The Geste of Duke Jocelyn

by Jeffery Farnol

First published 1919

Amazon Project Gutenberg

2.7(13)

Duke Jocelyn, scarred and convinced that his appearance makes honest love impossible, chooses disguise rather than rank as the means of approaching Lady Yolande. Accompanied by the blunt Sir Pertinax, he travels as a jester through a comic medieval world of knights, outlaws, townspeople and challenges in which wit is often as useful as a sword.

The novel deliberately imitates the cadence and conventions of chivalric romance while refusing to take them entirely solemnly. Jocelyn’s disguise makes courtly ideas of beauty and nobility part of the plot, allowing Farnol to ask whether character can be recognised when heraldry and title are removed. The mixture of prose, verse, adventure and comedy gives the book the quality of a modern invented geste rather than a reconstruction of one specific medieval court.