Errant

Chivalric romance

The models of knight-errant are the heroes of the Round Table from the Arthurian legend, even as deeds of this sort are seldom attributed to Arthur himself. Arthur's many Knights of the Round Table notably include Gawain, Lancelot, Perceval, and Yvain, protagonists of adventurous, largely solitary knight-errant journeys in a series of influential chivalric romance poems written by Chrétien de Troyes in the 12th century. Their greatest quest is that for the Holy Grail, originating from Chrétien's unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail. Often, conventions of the genre place an importance on the knight-errant's celibacy, as in the case of Galahad, the perfect knight and achiever of the Grail in a later medieval Arthurian prose romance tradition. Less typical examples include Dagonet, a court jester balancing between the roles of a knight-errant and a royal fool in Thomas Malory's 15th-century Le Morte d'Arthur. The 13th-century French Post-Vulgate Cycle features a minor Round Table called the Table of Errant Companions, reserved for the younger knights actively seeking adventures while awaiting promotion to the main Round Table.