A Relaxed Knight and an Impatient Heroine Ironizing the Love Quest in the Second Part of the Middle Dutch Ferguut

FERGUUT OR DIE Riddere metten witten scilde (The Knight with the White Shield) is one of the oldest (c. 1240) Arthurian romances in Middle Dutch. The romance was written in Flanders, but the only extant copy is preserved in a manuscript, made in the duchy of Brabant around the middle of the fourteenth century, Leiden, Universiteitsbibliotheek, Ltk 191. Ferguut is an adaptation of Fergus, an Old French Arthurian romance (c. 1200) by Guillaume le Clerc. This romance tells the story of an extraordinary hero who begins his career as the son of a farmer. Knighted at Arthur's court and on his way to his first adventure, he meets Galiene, who confesses her love for him. Fergus spurns her advances and the offended Galiene flees. When Fergus successfully returns from his adventure, he finds himself under the spell of love and leaves on a long quest for Galiene, in which he has to learn to combine amour ‘love’ and chevalerie ‘chivalry’. As the ‘Chevalier au bel Escu’ [the Knight with the Splendid Shield], Fergus fights for Galiene, who, after her father's death, has become mistress of Lothian. Eventually Fergus wins Galiene's hand in marriage and becomes lord of all her lands.
Research has shown that the romance of Fergus was also meant as a literary critique of Chrétien de Troyes's late twelfth century story of Perceval in Le Conte du Graal (The Story of the Grail). Guillaume returns to the romance model centering on the theme of the balance between worldly love and martial prowess, which Chrétien chose for his earlier romances Erec et Enide and Yvain. At the same time, Guillaume rejects Perceval's choice for a religiously inspired form of chivalry, symbolized by the Grail, by creating a new hero, Fergus, who is very similar to Perceval, and whose goal lies in the union of chivalry and love in the service of Galiene. Unlike Guillaume, the Flemish author does not aim at playing this specific intertextual game with the Conte du Graal; instead, the Middle Dutch romance offers a simpler, but skillfully told, fast-paced version of the story.