LLT 180 Lecture And we're commenting on the notes. And maybe it'd be best, in case you're not reading

Transcription

1 LLT 180 Lecture 20 1 We're picking up with Yvain, getting through this on Friday, moving toward a test. And we're commenting on the notes. And maybe it'd be best, in case you're not reading the notes, just to leaf over to the notes for a second and comment on a few things they say in here. There's all kinds of trivial stuff they say in here, but there's also some really good stuff in the notes, starting on page 515, the note regarding line 368: Some critics would see Chrétien's main message in Yvain as being a criticism of the chivalric quest of adventure from motives of personal glory rather than responsible social endeavour. A couple of other things that I wanted to mention in here. We notice, on line 2151, what we've mentioned many times, Chrétien here follows his frequent practice of delaying the naming of his chief characters [forever] until long after their first appearance. It talks about Erec, the other -- talking about the lion. I wrote "good" beside my footnote on page 518, line And we'll get back to Roland; there's a thing about Roland. I don't think the footnote is very useful on that. The rescue of the lion is structurally the central episode in Yvain. What significance Chrétien attached to it is by no means clear. The seekers for allegory see in the struggle between fire-breathing serpent and lion an evident figuration of the combat between good and evil, especially as medieval symbolism usually equated the lion [and, of course, Richard the Lion-hearted] with noble qualities and even with the Deity.

2 LLT 180 Lecture 20 2 And then I don't think we'll get quite this far, but another good footnote, 4819, The fact that Chrétien here presents Yvain [and we might notice how he's being a champion for women all the time] as a champion of women might imply that he sees his hero atoning for his desertion of Laudine for worldly prowess by henceforth devoting his chivalry to the service of the fair sex [however accurate that may be]. Another futile attempt to be humorous. Anyway, back to the text. We left off on page 308 and hope to get about halfway through, which would put us on about 343, and not any further because I haven't read any further for today. So if we get close to that, I'll have to drag my feet to make the class period last that long. So maybe I'd better drag my feet at the beginning so I can say, "Oh, gotta get to 343" and make it look better. Anyway, we talked about the kind of seeming parallel between Erec and Yvain, the first part of this work being involved in how you find a wife -- or getting a wife. And so it almost seems like he has some kind of formula that he's working on to fulfill this. We left off here with this yucky romantic stuff, talking about heart, eyes, ears, love. And her condition, though -- you know, her condition for him, for total reconciliation, is what? And what Lunete had worked on her with -- "Hey, you need a defender for the fountain. Well, none of your guys are gonna do this." And so she says here, about line 2035, "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."

3 LLT 180 Lecture 20 3 So however much they might be appealing to each other, without this agreement there would be no deal. The damsel, Lunete -- and I don't know if they purposely make these names like this just to confuse us. Somehow people always get these names mixed up. Laudine is the lady. I think one of the reasons they get mixed up is, I think maybe they only refer to her by name once or twice. Otherwise, they always refer to her as "lady." And Lunete they refer to more often, even though they still refer to her as "damsel," which is confusing. Because then another damsel shows up and you say, "Is this Lunete?" even if it's somebody else. So I got kind of confused in this. I don't know if it was because I was trying to watch a baseball game while I was reading it. Never do as your professor does; always do as they say, you know. Sit in a quiet place and read your work. A game I shouldn't have watched, by the way. How long -- we talk about these numbers and sometimes -- you know, seven is supposed to be a lucky number. Lady has been married for seven years and her husband gets killed. Definitely not a lucky number for him. But sometimes we talked about the frequency of certain numbers and it's almost like people use these numbers just out of habit unless there's some reason to use some other number. This 60-year number, for example here, is kind of a curious custom, a curious number. The custom of the spring has been going on for 60 years. Again, Chrétien's writing. We're not in White anymore; we're back in Chrétien. We're back in medieval material where 40 is your standard number for kind of like a really long time. So I don't

