Arthuriana Volume 5 Issue 4 1995 [Doi 10.2307%2F27869147] MICHELLE R. WRIGHT -- ARTHURIAN ARMS and...

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Designing the End of History in the Arming of Galahad Author(s): MICHELLE R. WRIGHT Source: Arthuriana, Vol. 5, No. 4, ARTHURIAN ARMS AND ARMING (WINTER 1995), pp. 45-55 Published by: Scriptorium Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869147 . Accessed: 17/06/2014 21:34 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Scriptorium Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Arthuriana. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.44.79.146 on Tue, 17 Jun 2014 21:34:40 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

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Arthuriana Volume 5 Issue 4 1995 [Doi 10.2307%2F27869147] MICHELLE R. WRIGHT -- ARTHURIAN ARMS and ARMING Designing the End of History in the Arming of Galahad

Transcript of Arthuriana Volume 5 Issue 4 1995 [Doi 10.2307%2F27869147] MICHELLE R. WRIGHT -- ARTHURIAN ARMS and...

  • Designing the End of History in the Arming of GalahadAuthor(s): MICHELLE R. WRIGHTSource: Arthuriana, Vol. 5, No. 4, ARTHURIAN ARMS AND ARMING (WINTER 1995), pp. 45-55Published by: Scriptorium PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27869147 .Accessed: 17/06/2014 21:34

    Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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    .

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  • Designing the End of History in the Arming of Galahad

    MICHELLE R. WRIGHT

    This article analyzes Galahad's swords in La queste del saint graal as

    synecdoches of the chivalric function, which in the course of the

    narrative moves from an Arthurian to a celestial allegiance; Solomons

    wife and Perceval's sister construct the signs of this transformation.

    (MRW)

    The

    arming ritual defines a durable allegiance of mutual obligation between the donor and the recipient of the arms, both in historical

    practice as Jean Fiori has defined it (290-330) and in literature. Of the various

    objects involved in the ritual, only the sword incorporates both the idea of

    allegiance and the physical means to enforce it; it thus acts as a synecdoche of

    the chivalric function itself. Throughout the early thirteenth-century French

    Arthurian Vulgate Cycle, for example, the circulation of swords through giving,

    receiving, and rejection traces the conflict between Arthurian knighthood and the chevalerie celestienne. Without developing the full logic of these gladial distributions from Lestoire delgraalthrough La mort le roiArtu (the subject of a longer work in progress), I will focus here on the arming of Galahad in La

    queste del saint graal I hope to demonstrate that the representation of swords

    organizes events into typological relationships that collapse temporal differences, thereby removing the constraints of history from both the hero

    and the sword. In mythological criticism, which has strongly influenced many readings of

    Arthurian literature, the initiatory rite is almost always read as an ontological rebirth. Michel Stanescos Jeux derrance du chevalier m?di?val, for example, draws on the mythological analyses of Mircea Eliade in order to explicate the

    representation of ritual in chivalric literature (6off). In the Vulgate Cycle, however, the arming ritual most often does not actually transform a male

    character into a knight. Rather, the investment of the hero with arms renders

    visible an ontology, that is, an essence of being, that always already exists: Arthurs kingship exists even before the barons recognize it; Galahad knows

    ARTHURIANA 5.4(1995)

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  • 46 ARTHURIANA

    he will succeed in the Quest even before he begins. The apparent absence of a

    transformative function in the Queste suggests that theories of symbolism cannot always serve as effective theories of representation.

    Although Galahad may not, change from the beginning to the end of the

    narrative, he receives arms three different times. Each episode redefines his

    role in salvation history for the reader. Taken as a group, they trace Galahad's

    translation from earthly Arthurian allegiance to celestial Christian devotion.

    Each sword marks a new stage of the narrative journey that culminates in

    communion with the grail: the first associates Galahad with the Arthurian

    court and is given by Lancelot; the second establishes a celestial allegiance and appears mysteriously in a floating stone near Arthurs court; and the third

    signals Galahads final spiritual perfection. This last sword, originally King Davids, undergoes two transformations before completing its journey to

    Galahad s side. These transformations, engineered by Solomons wife and

    Percevais sister respectively, sign the redemptive process of salvation history. The moral import of the text as a whole thus becomes formally encoded in

    the semiotics of the sword and the patterns of its distribution.

