Well, my friends, if you are able to sum up Waswo’s sweeping, audacious argument in a couple of short paragraphs, then I congratulate you. You are certainly ready for our bibliographical project.
My plan was that we read this essay as we moved between romance-derived and chronicle-derived portions of Malory. Do Waswo’s loaded dichotomies between cultivation and nomadism, between city and forest, and between the displacers (conquerors) and the displaced help us with any of the binaries that we have been struggling with thus far: prowess/enchantment (not sure if this is really a binary), courteous/discourteous behavior, chronicle/romance, aristocracy/peasantry, constructions of masculine/feminine? Does Waswo help us to make sense of Arthur’s Roman adventure?
It is quite possible that the short answer to most of these questions may be “no.” But let’s struggle with the ideas anyway. How does the persistence of the Arthurian legend fit within Waswo’s Virgilian trajectory?
Feel free to post initial thoughts here. In any case, please jot down your ideas and bring them to class for discussion.
January 19, 2007 at 1:36 pm
It seems as though some of the arguments that Waswo makes in his article are also seen in Arthur’s conquests from neighbor and foe. The different knights and kings seem to continually battle their opposer as they strive to conquer each other’s land and damsoels, which is part of our history and past as seen when different countries and leaders battled each other for people and territory. Waswo also makes the connection that culture and civility occur within a city and behind towers and walls and as people spread into the forest they become savages. In the readings we have read thus far it seems to hold true that the civlized remain behind walls and the savages like the giants we read about in sir Lancelot du Lake live in the forests without civility or culture.
January 21, 2007 at 8:06 pm
I’d just like to wonder out loud, briefly, and perhaps complicate Shelley’s observation — if the above is true, what does that mean for our hermits that live in forests, and our knights who go out in the forests of adventure? I keep picturing the plain in front of the Knight of the Red Launds’ castle, positioned between the forest and the castle proper and full of tents and pavilions. Here is cleared land not used for cultivation, and in fact not used as a battleground for any activity that will mean property changes hands. The life of the knight here is so far removed from agriculture and is instead one spectacle after another on one mowed tournament field after another, and the spectators are everywhere. The weight of the gaze must be nearly as heavy as the armor for the knight in this context.
January 22, 2007 at 11:58 am
In Sir Gareth of Orkney, which we may not even get to today, the mysterious knight reveals his name, Gareth, to Lancelot on 125. But! Malory continues to call him by Beaumains, the degrading kitchen boy name. He is called Sir Gareth only in the paragraph where he is knighted by Lancelot. Then, it is not until 127 that Malory at least calls him Sir Beaumains. Why is his real name not used continually?
Also, there seems a turn in the story on 125 when Lancelot knights Gareth. Malory attempts to make a moral of the story of Sir Kay’s treatment of Gareth/Beaumains. I thought this was interesting because it’s thr first time I’ve noticed a moral openly exposed in the story.