Marhalt enjoyed the advantage at the very beginning of their combat, having unhorsed him, Gawain was quick to point out the unfairness and even threatened to kill Marhalt’s horse if he did not dismount immediately. However, while Gawain enjoyed the advantage for three hours, and Marhalt ‘had grete wondir how his myght encreced’, it never occurred to Gawain to stop the fight, even though their ‘quarellys’ were ‘nat grete’. Rather, he carried on, wounding and being wounded by Marhalt ‘passyng sore’. It was left to Marhalt to take pity on his exhausted opponent, who as ‘evynsonge’ drew near seemed able to ‘dure no lenger’, and to say the courteous ‘worde’ which stopped their fight (161.5–20:IV.18–19). Gawain’s behaviour indicates that he knows the rules of fair play well enough, but that he abides by them only when it is to his advantage to do so. His behaviour also indicates that he simply loves to fight. Indeed, he seems to take such pleasure in an evenly matched contest that it would never occur to him to stop fighting, no matter how much blood is being shed on either side. No doubt there were many reasons why Malory chose to make Gawain the chief exemplar of Heroic knighthood. First of all, as a native folk hero, he was already famous—as a warrior, as the leader of a noble Scottish clan, and, above all, as King Arthur’s favorite nephew, his sister’s son. Secondly, that heroic image had already been brilliantly projected with a strong religious bias in the alliterative epic poem, the Morte Arthure.3 Thirdly, and just as important, Malory found that same heroic image projected in a negative fashion in two of his French sources for the history of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. Malory could not avoid using these French romance sources for they had great authority and in some cases were the only sources available. For example, other than the brief summaries of Arthur’s reign to appear in English chronicles, the only sources for the early years of his reign were the Merlin branch of the Vulgate cycle and its continuation, the Suite du Merlin. The author of the Vulgate Merlin sees Gawain in a fairly sympathetic light. On the other hand, the author of the Suite goes out of his way to show that by comparison with other knights Gawain is seriously lacking in the refinements

Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory • 289 proper to a knight of Arthur’s court, as he does, for example, in his account of Gawain’s quest for the white hart.4 The Vulgate Lancelot again presents Gawain in a relatively favorable light: he is a bit of an adventurer with the ladies, but a paragon of knightly courtesy and a great friend and admirer of Lancelot. However, for reasons which probably had as much to do with his view of Lancelot as with his view of Gawain, Malory chose not to use very much of the Lancelot as a source for the middle years of Arthur’s reign. He chose rather to rely on the French prose Tristan, which represents Gawain as a criminal. Malory was enough of an historian to realize that he was obliged to make sense of the contradictions in these sources, and his portrait of Gawain offers an exceptional insight into the historian at work, comparing and evaluating his sources. He seems to have found it relatively easy to harmonize the view of Gawain in the post-Vulgate romances with that in the English chronicles. The chronicles present Gawain as a great warrior in the heroic mould. The Suite du Merlin and the Tristan both present him as a barbarous villain and a murderer. But Malory could explain that apparently stark contrast as a function of social context: in the refined atmosphere of a medieval French court an heroic warrior might well appear to be barbaric; certainly his acts of vengeance as a blood feudist would appear to be savage murders. It was not so easy to deal with the Vulgate view of Gawain as the lover of many ladies and as Lancelot’s friend. This courtly view of Gawain contradicts not only the post-Vulgate romances and the English chronicles but the native English romances of Gawain, as well. The English romances also make Gawain a model of courtesy (e.g., The Carl Carlisle), but two of them (The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell and The Marriage of Gawain) conclude with his marriage, and one of them (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) offers a unique view of him as a very young knight who is both pious and chaste. Malory seems to have concluded that this native English romance tradition erred by making Gawain much too good to be true, probably much better than the historical figure really was, and that the Vulgate romances erred by making him over too much in the courtly French image. Thus he resolved the contradictions of his sources by preferring English chronicles to the English romances and the post-Vulgate French prose romances (the Suite du Merlin and the Tristan) to the Vulgate romances (the Merlin and the Lancelot). As a consequence Malory’s Gawain remains the epitome of Heroic knighthood, a great warrior who never adapts to the courtly code of knighthood spelled out in his uncle’s pentecostal oath. That oath defines Malory’s second type of knight . . . . We may call this type the Worshipful knight, since Arthur’s knights abide by his code in order to merit his lordship and win ‘worship’. . . . Lancelot would be his chief exemplar of True knighthood. . . . In the fifteenth century not all men of the knightly class had adopted the courtly values typical of Malory’s Worshipful knights. The older heroic code of

290 • Beverly Kennedy values was still honoured by many, particularly in the north of England and in Scotland. Indeed, the society of the Scottish highlands continued to be structured on the basis of patrilineal clans well into the eighteenth century. This may explain why Malory puts so much emphasis on the fact that Gawain and his brethren come from the Orkney Islands, far in the north of Scotland. Gawain is Malory’s epitome of Heroic knighthood and he and his brethren (with the exception of Gareth) consistently act in accordance with the values of Scottish clansmen. . . . The Heroic knight defines honour in relation to his family not in relation to himself as an individual. In fact, it is arguable whether or not he can even understand honour as something belonging to an individual independently of his family. Gawain and Lamorak both regard King Arthur as the source of their honour, but Gawain looks to him as his uncle, the most powerful of all his kinsmen, whereas Lamorak looks to him as his liege lord and the most powerful king in Christendom. Gawain and his brethren expect Arthur to honour them in his court simply because they are his kinsmen. By contrast, Lamorak expects that if he should violate the Worshipful code of honour or fail to keep his Pentecostal oath, Arthur will take away his ‘worship’ and his lordship ‘for evirmore’. The society of Arthur’s kingdom is not organized on the basis of patrilineal clans, but Gawain and his brethren act as though it were just like their native Scottish highlands. The anthropologist Julio Caro Baroja has observed that in a society composed of patrilineal clans, each clan sees itself as engaged in a fierce competition with all other clans to be acknowledged as ‘“worth more” than the rest’. Those who are defeated in this competition are automatically ‘worth less’ and so the ‘competition for possession of any existing public honours and offices’ is likely to become ‘obsessive’.5 Gawain and his brothers see themselves engaged in such a competition with the other two great family groups in Arthur’s court: the sons of Pellinor and the sons of Ban and Bors. And from the very beginning of the Morte Darthur, Gawain appears to be obsessively concerned with the honours his uncle bestows upon these other knights. The first knight to be accorded an exceptional honour in King Arthur’s court is Pellinor. When the Round Table is instituted, Merlin, Arthur’s chief counsellor, gives the seat on the left side of the Siege Perilous to Pellinor, ‘for beste are ye worthy to sitte thereinne of ony that her ys.’ Malory reports that ‘thereat had sir Gawayne grete envy’ (102.8–10:III.4), whereas the author of the Suite du Merlin says only that he made ‘grant duel’ to see the slayer of his father so honoured (2:75). Gawain’s ‘grete envy’ suggests that he expected his uncle to give him the seat of greatest honour at the Round Table, despite the fact that he has only just been knighted and that Pellinor has greatly distinguished himself in Arthur’s service. From the familial point of view of the Heroic knight, such political facts do not matter. The elevation of Pellinor

Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory • 291 makes his family ‘worth more’ and Lott’s family ‘worth less’ and this should not be allowed to happen to the king’s own kinsmen. That Pellinor killed Lott in battle exacerbates the humiliation, no doubt. More importantly, it also allows Gawain to justify killing Pellinor by the law of the blood feud. Nevertheless, Malory’s handling of this scene in which Pellinor is honoured by Arthur suggests that envy plays a large part in motivating Gawain and Gaheris to kill Pellinor. The murder of Lamorak follows the same pattern as the murder of Pellinor. 6 The actual killing is incited and planned as a consequence of what Gawain and his brethren consider to be a humiliation to their family. Shortly after Tristram has praised Lamorak by comparing him favourably to Lancelot (606.7–12:X.20), Arthur calls a tournament at which Lancelot, Tristram and Dinadan refrain from jousting ‘for the love of kynge Arthure’ so that Gawain and his brethren might be ‘suffyrd . . . to wynne the degré yf they myght’ (606.21–24:X.21). Lamorak enters this tournament in disguise and unhorses twenty knights (including Gawain) so winning the ‘pryce . . . as a knyght piereles’ (607.27–28:X.21) and much attention and praise from the king. Gawain and his brethren are ‘wondirly wrothe’ with Lamorak ‘that he had put hym to such a dishonoure that day’ and Gawain calls a counsel: ‘Fayre bretherne, here may ye see: whom that we hate kynge Arthure lovyth, and whom that we love he hatyth. And wyte you well, my fayre bretherne, that this sir Lamerok woll nevyr love us, because we slew his fadir, kynge Pellynor, for we demed that he slew oure fadir, kynge Lotte of Orkenay; and for the deth of kynge Pellynor sir Lameroke ded us a shame to oure modir. Therefor I woll be revenged.’(608.13–20:X.21) Gawain’s interpretation of Lamorak’s liaison with Margawse is completely original with Malory. Gawain seems to think that Lamorak has entered into this ‘shameful’ affair with their mother for the sole purpose of getting revenge for the death of his father. His interpretation of Lamorak’s motives tells us more about his own attitude towards women than it does about Lamorak, however, for we have good evidence that Lamorak is passionately enamoured of Margawse (579.19–25:X.8). At the same time, it is not hard to see that the betrayer of Ettarde and the abductor of Sir Froll’s damsel might find it difficult to appreciate Lamorak’s feelings, particularly where his own mother is concerned. So, just as Gawain was able to justify the murder of Pellinor, he is able to justify the murder of Lamorak by his own ethical standards. Lamorak has dishonoured his family by dishonouring his mother; ‘therefore’ Gawain must be revenged. Nevertheless, this conclusion is the last link in a chain of argument which began with his fury that Arthur should have honoured Lamorak, the knight who ‘had put hym to such a dishonoure that day.’ Gawain cannot endure that his family should appear to be ‘worth less’ than any other, and

292 • Beverly Kennedy particularly not less than the family of Pellinor. Malory’s handling of the scene suggests that envy plays a large part in motivating this second murder, as well. Malory makes much more of the murder of Lamorak than does the author of the Tristan. He doubles the number of references to it, includes one long and detailed description of the crime, and records the responses of several individual knights to news of the deed (cf. 688.6–19:X.54, 691.27–34:X.55, 698.28–700.8:X.58, 1149.32–35:XIX.11 and 1190.1–16:XX.11–12). By this means he converts the death of Lamorak into a visible turning point in the Tale of Tristram, the nature of which is made clear in this speech by Dinadan: ‘. . . sir Gawayne and his bretherne, except you, sir Gareth, hatyth all good knyghtes of the Rounde Table for the moste party. For well I wote, as they myght, prevayly they hate my lorde sir Launcelot and all his kyn, and grete pryvay dispyte they have at hym. And sertaynly that is my lorde sir Launcelot well ware of, and that causyth hym the more to have the good knyghtes of his kynne aboute hym.’ (700.1–8:X.58) Gawain’s behaviour is destroying the fellowship of the Round Table. Arthur’s best knights all sense their danger and they are responding in one of two ways: either they avoid the court of Arthur, as Tristram now says he will do (698.32–34:X.58) and as Lamorak has done (670.13–27:X.49), or, like Lancelot, they surround themselves with their own kinsmen for protection. . . . If the reader examines the actions of Arthur, Gawain and Lancelot solely within the worldly context of politics and governance and solely from the pragmatic and rationalist point of view, then it becomes apparent that Arthur’s reign ended in catastrophe because of a judicial crisis for which all three men are partly to blame. Lancelot is to blame for keeping ‘trouth’ with the queen when he knew that the king had probably set a trap for him; Arthur is to blame for refusing Lancelot’s request for a trial by battle when he has failed to catch him in flagrante delicto; and Gawain is to blame for continuing to pursue vengeance upon Lancelot after the Pope has commanded Arthur to accord with him and Arthur is willing to do so. However, as the reader well knows from Malory’s development of the ethical typology of knighthood, each of these blameworthy acts constitutes a virtue by the ethical standards of the agent: Lancelot believes that ‘trouthe is the hyeste thing that man may kepe’; Arthur has sworn to stand with ‘true justyce’; and Gawain knows that it is his sacred duty to exact vengeance for the death of a kinsman. Gawain represents Heroic knighthood at its best by comparison with his younger brothers, Aggravayne and Mordred. Gawain is a better man than they because he lives strictly according to his code of ethics, that is to say, he acts consistently to safeguard the honour of his family. By contrast, Aggravayne and Mordred only pretend that the honour of the family is their motive for accusing Lancelot and the queen. Malory tells us that actually they are motivated by ‘prevy hate’ and rancorous envy. Gawain, too, has long envied

Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory • 293 Lancelot’s pre-eminence in his uncle’s court, but he loves his uncle too much to attempt to destroy the man who is most responsible for the stability of Arthur’s governance. The only time Gawain betrays his Heroic code of ethics is when he fails to exact vengeance for the deaths of Aggravayne and his two sons, and even this failure can be explained as part of his attempt to save Arthur. On the other hand, Arthur does not live strictly according to the Worshipful knight’s code of ethics. He acts both irrationally and imprudently when he refuses to take Gawain’s advice and allow Lancelot to defend himself in trial by battle. Arthur knows that his nephew will not support his judgment and he must realize that Lancelot will do everything in his considerable power to prevent its execution. Nevertheless, impulsively and in anger, he condemns his queen to be burned at the stake. In The Prince, Machiavelli observes that some circumstances require a prince to be impetuous while others require that he be circumspect (133). In the early part of his reign, Arthur’s impulsiveness and even his anger served him well in overcoming his enemies and extending his dominion. Now, however, these same qualities prove to be his undoing. In the event, he does not command sufficient power to enforce his judgment at the execution site and the consequence is a civil war which turns into a blood feud when Gawain refuses to reconcile with Lancelot. . . . Gawain, like Arthur, is caught up and destroyed by the tidal wave of unhappynesse which engulfs Christendom. As a consequence of Arthur’s ‘unhappy warre’ against his vassal, the King of France, Mordred is able to usurp the throne of England, causing yet another ‘unhappy warre’ in which Gawain receives his death wound at Dover beach. This causal sequence is to be found only in the English stanzaic Morte and in Malory’s Death of Arthur. In Malory’s text it powerfully reinforces the hap motif because on his death bed Gawain acknowledges his responsibility for ‘thys unhappy warre’ with Mordred and regrets the pride and ‘wylfulnesse’ which made him refuse to accord with Lancelot. The emphasis upon Gawain’s ‘wylfulnesse’ is original with Malory and suggests that the reader ought to take a providentialist view of Gawain’s misfortune. Viewed in this way, the fall of Gawain becomes a de casibus tragedy such as John Lydgate might have included in his Fall of Princes. But even though the reader may see this, Gawain himself does not. He recognizes that he is to blame for this ‘unhappy warre’, but he does not go on to draw the providentialist conclusion that his subsequent fall is God’s punishment for his ‘wylfullnesse’ and his vengefulness. Gawain’s sincere repentance wins him salvation, but to the moment of his death his primary loyalty continues to be to his kin group. Malory’s handling of the death-bed scene suggests this rather subtly; he tells us that Gawain confesses his sins to God and receives the sacraments from a priest, but he shows us Gawain confessing to Arthur and seeking forgiveness from Lancelot. The letter to Lancelot is Gawain’s final act in this world and it, too, is Malory’s

294 • Beverly Kennedy invention, reinforcing our sense of the importance which Gawain continues to attach to his family. Gawain has only two close male kinsmen left alive, his half-brother, Mordred, and his uncle, King Arthur, and the one has become a traitor to the other. To a Heroic knight no prospect could be more painful than war between kinsmen, no crime more heinous that the rebellion of Mordred against Arthur. As he lies dying, Gawain sees that his refusal to accord with Lancelot has caused him to lose everything he has fought all his life to preserve—the honour and well-being of his family. By turning to Lancelot for help in this extremity, he shows that repentance has enabled him not only to overcome his long-standing envy of the greater knight but also to realize at last that Lancelot loves Arthur as well as he does. Gawain knows that he can count on Lancelot’s loyalty to ‘that noble kynge that made the knyght’ (1231.27:XXI.2) even now, after he and Arthur have ravaged France. He may not fully understand why Lancelot should be so loyal to a man who is not his kinsman, but his use of the phrase ‘that noble kynge that made the knyght’ suggests that he has at least taken note of the reason which Lancelot has always given for his consistent refusal to make war on Arthur. Notes

1.

2.

3. 4.

Reprinted by permission of Boydell & Brewer from Knighthood in the Morte Darthur by Beverly Kennedy (Cambridge: Brewer, 1985), pp. 82–85, 93, 203–6, 329–30, 339–40. References to Malory’s text are to page and line numbers of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugene Vinaver, 2nd ed. rev. 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973), and to relevant book and chapter division of the Caxton text. Endnote numbering differs from that in the original text. Anthropologists are still unsure of the reason for the unusual closeness between mother’s brother and sister’s son in patrilineal societies. It may be the vestige of an earlier matrilineal social organization, or it may simply be the recognition of a blood bond, which can never be questioned (as it can in the case of a father and son). The only studies of this nearest and dearest of male kinship relationships in European literature are both quite old (Gummere and Bell), and the subject would seem to deserve another look in view of more recent anthropological theory and research. Malory has deviated from his French source in order to give Gawain such a decided edge for such a long period of time. According to the Suite du Merlin, Gawain’s strength merely ‘doubloit . . . entour heure de miedi’ (2:239); however, this was sufficient to ensure that he overcame all the opponents he ever faced in his life, except for six. Malory’s alteration, not only emphasizes the superiority of those knights who are able to beat Gawain, but also stresses the extent to which King Arthur favours his nephew. The late fourteenth-century ‘Ordenaunce and Fourme of Fightyng Within Listes’ assumes that all trials by battle to be fought before the King or his Constable will begin at nine o’clock in the morning, and that if the appellant fails to appear by noon, he will lose his appeal (311–313). Near the end of his long work Malory will explain that King Arthur made ‘an ordynaunce’ that all trials by battle to be fought before him should begin ‘at undern’, i.e., at 9 a.m., so that ‘by lyklyhode if sir Gawayne were on the tone parte, he shulde have the bettir in batayle whyle hys strengthe endured three owrys’ (1217.2–7:XX.21). See Chapter 6, pp. 325–6. In his interpretation of the alliterative Morte Arthure William Matthews sees the heroic figure of Gawain as a type of Christ, sacrificing his life for his people (Tragedy 148–50). Fanni Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail: A Study of the Structure and Genesis of a Thirteenth-Century Arthurian Prose Romance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1966), p. 179.

Gawain and Heroic Knighthood in Malory • 295 5. ‘Honour and Shame: An Historical Account of Several Conflicts’, in Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1965), p. 89. 6. Although Gawain and Gaheris would not call it murder, we know that, judged by the standards of Worshipful knighthood, they did not kill Pellinor ‘knyghtly’ but rather ‘shamefully’, two against one. Gaheris boasts of this to Lamorak (612.26–27:X.24) and later, during the Quest, Percival’s aunt and mother confirm that Pellinor was ‘thorow outerageousnes slayne’ (905.24:XIV.1), ‘nat manly, but by treson’ (810.11–13:XI.10).

Page Intentionally Left Blank

17

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature RAYMOND H. THOMPSON

In The Squire’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer, the Squire compares the eloquence of one character to that of “Gawayn, with his olde curteisye” (v. 95).1 Gawain’s reputation for courtesy made him a much-loved figure in medieval verse romance throughout Europe. In the prose romances, however, his high reputation declines precipitously until he seems at times the very antithesis of his earlier self. In Le Morte Darthur, Malory takes advantage of this to lay upon Gawain even more of the blame for the fall of the Round Table than occurs in his sources. In addition to these two traditions there was a third: the loyal and valiant, if at times impetuous, warrior found in the chronicles. Post-medieval authors could therefore choose from among different sources to present Arthur’s nephew in a variety of ways: as a wise and courteous knight, widely loved for his service to others (especially ladies); as a proud and stubborn prince, prey to lust, envy, anger, and vengefulness; or as a mighty warrior, loyal and brave to the point of recklessness. He may thus attract admiration as the chief supporter of Arthur’s realm, condemnation as one of the principal causes of its downfall, or a combination of both. Nor is he exempt from humor, though it is usually affectionate.2 Since Arthurian legend had dropped out of fashion, Gawain appears rarely in English literature between the Middle Ages and the nineteenth century. In The Misfortunes of Arthur (1587) by Thomas Hughes, “The valiant Gawin Arthurs Nephew deare” loyally supports his uncle against his brother Mordred.3 His character is expanded in William Hilton’s Arthur, Monarch of the Britons: a Tragedy (1759), where he is greatly admired: “such his magnanimity of soul, / He joys to suffer in his country’s cause”.4 His soldiers are as devoted to him as he is to his king and country. He is, moreover, generous to others, helping an old man (really the Queen disguised) and sparing those who surrender: “Justice in fight is ev’n to villains due” (p. 234), he proclaims. Both plays are based upon Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, but it was to English verse tradition that John Seally turned for his burlesque

297

298 • Raymond H. Thompson opera “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine” (1782), which emphasizes the humor of the situation.5 The nineteenth century saw a substantial increase in the number of Arthurian works and consequently appearances by Gawain. Five poems from the first half of the century all praise his courtesy. In Reginald Heber’s “Morte D’Arthur: A Fragment” (1812), though Lancelot is proclaimed “the best of all,” (p. 201), Gawain is acknowledged the “flower of courtesy; / Yet few with him in battlefield may vie.” (p. 202).6 “Fragments of The Masque of Gwendolen” (1816) by the same poet recounts the marriage of Gawain, hailed as Britain’s “bravest knight” (p. 292), to Dame Ragnell, here called Gwendolen. As in its medieval sources, the poem demonstrates the hero’s noble qualities, particularly loyalty and courtesy, when he agrees to marry a repulsive hag to save Arthur’s life.7 Although he does enjoy some humor at Gawain’s lack of skill as a commander, John Hookham Frere is equally generous in praising his courage and courtesy in The Monks and the Giants (1821), and he makes much of the fact that he is loved by everyone. In William Wordsworth’s “The Egyptian Maid” (1835), a cheerful Gawain is among the knights of Arthur’s court who seek to revive the Maiden with a touch. The fullest and most entertaining treatment of Gawain, however, is provided by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in his epic poem King Arthur (1848). Interwoven into the account of Arthur’s quests to find a magical sword, shield, and guide that will protect his kingdom from the Saxons are the adventures of frank Gawaine Whom mirth forever, like a fairy child, Lock’d from the cares of life. (1:36)8 Book 6 gives a comical account of the knight’s pursuit of a raven. Despite Merlin’s assurance that it is summoning him to Arthur’s aid, Gawaine views his guide with unease, muttering imprecations against the “portentous chough” (1:257) and “cursed bird” (1:270) whenever he runs into problems. His misgivings are vindicated when his journey turns into a series of mishaps. First, he must endure a version of the motif contrasting the fickleness of women with the fidelity of dogs,9 although in this instance he is glad enough to be rid of the domineering lady. Indeed, when her new companion returns for her dog, Gawaine “pales, he groans—‘The carle repents! / No, by the saints, he keeps her or he dies’” (1:280). Then he is pinched and stung by mischievous little folk when he falls asleep beneath “the Fairy’s Oak” (1:283). Finally, he is ambushed by Viking pirates who prepare him for sacrifice, defending their action on Utilitarian grounds: “No pleasure like a Christian roasted slowly, To Odin’s greatest number can be given . . . . On selfish principles you chafe at capture, But what are private pangs to public rapture?” (2:65)

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 299 Though silenced by the “sound logic” (2:66) of “that enlightened tho’ unlearned man” (2:65), Gawaine is heartened by the raven’s departure at long last, and he makes his escape with the aid of the faithful dog. Eventually, he rejoins Arthur. Despite his comic misadventures, 10 Gawaine remains an attractive and witty figure with whom one readily sympathizes. Bulwer-Lytton proclaims his own partiality for the hero in a footnote: “poor Gawaine himself, the mirror of chivalry in most of the Fabliaux is, as Southey observes, ‘shamefully calumniated’ in the Morte d’Arthur as the ‘false Gawaine’” (1:45). By contrast, the deeds of Arthur and Lancelot, though admirable, soon grow tedious.11 As a result, Gawaine stands out as a memorable and entertaining figure in an otherwise undistinguished poem. Despite Bulwer-Lytton’s complaint, the influence of Malory’s romance, with its largely negative portrayal of Gawain, proved irresistible. In Idylls of the King (1857–85), Tennyson offers the harshest portrayal of Gawain, eschewing all favorable qualities found in his sources to present a figure who is consistently frivolous and dishonorable.12 The consequences of this behavior are most damaging in “Pelleas and Ettarre” (1869), in which he betrays the trust of both parties when he woos Ettarre for himself rather than Pelleas. This precipitates the series of events that finally turns the disillusioned Pelleas against Arthur and all for which he stands. Yet others also go out of their way to tarnish Gawain’s reputation. Although in Malory, Gawain staunchly protests the Queen’s innocence of the charge of treason and refuses to be present at her execution, in “The Defence of Guenevere” (1858) by William Morris, he is her accuser; whereas Malory merely notes that he accompanies his mother to Arthur’s court when Mordred is conceived, in “The Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy” (1892), Richard Hovey takes advantage of the opportunity to demonstrate Gawain’s lustful nature, even at the age of sixteen; and in Mordred: A Tragedy (1895), Henry Newbolt turns this most loyal of knights into a supporter of Mordred in his war against Arthur. Even those who remained content to follow Malory still found ample material therein to condemn Gawain. Thus while C. J. Riethmuller in Lancelot of the Lake: A Tragedy (1843) and Wilfred Campbell in Mordred (1893) both recognize his noble qualities, they nevertheless blame, in varying degrees, the fall of the Round Table on his vengefulness. When Gawain is absolved of blame, he is marginalized, as in J. Comyns Carr’s King Arthur (1895), where he serves merely to report events happening offstage. All three main traditions in the portrayal of Gawain are thus successively represented in English literature from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries. The heroic warrior of the chronicles appears in drama; the courteous, if at times comical, knight of the verse romances figures in poetry; and the proud and vengeful prince of the prose romances in both. This pattern persists into the twentieth century.