    Galahads first arming occurs at the abbey where he has been raised. The

    abbess summons Lancelot to conduct the initiatory rite (2), which he does

    the following morning. Lancelot then asks the new knight to accompany him to Arthur s court, but he pointedly refuses: 'Sire, fait il, nanil, avec voi n'irai je

    pas' (3) ['Sir, he said, not at all, with you I will not go'].1 Thus although Galahad appears to have joined the Arthurian order as the son and initiate of its greatest knight, he in fact refuses to enter the company of knights. He

    demonstrates clearly his rejection of the Arthurian allegiance implied in the

    receipt of arms when he enters the court the next day 'sans espee et sans ecu

    (7) [without sword and without shield]2 Galahad thus receives chivalric initiation from Lancelot only in order to signal his rejection of allegiance to

    the court and to his earthly father. To replace these Arthurian arms, Galahad draws the sword from the

    mysterious floating stone (12). In a gesture that circumvents the socially binding function of the arming ritual, Galahad places the sword around his own waist,

    whereupon he informs Arthur: 'Sire, or valt mieux que devant. Or ne me faut mes fors escu (12) ['Sir, now is better than before. Now I lack nothing except a shield']. Arthur easily recognizes that God alone will complete the arming of Galahad: 'Escu vos envoiera Diex d'aucune part, ausint come il a fet espee' (12) ['God will send you a shield from somewhere, just as he did the sword'].

    And indeed, Galahad meets his shield soon after leaving Arthur's court. Having hung it about his neck, he immediately separates himself from his Arthurian

    companion, Yvains (31). Once endowed with his divinely inspired arms,

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  • ARMING OF GALAHAD 47

    Galahad severs all relations with Arthurs court, as if he had passed through it

    only in order to demonstrate his distance from it. However, the arms acquired in Arthurian company, although apparently granted by divine intervention,

    will not accompany Galahad into the presence of the grail. Because Galahad

    and the grail both oppose Arthurian chivalry, all Arthurian connotations will

    be effaced from the arms before the completion of the quest.3 This second

    sword, a sign of singularity and perfection, will be superseded by the third, a

    sign of the process of redemption that leads to perfection. The third sword

    thus provides the imitable example that Galahad himself does not.

    The complex adventure of the third arming spans millennia. Solomons

    wife and Percevais sister re-fabricate nearly every aspect of the ancestral sword

    before it joins Galahad. The changes in the swords appearance and location

    mark the stages of a semiotic process in which the artifact becomes a sign of

    Christian spiritual perfection, of a theory of history as a redeemable text. The

    intervention of female craft in this process demonstrates the power of

    typological interpretation and the redemptive capacity of transcendent

    authority. The first transformation of the sword strips away its Old Testament history

    in order to begin the construction of a sign of eternal truth. Like Galahad, the

    sword comes from the 'haut lignage le Roi David' (7) [the lofty lineage of

    King David]. Both the hero and his sword represent rather than resemble

    their past because their significance lies outside of time. Thus Christ (as a

    figure of eternal truth), rather than David and Lancelot (Galahad's genealogical fathers), defines the ultimate significance of Galahad's actions.4 Likewise, the

    re-fabrication of the sword gradually replaces its historical relation to David

    with its semiotic relation to redemptive truth, that is, the Old Law with the

    New (Leupin 72; Quinn 206). To apply the formula of Laurence de Looze, its

    terrestrial signifieds are disinherited in favor of celestial ones (129). Physically, then, the rebuilding of rhe sword disguises, or re-guises, history as a sign of

    eternity.

    The sword resides in a temple, along with the rest of David's superlative armor. When Solomon learns that the last of his line will be a hero surpassing all others, he wishes to communicate his knowledge of the future to his distant heir. Following the advice of his wife, Solomon has the sword removed from

    the temple so that it may be placed in the ship that will travel to the future.

