The tale of Sir Lancelot du Lake is replete with various adventures and is full of violent acts, through which Lancelot adds to his already impressive reputation. It is through these acts of violence that “Sir Lancelot increased so marvelously in worship and honor.” (95) But the context of his actions must be recognized: he is not one of those pillaging knights razing the countryside or attacking the helpless. Rather his actions are undertaken to defend others, either their honor, their persons, and his own self. It is these chivalrous acts of violence that earn him the love of Queen Guinevere, a love that will eventually lead to the downfall of Arthur and all he has worked to achieve. But throughout this tale devoted to the adventures undertaken by Lancelot, his love for the queen and his desire to uphold both honor motivates him to overcome all challenges…which are usually solved through violence.
When the four queens come upon him, asleep beneath a tree, their leader Morgan le Fay, determines that they will have him choose one of them to be their paramour or else he shall die within their prison. But a mere threat to his life is not enough to dissuade Lancelot of his allegiance: “Yet had I liever die in this prison with worship, than to have one of you to my paramour maugre my head.” (98) Now Lancelot cannot take action against these queens because they are women and within the context of this tale they cannot participate in violence. Yet Mallory shapes the tale so that Lancelot is still saved from their plotting through the completion of some violent quest. The servant girl returns and asks for him to help her father in a tournament: in return for that promise, she will set him free.
On his journey to aid the damosel’s father, he has an embarrassing mix-up with Sir Belleus and wounds the poor knight “unto death,” (100) but when each has apologized to the other and Lancelot realizes that Belleus is waiting for his lady love, Lancelot can do nothing else but help to heal the knight and promise to help make him a knight of the Round Table. Though these men are not enemies, the plot moves forward on the basis of love, mutual respect and violence. This bit of the tale concludes with Lancelot’s participation in the bloody tournament of Sir Bagdemagus, in which he triumphs through the utter destruction of those he competes against: “he smote down with one spear five knights, and of four of them he broke their backs. And in that throng he smote down the King of Northgales, and broke his thigh in that fall.” (102) He physically forces them out of the tale, sidelining them and preventing them from committing further dishonors, as he does with another knight in the tale who attacks travelers and rapes women. The violence, though discussed, is not explicit because the violence is not the focus: it is the means to an end. Violence upholds honor and proves one’s love. When undertaken for its own sake, those who commit it are dishonorable and serve as foes and counterpoints to the figure of Lancelot.
The notion of violence as a means to an end hit on a few of my reflections as well, considering the way violence is centralized in certain players. Riddy makes an interesting comparison between the Morte Darthur and Piers Plowman, in which the knight serves as "a nexus of social responsibilities" (56). In Mallory though, the knight - and especially the king - escapes social responsibilities and is instead a nexus of violent power.
ReplyDeleteFor example, it seems obvious to us today, but there is a telling undertone to the fact that Arthur's kingship is acclaimed by his possession of a sword, the aristocratic weapon, and then cemented by Excalibur, a weapon which serves as a symbol of his authority and the integrity of his kingly body. The king, despite being the most important nexus of social responsibilities in feudal society - short only of God Himself - is introduced to us instead as a nexus of violence - his drawing of the sword from the stone enables his brother Kay to commit violence in the tourney, and his kingship begins with civil war over his lineage.
In some sense, the king seems to be an enabler of violence. When Uther lies sick during a time of war, Merlin insists that he must be present at the battle, "though ye ryde on an hors-lyttar; for ye shall never have the better of your enemyes but yf your persone be there, and thenne shall ye have the vyctory" (7). When Arthur engages in battle, he "leyd on with a swerd and dyd merveillous dedes of armes" personally (13). The king is expected to be the central point of battle and to commit violence himself; the absence of a violent king ensures defeat, by Merlin's reckoning. So although violence is a means to an end, it is still practically the fabric of social relations between kings and knights.
In Le Morte Darthur, violence does seem secondary to larger, more abstract ideals; love and honor. What struck me most, especially in the Tale of Sir Lancelot, was the dull acceptance of violence as the inevitable outcome of all undertaken adventures. When Lancelot must fight the two great giants after slaying the porter of a nearby castle, he very quickly kills one, “with his sword he cleft his head asunder” (109). The other giant tries to run but is slain as well. What a boring battle! In a more drawn out clash between Lancelot and Sir Tarquin (Gaheris), the emphasis is on how long they fought, nearly two hours at a time, and the glistening blood on the ground. Even when it appears as though Lancelot is cornered and has no chance of escape as when he is tricked by Sir Phelot, he resolves to take a branch and “[take] him on the head, that he fell in a swoon to the ground” like a dainty flower. Then Lancelot’s takes Sir Phelot’s sword and just “struck his neck in two pieces” (118). Oooh, scary!
ReplyDeleteThere is absent the relish, the glory of combat itself that is so abundant in the Song of Roland as a blunt contrast. The Song of Roland hits the reader with graphic repetition over and again of gratuitous violence coupled with the grief it brings on slayer and slain alike. But in Le Morte Darthur, the chivalric code of honor and good deed is blatantly at the forefront of a knight’s life. Though it is through violence that a knight executes these values, the view of violence itself here is as a tool much like armor or the Excalibur – easily adorned and taken off. The fame, the honor of battle, and one’s prowess are what last in a knight’s life but again these are but abstractions of violence superseding the act itself. There is no passion for the means of bloodshed, only what it yields.
I also found the depictions of violence and honor in the tale of Sir Lancelot somewhat perplexing. In particular, I found the figure of Sir Tarquin to be an interesting foil to Lancelot. Sir Gaheris claims Lancelot is “the best knight in the world, for ye have slain this day in my sight the mightiest man and the best knight except you that ever I saw,” (106). Of all of Lancelot's deeds, Gaheris zeroes in on Lancelot's defeat of Tarquin as the defining feature of Lancelot's greatness. Gaheris’ identification of Tarquin as the second-best knight seems odd; Tarquin is obviously skilled in fighting, since he has killed 100 knights and has nearly forty held prisoner, but there is no mention of Tarquin’s honorable or chivalric behavior. Furthermore, Tarquin’s actions are not performed at the behest of a king or lord, but rather for revenge for his brother, who was killed by Lancelot (105). We might expect that Tarquin would then seek out Lancelot to gain his revenge, but instead he has killed and captured a number of other uninvolved knights for unclear reasons. Perhaps we should assume that Tarquin holds these knights captive in the hopes that Lancelot will hear about it and mount a rescue, but this seems a convoluted way to achieve his revenge. Still, Tarquin’s status is based on his victory over the knights he has defeated and Lancelot’s status is based on his defeat of Tarquin. The status of Lancelot and Tarquin as the best knights seems to suggest that the knights in this tale view military prowess as the most important aspect of knighthood, rather than honor or chivalry, and condone violence against other knights, even outside of battle and tournaments.
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