4 LLT 180 Lecture 20 4 know if this is a real long time and a half, or what this is supposed to be. A super long time? We're not gonna make it 40; we're gonna make it 60. It's been a long time. You're dead, your kids are dead, your grandkids are dead. Somebody's alive but most of you are dead and long gone. Again, she's a political creature and she's trying to get the lord to answer to her, who evidently are in this lege pyramid underneath this castle, to buy into the fact that she needs to marry Yvain. And so Laudine is not above manipulating them and Lunete advises her how to manipulate them. "I wanna get married now, somehow, telephone, telegraph, satellite." They know Arthur's coming. And so we repeatedly in this material -- I think it's too big a project for writing a paper in a class like this, but we could certainly go back through Chrétien, certainly go back through this medieval material, and pick out proverbial type material. There are actually indexes. Sometimes when you read -- if you read miscellaneously, there are all kinds of indexes out there. And so if you read folk tales -- have you ever read a folk tale and afterwards in parenthesis -- this isn't correct, but I forget how they're done -- but you'll see like XM374J or something. Those aren't the right letters or the right numbers. But you'll see something -- have you ever read a story and seen a code after that, like a collection of stories? There's some big indexes of folk tales and they're all typed. And so sometimes people go back and you can go back and look in the Arna Thompson tape index, and then go back and say, "Oh, that's like Cinderella but that's a modification according to subtype

5 LLT 180 Lecture 20 5 J." And so you go to this big index and you can find details. People do the same thing with proverbs. There's a lot of wisdom in here -- or apparently. On page 310 on the top, "If you act wisely, this day won't pass without your having concluded the marriage; for anybody who waits a single hour before doing what is good for him is very foolish." So we finally get her name, we finally get Laudine's name here, Laudine of Landuc. I don't know. Dr. Polly in French would just cringe if he was watching this show. And so they want to get married because Arthur is coming. So they get married, Arthur arrives at the slab. Yvain -- I'm sorry -- Kay again just continues in this work to be a total idiot. We go through our standard sequencing here with the matched fountain. Arthur pours the water. We have the tempest. Yvain arrives. And Kay, as Yvain anticipated, asks for the honor of being the knight to first challenge. He does and is defeated by Yvain -- Kay is. Yvain comes before Arthur and identifies himself and tells his story. So they all go to his castle, which would be a great honor for Yvain. In other words, Arthur is coming to his place. And he's excited about this. He'll spend a week and no longer. Gawain plays a decisive role at this particular point of work because Gawain and Yvain are friends. And Gawain says, you know, "You gotta continue to do this knightly stuff." Course he's probably thinking of Erec. Remember, Chrétien wrote this before he -- wrote this after he wrote Erec. So Erec is already messed up. And so the implication is, don't mess up like Erec. You gotta do knightly stuff.

6 LLT 180 Lecture 20 6 And so he kind of keeps on his case. Does Yvain leave gladly? I don't know. Honesty's worth a lot, though. Volunteers? Who's read that far? He cried. He's a total wimp, you know. He says, "I don't wanna go. You know, I wanna be like Gareth. I wanna stay here with her." But, you know, he's just really intimidated. She seems ready to let go of him and that he is the first. "Yeah, yeah, you can go. But I tell you what, you know, Buster. You stay one day over a year and you're grass, you know. It's all over, you know. I'm not gonna love you anymore." You know, again never -- you know, we read last time how fickle women -- I didn't write this; Chrétien wrote this -- how fickle women are, and she can just turn it on and turn it off. "Gone. Don't love you anymore. You're an idiot." And he'll be trashed. So he gets to leave -- well, not that he particularly wants to. And so they're getting ready to leave, over on page 314. The king wants out of here. And he refers -- we have this Gawain kind of reference to Erec. He doesn't use Erec's name, but on line 2484 he says, "What? Will you now be one of those", my lord Gawain said to him, "who lose in merit because of their wives?" Shame on him, by Saint Mary, who marries and degenerates as a result! I thought if you didn't marry you became a degenerate. Different story. Women are totally justified -- women are totally justified if you degenerate, you know -- if you turn into a degenerate. They're totally justified on dissing you, saying you're worthless. "I stay, you go." He says on the bottom of that page, "... you'd also find

