Event

This chapter contends that the event is always an event of language and that adventure is inseparable from the speech that tells it. The being that happens here and now happens to an “I” and, for this reason, is not without relation with language; it is instead defined every time with respect to an instance of enunciation; it is always a “sayable,” which as such demands to be said. For this reason, the one who is involved in the event-adventure is involved and summoned in it as a speaking being, and—following the mandatory rules of the Round Table—must try to tell his adventure. The adventure, which has called him into speech, is being told by the speech of the one it has called and does not exist before this speech.

Eros

This chapter seeks to define the experience of Eros. It first dismisses the modern conceptions of adventure, which run the risk of obstructing our access to the original meaning of the term. The end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age in fact coincide with an obscuration and devaluation of adventure. The chapter argues that such a line of thinking is a misunderstanding of the medieval intention: not only does adventure never remain external to the knight who is living it, but, even with respect to the poet, it turns out to be so far from contingent that it instead penetrates his heart and is identified with the very text he is writing.

Demon

This chapter reflects on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's treatment of four deities introduced in Macrobius's Saturnalia: Daimon, Tyche, Eros, and Ananke (Demon, Chance, Love, and Necessity). According to Macrobius, the four gods attend a human being as it is born: Demon, Chance, Love, and Necessity. To him, Daimon must be honored because we owe him our character and nature; Eros because fecundity and knowledge depend on him; Tyche and Ananke because the art of living also involves a reasonable degree of bowing to what we cannot avoid. The way in which each person relates to these powers defines their ethics. In addition to these, the chapter describes a fifth character—Elpis, or Hope.

Elpis

This chapter argues that love is, in a sense, always hopeless, and yet hope belongs only to it. This is the ultimate meaning of the myth of Pandora. The fact that hope, as the final gift, remains in the box means that it does not expect its factual accomplishment in the world—not because it postpones its fulfillment to an invisible beyond but because somehow it has always already been satisfied. Here, love is stronger than the adventure. But precisely for this reason, in love, we experience at each turn our inability to love and go beyond the adventure and events. Yet, this very inability is the drive that leads us to love.

Aventure

This chapter examines the definitions of the term aventure. It considers this term to be an essential technical term of the medieval poetic vocabulary. It has been recognized as such by modern scholars, who stress the poetological meaning the term acquires in Hartmann von Aue, as well as the performative character the poetic text acquires to the extent that the act of telling and the content of the tale tend to converge. In chivalric poems, Aventure seems to have as many meanings as Tyche. Like Tyche, it designates both chance and destiny: the unexpected event that challenges the knight and a series of facts that will necessarily take place.