The beginning of the tournament puzzled us for a few reasons: its peculiar, half-civilized location on the field or plain (17, 18); the unpredictable combination of individual and mass combat, and the blurry rules of encounter (e.g. Satyrane’s wounding Triamond in the side [24], taking him, it seems, by surprise); and the seemingly arbitrary succession of new knights entering the fray. Cambell and Triamond’s exchange of armor on the second day makes for an exhibition of friendship, but their funny youdaman, no youdaman routine in (36) reads like a parody of the reciprocal geometry achieved at the end of canto iii. It also proves incommensurable with the rules, such as they are, of the tournament (Satyrane is the winner of day one, but an award for day two is frustrated by the friends’ mutual diffidence). There was a general sense of a conflict of codes: are we to judge these events by the (collective) laws of chivalry, or by the (individualizing) canons of Aristotelian friendship? And the tournament itself: is it an allegorical structure with a synoptic meaning, or is it a kind of chaotic trading zone where different hermeneutics meet? There is also the question of Braggadocio’s place (he will not join a team), and then of the girdle as a prize. What to make of the description at the end of (15): the girdle seems to find its value in its materials, even more in its workmanship, and most in…the fact that Florimel possessed and lost it. What of the maker? [JD]