    Constructed by Solomon's wife, this ship will ultimately meet Perceval's sister

    and provide the heroes of the grail quest, providing them with knowledge of

    the distant past. The closure of this communication gap facilitates Galahad's

    completion of the quest at the same time that it seals the judgment of condemnation against Arthurian chivalry: unlike Lancelot, who fails to

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  • 48 ARTHURIANA

    apprehend the past (Maddox 39-42), Galahad communicates successfully with

    his most distant ancestors.

    Solomons wife does not simply advise him to present the sword to his

    distant heir as an antique artifact, she directs him to dismantle the ancestral

    weapon:

    Ou temple que vos avez fet en l'onor vostre Seignor est l'espee le roi David vostre pere, la plus trenchant et la plus merveilleuse qui onques fust bailliee de main de chevalier. Si la prenez et en ostez le pont et l'enheudeure, si que nos

    aions l'alemele tote nue tornee a une part. (223)

    [At the temple that you made in honor of your Lord is the sword of King David your father, the sharpest and the most marvelous that ever was handled by a knight. Take it

    and remove the pommel and the hilt, so that we have the blade all bare returned to an

    original state.]

    The removal of the pommel and hilt strips the sword to its bare essence?the

    blade?and effaces the personal imprint of David. Furthermore, the phrase Cornee a une part potrays the blade in an original state of meaninglessness, tote nue' and empty of signification. In salvation terms, then, the stripping

    of the sword dissociates it from the processes of history initiated by the Fall, and suggests a state untouched by the consequences of sin.

    Solomons wife continues with instructions on how to rebuild the sword

    with a new pommel, hilt, scabbard, and baldric:

    Et vos, qui conoissiez les vertus des pierres et la force des herbes et la maniere de toutes autres choses terrienes, si i fetes un pont de pierres pr?cieuses si soutilment jointes qu'il n'ait apr?s vos regart terrien qui po?st conoistre Tune de l'autre, ainz quit chascuns qui le verra que ce soit une meisme chose. Et

    apr?s i fetes une enheudeure si merveilleuse qu'il n'i ait el mende si vertueuse ne si merveilleuse. Apr?s i fetes le fuerre si merveilleus en son endroit corne

    l'espee est ou suen. Et quant vos i avroiz ce fet, je i metrai les renges teles come

    moi plaira. (223)

    [And you, who know the virtues of stones and the strength of herbs and the manner

    of all things earthly, make a pommel of precious stones so subtly joined that after you there will be no earthly look that can recognize one from the other, rather everyone

    will see it as one single thing. And then make a hilt so marvelous that there be none in

    the world so virtuous or so marvelous. And then make a scabbard just as marvelous in

    its own way as the sword is in its. And when you have done this, I will put on a

    baldric^ such as will please me.]

    These instructions demonstrate the limits of Solomons wife's access to the

    truth, limits that will be signed by the artifact that the instructions aim to

    create. First, her knowledge as well as Solomon's are grounded in the terrien:

    within these limits they may be superlative, but they will never comprehend the celestien. Second, her knowledge is restricted to the world of romance,

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  • ARMING OF GALAHAD 49

    where the height of achievement is merveilleus rather than spirituel. And indeed,

    Stephen Nichols portrays her as the figure of the romance genre by identifying her with the ship, a vehicle of the romance itself (31). Her assertion of

    individual will ('come moi plaira') is another element of her romance persona, for this formulation presents the new baldric as a product of romance desire

    rather than of devocion to a transcendent Will. In these ways, the description of the proposed changes to the artifact emphasizes the gap between this Old

    Testament world and the spiritual perfection that is Galahad's destiny, where

    the terrien, the merveilleus, and the moi all give way to the celeste. The completed sword will embody this process of redemption, which necessarily includes a

    stage of limited knowledge?a stage elided in Galahad's own journey. Solomon accepts these instructions, except where they require the creation

    of illusion:

    Et il fist tout ce quele li dist, fors dou pont, ou il ne mist qu'une sole pierre, mes elle ert de totes les colors que len po?st deviser .... (223)

    [And he did everything she told him, except with the pommel, where he placed only a

    single stone, but it was of all the colors that one could name . . . .]

