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Malory's account of the Quest for the Holy Grail, while not Chaucerian, is by no means Victorian. His account is not the one our grannies read to us. Yet it is marvellously virginal and naive. . . I wondered where our sex education came from!
Chronicles of Romance
At this, my third day of dipping, would you believe that I chose blindly at random the same volume of American historical documents which I rejected yesterday. So I dipped again, and came up with Volume 35, Chronicle and Romance, containing the writings of Froissart (12th century) Malory (15th century) and Holinshed, chronicling Shakespearean England in the 16th century.
By opening the volume near the middle I found myself in Malory's story of King Arthur, compiled from both the French and English versions of Camelot, which existed - or didn't exist -several hundred years earlier.
It puzzles me, because I had not appreciated before that the language is so very much simpler than Chaucer's English. It is archaic in some respects, but easily understood. [It reminds us how quickly language changed over a few centuries]
I wonder if Kate and Ty will remember us exploring, somewhat inaccurately and at random, the story of King Arthur as we sat on the floor in my upstairs study, before breakfast in the days of 2000/01?
Sir Thomas Malory, born in 1400, was an English knight who served in the French wars under the Earl of Warwick, whom all of Europe recognized as embodying the knightly ideal of the age, and probably picked up his admiration of ancient chivalry from him.
In turn, Tennyson and other poets used Malory as their source for epics on Morte d'Arthur. Malory's prose is filled with marvellous cadences and images. His
account of the Quest for the Holy Grail, while not Chaucerian, is by no means Victorian. And it is not the way my granny told me the story. Yet it is marvellously virginal and naive. . . I wondered where my sex education came from!
Malory's knights are not quite as virtuous as I remember them. Some are 'tainted' by temptations and very human weaknesses. But not Sir La(u)ncelot and his son Sir Galahad, thank goodness.
According to Malory, Sir Lancelot cannot be blamed for losing his chastity and siring a son out of wedlock. The princess bewitched and beguiled him. As Queen Guinever(e) says 'I may well suppose that Sir Launcelot begat him on King Pelle's daughter, by the which he was made to lie by, by enchantment, and his name is Galahad.
Then there is Sir Bors, whom my granny (no prude herself) never mentioned, no doubt because he never even appeared in her 1890's edition of the famous legends of Camelot. Sir Bors, according to Malory, was tempted by the devil in woman's likeness, and only by God's grace was he not seduced by her. She was. . . the richest lady and the fairest of all the world, and the which loveth you best above all other knights, for she will have no knight but you. And when he understood that language he was abashed. . . . She sought him to be her love, for she had loved him above all earthly men. . . When Bors understood her words he was right evil at ease, which in no manner would not break chasity (sic), so wist not he how to answer her.
She maketh it even tougher for him:
Alas, said she, Bors, shall ye not do my will? Madam, said Bors, there is no lady in the world whose will I will fulfill as of this thing. [Can you hear his mum muttering,"whose-will-will-Will-fulfill? Will will fulifll no silly filly's will with his willie - will he?]
Ah Bors, said she, I have loved you long for the great beauty I have seen in you, and the great hard(i)ness that I have heard of you, that needs ye must lie by me this night, [I kid you not] and I therefore I pray you grant it to me. Truly said he, I shall not do it in no manner wise. . . And therefore she took him by the hand, and bad him behold her. And ye shall see how I shall die for your love.
Then she departed and went up into an high battlement, and led with her twelve gentlewomen; and when they were above, one of the gentlewoman cried, and said: Ah Sir Bors, gentle knight have mercy on us all, and suffer my lady to have her will, and if ye do not we must suffer death with our lady, for to fall down off this high tower, and if ye suffer us thus to die for so little a thing [how did they know!?] all ladies and gentlewomen will say of you dishonour.
Sir Bors is now in deep trouble, and doesn?t know what to do. He durst not sleep with the fairest lady in the land - and he durst not have a dozen more damosels falling from the tower on his head.
What to do?
Read on. Read on.
Morte d'Arthur's plots outshine today's bad movies by far.
Personally, I cannot wait to get into the Classics again. We leave at dawn tomorrow for three weeks in the wilds of Sabie River, Kruger Park and Sun City. When I get back, I shall try to record at least 30 'ten minute dips' into the greatest works of Western literature. . . in the hope that whoever may read them will spread the word, and allow more modern readers and family into this wonderland.
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