Which Arthurian film do you want to see? (Poll)

Identity Construction is Hard, But It's No Excuse to Pick on Sir Kay

I’m about to say something not enough people say with regularity: I love Sir Kay. Ever since he evolved (or devolved) into the brat of the Round Table, he’s served as a voice for readers who find the self-righteousness of the other knights tiresome. Kay grounds Malory’s tales by representing the real-world skepticism of chivalric ideals. He’s also a hilarious and handy plot device, as we’ve seen in the stories of Lancelot and Gareth. It fills me with wrothe when the aforementioned knights use him to promote their own reputations, partly because their disrespect for him is a blow to the common man; when they disregard him, they elevate themselves further into the realm of unattainable knightly perfection.

Now I’m going to contradict myself for a second, because I don’t believe it was Malory’s intention to make Lancelot’s interaction with Kay seem demeaning. I think when Lancelot rescues him from the three pursuing knights, it’s supposed to be a reflection of Lancelot’s selflessness. After all, their armor swap allows Kay to travel safely, and in theory, Lancelot’s donning of Kay’s armor and winning several jousts with it can knock Kay’s reputation up a notch. However, since nearly everyone realizes it’s not Kay who’s fighting, I’m left wondering what Lancelot’s motives are for disguising himself as Kay, of all people.

The only explanation I can come up with has to do with Arthurian knights’ almost maniacal desperation for adventure. Lancelot’s (and later, Gareth’s, when he fights with Kay’s shield) decision to temporarily fool people into thinking he’s the worst knight in Arthur’s court seems to be evidence of the slightly self-destructive quality of self-promotion. He, along with other knights who have dedicated themselves to chivalry, will never be satisfied with the amount of glory associated with his name, so he’s constantly searching for ways to make his achievements more difficult. It seems that Lancelot’s Kay-disguise is merely a challenge to himself – and an element of amusement to keep himself from getting bored with winning all the time.

This is also the only reason I can think of for the Arthurian trend of hiding one’s identity. This is what all the cool kids do in Gareth’s tale, and though its main function seems to be plot development, I think it’s also another sign of knights’ desire to make things more difficult for themselves in order to justify their accomplishments. Their life’s work is constructing reputations for themselves, so their names are powerful signifiers of their worth. So much so, in fact, that the knights who hide their names seem to be conflicted between their self-identity and their courtly identity, which they try to reconcile by disassociating themselves from the names they’ve built their reputations on, and testing their prowess without them. It’s as though their relentless search for adventure is a reflection of their relentless search for identity.

Or maybe they’re jealous of Kay’s wit and secretly want to be just like him.

To Speak or Not to Speak?

Historic change to rule of succession finally gives equality to women

Hey, look at that -- someone decided King Evan messed up!

I’m sure this decision is the result of extensive meetings, votes, paperwork, and tea drinking, because the number of voices that need to be addressed in 2011 is large. Women were involved in the decision-making too, which is in direct contrast to their level of involvement in the decree Evan passed.

The power of the males in Silence is audible. With a sentence, King Evan took away the rights women, and Cador banished all the minstrels in the land. Their words are potent enough to alter the fabric of society, which is too bad, because they’re usually spoken impulsively -- the men make bad decisions in obedience to Nature.

So far (halfway through the poem), I can’t tell if having a voice is something women should be rewarded for in the author’s opinion. The only time a woman says something that has the same lasting effects as the men’s words is when Cador’s cousin announces that Silence is a boy. Not only is this a lie, but it’s not even stated in her own words -- they’re Cador’s words coming out of her mouth. Because she’s not speaking naturally, her own voice is basically still silent. This might be beneficial to Silence if she’s able to inherit her parents’ land, so it seems like her silence is to be applauded.

When Silence sings (beautifully, apparently) she’s punished for it by the minstrels who want to kill her. While everyone else may enjoy it, it’s dangerous to Silence. It would appear that the author is saying, again, that vocality equals trouble.

The only vocal females are the abstractions (Nature, Nurture, and Reason), and their voices are generally just banter. They tend to muddle together until they become noise, sort of canceling each other out. Their words are ineffective (on the characters, not the narrative itself), and the men’s words aren’t well thought-out. So from the author’s point of view, is it “bad” to speak?

The Fisher King Serial Killer

So I like to 'switch off' sometimes on the weekends, don't we all, but watching a great deal of mindless television. Marathons of procedural shows are great for this kind of thing, dedicating eight hour blocks to Law & Order reruns is the greatest thing TNT ever did.

This past weekend I swapped Law & Order for Criminal Minds on A&E. If you've never seen it, it's a totally unrealistic, but really satisfying, show about the FBI Behavorial Analysis Unit. They hunt down serial killers! Think of it as The Clarece Starling show. So, imagine my surprise when one of the episodes, actually a two-parter, involves a man who sends teasing quotes to the FBI citing a plethora of Arthuriana. Specifically, he referred mostly to the story of the Fisher King. The killer himself is physically scarred places himself in the role of the Fisher King. In this retelling the grail that he insists belongs to him is, actually, a girl he had abducted and chained in the basement. Isn't it always so?

