2 - Knights of Fortune

Summary

L’en ne doit Crestiën de Troies,

Ce m’est vis, par raison blasmer,

Qui sot dou roi Artu conter,

De sa cort et de sa mesniee

Qui tant fu loee et prisiee,

Et qui les fez des autres conte

Et oncques de lui (sc. Gauvain) ne tint conte.

Trop ert preudon a oblïer.

(I believe it fair to criticise Chétien de Troyes who, although he was adept at telling stories of King Arthur and his much-vaunted company of knights – and indeed told stories about a host of such knights – never told one about him [sc. Gauvain]. But that knight is too valorous to be forgotten.)

In the following discussion the frequent invocations of Fortuna's talismans are construed as the narratorial attempt to forge a moral link between the protagonist and his legendary father, Gawein, through the technique of associating both knights with the (purportedly) supernatural tokens of the goddess. The evocations of the (upper-case) ‘Saelde’ (Lady Fortune as a personified deity) and of lower-case ‘saelde’ (good fortune in a general sense) are largely instrumental to this purpose of underscoring the father-son bond. It will be shown that relatively less interest is shown in depicting Wigalois as acting under the tutelage of the goddess of the Ancients than there is in establishing symbolically a parity of chivalric standard between father and son – this ensuring Wigalois more success in the knightly arena than the dubious boons of the traditionally ‘two-faced’ Lady Fortune.

Fortuna's Emissary

Whilst Le Bel Inconnu begins in mediis rebus with an account of Guinglain's youth (retrospectively augmented by flashbacks to Gauvain's biography), Wirnt von Gravenberg (possibly influenced by Wolfram's methods in the story of Gahmuret and Herzeloyde), prefaces his story with a short narrative concerning his hero's parents. This Vorgeschichte, albeit brief and with few organic links to the main story, serves to establish the importance of the figure of Gawein from the outset. Although aspects of the narrative do not show Gawein in an exemplary light (the motif of Iwein's forsaking of Laudine supplies an all-too close analogy to Gawein's leaving of Florie), Wirnt's frequent apologias for his deuteragonist and his attempted ‘bowdlerisations’ of morally dubious features of his conduct indicate the desire to mount a stout defence of the hero's father.