LLT 180 Lecture We finished Erec last time. We're gonna pick up with Yvain today. I haven't read

Transcription

1 LLT 180 Lecture 19 1 We finished Erec last time. We're gonna pick up with Yvain today. I haven't read this very often, but Dr. Polly, who teaches French in my department, is a medievalist. When he's teaching Chrétien, he says this is his favorite work. And so I have taught it on and off. We've just amazingly stayed pretty much on syllabus. Usually I get way, way off, and so I think we have time to squeeze this in and still do the films I'd like to do. It has a subtitle, The Knight with the Lion, and so we know at some point we're gonna have a lion in here. It's kind of interesting to me, if you read the material for today -- sometimes when you read stuff several times little patterns emerge. And we said that Chrétien evidently had to write romances of about 7,000 lines. What's interesting is both Erec and Yvain start off with -- not by intent, but how things work out is that our knightly hero ends up finding a wife. And I think back in Erec, it was over like on page 28, and it even said "here ends the first part." And so if you count pages at this time, really it's almost exactly 28 pages into it again that finally he gets married with Laudine. So again, we're setting off, we're not really clear exactly where we're going, but this is going to be the other side of the coin to Erec. So Erec's problem was what? He met his wife and said, "Oooh, I like this. I no longer do knightly stuff. I stay home in bed," and he loses all his fame and reputation. And it's perfectly legitimate, evidently, according to Chrétien, that if after a while you don't measure up, for your wife to diss you -- say, you know, "You're worthless, you know. You're not ripped like you used to be. You lost all your hair. I'm getting rid of you." And that's legitimate, you know. It scares me.

2 LLT 180 Lecture 19 2 But we're gonna learn from that -- the court is gonna learn from that. And so when we get to that point, Gawain and the other people are gonna want him to go with them. And so it's gonna be the other side of the coin: he's gonna diss his wife and remain a great knight but lose love. And so he's gonna have to come back. So as we pick this up, some of this stuff we beat up and we beat up and we beat up. As we start Yvain it shows that White at least got a lot of his stuff right. And so a lot of this stuff of tradition, from tradition, that we wonder is correct or not or is this stuff White invented, when's this happening? Pentecost. Again. So right at the beginning, Arthur is holding court, a really splendid regal court, at Pentecost and all the knights are gathering. We talked about standard introductions in romances. And one of the problems in not knowing more about Chrétien, usually in standard introductions not only do they tell you what they're going to do, but they also tell you something about themselves. And whether Chrétien was writing for a set audience, and so he felt he didn't have to say that again, people knew it was by Chrétien and who he was, in his introductions he doesn't really speak much about himself or his education or where he's from. He really just tells you what the story is about. One of the things I always find interesting is back to White's question of how much have we changed, when the answer is "not very much." And you read some of these things and you think, "Gosh, this is being written in the middle of the twelfth century. And how would it be written any different today?" And so we read on that very first page, on page 281, must be about line 18.

3 LLT 180 Lecture 19 3 Nowadays [so nowadays in 1170], however, it has few adherents, since almost all have abandoned love, leaving it much debased. For those who used to love had a reputation for courtliness, integrity [you know, this sounds like me], generosity and honour [that is me]. But now, you know, guys are just shallow, you know. You know, they just say they love but they don't have all these great qualities like Chrétien's talking about. And then we always have this wisdom thing, about line 36, "For, in my view, a courtly man who is dead is still worth more than a living churl." Certainly one of the things you can do when you read this stuff, you can add to your vocabulary or get callouses on your thumb by leafing through a dictionary. A churl -- and he later describes this kind of monster thing as a churl. And so if you based what you thought churl meant on that description, you'd be way off. Actually, churl is just the lowest freeman in England at this time. And so we use that -- if you ever use that word, and I think probably I've been guilty of using it once or twice -- it just means somebody without manners, some real base, mannerless person. So the purpose here is going to be talking about love. Now, not in the grand sense that we're gonna get in Tristan and Isolde, but the focus is love. We're back at Arthur's court which, of course, always serves as the framework for the action in this material. And Arthur gets up and leaves, and we're gonna see kind of a prominent secondary character who tells a story that sets the action in progress, and this is gonna turn out to be Yvain, our hero's first cousin. However you want to pronounce that, Calogrenant. Dr. Polly cringes when we anglicize some of this stuff. He says, "Who's

