Arthurian Paper
I am burnt out... working and stressing over the big Arthurian Legends project due tomorrow. I hope we do well on it... I definitely put my heart and soul into it. For those who like a good read, its below. I cut it out so you don't have to read it if you don't want to. I was just particularly proud of it, after a fashion. It helps to have read the book, Le Morte Darthur, but most of the concepts aren't so alien.
The Purpose and Meaning of Ideals and Chivalry in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
Seldom does a theological or purely didactic work change a person’s life, no matter what their religious background. It is rare to even want to read a story in which morals are laid out as a list of commandments to be followed. In his preface of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, William Caxton attempts to cast a work where murders and rapes are portrayed indifferently by the narrator in the light of just such a book:
And I, according to my copy, have set it in imprint, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour; and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke . . . For herein may be seen noble chivalry, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown. (Caxton 530)
Did Caxton even read the book that he printed and prefaced? Mordred, who was cast as the villain and traitor, got away with usurping the throne; his end was no different than that of Arthur: dying with the knowledge that all he had gained was lost. Sir Lancelot was the most notorious sinner in the book besides Guinevere, yet Malory has a bishop see just after his death “angels heave up Sir Lancelot unto Heaven, and the gates of heaven opened against him” (525). Caxton’s proposed idea of justice in regards to morals seems to be shaky at best, when looking at the consequences of Modred, Arthur and Lancelot’s actions. It is obvious that there are other ways in which this book becomes an “educative novel, in the widest sense religious” than example alone (Fritscher 4). Perhaps rather than an aggressive allegory, the treatment of the subject is more akin to a subtle satire. Malory uses the idea of chivalry to show that it is not the institution which is responsible for morality, but rather how the individual feels they must respond to the environment, and whether that response was intentional or coerced. This desire to respond or act manifests itself into two distinct categories. The first is extrinsic motivation, or being compelled by outside sources; the second category is intrinsic motivation, or motivation by internal values or ideals. It seems that the morals inherent in Le Morte Darthur intend to be fostered in a reader in a similar way: they should be inspired to choose their own path and not have some external laundry list of dos and don’ts forced upon them. It is through personal experience, and not by example, that true virtue and happiness is learned. The maintenance of appearance is indicative of an extrinsic motivation, and the desire to do what is right without external reward is intrinsic. As a reflection of the two categories of motives, these two ideas of appearance and morality are constantly juxtaposed throughout Malory’s work, especially in the first and last books. Arthur, Lancelot and Gawain’s motivations indicate the nature of the general demise of the court; through their individual trials, both bound to and freed from the institution of chivalry; the reader participates in the story and can absorb the true meaning of Malory’s treatment of morals and are able to apply it within their own life.
The idea of the appearance of legitimacy and of righteousness is a consistent motif throughout; a knight’s word was his life, and to break it would mean disgrace. Even so, the story demonstrates that an internal motivation for good is still a powerful force in shaping events. For example, Arthur’s famous pulling of the sword from the stone is steeped in generosity and already the importance of kin can be heard in his words, “for my brother Sir Kay shall not be without a sword this day” (Malory 9). This simple act, which constitutes many of the non-martial virtues of Chivalry, is done without any vows or wondering ladies looking on; it is in a quiet churchyard with no trappings of ceremony or of grandeur. It is likewise in the most private of circumstances where the initial evil deeds occur, which foreshadow the rest of the events in the story in the pallid color of love gone awry.
Arthur’s conception is technically legitimate, but in actuality Uther had every intention of committing adultery. In this case, the desire to sin was countered by the fortunate death of the Duke of Tintagel. Little justification is offered to the fact that Arthur was conceived in sin, if not in actuality then in intent. Likewise when Arthur unknowingly desired his sister, there could be no doubt that adultery was committed, “wherefore the king cast great love unto [King Lot’s wife], and desired to lie by her” (Malory 21). The difference was that this act was given a divine judgment when Merlin says to Arthur, “ye have done a thing late that God is displeased with you” (Malory 23). Along with these sinful acts committed out of lust, there is a sense of duty and necessity which permeates many of Arthur’s actions once he assumes the throne, but most, if not all of those acts are done with the advice of Merlin. For example, the foreknowledge of how a baby of noble birth born in May “should destroy him and all the land” prompts Arthur to commit murder of a scale that would horrify people of both sides of the abortion debate (Malory 31). But unlike the incestuous act with his half-sister, Merlin and Malory both fail to offer any moral judgment for this act. The glossing over of these seemingly pivotal actions speaks more to the furthering of plot than of any moral interpretation on Malory’s part. His focus lies far more with the consequences of voluntary sin with full knowledge, which was more prevalent at the time, whereas these sins of murder, adultery and incest were committed at least in part in ignorance or obligation.
