Yvain, or the Knight With the Lion

58 pages • 1 hour read

Yvain, or the Knight With the Lion

Fiction | Novel/Book in Verse | Adult | Published in 1176

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Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Lines 1-1588

Lines 1589-2638

Lines 2774-4634

Lines 4635-5770

Lines 5771-6808

Character Analysis

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Lines 1-1588Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Lines 1-174 Summary: “Calogrenant is urged to recite a tale, at Arthur’s court”

During the time of King Arthur, when duty and romantic love were the most noble traits, a group of Arthur’s knights gather after a banquet to share stories of their adventures. One of them, Calogrenant, notices that the Queen has quietly joined the group, and he salutes her and offers to tell of an embarrassing event in his life, “One not to his honour, but his shame” (8).

Knight Kay, the royal manager—embarrassed that he and the others failed to notice the Queen’s arrival until Calogrenant did so—ridicules him, but the Queen rebukes Kay: “His custom is to speak ill of all” (10). She commands Calogrenant to tell his story, and he obeys, declaring that what he is about to tell is true.

Lines 175-268 Summary: “Calogrenant tells of how he came to a wooden tower”

Seven years earlier, Calogrenant, while traveling on horseback through the densely overgrown forest of Brocéliande, comes upon a fortified estate, where he begs entry. The manor lord welcomes him; his lovely and educated daughter chats with him, and they take a strong liking to one another. Calogrenant is fed and housed; in the morning, thanking the lord and promising to return, he continues on his journey in search of a great challenge.

Lines 269-580 Summary: “Calogrenant’s adventure in the wood”

Calogrenant comes upon a clearing where a 17-foot-tall giant, ugly and menacing, guards and controls a herd of bulls. The giant asks Calogrenant his mission; the knight replies, “An adventure, to prove thereby / My prowess, and my bravery” (17), and asks if the giant knows of any such adventures nearby. The giant points to a trail and tells Calogrenant the path leads to a fountain guarded by a beautiful tree and a small chapel. Hanging from the tree is a golden bowl filled with fountain water. If the knight sprinkles water from the bowl onto a large emerald beside the fountain, a terrible storm will erupt from the sky, a trial from which none have returned.

Calogrenant takes up the challenge, rides to the fountain, and sprinkles water on the stone, and a ferocious storm of gales and lightning levels much of the forest. Calogrenant barely survives the ordeal. The storm ceases, sunlight beams down, and birds gather to sing in the branches of the beautiful guardian tree, itself miraculously undamaged.

Armor clanking loudly, a large and powerful knight approaches on horseback. Sensing trouble, Calogrenant quickly mounts his own steed. The mysterious knight condemns Calogrenant for ruining his forest and demands a duel. They gallop toward each other, lances drawn; Calogrenant lands a hard blow on the other’s shield, but his lance breaks. The other knight’s much larger lance knocks Calogrenant from his mount. Lying dazed, Calogrenant watches as the other knight commandeers his horse and leads it away.

Calogrenant removes his heavy armor and walks all the way back to the fortified manor, where the lord and his daughter welcome him as before. They inform him he is the first knight to return from the forest alive.

Lines 581-648 Summary: “Yvain takes up the challenge”

Calogrenant’s cousin Yvain berates him for not informing him years ago of this misadventure. Nevertheless, Yvain decides to avenge him. Kay ridicules Yvain, calling him foolhardy. The Queen cuts off Kay sharply: “Your tongue utters ill of every man; It makes you disliked everywhere” (24-25). Yvain insists that Kay doesn’t bother him: “I would not seem like some cur, / That growls and bites, on whim, / Because some other yaps at him’” (25).

Lines 649-722 Summary: “Yvain determines to adventure alone”

King Arthur awakens and steps into the hall where the knights sit chatting. The Queen relates to him Calogrenant’s tale, recalling it word for word. Arthur wants to visit the magic fountain and invites the others to join him. Yvain is troubled because he’d planned to go there alone; worse, of the entourage, Arthur is more likely to choose Kay or Gawain in a bout with the mysterious knight of the forest. Yvain decides to leave early for Brocéliande.

Lines 723-746 Summary: “Yvain departs the court secretly”

Telling no one, Yvain leaves Arthur’s castle. At his house nearby, the knight orders his squire to ride Yvain’s battle steed to a meeting point, while Yvain departs on an ordinary horse; later, they’ll meet up and trade mounts. Yvain swears the squire to secrecy.

Lines 747-906 Summary: “Yvain repeats the adventure and the fight”

Yvain and the squire meet far from the house. The squire dresses Yvain in his armor, and Yvain sets off for the magic forest. Over many days, he carefully follows the trail as described by Calogrenant: “Through the forests deep and wide / Places savage and most strange” (29). He arrives at the fortified estate, where the lord and his daughter are kinder and more wonderful than he imagined from Calogrenant’s description.

The next day, Yvain encounters the great and ugly giant, who points out the way to the fountain. Arriving at the spout, he pours water from the basin onto the emerald stone, and the storm thunders; then the sun comes out and the birds sing; finally, the angry knight arrives on horseback. The two warriors charge in a joust, their lances breaking on each other’s shields. They draw swords and clash until their shields are broken; still mounted, they hack away at each other. Bleeding, they continue the fight for a long time, each intent on killing the other, each unyielding.

