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.
1 See: Bram Caers and Mike Kestemont, ‘Over de datering van de Middelnederlandse ridderepiek’, Verslagen en mededelingen van de Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse taal- en letterkunde 121 (2011): 1–59 at pp. 20–18. Mike Kestemont, ‘In het land van Alena: Over de lokalisering van de Ferguut’, in ‘Ende hi verkende dien name wale’: Opstellen voor Willem Kuiper, ed. Marjolein Hogenbirk and Roel Zemel (Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU / Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2014), pp. 93–98. Monographs on the Ferguut include Willem Kuiper, Die Riddere metten Witten Scilde: Oorsprong, overlevering en auteurschap van de Middelnederlandse ‘Ferguut’, gevolgd door een diplomatische editie en een diplomatisch glossarium (Amsterdam: Schiphouwer and Brinkman, 1989), and R. M. T. Zemel, Op zoek naar Galiene: Over de Oudfranse ‘Fergus’ en de Middelnederlandse ‘Ferguut’ (Amsterdam: Schiphouwer en Brinkman, 1991). See also: A. A. M. Besamusca, ‘The Middle Dutch Arthurian Material’, in The Arthur of the Germans: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval German and Dutch Literature, ed. W. H. Jackson and S. A. Ranawake (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 187–228 at pp. 211–14 and Willem Kuiper and Geert H. M. Claassens, ‘‚Fergus‘/‚Ferguut‘’, in Germania Litteraria Mediaevalis Francigena. Band V. Höfischer Roman in Vers und Prosa, ed. René Pérennec and Elisabeth Schmid (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 311–29 at pp. 318–22. 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.
2 See: Roel Zemel, The Quest for Galiene: A Study of Guillaume le Clerc’s Arthurian Romance ‘Fergus’ (Amsterdam: Stichting Neerlandistiek VU / Münster: Nodus Publikationen, 2006), Chapters 2 and 3. 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.
3 Zemel, Op zoek naar Galiene, pp. 181–353, presents a detailed comparison of part 1 of the Ferguut and the Old French source. The romance reads like an account of the spectacular career of the son of a farmer, an unusual protagonist, who eventually becomes the best knight of Arthur’s court and the world.
The Middle Dutch text starts as a slightly abridged translation of the Old French
Fergus, after which it gradually turns into a free adaptation in the second half of the romance. Several explanations have been offered for this. Considering linguistic characteristics of both parts, Willem Kuiper argued that
Ferguut must have been written by two authors, the second working years later than the first.
4 Kuiper, Die Riddere metten Witten Scilde, pp. 217–301. Others have opted for one author who, for whatever reason, had to continue his work from memory.
5 See: David F. Johnson and Geert H. M. Claassens, eds., Dutch Romances. II. Ferguut (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer 2000), pp. 3–6; Kuiper and Claassens, ‘‚Fergus‘/‚Ferguut‘’, pp. 318–22. Recent stylometric research, however, seems to suggest that we are dealing with one single author.
6 M. Kestemont, Het gewicht van de auteur: Stylometrische auteursherkenning in Middelnederlandse literatuur (Gent: Koninklijke Academie voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde, 2013), p. 236; Th. Meder et al, ‘Stijlbreuk in de Ferguut: Stylometrische heroverwegingen bij een auteurskwestie’, Queeste 25 (2018): 87–100. This author does not simply retell the story from the French source, but, as he proceeds, breaks free from it, and makes his own choices for style and content.
7 See also: Roel Zemel, ‘Koning Artur in actie: Over het begin van Fergus en het eind van Ferguut’, Voortgang, jaarboek voor Neerlandistiek 29 (2011): 29–52 at p. 43. From the moment that the protagonist Ferguut goes in search of the White Shield, the romance contains a series of connected changes, especially in the development of the love story of Ferguut and Galiene, which points to a deliberate and creative, and above all, humorous adaptation of the Old French source.