Many vices such as these were certainly widespread among the noble class in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. F. Cornish recounts the actualities of the chivalric code in less than romantic terms, clarifying that it promoted war for its own sake, propagated the idea of a class-institution, took the most outwardly extravagant aspects of religion to its ceremonies and appearances, and finally condoned adultery and sexual promiscuity in the practice of l’amour courtouis (31). Malory’s work seems to address a need for the education of the nobility; to be of noble spirit and not let an ideal such as chivalry become a means to an end. He implores readers to see courtly love for what it was, and not for what many French poets made it out be. Chivalry in Malory’s work was held up both as an ideal and as an example of what not to do; but neither is so explicitly spelled out in the text. The concept of courtly love and its external rules are not the only blemish on an otherwise spotless coat; the very idea of chivalry must be examined in whole in the context of its time period.
The three main components which make up the concept of chivalry are love, war, and religion, which constitute in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur the foundation of all ideals. All three can be to blame for external actions, just as each of the three can be an opportunity to exercise an intrinsic motivation. When the three are combined, however, their cumulative effect is quite often negative, as they tend to make uneasy bedfellows. To this end, Cornish described the flawed nature of the unions of chivalry in The Social History of Chivalry:
To make a moral trinity in unity out of a fusion of war with religion, and religion with gallantry as the three were understood and practiced in the late Middle Ages, was so flagrant an impossibility that the decadence of chivalry can be discovered in its very idea. (25)
Even with this “decadence,” chivalry was not a complete failure in its time. In fact, the marginal success of chivalry in bringing up morals on a large scale was still a great achievement. The reason why it was so successful might even be to blame for why it failed so miserably; its very polished appearance came to be the foundation for the hypocrisy and fallacy that would come to characterize its practice.
One of the main unifying forces and source of appeal behind the institution of chivalry was its appearance: the beautiful armor of a knight riding off to war, the lover who would surrender all for his unreachable lady, and the ceremony and hypocrisy of religion and superstition being thrown into the mix with the other two. While the appeal of being seen a knight and a practitioner of chivalry was enticing, the actual motivations to follow it were usually not the pursuit of self-denial and of perfection, as were Lancelot’s. The desires for glory and fame for their own sake is essentially extrinsic, being motivated by the view of others; in Morte Darthur the main characters can be seen to be motivated by it so far as it affects their ability to do good. Arthur’s reputation was essential to the existence of the kingdom, so when Lancelot told Arthur that “ye win no worship at these walls” he was not trying to get the king to leave for fear for himself (Malory 503). The necessity of fame is usually not in the minds of many in the time of Malory, or even for those today for that matter.
It is a popular and little-contested belief fostered by society that fame and renown bring happiness, and not how and why they are attained. Malory’s work invites the nobility to not only remember the outward practices of Chivalry, but also the inner struggle; so that people would hope to “do after the good” for the sake of good, not so that they might attain renown or attract women. The end of instruction is accomplished most effectively by showing the opposite. Instead of feeling guilt for wrongdoings, it is through fear of shame or the loss of glory. Cooper observes this very idea in the introduction to Oxford World Classic’s edition of Le Morte Darthur, the society therein operates “by the principles of a shame culture, where worth is measured in terms of reputation, ‘worship’, rather than by the principles of a guilt culture, of what one’s conscience may declare to be right or wrong” (xv). One of the greatest examples of this concept was that of the Pentecostal oath.