4 LLT 180 Lecture 19 4 that?" because we're not pronouncing it properly in French. And he's gonna tell a story, and this is gonna be a story he's never told that's pretty old. It's seven years old. A lot of numbers thrown in here by form, and so it's a seven-yearold story and he hasn't told it because it brings him dishonor or at least shame. The queen, who's in there with kingy -- he's sleeping but she's not -- is also listening to this discussion that's going on. And we see kind of an expansion in this work about Kay being an idiot. We see that a lot in here. So several times Kay is just like slandering everybody, and just being really, really obnoxious. Queen -- anyway, the queen asks him to -- comes out, asks him to finish telling the story, and so we're gonna get the story about his adventure which is gonna set Yvain in motion to remove the family shame. To understand stories of this nature, you need to not only lend your ears but your heart. And so when we're talking about love stuff, your heart has to be receptive. If you don't listen with your heart, all you do is hear the story. You really don't experience the story the way you really should. Now, one of the things that happens in all these stories is, again, we've talked about the role of magic and how people readily accept the fantastic or unusual throughout the story. And so seven years ago, he was traveling through this dense forest, comes to a fortress, meets a vavasour. We always have these beautiful maidens; it's a necessity. She de-armors him, if that's a word, and dresses him in some Armani made mantle over here, a cloak -- on page 284. He leaves the next day and this is when he encounters this churl who looks like the

5 LLT 180 Lecture 19 5 nightmare of a blind date. On the bottom of you know, sometime on a test I'm gonna have people draw these people, just as a laugh. I'll even write the description on the test. Just to have you draw it, to see what it looked like. Some of you will draw stick people. But it says here -- and you try to imagine this and your mind just goes dead: 294, "On approaching this fellow I saw he had a head larger than that of a pack-horse or any other beast. His hair was tufted and his forehead, which was more than two spans wide.@ How wide's a span? Yeah, there are two different definitions of span. Actually, yeah. That is the traditional definition of a span, supposed to be about 9 inches. But actually, there's also another use of the word span, which is actually supposed to be from the tip of your middle fingers to your side, to your sexy sides. That's what I thought when I read that, "Oh, I'll have to use that in class, you know. It's to your side. What a nice side." Anyway, "more than two spans wide, was bald." How ugly. So anyway, 18 inches wide forehead. Is that how wide it was, 18 inches wide? Wow. "He had great mossy ears [What is that? What is a mossy ear? I don't even know what that is.] like an elephant's, heavy eyebrows, and a flat face with owl's eyes [this guy's charming] and a nose like a cat's, a mouth split like a wolf's..." Okay, that's enough. How tall is he? Seventeen feet tall. Man, definitely a Division I caliber player here. Seventeen feet tall. The churl is just this kind of force of nature and he asks Calogrenant what he's

6 LLT 180 Lecture 19 6 looking for. And what is he looking for? He's kind of looking for the ultimate quest. And knights go questing to prove themselves, to prove they're worthy of being a knight, worthy of being their rating. Kind of interesting here, like when among the geese she didn't understand the meaning of the word "war." Here the churl doesn't understand the meaning of "quest" or "adventure." Like, you know, what's that? In other words, he just lives his life and this idea is just some term he doesn't understand. But he says, "If you want one, I'll tell you what to do. Go over to this spring" -- and many, many times during the course of this, they're gonna talk about the custom. In other words, this whole thing with the magic spring, its custom has been part of the culture for over 60 years. That there's this magic spring and you go pour water on it if you want the great challenge, and it'll be a great tempest, and after that -- you know, this tempest they describe on the bottom of page 286, it says here, "But I'm afraid I poured too much, because then I saw the heavens in such a commotion that from more than fourteen directions [fourteen directions, what kind of weird number is that?] the lightning flashed in my eyes and the clouds hurled down snow, rain and hail pell-mell." Pell-mell. And so this is really, really, really a bad storm. The storm stops and again, this whole magical world that he's in. And instead of freaking out, thinking his brain's getting crispy here or something, it's just accepted. And after the storm, all of a sudden this huge pine tree is covered by birds and each bird sings a different song but yet they seem to sing in harmony. So kind of the marvels of nature in a negative and positive sense.