Yvain strikes the other on his helmet with a solid blow, denting the helmet and breaking the man’s skull. The man faints, then recovers and gallops away toward his castle, Yvain in pursuit. They race across the drawbridge and onto the palace grounds.

Lines 907-1054 Summary: “Yvain is trapped in the knight’s palace”

They race through a narrow inner passage, whose gate, spiked in iron at the bottom, will, at the touch of a lever, fall at once onto anyone in pursuit. The knight reaches out and trips the switch just as Yvain leans forward to grab at him, so close behind that he gets through safely while the gate drops down through his saddle, cutting his horse in two. Yvain falls to the ground; his opponent escapes through a second gate, and its bars slam down. Yvain is trapped.

A door opens, and a beautiful young woman, Lunete, steps into the courtyard. She is an aide to the knight’s wife. She tells Yvain that the knight is dying and his lady and all the castle are in mourning; if not, they’d make short work of him. Defiant, he tells her, “They could never if they tried / Take or kill me, if God so will” (38).

Impressed by his courage and moved that a knight shows the courtesy to speak to a lowly chamber maid—none have to her, before this moment—she loans him a ring that, when rotated on the finger, renders its wearer invisible. She leads him to a nearby alcove, then brings him food and drink.

Lines 1055-1172 Summary: “Yvain is rendered invisible by the ring”

Lunete warns Yvain not to move or make a noise, no matter who approaches. She knows he is the son of the great King Urien, and she wants to serve him. She leaves, and soon the courtyard is filled with angry soldiers who search for him. They find the remains of his horse but can’t find him. Frustrated, they continue their search, swinging their weapons everywhere, but they fail to find him.

A stunningly beautiful woman emerges from the castle. She is the lady Laudine, wife of Esclados. Deeply grieving, she stumbles in a faint, then recovers; “Clawing her face in deep despair / And tearing fiercely at her hair” and clothing (43), she watches as her husband’s bier passes by, attended by nuns and priests, candles flickering, censers swaying.

Lines 1173-1342 Summary: “The dead knight’s wounds bleed”

As the dead knight’s body passes by, its wounds again bleed, telling all that the killer is still nearby. Again they search, again in vain. Laudine beseeches God to reveal the enemy; she calls out to the invisible killer, calling him a coward and demanding why he hides from her “When with my lord you made free?” (45).

Lunete goes to Yvain and insists that he must have been afraid during the search. He admits he was terrified but says he wishes he might witness the procession. In fact, what he wants is to look upon the beautiful lady again. The maid leads him upstairs, where he looks down at Laudine as she declaims on her husband’s courage, unequaled honor, and chivalry. Yvain wants to comfort her, but Lunete counsels him to refrain “Till all their sorrow has abated” (47).

Lines 1343-1506 Summary: “Yvain falls in love with the dead knight’s lady”

Yvain worries that, with the burial, no evidence will remain with which he can prove he has slain the knight who defeated Calogrenant. Meanwhile, though injured during the battle, Yvain feels a new, much deeper wound: his budding love for Laudine. This pain is all the greater because “He loves her who hates him most” (49). Love, so often mistreated, finds in Yvain’s heart a warm place of lodging; it will not leave him.

Stunned by her beauty—more perfect than any he’s seen—he feels distraught at the sight of her anguished nails tearing at her own flesh. Her tears make his own eyes fill. He decides he’ll find a way, somehow, to change her hate for him into love.

Lines 1507-1588 Summary: “The maiden plans to free Yvain”

Lunete asks Yvain how he is feeling; having gazed at his beloved, he replies that he has had a pleasant time. Lunete, reading past his words, warns him not to be foolish but to follow him to a secret exit from the castle. Yvain says he’d rather stay and die than sneak out. She takes him to a small chamber room, brings him food and necessities, and goes off to think.

Lines 1-1588 Analysis

For nearly 400 years, the Romans ruled Britain. After they left in 410 CE, Saxons from northern Germany poured into the island nation and took it over. Arthur, a fabled king of the time, was remembered as one who fought against the invasion during the late 400s and early 500s. Arthur may have been imaginary, but stories of his exploits began to circulate, and during the 1100s several important histories of Britain were written that included him as a real figure.

In 1066, a French duke, William of Normandy, invaded and conquered England. The French and English cultures mingled, and French writers became fascinated with the old legends of the British Isles, including tales of Arthur and his knights. The poet and troubadour Chrétian De Troyes, who served in some of the noble houses of France, learned the Arthurian stories and, in a series of epic poems, enlarged them with new characters and exploits that introduced Lancelot and his affair with Gwinevere, Perceval’s search for the Holy Grail, and Arthur’s grand court, Camelot.

De Troyes’s 1181 work Yvain, though less well known, is widely considered his greatest literary achievement. The work is an epic poem, which, in the classical Greco-Roman tradition, tells about gods, magic, and the adventures of extraordinary people. The author was strongly influenced by the Roman poet Ovid, who penned books of verse on the art of love.

