The Black Knight is the title given to several characters in Western literature.
The Black Knight appears in different forms in Arthurian legend. In one tale he is a knight who tied his wife to a tree after hearing she had exchanged rings with Perceval. Perceval defeated the black knight and explained that it was an innocent exchange. A supernatural Black Knight is also summoned by Sir Calogrenant (Cynon ap Clydno in Welsh mythology) in the tale of Yvain, the Knight of the Lion. Calogrenant is bested by the Black Knight, but the Black Knight is later killed by Ywain (Owain mab Urien) when he attempts to complete the quest that Calogrenant failed.
A black knight is also the son of Tom a'Lincoln and Anglitora (the daughter of Prester John) in Richard Johnson's Arthurian romance, Tom a'Lincoln. Through Tom, he is thus a grandson of King Arthur, though his proper name is never given. He killed his mother after hearing from his father's ghost that she had murdered him. He later joined the Faerie Knight, his half-brother, in adventures.
A black knight is also mentioned as being killed by Gareth when he was traveling to rescue Lyonesse.
In the novel Ivanhoe, one of the characters is an unknown black knight who fights alongside Ivanhoe in a tournament and helps assault Front-de-Boeuf's castle. He is later revealed to be King Richard I.
The Arthurian black knight has survived past its appearance in the medieval Arthurian romances. A giant knight, clad in black, named Orgoglio (Pride) appears in The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, whom Prince Arthur kills after first severing his arms and legs. Consequently, this black knight is part of a genre trope lampooned by the scene with the black knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In Conquests of Camelot the Black Knight of Glastonbury was a spirit that held Sir Gawain captive.
Famous quotes containing the words black and/or knight:
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world.... I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: “I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)
“By a knight of ghosts and shadows
I summon’d am to a tourney
Ten leagues beyond the wide world’s end:
Methinks it is no journey.”
—Unknown. Tom o’ Bedlam’s Song (l. 57–60)