Tony Beers (for Monday Feb 27? A bit confused as to where we are now)

The Knight with the Lion

So far this story, for me, is by far the most accessible in that both it's romantic and militaristic interludes are fewer, focusing primarily on Yavain’s travels and the subsequent “spell” he falls into after being captured by the “Lady’s” men in her castle. Just catching sight of her, he cannot be deterred, indulging all his service, attention, and will to her -- he is done for. The battles or duels are less frequent with less detail than the other stories. Chretien appears to favor more description of the inner thoughts and romantic workings of his primary characters, here, rather than flooding us with encounter after encounter -- whether duels or romantic gestures and conquests along the way -- preferring to draw us in to love’s poetic capacity and the fortitude with which matters of the heart can
strike us all so deeply.

Such strength Chretien’s love “malady” brings, that even an honored and respected powerful knight cannot escape its grip. Chretien’s “Erec and Enide” and “Knight of the Cart” do not hold the deep interior emoting the author brings to “Yavain” in this story. All these romantic fantasies, including Marie de Frances’s, have the common thread of the spell of love overwhelming their characters to the point of misbehavior and so often murder (Bisclavret’s wife and lover were certainly rendered insane by this “super drug”); but this one really got to me.

A common element in all three Chretien stories, “The Knight of the Cart”, “Erec and Enide” and “The Knight with the Lion”, that does persist, is, I suppose a necessary one to dramatize and highlight how honorable and worthy these knights were (some of them, not all); the evil “Dwarf” ingredient in Erec and Enide and again in Knight of the Court, appears in The Knight with the Lion as Kay, the seneshal, with his sharp tongue that stirs the eventual challenge accepted by Yavain, beginning his journey away from King Arthur’s court.

One question I have, though, is while the love emoted by Yavain and subsequently his Lady, appears plausible (for me anyway), her granting him leave to go with Gawain to Arthur's Court FOR A YEAR, just after marrying, doesn't seem a plausible move on her part – nor wood I expect Yavain to overstay the year contract , given the strength of his feelings. I did like, and could relate to, the insanity Yavain went through after his beloved rejected him completely when the year had passed without a word from him. That he goes mad and naked into the forest is both humorous and painful to read, depending on ones intimate relationship with a rejection and heartbreak.