Proposal

“Yvain and Lancelot: The Complications of Knighthood”

My essay will be dealing with the romantic relationship between Yvain and Laudine within Chrétien’s The Knight with the Lionand the relationship between Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory’s work. I want to compare the two knights and specifically locate points in which their acts of courtly love differ and agree with each other. I also want to look at the ways in which they both seek chivalric status in the stories. By this I mean specifically looking at the ways in which the two knights attempt to boost their status when they are away from their love interest. We’ve seen that the times in which the knights are increasing their status they are sometimes compensating for something that is missing. For Yvain, we see that he is compensating for his time away from tournaments and when he resumes competing he fails his promises to Laudine. With Lancelot, we see that he competes constantly yet he hides his identity and often fails Guinevere by competing for other women. With this scenario we see a bit of an inverse, and it seems that the two knights are working in different ways to redeem not only their lives as knights but also their love lives. Finally, I want to look at the influence of Laudine and Guinevere and specifically look at the ways in which they influence and change their romantic interests. Ever since the beginning of the course I’ve been very interested in the idea of courtly love and how it acts and influences within the stories we’ve read. I’m also interested in the connection between the codes of chivalry and these two authors stories of love. By comparing these two knights I believe I could find interesting parallels and differences.

Some of the sources I’ve looked into so far deal with topics that I think would enhance this comparison. Harry E. Cole’s essay Forgiveness as Structure: The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guineveredeals with the idea of forgiveness within Malory’s story and how it shows that Malory still finds a way to show that Lancelot is still a redeemable character despite his sinful actions. Despite Malory’s view, Cole still sees Lancelot’s relationship in a negative way. Yvain is driven to madness when he is denied by Laudine, but he finds a way back to an acceptable and chivalric status once he is forgiven by Laudine. For Lancelot, we see that he cannot find a way back to chivalric status due to the fact that he is sleeping with King Arthurs wife. Both of these knights seem to be seeking the same goal of being chivalric moral knights and good courtly lovers. The difference between them is the ways in which they attempt to succeed and attain that goal. So far the topic doesn’t have a formed thesis, but I want to boil it down to something that deals with chivalric code and courtly love within these two stories.

Any comments on how I could boil this down a bit more or ideas on the topic would really help. Thanks.

 

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