The Unfulfilled Adventure: the Knigth’s Path towards Sunset

Abstract

The hero’s motion towards his glory involves a series of events in which the magic and the wonderful come together to provide aids or obstacles that fortify the knight’s character, and help him acquire his chivalric ethos. Battles, fabulous encounters and strange apparitions are strung, like beads on a necklace, to drive him to his full realization. Similarly, unfulfilled adventures indicate that the hero’s time to rest has come. Thus, his walk shall be slower and he must give place to his heir. The magical universe takes part in the hero’s decline and points out that the adventure can not be carried out by him but by his son. This paper aims to examine how the magical element involved in this “resting state” of the errant knight often implies his enthronement as ruler of a kingdom or empire, and the birth of new future knight.