    Defying his wife for the first and only time in the construction of the ship, Solomon here reclaims a portion of his authortiy over his wife by refusing the

    deception that she herself constantly practices by grant engin' (220) [great craftiness6]. By substituting the single stone for the fabricated one, Solomon

    presents a pommel whose surface is transparent to its ontological reality.? Solomon's refusal of craft, or engineering, per se, constitutes a rejection of the

    principle of evil and an acceptance of divine authority: the engineor, after all,

    practices deceit as a devilish activity explicitly opposed to divine will (Hanning 83n4; Queste 211). In effect, the substitution demonstrates a recognition rhat

    the pommel must ultimately satisfy not only a regart terrien, but the regart celestien as well. The true wholeness of the stone thus signifies the future

    wholeness of the hero, as the narrator's later description of the pommel suggests: chascune des colors avoit en soi une vertu' (202) [each of the colors had in it

    a virtue], Galahad's virtues, like the colors, form his singular devotion to God

    and are inseparable from each other.

    When the sword arrives, it appears to Solomon to be a product of his wife's

    usual deception, at which he expresses anger: 4ele i avoit mises renges

    d'estoupe...' (223) [she had put on a baldric of crude fiber...]. Estoupe suggests a lie or error by association with the verb estouper, which refers to the use of

    fibers to create a stopper or blockage (Godefroy). Estoupe can thus be

    understood figurally as a blockage of truth. On the surface, the crude baldric

    does indeed belie the richness of the sword itself. But the transformation of

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  • SO ARTHURIANA

    the sword into a sign of the redemptive process remains incomplete at this moment. Solomons wife's refusal to fabricate or engineer appropriate baldric

    thus communicates truthfully the limits of her knowledge. The rich sword and the crude baldric together represent a moment of partial understanding, which cannot be completed in the historical moment of the Old Testament.

    Solomon's wife recognizes fully these limitations: 'Sire, sachiez que je n'ai

    nule si haute chose, qui soit digne de sostenir si haute espee corne cest est'

    (223) ['Sir, know that I have nothing so lofty that it would be worthy to

    support such a lofty sword as this is']. Thus while Solomon condemns the baldric as a product of engin as deception, it in fact carries no artifice at all.

    Instead, it honestly marks the limits of her engin as intelligence and invention? She cannot sustain the sword because it is a sign of a Christian purity whose advent lies in the future and which cannot be invented: the baldric, presented initially as a product of Solomon's wife's romance desire ('come moi plaira), here testifies to the supreme Truth of divine Will. Thus just as the redemption of Man by Christ, of Woman by Mary, and of Chivalry by Galahad lie in the future, so does the 'redemption' of the baldric by Perceval's sister.

    The devoted handiwork and flawless exegesis of Perceval's sister complete the design of the sword begun by Solomon's wife. When the ship launched from the Old Testament finally reaches its Arthurian destination, the sword itself actually does a lot of explaining. The hilt claims that only the knight for

    whom it is destined can grip it (203), one side of the blade warns of the

    dangers to the unworthy who try to draw it (203), while the other alludes to

    the fate of one who did try to use the blade (206), and the scabbard explains at great length how only the purest can bear it, how the poor baldric will be

    replaced by a rich one, and how the damsel who does this will also provide the true names of the sword and the scabbard (205-06). When Perceval's sister has recounted the entire history of the ship and its

    contents, and the veracity of her tale has been guaranteed in writing, Perceval declares to his companions that they must leave immediately in quest of the

    virgin who can replace the poor baldric and enable Galahad to take on his sword (226). Perceval, like Solomon, fails to understand the correct action to

    be taken concerning the baldric. And as Solomon's wife corrected Solomon, so Perceval's sister corrects the knights. Overhearing their resolve to leave, she tells them that the appropriate baldric will be in place before they leave. She then produces 'unes renges ouvr?es d'or et de soie et de cheveux mout

    richement' (227) [a baldric worked in gold and silk and hair very richly]. The narrator remarks on her great skill in attaching it to the sword, 'si bien com se

    eie l'eust fet toz les jorz de sa vie' (227) [as well as if she had done it every day of her life]. This is of course the first and only time Perceval's sister performs