The most interesting aspect of this modern retelling of the Fisher King was that seemed to be, to a degree, an emphasis on instruction and knowledge. The youngest of the FBI Agents is referred to by the murderer as Perceval. He is told that he has the key to finding the grail. The clue that would lead to the abducted girl is squirreled away by the serial killer with, get this, the Agent's mother. The Agent's former Lit professor mother who used to read Arthuriana out loud to the Agent when he was just a little Agent. I find it interesting that I spent so much time harping on the abandonment of knowledge bestowed by the mother to Perceval in Chretien's telling of the story only to find this episode of Criminal Minds where, seemingly, a reversal takes place. An emphasis is placed on the Agent, this story's Perceval, returning to his mother and her teachings in order to solve the case and succeed in finding the abducted girl.

I wanted to include here a clip of the episode, but youtube has disabled embedding for this video. So, if you're interested at all in seeing a clip, follow this link to the climax of the episode, a scene where our FBI Agent/Perceval confronts the murderer/Fisher King.

The Education of Perceval

Although we’ve now moved on from Chretien’s story of the grail and Perceval, I had some lingering questions about his story that I thought I may as well address here, if anything just to get them off my mind so that I can focus on our new grail story.

Chretien’s story of Perceval really seemed to me to be a story focused on knowledge and education. It’s clear from the beginning, and Perceval’s first few monologues, that Perceval’s main source for information in life up to that point has been his mother. “My lady mother spoke the truth,” “my mother did not lie to me” (383) and “my mother herself said that one must” all collectively tell us this. It’s when Perceval begins to seek knowledge from others, beginning with that passing knight who, though he finds Perceval annoying still proclaims “before I leave I’ll tell him everything he wants to know”, that Perceval’s worldview begins to widen and with it comes his desire to venture away from the realm of his mother and her teachings.

Initially this distancing from his mother’s knowledge seems to be a good thing. His mother’s teachings are in a rather round about way declared inadequate by King Arthur when he, in reference to Perceval says that “though the boy is naïve, still he may be of very noble line; and if his folly has come from poor teaching, because he had a low-bred master, he can still prove brave and wise” (393). The only master the boy ever had was his mother, so she must be the low-bred failure of a teacher that produced an ill-educated Perceval. Even though Gornemant at first praises Perceval’s education, “blessed be your mother, for she advised you well” (398), at the end of his own instruction of Perceval he changed his tune and warns Perceval to “never again claim, dear brother, […] that your mother taught or instructed you.” His reasoning behind warning Perceval being that should he “continue to say that, people will take you for a fool.” So, though intitially Gornemant said that Perceval should swear to “believe your mother’s advice and mine,” (399) he later changes that to, ‘no, really, actually, just mine, forget Mom.’

I have trouble reconciling this replacement of mentors and knowledge with what happens in the narrative. If Perceval hadn’t cast aside the teachings of his mother, do we think he would have been more likely to ask the right question when he saw the Fisher King and the grail? The Perceval who is a knight holds his tongue for fear of insulting the Fisher King. The Perceval who was an overly inquisitive boy surely wouldn’t have kept silent. I question whether this is saying that the more naturally acquired parental knowledge ought to be privledged over the later chivalric knowledge—rather perhaps, the answer is that one ought not to abandon one completely for the other but achieve some sort of balance? No one can deny that Perceval is a better knight for having learned from Gornemant. Then again, even Gornemant in the text at one point isn’t given total credit for creating, through his teachings, Perceval as brilliant knight. Perceval is described as almost a natural talent, “he began to carry the lance and shield as properly as if throughout his life he had frequented the tournaments, for it came naturally to him; and since Nature was his teacher and his heart was set upon it, nothing for which Nature and his heart strove could be difficult” (399-400). Nature is the teacher here, not Gornemant. Is Nature a reference back to the mother? Or is Perceval ultimately his own creator? He is as we discussed in class, a self-made man, at least when we compare him to Gawain.

Really I suppose it’s a miracle that Perceval learned anything, since he never seems to be listening to any of his ‘teachers’ in the text. He “paid scarcely any attention to what his mother said” (387) and “did not give a fig for anything the king told him.”

So, what do we make of the education of Perceval?

"Camelot! (It's only a model...)"

I’m going to write about characterization one more time before I move on to something more original. I sort of love (and sort of hate) Chretien’s larger-than-life adventurers because of their predictability. I’m not claiming to have expected Yvain to save a lion from a dragon, or Gawain to be attacked for wanting to lie on a cursed bed, but the narratives are very formulaic in structure, as are the knights. We know our protagonists are going to be victorious in battle, that they’ll get the ladies, and that they’ll do all of it in accordance to Chretien’s sense of morality. We also know whichever knight we’re following is going to be the best at what he does, which is the Chretienism that I find the most annoying and oddly intriguing.