300 • Raymond H. Thompson Gawain appears in several plays during the first half of the century. In Edwin Royle’s Launcelot and Elaine (1920, 1929), which dramatizes Tennyson’s poem, Gawain is a willing puppet of the villainous Mordred. In Rutland Boughton’s unperformed opera Avalon (1945), he betrays Arthur and joins Mordred at the last battle. In Stark Young’s Guenevere (1906), Laurence Binyon’s Arthur: A Tragedy (1923), and Georgene Davis’s The Round Table: A History Drawn from Unreliable Chronicles (1930), he is presented with some sympathy, but in the last two plays, his implacable desire for revenge against Lancelot for the slaying of Gareth nonetheless prevents the reconciliation that might have saved the kingdom. In Clemence Dane’s “The Hope of Britain,” the second of seven plays collected as The Saviours (1942), Gavin plays a minor role as Arthur’s loyal nephew during the wars on the continent and against Modred. During the second half of the century, Gawain features in two substantial theatrical productions. In 1990, David Freeman wrote and directed a sevenhour dramatic adaptation of Malory’s Morte Darthur, but since it includes the stories of both Pelleas and Ettard and the Grail Quest, Gawain plays an unflattering role as in the source. He emerges with credit, however, in David Harsent’s verse drama Gawain (1991). Based upon Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, this was developed into an opera the same year, with music by Harrison Birtwhistle, and it was well received at Covent Garden in London.13 Arthurian legend has also frequently been adapted as children’s plays. They usually cast Gawain in a minor role, except when they draw upon the verse romances. Thus he proves his courage and loyalty during his encounter with the Green Knight in James Yeames’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Play (1911), in David Holman’s The Green Knight (1984), and in John Chambers’s Tales of King Arthur (1996), where it contributes to the theme of forgiveness for failure; and he demonstrates kindness in his wedding to the Loathly Lady in Marguerite Merington’s The Testing of Sir Gawayne (1913). The two stories were also adapted as children’s operas by Richard Blackford: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (1978–79) and Gawain and Ragnall (1984).14 The few poems that adhere to the chronicle account of Arthur’s reign also view Gawain favorably. In John Heath-Stubbs’ Artorius (1973), for example, he is repeatedly praised as “the courteous Gwalchmai” and fights valiantly in Arthur’s wars.15 Those poems inspired by verse romances are generally positive too, though when they draw upon Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, some may dwell upon the hero’s shortcomings, others the humor of his situation (e.g., Charlton Miner Lewis’ freewheeling adaptation, Gawayne and the Green Knight [1903]).16 The most extended treatment of Gawain in modern poetry is The Wraith of Gawain (1948) by E. H. Tax. Although the second half of this long, “dramaticnarrative poem” (p. 9)17 (as the poet himself describes it) is based upon Malory, the first half draws upon the verse romances and Celtic tales, and it is the

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 301 concept of “Arthur’s courteous nephew” (p. 11) found there that pervades the entire work. Thus Gawain pursues Lancelot to France in search, not of revenge for his brothers’ death, but of justice: “The Nation’s law is fixed like arching Heaven, / And though a man may journey, he is under it” (p. 208). That this is a matter of genuine principle, rather than an excuse for vengeance, is demonstrated by the circumstances that lead him to slay Pellinore. In prose tradition, he acts to avenge Pellinore’s killing of his father, and it precipitates a kin feud between the two families that reveals the viciousness of the whole Orkney clan except Gareth. Here, however, Gawain takes up the cause of an unknown peasant whose granddaughter was abducted by Pellinore, and he kills him only when the latter attacks first without warning. Since Pellinore was his strongest ally against Lancelot, Gawain ignores political expediency when he demands that the young woman be restored to her grandfather. He also rejects Bedivere’s advice to imprison Pellinore’s sons: “I am not old enough, / Or else not young enough, to be a tyrant” (p. 225). It is the sons, not he, who vow revenge, and they subsequently join Mordred’s rebellion against Arthur. Gawain, by contrast, remains a noble and heroic figure, albeit an increasingly melancholy one as fate darkens around him. He even gains the upper hand in his personal combat against Lancelot, before breaking it off at the news of Mordred’s rebellion. By contrast, poems influenced by the conception of Gawain found in the prose romances are sternly critical of him, particularly for promiscuity and vengefulness. The former quality is condemned in “Gawain and Marjorie” (1906) by Oscar Fay Adams, who adopts Tennyson’s view of a prince both “false” and “light in love,” and in “Ettard’s Troth” (1912) by Francis B. Money Coutts. In The Tragedy of Etarre: A Poem (1912) by Rhys Carpenter, however, Gawain is portrayed as the victim of seduction by an older and more experienced woman. Despite their sympathy for the hero, Gawain’s vengefulness is blamed for the fall of the Round Table in Merlin (1917) and Lancelot: A Poem (1920) by Edwin Arlington Robinson as well as in A Dream of Camelot (1990) by Alan Lupack, who finds him “rash / And at times unreasonable / Yet innately noble” (p. 72). 18 Robinson is more generous to him in Tristram (1927), however, and in John Masefield’s “The Breaking of the Links,” one of the poems collected in Midsummer Night (1928), the high-minded Gawain departs the court, outraged at the accusations of treason against the Queen. When we turn to prose fiction, a pattern already discernable in later poetry and drama becomes even more noticeable. While some, particularly the historical, fiction continues to draw upon the chronicles, most is dominated by Malory and the prose romances. Recent years have, however, witnessed a dramatic growth in the influence of the verse romances. Gawain figures regularly in novels based primarily upon chronicle accounts of Arthur’s reign, albeit with some borrowings from Welsh and romance tradition. In The Bear of Britain (1944) by Edward Frankland, a light-hearted Gwalchmei is virtually the only character who enjoys life in a novel permeated

302 • Raymond H. Thompson by a sense of doom, although his abduction of the King of Gwyneth’s daughter does contribute to the overall pattern of betrayal. Gawain makes but a brief and unremarkable appearance in Andre Norton’s Merlin’s Mirror (1975) and (as Gwalchmai) in Douglas Carmichael’s Pendragon (1977), which follows Arthur’s career only up to the Battle of Badon Hill. He serves as a loyal captain to Gereint in Warwick Deeping’s The Man on the White Horse (1934); to Uther in David Gemmell’s Last Sword of Power (1988); and to Arthur in Walter O’Meara’s The Duke of War (1966), George Finkel’s Twilight Province (1967; published in the United States as Watch Fires to the North, 1968), Jane Viney’s The Bright-Helmed One (1975), Victor Canning’s The Immortal Wound (1978) (the third novel in his Crimson Chalice Trilogy), Stephen Lawhead’s Arthur (1989) (the conclusion of his Pendragon Cycle), and Diane Paxson’s The Hallowed Isle. Book Four: The Book of the Stone (2000). While depicted in positive terms, Gawain remains a minor character amidst the many who surround Arthur. By contrast, Rosemary Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset (1963) provides a fuller picture of the hero by turning him into a healer. Despite a crippled foot, Gwalchmai serves the warband as both warrior and surgeon. Artos values his wisdom, noting that “Gwalchmai, . . . though no captain, always had his place at our councils” (p. 275).19 Gwalchmai demonstrates his tact in contrast to the “less forbearing” Cei when Artos breaks his own rule by allowing his wife to stay at the military camp (p. 236). Although not Artos’ nephew in this novel, he is devoted to his leader, leaving the monastery where he is a novice with the avowal, “I am your man, my Lord Artos, for all that there is in me” (p. 81), and becoming one of his closest Companions. Gwalchmai’s most striking quality, however, is his selfless dedication to helping the wounded. Despite his own fatigue, he moves “serenely” among them in the aftermath of battle: “His face was grey and still, with the gentleness and complete withdrawal from all other matters that came to him only when he was plying his craft” (p. 129). When he loses one patient after a long struggle, he complains wearily, “We know so little—so hideously little” (p. 242). And despite his own failing health, he returns to duty with the campaigning army, dying at last in the service of the wounded “as quietly and suddenly as a tired man falling asleep by the fire after a hard day’s work” (p. 445). Gawain’s talent as a healer does in fact appear in medieval tradition, but in verse romance—Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval—rather than in chronicle.20 It is a talent that he possesses in other novels, however, notably Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy (1980–82), Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot (2001), where he is called “the gentle healer” (p. 175),21 and N. M. Browne’s Warriors of Camlann (2003), where Gawain (here a time traveller from the present day) heals Medraut of his wounds.22 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is, as one might expect, the poem that exerts the greatest influence on modern fiction,23 though modern writers

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 303 focus upon different aspects. John Myers Myers’s Silverlock (1949) and Meredith Lahmann’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Quest (2003) emphasize the nobility and heroism of Gawain. Persia Woolley’s Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn (1991), which concludes her Guinevere trilogy, Anne Eliot Crompton’s Gawain and Lady Green (1997), and James C. Work’s Ride South to Purgatory (1999), which recasts the story as a western, focus on the chastening lesson learned by a deeply flawed hero. Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex (1978) and Gerald Morris’s The Squire, His Knight, and His Lady (1999) try to attain the balance between the two that distinguishes their source. Robert Holdstock makes use of a primitive version of the encounter in The Hollowing (1993), part of his Mythago series. In Fay Sampson’s Herself (1992), the fifth and concluding volume in her Daughter of Tintagel sequence, Morgan le Fay briefly offers her own view of events. Sophie Danson’s erotic novel Knights of Pleasure (1992; reissued as Avalon Nights, 1994) drastically transforms Gawain’s encounter with Bercilak’s wife into a series of sexual gymnastics that reveal he is as licentious as the rest of the Round Table (including Galahad!). The figure of Gawain would appear to be indiscernibly dispersed among several of the characters in Iris Murdoch’s complex novel The Green Knight (1993), but the poem may also have inspired his role as an innocent sacrifice in Catherine Darby’s A Dream of Fair Serpents (1979) and in Bernard Cornwell’s Excalibur (1997), the conclusion of his Warlord Chronicles. By contrast, Vera Chapman, who acknowledges in an author’s note that her view of Gawain is shaped by Malory, replaces him with a nephew of the same name when she adapts the story in The Green Knight (1975). The older Gawain, who has a reputation for bloody rages, is marginalized throughout her Three Damosels trilogy. The story of Gawain’s marriage to Dame Ragnell has also attracted attention, figuring as a brief incident in novels like Persia Woolley’s Queen of the Summer Stars (1990). In Arthur Rex by Thomas Berger, The Squire’s Tale (1998) by Gerald Morris, and Sir Gawain’s Little Green Book (2000) by Mark J. Mitchell, the circumstances give the hero an opportunity to prove his worth. Welsh tradition also influences modern fiction. Susan Shwartz follows Malory when she notes Gwalchmei’s “moody, vicious temper” that “could turn murderous in the blinking of an eye” in “Seven from Caer Sidi” (1988), a short story based upon the early Welsh poem The Spoils of Annwfn.24 Gawain is viewed more favorably, however, in Kathleen Herbert’s The Lady of the Fountain (1982; revised as Bride of the Spear, 1988) and in Nigel Tranter’s Druid Sacrifice (1993), both of which are based upon the Old Welsh Owain and the legend of Saint Kentigern (or Mungo as he is known in Scotland). As the beloved brother of the heroine, Gawain offers her what little aid he can after she is raped by Owain of Rheged, is condemned to death by her outraged father, but miraculously survives to become mother to the great Scottish saint

304 • Raymond H. Thompson who founded Glasgow. Gawain is equally honorable in Sarah Thomson’s The Dragon’s Son (2001), which mingles the stories of Owain and The Dream of Rhonabwy with prose tradition. Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival is the source for a trilogy of Grail novels by Richard Monaco: Parsival or a Knight’s Tale (1977), The Grail War (1979), and The Final Quest (1980). The violence and brutality that abound reflect historical conditions during the Middle Ages, and they prompt the search for a better world represented by the Holy Grail and tales of romance, even though that search too often leads to yet further atrocities and disappointments. Despite his many flaws, Gawain is blessed with a sardonic and self-deprecating wit and he thus emerges as one of the most fascinating and attractive characters in the series.25 As in Edward Frankland’s Bear of Britain (1944), he benefits from the fact that most of the other characters are so much worse than he is. Gwalchmai is himself the central hero in Hawk of May (1980) and Kingdom of Summer (1981), the first two books of Gillian Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy. Rejecting his mother’s attempt to initiate him into the service of the forces of Darkness, Gwalchmai chooses instead to serve the Light, and, after nearly three years in the Isles of the Blessed with Lugh, he returns to join Arthur’s warband. Arthur, however, mistrusts the son of the half-sister who seduced him. The first novel deals with Gwalchmai’s attempts to win acceptance in the face of his uncle’s deep hostility, a feature found in medieval accounts of the birth of Gawain.26 Here, as in Sutcliff ’s novel, he possesses healing skills, the practice of which eventually helps convince Arthur of his trustworthiness. The main plot of the second novel, Gwalchmai’s ill-fated love affair with Elidan, is drawn from the First Continuation of Chrétien’s Perceval. In the third novel, In Winter’s Shadow (1982), Gwynhwyfar recounts the fall of Arthur’s kingdom with all its bright hopes, though here too some details are borrowed from poetry (e.g., the grief of Medraut at his brother’s death is found in the English Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Gwalchmai’s fairy horse Ceincaled recalls Gringalet, his horse with similar origins in the verse romances). 27 Despite failings, particularly when he gives way to pride and vengefulness, Gwalchmai wins our admiration throughout the trilogy because he struggles so heroically against the Darkness that he encounters, in his own soul as well as in Arthur’s realm. In choosing the prose romance tradition as the basis for In Winter’s Shadow, Bradshaw joins the substantial majority of modern authors who have been attracted to Arthurian legend. Even Rosemary Sutcliff, who strives more rigorously than do most to achieve historical authenticity in Sword at Sunset, decides to retain “the Sin which carries its own retribution; the Brotherhood broken by the love between the leader’s woman and his closest friend. These have the inevitability and pitiless purity of outline that one finds in classical tragedy, and that belongs to the ancient and innermost places of man” (p. vii).

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 305 Unfortunately for the reputation of Gawain, it is a tragedy in which he plays a largely negative role. This is particularly true, moreover, of the versions by Malory and Tennyson, the very ones that have exercised the strongest influence on later writers. In the former, Gawain’s implacable demand for revenge for Gareth’s death prevents any reconciliation between Arthur and Lancelot until it is too late to save the realm; in the latter, his treachery to his fellow knights, if not his king, is both a symptom and cause of the moral decay that makes tragedy inevitable. Some authors do avoid embroiling Gawain in a feud with Lancelot, however, by adapting their material freely. Although she follows the prose tradition throughout most of her Daughter of Tintagel sequence, Fay Sampson departs from it to make Modred the Queen’s lover. In Excalibur! (1980) by Gil Kane and John Jakes, Guinevere and Lancelot do not betray Arthur despite their love. In The Sword and the Flame (1978; published in the United States as The Pendragon, 1979) by Catherine Christian and The Road to Avalon (1988) by Joan Wolf, Gawain even protects the lovers when they are trapped by Agravain in the Queen’s chamber. Since Arthur immediately pardons them, there is no need for Lancelot, or Bedwyr (who plays Lancelot’s role in the The Road to Avalon, as in the novels of Sutcliff and Bradshaw), to rescue the Queen and kill Gareth. In Firelord (1980), Parke Godwin severs the blood relationship between Gawain and both Arthur and Gareth (who is not slain during the Queen’s rescue). Thus while Gawain supports the king in his war against Guenevere and Lancelot, he bears no special animosity against the latter. Despite his cruel treatment of Pictish prisoners and the blindness of his devotion to his own kindred, Gawain is nonetheless highly respected for his integrity, as Arthur acknowledges: “Gawain had been my most impoverished chief and perhaps the most honest. Against me when I played him false, but at my side again when his heart found me right, and putting his life in the scale to attest it.”28 In the absence of his feud with Lancelot, here, as in the novels based upon the chronicles, Gawain emerges as one of Arthur’s trusted captains, an admirable, but relatively minor figure in a crowded cast of characters. The feud between Lancelot and Gawain is also omitted from Peter Vansittart’s Lancelot: A Novel (1978), Robert Nye’s Merlin (1978), and David Drake’s Dragon Lord (1979). As in Frankland’s Bear of Britain, Gawain stands out in all three novels as one of the few attractive characters among Arthur’s followers, though here again his appearances are brief. In Dragon Lord, Drake avoids the feud by setting the action early in Arthur’s reign, as do a number of other novels. The consequences for Gawain’s reputation, however, are very mixed. Accounts of his childhood in T. H. White’s Witch in the Wood (1939; later retitled The Queen of Air and Darkness in The Once and Future King, 1958), Cris Newport’s Queen’s Champion (1997), and Rosemary Edghill’s “Bad Heir Day” (1999), for example, anticipate his later failings by revealing his early arrogance, hot temper, and rash, even

306 • Raymond H. Thompson bullying, behavior. By contrast, Bradshaw’s Hawk of May, Elizabeth E. Wein’s The Winter Prince (1993), and Jane Yolen’s The Sword of the Rightful King (2003) all praise his efforts to escape his mother’s malign influence. When Gawain encounters Pelleas and Ettarde in The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (1976) by John Steinbeck, he deceives them both because “his vanity cried out for conquest” (p. 147).29 When his treachery is revealed, he blames others rather than himself: “She was far from the prettiest. And as for Pelleas—this is my reward for revenging him on that woman who had made him miserable. Well—there it is. There is no gratefulness in the world any more. A man must look after himself. And I will from now on. It is a lesson to me” (p. 150). The irony of this self-justification is in keeping with the ironic vision throughout Steinbeck’s novel, but it casts Gawain in a bad light, particularly by contrast with Lancelot’s heroic struggle against his feelings for Guinevere. The Emperor Arthur by Godfrey Turton (1967), however, interprets Gawain’s actions more generously, for not only is his subsequent repentance sincere, but his loyalty to Arthur contrasts favorably with the betrayal of both Ettard and Lancelot. He is, moreover, readily forgiven by his friend Pelleas who recalls “his warmth of heart, his high spirits.” 30 In The Squire’s Tale, Morris exonerates Gawain completely in his revisionist account of the episode: the hero offers no more than kiss to the lady in a futile attempt to help two impossibly foolish people.31 Influenced, no doubt, by Malory’s observation that Gareth avoided Gawain’s company because he was so vengeful, E. M. R. Ditmas in Gareth of Orkney (1956) gives the latter a violent temper, an unfortunate failing in a story that seeks to teach its young hero the importance of patience. By contrast, Gerald Morris again rises to his favorite hero’s defense in The Savage Damsel and the Dwarf (2000), in which Gawain remains as admirable as ever, while Gareth emerges as foolish and rather stupid. The feud between the Orkney clan and the family of Pellinore, originating in the Prose Tristan, is usually a dark stain upon Gawain’s reputation, but nowhere is it worse than in Nancy Springer’s I Am Mordred (1998), where Gawain and Garet torture Pellinore and murder Morgause and Lamorak to avenge family honor. Yet even in this feud, Berger’s Arthur Rex, like Tax’s poem The Wraith of Gawain, manages to present his conduct in positive terms. Accounts of the Grail quest based upon Malory and his French sources often reveal that Gawain is too worldly or violent to succeed, as is the case in White’s Once and Future King. That criticism is blunted, however, by the widely shared view in many novels that the quest is a scheme to further the political ambitions of a fanatical and intolerant Church.32 When authors draw upon Perlesvaus rather than the Vulgate Queste and Malory, moreover, as do Dorothy James Roberts in Kinsmen of the Grail (1963) and Cherith Baldry in Exiled from Camelot (2001), Gawain does emerge with credit. Even his struggle in the former to come to terms with his own limitations is commendable.

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 307 In the story of the poisoned apple, Gawain’s reluctance to believe the Queen is innocent usually does him little credit, but in The Idylls of the Queen (1982) by Phyllis Anne Karr, he wins the grudging respect of a sharp-tongued Kay for his strong sense of duty and his severity upon himself. Although an argument may break out between Gawain and Lancelot as the tragedy draws to a close, it does not always lead to a feud, and this is the case in two novels that transpose elements of Arthurian legend into very different settings. In The Grail: A Novel (1963) by Babs H. Deal, the setting is U.S. college football; in Port Eternity (1982) by C. J. Cherryh, it is an alternate universe accidentally entered by a spaceship in the far future. In both, however, Gawain finds himself in an argument with Lance, and it divides the loyalty of the group at a time of crisis. The consequences are the same when he sides with those who accuse Launcelot and Guinevere in Marvin Borowsky’s historical novel The Queen’s Knight (1956). Despite his good qualities, Gawain’s judgement is called into question by his misplaced loyalties in all three works. In Kate Schafer’s The King’s Sister (2000) and Alan Massie’s Arthur the King: A Romance (2003), Lancelot compares unfavorably to Gawaine. Indeed the narrator in the latter tells us, “No unworthy act stained his reputation and there was no challenge or duty he ever shirked.”33 Elsewhere, Gawain’s insistence upon revenge for Gareth’s death at Lancelot’s hands is blamed, in varying degrees, for the fall of the Round Table. Some choose to emphasize his virtues and the misfortune that forces him to fight Lancelot; others condemn him for the anger and vengefulness that prevent the reconciliation between Arthur and Lancelot and so doom the kingdom; a few, like Naomi Mitchison’s To the Chapel Perilous (1955) and Barbara Ferry Johnson’s Lionors: King Arthur’s Uncrowned Queen (1975), view him only from a distance, despite his influence upon events. The earliest among the first group is Lord Ernest Hamilton’s Launcelot: A Romance of the Court of King Arthur (1926). Despite his flaws, Gawaine is praised by the author: “for all his ill-deeds, men loved him passing well, for, although he was savage as a wounded lion, and inconstant in love as the wind, yet was he brave as any that lived and as faithful to men as he was faithless to ladies.” 34 In The Little Wench (1935) by Philip Lindsay, a wise and nobleminded Gawain even eludes Ettard’s attempt to seduce him. In both books, he is made less culpable than Guenevere, who is presented as a jealous, selfish woman. In the latter, for instance, we are told, “she could not bear to have those around her who were not slaves to her loveliness.”35 When Morgaine, in Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon (1982), learns that Gawaine was the first to return from the quest for the Grail, she smilingly observes, “He was always fickle—to everything and everyone” (p. 806);36 but Lancelet reminds her, “Except to Arthur” (p. 806), and she later describes Gawaine as “that great-hearted man” (p. 865). In Courtway Jones’s In the Shadow of the Oak King (1991), the first book in the Dragon’s Heirs trilogy,

308 • Raymond H. Thompson Pelleas deeply mistrusts Gawaine; but in the second book, Witch of the North (1992), Morgan proves a much more sympathetic narrator. She loves her “favorite cousin” well and, though aware of his faults, admires his sense of honor.37 This he demonstrates when, after accidentally slaying her son Uwayne, he offers to make amends “up to and including my life as blood price” (p. 239). His loyalty to Arthur even extends beyond death, when he finds himself transmigrated into a hawk in Susan Shwartz’s “One Wing Down” (1999). The most favorable treatment of Gawain’s enmity toward Lancelot is found in Sharan Newman’s Guinevere Trilogy (1981–85) and Berger’s Arthur Rex. In Newman’s books, Gawain is a noble and well-loved figure, a dear friend to both Guinevere and Lancelot. Thus when duty to avenge his slain brother obliges him to fight the latter, Gawain chooses to end the combat by deliberately running onto his opponent’s sword rather than risk killing him. So distraught is Lancelot at his friend’s sacrifice for their sake that he has to be restrained from killing himself. For her part Guinevere recalls her companion since childhood with warm affection: “he was strong and valorous. No one would deny that. But he was also loving and funny, and he had the most amazing knack for getting into ridiculous situations. . . . yes, that was Gawain. Brash, sure, good-hearted, rather over-eager to please a lady, always dreaming of glory.”38 Whereas Gawain is admirable throughout Newman’s trilogy, in Berger’s novel, he develops as a character, learning from his mistakes until he eventually wins the author’s praise as “the finest man of the company of the Round Table (for he had all the virtues and of the vices the most natural)” (p. 466). 39 Gawaine must strive to overcome these vices, yet he does so with heart-warming success. Thus he conquers his initial envy of stronger champions like Launcelot and Tristram. He even calls a temporary halt to his last, fatal combat with Launcelot when he sees his friend weak from loss of blood, and he insists that his wound be bandaged. While these novels present Gawain in a predominantly favorable light, many view him more critically. He may still be praised by other characters, but the actions that we witness undermine this good opinion. In White’s Once and Future King, Lancelot describes Gawaine as a good man with a generous heart, but we are deeply disturbed by his inability to understand his uncle’s ideals and by his bloodthirsty slaying of many good knights, especially King Pellinore “who would not willingly have hurt a fly.”40 Although the kind-hearted Arthur blames Morgause for her children’s behavior,41 we are less ready than he is to forgive such actions as attacking Lamorak at odds of three to one and stabbing him in the back. In White’s novel, the whole Orkney clan, including Gawaine, bears most of the responsibility for the failure of Arthur’s dream of a better, kinder world. Similarly, in Dorothy James Roberts’s Launcelot, My Brother (1954), Bors, the narrator, acknowledges Gawaine’s virtues: “he had gifts of loyalty to his