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  • ARMING OF GALAHAD 51

    this feat of engineering. But she has no need to learn it, for her absolute devotion inspires her movements. Her unique work is thus perfect from

    inception, just like the hero it will adorn. In addition to completing the physical transformarion of the sword,

    Perceval's sister provides the swords proper name, TEspee as esrranges renges' (227) ['the Sword of the Exrra-ordinary9 Baldric']. The reference of the name

    remains ambiguous, for the phrase designates only the object's powerful alterity without qualifying the nature of its departure from the normal or expected. Estranges renges can thus refer either to Solomon's wife's surprisingly poor bladric or to Perceval's sister's inconceivably rich one. The ambiguity of the reference

    thematizes the object's distance from the familiar while effacing the memory of its association with David and Solomon. In place of this genealogy, the name presents an interpretation of Galahad beyond history, beyond the

    ordinary. Thus he becomes fully visible as the superlative hero of the spiritual quest when he becomes the Knight of the Extra-ordinary Baldric.

    Having re-designed the sword through her craft, and re-signed it through her onomasric inrervention, Perceval's sister uses it to mark Galahad's total

    celestial allegiance:

    Certes, sire, or ne me chaut il mes quant je muire; car je me tiegn orendroit a la plus beneuree pucele dou monde, qui ai fet le plus preudome dou si?cle chevalier. Car bien sachiez que vos ne Testiez pas a droit quant vos n estiez

    garniz de l'espee qui por vos fu aportee en ceste terre. (228)

    [Certainly, sir, now I don't care at all when I die, for I hold myself now the most

    happy girl in the world, who have made the most worthy man of the earth a knight. For know well that you were not rightfully one when you were not invested with the

    sword that for you has been brought to this land.]

    Although Galahad has never been in the wrong, those who encountered him

    could misread him as an ordinary Arthurian knight because he did not yet

    carry the sign of his true knighthood, the chevalerie celestienne embodied by the Sword of the Extra-ordinary Baldric. The sword designates him as the

    perfected spiritual knight that he has always been; it functions as the chivalric

    counterpart to the grail's eucharistie associations. The new sword severs his

    last Arrhurian ties, affirming his place in Christian history and marking his

    readiness to achieve the grail' (Quinn 210). The sword itself, now physically and semiotically complete, is only fit for one battle (Queste 238): the defense

    of the maiden who redeemed it from history for Galahad on behalf of God

    Himself.

    Perceval's sister's role in the redemptive process of Christian history is made

    clear in her death, a Christological sacrifice. She gives her blood to heal a

    leprous damsel, and thus gives her life, declaring to the woman: 'je sui a la mort venue por vostre garison' (241) [I have come to death for your healing].

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  • 5* ARTHURIANA

    The formula expresses succinctly the function of Christ s own death: Percevais

    sisters saintly blood redeems the body of the sick woman just as Christ

    redeemed all believers with his death (Quinn 204; Ribard 44). The blood itself is delivered to the sick damsel in an escuele, the word initially used in

    Lestoire del saint graal for the grail itself (33). Thus although Galahad is

    conventionally identified as the type of Christ in the Queste, Perceval's sister's

    redemptive powers are in fact more visible and her actions imitate more directly those of the Saviour, (Aronstein 218-19). Indeed, her body arrives in Sarras

    before the knights (Queste 276). The two women who re-design the sword can be read as an expression of

    the relationship between history and salvation, between the terrestrial and the

    celestial that governs the text as a whole. The joint effort of Solomon's wife

    and Perceval's sister to redeem the sword from the Old Testament past for the

    spiritual arming of Galahad stages the movement from literal to typological

    interpretation, from mere physical to ontological transformation, from artifact

    to sign. Solomon's wife is crafty, and although she recognizes the inadequacy of literal reading, she remains grounded in a past that lacks any other mode of

    understanding. Perceval's sister, by contrast, has direct access to divine vision

    and mediates between men and God. Her grant devocion, which effaces

    individual invention, replaces Solomon's wife's grant engin: her skills derive not from her own craft, but from the emptying of herself before God.