7 LLT 180 Lecture 19 7 Then this super hostile knight, whose name we don't find out for, what, maybe 15 pages? We don't find out until the lady, whose name we also don't find out -- we don't know anybody's name by Yvain and Calogrenant. None of the inset characters, the carriers in this incest story, do we learn their names until, you know, 25 pages into the work or almost a third of the way into the work. Anyway, he comes, he challenges Calogrenant, mad because he's flattened his woods. We have a battle and our Arthur knight, our knight from Arthur's court, Yvain's cousin, loses quickly. The knight takes his horse. He's ashamed. And how humiliated is he? Not only does he lose his horse, but he doesn't have any way to get back to his host castle. So he takes off his armor and leaves all his armor there, too, you know. So really going back kind of utterly defeated to his host castle. And that's the end of the story. So that's the end of the story. Yvain -- Calogrenant is Yvain's first cousin and Yvain is very upset -- and we're back to our standard word, revenge. He wants to revenge the family's shame, the family's dishonor that has been brought upon them. Kay is rude again. You know, you really see clearly in this work the role that is assigned Kay progressively, especially through what Chrétien writes. Arthur awakens, the queen tells the whole story, and Arthur himself intends to go. And so this really upsets Yvain. He can't say so because he wants to be the one to avenge his family honor. And he knows if Arthur goes, Kay will say, "Oh, oh, stepbrother. Let me go first," and he won't get a chance. Because it'll be Kay, and then it'll be Gawain, and so somebody else will eliminate his ability to remove the smirch from his family dishonor.

8 LLT 180 Lecture 19 8 So he sneaks away. He tells nobody and he steals away from court, on 290, with the intent again of avenging, of revenge, they tell us on 291, and he hurries in that direction. He goes to the same -- he has the same host. Again, we have the same maiden being there. And again, what we're noticing -- Reese? [Inaudible student response.] I don't know. There's a note on that. Did you check to see if that noted the whole thing or just noted the last word? I don't read all the notes that carefully or put 'em to mind unless they say something really important [Inaudible student response.] A lot of stuff in the back. You know, don't forget there are notes in the back. Other questions? I'll try to read the notes better myself. So Yvain steals away from court. One of the things that we're noticing here -- and this is gonna be very important. I don't know. Students always confuse these two characters' names and I totally understand it. That's gonna be the lady's name. And the damsel, her kind of lady-in-waiting, her advisor, whose name Lanetta or Nette. And so one of the things we're gonna notice here again is that people just aren't pretty, but intelligence and other attributes are very important, too. And so I think, you know, you get feminist readings of these works and criticism written. And I think, you know -- I mean, there's obviously things where women are chattel in here. They're given away and things. But there are other quality things here which are fairly important. The maiden, we see in 780, "... in her he saw a hundred times more

9 LLT 180 Lecture 19 9 intelligence and beauty than Calogrenant had described." We've talked before about how much being on the right side of God in this stuff is important. And he crosses himself all these times before -- after the storm, before the knight arrived, with rage. And so same knight comes again. They have this huge battle, lance, sword. And again, getting back to the basic meaning of the word "chivalry" -- you know, coming from the French word for being on horseback. They make the point here that during this entire battle they are on horseback. We kind of laughed through Erec. The killings of the giants are the last things that stuck in my brain -- well, shouldn't be talking about brains here -- but that he loves blood and brains flying all over. And so you almost get ready, when somebody's gonna die -- it's like, "What body parts are gonna go flying?" Probably brains are a good bet. And, sure enough, here on the bottom of 292, Yvain shatters the helmet of the knight, who was stunned and dazed; and never having suffered such a savage blow before, he was terrified. For under the coif it had split his head down to the brain [so it was just down to the brain], so that the links of the shining hauberk were stained with brains and blood, which caused him such intense pain that his heart almost failed him. But this guy is tough. He's tough. And to make the story work, he can still ride back to his castle. So he rides back to his castle and Yvain is hard after him. And they use the word here, "great hall." What I envision here -- and, you know, if you have the idea -- you know, if