As I said before, I think the romances are instructional, working like fables to influence the reader’s social behavior and to impart a specific code of ethics. Accordingly, the characters serve as embodiments of abstract qualities such as strength, bravery, cowardice, or pride in order to expand the tale from “a day in the life” to “a day in the life of humanity.” It’s as though Chretien purposely adds incredulity to his stories to draw the reader’s attention away from individual characters and direct it toward the immensity of their deeds and the consequences that follow. It’s his way of demonstrating the rewards of adhering to specific codes of conduct; to underline their importance, he makes each action extreme.

The grey areas are particularly interesting, like Lancelot’s affair with the queen. Chretien doesn’t punish either lover for their sins, which is almost the same as rewarding them for it. (I say “almost” because in the end, Guinevere’s still married to Arthur -- not Lancelot.) Even though he makes it a point to put Lancelot on a cart, the knight isn’t humiliated by the experience; everyone he encounters finds it humiliating, but he’s so focused on finding Guinevere, it doesn’t affect him. Chretien then shows us how great of a fighter Lancelot is, and how noble, putting the emphasis on this desired behavior rather than the adultery, which, oddly enough, serves as a vehicle for chivalry.

Perceval’s story is interesting too, because it isn’t quite as predictable. Chretien gives his reader a knight-in-the-making, who’s less than perfect and completely human. (At least at first.) Because Perceval’s is a story of education, he’s allowed to break the typical knightly mold and not be entirely archetypal. However, the author makes Perceval’s learning period notably awkward and uncomfortable, which guarantees the reader’s anticipation of his eventual success. What makes this story unique is that his prowess is learned and gradual. In the end, though, Perceval is basically the same character as every other knight in the Romances, and represents the same ideals.

Chretien doesn’t hide his desire to instruct his reader. He’s constantly incorporating words of wisdom into his work, like “Wretched is the man who sees that the propitious hour has come but waits for a still better one” (438), or “Words that are not understood by the heart are lost completely” (297). These little gems may as well be preceded by “I’m talking to you, reader! Yes, you, holding this book!”

I think I understand Chretien’s intentions, but I have a hard time putting them into a modern context. What does he expect his reader to walk away with after reading his manual of manners? How timeless are his values? I’m also struggling to define his ultimate motive in writing these romances, because the readers he had in mind and the readers of 2011 have such different values and mindsets. Am I right in assuming the tales are meant to be social models, or am I taking them too seriously?

Strangers of the Round Table

If you asked me what Arthur looked like (or Guinevere, or any of the knights), I’d only be able to describe him in pieces: his armor, his crown, his posture. Even then, I’d have to generalize. I wouldn’t be able to tell you what color of hair he had, or how tall he was, if he had a beard, or what his voice sounded like, because none of that seems to matter in Arthurian legends; the stories tend to outsize the people they’re about.

The writers of older texts appear to put more care and effort into what their characters represent, rather than exploring their individuality. As a modern reader, I expect to “know” literary characters inside and out, but this type of intimacy is missing from the early accounts of Arthur; the narratives demand a completely different relationship between text and reader, and establish a unique method of engagement between the two.

The classic characters in these legends (the noble knights, the pure maidens, and of course, the deceptive lords and promiscuous ladies) are mostly archetypes. Contemporary readers have been trained to evaluate characters’ psychological motives based on their quirks and thought processes, which grant them accessibility. When writers value actions over reasons, the characters become much more distant than what we’re used to these days, forcing us to examine the ideas of the characters more than the characters themselves. In terms of reader engagement, I’m not sure if this provides more opportunity for identification than contemporary texts, or less.

Though the internal monologues of “Cliges” offer insight into the characters’ emotions, we’re still denied the details of their everyday existence; we never get a real sense of who they are, but I suppose that’s the point. The story isn’t about Cliges -- it’s about the ideas of love and devotion, and their various levels of meaning. By keeping the characters slightly out of reach, Chretien asks that we shift our attention from the people in the story to the emotions that govern them.

What little physical descriptions we get (beyond the vague “beauty” of the central characters) are based on the segmentation of physical attributes. Soredamors and Alexander, for instance, constantly think of their eyes and hearts as organs that have betrayed them. Soredamors calls her eyes “traitors,” and curses her tongue for not obeying her heart. The lovers are mostly presented in pieces, which emphasizes the author’s elevation of abstraction over physicality. Chretien also refers to love and largess as “him” and “her,” to underline their significance.

Alexander and Soredamors are ruled by love, so much so that they physically suffer from it. They’re only able to recognize themselves as wholes when the queen unites them with each other. After she does this, Chretien writes, “Thus [Soredamors] had what was hers, and [Alexander] what was his; she was his entirely, and he entirely hers” (151).

As a reader of contemporary fiction, it’s sometimes hard for me to respect the type of characters in the legends we’ve been discussing because I don’t see them as authentic. (Though I realize they would have seemed novel at the time the tales were first published.) They appear to serve only as instruments of instruction. I appreciate the writerly intentions, but I can’t say it makes for pleasurable reading. Maybe it’s a generational difference in taste? Or a cultural difference in values? Or maybe it’s just me...