Chrétien de Tr-Oh, yes! & Michel Fouc-Oh, no!

“My most recent reading for fun was the first twenty pages of Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, after which I gave up.” - Me, on the first day of class.

This class is taking on a strange cyclical nature for me - upon reading “The Knight of the Cart” I was instantly reminded of what little Foucault I had read. What served as a point of interest to me in particular was the punishment itself - the titular cart - which serves a peculiar analytical position when studied through the lens of Foucault’s explanation of history.

Strap yourselves in, this is gonna be dense.

Discipline and Punish studies the historical shift between feudal penal structures (which it argues to be public and focused on the body) and later capitalistic ones (which it argues to be more private and focused on the “soul”). The punishment of the cart was perplexing to me because it seemed to contradict Foucault’s thesis - while, like Foucault predicts, it was very public, its description in the text seems to indicate a greater focus on the soul, saying “Thus he [the condemned] had lost all honor.” With further thought, I realized something crucial about feudal society, which I believe is key to understanding several of the texts we’ve read thus far: the body and soul were not considered separate ontological entities, as we know them today, at the time. This punishment of the “soul” (through the emotion of shame) here has direct consequences, not just spiritually, but materially, through the system of honor in place at the time. Chrétien alludes to this: “From then on all courts refused him hearing”. The significance is difficult to understand through our modern capitalist lens, but at the time, this was a very severe material penalty, that had intense physical consequences to the body of the condemned - he would likely be doomed to a life of poverty and solitude, potentially ending in starvation or similar death. For the knight, labor in service of a court was the only option - its denial would lead to death. The punishment of the “soul” here is not coherently differentiable from the material punishment of the body.

Phew!

So ultimately, this long-winded mess has led to the conclusion that medieval ontologies lacked the distinction between body and soul as separate entities that modern constructions have. I am positive that this can be applied to other texts that we’ve read as an interesting perspective and mode of analysis. I, however, will draw upon my roots as a math major: “This is left as an exercise to the reader.”

Does anyone else understand this story? Because I don't

Thankfully, this story wasn’t as heavy with details as Erec and Enide was, but for some reason I still had problems with it. To me, it seemed like just a jumbled mess of random events punctuated with action scenes. It was made even more confusing by Chrétien’s refusal to use a name other than “knight’ for anyone.

One of the first things that I found weird was on page 171 when the knight came in and basically said “hey king, I have a bunch of your people imprisoned and there ain’t nothing you can do about it”. Then the king just kind of went “eh” and went on his merry way. But then Kay heard about this and came up with some manipulative scheme that just ended with him disappearing and the queen being captured. God damn it Kay.

Another scene that was particularly confusing was when the knight of the cart attempted to cross the ford and had to fight the guard on page 179. Neither of the knights were given proper names and Chrétien kept switching between “knight” and “guard” for the man who was guarding the river while still calling the knight of the cart “knight”. At times it almost seemed like there were three men there and I could never tell who had the advantage.

Which reminds me, what is with this knight and his spacing out? He was so out of it that he couldn’t hear the guard until he was physically thrown from his saddle? Was he high or something? I mean, I know he was thinking about a woman, but really.

And then there was the whole thing about the cursed bed that couldn’t be slept on. The woman was nice enough to take them in when they were supposedly disgraced from riding in the cart, and how does the knight of the cart repay her? By telling her that her rules are stupid and then sleeps in the bed anyway. And if he was able to chuck the flaming lance away and put out the fires without even getting out of bed, then why was the bed so dangerous in the first place? He seemed to have no trouble with it.

Gah, I just don’t know anymore. Now I’m really looking forward to the discussion because I want to find out what the heck was supposed to be going on in this story. 

The Knight of the Cart...a Disgrace??

In this story, I've come to the realization that Chretien is not particularly fond of dwarves. Why he makes them out to be so horrible, I have no idea, but this brings me to the cart that the dwarf had.

Why is it such a big deal that the knight rode in the cart? The knight got into the cart so that they could learn what happened to their queen. Is that not honorable in itself?! I know the story is kind of vague at times (especially with characters), but why is riding in a cart so horrible? Why should that even matter, especially when he did it for his queen?

Another thing that I want to bring up is the bed that they are supposedly too undeserving to sleep in. What does this bed symbolize, assuming it is of importance? I'm not sure exactly was going on in this part of the story. There was something about fire and a lance, I think. It was a little hard for me to follow.