10 LLT 180 Lecture we look from overhead, if we have these gates on castles -- in other words, that this is the castle wall. As you're going through this gate, there's an exterior lattice -- you know, like wrought iron, heavy metal thing that comes down, and then there'd be an interior one, too. And it's like when this guy rides in, that if you know right where to ride you're safe. But if you ride in the wrong place, you trigger something and this comes crashing down. And this is what cuts Yvain's horse in half, okay? But then the second one also falls down, and so this is why Yvain ends up being trapped. But there's some little magic door here that our damsel -- you know, who's anything but a damsel. She's smart, she's shrewd, she's all kinds of things. And you really wonder where in tradition the idea of, you know, how many blondes does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Thirty-five, you know. I don't know. Where the idea came into culture, you know, about the dumb blonde jokes or something. 'Cause here again, you know, it seems that the shrewd people are usually brunettes, for whatever reason. So whether it goes way back in Germanic culture someplace, I don't know. I just kind of put it aside. So anyway, it's not enough -- you know, it's kind of curious, you know, because a knight's word would seem to be so important. But evidently it's just not enough to do go a great deed and then come back and report it, in this instance, you know? Usually what happens is, when our heroes defeat somebody, they send 'em back to report it to Arthur's court. And so it's almost like, you know, you don't need to believe me, but you can believe the word of the guy who I beat up. And so here again, since the guy ran away, he needs some evidence. So that's one of the reasons he's chasing after him: so he can remove

11 LLT 180 Lecture this stain of dishonor. So they talk about this trap. Fortunately, he's leaning forward when they go through it. Fortunately for him; not fortunately for his horse. So his horse is chopped in two and he just barely escapes. He cuts off his spurs but he's trapped inside this area. The fair damsel -- and she is fair. Gawain later would like to jump her bones. No. He's courteous, noble -- you know, remember this stuff from the other page that I said I am? Well, that's Gawain. But then guys lie a lot. Anyway, this damsel, this fair, intelligent, shrewd, brunette damsel, appears through a side door and wants to help him. She says that the knight's wife is really upset. Duh! And we get back -- it's almost like, "No, not Enide again. Grieve." So she's suffering grief. She knows who he is. She's been at Arthur's court and he's been nice to her, it's always good to be nice to people, kindness is rewarded. Yet the damsel had been sent by her lady. Again, at this point, nobody's being identified by names. It's just "damsel," "lady." [Inaudible student response.] Yeah, he's gonna be what: Escalados, or something -- whatever his name was. This the lady's -- the wife of the knight. And he hasn't been on the scene that long. We're gonna find out later that he must've appeared on the scene just shortly before Calogrenant, you know, came to the fountain. Because later we find out they've only been married for seven years. And so he is champion of the fountain. And so we have the feeling this has always been her castle, her area, but she needs a champion. And the damsels are gonna tell her, you know, all your knights are worthless, you know. They'll accept you picking anybody as a

12 LLT 180 Lecture husband because they don't want to defend the fountain. And so this is the role of the king. As soon as her husband dies, this whole thing works out because she's gonna need a new champion. Because somehow they know, you know. I don't know if this is telepathy or whatever, but somehow later they know already that Arthur's coming. If you want to start picking this stuff apart -- like, "How do they know that?" Anyway, she knows who he is. He's Yvain, King Gurian's son. And she says, you know, "The fact that you're so nice to me, I'm gonna reward you." And so again, the point we made, the strong female. Not only are they helpful, but they really direct the action. They tell us where the action should be going or make sure it goes it the direction they think is best. She gives him a small ring. And there are a bunch of magic things which would be kind of cool to have in Germanic folklore. This ring she gives him -- what does he have to do: hold the stone toward his palm? Is that what he has to do? Makes him invisible. Actually, there's some other stuff, too. There's a magic cape. Now, don't ask me why. The cape makes you invisible but not your shadow. No, no, no, no. Wait a minute. No. It makes you and your shadow invisible. Then there's a bird's nest. If you have this magic bird's nest, you're invisible but your shadow is not. There's also a magic girdle, or belt, and the belt increases your strength twelve-fold. So there's all kinds of stuff floating around. I think we mentioned Fortunata's purse one day, too, and the seven-league boots. So there are all kinds of magical things which exist out there that heroes in romantic material, you know, often encounter. And a lot of

