In Antecedents of the English Novel, 1400–1600, Margaret Schlauch hails the ‘courtly realism’ of Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur and, in particular, ‘the comically realistic Sir Dinadan’, whose jokes about his fear of jousting have his listeners laughing so hard they can barely keep their seats. ‘Sir Dinadan, the realist’ (Elizabeth Edwards), the ‘rational moralist’ ruled by a ‘pragmatic creed’ (Donald Hoffman), remains a standard figure of Malorian analysis. Equally standard, however, is the scholarly observation that Dinadan's humorous cowardice never seriously challenges the ideology of knightly worship. This essay will re-examine Dinadan's role in Malory, questioning the alleged innocuousness of his comic counter-ideology. Dinadan making fun of chivalry may not be dangerous, but, I will argue, Dinadan turning language into the medium of foolery and japing is.

Sir Dinadan first appears in the anonymous French romance known as the Prose Tristan, written around 1230. In it he acts as Tristan's sidekick, a devoted friend and champion, who revenges Tristan's murder by King Mark. Sometime later, what Eugène Vinaver labeled the ‘Second Version’ of the Prose Tristan transformed Dinadan into a sarcastic critic of knightly manners and customs, one whose ‘philosophy of happiness’, according to Vinaver, ‘spares nothing, questions everything: knightly worship, courtly love, Christian belief’. Dinadan in the Prose Tristan burlesques established rituals. In one episode, for example, he is riding through a forest when he meets an unknown knight. The chevalier accosts him with a standard demand: ‘Sir knight, you must joust with me!’ The stranger is puzzled by Dinadan's response: ‘Sir knight’, he says, ‘so God give you good adventure, don't you know any other way to greet a knight-errant than to say, “You must joust with me”? So help me God, this greeting is hardly courteous!’ The befuddled stranger can only repeat his first question: Will Dinadan joust with him? ‘Tell me’, says Dinadan, ‘this joust that you demand from me, do you seek it for love or for hate?’ For love, of course, the stranger says. Well, says Dinadan, ‘Go show your love to somebody else, because if that's your idea of love, I’d rather be your enemy.’

Of course, the stranger knight's request was completely ‘courteous’, or courtois, as courtliness was understood within the traditions of Arthurian knighthood. What is shockingly unorthodox is Dinadan's refusal to respond with a similarly curt phrase, lower his lance, and charge.