This humorous perspective is visible from the very beginning of the story. The romance opens with a prelude in which Arthur and his knights set out to hunt a white stag and arrive in the land of the rich farmer Somilet who is married to a noblewoman. The narrator introduces the unusual hero, des dorpers sone ‘the son of a villein’ (313), who stops plowing when he sees the hunting party pass by and decides to go to Arthur’s court to become his advisor. There he enters the great hall on horseback and is mocked by the seneschal Keye. Nevertheless, Ferguut is dubbed a knight. His first task is to defeat the Black Knight, Arthur’s enemy. On his way to the battle, he finds lodging at a castle named Ydel, where he meets Galiene, whose uncle owns this castle. She visits him at night at his bedside declaring her love for him. Ferguut does not immediately respond to her advances, because he knows nothing about love and because he first has to complete the task given to him by Arthur. However, he promises to return. When he has defeated the Black Knight and has sent him to Arthur’s court, Ferguut returns to Ydel. Galiene, however, has fled, and suddenly the hero finds himself completely under the spell of love for Galiene. Feeling guilty about having spurned her advances, he embarks on a long quest to find her. After several encounters with adversaries which do not bring him any closer to his goal, Ferguut loses his mind and roams the forest for two years until he is healed by a magic fountain. A dwarf tells him that he must acquire the White Shield in order to find his beloved. At the castle where the shield is kept and defended by a dragon, he fights the giantess Pantasale and acquires the shield. Then, Ferguut passes the castle of a giant, Pantasale’s husband, defeats him and frees two damsels who were captured and whose lovers had been slain by the giant. Ferguut also tames the giant’s horse, Pennevare, who becomes his new mount.
From the damsels he learns that Galiene’s castle, Rikenstene, is besieged by king Galarant, who intends to conquer her and her lands by force. Acting as ‘The Knight with the White Shield’, Ferguut twice takes the lead in a great battle against Galiene’s enemy, but he returns to the giant’s castle afterwards. When Galarant attacks again in the hero’s absence, Galiene proposes a decisive combat in order to save her lands: her champion will fight against two of the opponent’s knights. Galiene sends her lady-in-waiting Lunette to Arthur’s court to look for a champion to take up the fight. Lunette returns unsuccessful but passes Ferguut’s castle on the way back where she tells him about the situation. Ferguut arrives the next day just in time to fight the two knights: Galarant and his nephew Macedone. Ferguut kills the latter and defeats Galarant, after which he once again departs immediately to his castle without identifying himself.
The attention now shifts to Galiene, who travels to Arthur’s court to find a husband to administer her lands. In a comical scene (5101–44), which does not appear in the Old French source, Ferguut learns about Galiene’s initiative from a dwarf in knightly armour, who happens to be passing by Ferguut’s castle. He tells Ferguut that Arthur has declared a tournament with Galiene’s hand in marriage as a prize. The dwarf, who is also infatuated with the beautiful Galiene, is on his way to this tournament, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Ferguut realizes that now he must hurry to Arthur’s court, because he could lose Galiene. There, Ferguut, alias ‘The Knight with the White Shield’, defeats Keye on the first day, Pertsevael on the second, and one knight of the Round Table after the other on the following days. On day twelve, Gawein steps forward but Ferguut refuses to fight him. When he removes his helmet, Gawein joyfully recognizes him. Ferguut wins the tournament and receives Galiene, who feels deeply ashamed, from Arthur’s hand, and Ferguut and Galiene marry immediately at Arthur’s court.
As several critics have shown, one of the most attractive aspects of the Middle Dutch romance lies in superior narrative style. The author has a talent for burlesque descriptions, frequently using litotes and diminutives. The addition of large quantities of direct speech, original expletives, and expressions makes the romance very lively and humorous.
8 On the humorous style of the Ferguut, see: E. Rombauts, N. de Paepe and M. J. M. de Haan, eds., Ferguut (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff 19822), pp. 35–39; Veerle Uyttersprot, ‘“Entie hoofsche Walewein, sijn gheselle was daer ne ghein”: Ironie en het Walewein-beeld in de Roman van Walewein en in de Europese middeleeuwse Arturliteratuur’, PhD dissertation (Katholieke Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, 2004), pp. 45–48; Frits van Oostrom, Stemmen op schrift: Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse literatuur vanaf het begin tot 1300 (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006), pp. 272–74.In the second part of the romance, the author’s style becomes even looser than in the first part, and deviates in a number of remarkable ways from the French source. This part of the romance has, like the Old French romance, a tripartite structure: first, Ferguut has to complete the quest for the White Shield (3161‒3814); this part is followed by the story of Ferguut’s actions during the siege of Rikenstene (3865‒4890), and the last part concludes with the tournament and the hero’s marriage to Galiene (4979‒5589). The free adaptation presents a new version of the hero’s quest for Galiene, and its humorous style evokes an ironic distance with regard to the
amour–chevalerie theme of the Old French romance. Here, Ferguut takes his time rather than being driven by love.
9 Another opinion is voiced by Kuiper and Claassens, ‘‚Fergus‘/‚Ferguut‘’, p. 126, who see in the Ferguut the very same return to the overriding love theme as in the Fergus. Other characters propel him toward his reunion with Galiene. Moreover, in the very last part of the romance Galiene also seems to have forgotten Ferguut.