I am fascinated by the tension in Parzival between knighthood and Love. While knights are bound to seek adventure and gain fame in order to honor and win the love of a lady, they are also at peril when they forget themselves and their higher ideals for this. It is taken for granted and expected that knights are “highly motivated” by their maidens and ladies. However, when it come to the Gral this natural behavior becomes complicated.
King Anfortas (the Fisher king) had been trusted to be the Protector of the Gral and its company. However, he was wounded with a poisonous spear for committing the folly of riding out to seek adventures in the name of love. In this respect von Eschenbach takes care of making it evident by narrating that his battle-cry was “Amor!” (244). In his court no one approved of his leaving on this quest. Consequently, the King who forgot his duty lost what is so precious to knights, his manliness.
It's interesting how WvE has an entire passage belaboring the point that it is love of women that drives Knights to their deaths ( 295-296). AS if, without the love of a women Gawain would never feel the need to set out on adventure Parzival would not feel "pangs" for his Queen... perhaps what he's really saying (for we see quite clearly that they would and do have deathly dangerous adventures without the help/ motivator of women) is that if love of woman didn't exist they'd never had to feel bad about it.
ReplyDeleteHi Natalia. Great topic. I don't have anything significant to add, other than I'm tempted to imagine--and possibly write--what your "finished" post might look like. You've pulled a Chretien on us, and I for one don't like this feeling of suspension....
ReplyDeleteI was interested in that passage also, Hannah. In Parzival, women are a threat to men- they threaten to destroy men's chastity (the prime virtue for knights in Parzival), and they threaten to physically harm knights by encouraging them to do battle for their honor or love. I was especially struck by Von Eschenbauch's portrayal of women as morally or mortally threatening because it is so opposed to the portrayal of women in fin amour poetry or the courtly love tradition. In those discourses, women are the means by which men achieve a moral worldview--think Beatrice in The Divine Comedy. Women elevate and better men. Of course, that, too, is a problematic portrayal of women insofar as it denies women their subjectivity and demands that they exist merely for men's betterment. However, I think one could certainly make a similar argument for the Parzival tale. Women in Parzival are portrayed as corrupting agents; they act and it ruins men. However, aren't women in the knightly tradition merely conduits for male desire? Do the men fight over women and imperil their lives because they genuinely love the women? Or is each woman merely an excuse to behave violently and act as they wish while using the love of a woman as a scapegoat for their often perilous and immoral actions? I tend to think the latter. Even in instances when women like Guinevere seems to act as free agents they can still be read as mirrors of male desire. For instance in the Lancelot tale (The Knight of the Cart), Guinevere appears to act as a free agent by refusing Lancelot after he's risked his life to save her. However, her withholding can also be viewed as her fulfillment of his desire--she is acting out the male fantasy of playing "hard to get," and exciting and satisfying his desire for her further. I wouldn't claim that this means Guinevre has no agency in that story, just they her agency is never fully opposed to her male society. When it comes to female agency and subjectivity in the stories we've read thus far, it seems best to remember what men get from women if they act a certain way (ie. the satisfaction of their fantasies or desires), while still attuning to ways in which women might be claiming some amount of subjectivity or agency within male-dominated systems.
ReplyDelete