7 LLT 180 Lecture 20 7 yourself regretting the loss of her love, should you degenerate." So he tells him don't be scourged. And so he goes adventuring, which is questing -- he goes adventuring with Gawain. And so he's going just the opposite route that Erec did. Erec stayed home, didn't do anything. Here he doesn't stay home; he just goes and does knightly stuff in the sense of adventure and questing. She tells him -- she grants him leave. He asks her, hoping she'll say no, you know. But she says, "No, you can go. Get out of here." On the bottom of page 315, I guess it is, line -- gosh, it's right at the bottom: "I grant you leave until a certain date. But you may be absolutely sure that my love for you will change to hate." And so one of the things -- I think the footnote made reference to this, about how Chrétien likes to deal with this relationship between love and hate. And this is a very romantic kind of view. In romanticism, literary romanticism, as it grew up in the early 1800s -- very, very late 1700s, early 1800s -- what romanticism as a movement tried to do was to be what they all talked about as being universale, being universal, and pulling everything into romantic -- into the realm of romantic thought. And so everything is worthy of being treated: the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly -- you know, all extremes are part of that. And what you want to do is, you want to meld everything together into one homogeneous hole. And so usually the person who's considered usually the best romantic would be Wagner. Because what Wagner does is, he even takes different forms. He takes music, he takes -- both instrumental and voice, he takes myth. He takes all this material and melds it into one.

8 LLT 180 Lecture 20 8 And so here again, the relationship of love and hate are the strongest hate grows out of love, you know. That these things are kind of extremes of the same thing. So she says here, "But you may be absolutely sure [so, you know, she's sure; she can wholly control her feelings] that my love for you will change to hate if you over-step the time limit I shall set you." And the boy stays -- I think one of the footnotes tells us he stays like six extra weeks or something? It's like bad. He's gone seven years and he's supposed to be gone one. And then -- but then he's depressed that she says he can stay so long, you know. He thought he'd go a month. She says, "Oh, go a year. Get outta here." It seems like a long time to him. She gives him a ring. We have all these magic rings. I haven't seen this one before. It's pretty cool. This seems to be the Palace of the Magic Ring, they should call it or something. 'Course Lunete had one that made him invisible. Pretty cool. And this one what? Makes him invincible, basically. I think it tied in, though -- it only makes him invincible if he loves. Isn't that what the condition was or something? She says here, in the middle of page 316, "But now put on your finger this ring of mine, which I lend you; and I'll explain clearly to you the nature of its stone. No true, loyal lover can be held prisoner or lose any blood or suffer any harm provided that he wears and cherishes it and bears his love in mind: instead he becomes harder than iron." So basically, you're invincible and in all this time frame, he remains invincible. He remains undefeated in this time they're apart. So both of them leave bitterly, pretty sad, a sad

9 LLT 180 Lecture 20 9 parting. And he goes, as they tell us, unwillingly. They warn us, though -- they immediately warn us, on the top of 317. Again, Gawain is the one that sets them on this course and Gawain is what? Probably gonna make him late. And so we're kind of set up here that things aren't gonna work out. We read, line 2670, "He [that is, Yvain] will overstay it, I fancy, for my lord Gawain will not let him leave his company." So we're left without all these adventures. And so where in other places Chrétien has gone on and on about adventures, the adventures at this point are not important. They're just tournaments, they're just knightly stuff. It's the adventures after he overstays, that he then has to do his penance, come back into the good graces of Laudine, that are important, and these would be all the ones where he helps fair damsels. Where as before, I think we saw one small part here, right here, where he's just gonna terminate, just doing knightly stuff, you know. So a year passes. Actually, a year and a half passes, it sounded like. But I think in one of the footnotes, they say a year and seven weeks or something. And they -- Arthur's holding court and a damsel comes, and the damsel denounces. And so this is another thing that we'll have happen. This is a fairly common device. She says, on the very bottom of page 317, "... Yvain, the disloyal traitor, liar and deceiver, who has abandoned and duped her." And so what is his crime? His crime is he stole her heart. He stole her heart. So sad. Oh, what a scuz. And so he's injured her heart. They talk about dealing her a mortal blow, and that is obviously to her heart, to how