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 309 brothers and friends, and he honored Launcelot above all men,” (p. 10).42 Yet such commendations have less impact than the display of Gawaine’s pride, which takes offence too readily, and bloody deeds like the slaying of Pellinor and Lamorak in revenge for the death of his father. Because of the narrator’s unquestioning loyalty to Launcelot, even Gawaine’s deathbed repentance seems too little too late, rather than an act of magnanimity. Despite some redeeming qualities, Gawain does more harm than good in most of the novels that celebrate the love between Guenevere and Lancelot, e.g., Nancy McKenzie’s The Child Queen (1994) and The High Queen (1995) (both revised and issued in 2002 as one novel, Queen of Camelot) and the trilogies by Persia Woolley (1987–91) and Rosalind Miles (1998–2001). Woolley’s Queen likes Gawain, who is her cousin, but his actions do little to justify her feelings. In Queen of the Summer Stars (1990), he sulks from offended pride when he hears “that Tristan had beaten Marhaus when he could not”(p. 64);43 after a fight, he “hacked viciously at something in the grass and began to caper in a wild, drunken dance of glee and terror, singing and crying as he brandished the head of his enemy by the hair” (p. 160); and later, in an argument with Arthur, he “glared back, as stubborn and hot-tempered as ever” (p. 307). At the end of the novel, Gawain decides to reform and behave more courteously, but in Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn (1991), his anger against Lancelot for killing Gareth shows him reverting to type. Thus Guinevere indignantly perceives,“he was not only pitting Arthur and Lance against each other, he was holding everyone hostage to his own outrageous pride” (p. 384). The harshest condemnation of Gawain’s conduct, however, is found in The Wicked Day (1983) by Mary Stewart. In The Last Enchantment (1979), Merlin prophesies that Morgause’s four sons will be Arthur’s faithful servants, but the author’s plans had clearly changed by the time the last book was written. Like White, Stewart turns Morgause into Arthur’s main foe, whose final revenge is accomplished not by Mordred, however, but by “her three legitimate oldest, her wild, unpredictable, and now almost ungovernable sons” (p. 184).44 There are no features in the character of Stewart’s Gawain to compensate for such traits as the pride that “saw no reason for a prince to stop at murder if it suited his plans” (p. 133) and the recklessness that moves him to break the truce during the embassy to the Roman camp. Even his deathbed plea to Arthur to seek help from Bedwyr (here in the role of Lancelot) is inspired by violent motives: “So, still counselling murder and strife, died the fourth of Morgause’s sons” (p. 319). This survey of Gawain’s role in post-medieval literature, then, reveals the persistence of all three medieval traditions: chronicle, verse, and prose. In works influenced by the chronicles, he is Arthur’s brave and loyal captain; in those that draw upon verse romance, he is a courteous knight though not, however, exempt from humor; in those based upon prose romance, his pride and vengefulness bear much of the blame for the fall of Arthur’s kingdom. It is

310 • Raymond H. Thompson of interest to note that Gawain is often portrayed as having red hair and speaking with a broad Scottish accent, traits that seem to have originated with T. H. White.45 Within each tradition, however, there is variation in the treatment of Gawain. In chronicle tradition, emphasis may fall on his loyalty or his lightheartedness; in verse tradition, he struggles, with mixed success, to deal with the darker side of his nature; and in prose tradition, he may be a noblehearted victim of fate or a vindictive fomenter of strife. As might be expected, he does better, on the whole, in works that are sympathetic to Morgan le Fay and/or critical of Guenevere or Lancelot: they include not only many in the chronicle tradition, but also a significant number in the prose tradition as well. Conversely, he is at his worst in most, though not all, of the works that condemn his mother Morgause. Ironically enough, this division suggests not only that many authors have been drawn into taking sides in the feud between the families of Gawain (and Arthur) and Lancelot (and Guenevere), though they usually recognize that right and wrong are shared, but that a surprisingly large number have more sympathy for the former than for the latter. Such variations within each of the three main traditions are accounted for, in part, by borrowings from the other two. Indeed, the most interesting treatments of Gawain are those that seek to reconcile elements from disparate traditions. While this process modifies the hero’s behavior in a number of works, particularly Newman’s Guinevere Trilogy, it can be observed most strikingly in Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset, where verse modifies chronicle tradition; in Bradshaw’s Arthurian trilogy, where prose modifies verse tradition; and in Berger’s Arthur Rex, where verse modifies prose tradition. Sutcliff virtually divorces Gwalchmai from chronicle tradition. He remains unswervingly loyal to Artos and is a trusted counselor, but the only activity in which we actually see him involved is as a healer, a feature found exclusively in verse romance. Gwalchmai thus mirrors Artos’s own attempts to heal the land. Both are crippled, the former physically by a malformed foot, the latter emotionally by the unwitting incest with his half-sister; both recognize their own limitations, the former of his medical knowledge, the latter of his ability to satisfy all the conflicting demands upon him, particularly those of his wife; both nonetheless serve others with tireless devotion, regardless of the personal cost and the doom that they know will inevitably overtake them; and both eventually die serving the cause in which they believe so firmly. Gwalchmai’s role is modified, thus, to develop the novel’s theme more fully: like Artos himself, Gwalchmai cares deeply for others, ultimately sacrificing himself for their sake.46 After following verse tradition in the portrayal of Gwalchmai in the first two books of her trilogy, Bradshaw shifts to prose tradition for the last. Although courteous and noble hearted, Gwalchmai must struggle throughout the trilogy against the evil side of his own nature, particularly pride and

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 311 vengefulness. These he masters in Hawk of May when he rejects Morgawse’s offer of power in the service of Darkness and forgives both Arthur and his older brother Agravain for their mistreatment of him in the past. Yet he gives way to both emotions in Kingdom of Summer when he kills Elidan’s brother in violation of a promise to her. Despite his regret and long expiation, he fails to win the lady’s forgiveness and so is denied the reconciliation he achieved with his brother and uncle in the first book. Elidan’s unwillingness to forgive until too late foreshadows Gwalchmai’s own fate in In Winter’s Shadow. Gwalchmai warns Gwynhwyfar, “My lady, do not feed on the darkness and grief ” (p. 115), 47 after she tries to poison Medraut. Yet he ignores his own advice and the lessons of past experience when he seeks revenge for the accidental death of his beloved son Gwyn at the hands of Bedwyr (here in the roles traditionally assigned to Gareth and Lancelot).48 Only on his deathbed does he confess in a letter to Bedwyr, “I wished for justice with a longing greater than was just, and so . . . I brought ruin upon our lord, and all we fought for, greater ruin than any you caused. . . . I forgive you my son’s death. Forgive me my vengeance” (p. 343). He even asks the Queen to tell Medraut that he loved him. These last acts of forgiveness, of caring for others, gain Gwalchmai personal salvation, though it does little to comfort Gwynhwyfar for the ruin of all she and Arthur and his Companions worked so hard to build: “Not only is it all lost, it was we who lost it, we who by our own stupidity and weakness allowed ourselves to be divided and break” (p. 370). Gwalchmai’s fierce struggle against the Darkness, both external and internal, his hard-won victories and bitter defeats, are crucial to the development of the central theme and darkening vision of the trilogy. Thus the grieving Gwalchmai tells Gwenhwyfar, “Once I sailed to the Kingdom of Summer, the Otherworld. I thought then that the struggle between Light and Darkness was fought upon the Earth, and that the intentions of our spirits reflected it, and bound Earth and the Otherworld. But now that world seems unconnected and remote from here, for even the best intentions of those devoted to Light can create Darkness. And so there is no justice, can be no justice.” (p. 291) Like Sutcliff, Bradshaw turns to another tradition, in her case the prose, borrowing elements from the proud and vengeful figure found therein in order to fit Gwalchmai to her purpose. And just as Sutcliff creates in Gwalchmai a truly heroic figure, quietly defiant in the face of death, so Bradshaw raises him to tragic stature. Despite his dazzling gifts, Gwalchmai retains human flaws that are fated to prove his downfall. Yet he recognizes these flaws and their dire consequences in his dealings with both Elidan and Bedwyr, accepting responsibility for his actions, forgiving those who have wronged him, and asking forgiveness of those whom he has wronged.

312 • Raymond H. Thompson If Bradshaw’s Gwalchmai is tragic, Berger’s Gawaine is comic. Although he follows Malory’s account of Arthur’s reign, the author modifies his sources significantly, not only for comic effect but also to heighten the nobility of Arthur’s knights. No character benefits from this process more than does Gawaine. While still guilty of envy and lust, he learns from his mistakes. Thus when reproved for “lacking in generosity to men” (p. 106) after his first quest for the white hart, “Gawaine did ponder on what the Lady of the Lake had told him, and he determined to be a better knight in future” (p. 107). He still yields to envy when he first fights against Tristram and Launcelot, but after his defeat, he finds that “his envy had been honestly expunged” (p. 149). He goes on to tell the latter, “thou art my better, as is Sir Tristram, and I thank God ye are both my friends, so that I am that happy man who can love his superiors” (p. 150). Gawaine starts out as a merry lecher, preoccupied with what the Lady of the Lake calls the “simple philosophy of groins” (p. 105), but he learns the sorrow of a lost love from his encounter with Elaine of Astolat before he eventually finds happiness in marriage to Dame Ragnell. Yet it is a happiness that he earns by putting respect for the lady before personal wishes. Thus he insists that she herself decides whether to be beautiful by night or day: “Thou art one of God’s creatures . . . . This choice therefore must be thine alone” (p. 325). Not only does Berger show Gawaine’s steady moral improvement, but he also takes pains to reduce his culpability for those errors he does commit. The anger that leads Gawaine to refuse mercy to a knight at the outset of his career is prompted by the latter’s repeated acts of deceit. Moreover, the lady whom Gawaine accidentally decapitates as a result turns out to be none other than the Lady of the Lake, and she survives his blow without ill effect. Nor is his early envy without its benefits, as Arthur recognizes: “Gawaine, with his human envy, is the happier for it, being constrained ever to strive” (p. 151). Gawaine’s revenge against King Pellinore for slaying his father and against Launcelot for slaying his brothers is prompted by a reluctant sense of duty to his family, rather than anger or pride. His attitude wins the approval (albeit ironic) of the former: “‘I share thy feelings, gallant Gawaine,’ said King Pellinore, ‘and I hope that mine own sons will be as zealous as thee to defend their family’” (p. 308); while to the latter, he extends a measure of forgiveness before their final combat: “And though I can finally forgive thee for killing Agravaine, Gaheris, and Gareth in self-defense, I can not pardon thee for assisting Mordred, though unwittingly, in his detestable scheme” (p. 460). As for his lechery, Gawaine confines his attentions to women who welcome them, being concerned to bring them happiness: “and,” we are told, “without exception they loved him yet” (p. 324). No less an authority than the Lady of the Lake views the conduct of “her favorite knight” with affection, even reminding him, “thou wert never commanded to be a prude” (p. 216). Berger also omits some episodes from the prose tradition that might reflect poorly upon Gawaine, like his betrayal of Pelleas with Ettarde, and adds

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 313 instead two important tales from verse tradition: his encounter with the Green Knight and his marriage with Dame Ragnell, both of which extol his courtesy and loyalty. Indeed, Gawaine’s willingness to sacrifice his own happiness by marrying the hideous Ragnell to save Arthur’s life does much to mitigate his killing of Pellinore. The cumulative effect of such changes is to create a truly admirable hero whose ghost brings comfort to his despairing uncle: “For can we not say, without the excessive pride which is sinful, that we lived with a certain gallantry? . . . we sought no easy victories, nor won any” (pp. 483–84). The achievements of Gawaine, more than any of Arthur’s followers, are central to Berger’s rich comic vision, a vision captured in the dying king’s last words to Bedivere: “Do not weep my friend. . . . Rather thank God in joy that for a little while we were able to make an interregnum in the human cycle of barbarism and decadence” (p. 495). The adaptation of the character of Gawain to fit the controlling vision in each case is evidence of the concern for structure that places these novels by Sutcliff, Bradshaw, and Berger among the finest achievements of postmedieval Arthurian literature, and they have helped to rehabilitate a reputation blackened by Malory and Tennyson. Nor are these authors alone in choosing to mingle elements from different traditions in order to create their own vision of Arthur’s kingdom. This mingling of traditions works to the advantage of Gawain, and it mitigates the severity of the prose tradition by introducing features from the more favorable chronicle and verse traditions. The reverse process, in which the prose tradition influences the other two, occurs much more rarely. Apart from Crompton’s Gawain and Lady Green and Chapman’s The Green Knight, Bradshaw is the only major exception to this pattern, and her treatment of Gwalchmai elevates him to tragic stature. Thus while modern authors draw upon prose tradition more often than upon either chronicle or verse for details of plot, only a few treat Gawain as severely as do their prose sources. There are, I would suggest, three features attached to Gawain in all three traditions that work in his favor: his loyalty to Arthur, the painful learning process he undergoes, and his courtesy. Nor is it a coincidence that these three features are precisely the ones most strikingly demonstrated in that great medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain’s loyalty to his uncle in medieval literature is unswerving despite vestiges of animosity in a handful of works. Condemnation of his misconduct in the later prose romances has not altered this, although the value of his service may be diminished. Since the vast majority of modern authors admire Arthur,49 they are inclined to view his nephew’s loyalty as a virtue that goes further to outweigh his faults than is the case in their prose sources. The tension between positive and negative presentations of Gawain in medieval texts creates the opportunity for later authors to have him experience a painful learning process as he struggles to control his darker impulses. This is especially so when they deal with his encounter with the Green Knight

314 • Raymond H. Thompson and his role in the Death of Arthur, and it is a feature that recommends itself to novelists to whom developing characters are more important than they are to the writers of romance. Finally, many authors are attracted by the “olde curteisye” so admired by Chaucer’s Squire. Despite his flaws, Gawain embodies, more completely than any other knight of the Round Table, the ideal of service to society. His commitment is to Arthur, the king who tries to maintain order and justice throughout the realm, not to any lady (however beloved) nor to the search for personal salvation (however commended by the Church). Most modern authors are attracted to Arthurian legend because it evokes a golden age. For many, this may best be attained, however fleetingly, by placing concern for others ahead of oneself. While this remains so, the courtesy and consideration that Gawain displays towards others (regardless of their station in life or their strange behavior) will continue to win respect and affection, leading us to rediscover yet again why he is the most widely loved knight of the Round Table. Notes 1. Gawain’s name is variously spelt by different authors as Gauvain (French), Gwalchmai (Welsh), etc. I have followed individual practice when referring to specific works; elsewhere I use the standardized form of Gawain. I follow the same rule with other traditional characters. 2. For discussions of Gawain’s reputation in medieval literature, see Keith Busby’s entry on Gawain in The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, ed. Norris J. Lacy et al. (New York: Garland, 1991), pp. 178–79, and the essays collected in this casebook. 3. Thomas Hughes, The Misfortunes of Arthur, ed. H. G. Grumbone (Berlin: Felber, 1900), IV.ii.139. 4. William Hilton, Arthur, Monarch of the Britons: a Tragedy, in The Poetical Works of William Hilton (Newcastle upon Tyne: Saint, 1776), 2, p. 179. 5. Published in European Magazine 1 (May 1782): 320–24 and 2 (July 1782): 18–21. See Roger Simpson, Camelot Regained: The Arthurian Revival and Tennyson 1800–1849 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1990), pp. 115–16. Seally’s burlesque was inspired by the publication in 1765 of Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, which included the ballad version “The Marriage of Sir Gawaine.” 6. Reginald Heber, “Morte D’Arthur: A Fragment,” in The Poetical Works (London: Murray, 1841), pp. 201–2. 7. See Beverly Taylor and Elisabeth Brewer, The Return of King Arthur: British and American Literature since 1800 (Cambridge: Brewer, 1983), p. 63; cf. Simpson, p. 116. 8. Edward Bulwer, Lord Lytton, King Arthur (London: Colburn, 1849). 9. In a footnote, the poet acknowledges that the incident “is borrowed (with alterations) from one of LE GRAND’s Fabliaux”, p. 281, presumably Le Chevalier à l’Epée. The motif also occurs in La Vengeance Raguidel. The publication of Percy’s Reliques (1765) and G. L. Way’s translation of Le Grand’s Fabliaux (1796) made available to writers the verse romances with their favorable portrayal of Gawain. 10. Along with other figures of Arthur’s court, Gawain is made fun of in short comical poems like Oscar Fay Adams’s “The Rape of the Tarts” (1886) and George du Maurier’s “A Legend of Camelot” (1866). His role is minor, however. 11. The contrast between Bulwer-Lytton’s talent for burlesque and satire on the one hand and the failure of his epic aspirations on the other is observed by Taylor and Brewer: “while the witty passages move energetically, most of the 9,408 lines bog down in stilted language, exaggerated epic pretension, abruptly fluctuating tone, and sentimentality”, p. 78. This opinion is echoed by Mark Cumming, “Allegory and Comedy in Bulwer-Lytton’s King Arthur,” in The Arthurian Revival: Essays on Form, Tradition, and Transformation, ed. Debra N. Mancoff (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 31–51. For sources see James D. Merriman,

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 315

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

“The Last Days of the Eighteenth-Century Epic: Bulwer-Lytton’s Arthuriad,” Studi Medievali 2.4 (1983): 15–37. In “The Passing of Arthur,” the warning of his ghost is scornfully dismissed: “Light was Gawain in life, and light in death / Is Gawain.” Tennyson’s degradation of Gawain’s character is discussed by B. J. Whiting, “Gawain, His Reputation, His Courtesy, and His Appearance in Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale,” Mediaeval Studies 9 (1947): p. 189–234 (see especially 200 and 202–3), reprinted in this casebook; by Taylor and Brewer, pp. 107–8 and 113; and by David Staines, Tennyson’s Camelot: The Idylls of the King and Its Medieval Sources (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1982), pp. 56n., pp. 75–76, p. 90, pp. 118–19. See Robert Adlington, “‘Good lodging’: Harrison Birtwistle’s Reception of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in King Arthur in Music, ed. Richard Barber (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 127-43. Other musical adaptations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are cited in Jerome V. Reel, “A Listing of Arthurian Music,” pp. 161–88 in the same book. For a discussion of Gawain’s role in these and other plays and operas for younger people, see Dan Nastali, “Swords, Grails, and Bag-Puddings: A Survey of Children’s Poetry and Plays,” and Jerome V. Reel, Jr., “Good King Arthur: Arthurian Music for Children,” in Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, ed. Barbara Tepa Lupack (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 190–91, and pp. 231–32. See also Reel, “A Listing of Arthurian Music.” John Heath-Stubbs, Artorius, 2nd ed. (London: Enitharmon, 1974). See especially pp. 47, 62, 74, 84, and 90. See Alan Lupack and Barbara Tepa Lupack, King Arthur in America (Cambridge: Brewer, 1999), pp. 100–2. E. H. Tax, The Wraith of Gawain (Prairie City, IL: Decker, 1948), p. 9. Alan Lupack, A Dream of Camelot (Vista, CA.: Green Chapel, 1990). For a brief discussion of Gawain’s treatment in verse, see my entry in Lacy et al., The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, p. 143. In Robinson’s Lancelot, Gawaine is repeatedly blamed for the many lives lost through his insistence upon revenge: see Whiting, pp. 212–14, Taylor and Brewer, p. 187, and Rebecca Cochran, “Edwin Arlington Robinson’s Arthurian Poems: Studies in Medievalisms?” Arthurian Interpretations 3.1 (Fall 1988): 54–55. Rosemary Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), p. 275. See vv. 6910–48. Chrétien may have considered it one aspect of the hero’s concern for the less fortunate, attested elsewhere by the grief of the poor people over the (false) rumor that Gawain is dead (see vv. 9193–214); it may have been suggested by the fact that Gawain is the nephew of Morgan le Fay, widely famed for her healing powers as Chrétien himself records in Yvain, vv. 2947–51, and Erec et Enide, vv. 4193–202. The figure of the healer is a favorite one in Sutcliff ’s novels: see my “Interview with Rosemary Sutcliff,” Avalon to Camelot 2.3 (1987): 14, reproduced in “Taliesin’s Successors: Interviews with Authors of Modern Arthurian Literature” (1999) http://www.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/intrvws/sutcliff.htm. Gawain’s talent as a healer is preserved in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and in Dutch tradition: see David F. Johnson, “‘Men hadde niet Arsatere vonden alsoe goet’: Walewein as Healer in the Middle Dutch Arthurian Tradition,” Arthuriana 11.4 (Winter 2001): 39–52. Cherith Baldry, Exiled from Camelot (Oakland, CA.: Green Knight, 2001), p. 175. Gawain comes from even farther afield in Robert Doherty’s Area 51: The Truth (2003), in which we discover his origins are extra-terrestrial. For retellings of the poem for younger readers, see Cindy L. Vitto, “Deceptive Simplicity: Children’s Versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Adapting the Arthurian Legends for Children, ed. Lupack, pp. 107–21. Susan Shwartz, “Seven from Caer Sidi,” in Invitation to Camelot, ed. Parke Godwin (New York: Ace, 1988), p. 110. Monaco observes that Gawain as a character “took over” and developed in unexpected directions: see my interview in “Taliesin’s Successors” (1999) http://www.lib.rochester.edu/ camelot/intrvws/monaco.htm. The story of Gawain’s birth is preserved in three romances: the French prose Perlesvaus, a fragmentary French poem entitled Les Enfances Gauvain, and the Latin prose De Ortu Waluuanii Nepotis Arturi, all dated in the early thirteenth century. The significance of the hostility between Arthur and Gawain is examined in my article “Gawain Against Arthur: The Impact of a Mythological Pattern upon Arthurian Tradition in Accounts of the Birth of Gawain,” Folklore 85 (1974): 113–21, reprinted in this casebook. The relationship between Arthur and Morgause in Arthurian tradition is explored in my article “Morgause of Orkney,

316 • Raymond H. Thompson

27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45.

46.

