Meleagent the Evil-Doer!

I have to love this guy because he is the essence of our modern villain. Shows up to a party, steals a queen, then tries killing the hero in the end? Perfect character trope in the making! You can almost imagine Meleagent’s armor is black and red whereas Lancelot’s is blue and silver. The best Darth Vader ever did was kidnap his own princess daughter and try killing his son (and no, Tarkin was the one to destroy Alderaan so Vader can’t even put that on his resumé). Nevertheless, child abuse is evil, too, but far less classy than party crashing.

Plus, I like pretending his name is secretly an old French pun for "evil-doer." See, the stem "mal," means evil, and "agent" is someone who does something.

Like many hated villains, he has an older, wiser advisor. And like the most evil of those villains, that advisor is his dad. Even he wants Meleagent to chill before he gets his ass handed to his angsty self by our knight in shining armor. Our evil-doer is starting to seem less like Vader and more like whiny Anakin.

George Lucas is the real villain.

So like civilized nobles the hero and villain decide to resolve their conflict by murdering each other! Standard procedure, villain loses his arm gets punched in face. Yet it’s not very gratifying. And that bugged me! He’s evil but we don’t get the full impact of hating him like Lancelot hates him. It's because we don't get a good reason to hate him because we only see him as an actual actor nearing the end. That’s way too late to start a compelling relationship between character and audience.

Still, Meleagent lives up to his villain status in the end by basically yelling, “I’ll get you for this!” Too bad he can't keep his head to deliver said revenge. He would’ve won if he were better armed.

Me laughing at my own dumb puns.

It's Just A Flesh Wound

         Let me start by asking what I hope others in our class have been wondering as well: just how high is Lancelot’s pain tolerance. I mean, come on! Throughout the entire story (and that’s a lot of pages) he is either wounded, or healing from his terrible wounds. He refuses more treatment than I can count, and he is somehow able to participate in battle throughout it all—and that’s not even taking into account the weight of the armor which is necessary for him to wear! 

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAYQjB0&url=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.egu.eu%2Fnetwork%2Fpalaeoblog%2F2013%2F02%2F18%2Fits-just-a-flesh-wound%2F&ei=F9rrVPvhBMWbNsuSg4gK&bvm=bv.86475890,d.eXY&psig=AFQjCNH9mZhx2c8WUfCMxWQrQtk1TbDMzQ&ust=1424829311441607

                I had to add this image because it’s the only thing I could think of while I was reading. It’s funnier because the first time I ever watched Monty Python and The Holy Grail, I found it funny…well…simply because it was funny. After learning and reading so much more Medieval literature, the movie has reached an entirely new level of humor. If you haven’t seen it, I highly suggest you watch it at some point.

            ANYWAY, I couldn’t help but to laugh while reading, “Little worried about injuries to his hands and feet, he would rather maim himself than fall from the bridge and bathe in water from which he would never escape” (208). MAIM himself? For goodness sake! Let’s just take a look for one moment at the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of maim.

“Originally: a lasting wound or bodily injury. Subsequently: an injury to the body which causes the loss of limb, or of the use of it; a mutation, a mutilating wound.”

            Chretien wasn’t talking about a scratch. He wasn’t even talking about a broken bone or something which requires a few stitches. If I’m following the text correctly, Lancelot has possibly lost major portions of his body (or maybe even a few small chunks), but isn’t worried about it. Yeah, I’d probably bow down to him too.

            The best part about the injuries in this story, in fact, is possibly the way in which they barely affect the people who have received them. Toward the end I wasn’t even surprised to hear that Lancelot, while ripping metal bars out of a concrete slab (something I hope somebody tackles in their blog), accidentally severed his finger (and part of another), but didn’t notice until he is in his own bed (226).

The image below accurately depicts my facial expression when I have accidentally given myself a paper cut, or maybe even caught a piece of my hair in the zipper of my jacket. 

http://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fio9.com%2F5912008%2Fthe-ten-most-painful-insect-stings-as-measured-by-science&ei=id7rVILIHeKwsASz0YHQBQ&bvm=bv.86475890,d.cWc&psig=AFQjCNFYDqU1e0ZQLKzLPXynJpYoylgjBA&ust=1424830433002436

            So, overall, I only covered one aspect of the story which caught my attention. But then again, the entire story questions what it means to be a knight, and I think receiving injuries without complaint is a major part of that. 

 Works: 

 http://www.oed.com/

Chretien de Troyes. The Complete Romances of Chretien de Troyes. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1990. Print. 

Love Thy Lover With All Thy Heart and Soul and . . . Wait, What?

            One of the most interesting things about “The Knight of the Cart” is the way it approaches piety and faith. As per the norm, characters interact with each other in a deeply Christian age, but Chrétien de Troyes creates a land where faith means different things to different people. The knights in particular approach faith in a different way.

            Lancelot has a shaky manifestation of his faith in God. He starts off fairly merciful and noble, sparing the life of the knight at the ford: “‘I have always shown mercy to anyone . . . if he seeks mercy in the name of God. I do this in God’s name, as is right’” (Chrétien 181). Mercy is one of the core Christian virtues, so Lancelot seems pretty solid in his faith. Things soon change when he beheads the knight who interrupts his meal. That knight also asks for mercy in God’s name, but Lancelot instead sides with “Generosity” and gives the head to a passing maiden who asks for it.

The “dueling virtues” of Generosity and Pity seem pretty strong as Chrétien portrays them, but that is an argument people (myself included) have been using for ages to justify doing something wrong. While Lancelot doesn’t abandon his Christian nature, he certainly diminishes it after losing his mercy.

            Rather than focusing on God, Lancelot spends most of the story fixated on the queen, who, it becomes evident, is an empowering force. One of the biggest examples is when Lancelot breaks open a barred window: “‘I believe these bars to be useless. Only you may prevent me from reaching you. If you grant me permission, [my lady,] my way is clear’” (Chrétien 226). The instance’s significance comes from its resemblance to water-walking miracle from the Bible. Jesus walks across the Sea of Galilee to meet the disciples. Peter responds much like Lancelot does: “And Peter answered Him and said, ‘Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water’” (Matt. 14.28). Clearly, faith is a force that empowers humans to greatness, but in “The Knight of the Cart,” Love is also a force that empowers greatness. It seems like Lancelot puts his love for the queen before his love for God, which is a no-no in traditional Christianity.

            So, I’ve been wondering, can a lover in courtly romance truly be dedicated to his faith? What does it mean to be faithful? Is love greater than faith? I don’t know, but it doesn’t seem like the infatuation of courtly love and faith coexist fairly well; however, Chrétien de Troyes would probably disagree.

***

Additional Works Cited

The New King James Bible. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1982. Print.

 

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.