10 LLT 180 Lecture much she loved him. And by not returning, he must've not held her in high respect. He displayed scorn for her. She wants her ring back. Of course, this ring has made him invincible, you know. And the damsel just takes it. Yvain is speechless. He just -- you know, he didn't think and he's disgusted with himself. We read on 318, about line 2770, "Yvain, my lady has no further concern for you, but instructs you through me never to return to her." You know, she said what? Love would turn to hate and not to keep her ring any longer. He's like stunned, 2774: Yvain cannot reply to her, having lost his senses and power of speech. The damsel jumps forward and pulls the ring off his finger. He hates himself, he leaves nobles, and basically he's gonna go into the wilderness. And again, you know, we saw that in the movie Excaliber, kind of with Lancelot, and we saw him come back and he looked, you know, like Mountain Man or something. We're gonna see it with Perceval, too. Once they've done something really bad, they kind of have to wander out into the wilderness to be healed, for times of reflection. And here he goes out, and much like all our characters when they're in grief, he tears and rends his clothes and goes fleeing across the fields. And they even describe him, in line 2827, as a madman. A madman. And so he's just totally lost it. He's just so disconsolate that he can't stand it. He strikes up a friendship with a hermit. They have kind of this cooperative deal. Evidently, they really don't talk, but it gives him some contact with humanity. And then over - - I found it interesting, on line 2887, how again, you know, this material, just the fact that we

11 LLT 180 Lecture can be reading this material just like folk tales, there's a timelessness to the material in the fact that we're not particularly tying it to any place or time. We are but we aren't, you know. How much later is this? Exactly what's going on? When did this take place? In 2887, "That lasted him for a long time." So how long was he there, you know? Are we gonna make him be so old or, you know, make Laudine be an old, ugly hag now? You know, we don't know how long. So it's up to you. How long is this necessary?... iuntil one day he was found asleep in the forest by two damsels along with a lady, their mistress. Now, this one damsel wants to check him out because he's naked. No. She sees this naked man, however, and she wants to check him out. So whatever sequence you put that in. And the damsel -- I didn't have time to reread this when I was reading this yesterday and this morning. But they say she was -- they seemed to imply that they were looking for somebody and she recognizes him. This is not Lunete. So for some reason, whatever, Yvain's fame, she recognizes him by a scar. We read in the middle of that paragraph, "... a scar he had on his face seemed to her to resemble one my lord Yvain had on his." Now, whether this is that people know about heroes. In the Nibelungenlied, an important piece of German literature, really literature. You've heard of Sigfried and Brunhilde, and all those people -- you know, the comic strip Brunhilde. Brunhilde is actually queen of these Amazons. And when they show up at this distance court, when Sigfried goes to this distant court to help woo Brunhilde, somebody says, "That must be Sigfried because nobody else could look like that. We've

12 LLT 180 Lecture heard stories of Sigfried." So whether this is analogous or not, it's like Yvain -- again, one of Arthur's great knights -- that maybe everybody knows he has a scar on his face. She doesn't wake him or touch him, but goes back and tells her lady that she thinks she found Yvain but he obviously is racked out. So the lady needs help and she has a magic ointment, always had a, you know -- gosh, tell the drug companies about this -- she had an ointment to cure madness. She has some from a guy called Morgan the Wise. That will not be on the test, believe me. The only time this guy's mentioned, Morgan the Wise. That would be getting extremely trivial. And so they go back to get him clothes, get him a horse, get the ointment so that he can be cured and maybe be, then, of use to the lady who needs a champion. Of course ladies in here evidently always need champions, at least in this part. She -- you know, we don't get into this at this point, but she tells the damsel only to rub it on his temples; that, you know, he doesn't need any more than that, and don't use too much, this is valuable stuff. But the damsel gets back. Finding him naked, she rubs it over his whole body, you know. What can I tell you? Just know what I read. 2987, Taking the ointment, she rubs him with the entire contents of the box, being so anxious to cure him that she proceeds to anoint him all over. She rubs it into his temples and forehead, and his whole body down to his toes. Well, I mean, he is naked. It's not like she undressed him to do this. He's already naked kind of like Lancelot in the woods. She hides. This is instant working stuff. This is, you know, instant cure stuff. And he