Queen of Air and Darkness,” Quondam et Futurus: A Journal of Arthurian Interpretations 3.1 (Spring 1993): 1–13; see especially pp. 6–7 for Morgause’s role in Bradshaw’s novels. Mordred also weeps when he hears a false rumor of Gauvain’s death in the Vulgate Lancelot, but this occurs early in the careers of both brothers. On Gringalet, see Roger Sherman Loomis, Arthurian Tradition and Chrétien de Troyes (New York: Columbia University Press, 1949), pp. 156–59; and Richard Trachsler, “Qui a donné le Gringalet à Gauvain? A propos d’un épisode d’Escanor de Girart d’Amiens,” in Le Cheval dans le Monde médiéval (Aix en Provence: Université de Provence, 1992), pp. 527–42. Parke Godwin, Firelord (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980), p. 374. John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, from the Winchester MSS. of Thomas Malory and Other Sources (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1976), p. 147. Godfrey Turton, The Emperor Arthur (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), p. 168. In his Author’s Note, Morris declares his affection for Gawain, “The courteous and humble knight whom I encountered and loved in such poems as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.… And so, I have retold the same stories that Malory tells, but I have told them in a different way, trying to restore the reputation of this most honored of all knights on earth” (The Squire’s Tale [Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998], pp. 211–12). See my article “The Grail in Modern Fiction: Sacred Symbol in a Secular Age,” in The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira B. Mahoney (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 545–60. Alan Massie, Arthur the King: A Romance (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson), p. 266. Lord Ernest Hamilton, Launcelot: A Romance of the Court of King Arthur (London: Methuen, 1926), p. 173. Philip Lindsay, The Little Wench (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1935), p. 360. Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (New York: Knopf, 1982), p. 806. Courtway Jones, Witch of the North (New York: Pocket, 1994), p. 11. In fact, Gawaine and Morgan fall in love and might have married under more favorable circumstances. Fate, however, conspires to keep them apart. Sharan Newman, Guinevere Evermore (New York: St. Martin’s, 1985), p. 205. The ridiculous situations that Gawain finds himself in usually stem from his falling sound asleep from sunset to sunrise, a trait suggested by the romance tradition that his strength waxes and wanes with the sun. The humor at Gawain’s expense is discussed briefly by Harold J. Herman, “Sharan Newman’s Guinevere Trilogy,” Arthurian Interpretations 1.2 (Spring 1987): 49–50. Thomas Berger, Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (New York: Delacorte, 1978), p. 466. For a fuller discussion of Gawaine’s role in the novel, see Klaus P. Jankofsky, “Sir Gawain at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger’s Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel,” in Theorie und Praxis im Erzahlen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts: Studien zur englischen und amerikanischen Literatur zu Ehren Willi Erzgraber, ed. Winfried Herget, Klaus Peter Jochum, and Ingeborg Weber (Tübingen: Narr, 1986), pp. 389–404, reprinted in this casebook. T. H. White, The Once and Future King (London: Collins, 1958), p. 451. See my article, “Morgause of Orkney,” 4–6, and 9–10; and Elisabeth Brewer, T. H. White’s “The Once and Future King” (Cambridge: Brewer, 1993), p. 182. Although Brewer also maintains that, “In accordance with Malory’s representation of the adult Gawaine, White shows him as a boy whose sturdy uprightness of character develops into a noble steadfastness that never leaves him,” p. 181, this is a more generous interpretation of his role in both texts than is borne out by such actions as the seduction of Ettarde and the murder of Pellinore and his sons. Dorothy James Roberts, Launcelot, My Brother (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1954), p. 10. Persia Woolley, Queen of the Summer Stars (New York: Poseidon, 1990), p. 64. Quotations from Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn are taken from the paperback edition (New York: Pocket, 1993). Mary Stewart, The Wicked Day (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984), p. 184. Since his father’s kingdom was in Orkney or Lothian, this development is hardly surprising. Scottish claims on Gawain date back to the later Middle Ages: see Martin B. Shichtman, “Sir Gawain and Scotland: A Hometown Boy Made Good,” in King Arthur Through the Ages, ed. Valerie M. Lagorio and Mildred Leake Day (New York: Garland, 1990), vol. 1, pp. 234–47. For a discussion of the theme of compassion in the novel, see my book The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction (Westport, CT.: Greenwood,

Gawain in Post-Medieval English Literature • 317 1985), pp. 47–48. Most of the novels mentioned in this article are discussed at greater length therein. 47. Gillian Bradshaw, In Winter’s Shadow (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), p. 115. 48. Lancelot’s role is played by Bedwyr, not only here, but also in Sutcliff ’s Sword at Sunset, Mary Stewart’s Wicked Day, and Joan Wolf ’s Road to Avalon: see my article “‘The Old Order Changeth . . .’: Bedivere in Arthurian Literature,” in Moderne Artus-Rezeption: 18.–20. Jahrhundert, ed. Kurt Gamerschlag (Goppingen: Kummerle Verlag, 1991), pp. 225-36. Bradshaw also borrows elements of the Perceval story in her portrayal of Gwyn: the mother who seeks to keep her son from a knowledge of war, against whose wishes he seeks Arthur’s court, and who dies during his absence; and the boy’s first identification of a knight as an angel of God (see In Winter’s Shadow, pp. 68–69, and p. 139). 49. See my article “Conceptions of King Arthur in the Twentieth Century,” in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 299–311.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

18

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle: Thomas Berger’s Comic Didacticism in Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel KLAUS P. JANKOFSKY

. . . out of olde bokes . . . I. The publication of Geoffrey Ashe’s The Discovery of King Arthur in February of 1985, his identification of a fifth-century High King, Riothamus, as the most likely historical figure to which stories and legends would have been attached in the following centuries, provides readers interested in matters Arthurian with yet another opportunity to appreciate the age-old dichotomy between history and legend, fact and fiction, verifiability and inner truth, and to respond to the spirit of the Arthurian story that is timeless and universal.1 This dichotomy has been especially fruitful during the last thirty years or so in producing a proliferation of new scholarly insights and an ever-growing body of new Arthurian works in literature, film and the musical.2 Contemporary novelists are able to explore the “interface of history and legend,” as Parke Godwin does with his Firelord (1982) and Beloved Exile (1984); fathom the psychological motivations of traditional characters within the frame of meticulously researched historical novels, as does Mary Stewart in her Merlin trilogy and The Wicked Day (1970, 1973, 1979, 1983); or interpret “neglected” aspects of their importance, as does Marion Bradley with Morgaine/Morgan le Fay in The Mists of Avalon (1982). The 1985 paperback publication of Thomas Berger’s Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (1978) appears to recognize the general public’s interest in and reception of such modern versions and to challenge the perceptive reader to come to grips with this dichotomy, implicit in the novel’s title and explicit in its closing words: “. . . in these fair laps we must leave King Arthur, who was never historical, but everything he did was true” (499/543).3 Berger’s seemingly self-contradictory statement highlights the dialectical relationship between literature and life, and presents both a summary of the story and a final appeal to the reader to bridge the gap between the real

319

320 • Klaus P. Jankofsky and the ideal through an effort of the empathetic imagination. But it goes even further than the simple distinction between “history” and “story,” whose characteristics are wittily contrasted in his narrator’s aside, “For it is only in the historical world that a reputation can be gained by talk alone, and in the realm of legend only deeds are counted” (427/467). It recalls John Steinbeck’s view that “Arthur by his nature (as a symbol rather than a character) is a critic of the shortcomings of the present and by his very existence criticizes our failures.”4 For Berger’s narrator—unidentified and omniscient—the present is “the time of the caitiff,” and “it will be a long time yet” before “the world is ready once more to celebrate honor and bravery and nobility” (497/541). This view seems to be shared, “projected,” by Thomas Berger the author, for whom the Arthurian world of his fiction seems to provide a counter-balance to his “loathing of the current reality” and may indeed be “an alternative to it,” as Berger claims to be true of his fiction in general.5 For Berger, the Arthurian matter (i.e., Arthur and the Round Table, the Grail Quest, the loves of Launcelot-Guinevere, Tristram-Isold) revolves around the values of honor, bravery, nobility, and chivalrous principles which may have become nowadays a matter of “quaint curiosity.” At the very end of his life and rule, King Arthur evaluates his endeavor “to rule on principles of absolute virtue” as a failure and holds that it was “reality that brought me down” (484/529). But when he learns from the Lady of the Lake that his “obligation was to maintain power in as decent a way as would be yet the most effective” and that “all human beings must perform according to their nature” (484/530), he is able to console Bedivere that, rather than weep at his king’s mortality and the disintegration of the realm, he should “thank God in joy that for a little while we were able to make an interregnum in the human cycle of barbarism and decadence” (495/540). This philosophical outlook indicates a singular coalescence of the viewpoints of Arthur and Gawaine and the narrator (and presumably the author as well). The depiction, evocation, and celebration of those values are contained within a comic vision—which underscores the tragic elements of the story—losing none of the writer’s purpose or ethos. Indeed, Berger’s comic version thrives on his sense of humor, irony, and mastery of traditional subject matter and literary forms. Berger’s portrayal of Gawaine, described as “a model for future generations” because of his “command of reality,” illustrates both his artful balancing of comic-parodic and idealistic-normative elements, and the perennial appeal of the Arthurian material. II. The reader first encounters Gawaine when the court at Camelot is kept waiting while a page is looking for him. He is needed to answer Arthur’s inquiries as to the extent of Gawaine’s family and what additional relatives Arthur might have besides his newly discovered nephews, the Orkney boys. Gawaine

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 321 can be found only with difficulty and some delay, for after his knighting he is engaged in his “favorite activity” with a young lady who obviously “does not protest too much,” a type of engagement, which has earned him the reputation of a ladies’ man and an “unrestrained lecher” (202/226). However, Gawaine’s fetching smile, his winning charm and sensible explanation for his behavior affect even a sternly moralistic Arthur. His boyish/masculine ability to gain a woman’s intimacy without force nor prevarication (“he would simply say, Come, sweet chuck, let us have some sport”), and his genuine cherishing of women and admiration for them (and their love for him in return) give the sobriquet “lecher,” freely attributed to him and used by himself throughout the novel, the ring of indulgent understanding on the part of the narrator, the characters in the story, and the reader as well. Thus, early in the unfolding chronology of events at Arthur’s court this leitmotif has been sounded for our understanding of Gawaine, whom the narrator eulogizes upon his death as “one of the very greatest knights who ever lived and the finest man of the company of the Round Table (for he had all the virtues and of the vices the most natural), . . . greatly mourned on earth by all the brave knights and all the beautiful ladies, whilst in Heaven the angels rejoiced to have him amongst them, with his great virile integrity’ (466/510). How does this apotheosis come to be deserved? More than any other character in the novel, Gawaine is called upon and challenged to learn about himself in “adventures”—which by medieval definition are always appropriate to the character and germane to his nature—to bring his human potential to full fruition, and ultimately to provide a model for others. The first adventure Gawaine and the newly-founded company of the Round Table face is the intrusion of a snow-white hart, pursued by a white brachet, further pursued by thirty pairs of black hounds, and they in turn followed by a beautiful lady on a white palfrey, who is herself pursued and carried off in the sight of all by a huge knight in black. Merlin immediately recognizes the importance of this quest for the Arthurian court in which two of the knights, King Pellinore and Gawaine, are being put to the test. As we learn later, it is the Lady of the Lake—immortal, supernatural, the feminine principle and the remote-controlling intelligence, catalyst, teacher, and spiritus rector, as she reveals herself in this episode—who is responsible for this test and provides the explanations for its meaning: Pellinore, to whom Arthur had assigned the rescue of the lady, in disregarding a weeping damsel with a bleeding knight in her lap when he comes across them on his single-minded pursuit, learns that he was responsible, though unwittingly, for the eventual deaths of the two (his own daughter and her wedded knight) and that “no quest . . . should be conducted blindly”; that “To have a purpose is good, but to be so intent upon it as to see only its end is folly”; that “Never to be distracted is ultimately to serve nothing but Vanity” (105/122). King Arthur is

322 • Klaus P. Jankofsky taught that “a king must always allow for the possibility of the impossible, the existence of that which can never be explained to mortals, who foolishly distinguish between that which they can touch and that which they dream” (104/ 122). And Gawaine must learn to go beyond his “simple philosophy of groins”; that he is “lacking in generosity to men”; and that “there is no limit to mercy, and [that] the treacherous need it most of all” (105–6/123). For this first quest Arthur, aware of Gawaine’s “anticipatory vision of killing the knight and making lascivious use of the grateful lady” (100/117), had assigned him the pursuit of the stag instead. But Gawaine, attacked by a knight at a castle he had wandered into, had by misadventure beheaded a screaming lady coming to the rescue of the thrice subdued knight; petrified by his action and with the greatest shame, Gawaine was told by the knight that his task henceforth would be to serve as the pre-eminent protector and especial champion of ladies, even when they seem wicked (101/118). Later, with the identity of the Lady of the Lake and her role as the “beheaded lady” revealed, and pondering her words, Gawaine determines to become a better knight, to subdue his vice of envy and rivalry with other men, and, valor conjoined with generosity, he is thus better prepared for the next challenge, the encounter with the Green Knight. It is in his adaptation and modification of the fourteenth-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK),6 particularly Sir Gawain’s stay at Bercilak de Hautdesert’s Castle, that Berger’s reworking of a vast array of Arthurian material, medieval and modern, is most obvious, idiosyncratic, and revealing of the underlying thematic unity of his Arthur Rex. In SGGK, that justly most famous of the Middle English romances, the challenge of the Green Knight to Arthur’s court is a test both of Sir Gawain as its most outstanding, valiant, chivalrous, and Christian member as an individual, and of the society of which he is representative. The elaborate and subtle connections, parallels, and contrasts of the “beheading game” and of the “hunting scenes” and the “temptation scenes” have elicited numerous ingenious and equally subtle explanations and interpretations, often of great learning and discernment in their typological exegesis. Berger is much simpler; he cuts the Gordian knot of sophisticated scholarly debate and interpretation: his Gawaine succumbs to temptation. But what is possibly lost in artistry is gained in clarification of the central issue for the modern reader: how to be human and live to tell; how to be a Christian knight and reconcile one’s nature with the self, the world, and God. As in SGGK, Berger’s Gawaine comes out of the ordeal of the beheading game (a head for a head, a gain for a gain) with only a slight wound in the neck and wiser. And while both heroes have committed infractions against truth of which they are deeply ashamed and for which they are punished, their motivations differ. Sir Gawain’s acceptance and keeping of Lady Hautdesert’s magic lace in SGGK has to do with an understandable human impulse to protect his life. But no such self-care motivates Berger’s Gawaine. On the contrary, he looks forward to the stroke that will

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 323 behead him because of his shame at breaking a vow to his host and having committed adultery with his host’s wife, but mainly because of his hopeless love for Elaine of Astolat. In SGGK, Gawain’s reputation as a chivalrous and courtly lover and paragon of courtesy remains untarnished, whereas Berger’s Gawaine falls victim to both his own carnal appetites and the deception played on him. Lastly, in an additional major departure from his source, Berger does not show Gawaine’s return to King Arthur’s court. Rather curiously, the entire Green Knight challenge seems to have been forgotten by everyone and its outcome never questioned, a modification that focuses attention on Gawaine’s personal learning and growth independent of its direct impact on the court. A closer look at the chapter entitled “Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle” will show how central the encounter with the Green Knight is to the theme, structure, and meaning of Berger’s “legendary novel.” III. The “cherchez la femme” motif is humorously adumbrated in Arthur’s and the companions’ reaction to the Green Knight’s challenge to Gawaine, after his head had been struck off: “now that I have felt the strength of your arm, I shall test your moral mettle” (153/174). While Arthur interprets the Green Knight as possibly being of the “druidical persuasion” and his purpose a challenge to Christianity (similar thoughts of this as a test of Gawaine’s piety are voiced by Launcelot, 190/213–4), Gawaine himself links this challenge to his new role of defender of women: “Methinks, . . . that God arranges each adventure for a particular knight, that chance doth never come into play. Now, I am the special defender of women. No woman is yet evident; but no doubt one will appear a year hence.” (154/174) This earns him the bawdy and proactive comment from Kay (gourmet cook, maitre d’, and eventually a good knight of prowess as well) that “thou shalt prepare by jousting with as many females as thou canst find.” However, in the flow of events during that year the encounter with the Green Knight is preceded by the sudden abduction of Queen Guinevere by Sir Meliagrant (“to be wicked is my métier,” 174/197), Kay and Launcelot’s rescue mission, and, closely connected to it, Gawaine’s meeting Elaine of Astolat, love-sick for Launcelot, and his falling utterly and hopelessly in love with her. Thus, when the time comes for his appointment with the Green Knight, Gawaine, once merry and with a great zest for life, now sets out on his journey sad, melancholy and with a heavy heart. Hardly out of Camelot he sees a black-draped barge drifting down the river towards him and recognizes the dead Elaine of Astolat decked out as a bride, an apparent suicide (Berger fuses Ophelia-reminiscences with the traditional Arthurian treatment, 188/211–12; 198–99/223). After an agony of grief and confusion and having learned the reasons for her

324 • Klaus P. Jankofsky act through a letter found on her, he allows the current to take the funerary barge towards the sea. Berger’s timing of this “tragic episode” before Gawaine’s arrival at Liberty Castle is important for two reasons. It accounts for Gawaine’s ever more contemplative frame of mind and introspection and prepares him for the discussion of freedom and necessity, character and destiny, with the Lord of the Castle and the Lady of the Lake. Secondly, the appearance of Elaine’s ghost in his bad dreams—she “chided him for his failure to confess to the lord what he had been given by the lady, thereby violating his pledge”—is directly responsible for Gawaine’s unsuccessful attempt to make a clean breast of it all on the next morning, and his realization that he had been put to a test in which he had failed by being “untrustworthy, mendacious, and adulterous.” When Elaine reminds him “that she had died for loyalty to an idea of herself ” (213–14/239), she evokes not only their particular relationship but, in a larger sense, the dichotomy between the ideal and the real, aspiration and failure, illusion and insight, which permeates the entire novel and the endeavors of its protagonists. (Gawaine’s ghost fulfills a similar function in his dialogue with Arthur in Arthur’s deadly swoon at the last battle, 482–84/528–29). Without the inclusion of the Elaine of Astolat component, Berger’s handling of the traditional hunting, temptation and beheading scenes would be only a witty, bawdily hilarious parody and a delightful jeu d’esprit et de mots.7 The humorous context in which Gawaine’s experiences are couched and the comic effects brought about by the necessity of his having to quickly adjust to the unexpected is established immediately upon Gawaine’s entering the castle with the telling name “Liberty Castle” where the freedom of the guest is absolute. And he led Sir Gawaine within the castle, which was the most sumptuously furnished place that Gawaine had ever seen, and the chamber where he was led was hung with silks and carpeted in fur soft as foam, and nightingales sang in golden cages, and hanging lamps burned Arabic oils with a delicious fragrance and in their glow, on a couch of winepurple velvet, lay an exquisite woman whose robes were of pale-violet gauze and transparent, so that her voluptuous body was revealed in every particular. Now Sir Gawaine was taken aback, for he believed that he had been conducted into a bordel and that this seemingly fine lord was rather a loathsome pander. But before he could draw his sword and smite him with the flat of it for this insult to a knight of the Round Table, the lord said, “Most noble Sir Gawaine, may I present my wife.” And therefore Gawaine was constrained by the laws of courtesy to greet this lady as he would any other, and he endeavored to ignore the

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 325 indecency of her costume as she smiled at him and welcomed him to the castle, for her ivory body, scarcely screened, was far more beautiful than any he had ever seen in many years of intimate congress with maids. “Now, Sir Gawaine,” said the lord, “whilst you are under my roof, all that I possess is yours, and the only offense that you can commit against me is to refrain from using that which you desire. For this is Liberty Castle, and the freedom of my guest is absolute.” (200–01/224–225) Gawaine’s question, “do I understand that you are so addicted to the giving of freedom that you would impose it upon him who doth not seek it?”, elicits the response that “there is no such mortal upon the earth, for all are born free and become captives through denial” (201/225). Though Gawaine perceives this as an impious theory yet worth pondering, he agrees to the bond of hospitality. The premise upon which the ensuing temptations rests seems to be: “Absolute liberty is the freedom to be depraved” (209/234). How does Gawaine find this out? As a prelude, the luxurious and sybaritic setting provides Gawaine with choices to indulge in sensuous pleasures after a hard day in the saddle: to bathe in a garden pool in the center of which is an alabaster statue of a nude woman, silvery water flowing from her breasts, with lovely background music—a locus amoenus environment par excellence; to be kissed and dried off with fluffy towels by three naked small boys, with golden hair and very white skin, with whom he is invited to take his pleasure; or to be given a working-over by a robust young man, unclad except for an iron helmet and brass greaves, with a bundle of birches and smirking in genial cruelty, late masseur to the court of Rome; or to enjoy a lovely sixteen-year-old maiden. Instead, Gawaine washes alone in a simple tin basin filled with cold water, dries and covers himself with a coarse homespun cloth brought by an old hag, and with some pangs of regret dismisses the girl to fetch her master to provide him with a housecoat, Gawaine’s only vestments being his armor and his “smallclothes” (202/226). Later the sumptuous meal with exotic and succulent delicacies in precious dishes offers similar surprises: And hearing some slight stirring near his knees beneath the table, Sir Gawaine lifted the cloth and saw a beautiful child with a face of old ivory and dark eyes shaped like almonds. “At the very edge of the world,” said the lord his host, “on the brink of nothingness, live in great luxury a golden-skinned people called the Chinee. Now it is their practice to use infantile entertainers beneath the table top at banquets, to stir one appetite by provoking another. This can be especially amusing as prelude to an Oriental dish we shall presently be offered: live monkey. I shall strike off its crown, and we shall eat his smoking brains.” And here the lord brandished a little silver ax.

326 • Klaus P. Jankofsky “I promise you that nothing is more aphrodisiac, and that soon you will be delirious with lust.” (203/227) Gawaine declines and also spurns “the lark’s eyes in jelly, the coddled serpenteggs, the pickled testicles of tiger,” and has “cold mutton and small beer” instead. Similarly, the attractions of a flute-playing, veil-shedding transvestite, revealed as a willowy young man who takes his deep bow before Gawaine but facing away, do not entice our hero: “My lord, I am no bugger.” A little later, in his first close encounter with the lady of the castle, Gawaine explicitly repudiates such aberrations: “Lady,” said Gawaine, “methinks I now understand the test to which I am being put at Liberty Castle, where all temptations of the flesh have been offered me, but in fact not even when I was a notable lecher did I frequent children, persons of mine own gender, nor other men’s wives.” (205/229) It will be through more sophisticated means than unbridled sensual indulgence that Gawaine will come to grief. As in SGGK, conversation and debate with the lady of the castle and the constraints of courtesy, as well as the contractual nature of the bargain with his host to exchange winnings, provide both the basis and the measuring yard for the test of Gawaine’s “moral mettle.” Under the pretence of needing his kindness and being in distress because of a sense that her kisses might be obnoxious so that her lord had avoided her of late, the lady of the castle, ever suggestive in dress and demeanor and teasingly provocative that Gawaine’s obligations as a knight of the Round Table make him trustworthy not to take advantage of her, wins his agreement to accept one kiss “for the purpose of examining it”: And the lady forthwith crushed her hot mouth against his lips and had he not clenched his jaws and so erected a barrier of teeth, she would have thrust her tongue into his throat so far as it would go, for it battered against his gums with great force. (206/231) Breaking free at last from this vigorous attempt at osculation, Gawaine comments, with polite understatement, “Your kiss is sweet, I assure you. But perhaps it is given too strenuously” (206/231), and invokes the guest’s privilege to call a halt. Upon the return of the lord with the brace of partridge he had set out to hunt as part of their deal, Gawaine is at first oblivious of the received “favor,” but is reminded that their agreement was to be considered literally and absolutely. Doubly ashamed because of his lack of recall and the required action, he acknowledges receiving a kiss but manfully purses his lips and presses them to the cheek of the lord. This earns him the host’s humorous inquiry as to whether this was “precisely how you received this kiss, and did the giver thereof make a similar grimace?” (207/231) He then kisses the lord

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 327 full on the lips, “doing his best to simulate the tender expression of the lady” and earns the compliment that he is “a truthful knight of much worship.” Gawaine’s first attempt at finding the chapel at Liberty Castle to prepare himself spiritually for the meeting with the Green Knight having failed, he fares no better the second day. Remembering his first day’s embarrassment and therefore rejecting any more “game,” Gawaine wishes to fast and pray. The lord informs him that at Liberty Castle he will not find a chapel, for “We are pagans here, and furthermore we make no apology for so being” (209/234). His gift to the lord upon his return from that day’s hunt is a groping at the lord’s chest, “which was covered with a thick mat of hair very like that of the bearskin” the lord had brought him. This is the equivalent of Gawaine’s semiinvoluntary, rebuked fondling of the lady’s proactively offered bosom in what must be one of the funniest scenes in literature. I can only inadequately paraphrase and epitomize this second temptation with reference to another instance of literary mimesis in such matters, Erich Segal’s translation of the Plautine phrase “Papillarum horridularum oppressiunculae” as “Touchieclut-chie, itty-bitty-pretty-titty.” The post-mortem discussion of this second exchange results in Gawaine’s remark that he “should have understood that . . . Absolute liberty is the freedom to be depraved,” only to be told, “But only if you choose to make it so. One can also see it as the only situation in which principles may be put to the proof. No strength of character is needed to stay virtuous under restraint” (209/235). This dialogue is of critical import as both Gawaine and the reader are herewith drawn into the debate of Christian versus pagan ethics, of the distinction between shame and guilt (a notion important in modern anthropology), and of the significance of this testing. For Gawaine, the fact that “a paynim” dares “to test the virtue of a Christian” (210/235) is a matter vexation, especially since all along the explicitly expressed and shared Arthurian philosophy of life has been grounded in the firm belief that Christianity and the new Arthurian political order are superior (while recognizing that all men are fallible and only God is perfect). Gawaine’s voiced suspicion that the lord is the Devil and Liberty Castle Hell, and that the lord wishes to weaken him for his encounter with the Green Knight, is refuted as a silly and ridiculous proposition: “A charlatan dyes his skin and hair and dressed in green clothes bursts into Arthur’s court to make a preposterous challenge. Would that be taken seriously anywhere but at Camelot? Now you are likely to die of this buffoonery, and cui bono?” (210/235) Gawaine’s response is that he cares “not a bean” for the Green Knight, but “to keep my oath I should go to Hell. And methinks I have done so in coming here” (210/235). But with mirth the lord tells him, “It is so only if you choose to make it such, . . . the which can be said of any other place on earth but especially of your Britain” (210/235). With an expression of his admiration for