The Pentecostal oath was a means of setting down a code of conduct for knights with a set consequence for its breaking. The purpose and ultimate failure of it would be for those who participate in it to actually internalize it and not need such a renewing of a promise to upkeep it. While Gawain would be an example of one who could not escape the bounds of tradition, Lancelot is able to transcend this code and internalize it in a way that makes its consequences the last thing on their mind. The original external bonds of loyalty, expressed in the clause in the Pentecostal oath, where all of it rests “upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore,” is not the primary motivation for Lancelot granting the King and Gawain succor, but rather something greater than glory or guilt or even shame (Malory 57). This opposing force, though present in both Lancelot and Arthur, is not enough to stop the eventual self destruction from within of the Arthurian society. Despite his ability to apprehend the true nature of the code, Lancelot’s failure in other areas, particularly courtly love, lead to the ultimate grief that befalls him and those he loves most.
Many of events leading up to the eventual downfall of Arthur are precipitated by surrendering to some external obligation or expectation, and thus through a seemingly contradictory portrayal of love and kinship the true morals reveal themselves. The love affair most attributed to the downfall of Camelot is that of Lancelot and Guinevere. Throughout the relationship, Lancelot suffers and is ordered about by the courtly heroine that Guinevere becomes, even to the point of their eventual discovery. On that very night Lancelot explains to a worried Sir Bors why it is he must go to Guinevere’s chamber: “sithin the queen hath sent for me; and wit you well, I will not be so much a coward, but she shall understand I will see her good grace” (Malory 471). Charles Moorman accurately surmises in his article “Courtly Love in Malory” that Lancelot “is too much a man of the world to think that his conduct is going unnoticed; his genuine religious feelings are outraged by his own actions; yet he must obey Guinevere, not because she is the queen, but because he is her pledged lover” (174). Because Lancelot’s motivation was that of reputation and of the tenets of courtly love, the title of “pledged lover” would be more of a sentence than an honorific. Lancelot is similarly reminded of his duties and the expectations of him in the rescue of Guinevere by Sir Bors, “that [Guinevere] be not slain and put to a mischievous death; for she so die, the shame shall be evermore yours” (Malory 476). Consequentially, the battle which would find the death of Sir Gareth and the beginnings of the blood feud that would tear apart the fabric of the Round Table takes place. That battle was characterized by murder and wrongful violence intermixed. Guinevere was justly, if not desirably, being put to death; John J. Fritscher spells it out that “by saving her, thus giving false evidence of her innocence in a society which believed in proof by religious ordeal, Lancelot did service to his lady and disservice to his God, thus inverting the order Malory [god first, lady second] so carefully counseled” (18). That order didn’t rely on others perceptions, and is one of the great paradoxes that seem to bring the reader more truth than the characters; for in a society of shame and worship God’s will was done in the depths of the unseen soul.
To be compelled by others and by society to do certain things is evidence of an extrinsically motivated person; it is the perception of a lack of choice that makes real chains out of those of words and ideas of others. One of the main tenets of courtly love was the expected sworn oath of a lover to his beloved, as in the case of Lancelot and Guinevere. Likewise, the same socially necessary revenge was to blame for the bloodshed and wars between Arthur and Lancelot on the behalf of Sir Gawain. Arthur’s kinship with Gawain was the sole cause for his war, as otherwise “King Arthur would have taken his queen again and t have been accorded with Sir Lancelot; but Sir Gawain would not suffer him by no manner of mean” (Malory 486). By letting the status of Gawain as a nephew overrule his own internal desires, Arthur is showing that he is not in control and that he is being motivated by the societal expectations of kinship. In a look at the politics of loyalty and friendship, Hyonjin Kim explains that “a knight must be loyal to his kin: he is expected to fight on their side both in tournaments and in wars, to shield their interests, and ultimately to avenge their death” (75). While this basic tie of loyalty is necessary to any society, Gawain, “in short, exemplifying the oral principle that virtue to excess is vice, because of his fierce family loyalty is willing (to avenge his private literal family [455]) to destroy the wider knit family of Camelot” (Fritscher 21). Lancelot’s love for Arthur, and the reciprocal desire of Arthur to accord with Sir Lancelot, is proof of the underlying and internal desire for peace and for forgiveness that is overshadowed by the demands of office and of kinship. William Schofield sums up Malory’s purpose in his book where he states:
[Malory] would have had the lords of his day reform themselves, and he would have conducted the reform on the basis of idealistic principle. - the pressure to change coming from within, spiritual, rather than from without, temporal. (122)
It takes a great amount of artistic vision to weld disparate sources together into a coherent message which teaches not by example, but through experience. By using a society whose main impetus was extrinsic motivation, and demonstrating through the individuals that overcome it, Malory accomplishes this goal.
Far from Caxton’s idea of chivalry bringing its practitioners “good fame and renown,” it is stability and virtue, which are components and sometimes opponents of chivalry, which are necessary to living a worthwhile life. Malory realized the truth that education and experience went hand in hand, and that just as the Pentecostal oath was an external and remote ideal, so too would any attempt to convey the truths in Le Morte Darthur be external to the reader as a list of commandments which are not explained. It is in the two chief vices which are detrimental to life, in his opinion, that he presented in both the Oath and in the tale that followed it: murder and adultery. Murder was what eventually led to the downfall of the ideal society; it is when the private family crisis was opened to the public shame society that murder occurred, and it is that accidental murder of Sir Gareth that was the impetus for the fraternal organization’s fracturing and infighting (Fritscher 19).
If murder is the chief vice, how is it that chivalry, whose main office involves killing, is to be held as the ideal for how society is to function? And likewise, if stability and fidelity are to be championed, why is it that Chivalry and courtly love are so often fatally intertwined? As Fritscher observed of that dubious ideal:
Courtly love, if truly Platonic, could lead the lover to virtue; but in practice courtly love more often led the lover to a choice between ‘Venus and Christ.’ As a consequence it was vigorously condemned as immorally adulterous by the Church. Malory could have agreed no more. (17)
Malory was walking on thin ice, in portraying sympathetically sinners and murderers and having their salvation be realized at the end. But in this the very purpose of his work is discovered: like the oath and society which helped create it, the story and its portrayal create in the individual the tools necessary to obtain peace and solidarity through their own means. And so the reader, whether turning the pages in hope of discovering some truth and piously keeping in mind Caxton’s preface, or just delighting in the entertainment of the story, gains the personal experience which is the purpose in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, and indeed a component of all great literature.
IF you manage to understand some of it, give it a comment. I won't blame anyone for not reading, it is rather long. And its not that terribly interesting, as a story I would write would be. I hope to mostly dabble in the fiction realm, but this is as good of an example of nonfiction as I can present right now. And now, to create some cover art and a presentation outline and notes for tomorrow... And somewhere in there try and pass an insane fitness assessment in the morning.
The Purpose and Meaning of Ideals and Chivalry in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
Seldom does a theological or purely didactic work change a person’s life, no matter what their religious background. It is rare to even want to read a story in which morals are laid out as a list of commandments to be followed. In his preface of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, William Caxton attempts to cast a work where murders and rapes are portrayed indifferently by the narrator in the light of just such a book:
And I, according to my copy, have set it in imprint, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour; and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke . . . For herein may be seen noble chivalry, humanity, friendliness, hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown. (Caxton 530)
Did Caxton even read the book that he printed and prefaced? Mordred, who was cast as the villain and traitor, got away with usurping the throne; his end was no different than that of Arthur: dying with the knowledge that all he had gained was lost. Sir Lancelot was the most notorious sinner in the book besides Guinevere, yet Malory has a bishop see just after his death “angels heave up Sir Lancelot unto Heaven, and the gates of heaven opened against him” (525). Caxton’s proposed idea of justice in regards to morals seems to be shaky at best, when looking at the consequences of Modred, Arthur and Lancelot’s actions. It is obvious that there are other ways in which this book becomes an “educative novel, in the widest sense religious” than example alone (Fritscher 4). Perhaps rather than an aggressive allegory, the treatment of the subject is more akin to a subtle satire. Malory uses the idea of chivalry to show that it is not the institution which is responsible for morality, but rather how the individual feels they must respond to the environment, and whether that response was intentional or coerced. This desire to respond or act manifests itself into two distinct categories. The first is extrinsic motivation, or being compelled by outside sources; the second category is intrinsic motivation, or motivation by internal values or ideals. It seems that the morals inherent in Le Morte Darthur intend to be fostered in a reader in a similar way: they should be inspired to choose their own path and not have some external laundry list of dos and don’ts forced upon them. It is through personal experience, and not by example, that true virtue and happiness is learned. The maintenance of appearance is indicative of an extrinsic motivation, and the desire to do what is right without external reward is intrinsic. As a reflection of the two categories of motives, these two ideas of appearance and morality are constantly juxtaposed throughout Malory’s work, especially in the first and last books. Arthur, Lancelot and Gawain’s motivations indicate the nature of the general demise of the court; through their individual trials, both bound to and freed from the institution of chivalry; the reader participates in the story and can absorb the true meaning of Malory’s treatment of morals and are able to apply it within their own life.
The idea of the appearance of legitimacy and of righteousness is a consistent motif throughout; a knight’s word was his life, and to break it would mean disgrace. Even so, the story demonstrates that an internal motivation for good is still a powerful force in shaping events. For example, Arthur’s famous pulling of the sword from the stone is steeped in generosity and already the importance of kin can be heard in his words, “for my brother Sir Kay shall not be without a sword this day” (Malory 9). This simple act, which constitutes many of the non-martial virtues of Chivalry, is done without any vows or wondering ladies looking on; it is in a quiet churchyard with no trappings of ceremony or of grandeur. It is likewise in the most private of circumstances where the initial evil deeds occur, which foreshadow the rest of the events in the story in the pallid color of love gone awry.
Arthur’s conception is technically legitimate, but in actuality Uther had every intention of committing adultery. In this case, the desire to sin was countered by the fortunate death of the Duke of Tintagel. Little justification is offered to the fact that Arthur was conceived in sin, if not in actuality then in intent. Likewise when Arthur unknowingly desired his sister, there could be no doubt that adultery was committed, “wherefore the king cast great love unto [King Lot’s wife], and desired to lie by her” (Malory 21). The difference was that this act was given a divine judgment when Merlin says to Arthur, “ye have done a thing late that God is displeased with you” (Malory 23). Along with these sinful acts committed out of lust, there is a sense of duty and necessity which permeates many of Arthur’s actions once he assumes the throne, but most, if not all of those acts are done with the advice of Merlin. For example, the foreknowledge of how a baby of noble birth born in May “should destroy him and all the land” prompts Arthur to commit murder of a scale that would horrify people of both sides of the abortion debate (Malory 31). But unlike the incestuous act with his half-sister, Merlin and Malory both fail to offer any moral judgment for this act. The glossing over of these seemingly pivotal actions speaks more to the furthering of plot than of any moral interpretation on Malory’s part. His focus lies far more with the consequences of voluntary sin with full knowledge, which was more prevalent at the time, whereas these sins of murder, adultery and incest were committed at least in part in ignorance or obligation.
Many vices such as these were certainly widespread among the noble class in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. F. Cornish recounts the actualities of the chivalric code in less than romantic terms, clarifying that it promoted war for its own sake, propagated the idea of a class-institution, took the most outwardly extravagant aspects of religion to its ceremonies and appearances, and finally condoned adultery and sexual promiscuity in the practice of l’amour courtouis (31). Malory’s work seems to address a need for the education of the nobility; to be of noble spirit and not let an ideal such as chivalry become a means to an end. He implores readers to see courtly love for what it was, and not for what many French poets made it out be. Chivalry in Malory’s work was held up both as an ideal and as an example of what not to do; but neither is so explicitly spelled out in the text. The concept of courtly love and its external rules are not the only blemish on an otherwise spotless coat; the very idea of chivalry must be examined in whole in the context of its time period.
The three main components which make up the concept of chivalry are love, war, and religion, which constitute in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur the foundation of all ideals. All three can be to blame for external actions, just as each of the three can be an opportunity to exercise an intrinsic motivation. When the three are combined, however, their cumulative effect is quite often negative, as they tend to make uneasy bedfellows. To this end, Cornish described the flawed nature of the unions of chivalry in The Social History of Chivalry:
To make a moral trinity in unity out of a fusion of war with religion, and religion with gallantry as the three were understood and practiced in the late Middle Ages, was so flagrant an impossibility that the decadence of chivalry can be discovered in its very idea. (25)
Even with this “decadence,” chivalry was not a complete failure in its time. In fact, the marginal success of chivalry in bringing up morals on a large scale was still a great achievement. The reason why it was so successful might even be to blame for why it failed so miserably; its very polished appearance came to be the foundation for the hypocrisy and fallacy that would come to characterize its practice.
One of the main unifying forces and source of appeal behind the institution of chivalry was its appearance: the beautiful armor of a knight riding off to war, the lover who would surrender all for his unreachable lady, and the ceremony and hypocrisy of religion and superstition being thrown into the mix with the other two. While the appeal of being seen a knight and a practitioner of chivalry was enticing, the actual motivations to follow it were usually not the pursuit of self-denial and of perfection, as were Lancelot’s. The desires for glory and fame for their own sake is essentially extrinsic, being motivated by the view of others; in Morte Darthur the main characters can be seen to be motivated by it so far as it affects their ability to do good. Arthur’s reputation was essential to the existence of the kingdom, so when Lancelot told Arthur that “ye win no worship at these walls” he was not trying to get the king to leave for fear for himself (Malory 503). The necessity of fame is usually not in the minds of many in the time of Malory, or even for those today for that matter.
It is a popular and little-contested belief fostered by society that fame and renown bring happiness, and not how and why they are attained. Malory’s work invites the nobility to not only remember the outward practices of Chivalry, but also the inner struggle; so that people would hope to “do after the good” for the sake of good, not so that they might attain renown or attract women. The end of instruction is accomplished most effectively by showing the opposite. Instead of feeling guilt for wrongdoings, it is through fear of shame or the loss of glory. Cooper observes this very idea in the introduction to Oxford World Classic’s edition of Le Morte Darthur, the society therein operates “by the principles of a shame culture, where worth is measured in terms of reputation, ‘worship’, rather than by the principles of a guilt culture, of what one’s conscience may declare to be right or wrong” (xv). One of the greatest examples of this concept was that of the Pentecostal oath.
The Pentecostal oath was a means of setting down a code of conduct for knights with a set consequence for its breaking. The purpose and ultimate failure of it would be for those who participate in it to actually internalize it and not need such a renewing of a promise to upkeep it. While Gawain would be an example of one who could not escape the bounds of tradition, Lancelot is able to transcend this code and internalize it in a way that makes its consequences the last thing on their mind. The original external bonds of loyalty, expressed in the clause in the Pentecostal oath, where all of it rests “upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of King Arthur for evermore,” is not the primary motivation for Lancelot granting the King and Gawain succor, but rather something greater than glory or guilt or even shame (Malory 57). This opposing force, though present in both Lancelot and Arthur, is not enough to stop the eventual self destruction from within of the Arthurian society. Despite his ability to apprehend the true nature of the code, Lancelot’s failure in other areas, particularly courtly love, lead to the ultimate grief that befalls him and those he loves most.
Many of events leading up to the eventual downfall of Arthur are precipitated by surrendering to some external obligation or expectation, and thus through a seemingly contradictory portrayal of love and kinship the true morals reveal themselves. The love affair most attributed to the downfall of Camelot is that of Lancelot and Guinevere. Throughout the relationship, Lancelot suffers and is ordered about by the courtly heroine that Guinevere becomes, even to the point of their eventual discovery. On that very night Lancelot explains to a worried Sir Bors why it is he must go to Guinevere’s chamber: “sithin the queen hath sent for me; and wit you well, I will not be so much a coward, but she shall understand I will see her good grace” (Malory 471). Charles Moorman accurately surmises in his article “Courtly Love in Malory” that Lancelot “is too much a man of the world to think that his conduct is going unnoticed; his genuine religious feelings are outraged by his own actions; yet he must obey Guinevere, not because she is the queen, but because he is her pledged lover” (174). Because Lancelot’s motivation was that of reputation and of the tenets of courtly love, the title of “pledged lover” would be more of a sentence than an honorific. Lancelot is similarly reminded of his duties and the expectations of him in the rescue of Guinevere by Sir Bors, “that [Guinevere] be not slain and put to a mischievous death; for she so die, the shame shall be evermore yours” (Malory 476). Consequentially, the battle which would find the death of Sir Gareth and the beginnings of the blood feud that would tear apart the fabric of the Round Table takes place. That battle was characterized by murder and wrongful violence intermixed. Guinevere was justly, if not desirably, being put to death; John J. Fritscher spells it out that “by saving her, thus giving false evidence of her innocence in a society which believed in proof by religious ordeal, Lancelot did service to his lady and disservice to his God, thus inverting the order Malory [god first, lady second] so carefully counseled” (18). That order didn’t rely on others perceptions, and is one of the great paradoxes that seem to bring the reader more truth than the characters; for in a society of shame and worship God’s will was done in the depths of the unseen soul.
To be compelled by others and by society to do certain things is evidence of an extrinsically motivated person; it is the perception of a lack of choice that makes real chains out of those of words and ideas of others. One of the main tenets of courtly love was the expected sworn oath of a lover to his beloved, as in the case of Lancelot and Guinevere. Likewise, the same socially necessary revenge was to blame for the bloodshed and wars between Arthur and Lancelot on the behalf of Sir Gawain. Arthur’s kinship with Gawain was the sole cause for his war, as otherwise “King Arthur would have taken his queen again and t have been accorded with Sir Lancelot; but Sir Gawain would not suffer him by no manner of mean” (Malory 486). By letting the status of Gawain as a nephew overrule his own internal desires, Arthur is showing that he is not in control and that he is being motivated by the societal expectations of kinship. In a look at the politics of loyalty and friendship, Hyonjin Kim explains that “a knight must be loyal to his kin: he is expected to fight on their side both in tournaments and in wars, to shield their interests, and ultimately to avenge their death” (75). While this basic tie of loyalty is necessary to any society, Gawain, “in short, exemplifying the oral principle that virtue to excess is vice, because of his fierce family loyalty is willing (to avenge his private literal family [455]) to destroy the wider knit family of Camelot” (Fritscher 21). Lancelot’s love for Arthur, and the reciprocal desire of Arthur to accord with Sir Lancelot, is proof of the underlying and internal desire for peace and for forgiveness that is overshadowed by the demands of office and of kinship. William Schofield sums up Malory’s purpose in his book where he states:
[Malory] would have had the lords of his day reform themselves, and he would have conducted the reform on the basis of idealistic principle. - the pressure to change coming from within, spiritual, rather than from without, temporal. (122)
It takes a great amount of artistic vision to weld disparate sources together into a coherent message which teaches not by example, but through experience. By using a society whose main impetus was extrinsic motivation, and demonstrating through the individuals that overcome it, Malory accomplishes this goal.
Far from Caxton’s idea of chivalry bringing its practitioners “good fame and renown,” it is stability and virtue, which are components and sometimes opponents of chivalry, which are necessary to living a worthwhile life. Malory realized the truth that education and experience went hand in hand, and that just as the Pentecostal oath was an external and remote ideal, so too would any attempt to convey the truths in Le Morte Darthur be external to the reader as a list of commandments which are not explained. It is in the two chief vices which are detrimental to life, in his opinion, that he presented in both the Oath and in the tale that followed it: murder and adultery. Murder was what eventually led to the downfall of the ideal society; it is when the private family crisis was opened to the public shame society that murder occurred, and it is that accidental murder of Sir Gareth that was the impetus for the fraternal organization’s fracturing and infighting (Fritscher 19).
If murder is the chief vice, how is it that chivalry, whose main office involves killing, is to be held as the ideal for how society is to function? And likewise, if stability and fidelity are to be championed, why is it that Chivalry and courtly love are so often fatally intertwined? As Fritscher observed of that dubious ideal:
Courtly love, if truly Platonic, could lead the lover to virtue; but in practice courtly love more often led the lover to a choice between ‘Venus and Christ.’ As a consequence it was vigorously condemned as immorally adulterous by the Church. Malory could have agreed no more. (17)
Malory was walking on thin ice, in portraying sympathetically sinners and murderers and having their salvation be realized at the end. But in this the very purpose of his work is discovered: like the oath and society which helped create it, the story and its portrayal create in the individual the tools necessary to obtain peace and solidarity through their own means. And so the reader, whether turning the pages in hope of discovering some truth and piously keeping in mind Caxton’s preface, or just delighting in the entertainment of the story, gains the personal experience which is the purpose in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, and indeed a component of all great literature.
IF you manage to understand some of it, give it a comment. I won't blame anyone for not reading, it is rather long. And its not that terribly interesting, as a story I would write would be. I hope to mostly dabble in the fiction realm, but this is as good of an example of nonfiction as I can present right now. And now, to create some cover art and a presentation outline and notes for tomorrow... And somewhere in there try and pass an insane fitness assessment in the morning.