13 LLT 180 Lecture wakes up and goes, "Wow. Hey." Remembers everything, is happy to see clothes there. So he gets dressed and the damsel feigns an encounter and they go together to the castle since the lady needs assistance. So there's always a bad guy. Obviously, that's gonna have to be the damsel or the lady here in question is gonna have to be rescued from. And so they have the battle. He's gonna protect the lady's castle, her well-being. And he kills this guy, pretty soundly -- my note to myself was, "At least there are no flying brains" in this particular slaughter. On the bottom of page 323, "... for his heart burst in his breast [that'll do ya], and his backbone was snapped through." Why did they have to, like, kill people twice? You know, they slice 'em in half and they disembowel 'em or something. You know, it's just, "Okay, they're dead." Everybody's impressed by Yvain as well they should be. He's a great knight. And they even liken him to Roland. Time of Roland? Now, this is 1170 as we're writing here. Who's Roland? Any French students, take French? [Inaudible student response] Yeah. Chanson de Roland, a famous medieval work in French. He fought a rearguard action for Charlemagne. Charlemagne was coming back through the Pyrenees and that's what that song is about. So Roland is supposed to be a great knight -- you know, early Germanic times. Early Germanic times. And so again, this is stuff that will not be on the test. This is just miscellaneous stuff. But kind of interesting. We say great heroes always have swords with names. And

14 LLT 180 Lecture here, almost in the same breath as they mention Roland, they mention his name and, of course, Roland is forever associated with Roncevaux. You know, I think the weirdest part of anything we've read so far -- and I have no idea why it's in here, because horses are valuable -- that they have over here on page 325 that they kill all the horses. And I don't quite get that. What is it, line 3260, "The pursuit lasts a very long time until the fugitives become exhausted and their pursuers hack down and disembowel all their horses." Why? Why? If we had read Lancelot in White's book, at one point when Lancelot's coming to Guenevere's rescue they shoot all these arrows at 'em. They don't hurt him, but his horse looks like a porcupine. And so finally he has to leave his horse and commandeer a cart to get to where she's in prison. And, of course, for a knight to travel in a cart is like demeaning. And when he gets to the castle, he's really mad because they killed his horse, you know. It's like, "Why're you shooting arrows at my horse, you know?" And so I don't quite get this. Anyway, the count surrenders, as well he should, and will make peace with the lady on whatever terms he desires. So again, the point that was made in the footnote, you know, once he has been denounced -- he's been denounced at court by the damsel. Now Yvain is gonna start doing these good deeds for women. And so here we have our first one of this -- anonymously; we don't even get her name -- against this count. We now get to the central point and I'll try to remember to bring my prop next time. It's really a cute lion. He has kind of like monkey legs, but he's really cute. He sees this lion

15 LLT 180 Lecture and this is where we're gonna get our name. He's gonna subsequently refer to himself as what: knight with the lion? Is that what it is? Because he doesn't want people to know who he is, he doesn't want people to know it's Yvain. And so he's gonna counter this lion, the lion is fighting the serpent. He tells why he's coming to the aid of the lion, that the lion -- he doesn't particularly say the lion is good, but he says anything that is venomous and is full of fire is obviously bad. And so killing the serpent would be good. And they make a point: in killing the serpent, he has to cut off a piece of the lion's tail. Now, nothing subsequently is made of that. I don't know if that's just that the lion is still appreciative, in spite of them cutting off part of its tail. We read on the bottom of page 326, He goes to strike the treacherous serpent with his keen sword and cuts down through it to the ground, slicing it in half. [Again, you know, no brains flying. I don't think serpents have very big brains, though.] He strikes again and again with such vigour that he chops it all into pieces. [Is this guy possessed or what? I mean, like dead is dead. He slices him into half. Why does he have to chop him into pieces?] But he had to sever a piece of the lion's tail. Poor lion. Ah, lion's thankful. And now they set off together and they become companions. And so because of the -- they develop this relationship. Very, very important in 3454, He was very fond of the lion after that and, because of the great affection it showed, took it as his companion all the days of his life.