328 • Klaus P. Jankofsky him, he terminates their colloquy as well as this episode in the education of Sir Gawaine. The third day sees Gawaine taking the “virile initiative.” Instead of waiting passively for the lady to seek him out, he goes in search of her. Unlike the endlessly repeating corridors of the film “Last Year in Marienbad,” all corridors at Liberty Castle “soon led to the most private of her chambers, the walls of which were lined with quilted velvet of pink, the which color deepened and darkened as he penetrated the room, and the couch on which she lay was of magenta. But her body for once was fully covered, in a robe of the richest dark red and of many folds and trimmed with the sleek fur of the otter” (211/236). His own intentions and the highly suggestive eroticism of this luxurious “chamber of Venus”—to appropriate a Chaucerian phrase—do not fail to have their effect on him. When the lady greets and asks him rather coolly, “Good day to you, sir knight. . . . And for what have you come to me?” he answers with thinly-concealed directness that he has come “To offer my services . . . the which you have previously required each day at just this time.” When the lady sternly rebukes him that she has no memory of that and questions the decency of Gawaine’s purpose to seek her out when her husband is away and calls her knights to aid, “Gawaine understood that he had been tricked and mostly by himself.” Though unarmed, he valiantly defends himself and dispatches the “brace of huge knights” who attack him. But then he has to cope with the lady who assails him with a dagger and her sharp nails. The ensuing wrestling match results in disastrously comic/painful consequences: But hooking her toe behind his ankle the lady tripped him up, so that he fell onto the couch, and she was underneath him. “Lady,” he said, “I would not hurt you for all the world.” “Then release mine hands so that I might feel whether I have broken anything,” said she. And he did so, but when her fingers were free she used them rather to bare her thighs, the which she then spread on either side of him. And whilst he was stunned with amazement at her strange behavior, she lifted his own robe to the waist, saying, “I fear I may have smote your belly with my knee, and I would soothe your bruises.” And then she went to that part and farther with her white fingers. “Lady,” said Gawaine, “I assure you that I am not sore.” “Yet you have a swelling,” said she, and she did forthwith apply a poultice to him. And to his horror Sir Gawaine discovered that his strength of will was as nothing in this circumstance, and therefore he must needs submit to this lady altogether. But this was a defeat which was the more easy to accept with every passing instant, and before many had gone by he had

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 329 quite forgot why he had resisted so long, in the service of a mere idea, for such is the eloquence with which the flesh first speaketh to him who ceases to withstand temptation, God save him. (212/237–38) This intricate fusion of description and commentary by the narratoromniscient, seemingly objective, yet understanding of Gawaine’s predicament and benevolently generalizing in his concluding formula—reminds the reader of the purpose of these encounters. When subsequently Gawaine—with great shame maximized by his remembering the agreement with the lord—accepts a splendid rack of antlers but prevaricates in his answer about his own spoils of the day, the stage is set for the revelation of the significance of this adventure which will culminate in his meeting with the Green Knight. Gawaine’s attempt to make a clean breast of this failed chastity test is unsuccessful, for when he goes to look for the lord to tell him, neither he, the lady, or anyone else, nor the scented pleasure-chambers can be found. “In fact, the entire castle was but a ruin and covered in years of moss and vines, and it was apparent that no one had inhabited it since the days of the giants who lived in Britain before the first men came there after the fall of Troy” (213/ 239). On the story level, this leads to Gawaine’s realization that he had spent the last three days in a magical test at which he had proved himself “untrustworthy, mendacious, and adulterous” (214/239). On the interpretive level, Berger’s subtle evocation at this point of the elegiac mood of Old English poetry, and the cadences of the opening and closing lines of SGGK, with their reference to the fall of Troy and echoes of Uther Pendragon’s words about his ancestors and his outlook on Britain’s future, reinforce the reader’s awareness that the hunting trophies are symbolic of Gawaine’s entangled endeavors;8 that the enticements to sensual indulgence are libidinous projections; and that it is in stories that the memory of human effort and failure is preserved. Mindful of Merlin’s definition of magic as that to which reason cannot be applied, the reader can now share in Gawaine’s learning from the Green Knight that these shortcomings are a sign of Gawaine’s essential humanity. Sad and not pleased with himself and eager to have his bargain with the Green Knight over and done with, Gawaine acknowledges to him his failure to live up to his word and integrity. “Sir Gawaine,” said the Green Knight, raising his ax high over his head, “you are the most humane of all the company of the Round Table, and therefore, unlike the others, you are never immodest. To be greater than you is to be tragic; to be less, farcical.” (214/240) When the mightily descending ax only nicks Gawaine’s neck slightly instead of beheading him, the astonished Gawaine begins to learn the solution of this riddling challenge. “That is your punishment . . . . You are no adulterer, dear sir, for that was no one’s wife but rather the Lady of the Lake” (215/240). And had

330 • Klaus P. Jankofsky he not prevaricated in his pledge to the lord of the castle and told the full and literal truth and fulfilled to the letter the terms of his agreement, he would have been obliged to use the lord as he did the lady. But in the large, Gawaine performed well, he is told: “a knight does better to break his word than, keeping it, to behave unnaturally. And a liar, sir, is preferable to a monster” (215/241). When the significance of this statement sinks in, the reader, like Gawaine, can be relieved. But more so, the narrowly-escaped prospect of having “to use the lord as you did the lady” (215/240) ironically counter-balances Gawaine’s personal propensity, his natural addiction to women. At the same time, the specifically rigged entrapment in “unnatural behavior” provides an important clue for the understanding of the numerous references to sodomy throughout the novel. Terms such as “sod,” “vile sodomites,” and “catamites,” generally used as negatives, though frequently with ironic overtones, can initially be read as mere indications of coarse humor, invective, provocation, or suspicious characterizations of members of a dominant male society. (Women have no real power and this is Guinevere’s, “the consort’s,” problem in this novel, as well as the source of Morgan la Fey’s driving energy.) But their persistent—and to some readers possibly offensive—use seems to be part of a larger interest in and treatment of the traditional Seven Deadly Sins, and of Lechery in particular, in the moral fabric of this novel. Pride, Envy, Avarice, Gluttony, Anger, Sloth, and Lust are associated in varying degrees with various characters and prominently mentioned and discussed by them, as well as in authorial comments. But whereas Langland, for example, in his vision of man’s way through the world, chooses to concretize and dramatize them—in mini-scenes with characters from fourteenth-century reality in the only sustainedly humorous passages of his allegorical poem—Berger generally only names them. But he gives special prominence to sexuality, sexual behavior, and sexual aberration, primarily for their comic potential, and as the possibly most easily understood illustration of these capital sins and their debilitating and destructive nature and effects. Uther Pendragon’s prodigious promiscuity, the Morholt’s brutal bestiality, Meliagrant’s sadistic tortures, the historicalcomparative survey of the deviant sexual mores of the Irish, Russians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Vandals, Copts, and Berbers that Morgan la Fey gives to Mordred in her lesson on evil, and the case of the—quite appropriately—maimed King Pelles (whose concupiscence made him “climb into one bed for half an hour and as a result was condemned to another for half a century”) supply additional variations on the topic of sexual morality and a context for Gawaine’s ever diminishing “merry lechery.”9 But the greatest surprise for Gawaine and the reader is yet to come. Taking his cue from the Green Knight’s essentially positive judgment of him and its general application, Gawaine asks whether “that sometimes justice is better served by a lie than by the absolute and literal truth?” The Green Knight tells him, “That may indeed be so . . . when trafficking with humanity, but I should

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 331 not think that God could ever be deluded” (215/241). Thus, several themes and lessons of the narrative are here brought together and applied pedagogically: that the single-minded pursuit of a purpose may only serve vanity; that principles of absolute virtue need to be seen in light of the humanly possible; that justice must be tempered with mercy; that honor is most itself when shown to the dishonorable; and that ultimately all vows are made to God. Then Sir Gawaine knelt to pray, and when he rose he saw that the Green Knight had lost his greenness and had dwindled in size, and in fact was no longer a man, but a woman, and she was the Lady of the Lake. (215/241) Seeing this metamorphosis as yet another attempt by the Lady of the Lake—“who in her true appearance was even more beautiful than in any of her guises” (216/241)—to gull and delude him, Gawaine is reminded by her that both times he has come out of his adventures with love and death with a reward. Would he have been better off each time had the woman been real? No. And happier and more free than now in denying his carnality? Would it have been better to have made “lewd advances to Elaine of Astolat, . . . the rejection of which would not have altered her fate, but would have freed me?” (216/242) he questions. “Why,” asked the Lady of the Lake, “didst thou assume thine overtures would have been rejected? Gawaine, thou wert never commanded to be a prude.” And so having made her favorite knight the more puzzled, the Lady of the Lake did void that place in the form of a golden gossamer, the which floated from the door of the chapel and rose high into the air without. (216/242) With this ending, the episode at Liberty Castle and the Green Chapel reveals its richness in comic situations, multiple ironies, and authorial jeu d’esprit. Of course, Gawaine was right in his first impression that the Lord of the Castle might be a pander—not a “loathsome” one as it turns out, but one with ulterior and pedagogical motives. Gawaine’s rejection of this first impression on the basis of courtesy (the framework of social etiquette whose underlying norms are not questioned) shows him still as judgmental and set in his expectations. (He had initially suspected that the “beastly amusements” offered him might have been temptations in the service of a higher good.) His vigorous assertion that he will keep his oath to the Green Knight, even if it means “going to Hell,” comes out of a fullness of self-reliance and pride of principle. Thus he can be genuinely surprised at his own relinquishing of control, yielding, and finally willing participation in “doing what comes naturally.” What seems at first an encounter with “the world, the flesh, and the devil” as a test of Gawaine’s moral mettle is revealed as a process of

332 • Klaus P. Jankofsky self-discovery with the help of a supernatural agent in the form of the “Eternal-Feminine” in its ameliorating, uplifting manifestation and qualities. Gawaine learns, again, that things are not what they seem, just as Arthur is told by the Lady of the Lake in his swoon at the last battle that “the passions are not real, but rather fantastic” (484/529). Though in the form of a vision, Gawaine’s is a learning experience, not a sudden revelation, not “a match burning in a crocus,” but something that needs continued thought. Thematically, the adventure-become-experience illustrates yet again the distinction between illusion and reality, the world of the tangible and that of the dream, which is central to Berger’s novel. But more than that: not only are there the obvious modifications of the SGGK scenes in the service of parodic and comic intent; the “seduction of Sir Gawaine” can also be seen as a humorous contrast to other famous scenes from medieval literature: Brunhilde’s and Siegfried’s famous contest and wrestling match in field and bedroom and, literature and life intimately intertwined, Francesca da Rimini’s and Paolo’s yielding to passion. While the Dantean lovers’ is the poignant and touching illustration of the soul’s first “parleying with sin” (in the words of Charles Williams) and the way to damnation, Gawaine’s signals salvation. Berger’s portrait of Gawaine would not be complete without the contrasting pair of Mordred and Morgan la Fey, the “vassals of Satan” (226/252) and their egotistical wills, ambitions, and machinations. Structurally and thematically juxtaposing it with the Liberty Castle chapter and its lesson, Berger depicts, diptychlike, a scene at Morgan la Fey’s “Peppermint Palace” (my term) and thus adds to the wit and depth of his comic vision. The ten-year-old Mordred and his aunt Morgan are shown discussing the nature and purpose of evil with specific reference to sexual morality. Mordred asserts that love does not exist and Morgan that she is incapable of sexual feeling, though she admits that the sexual appetites may be used as a means but are never ends in the celebration of evil (223/249). In parallelism to her jest that “on principle ’twould be a jolly thing to take thee into my bed and commit at once two crimes of which I greatly approve: incest and unnatural congress with an infant person. And ’twould only be improved upon were you rather my niece, thus affording the possibility of a third viciousness: female sodomy” (223/ 249), Mordred, of age and knighted, extends his later machinations and “vile ambitions” to a similar criminal triad: regicide and parricide, compounded by incest with his stepmother Guinevere (412/451). These thematic links between love and lust and mastery and power—as the ultimate goal on earth and in Heaven, according to Morgan—are constituent parts of other strands of the narratives as well (e.g., the Launcelot-Guinevere relationship), but here Berger’s carefully calibrated didacticism can be seen clearly. His comic treatment of evil does not give to it an undeserved dignity nor a greatness that might make its opponents tragic. Thus he follows tradition in depicting Mordred in his attempts and failure at seizing power, but takes greater

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 333 freedom in dealing with Morgan la Fey. After a long career in the service of evil she comes to realize that “corruption were sooner brought among humankind by the forces of virtue,” dismisses Mordred and his “play-acting of the child” as the “little bastard thou hast ever been” (453/495), takes the habit of a nun, eventually becomes mother superior of the convent of the “Little Sisters of Poverty and Pain,” notable for her piety, and makes her last appearance as one of the three veiled ladies—“the not-so-wicked” (499/543). Together with Guinevere, “the not-so-virtuous,” and the Lady of the Lake, “the supernatural” (499/543), she takes Arthur in the barge to the Isle of Avalon. IV. The lessons from Liberty Castle bear fruit in Gawaine’s next encounter with a woman—the “loathsome lady,” under a spell from Morgan la Fey to remain hideous until a knight of King Arthur’s weds her. The challenge to Arthur by Sir Gromer Somir Joure, in the service of Morgan, to answer the question, “What do women most desire in this world?”, provides ample occasion for Berger’s humorous treatment of this quest and for his masterly adaptation of sources—Chaucer’s “Wife of Bath’s Tale” and the fifteenth-century romance “The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell.”10 Loyal Gawaine’s agreement to marry the “loathly lady” in return for the correct answer, and his leaving the choice up to her as to when she would be ugly, when beautiful, breaks the double spell put on her by Morgan la Fey. Asked to decide when he wants to see her beauty, by day or by night, Gawain had said, addressing her in endearing terms: “Love of my life,” said Gawaine, embracing her, “this can never be mine own decision, for thou art not an object which I possess like unto a suit of armor. Thou art one of God’s creatures, and in all fundamental matters thou must answer only to Him. This choice therefore must be thine alone.” (325/359) Her equally happy and loving answer is that in refusing to use that power and allowing her her own choice, he has liberated her in more ways than one. “No free will can be held in the captivity of any enchantment, and no woman can be ugly who retaineth the mastery of herself ” (326/359). These convictions will be the basis for their long, happy marriage and family life with six sons. They grow out of his experience at Liberty Castle and also out of his being recalled to duty by King Arthur after killing King Pellinore in revenge for his father’s death. Both account for his maturing judgment and ever more philosophical world view. Despite the deliberate archaic flavor of the language, these ideas strike a modern chord and were, of course, also of importance to a medieval audience. But Berger’s knight does not need to listen, as Chaucer’s young rapist, to a curtain lecture on true nobility because he has learned to distinguish between illusion and reality, passion and responsibility, and to

334 • Klaus P. Jankofsky appreciate the price and value of loyalty and duty. Themes such as the conflict of Reason and Sensuality, human love and intimacy as personal and social enrichment in the pursuit of the good, the relationship of beauty to truth—Chaucer, Gower, Langland had taken them up and given them various interpretations. Berger uses them and the fairy tale motif of the “loathly lady,” but then, unexpectedly, goes one step further and portrays Gawaine as a domesticated, adventureless, “bourgeois,” happily married man. This may counterpoint a “sexual liberationist” viewpoint of the seventies, but more so echo Voltairian ironies in depicting both Gawaine’s “cultivate one’s garden” approach to life and the comic failures of Meliagrant and King Mark to live virtuously. On a more direct level, Gawaine’s settling down, his manly selfassurance and confident pragmatism, counterpoint the ambitious machinations of Mordred and Morgan la Fey and the destructive jealousies of his brother Agravaine. V. Berger portrays Gawaine through his marriage, his reflection on the nature of adventures, including those of love, and his appealingly sensible distinction between “common” and “uncommon adulterers” as becoming an ever more congenial foil for Arthur’s self-criticism and a worthy successor on the throne because of his spirit and moral stature (besides being of the blood-line). The disintegration of the Round Table and Gawaine’s death at the hands of Launcelot, of course, prevent this. It is thus that, in Arthur’s swoon at the last battle, Gawaine’s ghost can be a respectful dialogue partner and a truer judge of Arthur’s efforts and failures than even Launcelot. It is Gawaine who expounds to Arthur his human nature and the splendor and misery of the human condition with unadorned eloquence and simple pathos: “we are all fools for we live but temporarily, and beneath our armor we wear human skin, which is to say, motley. . . . And though man may be eternally contemptible, he should not be contemptuous of that which he can achieve” (483/528). The difference in achievement between the company of knights and the barbarians is that “we lived with a certain gallantry” (483/529). Now despite the grim conditions of this interview King Arthur could not but be amused by the obsession of Sir Gawaine even as a ghost. “Dost mean we none of us mishandled ladies?” smiling said he to the shade of his brave nephew. “What I meant rather,” said Sir Gawaine’s solemn spirit, “is that we sought no easy victories, nor won any. And perhaps for that we will be remembered.” (483–84/529) It is difficult not to think here of Camus’ Dr. Rieux, the humane physician of The Plague, and his words that even though there will be no victories that last,

Sir Gawaine at Liberty Castle • 335 this will not be a reason to cease to fight, and that there are more things to admire in men than to despise. It may be this humanity which Arthur values in Gawaine—the willingness to deal with the life that is measured in Time while also seeing an aspect of Eternity (444/486)—when he characterizes him as having “a command of reality the which I think will be a better model to those who come after” than Launcelot’s or his own (444/487). In the novel as a whole, Berger’s didacticism is couched in multiple ironies and controlled by humor; it grows out of great insight into human nature and is modulated by innumerable echoes from a wide-ranging literary culture. But his didacticism is also fairly straightforward: woman’s role is to teach man to know himself; the king’s is to teach knights their duty; to be a knight is not a matter of genes and family but a moral choice. In his conception of Gawaine as the “reformed lecher” who has followed his inclinations—but upwards!— Berger reconciles heroic and “all-too-human” traits, thus making the character and “th’old dayes of the Kyng Arthour” more easily understood by a modern audience. And remembered. Notes

1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

This essay is respectfully dedicated to Professor Willi Erzgräber on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday, with best memories of our association at the Universität des Saarlandes. Reprinted with permission from Theorie und Praxis in Erzählen des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts, ed. Winfried Herget, Klaus Peter Jochum, and Ingeborg Weber (Tübingen: Narr, 1986), pp. 398–404. Minor corrections to quotations by the editors. G. Ashe, The Discovery of King Arthur (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1985). See the Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society; S. Reimer, “The Arthurian Legends in Contemporary English Literature, 1945–1981,” Bulletin of Bibliography 38:3 (1981), pp. 128–38, 149; W. Reynolds, “Arthuriana: A Bibliography of Published Treatments of the Arthurian Legend, 1951–1983,” Studies in Medievalism 2:4 (1983), pp. 89–106; A. Lupack, “Modern Arthurian Novelists on the Arthurian Legend,” Studies in Medievalism 2:4 (1983), pp. 79–88; also the Quondam et Futurus Newsletter and Avalon to Camelot: A Quarterly on Matters Arthurian. Thomas Berger, Arthur Rex: A Legendary Novel (New York: Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence, 1978; repr. New York: Dell/Laurel/Seymour Lawrence, 1985). For convenience, page references in this essay are given for both editions, with the first edition preceding the paperback: Arthurian names are given in Berger’s spelling, i.e, Gawaine versus Gawain. John Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1976), p. 299; R. C. Mitchell, “Steinbeck and Malory: A Correspondence with Eugene Vinaver,” Steinbeck Quarterly 10 (1977), pp. 70–79, p. 78. Z. Ghose, “Observations from a Correspondence: From Thomas Berger’s Letters,” Studies in American Humor (New Series) 2:1 (1983), pp. 5–19, p. 6; M. Malone, “Berger, Burlesque, and the Yearning for Comedy,” Studies in American Humor (New Series) 2:1 (1983), pp. 20–32, p. 31. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, eds., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963). This view is supported by the fact that when the “Gawain at Liberty Castle” chapter was published in the September 1978 issue of Playboy under the rubric “First Look at a new novel,” it is a self-contained story with all but one reference to Elaine excised. The unmistakable “drumming” sound of the male partridge, or ruffed grouse, is a sign of territorial assertion. This may be Berger’s intended symbolism in substituting this gamebird for the deer of SGGK. The other trophies are relatively easy to understand.

336 • Klaus P. Jankofsky 9. In the overall scheme of the novel, the half-comic, half-serious emphasis on “unnatural” sex is of course also a subtly sustained reminder of Arthur’s unwitting incest with his half-sister Margawse and the consequences of this single shortcoming. 10. F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2nd ed., 1957); W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (New York: The Humanities Press, 1958), pp. 242–68.

19

Sir Gawain in Films1 DAVID J. WILLIAMS

We are concerned here not only with the three films based on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight itself, but also with a number of others in which Gawain appears. A study of these adaptations must not be undertaken in a mood jealously protective of the text and character. An adaptation is in effect a critical reading, and can teach us, if only by contrast, about the nature of the original, but can tell us too about the fate of this long-lived figure in the wider world of popular culture, about the significance of such medieval fictions for the twentieth-century imagination. Gawain is rarely a starring role. Thirty-odd films in the hundred-year history of the medium have an Arthurian theme, of which our hero appears in only a third. On the other hand, those few films are for our purposes usefully representative of the range of cinema itself, from lavishly spectacular productions to the intimacies of the television screen, from routine products of the industry to the work of individual auteurs at the boundaries of film art. The specificity of the medium means that we must become accustomed to seeing a living Gawain, and the cinema offers us a sometimes baffling conglomerate image. Usually he is young (even when the actors are now perhaps better known to us in their middle years): humorous but genteel as Robert Urquhart (Knights of the Round Table 1954) or rash as George Baker (Lancelot and Guinevere 1963); Liam Neeson’s Gawain is bearded, his hair in a trimly barbaric plait, and has an Irish accent (Excalibur 1981). Occasionally he is older, as a mustachioed Sterling Hayden, avuncular coach to the adolescent Prince Valiant (Prince Valiant 1954); or altogether the wrong generation in John Le Mesurier, a dim adviser to Kenneth More’s Arthur in The Spaceman and King Arthur (1979), a Disney variation on Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. Unlike a medieval author, the filmmaker cannot expect in his audience, even if he would like to, a knowledge of traditional representations of Gawain, which can make the hero’s role in modern versions of the legend seem arbitrary. But traditions do survive, even if transformed: Gawain the accomplished foil for the wilful Perceval; the unhappy Gawain of the last days, friend and reluctant

337

338 • David J. Williams foe of Lancelot. Popular Arthurian films are concerned still with ancient themes: courage, love (especially in conflict with honour and knightly duty), chastity even, and truth itself. Particularly persistent is an interest in youth and its education through experience, or in contrast to age as an agent of renewal. On the other hand, film is itself a medium with deeply ingrained traditions, conventions, and genres, as inclined to the formulaic as any medieval text. One example of this is the very look of Arthurian films. Apart from rare attempts to approximate the period of a particular text, they inhabit their audience’s expectations of a medieval fantasy world, familiar (castles, tournaments, horses, plate armour, trailing dresses) yet infinitely variable, and always with a strong contemporary colouring. Not unlike their medieval literary and pictorial forbears, films of Arthur’s days are dateable by their allegiance to current fashion in dress and setting. The cinema’s history is long enough to make some of its early Arthuriana seem as alien now as the medieval texts themselves. Three films typify the spectacular approach to Arthurian legend taken by American productions in Europe during the fifties and sixties. Two of these, Knights of the Round Table (Knights) and Sword of Lancelot (Sword), remake recognizable stories from the tradition, while reducing the role of Gawain to near insignificance. The third, Prince Valiant, in cheerful disregard of all the medieval stories and most of the characters, nevertheless manages to be a more striking and self-assured continuator of tradition, and to give King Lot a vigorous new son. These are films of escape, made in a time of crisis for the American cinema, competing with the new rival of television. In 1954, Knights (MGM’s first film in Cinemascope) and Prince Valiant in particular offered, to a world preoccupied with Korea, Senator McCarthy, and Dien Bien Phu, never-never lands of known, secure values, where an enemy, even when concealed, could be simply known and punished. Knights and Sword may be taken together as examples of a process of extreme compression of the history of Arthur, discarding and conflating stories in the interests of concentrating on Lancelot and the love triangle. The richly ambivalent role of Gawain in the matter is the first to suffer. Even in Sword, where he eagerly pursues revenge against Lancelot for the death of his brother Gareth, the conflict is resolved simply as a mistake when he discovers that Modred was really responsible, all in time for Gawaine (sic) to support Lancelot in his final defeat of the villain. In Knights, Gawain is hardly more prominent than his harpist brother, as a loyal young lieutenant in Lancelot’s entourage, comforting Elaine while her husband is away fighting Picts. The marriage of Lancelot matches the courtly restraint of his love for Guinevere: accusation there is, and emotional conflict, stuffily expressed by the three principals, Robert Taylor, Ava Gardner, and Mel Ferrer, but simply no adultery. As Taylor says in his defence, ‘A man and a woman may love each other all their lives with no evil between them. And I dare as say such love is good, for by denial and suffering the heart is purified.’ (The linguistic eccentricity is

