Le Chevalier à l'épée
Le Chevalier à l'épée ('The Knight with the Sword') is an earlier-thirteenth-century Old French romance, surviving in only one manuscript.[1] It is the earliest romance to focus specifically on the Arthurian knight Sir Gawain and its plot is in some important respects similar to that of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.[2] The poem presents a satirical or cynical take on ideas of chivalry.[3]
Summary
Gauvain rides out from Arthur's court seeking adventure. He meets another knight, who invites him to stay before hurrying home to prepare to receive the guest. On the way he talks to four shepherds who explain that no guest ever returns from the castle.
Well received, Gauvain meets his host's fabulously beautiful daughter. The host insists that Gauvain take his own bed, and that his daughter share it with Gauvain. The room is illuminated by many candles, to ensure that Gauvain cannot fail to be tempted by the daughter's naked beauty; but she warns him that if he tries to have sex with her, he will be killed by a magical sword hanging above the bed. Supposing that the daughter has simply invented the story to stop him raping her, Gauvain tries to have sex with her, but is injured by the sword before he jumps back. Eventually, Gauvain manages to pass the night alive. Impressed, Gauvain's host offers him his daughter in marriage and the two finally have sex.
After a while, Gauvain wishes to take his bride to visit the court of King Arthur. On their way, they meet a knight who seizes the maiden; he gives her the choice to return to Gauvain, but to test her new husband, she opts to stay with her captor. Instead of fighting for his wife, Gauvain leaves, taking her greyhounds with her. The woman makes her captor challenge Gauvain for the greyhounds; the knights give them the choice of who to go with, and unlike the woman they stay with Gauvain. 'There's one thing you can be certain about with a dog', says Gauvain: 'it will never leave the master who has raised it and go to a stranger. But a woman quickly abandons her master ... The greyhounds haven't abandoned me, and so I can prove well -- and I will not be refuted -- that the nature and the love of a dog is worth more than a woman's'.[4] Gauvain then fights the knight and, despite wearing no armour, defeats him. He then returns home with the greyhounds, abandoning his wife.
Editions and translations
- Edward Cooke Armstrong (ed.), 'Le Chevalier à L'Épée: An Old French Poem' (PhD thesis, The Johns Hopkins University, 1897), https://archive.org/details/lechevalierl00arms
- R. C. Johnston and D. D. R. Owen (eds), Two Old French Gauvain Romances (Edinburgh, 1972)
- Ross G. Arthur (trans.), Three Arthurian Romances: Poems from Medieval France. Caradoc, The Knight with the Sword, The Perilous Graveyard (London: Dent, 1996), pp. 85–105
References
- ↑ Three Arthurian Romances: Poems from Medieval France. Caradoc, The Knight with the Sword, The Perilous Graveyard, trans. by Ross G. Arthur (London: Dent, 1996), pp. xii, xiv.
- ↑ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd edn rev. by Norman Davis (Oxford: Clarendon, 1967), p. xviii.
- ↑ Claude Lachet. Réminiscences de Chrétien de Troyes dans "Le Chevalier à l'épée", 1997, Lyon, France. APRIME éditions, 13, p.19-32, 1997.
- ↑ Three Arthurian Romances: Poems from Medieval France. Caradoc, The Knight with the Sword, The Perilous Graveyard, trans. by Ross G. Arthur (London: Dent, 1996), p. 103.