Shaping Saladin: Courtly Men Dressed in Silk

Summary

Chrétien de Troyes's twelfth-century romance Perceval ou le Conte du Graal stages a telling encounter between the naïve and bumbling Perceval and his newfound chivalric mentor, Gornemont de Gort, in which the mentor asks, “Et de vos armes, biax amis, / Me redites que savez faire?” (1391–2), [Tell me again, my friend, what can you do with your arms/armor?]. Perceval responds curiously:

Jes sai bien vestir et retraire, Si com li vallés m'en arma Qui devant moi en desarma Le chevalier qu'avoie mort. (1392–5)

[I can put them on and remove them, just like the squire who armed me after disarming the knight I had slain.]

Perceval's seemingly silly reply appears at first to miss the point of Gornemont's inquiry. Instead of attesting to his skills as a knight, the newly dubbed Perceval can speak only of his skill at dressing and undressing as a knight.

And yet, Perceval's remarks aptly convey the importance of material culture, especially clothing, in the creation of chivalric masculinity within the Arthurian world. As Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman have shown in Cinematic Illuminations (in which they analyze both Chrétien's text and the film version of it, “Perceval Le Gallois,” directed by Eric Rohmer), knights in King Arthur's realm have to perform chivalry constantly in order to maintain it.