16 LLT 180 Lecture So Knight with the Lion. Fate, destiny, chance. Again, as fate would have it, as chance would have it, in their wanderings where do they come? The spring. So they're back where the focus at the beginning of the tale was. Line 3488, "... chance led them to the spring beneath the pinetree." Some of this is just strange and I have no idea why it's in here. It doesn't seem to lead the plot forward at all. You know, just that inadvertently, in being so upset at seeing the spring, Yvain sword cuts him, he bleeds a lot, passes out. The lion thinks he's dead. And the lion's gonna commit suicide. And just in time, Yvain wakes up. I have no idea why it's in there. I guess just to show how true, what a great comrade, how thankful the lion is to Yvain, and explain why later when things get going, he just doesn't say, "I'm outta here." Yvain, being back here now, is again very mad at himself for not -- for overstaying his year. And we get back to those standard words about Joy of Court. Again, we keep coming back to that word, Joy. Joy has abandoned him. As he's complaining so loudly -- and guys tend to feel sorry for themselves, no matter what the circumstance -- he hears this poor, suffering person in the chapel. And it's gonna turn out to be Lunete. Lunete has been accused of treason by the Seneschal and his brothers. Because the fact that Yvain didn't show back up within the year, it's viewed that she gave Laudine bad advice and caused her all this pain. So she's in prison, waiting to be burned up unless she can find a champion. And she's been given 40 days, right? So she's been given a long time. She's been given 40 days to find a champion.

17 LLT 180 Lecture Part of the problem is, you know -- and this is an inconsistency in character because she's always in command of the situation, always has great advice for everybody else. She has said that her champion will fight all three of these other people. Again, common numbers. The three are the Seneschal and his two brothers. And, as far as she knows, there are only two people, two people in Arthur's court, who could pull this off. One is Gawain -- and Gawain is gone, you know; somebody's abducted the queen and he's gone to try to bring her back to safety -- and Yvain. And who knows where Yvain is? But, now, Lunete saved Yvain. So Yvain's always had kind of a special relationship with her. And he says, "Hey, it's me. It's Yvain." She's shut in there, she can't see anything. She explains what's gone wrong, how she's fallen into this bad situation, and that her 40 days are up. They're gonna burn her tomorrow unless she can find a champion. He says, of course, he will help her. She's fearful for him. And again, stuff that just -- I guess it makes a dramatic why. You know, they keep asking why -- or I keep asking why. He knows he has to be there tomorrow but he's just camped down by the chapel. But for some reason, they wander off and he says, "I'll be here tomorrow to save you." But in the meantime he wanders off and he comes to this impressive stronghold. And again, while this particular story is only kind of secondarily about a damsel, he does rescue a damsel. And it's really her final pleading that gets him to stay longer to fight giants. And in this situation again we have seven young men who've been taken captive, we have giants, and we need a champion. The giant's name is Harpen of the Mountain. And he's killed. He's taken all of the count's sons, or the king's, whoever this guy is -- killed

18 LLT 180 Lecture two of 'em already, is gonna kill the other four tomorrow, and turn his daughter into a prostitute or whore, depending on your definition. He sought help. But again, who are the only two people who can help? Gawain and Yvain, and Gawain is gone on an adventure and nobody can find Yvain. Yvain says he'll do this. You know, he'll fight the giant. He'll save the sons, save the daughter from this cruel fate. But he has to be gone by noon tomorrow because he has another task that he has promised to do. So he can't totally insure he'll be there, but he'll try to be there. So he and the lion sleep, over on page 335. Consistently people pray to God. And when he gets up, he goes to mass. And so again -- you know, they even come back, how are the sides gonna be evened up? He has to fight three. He has to fight the Seneschal plus his two brothers. And then three and three is gonna be Yvain plus God plus justice. So really it's gonna be a fair fight. [Inaudible student response.] Well, the lion, you know, he's just kind of -- they say the lion somehow doesn't really count here. Because at least initially -- of course, he would've been -- you know, maybe God's acting through the lion or the lion is part of justice. Because he makes -- part of the deal is the lion is not supposed to participate, but, of course, the lion does. Good stuff. I tried to convince my parents -- when I was little, I tried to convince my parents once to buy us a lion. And it was before people knew it was bad to have a lion. And I don't know about you guys. If I haven't talked about this, I grew up in suburbia. I grew up 25 miles from