    Between engin and devotion lies Mary Herself as the mediator between Eve

    and Solomon's wife on the one hand (the text links them explicitly [220]) and

    Perceval's sister on the other. According to the Queste, Mary also descends

    from Solomon (220-21); she thus provides a purified historical link between

    the Old Testament and the Arthurian world. From this perspective, original sin and engin both signify a distance from divine truth, a distance that has

    been erased for Perceval's sister by Mary. The sister thus becomes the redeemed

    counterpart of the wife, as the sword passes from David to Galahad. Like

    Mary, the sword mediates between two poles of history. Perceval's sister can also be understood as Mary's Arthurian double,

    considering her a mediating rather than static figure. (Baumgartner 194; Lot

    Borodine 54; Quinn 198; and Ribard 43-46). In this way, Solomon's wife

    mediates between Eve (the original sinner) and Mary (the first devoted virgin). Perceval's sister's arming of Galahad, which she explicitly represents as

    transformative, becomes a symbolic re-birthing that parallels Mary's birthing of Christ (Locke 77; Matarasso 71). This perspective on mediation enables a

    symbolic reading consistent with mythological criticism and notions of the

    arming scene as a moment of ontological transformation. Other typological

    relationships are of course possible, and the analogical mode of the Queste

    encourages their multiplication (Burns 354-61). For Susan Aronstein, for

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  • ARMING OF GALAHAD 53

    example, all women in the Queste, including Perceval's sister, are typlogically bound to Eve because the male discourse of the text negates all female power

    (221-23). The possibility of multiple, even conflicting, relationships demonstrates the flexible authority of typology in the Queste, where Biblical

    and Arthurian modes of understanding repeatedly merge in the service of a

    transcendent signified that effaces the historical significances that would limit

    typological analogies. When Galahad is translated to heaven along with the grail, the sword is

    not said to accompany them. Instead, it remains on earth as a sign of the

    redemptive process (Baumgartner 122). The swords transformations do not

    reflect those of Galahad (if he has any), but those of a fallen figure who achieves

    perfection. In fact, the sword may be the only figure, animate or inanimate, that does undergo an ontological transformation in the text s static universe

    of eternal truths. Unlike the perfected characters, who are only admirable, the

    sword understood semiotically is imirable. It presents and represents the

    possibility of change as it parallels the process of redemption from a fallen state (history) to a sanctified one (eternity). The women who effect this

    transformation mark the end points of the process, as engin becomes devocion.

    The transformation of the sword engages chivalry itself, not only bacause

    of the synecdochic relationship between the hero and the sword but because

    the engin that motivates the first reformation also transforms the practice of

    chivalry in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Ipomedon, for example, chivalric engin causes the heroes to throw down their arms, 'symbolically ending the reign of prowess' (Hanning 100). The devocion that completes the

    transformation of the sword also renders prowess obsolete: when Lancelot

    attempts to engage in combat with the lions that guard the grail castle, a

    flaming hand knocks his sword out of his hand, and the lions only let him

    pass after he has submitted to the merci' of the Lord and sworn never again to draw his sword (Queste 253-54). Together, engin and divocion displace force; in the queste, this displacement is signed by the sword, the very emblem of

    force.

    Solomons wife and Perceval's sister design the sword to signify Galahad's

    unique and eternal devotion to the celestial order, an allegiance sealed by his

    third and final arming. The sequence of arming scenes traces the translation

    of Arthurian chivalry (the sword given by Lancelot) to celestial chivalry (David's sword re-formed by Solomon's wife and Perceval's sister) via the idea itself of

    divine intervention (the floating sword). Each of these scenes engages a new

    order of understanding. Together, they encode in their formal details a

    microcosmic view of the text's deepest concerns with spiritual hermeneutics, historical exegesis, and the limits of chivalric force.

    UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

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  • ARTHURIANA

    Michelle R. Wright ([email protected]) is Assistant Professor of

    French in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Miami Coral Gables, Florida. She is currently at work on a cultural history of

    the sword Excalibur in insular and continental narratives.

    NOTES

    1 This and all subsequent translations are my own. For a complete English translation of the Queste, see The Quest for the Holy Grail ed. Pauline Matarasso

    especially 31-66 and 207-51. 2 Alexandre Leupin suggests a similar interpretation (74m5). 3 Esther Quinn interpretsthe second sword as a sign of the Old Law rather than

    of divine intervention (207-08), while Albert Pauphilet interprets both the second and third swords as symbols of a chevalerie spirituelle' (140). The

    interpretation I present here, however, emphasizes the swords' chivalric

    significance within the Arthurian order.

    4 For extensive discussion of the typological relation between Galahad and

    Christ, see Baumgartner 92-94; Locke passim-, Matarasso 38-95; Pauphilet 140

    56; and Quinn 212-15. 5 I translate renges as baldric (that is, the belt that hangs from one shoulder

    diagonally across the chest, to which the sword attaches at the waist) following Legge's argument that this meaning had become common by the end of the

    twelfth-century (89). Earlier, renges seems to have referred to the ties that attach

    the scabbard to the belt rather than to the belt itself. 6 Georges Mator? suggests intelligence as the best general translation of engin

    (76). In English, however, craft seems preferable because it suggests both the

    deceptive and mechanical aspects of the Old French semantic field.

    7 In discussing the Queste's thematics of fracture and dissimulation, Leupin somewhat surprisingly does not discuss Solomon's substitution (73). Solomon's refusal to dissimulate as well as the stone's real unity suggest a modification of

    Leupin's interpretation of fiction and illusion, which focuses only on the wife's intentions.

    8 Douglas Kelly considers only these latter two aspects of engin in discussing Solomon (120), as does Grace Armstrong in reading Solomon's wife herself. The term's moral ambiguity, however, infuses its every use (Hanning 83-85).

    9 I prefer extra-ordinary to the common

    rendering of estranges as strange because

    it communicates the element of surprise that results from the sight of the

    utterly unexpected without the pejorative connotation of strange. In addition, the phonetic resonance with sword communicates part of the rhythm of the

    Old French phrase.

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  • ARMING OF GALAHAD 55

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    Article Contentsp. [45]p. 46p. 47p. 48p. 49p. 50p. 51p. 52p. 53p. 54p. 55

    Issue Table of ContentsArthuriana, Vol. 5, No. 4, ARTHURIAN ARMS AND ARMING (WINTER 1995), pp. 1-128Front MatterEditor's NoteRemarks on Arthurian Arms And Arming Scenes [pp. 1-2]Arthurian Armings For War And For Love [pp. 3-21]'Syngne,' 'Conysaunce,' 'Deuys': Three Pentangles in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" [pp. 22-31]Arthur as the Bearer of Civilization: The "Alliterative Morte Arthure," ll. 901-19 [pp. 32-44]Designing the End of History in the Arming of Galahad [pp. 45-55]'Arms and the (Wo)man' in Medieval Romance: The Gendered Arming of Female Warriors in the "Roman d'Eneas" and Heldris's "Roman de Silence" [pp. 56-83]The Round TableArthurnet [pp. 84-86]Correspondence from Geoffrey Ashe [pp. 86-89]A Survey of Recent Publications in German [pp. 89-94]

    ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 95-99]Review: untitled [pp. 100-103]Review: untitled [pp. 103-105]Review: untitled [pp. 105-106]Review: untitled [pp. 107-109]Review: untitled [pp. 109-111]Review: untitled [pp. 111-113]Review: untitled [pp. 113-117]Review: untitled [pp. 117-120]Review: untitled [pp. 120-124]Review: untitled [pp. 124-127]Review: untitled [pp. 127-128]

    Back Matter