Examples Of Quests In King Arthur

Lancelot, Parzival, Knighthood and quests

As we all known, Lancelot, always considered as one of the greatest knights of the king Arthur, fulfills with all wonderful qualities of being a great knight. He does rescue the Queen Guinevere; nevertheless, he still stays in the quest to gain the love of his beloved. The pure love is the quest for Lancelot, which makes him lose in the balance between chivalrous reason and love, and suffers all the time. However, Lancelot still feels meaningful, and follows the path of love, as we can easily see paradox inside his mind, “Because Love ordered and wished it, he jumped in; since Love ruled his action, the disgrace did not matter.” (Chretien, P117)

Knighthood tells knights to act within certain virtues and characteristics, and guide their behavior and deed to overcome troubles in quests. Different from Lancelot, who is always struggling within his mind, and Parzival is still on the path of learning to be a great knight.

Parzival strongly believe the code of knighthood, and always follows and acts with the code of knighthood.

In his quests, what he enhanced is not only physical features, but more in the mental. In other words, the biggest quest for Parzival is the process of making confession of himself to God for his mother’s grief and his own sin. As the first quest that Parzival failed to ask the proper question about the grail, is not because he hasn’t had mental mature, actually is in reason of his hesitation and nature is still far away from the nature of God. Even though he doesn’t finish the quest physically, as he is on the path that “Believe in God, love God, worship God.” (Chretien, P191) His soul has started to become pure and gone further, somehow as Trevrizent declared, “Give your sin over to me. Before God I am your atonement's guarantor. And act as I have told you - remain undaunted in that resolve!” (Eschenbach,

P205)
In general, quest is the eternal topic for all round table knights to prove themselves. They explore their own unremitting perfection through this uncertain trip, even though troubles definitely are waiting for them. Additionally, a qualified knight is both strong in physical and faith, since both knights have certain shortness; therefore, they didn’t succeed in completing the quests, they all gain some other things more and less by acting through their knighthood.