Overall, I was somewhat confused by this story. Yes, it was interesting, but it was vague and jumped around at times, which made it hard to follow.

A Love/Hate Relationship

After reading, "Cliges," I sorta developed this style of is this a good read, or is this a long, strenuous read.

Within the first couple pages I was instantly hooked, which is a weird feeling, because my relationship with school reads have plummeted since I read Fahrenheit 451 freshmen year of high school.

I loved how committed young Alexander was to be a mature leader for his land, wanting to Serve under King Arthur and his high court.

However, as I continued to read this, we once again come up with the topic of love. I understand that this class is entitled, "Genre Studies: Medieval Romance," but my mind still wants that idea of it being medieval. You know, with the knights and the crusades, slaughter and ravaging every female thing in sight. That's what I would love to see. My mind doesn't grip with the idea that love is apparent in every concept of every human being. In my opinion, some people in this era didn't really give a flying shit (Yes I do understand that shit cannot fly, it's more of an expression.)

The one thing that baffles me the most, is that Brittany suspects Alexander of cheating. Within a blink of an eye, she goes 0-100 real quick, "Oh I love him... Oh I cannot stand the little bastard!!!" As I tell everyone, however, we all know that crazy chick named Brittany.

Overall, fascinating read, too long though, and it never gets to a solid point in my mind.

YOU DO NOT WANT THIS SET OF WHEELS, YA NO-HONOR-HAVIN'-ASS

YOU DO NOT WANT THIS SET OF WHEELS, YA NO-HONOR-HAVIN'-ASS

By: Rory Conklin

            The Knight of the Cart was definitely an interesting read for me personally, mainly because I could not for the life of me follow what was going on!! It seems like my opinion was shared greatly by my fellow classmates that the continuing mentions of nameless characters, just left us all wondering whom was talking and when! left me totally confused and quite frankly frustrated in what truly was going on. Personally I like to visualize in my wonderful imagination what really goes down in this story, but I found myself simply only imagining the vivid scenery described but without the faces of who exactly was talking, or who was the center of attention. Just a bunch of knights and their armor that covers them.

            The most interesting part to me in this story was the significance a cart played in the society to the knights and the dwarfs themselves. "Like out pillories, carts served for murderers and robbers, for those found guilty in trials by combat, for thieves who had stole the property of others or seized it by force  on the roads" (174). The dishonor that goes along with having this cart made me think about how possibly the cart represented the public's judgment on these people that were convicted of such crimes, and that the cart showed their inability to achieve anything on their own, such as walking and why they need a mobile cart. This is what showed their dishonor and that they were not independent enough to make it on their own in the world, but rather take from others. Take a cart to make it easier on themselves rather than walk and earn their stripes. 

            How people thought of one another really had a major impact on the lifestyle back then, much like in Erec and Enide, where you were critically judged and forced to reflect on your own actions, and make the self realization that you must do whatever it takes to prove a point. 

Why is love so intense?!

In the story The Knight of the Cart, I noticed that love is once again NOT in moderation. Like most other stories, love is displayed to an extreme. Lancelot goes through Hell and back to rescue this queen. The characters of all these stories need to not take the concept "I'll do anything for love" so seriously.  Call me crazy but I will not do anything for love. There are plenty of fish out there, I do not need to go through so much and rescue anyone.  

I do think this was a challenging read, following what was happening and who they were talking about was really hard. I was extremely confused the first 5 or so pages. Keeping track of characters was challenging but I guess Lancelot and Sir Gawain were most important of the Knights so they were easily followed. 

I also noticed the use of dwarfs in this story just like in Eric and Enide. They are perceived as bad dwarfs...this remind me of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, the dwarfs in those books/movies are greedy and mean but they also are caring. 

The cart idea was really cool in my opinion, he wasn't like every other night who rides around on a horse. He had a cart hence his name The Knight of the Cart. I'm not sure why he was frowned upon for using the cart but I really liked the idea. It seems like a convenient  way of getting around but then again I'm not a Knight.

Overall, the read was alright. I didn't like being confused in the beginning because it kept me from wanting to go through with it. But I'm tired of all the intense loving and extreme notions of love. 

Am I still dreaming?

Throughout the reading, all I kept thinking of was two quotes from the movie Inception (see images below). 

