#chivalric literature

[we-are-knight]

A recent acquisition...

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i don't have the words to articulate it at this moment but there's something about the way that people have specific expectations for "authenticity" and will dismiss anything that falls outside them as a mangled, anglicised version of the thing when actually that is the older and more traditional form of something, it just doesn't match their expectations. obviously in my personal experiences i'm mostly talking about medieval literature here especially medieval irish literature

sometimes this is as simple as spelling – i've had people argue that the name "finn" is anglicised and it should always be "fionn" to be Really Irish, but "finn" is an older spelling, glide vowels are later, if you wanna go real far back it'll be "find" (nd in place of nn is an older spelling pattern). or they'll hear someone say "ogam" and assume they're mispronouncing "ogham" due to lack of knowledge of irish and not consider the fact that medievalists tend to use the older form of the word. or they'll Well Actually you about "correct" terminology which wasn't standardised (and/or invented) until the 20th century

a lot of this is defensive and the result of seeing a lot of people ACTUALLY get this stuff wrong and have no respect for the language. in that regard i understand it, although it becomes very tedious after a while, particularly when people sanctimoniously declare something "inauthentic", "fake", or "anglicised" without doing enough research to realise it's not trying to be modern irish and is in fact correct for older forms of the language

more often however this search for the projected "authenticity" is ideological and has much larger flaws and more problematic implications. "this can't be the real story because it's christian" well... that's the oldest version of the story that exists and it postdates christianity in ireland by about nine hundred years, so... maybe question why you're assuming the only "real" version of irish stories can't be a christian one? this is especially true when it comes to fíanaigecht material tbh, but in general there seems to a widespread misapprehension about ireland's historical relationship with christianity (i have seen people arguing that christianity in ireland is the result of english colonialism which took their "true" faith from them... bro. they were christian before the "english" existed. half the conversion efforts went the other way. please read some early medieval history thank you)

however i also saw someone saying this about arthurian literature lately which REALLY baffled me. "we'll never have the Real arthurian stories only the christianised versions" and it was in the context of chivalric romance. buddy you are mourning something that does not exist. this "authentic" story you're looking for isn't there. that twelfth century story you're dismissing as a christian bastardisation is as "real" a part of this tradition as you're going to get

[gawrkin]

That True Love thing...

Is it me or is every knight in this setting is trying to be what Lancelot is. And that the reason Lancelot is so powerful is because he is using the "Power of Love".

But most of the time, no-one can walk the walk. (Points to Claudas)

Or just not doing it right (Points at Pelleas)

TODAY IN : hitting characters from medieval literature with the dilfication beam

For your consideration : King Claudas de la Terre Déserte from Vulgate Cycle (1250)

First things first, and to get it out of the way, the label 'dilf' transcends the paradigms of sexual attraction, it is an 'aura' a 'spirit' a certain je-ne-sais-quoi.

Sure, Claudas does steal Lancelot's inheritance. But he is totally justified actually. He refuses to acknowledge King Aramount's sovereignty, who reigns over the neighbouring kingdoms, and Aramount turns to Uther for assistance. Uther actually grew up in exile in Claudas's lands but being the two-faced traitor he is, lays waste to Claudas's land and destroys all his castles anyway. When both Aramount and Uther have died and brothers Ban and Bohort take over as rulers in Brittany, Claudas seizes his land back and then goes after Brittany as revenge because Ban and Bohort are close allies of Arthur. It's not great ethics-wise but it is the sixth century or whatever.

Claudas does say that he doesn't want to harm Ban or Bohort or their family as they 'have done him no harm' and offers that if they swear fealty to him, he will retreat. Ethical king.