19 LLT 180 Lecture New York City, but it was a small town near Long Island. And we were those people that whatever we got always lived. And so we'd get like two ducks for Easter -- they lived. And some of you people who grew up out on farms and stuff, you know this. But it was so funny. My dad grew up on a farm in Ohio and he was always amazed by these ducks. The ducks would follow you around. We finally tried to get rid of 'em and gave 'em to like a children's zoo, and they kept following us to the car. And so we had all these pets that lived, and so we said, "Can we get a lion cub?" Probably went at the time for about $150. And so we can down on Easter morning -- and I was like 14 and my next older brother was and they'd given us a big stuffed lion. It was sitting in the living room. So at least my parents had a sense of humor. We said, "We want a real one." So anyway, we get this big lion. And the giant comes finally. He says, "I'm gonna really debase your daughter. I'm gonna give her to 2,000 guys." And Yvain, he says, "Ah, I don't think so." So he challenges him. We have the battle, on page 337. They're pretty much beating each other up. He hacks a chunk of the giant's cheek off, big enough for grilling. I don't know why Chrétien -- what drugs he's doing when he writes some of this stuff. But on 338, the lion again comes to the rescue. The lion is gonna be important. Chrétien would certainly perish many times without the assistance. He badly wounds the giant. And once he's given that advantage, Yvain cut his shoulder from his trunk, then puts his blade under his breast and through his liver, and so the giant falls with death pressing

20 LLT 180 Lecture him heard. I would think so. So all are saved. And as he leaves, they want to sing his praises or praise him. But again, all of a sudden we realize, as consistent Chrétien, he hasn't identified himself. And so they say, "Who are you?" And so this is the first time, on the top of page 339, that he identifies himself and calls himself as Knight with the Lion. And so this is also how he's gonna identify himself to Laudine after he rescues her to keep his identity anonymous. So anyway, he goes back -- again, we have the three on three we were talking about. We'll try to get as far as we can so reading this isn't extra work, so we can get this done this week and have a test on Monday, just to ruin your weekend. He challenges them. And she again -- you know, she's accused of treason and she again -- of course, again and again -- says, "I'm guiltless. I'm innocent. I didn't do anything." Wrong. Seneschal says the lion can't take part. So we have this battle. And again, we assume that Yvain would've been defeated by these three unless the lion had come to his aid, which he's not supposed to. He first attacks the Seneschal, I believe, on page 342. Really chews him up. And again, besides brain dying, brain pieces flying, he likes entrails falling out. This is kind of his second favorite thing. At the end of that paragraph starting line 4509, "It tears away everything it touches, so that his entrails are exposed." Well, thank you for that information. So now it's two on two. They wound the lion. These guys have the audacity to wound the lion, which really hacks Yvain off. And so he just totally pummels them and

21 LLT 180 Lecture carries the day. The lady is very happy. She's reconciled with Lunete. And again, remember: women are fickle. Their fancies vary from minute to minute -- if not, you know, day to day, second to second. And here she wants this guy to stay. She says, you know -- isn't she still married? Did she get it annulled? But she says, "Won't you stay?" He says, "No, I can't stay." She says, "Oh, please stay." And he says, "No. I've got this problem with a lady -- with my lady and I need to solve that." And so she says -- she asks again, "Well, I don't even know your name." And he says, "I've renamed myself. I've adopted a name." Gosh, in the middle of that long paragraph on page 343, must be about line 4608 or something, he says, "Nevertheless, I shouldn't hide from you the name I've adopted. You will never hear about the Knight with the Lion without hearing about me. I wish to be known by this name." We can finish this up next time. The test, just thinking ahead, whenever, it's gonna be on Candle in the Wind, Erec and Yvain. It'll have a similar format. I'll tell you more specifically about it on Friday. I've kind of mapped up a partial test on my computer so far. I think there'll be a short matching section so I can ask a little more bizarre stuff, but not like Morgan the Wise. Then there'll be several IDs and then there'll probably be two essays. One of the essays will probably deal with Erec and Yvain together, and the other will deal with the end of Candle in the Wind. I won't ask you anything picky from anything before Candle in the Wind, and there really aren't that many more IDs in Candle in the Wind. Most of those characters we've

22 LLT 180 Lecture seen. There are only maybe two, three possible questions out of that. But I'll try to be more specific next time, test time after.