 

We start the story with a great gathering of King Arthur and his many subjects at a glorious gathering planned by a guy named Kay.  Now for the dream parts… a knight suddenly confronts Arthur gloating how he has a bunch of Arthur’s subjects and ‘nyah, nyah, nyah-nyah, nyah’ he isn’t giving them back, as he leaves he further challenges Arthur implying ‘Your queen too, I want her as well [crude cough]. Send your best man (does not need to be the one from your wedding) with the queen, we fight, and I win and [perverted tongue action and sounds] the queen is now mine and on the off chance your man wins [whimsically spoken], you get your people back. [Thinks for a brief moment] Yea, that’s a great bargain for you, one for many should you win… Bye!’  And he leaves.  So we start at a great gathering… how did we get here again?  Then some unknown knight makes a challenge and one of your best men want to leave… if this is not strange, I am not sure what is.  Continuing on, the Kay-guy, with Queen in tow, ventures after the strange knight.  Arthur and his men pack up and chase after Kay who is chasing after the knight.  Enough with summing up the sequence of events at this point and getting more to why all of this is a dream (based on my two pictures’ quotes):

1)      Kay is not mentioned or included in the story once his horse is spotted for at least another 20 pages.

2)      Sir Gawain gets ahead of everyone else who is also trying to follow Kay and are also dropped from the story without proper explanation for quite some time.

3)      Sir Gawain, on his pursuit comes across a knight who has a over-worked and soon to be dead horse and without inquiring any details or further information (about the knights’ circumstances or Gawain’s own quest or anything), just gives the knight one of his horses.

4)      The horse is dead moments later and Gawain follows the ‘Cart of Shame’ (the human version of a dog’s ‘Cone of Shame’) which the knight chose to travel in and, again, does not inquire into what happened.  I mean the knight’s injured and sweaty, his horse died, your horse that you lent him died, and you’re neither injured nor sweaty… ask some questions about what happened!!

By the point that the knight’s ‘outstanding’ bed catches fire and a blade just barely cuts him, I gave up in trying to understand why all these things were happening and just came to the conclusion, ‘it’s all a dream!  Nothing is real!’  Correct me if I am wrong, but is not the whole story one strange occurrence after another?  If it is all a dream, who is the dreamer?  The narrator saying that they were asked to compose the story for someone they had feelings for, or someone dreaming of the narrator that exists in the story that the narrator is proposing? 

 

Confused?... Feel like Dr. Mario (above) put you on some trippy drug?  Well, you aren't alone!  Yet, at the same time, some of best memories have occurred from moments like in the story, where my friends and I acted and did things in the spur of the moment, making decision after decision with no fore-thought.  Whether the story is a reality of spurs or a dream, I leave up to you to make your own opinion… but I am going with dream!

Many Knights, Dwarfs and Love??

 

        Okay so first thing, why are Dwarfs so bad? In this story and in Erec and Enide they describe Dwarfs as being these horrible, rude and despicable creatures. I always thought dwarfs as being cute and adorable like the one in Snow White. Like Dopy, he was ADORABLE!!

 I just wanted to grab him and hug him ohh soooo much. Sorry about my little rant about how adorable dopy is... like seriously when I was younger all I wanted to do is pinch his cheeks. Kind of like what those weird grandmas do even though you’re a grown adult. Smh I am getting off track….back to the task at hand. Like I was saying Chretien de Troyes loves to use dwarfs I just think they are cute not as grotesque as he portrays them.

 

        Another thing I did not understand was why is it so HORRIBLE to have a cart? I would think it would be I don’t know…. Helpful!!... I know that if I was on a long   journey I would not mind having a cart. I would be able to hold all of my belongings. Even though when I think of it, having a cart would kind of make it easier for someone to rob me. Maybe having a cart is a bad thing because it shows weakness and shows robbers how easy it is for them to rob the cart owner. I have no idea!

 

 

        Another thing I want to rant about is why Chretien de Troyes never gives appropriate names for his characters. He never differentiated between all the knights in his story. The only knights I can keep track of are "the knight of the cart" a.k.a Sir Lancelot and Sir Gawain. Their journeys are so complicated and confusing. It seriously makes my head spin kind of like a twister.

        The sword bridge annoyed me. They talk about how dangerous and treacherous the bridge was and how no one has ever been able to cross it. It’s like this ominous being. It takes Lancelot forever to get to the bridge but then when he gets there in like 2 seconds he crosses the bridge with ease although he got injured but it felt like a major let down after all this work building up how scary and ominous the bridge is.