13 LLT 180 Lecture times they end up in possession of them because of the grace of God as some kind of recompense for something they've suffered. But here, she has a magic ring so he can hide while they look for him. She brings him food and she doesn't bring him a McDonald's Happy Meal. I mean, she's supposed to be like sneaking around. And she brings him a roast capon, a cake -- you know, wine of his choice. He gets an order from a wine menu. With a shining goblet. I mean, the guy's, you know, not suffering. Everybody's looking for him. They've already put the dead knight on a bier, just an older word. Actually, kind of an interesting word. Bier actually comes from old English, an old high Germanic word, bara, which means "to carry." And so actually the activity becomes the name for the item itself. So you put him on a bier to carry him, whereas the word comes from bara which meant, you know, carrying him. [Inaudible student response.] Well, you know, if you drink certain kinds of beer it's a religious experience, too. This will probably be cut. But, you know, Milwaukee, St. Louis -- you know, huge German towns -- and actually, spellings get changed around. Papst is the German word for father or Pope. So if you're drinking Papst Blue Ribbon beer, it's like, you know, going to confession or something. [Inaudible student response.] Actually, Germans make special beer a lot of different times during the year. And one of the times they make special beer is during Lent. And they made this stuff which is

14 LLT 180 Lecture super-strong beer. There's a really neat gothic monastery, gothic church, southwest of Munich. And it's on the way to those famous royal castles you always see in the posters: Moshschwanstein, that white granite castle that you see up in a promontory, that Disney World's castle was patterned on. But I had some friends who worked at a -- Australian friends who worked at an institute that studied water fowl. And they asked me -- this place had -- the monastery had been turned into a beer hall. And I actually had been working on my dissertation that day in the library, so I hadn't had lunch. And we were supposed to meet there and go someplace and have dinner with some other people. And so a lot of this dark beer they make, they'd send to Rome. The history is they sent it to Rome and said, you know, "We made this stuff to help us get through Lent." And the people in Rome who were, of course, wine drinkers drank this horrible stuff and said, "Yccchhh," you know. "If you can drink this stuff during Lent, we think that's great." This stuff is like super-proof beer. And I drank one big -- what they call a moss in Germany. It's like a big liter mug. And, you know, it tasted really good. I thought it was fine until I went out to get in the car to drive away, and I went like this and I couldn't feel my face. And I thought, "This is not good." But, you know, all these words. However we got on that. I don't know. Oh, bier. That's how we got -- bier. The whole -- how does the ring really work? You know, if you read this, does the ring really make him invisible? I'm not sure, as I read this, because they keep talking about magic. They keep talking about blinded. And so I think, you know, they're implying that really truly making him invisible -- at one point they talk like you're hidden like a tree inside

15 LLT 180 Lecture its bark or something. But at other points it's almost like the ring really works by not letting other people see rather than really making you invisible. I mean, it doesn't really matter. I just wish he'd been consistent because -- you know. Anyway, they meet him. And one of the ladies is beyond fine. I mean, they always get this, you know. I mean, how do you make somebody else more superlative when everybody else is already superlative? One time David Letterman was doing stuff and he had a super, colossal, jumbo, swallow-the-world cup or something. You know, they showed it next to the earth and it was two times the size of the earth. You know, the biggest size in drink cups today. And so when everyone's beautiful, how do you make someone even more beautiful? You obviously get into problems of just trying to make somebody more beautiful. And what is she doing? She's beating herself up. You know, she's tearing at her hair; she's, you know, rending her clothes; she's just so disconsolate. There's a religious procession, they're bearing the guy's body around, and his blood starts to run. Of course, medieval people felt that that was a sure sign that the murderer was present. So if you're carrying the body around and all of a sudden the corpse starts bleeding again, that means the person that killed the person is present. And, of course, Yvain is present; they just can't see him. And so they beat all around. He escapes. And they insult him to try to get him to reveal himself. But, you know, he kind of -- he hides out. Damsel returns and Yvain, you know, is much taken by the lady. And they're gonna correctly here, you know. Even though

