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Arthurian Adventure or Quixotic ›Struggle for Life‹?

A Reading of Some Gauvain Romances in the First Half of the Thirteenth Century
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Probleme des Artusromans
This chapter is in the book Probleme des Artusromans

Abstract

Already in the Conte du Graal Gauvain represents the insufficiency and failure of the Arthurian world. Subsequent romances, Le Chevalier à l’Épée, L’Âtre périlleux, La Vengeance Raguidel and La Mule sans frein, reinforce this impression of a loss of reality. Gauvain remains a shadowy and reappearing hero who is characterized by the lack of individual psychology. The hero’s quixotic struggle is a comic-tragic quest for reality in search of a lost ideal evoked in the mode of reminiscence.

Abstract

Already in the Conte du Graal Gauvain represents the insufficiency and failure of the Arthurian world. Subsequent romances, Le Chevalier à l’Épée, L’Âtre périlleux, La Vengeance Raguidel and La Mule sans frein, reinforce this impression of a loss of reality. Gauvain remains a shadowy and reappearing hero who is characterized by the lack of individual psychology. The hero’s quixotic struggle is a comic-tragic quest for reality in search of a lost ideal evoked in the mode of reminiscence.

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