What I Do for Love

The story of the Knight of the Cart  starts the same way as Erec and Enide. It would start off by introducing the story but then switching up the topics. Eventually it went back into the correct story within a few pages. I thought that telling the story of a different  knight finding the Queen was quite interesting. I personally still wouldn't let my wife be taken into the woods by some random knight for some prisoners but hey the king wanted to save the people.

I still don't like the fact that we don't know who these knights are until the middle of the story. For instance the name of the random knight who stormed into the castle demanding that the queen be sent into the woods was named Meleagant.  Lancelot is the name of the other mysterious knight who has set out to protect the queen and to find her along with Sir Gawain. But it makes it harder to follow along in the story without knowing the names upfront.

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.

Knights, Dwarfs, and Carts - Oh My!

Okay, first thing I noticed about this story: Chretien de Troyes really likes including dwarfs. I'm not sure what's up with that, but there was a dwarf in Erec and Enide, and now there's one here, and they're both equally nasty and gross. Dwarfs are "ill-born and ill-bred" (pg 174) - I wonder if this has anything to do with re-purposing old Germanic/Celtic pagan legends, but that's something of a long shot. It also doesn't help that whenever I think of these dwarves, I think of the Keebler elves.

I didn't choose the the thug life, the thug life chose me.

 I was a little confused as to why a cart would be a bad thing, because a cart, in my head, was just the same thing as a wagon, even though the text explains it, kind of? It is not a wagon? There seems to be some weird hierarchy of wooden transportation devices, which is confusing? Was it because carts were associated with poop and criminals and shame? 

I would appreciate it if Chretien de Troyes would use more proper names - between "the knight", "the knight", "the knight", and "the other knight", I have no idea who anyone is, unless you are "of the cart" or "Sir Gawain". The entire exchange between the knight of the cart and the knight of the ford (?) reminded me a lot of the thumb-biting exchange in the beginning of Romeo and Juliet, which was hilarious. 

I can tell that the knight of the cart is in love with someone, but who? He's distracted for seemingly no reason and just kind of... mopes... while trying to rescue the queen, who is one of the many young ladies Chretien references??? I admit, this story is rather difficult for me to follow because Chretien likes to jump around a lot and reference people indirectly. I'm still not 100% sure what's going on. 

The beginning of the Knight of the Cart reminded me of the beginning of Erec and Enide because of how it set the story up, but sort of switched its focus after only the first couple pages. 

I was expecting to read about the King and Gawain trying to follow Kay and the queen. But instead we read about some other knight searching for the queen. 

This bothered me.  Mainly because we were never even given his name… I wasn’t sure who he was or why he mattered or even why he cared so much to find the queen.  It was confusing.  It also made the dialogue hard to follow since it would just say the knight said this…. And then the other knight said this… then the first knight said this... like what?

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

I’m not sure what the point was of not revealing the characters names, especially the main character, but I’m hoping to find out during the rest of the story. 

The title of the story did come into play a lot because it was how they distinguished the main knight from the others.  He was not just a knight; he was the knight that rode in the cart.  It was crazy how quickly that rumor spread.  Pretty much every person they ran into knew he was the knight that rode in the cart.  It must have been very very important for him to find the queen knowing that the ride in the cart was going to basically ruin his reputation. 

Not to mention he was willing to risk his life by going across the sword bridge.

Everything he did though was for “Love.”  So he must have a great love for the queen then. 

 

I also didn’t get why the knight and Gawain didn’t choose to go the same way.  When they found out that there were two different paths to get there, they immediately decided to each take a different path. Why? I think sticking together would be the better, less scary option.

 

 

 

 

The sword bridge bothered me too though.  I feel like they made such a big deal about it by saying how dangerous it was and how no one has ever crossed it and whatnot.  Then it took him forever (way too long in my opinion) to actually get to the bridge, and once he did, he got across it very quickly and easily.  He may have had some injuries, but I felt like they built up the whole thing for basically nothing. 

But once he got there, I liked how King Bademagu and Meleagant were so different and how the king defended and helped out the knight.  However, since I really don’t know who the knight is, it makes me care less about what happens to him.  Which hurts the story.  Although, I’m sure he’s going to rescue the queen since he’s like super human.  But we shall see.