Parzival's Damsels in Distress

Sharon Kinoshita, in an article titled "The Politics of Courtly Love: La Prise d'Orange and the Conversion of the Saracen Queen," argues that possession of the Saracen woman became a surrogate for and a means of possession of the Saracen world. She examines Orable from La Prise d'Orange and argues that Guillaume Fierebrace's conquest of her is really a symbolic conquest of the city. I think this also rings true for the possession of women - both Saracen and not - in Parzival; more often than not, the women are linked to a throne or region that needs governance and the knight who "wins" her almost always "wins" a kingdom in the process.

After Gahmuret and the Queen of Zazamanc unite, the Queen makes clear what the noble knight has won: "I and my lands are subject to this knight," she declares to her people and she later echoes this sentiment via her letter: "Return, and from my hands receive a crown, sceptre and kingdom that have been bequeathed to me" (49). Likewise, Condwiramurs is trying to protect both "land and person" from Clamide's "wooing" and, instead, "bestowed her lands and castles on him [Parzival], for he was the darling of her heart" (110). The woman-land conflation is all over Parzival and seems to suggest that women's bodies do not function merely as their own but also as cultural signifiers.

Kinoshita's above article implies that women's bodies act as signifiers for their culture; that, essentially, the representation of conquest of an entire people can be brought out by the conquest of a single individual. This is problematic because this "site" then becomes a figurative battlefield as opposed to belonging to the individual herself thus raising the question: what would happen if women became agents and knights of their own, pursuing lands and saving others from harm, as opposed to acting as signs for conquest or the conquered?