16 LLT 180 Lecture he just killed her husband, Chrétien is gonna make a correct statement here about women's fickleness somewhere soon. And I didn't say this. Chrétien. But anyway, he wants to see the lady. The damsel takes him over to the window. And what is -- you know, the damsel is what? She's wise, she's courtly, and what does she do? She advises and instructs. Think about this. They use the words "advises and instructs" Yvain. And so lest you wonder why the action is going the way it does, you know, Yvain, just like any other man, is easily directed and manipulated because they're pretty stupid left to themselves. So they need some help. They need some serious help. And Yvain does whatever she says, mainly because he likes the lady a lot. She goes off again -- again, we get back to this idea of having no evidence. But he talks about his newfound love. And all this stuff is about love. See, I wrote it in big letters: LOVE. You start reading this and you just kind of get nauseous. Oh, no. Just kidding. But it says here, on 1372, he has love's wound. The effect of this thrust lasts longer than that of one from any lance or sword. A sword-blow is cured and heals very quickly once a doctor attends to it: Love's wound, though, grows worse the nearer it is to its doctor. [Dr. Love, no?] My lord Yvain's wound is such that he will never recover from it [never, ever, ever; has it bad, has it bad]. And then the rest is about love. So they finally bury the dead guy and so we can get on with the story, thank goodness. And all through this process, all through this procession, Yvain is just staring at

17 LLT 180 Lecture this lady. You know, it sounds like Ashputtle to me, you know. "She's mine! You can't dance with her!" And I'm like, "Ooohh, I think I'm outta here." The blind date from Hell. And this guy is saying, "Wow." Okay, just calm down. Yvain, though, he knows he just killed the guy. He's killed the woman's husband. So, you know, I don't think this can probably work out. However, women are fickle and so he should not be without hope. It says here, 1433, "... because a woman has more than a thousand fancies. Perhaps she will change again from her present frame of mind: or rather she will change it, with no 'perhaps,' so I'm foolish to despair of it." Now, making fun of that, one of the things I've never understood is when politicians are just totally abused by the fact that they voted this way and now, six years later, they're saying something different. Like changing your mind is somehow some kind of flaw and sin. Instead of "You have to believe one thing, absolutely, your whole life. And just because you get new knowledge, you still can't change your mind." That that's some kind of flaw where you think, "No, this is good." Anyway. But women don't necessarily have to have a reason, you say. It's just part of their fancy. Whatever. One must be receptive to love and so we have repeated pieces of wisdom. It says right in the middle of page 300, about line 1440, I would guess: "Anyone who doesn't make Love welcome when he seeks his company commits a crime and treason." Yvain, lest you wonder, had not set off to fall in love with her. So this is just happenstance; just happenstance. He says at the end of that paragraph, "I was never set on loving anyone so

18 LLT 180 Lecture much." She's out there, still beating herself up, and this really bothers him. We have all kinds praise laid -- you know, like, "After God made her, He broke the mold" -- on page 301, about line 1504, "God surely made her with His bare hand in order to astound Nature." So it wasn't even a mold, you know? They couldn't even make a mold good enough to make her, she's so fine, so fine. Yvain then can leave. He can probably escape, but he's trapped by her love. So he can't -- he can't leave. He just has to be with her, wants to be with her. And the damsel returns and he says, you know, "I had a good day. I had a lot of pleasure today." And she thinks he's totally been drinking too much wine out of the shining goblet. You know, how could you have pleasure today? She's gonna try to get him out of here but he doesn't want to steal away. He wants to be with the lady. So she says, "Well, you know, I'll see what I can do." She says, in 1589 on page 302, "The damsel was in such good favour with her lady that she was not afraid to say anything to her." So she says, you know -- she says, "Your husband's dead and all this grief isn't gonna bring him back. You need a new husband. After all, Arthur is coming." And again, don't ask me. I have no idea how they know Arthur's coming. No idea. A friendly sparrow told them, or something. And so she knows this is true. And again, the damsel who is telling the lady what to do and she's telling Yvain what to do, and she pretty much lies all around. Tells lies all around. She says that -- you know, "Your knights are worthless," which is the truth. And

