Medieval Romances
Glossary
ChivalryA complex and loaded term that originally denoted expert horsemanship (chevalerie). It later came to be applied to the social class to which expert cavalry warriors belonged, then to their codes of ideal behavior. Sometimes presented as quasi-religion, with its own commandments and distinctive virtue. It is essentially an upper-class phenomenon.
Dux bellorumTranslated literally from the Latin, war leader. Title given to a military commander; applied to Arthur in the earliest documentation of Arthurian “history.”
FeudalismA complicated concept, anachronistic and falsifying according to some current scholars, it is a term that refers to a system of government, social organization, economics, religious values, and so on, based on the relationship between lords and vassals. Loyalty was a virtue of paramount importance in its value system. If it existed, it permeated western European culture from the ninth to the mid-sixteenth centuries.
KnightA professional mounted warrior admitted to the ranks of that calling by a quasi-religious ritual called dubbing that arose in the early twelfth century. From that time onward, a knight (chevalier in French) was trained in the arts of warfare and courtly behavior (i.e., chivalry) from boyhood. Many such squires so trained never became knights; that distinction became increasingly rare and costly. Scholars have estimated that all of England had only 1,500 knights in the fifteenth century of Thomas Malory. In much of medieval literature, the ideal of knighthood was lofty and laden with ambiguities.
Middle AgesA term conventionally applied to the period A.D. 500-1500. Current scholars tend to extend it back to the symbolic date of 410, when Rome was sacked by the Visigoths.
Order of the GarterA knightly order established by King Edward III in the mid-fourteenth century and remaining thereafter the highest ranking distinction in England and the subsequent British Empire. Its motto, honi soit qui mal y pense (shame on him who thinks ill of shame), has been interpreted as a statement that chivalric gallantry can transform even traditionally base behavior. One commentator on the manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seems to have thought of this motto as the key to the poem’s message.
QuestAn adventure in which a knight typically sets out to find an object or person of often symbolic significance, such as a lady in distress, a wrong to right, or the Holy Grail. Modern literary critics often see the real object of such medieval quests as being actually the identity of the youthful knight-errant.
Quest for the Holy GrailA quest undertaken in Arthurian literature traditionally by several knights, especially Perceval. Its object is a mysterious and mystical cup or vessel, generally understood to be the cup blessed by Jesus at the Last Supper. Galahad is the exceptionally pure and idealistic son of Lancelot who finally succeeds in this most demanding of quests. The successful Grail Knight is always transformed, lifted to a superhuman state of awareness. The Grail itself has been varyingly interpreted by modern scholars as either primitive Christian or pagan Celtic in origin.
RomanceA genre of literature begun in France in the mid-twelfth century; originally long narrative poems in a Romance language dealing with love. Romances were eventually written in prose form.