Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 52
disgracefully. You began today,” he said, “an evil and unprofitable
controversy. You disgraced me and mocked the queen. You boast-
ed very foolishly. Your sweetheart is too beautiful and too glorious
if her serving-maiden is better and wiser than our queen is.)
The author repeats mention of Arthur’s anger as the king charges his
retainers with delivering judgment in the case. Arthur is angry and af-
fronted: an insult to the queen affects him as well. Nonetheless, the nature
of the grievance is curious and suspect. Angry words about disgrace and
mockery notwithstanding, Janual’s misdeed is on the same level as the
matter which had precipitated the quarrel among the knights in Erex
saga. At stake is no profound injury; no ethical consideration is involved;
only the vanity of a woman - and indirectly that of her husband or lover -
has been assailed. Arthur does not accuse Janual of attempted seduction;
instead, the knight is brought to trial to answer charges of having boasted
of the beauty of his beloved. Despite his wrath, Arthur is a passive figure
in the ensuing court drama. The responsibility for prosecution rests on
Arthur’s courtiers. They, in turn - as also the king - are powerless against
the intrusion of adventure, against the intervention of forces beyond Ar-
thur’s jurisdiction. Not the Arthurian world - as fanciful as it is - setties
Janual’s case, but the world of fairies and elves - in the form of Janual’s
beloved and her maids-in-waiting - intrudes to save the day for the ma-
ligned knight. Moreover, Janual does not seek re-instatement into the
Arthurian Table Round but flees instead with his beloved to another,
apparently better world on the island of Avalon.
Particularly in Parcevals saga King Arthur appears as a victim of cir-
cumstances beyond his control. As in Januals Ijod, the royal honor is at
stake: an outsider, the Red Knight, challenges the king’s authority by
threatening to claim Arthur’s realm as his own. We learn about the
episode from Arthur himself, who recounts the incident to Parceval to
explain why he had been so deeply immersed in thought as not to take
notice of Parceval’s arrival. In this episode Arthur and his knights are
depicted as completely immobilized by an external threat: none of Ar-
thur’s knights intervenes to curb the audacity of the challenger who, in an
insulting symbolic gesture, snatches the king’s golden gobiet, spilis its
contents in the queen’s lap, and then rides off unchallenged. While the
king fails into an apparently somnolent State of depression, his queen
seems to sulk. She takes refuge in bed, and the king surmises that she is
not well because of the injury inflicted upon her. The queen’s reaction to
loss of honor in Parcevals saga is identical with that depicted in Januals
38