Womaniser but in a sort of jaded yet charming way ? Has an affair with one of his barons' wife who accidentally lets slip one night after sex that her husband is hiding Bohort's young heirs. Honestly it turns out fine, Claudas kidnaps the children and has them imprisoned but its a very luxurious imprisonment to be fair and Pharien (the baron) does seem to be a bit of a cunt (he had been imprisoning his wife and upon learning that this has not stopped him from getting cucked, flies into a rage - he honestly seems more bothered by the cucking than by the imprisonment of the children the queen begged him to protect with his life )

Dark hair and eyes and a ginger beard and most importantly: good teeth and a sexy body (this is canon. this is written, i,n the txt)

Claudas decided to swear off true love because he 'wishes to live a long life'. He was once madly in love and undertook many chivalric exploits for the sake of a lady, but we learn nothing more. He bitterly remarks to his friends that a man in love will push himself to do ever more extraordinary feats until he is killed. what happened and can I (hypothetical reader of this text post) redeem him ? does claudas, in this way, generate an affective response from the reader ?

has a child if that matters

[gawrkin]

[...]

[,,,]

A post for our lord Gawain.

Despite the anti-Gawain sentiment that runs throughout the French stories, I felt this was a very powerful and poignant moment for both Gawain and Arthuriana in general as a whole. Gawain can't find adventure in the Grail Quest like he normally does in other romances, which emphasizes why the Grail quest is a special undertaking.

This isn't your bog standard Action-adventure story, where you travel to a far away land to defeat a bad guy while encountering numerous sidequests and episodes along the way, getting into epic fights with Random Knights and Monsters.

Grail Quest is essentially a search for Enlightment, a journey to learn and realize the Christian Mysteries and develop ones' spiritual well-being.

Gawain doesn't even get a chance to do something meaningful (other than killing his own teammates) on the Quest, as he lacks even the minimum requirements to percieve, let alone resolve, the adventures of the Grail Quest, because he's tainted with Mortal Sin, which Gawain - being fundamentally an Knightly Action Hero - does not recognize as a major obstacle on this journey.

Which leaves us with this wistful scene of poor Gawain hopelessly looking around for something to do or find anything that would lead them to their objective.

[eregar]

mentally putting heinrix in a tunic, hose, mantle, and codpiece outfit to go along with his 16th century masculinity ideals

[martianbugsbunny]

why is Sir Kei such a bitch lmao

[rosearamis]

'My sister had been wounded by a party of Saracens who had come upon her without a helmet, so she had been obliged to cut her long tresses if her dangerous head-wound was to heal. Now recently she happened to be travelling through these woods, her head shorn as I have said. / On her way she came to a shady spring, and, being weary and dejected, she dismounted, took off her helmet and fell asleep in the tender grass. (I don't believe there can be a story more beautiful than this one.) Who should come upon her but the Spanish Princess Fiordispina, who had come into the woods to hunt. / When she saw my sister clad in armour all except her face, and with a sword in place of a distaff, she imagined she was looking at a knight. After gazing awhile at her face and her manly build she felt her heart stolen. So she invited my sister to join the hunt, and ended by eluding her retinue and disappearing with her among the shady boughs. / 'Once she had brought her into a solitary place where she felt unlikely to be disturbed, little by little, by words and gestures she revealed that she was love-struck. With burning desire and fiery sighs she showed how consumed she was with desire. She paled and blushed and, summoning her courage, gave her a kiss.

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, English prose translation by Guido Waldman

[henry-fox-biggest-stan]

Lesbianism in my chivalric romance??? More likely that you think.

I’m researching this author for school, her name is Beatriz Bernal, she was Spanish and lived during the renaissance, and wrote a book of around 900 pages (pdf in Spanish here, if you’re curious) called Cristalián de España (Cristalián of Spain) which was pretty cool cause not only is it considered the first book by a female author written in Spanish with the purpose of getting published, but it also includes many cool female characters. In every chapter there’s at least 1, no matter how irrelevant. There’s also many women who never take a husband. They are described as being so wise that they chose not to marry.

The mc is a guy named Cristalián, who goes in search of adventures. In chapter 30, he finds a knight who claims to be trying to rescue the lady Penamundi, who Cristalián is actually in love with, so they fight, and this knight kicks his ass at first but since Cristalián is “the best knight in the world” (damn) he wins, and when he takes this knight’s helmet off, surprise! It’s a woman!