Sir Gawain in Films • 339 typical of an attempt here to devise a distinctive ‘antique’ tongue.) The tone, as well as language, of Sword almost a decade later is quite different: we see the lovers in bed together. And yet the underlying values are little changed. Lancelot at first resists Guinevere in the cause of ‘honour’, and when Arthur is dead and the field, so to speak, clear, finds no reward for adultery. To his dismay, the guilty Guin (as he calls her) has turned religious. The most recent version of the love-triangle story, First Knight (1995), takes a stage further the process of compression, reducing familiar complexities, as Malory’s Meleagant becomes the simplified villain Malagant. Sean Connery’s Arthur is king merely of a country called Camelot (although, in blandly imperialist style, the ‘freedom’ it stands for he wants to give to the world); as Lancelot Richard Gere is an outsider, the kind of lone fighter familiar in Westerns. There is no time for adultery. Arthur’s discovery of Lancelot and Guinevere embracing initiates the briefest of crises for the lovers, resolved by Arthur’s convenient death, handing on country and wife to the younger man. As for Gawain, he scarcely registers, a mere spear-carrier, unidentified by name except in the cast list. For, despite the title, these are not knights at all but soldiers who wear blue uniforms and fight in ‘brigades’. In Prince Valiant the name of Gawain (pronounced ‘G’wain’) is restored to strange prominence. As mentor to the eponymous young hero, Gawain’s bluff manliness is at the heart of the film’s values. The source is not medieval but the comic strip stories of Hal Foster, begun in 1937 in the New York Journal. The context is a mythic adventure world of boy-scoutish morality, incorporating many loosely medieval times and places, and set, in the film, in a Britain of constant sunshine and evocative castle ruins. ‘Val’ is a Christian Viking who seeks to become a knight of the Round Table, which means, as Gawain tells him, being ‘sworn to lay down his life for our king, and to defend truth, the weak, and the helpless’. Amusingly for readers of our poem, Gawain spends a large part of the film in bed recovering from injuries, where, for all his experience, he proves to be no ladies’ man, embarrassed by their mere presence in his sick-room. He falls speechless at the sight of beauty (a radiant Janet Leigh). Through misunderstanding, he has fallen in love with his young squire’s lady. But love here is nothing if not courtly; there is no sex, and marriage no more than a hint. The mistake is resolved and Gawain sums up: ‘You were a young fool and I was an old one, which is worse. We both had things to learn. The truth hurts sometimes but it’s the only thing to build happiness on.’ One often hears such blurred echoes of medieval themes. Three notable directors have given characteristic personal readings of the Arthurian material, and in the process arresting portrayals of our hero. In Excalibur John Boorman embraces the received imagery of Arthurian movies, but transmutes it with new expressiveness. In Lancelot du Lac Robert Bresson turns the genre’s motifs against themselves in a bleak vision of the end of things. Eric Rohmer rejects the conventional realism of the genre in order to

340 • David J. Williams create for the text of Chrétien’s Perceval a new cinematic voice (Perceval le Gallois (1978)). Excalibur interprets the myth as a kind of world history, rearranging and conflating stories and characters in startling but often effective ways. Again for Gawain this has meant a role severely curtailed, yet of great importance, since in effect all the accusers of Guinevere have been compressed into this one knight. With no preparation, he explodes into the story when, feasting at the Round Table, seduced and goaded by Morgana, he questions the absence of Lancelot ‘driven from us by a woman’s desire!’ A simple warrior, wild eyed, shaking with conflicting emotions, he overturns Guinevere’s offered cup of reconciliation, and in consequence fights and loses to his beloved Lancelot in a noisy and damaging encounter. We last see him dead, tied half-naked to the back of his straying horse, defeated in his quest for the Grail. He had been present, we might note, a mere bystander at court, when the qualities of knighthood were being discussed. A cross is prominent in the background here between Arthur and Guinevere, as Merlin, after some hedging, decides for truth: ‘When a man lies, he murders some part of the world.’ Bresson’s Lancelot too addresses the present with ancient myth, using ‘constant anachronisms’ (Baby 1985, 4) as a deliberate signal. Its chief source is La Mort le Roi Artu (Frappier 1936, translated Cable 1971), but it also preys with ironic negation on our awareness of the standard trappings of medieval spectaculars. Most scenes are set at night, or in the dark forest, the camera keeping us at a constant distance from the actors, or confining us to fragments of a scene, typically details of armour or horses. That odd inclination among cinematic knights to wear armour at all times is here given meaning, when Arthur enjoins it as a mark of preparedness. The ruined habitations, bare-walled rooms, unadorned tents, are appropriate also to the monastic dedication of knighthood in an age of decline. At the heart of this austere narrative, with its frequent ellipsis and stylization (repetitions of sound as well as image: clattering armour, neighing horses, croaking crows), emerges the most poignant portrayal of Gauvain. As ‘modelled’ (Bresson’s term referring to his use of non-professional players) by Humbert Balsan, he is young, despite the late age of the world; restless, impatient, even optimistic, he is the only one who smiles, unless Guenièvre does, hesitantly, when in his company, the only place she seems at ease. Like our poet’s hero, and as the queen suggests, he loves his life. In an extraordinary coup of narrative conflation, Lancelot kills him, not in a grand final combat, but unknowingly at the capture of Guenièvre. This short-circuiting of the source story is singularly successful as an expression of the tragedy, and of the film’s sense of fated events coming to pass in darkness. Ever outspoken, the dying Gauvain tries to offer advice to his grieving uncle, but the noisy departure of an armoured knight drowns his words and ends the scene. Like Lancelot, we never see him again, but his absence haunts the film.

Sir Gawain in Films • 341 In Perceval le Gallois we find none of the customary paraphernalia of filmed Arthuriana: ‘authentic’ locations, ruined castles, real forests, spectacular action; but instead an ambiguous, perspectiveless space, where knights journey among gleaming miniature castles and symbolic trees. Although the aim is to make Chrétien’s text accessible to a modern audience, that does not mean demystifying it and making it less medieval. It is precisely the alterity of the period as it idealized itself that interests Rohmer. He trims Chrétien’s story but still mimics its fragmentary state, refusing the continuations, and giving us only the first of the Gauvain episodes (the tournament at Tintagel, then the amorous knight besieged by the townspeople of Escavalon), and breaks off even more suspensefully than the original. Justifying the inclusion of the episode at all, which some see as a mere accident of the text’s transmission, Rohmer points naturally to the interesting contrast it suggests with Perceval himself, but admits that his real reason is ‘la séduction de ces pages, les plus brillantes du livre’ (Rohmer 1979, 7). Instead of the usual cinematic treatment of a literary text, where pictorial narrative replaces the original’s words, we are given those pages through a combination of visual enactment and spoken narration, with the words (modern octosyllables) distributed between a chorus of speakers and singers, as well as the characters themselves. When the wide-eyed, eager Perceval meets the famous Gauvain, we see at once the difference. Gauvain too is young enough, and blond, but with his shorter hair, drily intelligent face, and calm of manner, this is clearly the celebrated model of courtesy, who, as the chorus tells us, illuminated chivalry as the sun does the world. The actors (Rohmer too uses non-professionals, with André Dussolier as Gauvain) converse (and narrate) with a marked formality of gesture and tone, that conveys a convincing sense of the courtly social game, at once alien and appealing. Of the three films based on our poem, neither of those by Stephen Weeks, Gawain and the Green Knight (1973) nor Sword of the Valiant (1983), shows much allegiance to the original. Rather the story has been ransacked for some features of medieval romance that have appeal in the late twentieth century, and where those have not been found, they are supplied from elsewhere. The script, of the earlier film at least, is animated by a certain enthusiasm for the world of medieval romance. We recognize motifs from the poem, despite the new guise, and accretions from other sources, including Chrétien’s Yvain and Sleeping Beauty: the final encounter with the three blows survives, but turns into a conventional combat (of which both films are full); gone is Bertilak’s lady, replaced by Linet, a sort of phantom lover who nevertheless has a green sash to offer; there is a black knight at a green stone, a Land of Lyonesse restored to life with a kiss, and even a unicorn. The dispiriting jumble of contents is much the same in each film, with the emphasis so much on individual motifs that all sense of narrative line is lost, whether the original’s or any other; rather as if we had insisted on hearing in detail those adventures of

342 • David J. Williams Gawain the poet denies us. Despite the distance from the original, we can recognize the tracks of familiar critical responses to the poem itself. These Green Knights, whether Nigel Green or the more charismatic Sean Connery, are mystic wild men, representative of the ‘nature gods’ who, we are told, have an interest in Gawain’s acquiring ‘the courage and purity of heart that befits a man’. The desire to see Gawain as exceptional in Camelot reaches an extreme. The court is decrepit, the aged Arthur enraged at its decline. Only Gawain, who is not yet a knight, has the courage to answer the challenge. Thus the poet’s subtle themes are simplified to the conventional story of a young man’s trials in love and combat. The more expensive remake was an attempt by the new producers Golan-Globus to exploit a fashion then current for ‘swordand-sorcery’, and hoped to appeal to a wider audience. The Gawain of 1973, played by singer Murray Head (Jesus in the original recording of Jesus Christ, Superstar), is a moody adolescent capable of tears. Ten years later the muscular and expressionless Miles O’Keeffe (a recent Tarzan tamed by a blond wig) is altogether more detached, a worldly-wise adventurer happy to go to bed with any lady, and always ready with a quip: ‘This isn’t such a bad place to be lost’, he smirks appreciatively at the available Linet. The one conscientious attempt so far to adapt Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for the medium of film is Thames Television’s production, written by David Rudkin and directed by John Michael Phillips (transmitted 3 January 1991). The intelligence of its approach makes it instructive both about the nature of the poem itself and about what might in general be expected of film versions of a text whose visual qualities seem to invite filming. Readers have often found something cinematic in the poet’s writing. Spearing, for example (1970, 37–38, referring to earlier examples), remarks on the mobile point-ofview that conveys a sense of spatial reality. The analogy is revealing about effects in the poem, but is dangerously misleading if it encourages the notion that a verbal text translates simply into a visual; as if to make a film all one has to do is photograph those social and topographical spaces, following the directions about close-ups on severed heads, and slow-motion shots of descending axes seen from below. What the poet’s verbal close-up of ‘lippez smal la ande’ (Tolkien and Gordon 1967, 1207) causes us to ‘see’ in our mind’s eye is quite different from the relentlessly specific image of a particular actress, and the part that plays in the unavoidably visual sequence that is film narrative. Still, much of the pleasure (as well as pain) to be gained from an adaptation comes precisely from observing the familiar, if not realized, then reinvented in the new medium, and the filmmakers have followed many of the writer’s ‘directions’. The film preserves the main lines of the story, following a reading of the Green Knight as a ‘green man’ with unkempt hair and a costume resembling huge veiny leaves. His identity with Bertilak is well concealed while allowing many dark hints, visual as well as verbal. At the Chapel, of course, the film faces a problem the poet could happily ignore, but the gradual

Sir Gawain in Films • 343 transformation of Knight into host is amusing to observe. The temptation scenes work well, Valerie Gogan’s performance as the lady conveying at times a delightfully dangerous feeling of commitment to her task. Gawain, contrary to some readings, appears happiest and most pleased with himself on the second day, although in general Jason Durr’s blond hero is a glum and self-absorbed young man, too preoccupied by a sinister unease to display the easy grace of the ‘fyne fader of nurture’. The presence in the film of the real English landscape is affecting, even though the essential seasonal extremes are muffled by too much green leaf and an absence of snow. Perhaps our realization that the Green Chapel is in Goredale disturbs and flatters in a way analogous to the response of the original audience to recognizable topography. The courtly settings disappoint (although the fire- and torch-lit Hautdesert is a lively place), not because they follow the convention of using real medieval buildings in their modern condition, but because a much more generous budget would be required to represent such splendour. The production makes some attempt to match the stylization of the poem. Rudkin has devised a kind of clipped alliterative free verse that gives the dialogue a slightly ponderous but appropriately formal and coded feel, which is matched by the acting style, and editing which draws attention to the patterning in the story. The filmmaker faces a serious problem when translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into the kind of visual narrative usual in film: how to deal with a gap of one year so early in the action. That essential hiatus, managed with such panache in two stanzas by our poet, is possible only for a speaking narrator, whereas in visual as in dramatic narrative, either some such figure as ‘Time’ must appear to explain, or a more ‘realistic’ way must be found. The difficulty is compounded by the further restriction imposed by the ninetyminute commercial television slot, divided into three by advertising breaks, which necessitates a modification of the poem’s fourfold movement. (The breaks come during Gawain’s arrival at Hautdesert and between the second and third day of his stay.) Rudkin’s solution is to present the first episode as a series of recollections in Gawain’s mind as he makes his way northward. It works well locally, with imaginative expansion of the journey stanzas into vignettes of the hero’s hardships. But the device compels a changed point of view. Where the narration in the poem is designed, while showing much through Gawain’s eyes, to lend distance and objectivity to the story, in the film, despite the medium’s natural affinity with the literary third person, we are left with only the hero’s perspective. It is a striking translation of the medieval narrative into something distinctively modern, where the story takes place, as it were, in Gawain’s head. Gawain addresses us in voice-over, not only in the flashbacks, but at the end, where he interprets for us (rather than for his peers) his wearing of the girdle ‘in honour of no exploit and no excellence, but in memoriam how one midwinter morning I met my master on a

344 • David J. Williams mountainside, and he invested me with emblem of the order of imperfect man’. This message lacks context because the absence of a genuinely exterior viewpoint has removed a whole dimension from the fiction. The pentangle comes to seem like the personal whim of a now faintly priggish hero, since we learn its meaning only because we hear Gawain himself meditating upon it. The reduction to the personal is compounded by a pre-title prologue which implies that Gawain is setting out for his own reasons, rejecting the entreaties not merely of some misguided ‘segges’ but of Arthur himself. Is there another solution? For that particular context in commercial television probably not, but can we imagine an ideal film version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (other than a scholar’s fantasy at limitless expense with Middle English dialogue and no audience)? By translating the poem into a psychological narrative, the film not only adopts the normal procedure for the medium, it also responds to something genuinely present in the poem. The realism of the writing has proved dangerously appealing, not only to filmmakers, but to readers, distracting them from the rhetorical and abstract structure of which it is part, emphasizing the familiarity and accessibility of the text at the expense of its medieval otherness. Perhaps that is what we want a film to do, and we have seen a number of Gawain films doing it, continuing a tradition by reinterpreting Arthurian stories and themes for new times and audiences. But the work of Rohmer and Bresson suggests more complex possibilities. If it is the very strangeness, the alterity of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (or medieval romance in general), that appeals, then we might look for a version analogous to Rohmer’s Perceval in which the verbal narration is foregrounded, which does not seek to conceal gaps, resolve contradictions, but allows what is awkward to stand. If we could imagine a Bresson version, we should expect so thorough a reworking that we might recognize no more than the bones of story and theme. In any case, what both these directors display, in different ways, is an approach to narrative that is not realistic, centred in a single consciousness, but is dispersed or impersonal, and formalized, however full of feeling. Paradoxically, as Jordan suggests in the case of Chaucer (1987), the post-modern and the medieval have much in common. The small number of attempts at a filmed Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may be disappointing, although such films are but one manifestation in recent times of a continuing interest in the Arthurian romance tradition. On the other hand, the mere existence of the Thames Television version, despite its ephemerality, rather implies the canonical status of the poem. Commissioned in order to advertise the company’s cultural ideals when TV franchises were due for renewal, transmitted on one night, after the ten-o’clock news, and now known only through unofficial copies,2 its origin and fate seem curiously similar to those of the original poem, whose existence it helps to perpetuate.

Sir Gawain in Films • 345 Works Cited Baby, Y. 1985. ‘Metal makes sounds: an interview with Robert Bresson’. Trans. N. Jacobson. Field of Vision 13. Spring. 4–5. Cable, J., trans. 1971. The Death of King Arthur. Harmondsworth. Excalibur 1981. Film. Dir. J. Boorman. USA. First Knight 1995. Film. Dir. J. Zucker. USA: Columbia. Frappier, J., ed. 1936. La Mort le Roi Artu. Paris. Gawain and the Green Knight 1973. Film. Dir. S. Weeks. GB. Gawain and the Green Knight 1991. Television film. Dir. J. M. Phillips. GB. Jordan, R. M. 1987. Chaucer’s Poetics and the Modern Reader. Berkeley. Knights of the Round Table 1954. Film. Dir. R. Thorpe. USA. Lancelot and Guinevere 1963. Film. Lancelot du Lac 1974. Film. Dir. R. Bresson. France. Perceval le Gallois 1978. Film. Dir. E. Rohmer. France. Prince Valiant 1954. Film. Dir. H. Hathaway. USA Rohmer, E. 1979. ‘Note sur la traduction et sur la mise en scène de Perceval’. L’Avant Scène du Cinéma 221. 1 February 1979. 6–7. The Spaceman and King Arthur 1979. Film. Dir. R. Mayberry. USA. Also called The Unidentified Flying Oddball. Spearing, A. C. 1970. The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge. The Sword of Lancelot 1963. Film. Dir. C. Wilde. GB. Sword of the Valiant 1983. Film. Dir. S. Weeks. GB. Tolkien, J. R. R., and Gordon, E. V., eds. 1967. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Rev. N. Davis. Oxford. 2nd ed.

Notes Reprinted by permission of Boydell & Brewer Ltd. from A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), pp. 385–92. 1. I am grateful to David Rudkin for his help when writing this essay. 2. This film is now available as a videorecording: Gawain and the Green Knight. Thames Television (Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 1996).

Page Intentionally Left Blank

About the Contributors Bart Besamusca is Senior Lecturer in Middle Dutch Literature at Utrecht University, co-editor of Arthurian Literature XVII: Originality and Tradition in the Middle Dutch ‘Roman van Walewein’ (1999), and author of Walewein, Moriaen en de Ridder metter mouwen: Intertekstualiteit in drie Middelnederlandse Arturromans (1993) and The Book of Lancelot: The Middle Dutch ‘Lancelot’ Compilation and the Medieval Tradition of Narrative Cycles (2003). Phillip C. Boardman is Professor of English and Director of Core Humanities at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is the author, with Daniel P. Nastali, of The Arthurian Annals (2004). Fanni Bogdanow is Emeritus Professor at the University of Manchester. She is author of The Romance of the Grail (1966), editor of La Folie Lancelot (1965) and the five-volume edition of La Version Post-Vulgate de la Queste del Saint Graal et de la Mort Artu, Troisième Partie du Roman du Graal (1991–), and coeditor of the forthcoming Vulgate Queste. In 1999 she was awarded Le Prix Excalibur for her contribution to Arthurian scholarship. Rachel Bromwich is Emeritus Reader in Celtic Languages and Literature at the University of Cambridge. Among her many publications on early Celtic literature, she has edited Trioedd Ynys Prydein: The Welsh Triads (1978) and coedited Culhwch and Olwen (in both Welsh and English editions, 1988 and 1992) and The Arthur of the Welsh (1991). Keith Busby is the Douglas Kelly Professor of Medieval French at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Among his books are Gauvain in Old French Literature (1980), a critical edition of Chrétien de Troyes’ Perceval (1993), and Codex and Context (2002). Albrecht Classen is University Distinguished Professor of German Studies at the University of Arizona and has published numerous books and articles on medieval and early modern literature, history of mentality, and women’s studies. W. A. Davenport is Emeritus Professor of Medieval Literature at the University of London and Fellow of the English Association. His most recent book is Medieval Narrative: An Introduction (2004). Marie-José Heijkant is Associate Professor of the Italian Department at the University of Leiden and the author of La tradizione del ‘Tristan’ in prosa in

347

348 • About the Contributors Italia e proposte di studio sul ‘Tristano Riccardiano’ (1989), Tristano Riccardiano (1991), and Tavola Ritonda (1997). Klaus P. Jankofsky was Professor of English at the University of Minnesota at Duluth. His research and publications focused on death and dying in the Middle English period, on the South English Legendary, and on modern Arthurian literature. Douglas Kelly is Professor Emeritus of French and Medieval Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His most recent book is The Conspiracy of Allusion: Description, Rewriting, and Authorship from Macrobius to Medieval Romance (1999). He is currently completing a book on the subject of opinion in Christine de Pizan’s writings. Beverly Kennedy was Professor of English at Marianopolis College, Montreal, until her death in 2000. She is the author of Knighthood in the Morte Darthur (1985). William A. Nitze (1876–1957) was Professor of French at the University of Chicago. Among his many publications, he edited Le Roman de l’Estoire dou Graal (1927) and (with T. A. Jenkins) Le Haut Livre du Graal. Perlesvaus (1932–37), and he wrote (with T. P. Cross) Lancelot and Guenevere: A Study on the Origins of Courtly Love (1930). Raymond H. Thompson, retired Professor of English at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, is the author of The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction (1985), an associate editor of The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (1991) and its supplements, and co-editor of the Merlin Casebook (2003). Lori Walters is Professor of French at Florida State University. She has published widely on medieval romance, the Romance of the Rose, and Christine de Pizan. B. J. Whiting was Professor of English at Harvard University and published extensively on Chaucer and Proverbs, as well as Arthurian literature. David J. Williams taught English at the University of Reading and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in medieval studies and film. His publications include articles on medieval literature, in particular the Middle English alliterative poets, on Japanese cinema, and on “medieval movies.” Friedrich Wolfzettel is Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Frankfurt am Main. The author of numerous books and articles, his most recent publication is “Le Conte en palimpseste.”

Proper Name Index Note: “Gawain” (and variants thereof ) as an individual’s name has been omitted from the index because it appears on nearly every page. For ease of identification, the authors of individual works are credited in brackets. The index does not cover the Select Bibliography, and the notes to the Introduction and various chapters. A

275, 287–94, 297–302, 304–14, 319–24, 327, 332–35, 337–40, 342, 344 Arthur (15th-century English verse), 3 Arthur (Lawhead), 302 Arthur: A Tragedy (Binyon), 18, 300 Arthur of England (Dean), 256 Arthurian Revival, 17, 23–24 Arthur, Monarch of the Britons: A Tragedy (Hilton), 17, 297 Arthur Rex (Berger), 19–20, 28, 32, 303, 306, 308, 310, 312–13, 319–35 Arthur the King (television film), 26 Arthur the King: A Romance (Massie), 307 Artorius (Heath-Stubbs), 19, 300 Ascalun, 220 Ascham, Roger, 256 Ashe, Geoffrey, 319 Assentijn, King, 232–34 Astolat (Ascolat), 58, 60, 67, 70, 83 Atre Périlleux, L’, 7, 29, 76, 87, 127, 129–31, 134–35, 140–41, 147–52, 154, 157–58, 161–62, 167, 169, 247 Aubailly, Jean-Claude, 248 Auguissel, 108 Avalon, Isle of, 3, 333 Avalon (Boughton), 18, 300 Avalon Nights (Danson), 303 Avowynge (Avowing) of King Arthur, The, 16, 31, 76, 262–64 Awntyrs off Arthure, The, (The Adventures at the Tarn Wadling), 15, 262

Abenteuer Gawains, 57, 62 Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, The, (Steinbeck), 20, 306 Adams, Oscar Fay, 301 Adler, Alfred, 126 Adonis, 50 Agamemnon, 50 Agravain (Aggravayne), 53, 58–59, 64, 69–70, 72, 176, 186–87, 190–92, 196, 242, 292–93, 305, 311–12, 334 Alden, John, 57–58 Alexandre, 118 Amadas et Ydoine, 129 Ambrosius, Aurelius, 104–5 Amoraen, King, 232–33, 235 Anchises, 245 Aneirin, 259 Anfortas, King, 217, 224, 226–27 Anjou, 241 Anna (King Arthur’s sister), 3, 51, 96, 98, 105, 211; see also Morgause and Sangive Annales Cambriae, 104 Antikonie, 220–21, 224 Arcade, 57–58; see also Ettarre Ariosto, 249 Armoricans, 105 Arnive (Arthur’s mother), 222, 225; see also Igerna Arthour and Merlin, 16, 83, 255 Arthur, King, 2–6, 8, 11–13, 15–28, 30, 32, 45, 49–51, 58–66, 68–70, 72–76, 79–80, 82, 84–85, 95–100, 103–6, 108–14, 118–19, 122, 131–32, 135, 141–42, 144–48, 159–61, 163–64, 174, 177–79, 184, 186, 191, 193, 195, 200, 209–14, 217–19, 222, 226–27, 232–33, 240–42, 245, 249, 256–60, 262–70,

B “Bad Heir Day” (Edghill), 305 Badon Hill, Battle of, 302 Balaain and Balaan (Balin), 56, 267 Baldry, Cherith, 302, 306

