The Quest-ion
(This was written for my Britlit class.)
A search. A pursuit. A goal-oriented journey. A mission to restore that which has been lost. An adventure. Quests were common, expected, and approved. Knights of all ranks engaged in them. They were physical endeavors to right wrongs or to retrieve ancient and mystical artifacts. Yet the denotation of a quest only begins to scratch the surface, for when it comes to Arthurian knights and their quests, nothing is as it appears.
Quests could be ordered, could be given, could be searched for, or could be stumbled upon. There is no set formula for how a quest should start, and even less for how a quest should end. Quests set those who were knights in every sense of the word apart from those who wanted to be knights. They were marks of chivalrous and dutiful knights, though I suspect that, more often than not, knights were sent on quests to get them out of the king's hair. But true quests were never limited to the initial appearance.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a courtly holiday feast is interrupted by a knight who wants to play blow-for-blow with Arthur, and Sir Gawain takes the king's place. The quest that Gawain has stumbled upon seems simple enough at the onset: in a year, find the Green Knight and receive his return blow. When all is said and done, however, we discover that there was much more to the deceptively simple quest than having Gawain's head chopped off in return. Gawain's integrity was tested by the matter of the girdle, and he discovered that he had been found wanting. This quest revealed this and allowed Gawain to rectify it.
The knight from Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" is ordered on his quest as a means of escape of the punishment he deserved. What was missing was his understanding of and respect for women, and the queen intended to see that restored. He talked with many women before, as a final effort to save his life, he spoke with the old, aged woman who shared with him the secret in exchange for his pledge to marry her. Even when he shared the secret with the court and was declared successful, his quest wasn't over. He had the knowledge, but he did not yet know how to use it. It is not until he gives his wife the choice of appearance that his quest has truly been completed.
Quests have always managed to reveal a weakness within the character of the quester. Rarely, however, does the quest provide no way to make amends. When the quest has been brought to its final conclusion, it is as if two quests have been unconsciously completed simultaneously: the quest to restore that which was missing in the physical realm, and the quest to restore that which was missing within the knight.
A search. A pursuit. A goal-oriented journey. A mission to restore that which has been lost. An adventure. Quests were common, expected, and approved. Knights of all ranks engaged in them. They were physical endeavors to right wrongs or to retrieve ancient and mystical artifacts. Yet the denotation of a quest only begins to scratch the surface, for when it comes to Arthurian knights and their quests, nothing is as it appears.
Quests could be ordered, could be given, could be searched for, or could be stumbled upon. There is no set formula for how a quest should start, and even less for how a quest should end. Quests set those who were knights in every sense of the word apart from those who wanted to be knights. They were marks of chivalrous and dutiful knights, though I suspect that, more often than not, knights were sent on quests to get them out of the king's hair. But true quests were never limited to the initial appearance.
In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a courtly holiday feast is interrupted by a knight who wants to play blow-for-blow with Arthur, and Sir Gawain takes the king's place. The quest that Gawain has stumbled upon seems simple enough at the onset: in a year, find the Green Knight and receive his return blow. When all is said and done, however, we discover that there was much more to the deceptively simple quest than having Gawain's head chopped off in return. Gawain's integrity was tested by the matter of the girdle, and he discovered that he had been found wanting. This quest revealed this and allowed Gawain to rectify it.
The knight from Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" is ordered on his quest as a means of escape of the punishment he deserved. What was missing was his understanding of and respect for women, and the queen intended to see that restored. He talked with many women before, as a final effort to save his life, he spoke with the old, aged woman who shared with him the secret in exchange for his pledge to marry her. Even when he shared the secret with the court and was declared successful, his quest wasn't over. He had the knowledge, but he did not yet know how to use it. It is not until he gives his wife the choice of appearance that his quest has truly been completed.
Quests have always managed to reveal a weakness within the character of the quester. Rarely, however, does the quest provide no way to make amends. When the quest has been brought to its final conclusion, it is as if two quests have been unconsciously completed simultaneously: the quest to restore that which was missing in the physical realm, and the quest to restore that which was missing within the knight.
posted by Daramis at 22:04
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