Sir Gawain and Lancelot set out this crazy journey to find the queen. Lancelot almost gets speared by a flaming spear. He finds the girl that promises to have sex with him getting raped and then saves her eventually. Lancelot finds the queens comb with her hair and knows that he is getting close to her. But this guy here is going through hell and back for the queen. Lancelot becomes known as the Knight of the Cart because of all his traveling he does from place to place while riding in a cart. I wonder that if riding in this cart would ruin his reputation but so far I see as a way to just get around to find the Queen. Maybe people may see as dishonorable because its not a Knightly way of transportation but hey whatever floats his bout for trying to rescue the Queen as long as he gets to her.
Lancelot goes through a lot for "Love" and his determination shows his love that he has for the queen. This guy chooses the most dangerous path of crossing a Sword Bridge in order to save the Queen. I wouldn't go through on traveling on a sword bridge for anyone. But I was slightly disappointed because I thought the sword bridge would be more death defying and scary. But back then just the fact that it was a Bridge that was a Sword would've been seen as scary then. It was just easy for him to get across without a problem. Which I saw as boring! I have a theory that the queen may be leaving some sort of trail for the two knights to find her. This is just a guess because every time Lancelot and Gawain gets closer to the queen she's off again with Meleagant. Overall, people do crazy things when there in love. And Lancelot has a lot of love for the Queen.
I too thought it was funny how similar the story started off as Erec and Enide, especially how there's another rude dwarf so early in the story. So far the story seems a lot more interesting than Erec and Enide, because as you pointed out the characters are a lot more complex. The object of affection isn't just an ordinary maid, it's King Arthur's own wife- and the villains aren't nameless robbers, there's one evil, Machiavellian knight in Meleagnant (the name alone makes me think of the word "malignant"). The story also focuses much more on the quest and less so on details of how gruesome or beautiful things are, which I think is more entertaining. Hopefully Lancelot faces even more battles of wits as the story goes on.
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I'll go ahead and continue to echo the statements being made about how similarly this story and that of Erec and Enide began. That was certainly my thought as I began reading, especially once the storyline shifted focus right at the start. However, I wasn't too thrilled about the similarities between the two texts to be honest. The fact that I noticed them right away and then kept on noticing them... well, it really distracted me from engaging with the story. Instead of focusing on The Knight of the Cart, I kept comparing its style of writing to the style used in Erec and Enide, and after quickly realizing that I preferred the style of the latter (not that I thought I would ever say that), I was not able to connect with The Knight of the Cart as much as I would have hoped. The entire time I was reading I felt like there was a barrier between myself and the story - I just wan't able to strongly connect with it. The only time the story caught my attention was on page 183 when the Knight asserted that "the object of my great pursuit is no one less than the Queen Guinevere." It was at this moment that I finally realized who he was (even before he made an effort not to give out his name). This made me sit up and pay a bit more attention, however, the story quickly began to loose me again as it progressed... which honestly really disappointed me. I've now given it some thought and realize that the biggest problem I faced while reading was in confronting the feeling of not having any clue what was coming next. That may seem silly but once I started reading and comparing this story to Erec and Enide, I couldn't shake the sour feeling that I was developing towards The Knight of the Cart. I can't help but wonder... if I had read these texts in reverse would I be feeling the the same way? Or would I possibly not have been able to relate to Erec and Enide after reading The Knight of the Cart? I'm not entirely sure. Although, I have spent a good deal of time considering it this week.
ReplyDeleteOh and if you want clarification on why riding in the cart damaged the Knight's reputation look on pg. 174. Starting with the second paragraph.
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