19 LLT 180 Lecture then we have more stuff about women here. You know, if you're trying to write about the view of women in this material, about 7 lines down on 303, "But she has an irrational streak that other ladies have and almost all show by refusing to admit their folly and rejecting what they really want." Anyway, even though she's working on the lady, the lady kind of at each juncture she makes the point, needs an opportunity to reflect on the position she makes, and then finally she comes around to the damsel's position. And she says, "If we're looking for a great husband -- you know, if we just look at this objectively. When two knights fight, the one who wins would appear to be the more worthy one. And if you accept that as a logical conclusion, it would seem that the man who killed your husband must be a better knight than your husband, who you've always said such a great knight, was. Ergo -- hey, this guy could be a good choice." The lady, in kind of a self-argument on 304, is finally or slowly shifting her view to be in line with the damsel's. She even has -- and it's kind of confusing, at the bottom of 304. She kind of has this conversation with herself. And so even though it says "the man says," or whatever it says, she's kind of imagining a conversation she might have with this knight who killed her husband. The lady, on the middle of 305, has taken a 180 degree turn. Now she's ready to marry Yvain, just like that. Just like that. She says, right in the middle of, oh, about page 305, about 1800 maybe, "... provided there's no reluctance on his part, I agree to make him lord of my land and my person." And my person. Wow. Cool. And so it's identified,

20 LLT 180 Lecture it's Yvain, son of King Gurian. So definitely by his heritage he is well worthy of being lord of her land and I guess of her person, too. She wants to marry him when? Over here she hated him, wanted to see him dead. She wants to marry him now. Not tomorrow. Like now, this minute! And she even says -- you know, see here on the bottom of the page I wrote -- in the column I wrote, "Hot." You know, it's just like, you know, too hot to turn the page. "Then on his return he shall have from me whatever he wants me to give him." Okay. What has she been taking anyway? Anyway, damsel advised lady on how to have her way. They talk about the custom, the defense of the spring. And basically what she's telling her is, that of all these knights, all these lords that report to you, and you can get them to do what you want by just going to them and saying, "Hey," you know. "Arthur's coming. I need somebody to defend the spring." And none of them will want to do it. So you say, "Well, then I'll have to take a husband, and they'll be happy for you to marry anybody you want, just so they don't have to do it. So you can kind of act as if you're doing what they want you to do, even though you're gonna do what you want to do." So the damsel pretends -- and again, you know, she's telling lies all around. She's been telling a lot of lies. The lady has no idea that Yvain is still there, and so she's been lying to her lady. And now at this juncture she starts telling lies to Yvain. She's telling him, you know, "Well, the lady this" and "the lady that, you know. She's kind of still mad at you." And I don't know the particular point for this. So they meet -- again, the damsel's directing the action. And this is the first time we

21 LLT 180 Lecture get the name of one of the other characters. Esclados the Red is the name of her late husband. This, as far as I know, is the only time his name is gonna appear here. And we get into kind of this yucky romantic stuff over in the middle -- I'm really kidding about this -- on the middle of 308. The lady's like, "Why me?" You know, "Why'd you fall in love with me?" And first she absolves him. It's always good to be absolved. I wish I could find somebody who'd absolve me of all my wrongs and misdeeds. She says, about line 2007 maybe -- the line starts "every wish" on page 308: I absolve you from all your wrongs and misdeeds. But be seated and tell me how you've been so subdued." -- "My lady," says he, "the force comes from my heart, which is drawn to you: my heart has imposed this desire on me." -- "And what prompted your heart, my dear good friend?" -- "My eyes, Lady." -- "And what the eyes?" -- "The great beauty I saw in you." I mean, you need to put a little red heart on this page. And when you're, you know, writing your Valentine card -- you know, if you're a guy -- you know, go back and plagiarize some of this stuff, you know -- good stuff, you know. "And where does the fault of this beauty lie in that? -- "In that it makes me love, my lady." So it's your fault I love you because you're so beautiful. "Yes, truly." -- "In what way?" -- "To the greatest possible degree, so that my heart never wanders from you [that's a good line -- no, not a line; a good statement] or is to be found elsewhere; so that I can't think of anything else; so that I surrender myself entirely to you; so that I love you more than myself; so that, if it is your pleasure, I

22 LLT 180 Lecture wish to live and die wholly for you." [It's getting a little far afield for me.] -- "And would you dare to undertake for me the defence of my fountain?" -- "Yes certainly, my lady, against all comers." -- "Then rest assured that we are reconciled." That's kind of a good place to stop. Let's try to read about half the rest of it. I think we can get through this. If it turns out we have to wander into Monday and have the test on Wednesday, so be it. But we'll try to still finish this up this week.