Her name is Minerva, she’s a pagan and pretending to be a knight to live adventures. That’s her main motivation. She only used the excuse of rescuing Penamundi cause like, all knights fight for women, no?

When Cristalián finds out she’s a woman he’s like shocked and feels bad for fighting her and takes her somewhere to get her wounds healed. They become buddies after, and go on adventures together, and she gives him amazing and wise advice and he genuinely listens to her, they both kick ass, Minerva acts as a wingman for Cristalián with the princess Penamundi, and they are 100% platonic friends. Also, during a moment, a lady called Duante mistook Minerva for an actual (male) knight and confessed her love for her. Since Minerva can’t say she’s a woman cause she doesn’t want to get caught, she just says “oh yeah me too”, takes her hands, and kisses her. Like??? After Duante realizes this cute knight is actually a woman, they become close friends.

[themousefromfantasyland]

Proposition: Chivalric romances and fairy tales are set in the same universe, but told by different perspectives.

Chivalric romances, especially the Arthurian ones, focus sorely on knightly princes fighting epic battles, going into quests and rescuing damsels in peril.

Fairy Tales in general focus more on the exploits of those damsels in peril, along with some working class representation in the figure of lucky tricksters and helpless children.

In other words, Chivalric romances are mainly about Prince Charmings, while fairy tales are about everyone else.

The reason I started thinking about this was because of how much these types of stories share similar settings:

Humans, fae-like beings, dwarfs, cannibal giants (Ogres), and dragons being the main races.

Enchantress like Morgan Le Fay and the Lady of the Lake being suspiciously similar to the Fairies from the french fairy tales.

Christian entities being super present and somehow living relatively peacefully with other magical brings.

Heck, the oldest recorded version of the Sleeping Beauty type of story was in Perceforest, a Chivalric romance mea t to be a prequel to the King Arthur mythos.

Remember Perrault's version of the story, where after waking the Sleeping Beauty the prince has to go to war, leaving her and their children with his ogre mother?

Totally would be the type of story that chivalric romances would explore in bloody details

@ariel-seagull-wings @princesssarisa @adarkrainbow

[we-are-knight]

Obtained the Lais of Mary of France, and I gotta say, she's absolutely girly-pop. ✨

[brb-on-a-quest]

Cervantes apparently literally took every trope there was for books of chivalry (even down to the inconsistencies and typos and the vagueness??) and and subverted it in Don Quixote.

And then when someone wrote the sequel Cervantes took that point by point to subvert that too because he was salty about it??? Like the man is a methodical as much as he is a madlad.

[reqwiem]

remember when in the orlando furioso (the frenzy of orlando) ariosto said that everything lost on earth is to be found on The Moon, and not just lost objects but

fame, prayers, vows, lovers' tears and sighs, time wasted gambling, idleness, projects never put into practice, and also puddles of spilled soups, broken bottles, flowers that stink and so on...

only madness is not found on the moon, because it is all on earth.

i am very fond of this passage

[finnlongman]

I have a massively disappointing lack of haribo or other sweets in my house right now, and I was going to go to the supermarket on my way home, except I couldn't because I accidentally borrowed five chivalric romances from the library when I didn't plan to get any, and thus had no room in my bag for snacks.

This feels... on brand. However, the lack of snacks is terrible.

[howifeltabouthim]

Phineas had been ready to proclaim himself prepared for any devotion in the service of Lady Laura. Indeed, he had begun to reply with criminal tenderness to the indiscreet avowal which Lady Laura had made to him.

Anthony Trollope, from Phineas Finn

[martianbugsbunny]

if nobody else is going to ship the Chrétien de Troyes version of Sir Gawain and Sir Kei then I will

[rosearamis]

Towards daybreak she did close her eyes a little, and dreamed she saw Ruggiero who said to her: 'Why do you fret yourself and believe what is not true? You will see the rivers flow upstream before ever I turn my thoughts to any but you. If I did not love you, I should never love my heart, nor the pupils of my eyes.'

Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, English prose translation by Guido Waldman