349

350 • Proper Name Index Baldwin, Bishop, 260, 262 Baldwin of Britain, 263 Balzac, 127 Ban, King, 188–89, 290 Baroja, Julio Caro, 290 Barr, Mike W., 26 Barron, W. R. J., 257 Bate, Walter Jackson, 256 Baudemagus (Bademagus, Bagdemagus), 62–63, 67 Baumgartner, Emmanuelle, 183–84, 206, 239, 241 Bear of Britain, The, (Frankland), 301–2, 304–5 Beard, Dan, 25 Bedivere (Bedwyr), 18, 49, 69–70, 97, 105, 258, 267, 301, 305, 309, 311, 313, 320 Beheading Game, 14, 274; see also jeu parti Bel Gherardino, 243–45 Belinant, 63 Bel Inconnu, Le, (Renaut de Beaujeu), 7, 10, 13, 157–58, 164–68, 243–44 Beloved Exile (Godwin), 319 Beowulf, 287 Beowulf, 265 Bercilak (Bertilak, Lord, host) de Hautdesert, 276–77, 279–80, 323–27, 329–31, 342; see also Green Knight Bercilak’s Castle (Liberty Castle), 32, 258, 268, 275, 278–79, 320, 322–33, 343 Bercilak’s lady (Green Knight’s lady, hostess, Lady of Hautdesert), 14, 22, 85–86, 268–69, 276–82, 303, 322–30, 341, 343 Berger, Thomas, 19–21, 28, 32, 303, 306, 308, 312–13, 319–20, 322–24, 329–30, 332–35 Besamusca, Bart, 31 Betz, M. C. H., 22 Binyon, Laurence, 18, 300 Birth, Gawain’s, 20, 30, 209–16, 304 Birtwhistle, Harrison, 19, 300 Black Knight (Noir Chevalier), 26, 132 Blackford, Richard, 19, 300 Blanchefleur, 6, 112; see also Condwirarmurs Blanc(h)emal the Fée, 7, 164, 167 Bleheri, 145 Blioberis (Blyoberis) de Gaunes, 63, 176, 179 Bloisine, 53–54, 233–34 Blonde Esmeree, 165 Blood-on-the-snow episode (in Perceval), 112–13, 119, 259–60 Boardman, Phillip C., 31 Bogdanow, Fanni, 30, 183, 239 Bon Chevalier sans peur, Le, 178

Book of Leinster, 113 Book of Sir Tristrem (Malory), see “Tristram, The Tale of ” Boorman, John, 25, 339 Borowsky, Marvin, 307 Bors (Bohort), 8, 58, 63, 67–68, 70, 202, 308 Bors, King, 290 Boughton, Rutland, 18, 300 Braby, Dorothea, 25 Bradley, Marion Zimmer, 22, 25, 307, 319 Bradshaw, Gillian, 20, 22, 28, 32, 302, 304–6, 310–13, 315 Branca, Vittore, 243 Brandles, 263 Brangwaine, 71 “Breaking of the Links, The” (Masefield), 19, 301 Breca, 265 Brehus sans pitié (Breus, Breuz-sans-Pitie), 63, 175, 199–200, 241–42, 247 Bresson, Robert, 26, 339–40, 344 Bretons, 105–6, 108 Bride of the Spear (Herbert), 304 Brien de la Gastine, 145 Brien des Illes, 143–45 Bright-Helmed One, The, (Viney), 302 Brimstone (video game), 27 Britain, 2–3, 12, 15, 22, 26 Britons, 106 Brittany, 70 Bromwich, Rachel, 3, 12, 29 Bròn Binn, Am, 23 Browne, N. M., 302 Bruce, J. Douglas, 215–16 Brunhilde, 332 Brunor, 194 Brut (Layamon), 4 Brut (Prose), 3 Brut (Wace), 3–4, 6, 103, 106, 236 Brut Dingestow (Welsh), 98–99 Budicius, King of the Armorican Britons, 105 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 17, 68–69, 298–99 Burmaltus, 240 Burne-Jones, Edward, 24–25 Busby, Keith, 29–30, 157, 164, 239, 241

C Cabana, Darío Xohán, 23 Cador, 106–7, 265–66, 269 Caerleon (Carlion), 105, 108, 112 Calafiore, James, 26 Calogrenant, 136

Proper Name Index • 351 Camelot, 24, 60, 70, 177, 205, 274–75, 320, 323, 327, 339, 342 Camelot Eternal (comic strip), 26 Camelot 3000 (comic strip), 26 Camlann, Battle of, 28 Campbell, Wilfred, 18, 299 Camus, 334 Canning, Victor, 302 Cantare dei Cantari, 243 Cantare di Astore e Morgana, 249 Cantare di Ponzela Gaia, 44, 243–49 Cantari di Carduino, 243 Cantari di Lancillotto, 243 Caradigan, 108 Carados (Carrado), 23, 72, 152, 240 Cardini, Franco, 241 Carduel, 108, 149 Carduino, 243 Carl of Carlisle, 16, 75–76, 260 Carle off Carlile (The Carl of Carlisle, Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle), 76, 260, 262–63, 289 Carmichael, Douglas, 302 Carpenter, Rhys, 301 Carr, J. Comyns, 299 Castle of Marvels (Marvellous Castle), 11, 24, 113–14; see also Schastel Merveile Castle Schampfanzun, 220 Cathedral of Otranto, 240 Caxton, 24, 256 Ceincaled, 304; see also Gringalet Cervantes, 9 Chambers, John, 19, 300 Chanson(s) de geste, 125–26, 168, 266 Chanson de Roland (Song of Roland), 107, 110, 265 Chantilly MS 472, 42, 157–69 Chapman, Vera, 20, 303, 313 Charlemagne, 73, 287 Char(r)ette, see Lancelot (Chrétien) Chastity Test, 14 Château aux Dix Chevaliers, 191 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 29, 45, 48–49, 73, 83–84, 87, 255–57, 264, 278, 297, 314, 333–34, 344 Cherryh, C. J., 307 Chestre, Thomas, 13 Chevalier à l’Epée, Le, 7, 52, 68, 76–77, 113, 127–28, 132, 145, 147, 158, 161–62, 231 Chevalier aux deux épées (Meriadeuc), Le, 7, 29, 79, 87, 113, 140–41, 143–47, 150, 154, 231 Chevalier de neige, Le, (Vian), 21 Child Queen, The (McKenzie), 21, 309

Chrétien de Troyes, 1, 5–14, 16, 20, 22–24, 26, 28–30, 67, 98, 103–14, 117–23, 127–28, 131, 133, 139–40, 143, 152, 157–59, 161–64, 166–67, 169, 174, 184, 194, 218–22, 231–32, 237, 239–41, 247, 249, 255, 257, 259, 302, 304, 340–41 Christian, Catherine, 258 Chronicles of the Sword (video game), 27 Chroniques d’Anjou, 4 Cidegast, 223–24 Circe, 444 Claris, 75 Claris et Laris, 7, 28, 53, 141, 152, 209 Classen, Albrecht, 10, 30 Cligés, 5–6, 118 Cligés (Chrétien), 5, 103, 108, 118, 122, 143, 241 Clinschor, 222, 224–26 Colin li Fruitiers, 169 Condwirarmurs, 217; see also Blanchefleur Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court, A, (Twain), 25, 337 Continuation-Gauvain (First Continuation, Pseudo-Wauchier), 6, 16, 20, 22–23, 77, 87, 146, 165, 169, 193, 242, 247, 255, 304 Continuation (Gerbert de Montreuil), 6–7, 53–54, 233 Continuation (Manessier), 6–7 Continuation-Perceval (Second Continuation), 6, 165 Continuations, 6–7, 10, 139–40, 143, 163, 184, 257, 341 Corbenic, 174, 202–5; see also Grail Castle Cornwall, 3 Cornwell, Bernard, 303 Cortois de Huberlant, 150 Couperus, Louis, 22 Courtship of Miles Standish (Longfellow), 57–58 Coutts, Francis B. Money, 19, 301 Crimson Chalice Trilogy (Canning), 302 Crompton, Anne Eliot, 303, 313 Crône, Diu, (Heinrich von dem Türlin), 10 Cuchulinn (Cúchulainn), 50, 96, 104 Culhwch and (ac) Olwen, 12, 95–99 Cundrie, 218–19, 222 Curtius, Ernst, 110

D Dagonet, 49–50, 70 Dahood, Roger, 263 Dame de Caradigan, 145

352 • Proper Name Index Dame de l’amour, 264 Dame du Gaut Destroit, 132, 135, 164 Damoisele du Castiel du Port, 144–46 Damoiselle de la Montagne, 188, 193 Damsel of the Black Thorn (la Noire Espine), 110, 120 Dane, Clemence, 18, 300 Danson (Sophie), 303 Dante Alighieri, 332 Darby, Catherine, 303 Darnantes, forest of, 241, 249 Daughter of Tintagel sequence (Sampson), 303, 305 Daughters (unnamed) of Arthur, 23 of the Carl of Carlisle, 76, 260 of Guengasoin, 133 of host (in Le Chevalier à l’Epée), 128–29, 168; (in Hunbaut), 142, 163–64; (in Le Chevalier aux deux épées), 79 of King of Gwyneth, 302 of King of India, 23 of King of Norgales, 55 of Pellinor, 56, 321 Davenport, W. A., 31 David (biblical), 240, 242 Davis, Georgene, 18, 300 Deal, Babs H., 307 Dean, Christopher, 256, 264 “Death of Arthur” (Malory), 293 Deeping, Warwick, 302 “Defence of Guenevere, The,” (Morris), 18, 68, 299 Delay, Florence, 22 Denmark, 66 De Ortu Waluuanii, 30, 146, 161, 210–16 De rebus gestis regum Anglorum (William of Malmesbury), 103 Désiré, 245, 249 Didot-Perceval, 8 Dinadan, 68, 291–92 Dionise, 160, 162 Discovery of King Arthur, The, (Ashe), 319 Ditmas, E. M. R., 20, 306 Dogs and Gawain, 28, 54–56, 68, 129, 177–78, 298 Doloreuse Garde, 240–41 Dondinello, 243 Don Quijote, 274 Dorst, Tankred, 22 Dover beach, 293 Draak, Maartje, 232

Dragon Lord (Drake), 305 Dragon’s Heirs trilogy (Jones), 307–8 Dragon’s Son, The (Thomson), 20, 304 Drake, David, 305 Dream of Camelot, A, (Lupack), 301 Dream of Fair Serpents, A, (Darby), 303 Dream of Rhonabwy, The, 99, 304 Drian(t), 63, 175–76, 314, 316–17, 186–88, 190–92, 194–95, 199, 206 Druid Sacrifice (Tranter), 20, 303 Drystan, 96, 97; see also Tristan Duke of War, The, (O’Meara), 302 Dupin, Henri, 74 Durmart, 75 Durmart le Gallois, 240 Dyce, William, 24

E Eachtra an Amadáin Mhóir, 23 Eachtra an Mhadra Mhaoil, 23 Ector, 66–67, 203–4 Edghill, Rosemary, 305 “Egyptian Maid, The” (Wordsworth), 298 Ehler, Ursula, 22 Elaine of Astolat (Ascolat, Escalot), 24, 58–60, 67, 72, 243, 312, 323–24, 331 Elaine (of Corbenic), daughter of Pelles, 59, 338 Elidan, 304, 311 Emperor Arthur, The, (Turton), 306 Enfances Gauvain, Les, 7, 30, 146, 161, 168, 210–12 England, 5, 9, 23, 255–56 Engrés, 109 Enide, 6, 208–9 Entre les Illes, Roi d’, 141 Erec, 5–6, 10, 63, 109–11, 118, 121–22, 141, 163, 176, 179, 200, 202, 236 Erec et Enide (Chrétien), 5, 9, 11–12, 103, 108–11, 118, 121, 143, 159, 163, 168, 173 Erec (Hartmann von Aue), 10 Escanor (Girard d’Amiens), 7, 74–76, 109, 141, 151, 242 Escanor de la Montagne, 149–50, 161 Escavalon, king of, 119 Escavalon, townspeople of, 341 Espinogre, 130, 150 Estoire del Saint Graal (Vulgate), 173, 177 Etrigan, 26 “Ettard’s Troth” (Coutts), 19, 301 Ettarre (Ettard[e]), 18, 20, 25, 57–58, 66, 262, 299, 300, 306–7, 312; see also Arcade Eubea, 408

Proper Name Index • 353 Evans, Sebastian, 25 Excalibur, 26, 257 Excalibur (Cornwell), 303 Excalibur (film), 25, 337, 339–40 Excalibur! (Kane and Jakes), 305 Exiled from Camelot (Baldry), 302, 306

F Faerie Queene (Spenser), 257, 259 “Failure of Sir Gawaine and Sir Ewain, The” (Burne-Jones), 25 Fall of Princes (Lydgate), 293 Fée aux Blanches Mains, 165 Feirefiz, 218, 227 Fénice, 6, 122 Fergus, 163 Fergus, 7, 74, 141, 157, 162–63, 167, 169 Fichte, Joerg, 236, 264–65 Fier Baiser, 164 Final Quest, The, (Monaco), 304 Finkel, George, 302 Firelord (Godwin), 20, 305, 319 First Knight (film), 25, 339 Fisher King, 114; see also King Pelles Flanders, 236 Floating Chessboard, 22, 232 Flore de Lis, 22; see also Pucelle de Lis Floree, 81 Florence, 242 Floriant et Florete, 141 Florie, 10 Foreman, Michael, 25 Fossa da Cremona, Evangelista, 249 Foster, Hal, 26–27, 339 “Fragments of The Masque of Gwendolen” (Heber), 17, 298 France, 4–5, 31, 125, 255, 294 Francesca da Rimini, 332 Frankland, Edward, 301, 304–5 Freeman, David, 18, 300 Frere, John Hookham, 298 Frescoln, Wilson, 158 Freud, 212 Froissart, 87 Froll, 291 Frye, Northrop, 14

G Gaheriet, 53, 63, 65, 132, 174–78, 185–90, 196, 198, 202–5; see also Gareth Gaheris (Garies), 65, 69–70, 164, 167, 240, 288, 291, 312; see also Guerrehés

Galahad (Galaad), 1, 8, 21, 24, 32, 63–64, 66–68, 175, 197–99, 202, 242, 249, 303 Galapas, the giant, 72 Galasso, 249 Galehaut, 16, 178–79 Galeron, 15 Galiene, 163 Gallais, Pierre, 244 Galloway, 97–98, 104–5 Galván en Saor (Cabana), 23 Galvariun, 240 Ganelon, 108 Gareth, 17, 20, 65–66, 68–70, 104, 290, 292, 300–1, 305–7, 309, 311–12, 338; see also Gaheriet Gareth of Orkney (Ditmas), 20, 306 Gaudionet, 152 Gaul, 105 Gaunes, 174 Gauvain et le Chevalier Vert (Delay/ Roubaud), 21 Gawain (Harsent), 19, 300 Gawain and the Green Knight (film), 26, 341 Gawain and the Green Knight (Thames Television), 26, 342–44 Gawain en de Groene Ridder (comic strip), 26 Gawain and Lady Green (Crompton), 303, 313 “Gawain and Marjorie” (Adams), 301 Gawain and Ragnall (Blackford), 300 Gawan (Stucken), 22 Gawayne and the Green Knight (Lewis), 300 Gayous, 447–48 Gemmell, David, 302 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 2–5, 9, 17, 50, 96–98, 103–9, 111, 140, 157, 236, 241, 246, 258, 264, 297 Geraint Son of Erbin (Gereint ab Erbin), 12, 98–99 Gerbert de Montreuil, 6–7, 53, 233–35 Gereint, 508 Germany (and German-speaking countries), 10, 22, 255 Gesta Regum Anglorum (William of Malmesbury), 2 Ghost, Gawain’s, 49, 313, 324, 334 Giant of Mont St. Michel, 51 Gifflet, 55 Gingalyn, 264; see also Guinglain Girard (Gérard) d’Amiens, 7, 242 Glasgow, 304 Gliglois, 231 Godefroy de Leigny, 161, 166–67 Gododdin, 259

354 • Proper Name Index Godwin, Parke, 20, 305, 319 Golagros, 16 Golagros and Gawane, 16, 52, 262 Goldene Vogel, Der, 232 Goliath, 242 Gorvain, 164 Gottfried von Strassburg, 22 Goumerés, 150 Gower, John, 82, 255, 334 Graal Théâtre (Delay/Roubaud), 22 Graelant, 243, 245 Grail, 6, 8, 10, 12, 20, 24–25, 29, 50, 56, 63–64, 66–69, 72–73, 100, 114, 163, 166–67, 173–74, 202, 204–5, 219, 221, 224, 226, 257, 261–62, 300, 304, 306–7, 320, 340 Grail Castle, 6, 8, 22, 62, 166, 202; see also Corbenic and Munsalvæsche Grail messenger (Cundrie), 218 Grail: A Novel, The, (Deal), 307 Grail trilogy (Monaco), 20 Grail War, The, (Monaco), 304 Gral: Ein dramatisches Epos, Der, (Stucken), 22 Gramoflanz, King, 223–24, 226–27 Grave (Tomb), Gawain’s, 2–3, 95–97, 104 Green Chapel, 269, 276, 278–80, 331, 342–43 Green Girdle (band, belt, sash), 14, 86, 280, 285, 341 Green Knight, 14, 19, 25–27, 32, 82, 84–86, 258, 260, 267–69, 275, 279–80, 282–83, 300, 313, 322–23, 327, 329–31, 342–43; see also Bercilak Green Knight, The, (Chapman), 20, 303, 313 Green Knight, The, (Holman), 300 Green Knight, The, (Murdoch), 303 Grene Knight, The, (verse), 16, 260, 262 Gringalet (Meingalet), 12, 28, 52, 150, 281; see also Ceincaled Gromer Somir Joure, Sir, 333 Grummore Grummursum, Sir, 72 Guenevere (Young), 18, 300 Guengasoin, 133 Guerrehés (Guerrehet, Gariet), 165, 240, 243; see also Gaheris Guillaume le Clerc, 7, 162–63 Guinevere (Ginover, Guenevere, Guenièvre, Gwenhwyfar, Gwynhwyfar, Winlogee), Queen, 3–4, 6, 15–19, 21, 24–25, 58–60, 62, 64, 67–70, 72, 75, 82, 100, 109, 119–20, 122, 152, 161–62, 166, 178, 200–1, 212, 214–15, 222, 240, 245, 259, 266–67, 292–93, 297, 299, 301, 304–11, 320, 323, 330, 332–33, 338–40 Guinevere Evermore (Newman), 21

Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn (Woolley), 303, 309 Guinevere Trilogy (Newman), 308, 310 Guinevere Trilogy (Woolley), 303 Guinganbresil, 113–14, 193 Guinglain (le Bel Inconnu), 7, 158, 164–65, 167, 169; see also Gingalyn Guinloie, 146 Guiron le Courtois, 146 Gurnemanz, 217 Gwarddur, 259 Gwendolen, 298; see also Ragnell Gwri Gwallteuryn (Gwri Golden Hair), 12, 104 Gwyar, 12, 98, 173–74 Gwyn (Gawain’s son), 311 Gwyneth, King of, 302

H Haar, Jaap ter, 23 Haidu, Peter, 31, 258, 261 Hákon Hákonarson, King of Norway, 11 Hallowed Isle. Book Four: The Book of the Stone, The, (Paxson), 302 Hamilton, Lord Ernest, 307 Hamlet saga, 214 Harf-Lancner, Laurence, 244–45 Harpin de la Montagne (giant), 120 Harsent, David, 19, 300 Hartmann von Aue, 9–10, 236 Hastings, Selina, 25 Haug, Walter, 236 Hawk of May (Bradshaw), 20, 304, 306, 311 Healer, the, 86 Heath-Stubbs, John, 19, 300 Heber, Reginald, 17, 298 Hector, see Ector Heijkant, Marie-José, 9, 31 Hein, Christoph, 22 Heinrich von dem Türlin, 10 Helaes, 56 Hengist, 2, 95–96, 104 Herbert, Kathleen, 303 Herself (Sampson), 303 Herzen, Frank, 26 High History of the Holy Grail, The, (Evans), 25; see also Perlesvaus High Queen, The, (McKenzie), 21, 309 Hilton, William, 17, 297 Historia Regum Britanniae (Geoffrey of Monmouth), 2, 96, 103, 105–6, 108, 297 Hoel, 3, 105, 108

Proper Name Index • 355 Holdstock, Robert, 303 Hollowing, The (Holdstock), 303 Holman, David, 300 “Holy Grail, The” (Tennyson), 68 Homer, 287 “Hope of Britain, The” (Dane), 18, 300 Hôtel de Condé, 158 Hovey, Richard, 18, 299 “How Gawaine sought the Sangreal and might not see it because his eyes were blinded by thoughts of the deeds of Kings” (Burne-Jones), 24–25 Hugh de Morville, 10 Hughes, Thomas, 17, 297 Hunbaut, 142–43, 163–64 Hunbaut, 7, 29, 76, 87, 140–43, 147, 154, 157–58, 162–64, 167 Huneson, 244 Huth-Merlin, see Suite du Merlin Hygelac, 287 Hymne à Aphrodite, 245

J

I

K

I Am Mordred (Springer), 20, 306 Iberian peninsula, 9 Ibert, King of Sicily, 225 Iblis, Queen of Sicily, 225 Idylls of the King (Tennyson), 18, 68–69, 299 Idylls of the Queen, The, (Karr), 307 Igerna, 105; see also Arnive Iliad (Homer), 287 Ill-Made Knight, The, (White), 72–73 Immortal Wound, The, (Canning), 302 Inglewood Forest, 263 Innamoramento di Galvano (Fossa da Cremona), 249 Innamoramento di Lancillotto e di Ginevra (Niccolò degli Agostini), 249 In the Shadow of the Oak King (Jones), 307–8 In Winter’s Shadow (Bradshaw), 20, 32, 304, 311 Ireland, 5, 23, 66, 241 Isdernus, see Yder Isles of the Blessed, 304; see also Other World Isold(e) (Iseut, Isolt, Isoly, Yseut) of Ireland, Queen, 21, 24, 71, 175, 200–2, 206, 248, 320 Isolt of Brittany, 70–71, 123 Italy, 9, 23, 31, 239–41 Itonje (Gawain’s sister), 223, 226–27 Ivan Lejonriddaren, 11 Iwein (Hartmann von Aue), 9–10

Kane, Gil, 305 Karr, Phyllis Anne, 307 Kay (Cei, Che, Keie, Keu), 13, 22–23, 66, 72–76, 97, 105, 109–10, 119, 122, 142, 148, 161, 163, 177, 209, 213, 217–18, 240, 258–60, 262–63, 267, 302, 307, 323 Keeping, Charles, 25 Kelly, Douglas, 29 Kennedy, Beverly, 32 King, Jessie, 25 King Arthur (Bulwer-Lytton), 17, 67, 298–99 King Arthur (Carr), 299 King Arthur (film), 25–26 King Arthur (video game), 26 King Arthur and the King of Cornwall, 16 King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (animated series), 26 King Arthur Pendragon (role-playing game), 27 “King Arthur’s Tomb” (Morris), 68 Kingdom of Summer (Bradshaw), 20, 304, 311 King of India, 23 King of the Isles, 163 Kingrimursel, 221 King’s Sister, The, (Schafer), 307 Kinsmen of the Grail (Roberts), 20, 306 Knight of the Cart, see Lancelot (Chrétien) Knights of Pleasure (Danson), 303

Jackson, W. T. H., 95, 259 Jakes, John, 305 Jameson, Frederic, 269 Jankofsky, Klaus P., 32 Jaufré, 7, 9, 240 Jean de Preis, 3 Jeaste of Syr Gawayne, The, (The Jest of Gawain), 16, 262–63 Jehan, 152–53, 160, 162 Jerusalem, 214 Jeschute, 217 jeu parti, 130, 136; see also Beheading Game Johnson, Barbara Ferry, 307 Jonah, 273–75 Jones, Courtway, 307 Jones, Gwyn, 25 Jones, Martin, 219 Jordan, R. M., 344 Joyous Gard (Joieuse, Joyeuse Garde), 71, 174, 242

356 • Proper Name Index Knights of the Round Table (film), 25, 337–38 Köhler, Erich, 126–27, 129, 134 König Arthur und die Ritter der Tafelrunde (Recheis), 22 Koning Arthur (Haar), 23

L Lac, King, 178 Lacan, Jacques, 134 Lady of the Fountain, The, (Herbert), 303 Lady of the Lake, 97, 248, 262, 267, 320–22, 324, 329, 331–33 Lady of Shalott, 24 Lahmann, Meredith, 303 Lamorak (Lamorac, Lamorat), 17, 32, 62–63, 67, 69, 72, 175–76, 185–94, 196, 199, 206, 241, 290–92, 306, 308–9 Lance, Holy, 163 Lancelot (Launcelot), 1, 5–6, 8, 10, 16–17, 19–21, 24–28, 32, 49–50, 58–60, 62–70, 72–73, 75, 83, 109, 118–22, 152–53, 160–62, 166–67, 173–75, 185, 187–88, 193, 202, 241–42, 244, 249, 257–59, 261, 265–66, 289, 291–94, 298–301, 305–12, 320, 323, 332, 334–35, 338–40 Lancelot (Charrette, Knight of the Cart) (Chrétien), 5–6, 28, 76, 103, 109–10, 118–19, 121–22, 143, 152, 157–59, 161–62, 164, 166–67, 169, 259, 262 Lancelot (Vulgate), 8, 16, 55, 62, 74, 152, 173–75, 240, 289 Lancelot: Guardian of Time (film), 25 Lancelot: A Novel (Vansittart), 305 Lancelot: A Poem (Robinson), 19, 69, 301 Lancelot-Compilatie, 11 “Lancelot and Elaine” (Tennyson), 60, 68–70, 120 Lancelot-Graal (Vulgate) cycle, 8, 9, 184, 205–6; see also Vulgate Cycle Lancelot and Guinevere (film), 337 Lancelot du Lac (film), 26, 339–40 Lancelot of the Laik, 16 Lancelot of the Lake: A Tragedy (Riethmuller), 299 Langland, William, 330, 334 Lanval (Marie de France), 243, 245 Lanzelet (Ulrich von Zatzikhoven), 10, 244 Laris, 75 Larmat, Jean, 239 Last Enchantment, The, (Stewart), 309 Last Sword of Power (Gemmell), 302