Yvain’s 6,808 lines of tetrameter (eight syllables per line) are written in couplets, which rhyme two lines at a time. They meander from iambic (stress on the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth syllables) to trochaic (stress on the first, third, fifth, and seventh syllables), though this difference may largely be due to the difficulty of translating from old French into modern English and keeping the rhyme structure. Some of the lines and couplets are enjambed, their meaning spilling beyond the rhyme scheme from one line to the next.

As a story, Yvain is innovative: Its colorful descriptions, dramatic thrills, and intense romance give it the feeling of a modern adventure tale, and its structure and style anticipate the later development of the novel. Yvain centers on the idea of chivalry, an idealized knightly code of conduct centered on loyalty and gallantry in battle, exceptional fighting skill, and a courtly and gentlemanly way of pursuing romantic love. This idea flourished, especially in France, during the Middle and Late Middle Ages. In the French language, a male horse is a cheval, and “chivalry” derives from chevalier, or cavalryman; knights were high-ranking cavalry officers whose heroism earned them status as minor nobles.

A knight in full armor was a fearsome battle weapon. This sheer power, and the skill it took to wield it, were highly valued, but each knight had to prove his worth. During the 1100s, jousting—knights in full armor galloping on horseback toward each other with lances pointed—became a popular, if dangerous, sport, and the author makes use of jousting as a kind of manhood test between his characters.

Calogrenant’s opening story is an example of a knightly quest. A knight-errant, or wandering knight, would ride out in search of challenges by which to prove his valor and worth. This tradition of the lone hero recurs in adventure stories of all kinds, from America’s Old West gunfighters to Japan’s wandering samurai to Spain’s Don Quixote. Recent books, films, TV shows, and comic books continue the tradition, including the Tarzan adventures, the Batman sagas, TV shows from The Lone Ranger to Person of Interest, and the Jack Reacher books and movies. (The first true Western novel, 1902’s The Virginian, by Owen Wister, tells of a knightly cowboy who, like Yvain, travels on great quests, fights evil men, and pursues a soaring romance with a beautiful schoolteacher.)

In his quest, Calogrenant travels to the enchanted forest of Brocéliande, where he encounters a giant who points him in the direction of a fitting knightly challenge. The giant warns Calogrenant that none have returned from that trial; his fearful appearance, combined with his frank warning of supernatural dangers, foreshadow the magic and peril of the story to come. The Brocéliande forest appears often in the Arthurian legends. It is widely believed to be associated with deep woods in northwest France, where the weather tends to be unstable and subject to sudden storms. That region lies just across the sea from England, but, despite much travel back and forth by the knights and maidens of Yvain, there’s no mention of any ocean crossings. For most people in the late 1100s, geography was a little vague; therefore, the author had a lot of leeway in his description of locales. Thus, Brocéliande, wherever its real-life source, exists firmly in the geography of the imagination.

Calogrenant’s quest to survive the curse of the magic fountain leads to a jousting debacle at the hands of the fountain’s defender, the knight Esclados the Red. Though Calogrenant describes this misadventure as if it were an embarrassment, in fact he is the first knight to survive the fountain’s challenge. This success speaks well of his strength, courage, and endurance. None of Arthur’s knights are cowards, and all have great skill and determination.

Yvain, Calogrenant’s cousin, decides to avenge the defeat. Yvain’s character is based on a historical figure, Owain mab Urien, heroic warrior-son of Urien, the late-500s king of Rheged in northwest England. Yvain’s name may seem hard to pronounce: The letters W, V, and Y often overlap in speech, especially in Old English and the nearby regional tongues; thus, Yvain might well have been voiced as “Owen,” a Welsh-Gaelic word for “warrior.”

Yvain travels to Brocéliande, where his victory over Esclados hurls him—in a sudden plot twist much like that of a modern adventure film—into the next phase of his life. Exhausted and bloodied from battle, entrapped in the enemy’s castle, Yvain catches a glimpse of Laudine, the woman he has widowed, and her beauty and agony pierce his heart. His intense emotional confusion resolves cathartically into romantic love. Thus smitten, and ever the chivalrous gentleman, Yvain now would lay down his life for Laudine. Yvain’s love-sickness and sudden devotion to his new beloved typify the ideal of romantic love, a chivalrous concept passed down through the centuries and still with us today.

Yvain receives a finger ring from Lunete that make him invisible; he uses it to escape capture and death at the hands of Esclados’s forces. The idea of a ring of invisibility arose in Europe 2,400 years ago with a thought experiment by the philosopher Plato; called the “Ring of Gyges,” it tells of a shepherd who finds such a ring and uses it to overthrow his king and take the throne. Plato asks whether a good person would remain virtuous if a ring made him or her impervious to penalties. (In the 20th century, such a ring reappears as a central device in the Lord of the Rings novels and films.) The mere possession of such a ring may have made Yvain arrogant.

Yvain returns to his senses, and his hero’s journey shifts to the quest to win back his beloved. Yvain thus places itself at the center of chivalric literature and romantic literature in general. Its techniques, styling, and tropes have stood as guideposts for generations of authors.