Knight-errant

A knight-errant (or knight errant) is a figure of medieval chivalric romance literature. The adjective errant (meaning "wandering, roving") indicates how the knight-errant would wander the land in search of adventures to prove his chivalric virtues, either in knightly duels (pas d'armes) or in some other pursuit of courtly love. The knight-errant is a character who has broken away from the world of his origin, in order to go off on his own to right wrongs or to test and assert his own chivalric ideals. He is motivated by idealism and goals that are often illusory. In medieval Europe, knight-errantry existed in literature, though fictional works from this time often were presented as non-fiction. The template of the knight-errant were the heroes of the Round Table of the Arthurian cycle such as Gawain, Lancelot, and Percival. The quest par excellence in pursuit of which these knights wandered the lands is that of the Holy Grail, such as in Perceval, the Story of the Grail written by Chrétien de Troyes in the 1180s. The character of the wandering knight existed in romantic literature as it developed during the late 12th century. However, the term "knight-errant" was to come later; its first extant usage occurs in the 14th-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Knight-errantry tales remained popular with courtly audiences throughout the Late Middle Ages. They were written in Middle French, Middle English, and Middle German. In the 16th century, the genre became highly popular in the Iberian Peninsula; Amadis de Gaula was one of the most successful knight-errantry tales of this period. In Don Quixote (1605), Miguel de Cervantes burlesqued the romances and their popularity. Tales of knight-errantry then fell out of fashion for two centuries, until they re-emerged in the form of the historical novel in Romanticism. A knight-errant typically performed all his deeds in the name of a lady, and invoked her name before performing an exploit.

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Related concepts (14)

Chivalric romance

As a literary genre, the chivalric romance is a type of prose and verse narrative that was popular in the noble courts of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a chivalric knight-errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest. It developed further from the epics as time went on; in particular, "the emphasis on love and courtly manners distinguishes it from the chanson de geste and other kinds of epic, in which masculine military heroism predominates.

Knight-errant

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century chivalric romance in Middle English. The author is unknown; the title was given centuries later. It is one of the best-known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folk motifs: the beheading game, and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel; it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition.