In reading Barthleme’s The King, the thing I found most striking was the overwhelming focus on dialogue. Up until now the focus has firmly been on the action. Characters speaking was less about them having a conversation, and more because it advanced the plot or clarified emotions and motivation. The way the knights and kings have spoken in previous works can be stilted and more declaratory than seems natural. Knights speak to air their grievances so there can be a fight, or to call for a truce so they can espouse philosophy on the nature of combat out of nowhere. Or sometimes they speak to give a long monologue expressing every emotion they have, not because it really makes sense for them to be saying all of these things, but because the reader needs to hear them. It was mostly a way of getting back to the description of what happened.
In The King, however, the dialogue has a natural flow. Descriptions of what is happening to the characters are the most bare bones I have ever seen. Only short, declarative, present tense sentences with no value judgements or interpretation by a narrator. Characters have their own voice, individualizing them in a far more intuitive way than previous Arthurian characterization. Their conversations do not seem like forced exposition, but like a natural and interesting way for two characters to speak. There is even actual flirting, trusting the reader to pick up on the attraction between the characters, instead of relying on an immediate, direct and poetic declarations of love. It is a refreshing change of pace to have at once a less definite interpretation of the characters, since we are never actually told anything about how they feel or think by the narrator, and a more nuanced portrayal of their personalities from the dialogue they have. From the deadpan moroseness of the Blue Knight, to the dry British unflappability of Kay, it was nice to have little character notes like these.
The King’s almost total reliance on dialogue over description would be striking no matter what, but in comparison to previous stories, it was particularly noticeable. This is not to say that the character development or dialogue in all the other Arthurian stories was bad, but that after so long reading in similar medieval style, it was nice to have a change of pace.
I loved the use of dialogue in The King, especially after the frustrating lack of it in the older texts we’ve read. (I was especially thrilled to see such a feisty Guinevere, who is the most painfully silent character.) It’s interesting to compare The King, where the characters speak their minds, to say, Le Morte Darthur, where everyone’s speech is much more reserved. When we get more dialogue, we get more insight into the characters and their motivations (which I’ve been craving all semester), but we don’t get the same symbolism and metaphors as we do when all we have to judge the characters by is their actions. The older texts require us to fill in the gaps regarding characters’ psychologies, while The King demands that we do the same thing for their external displays of emotion.
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