Laudine, 6, 117–20 Launcelot: A Romance of the Court of King Arthur (Hamilton), 307 Launcelot and Elaine (Royle), 18, 300 Launcelot, My Brother (Roberts), 308–9 Lawhead, Stephen, 302 Layamon (Lawman), 4, 83, 264 Legend of Prince Valiant, The, (animated series), 26 Lewis, Charlton Miner, 300 Liber de Compositione Castri Ambaziae, 4 Liberty Castle, see Bercilak’s Castle Lindsay, Philip, 307 Linet, 342 Lionel, 68 Lionors: King Arthur’s Uncrowned Queen (Johnson), 307 Lischois Gweljus, 222 Little Wench, The, (Lindsay), 307 Livre d’Artus, Le, (Vulgate), 80, 87, 209 Lleu (Llew) ap Cynfarch, 12, 98–99; see also Lot Loathly Lady, 82, 278, 300, 333–34; see also Ragnell Logres, Kingdom of, 188–90, 195, 197–99 Longfellow, 57 Loomis, Roger Sherman, 97, 103, 125 Lorie de la Roche Florie, 152 Lorraine, 5, 267 Lorraine, Duke of, 266–67 Löseth, Eilhert, 183–84 Lot (Loth, Lott), King, 3, 23, 51, 61, 98, 105, 176–77, 185, 188–89, 210–11, 223, 227, 291, 338; see also Lleu Loth, Joseph, 96 Lothian, 3, 72, 105 Lovelich, Henry, 16, 255 Lowlands, 9, 11 Lucius Hiberius, 66, 105, 258, 266 Lugh, 304 Lukács, Georg, 226 Lunete, 119–20 Lupack, Alan, 301 Lybeaus (Libeaus) Desconus, 13, 264 Lydgate, 293 Lyonesse, 341

M Mabinogi (Mabinogion), 12, 99, 113 Machiavelli, 293 Madden, Sir Frederic, 63 Maelgwn, 104

Proper Name Index • 357 Magic Sword with the Two Rings, 232, 235 Maid of Ascolot, 16 Maid of the Short Sleeves, 110; see also Obilot Malcreatiure, 222 Male Pucelle (in Perceval), 11; see also Orgueilleuse Malory, Sir Thomas, 1, 17–22, 24–28, 31–32, 45, 48, 57–58, 64–69, 72, 74, 173, 267, 287–93, 297, 299–301, 303, 305–6, 312–13, 339 Man on the White Horse, The, (Deeping), 302 Manessier, 7 Mannyng (Manning) of Brunne, Robert, 3, 76 Mardoc, 24, 240 Marhaus, see Morholt Marie de Champagne, 169 Marie de France, 13, 128, 255 Mark (March), 12, 71, 175 Marriage of Gawain, see Wedding of Gawain Marriage of Gawain, The (ballad), 289 “Marriage of Guenevere: A Tragedy, The,” (Hovey), 18, 299 “Marriage of Sir Gawaine, The,” (Seally), 17, 298 Masefield, John, 19, 301 Massie, Alan, 307 Maynadier, 68 McKenzie, Nancy, 21, 309 Mehl, Dieter, 257 Meleagant (Meliagrant, Meliagraunce), 67, 119, 161, 261, 323, 330, 334, 339 Méliador, 75 Meliador, 140 Meljanz, 219–20 Mélusine, 244–46 Melyadus, 178 Ménard, Philippe, 244 Menealfe of the Mountain, 263 Meraugis, 63 Meraugis de Portlesguez, 7, 74, 113, 143, 146 Mercy: Sir Gawain swearing to be merciful and never again be against Ladies (Dyce), 24 Meriadeuc, 143–46 Merington, Marguerite, 300 Merlin (Myrddin), 21, 23, 26, 56, 61–62, 69–70, 72, 96, 177–78, 257, 290, 298, 309, 321, 329, 340 Merlin (English Prose), 16 Merlin (Lovelich), 16, 255 Merlin (Nye), 305 Merlin (Robinson), 19, 49, 69, 301 Merlin (Suite), 55, 61, 66, 176–77, 180, 288–90

Merlin (Vulgate), 16, 53, 61, 87, 167, 173, 210, 288–89 Merlin oder das Wüste Land (Dorst/Ehler), 22 Merlin’s Mirror (Norton), 302 Merlin trilogy (Stewart), 319 Merveilles de Rigomer, Les, (Jehan), 7, 29, 140–41, 151–54, 159–62, 165–67, 244 Metz, siege of, 265 Micha, A., 126–27 Midomidas, 160 Midsummer Night (Masefield), 19, 301 Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare), 262 Miles, Rosalind, 309 Miller’s Tale, The, (Chaucer), 83 Miraudiel, 160 Misfortunes of Arthur, The, (Hughes), 17, 297 Mists of Avalon, The, (Bradley), 22, 307, 319 Mitchell, Mark J., 303 Mitchison, Naomi, 307 Modena Archivolt, 9, 23, 31, 103, 240 Mohr, Wolfgang, 220 Monaco, Richard, 20, 304 Monks and the Giants, The, (Frere), 298 Monty Python and the Holy Grail (film), 25 Mordred (Medraut, Medrawd, Modred, Mordret), 3–4, 15, 18, 21, 26, 28, 50, 53, 64–65, 69–70, 98, 105, 108, 176, 186, 188, 190–92, 196, 243, 266–67, 292–94, 297, 299–302, 304–5, 309, 311–12, 330, 332–34, 338 Mordred (Campbell), 18, 299 Mordred: A Tragedy (Newbolt), 18, 299 Morgan le Fay (Morgaine, Morgana), 26–27, 111, 242–45, 247–49, 279, 303, 307–8, 310, 319, 330, 332–34, 340 Morgause (Margawse, Morcades, Morgawse), Queen of Orkney, 72, 185–86, 211, 291, 306, 308–11; see also Anna and Sangive Morholt, Le (Marhalt, Marhaus), 62, 66, 178, 288, 309, 330 Morpurgo, Michael, 25 Morris, Gerald, 1, 20, 303, 306 Morris, William, 18, 24, 68, 299 Mort le Roi Artu, La, (Vulgate), 7–8, 16, 26, 30, 58–59, 64, 140, 173–74, 176, 180, 184–85, 190, 193, 239, 242–43, 259, 340 Morte Arthur (Stanzaic), 16, 58, 60, 64–65, 83, 256, 293 Morte Arthure (Alliterative), 15, 17, 24, 31, 83, 256–58, 263–67, 269, 288, 304 Morte Darthur, Le, (Freeman), 18 Morte Darthur, Le, (Malory), 1, 17–18, 24, 28, 31, 68, 256, 287–94, 297, 299–300

358 • Proper Name Index “Morte D’Arthur: A Fragment” (Heber), 298 Mucius, Marcellus, 105 Mule sans frein, La, 7, 127, 136 Munsalvæsche, Castle, 217–18, 224–26; see also Grail Castle Murdoch, Iris, 303 Murphy, Cullen, 26 Murphy, John Cullen, 26 Myers, John Myers, 303 Myreur des Histors (Jean de Preis), 3 Mythago series (Holdstock), 303

N Neptune, 72 Newbolt, Henry, 18, 299 Newman, Sharan, 21, 308, 310 Newport, Cris, 305 Newstead, Helaine, 257 Niccolò degli Agostini, 249 Nicola de Martoni, 243 Niebelungenlied, 22 Nitze, William A., 29 Norgales, King of, 55 Normans, 5 Norton, Andre, 302 Norway, 3, 11 Nye, Robert, 305

O Obie, 219–20, 222 Obilot, 219–20, 224; see also Maid of the Short Sleeves Occitania, 5 Odin, 503 Odysseus, 264 Oliver, 107, 131, 265 O’Meara, Walter, 302 Once and Future King, The, (White), 20–21, 305–6, 308 “One Wing Down” (Shwartz), 308 Orgueilleuse (Orgeluse) of Logres, 204, 219–28; see also Male Pucelle Orguellous Faé, Li, 150 Orilus, 217 Orkney clan (boys, gang), 21, 72, 301, 306, 308–9, 320 Orkney Islands, 290 Orlando Furioso (Ariosto), 249 Other World, 60, 240–41, 245, 247, 249, 262, 311; see also Isles of the Blessed Ovid, 106, 111

Owain (Owein), 13, 96–97, 99–100, 303; see also Yvain Owain (The Lady of the Fountain) (Owein), 12, 99, 303–4

P Paien de Maisières, 7 Palamedes (Palomides), 63, 72, 175, 178 Palamedes, 30, 177–78, 180 Paolo, 332 Parcevals saga, 11 Parsifal (Wagner), 22 Parsival or a Knight’s Tale (Monaco), 304 Partonopeus, 247 Partonopeus, 244 Parzival, 10, 21, 31, 217–21, 224, 226–28; see also Perceval Parzival (Wolfram von Eschenbach), 9–10, 20, 22, 30, 114, 217–28 “Passing of Arthur, The” (Tennyson), 18, 49, 68 Pauphilet, Albert, 113 Paxson, Diana, 302 Pela-Horso, town of, 247–48 Pelleas, 17–18, 20, 25, 57–58, 62, 66, 262, 504–5, 515, 518, 526 “Pelleas and Ettarde” (Malory), 263 “Pelleas and Ettarre” (Tennyson), 18, 60, 69, 299 Pelles, King, 174, 330; see also Fisher King Pellinor(e), King, 17, 19–20, 56, 61, 63, 65, 67, 72, 176–78, 185–86, 188–91, 290–91, 301, 306, 308–9, 312–13, 321, 333 Pellinor, sons of, 61–62, 176–77, 186–87, 191, 193, 202, 205, 290–92, 301, 306 Pendragon (Carmichael), 302 Pendragon, The (Christian), 305 Pendragon ButtonLords (board game), 27 Pendragon Cycle (Lawhead), 302 Pentangle, 24, 269, 275, 278, 344 Perceval, 1, 5–6, 8, 10, 12, 23, 63, 67–68, 75, 111–14, 118–19, 121, 127, 143, 159, 163, 166–67, 187–88, 199, 202, 204–5, 259–61, 269, 337, 341; see also Parzival and Peredur Perceval (Conte du Graal) (Chrétien), 5–6, 9–13, 16, 20, 22–24, 26, 28, 30, 96, 100, 103, 108–10, 112–13, 118, 134, 140, 143, 149, 152, 218–20, 259, 262, 302, 340 Perceval le Gallois (film), 26, 340–41, 344 Percy’s Folio Manuscript, Bishop, 16, 260 Peredur, 99; see also Perceval Peredur Son of Efrawg, 12–13, 96, 99–100 Perilous Bed, 24

Proper Name Index • 359 Perilous Cemetry, 130, 149; see also Atre Périlleux, L’ Perlesvaus, 8, 20, 30, 64, 80, 110, 157–58, 161, 166–67, 210–12, 306 Philip, Neil, 25 Phillips, John Michael, 342 Pickford, Cedric, 183 Picts, 338 Pierre de Blois, 241 Pierre de Langtoft, 3 Pierre de Saint-Cloud, 168 Piety: The Knights of the Round Table departing on the Quest for the Holy Grail (Dyce), 24 Plague, The (Camus), 334 Poitou, 241 Pope (Sulpicius), 105–6, 210–12, 292 Port Eternity (Cherryh), 307 Porter, Tim, 19 Post-Vulgate Cycle (Roman du Graal), 8–9, 17, 30, 176, 178, 241, 289 Potiphar’s wife, 245 Predelli, Maria Bendinelli, 244 Pre-Raphaelites, 24 Priamus, 15, 266–67 Prince, The, (Machiavelli), 293 Prince Valiant (comic strip), 25–27 Prince Valiant (film), 26, 337–39 Prince Valiant (role-playing game), 27 Pryderi, the son of Pwyll, 12 Pseudo-Wauchier, see Continuation-Gauvain Pucelle de Lis, 146, 193, 247; see also Flore de Lis Pui de Montesclaire, 233 Pulzella Gaia, 242–48 Pyle, Howard, 25

Q Queen of Air and Darkness, The, (White), 20, 305 Queen of Camelot (McKenzie), 21, 309 Queen of the Summer Stars (Woolley), 303, 309 Queen’s Champion (Newport), 305 Queen’s Knight, The, (Borowsky), 307 Queen’s Robing Room, 24 Quest of the Holy Grail, The, (Burne-Jones), 25 Queste del Saint Graal (Vulgate), 1, 8, 17, 20, 30, 63, 114, 121, 140, 173–74, 184, 193, 202, 231, 239, 242, 249, 255, 306 Questing Beast, 72 Quintefuele (Quintefeuille) episode, 152, 160–61 Quintillanus, Gaius, 105

R Ragnell, Dame, 16–17, 19–21, 25–27, 298, 303, 312–13; see also Loathly Lady Raguidel, 133, 165 Ramsey, Lee, 432–33 Rank, Otto, 210, 212, 214–15 Raoul de Houdenc, 7, 140, 143, 153, 165 Recheis, Käthe, 22 Red Book of Hergest, The, 97, 99 Red Knight, 109, 111, 259 Renaissance, 256–57 Renart, 168 Renart, Roman de, 30, 157–58, 168 Renaud (Renaut) de Beaujeu, 7, 13, 140, 165 Riche Soudoier, 16 Richmond, Velma, 257 Ride South to Purgatory (Work), 303 Riethmuller, C. J., 299 Rieux, Dr., 334 Rigomer, 152–53 Rigomer, see Merveilles de Rigomer Riothamus, High King, 319 Ritter der Tafelrunde, Die, (Hein), 22 Road to Avalon, The, (Wolf), 305 Robert of Gloucester, 83 Roberts, Dorothy James, 20, 306, 308 Robin Hood, 72–73 Robinson, Edwin Arlington, 19, 49–50, 69–71, 301 Roche de Chanpguin, La, 222 Roges (the talking fox), 232–34 Rohmer, Eric, 26, 339, 341, 344 Roi d’Entre les Illes, 141 Roland, 131, 240, 265, 267, 287 Roman du Graal, see Post-Vulgate Cycle Roman Emperor, 3, 51, 210, 212, 214, 266 Roman Empire, 50 Romans, 3–4, 15, 17, 105 Roman war, 66 Romaunt of the Rose (Chaucer), 76 Rome, 3, 105–6, 210, 212 Roques, Mario, 168 R(h)os, 2, 95–97, 104 Rou, Roman de, (Wace), 107 Roubaud, Jacques, 22 Round Table, 1, 18–19, 22, 26, 106, 114, 118, 126, 132, 140, 145, 152, 175, 177, 179, 188, 194–95, 200, 209, 213, 218, 225, 227, 249, 262, 280, 288, 290, 292, 297, 299, 301, 303, 307–8, 314, 320–21, 324, 326, 329, 334, 339–40 Round Table: A History Drawn from Unreliable Chronicles, The, (Davis), 18, 300

360 • Proper Name Index Royle, Edwin, 18, 300 Rudkin, David, 342–43 Rutebeuf, 133 Rutupi Portus, 105

S Sagremor (Saigremor, Segremors), 55, 112, 119, 209, 217 St. Gregory, 212 St. Kentigern, 303 St. Michael’s Mount, 265 St. Michael’s Mount, giant of, 267 St. Mungo, 303 Sala di Malagigi, 243 Sampson, Fay, 303, 305 San Galgano, 241 San Nicola at Bari, 240 Sangive, 225; see also Anna and Morgause Saragossa, 9 Sarmatians, 25 Savage Damsel and the Dwarf, The (Morris), 20, 306 Saviours, The (Dane), 18, 300 Saxons, 26, 104, 298 Schafer, Kate, 307 Schastel Marveile, 10, 219, 222, 224–26; see also Castle of Marvels Schmolke-Hasselmann, Beate, 231–32 Scotland, 105, 290, 303 Seally, John, 17, 297 “Seven from Caer Sidi” (Shwartz), 303 Seven Deadly Sins, 330 Shining Knight, 26 Shwartz, Susan, 303, 308 “Sick-bed of Cuchulainn,” 111 Siege Perilous, 290 Siegfried, 332 Siena, 241 Sigune, 217 Silverlock (Myers), 303 “Sir Galahad” (Morris), 68 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1–2, 13–14, 19, 21, 24–25, 27–28, 31–32, 48, 50, 63, 83–87, 113, 147, 256, 258, 260, 262–63, 267–70, 273–86, 289, 300, 302, 313, 322–23, 326, 329, 332, 337, 342–44 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Blackford), 300 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Play (Yeames), 300 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: The Quest (Lahmann), 300 Sir Gawain’s Little Green Book (Mitchell), 303

Sir Launfal (Thomas Chestre), 13, 83, 262 Sir Percyvell (Perceval ) of Gales, 13, 100, 260 Sir Tristrem, 83, 255 Sir Uallabh O’Corn, 23 Sister (unnamed) of Brandles, 262–63 of Gawain, 164, 167 of Meleagant, 161, 167 of Perceval, 167 Sleeping Beauty, 341 Sons, Gawain’s, 293 Southey, Robert, 299 Spaceman and King Arthur, The (film), 337 Sparrow Hawk, 159 Spearing, A. C., 342 Spenser, Edmund, 257, 259 Spoils of Annwfn, The, 303 Springer, Nancy, 20, 306 Squire, His Knight, and His Lady, The, (Morris), 303 Squire’s Tale (Chaucer), 29, 45, 49, 83–84, 87, 297 Squire’s Tale, The (Morris), 20, 303, 306 Stafford, Greg, 27 Stapel, Gerrit, 26 Steinbeck, John, 20, 306, 320 Stewart, Mary, 21, 22, 28, 259, 309, 319 Story of King Arthur and His Knights (Pyle), 25 Story of the Quest for the Holy Grail, The, (Burne-Jones), 25 Stucken, Eduard, 22 Suite du Merlin (Huth-Merlin), 55, 61–62, 66, 146, 176–77, 180, 288–90 Sun god, 50 Sutcliff, Rosemary, 19, 28, 32, 259, 302, 304–5, 310–11, 313 Sword and the Flame, The, (Christian), 305 Sword at Sunset (Sutcliff), 19, 28, 32, 302, 304, 310 Sword Bridge, 261 Sword of Lancelot (film), 338 Sword of the Rightful King, The (Yolen), 306 Sword in the Stone, The (White), 72; see also The Once and Future King Sword of the Valiant (film), 26, 341

T Tablante de Ricamonte, 9 Table Ronde, La (role-playing game), 27 Tale of Sir Gawain, The, (Philip), 25

Proper Name Index • 361 Tales of King Arthur (Chambers), 300 “Tale of Tristram, The,” (Malory), 183, 292 Tammuz, 86 Tarn Wadling, 263 Tavola Ritonda, 242–44, 248 Tax, E. H., 19, 506–7, 516 Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 1, 18, 23–24, 27, 29, 48–49, 57–58, 60, 62, 64, 68–70, 72–74, 299–301, 305, 313 Testing of Sir Gawayne, The (Merington), 300 Thompson, Raymond H., 30, 32, 143, 145 Thomson, Sarah, 20, 304 Three Damosels trilogy (Chapman), 303 Three Days’ Tournament, 106, 259 Tintagel, 341 To the Chapel Perilous (Mitchison), 307 Tor, 56, 177 Tower of Ghirlandina, 241 Tragedy of Etarre: A Poem, The (Carpenter), 301 Tranter, Nigel, 20, 303 Trevrizent, 118 Triads, Welsh, 12, 29 Tristan (Tristram, Trystan), 1, 12, 21, 24, 27–28, 32, 60, 62–63, 66, 68, 70–73, 175, 178, 183–202, 206, 241–44, 247–49, 291–92, 308–9, 312, 320; see also Drystan Tristan (Gottfried von Strassburg), 22 Tristan (Prose), 1, 8–9, 17, 28–31, 62–64, 66, 69, 73–74, 140–41, 154, 175–77, 180, 183–206, 231, 239, 241–43, 248, 289, 292, 306 Tristano Panciatichiano, 9 Tristano Riccardiano, 9, 241, 244 Tristram (Robinson), 70–72, 301 Troiano, 244 Troubadours, 4 Troy, 329 Turke and Gowin, The, 16 Turkoyt, 223 Turton, Godfrey, 306 Turville-Petre, Thorlac, 264 Twain, Mark, 25, 337 Twilight Province (Finkel), 302

U Ulrich von Zatzikhoven, 10 Underwater Bridge, 119 Urien, 175 Urjans, 222 Urpin de la Montaigne Irouse, 233–34

Uther (Uthyr) Pendragon, 98, 105, 211–12, 214, 302, 329–30 Uwayne, see Yvain

V Valiant, Prince, 337 Valvens páttr, 11 Vansittart, Peter, 305 Vengeance Raguidel, La, 7, 11, 54, 127, 132, 134–35, 143, 145, 157–58, 165–67, 231 Vergulaht, 114, 220–21 Vétillard, Anne, 27 Vian, Boris, 21 Viking, 298, 339 Vinaver, Eugène, 65, 173, 177, 183–84 Vincensini, Jean-Jacques, 246 Viney, Jane, 302 Virgil, 106, 111 Virgin Mary, 14, 270, 277–78 Vita sancti Gildae, 240 Vivien, 23, 69 Vortigern, 104 Vostaert, Penninc and Pieter, 11, 22, 31, 232 Vulgate Cycle, 8–9, 11, 17, 21, 24, 30, 45, 75, 173, 175–76, 180, 255, 257, 288–89; see also Lancelot-Graal

W Wace, 3–6, 29, 45, 50, 83, 103–4, 106–8, 110–11, 113–14, 140, 157, 236, 264 Wade, 267 Wagner, Richard, 22 Wales, 2–5, 96–97, 104 Walewein (Betz), 22 Walewein, Roman van (Penninc and Pieter Vostaert), 11, 22, 24, 31, 231–37 Walewein ende Keye, 11 Walters, Lori, 30 Walweitha (Galloway), 2–3, 95–96, 104 Warlord Chronicles (Cornwell), 303 Warriors of Camlann (Browne), 302 Watch Fires to the North (Finkel), 302 Water Bridge, 162 Wedding, Gawain’s, 16–17, 20–21, 25, 27, 298, 300, 303, 312–13 Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell, The, 82, 262, 264, 289, 333 Weeks, Stephen, 26, 341 Wein, Elizabeth E., 306 Weston, Jessie, 60, 63, 240, 244 White, T. H., 1, 20–22, 29, 45, 72–73, 305–6, 308–10

362 • Proper Name Index White Book Mabinogion, The, 99 White Stag (Hart), 118, 159, 163, 177, 312, 321 Whiting, B. J., 29 Wicked Day, The (Stewart), 21, 28, 309, 319 Wife of Bath, 278 Wife of Bath’s Tale, 256–57, 264, 333 Wigalois (Wirnt von Grafenberg), 10 Wijngaard, Juan, 25 Willeri (polyglot bird), 153 William, King, 2, 96, 104 William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, 4 William of Malmesbury, 2–3, 29, 95–97, 103–5, 108–9 Williams, Charles, 332 Williams, David J., 32 Winchester, tournament at, 58, 67 Winter Prince, The, (Wein), 306 Wirnt von Grafenberg, 10 Witch of the North (Jones), 308 Witch in the Wood (White), 20, 72, 305 Woledge, Brian, 161 Wolf, Joan, 305 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 9–10, 20, 22, 30, 114, 217, 219, 221–24, 227–28, 304 Wolfzettel, Friedrich, 29 Wonder, King, 232–33, 235 Woolley, Persia, 303, 309 Wordsworth, William, 298

Work, James C., 303 Wraith of Gawain, The, (Tax), 19, 300–1, 306 Wrake van Ragisel, Die, 11 Wynkyn de Worde, 24

Y Ydain, 54, 132–33, 166 Yder (Isdernus), 103, 133, 240 Yder, 7, 76, 240 Yeames, James, 300 Yolen, Jane, 306 Yonec, 245 Young, Stark, 18, 300 Ysabele, 11, 31, 232–35 Ystorya Trystan, 12, 99 Yvain (Ewaine, Uwayne, Ywain), 5–6, 10–11, 22, 62, 66, 75, 97, 111, 117–22, 141, 162, 175, 195, 236, 247, 308; see also Owain Yvain (Chevalier au Lion) (Chrétien), 5–6, 9–13, 22, 24, 51, 103, 108–11, 114, 118–21, 143, 157–59, 161–64, 166, 169, 240, 244, 341 Yvain (Uwaine) l’Avoutre, 63, 67 Ywain and Gawain, 13, 255–56, 258

Z Zimmer, Heinrich, 96 Zwevende schaakbord, Het, (Couperus), 22