Question of the Week (12/3/10)

Read the excerpt below.
Comment on how chivalry is present in today's society. Is it, or have the rules of common decency been recycled into something different or entirely discarded? Explain and support your point using evidence from personal experience. Don't forget to comment on a classmate's response and post by the end of the school day on Monday.

The study of modern literature consists largely in the collection and interpretation of information about the authors. It is almost impossible, for example, to appreciate Byron without thinking of the author and his mystique. We do not, however, even know who the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (known as “the Gawain poet”) was.

We may view this as a restriction, but, in fact, it does not have to hinder our appreciation very much. We also know nothing substantial of Homer or Dante yet that does not prevent us from numbering them among the finest poets in history. Looked at from one perspective, our comparative ignorance of them and the Gawain poet could even be an advantage. It means there is more room for the imagination.

We should certainly take advantage of the knowledge that is available. Many people find they can enjoy Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with little or no knowledge of the author’s times. A more sophisticated appreciation, however, will require some understanding of the historical context. Above all, this will help us to respond to the poem not merely as a delightful fantasy but as part of a great tradition.

Only a single copy of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been preserved from the Middle Ages. The manuscript also contains three other poems, Pearl, Patience, and Purity. They are written in the dialect of the northwest Midlands, the area of England known today as Lancaster and Yorkshire. Similarities of language, imagery and theme, together with a high level of artistry, have convinced most scholars that they are the work of a single author. Pearl is a lament for the death of the author’s daughter, while Patience retells the Biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Purity is a religious meditation in which the author retells many stories from the Old Testament. All are considered to be among the foremost works of medieval literature. A fifth poem, St. Erkenwald, is sometimes attributed to the same writer. He was obviously educated in both religious lore and courtly ways, but virtually all our knowledge of him comes from his works.

The Middle Ages has been alternately praised as a period of romance or simple faith and vilified as a time of superstition and ignorance. Perhaps more than any other period of history, it arouses strong emotions. This is because it is a period of strong contrasts: splendid pageantry and squalor, gaiety and despair, compassion and cruelty, asceticism and extravagant sensuality. All of the popular images contain elements of truth, but none of them is complete.

The ethic of the nobility in the Middle Ages is known as chivalry. This is a set of customs that attempted to reconcile the virtues of a warrior society with Christianity. The ethos of the pagan warriors had emphasized physical courage and loyalty to one’s tribe and lord. It placed great stress on fierceness in battle and usually regarded restraining influences including pity with disdain. Christianity, on the other hand, upheld an ideal universal love.

Chivalry retained the martial virtues of the pagan warriors but in the service of other ideals. It continued to place great value upon loyalty and courage, but it scorned blood-lust, egotism and unrestrained sexuality. The Knight, the Christian warrior, was expected to be gentle and refined in his domestic life.

Central to the culture of chivalry was the cult of “courtly love.” Prior to the Middle Ages, there were only a few literary accounts of idealized lovers in Western culture. Love between the sexes had been regarded as a highly questionable passion, far less worthy of a hero than love of his companions or his country. This changed abruptly around the start of the eleventh century, as the Provencal poets of Southern France began to celebrate erotic love. This new preoccupation quickly spread to Germany and then to the rest of Europe. It became not only the major theme of lyric poetry but also a foundation of the chivalric epics.

Notions of love varied widely, just as they do today. Often a knight would elect to fight in jousting tournaments or on the battlefield in the name of a lady whose favor he wished to win. He was not supposed to expect either physical intimacy or expensive gifts in return, but he might be given a token of the lady such as a sash or a detachable sleeve from her dress. He would then take this with him into battle, sometimes using it as a banner to decorate his lance.

Often a knight might choose to serve the wife of another man. Since marriages among the aristocracy were largely political, love was usually outside of marriage. As long as the love remained only spiritual, the husband was not very likely to object. In practice, however, this sort of service could easily slide into adultery. In Mallory’s Mort D’Arthur, the downfall of the celebrated Round Table comes when Lancelot, once the greatest of the knights, has a love affair with Queen Guinevere, the wife of King Arthur.

The chivalric ideal of love depended on a very delicate emotional balance. Courtly love may have been an important civilizing force, but it could easily become an occasion for violence as well. It was surrounded by all sorts of elaborate conventions designed to keep erotic passions under reasonable control.

When the Gawain poet wrote at the end of the fourteenth century, the age of chivalry was nearly at an end. An especially virulent outbreak of bubonic plague in 1347-50 had destroyed about a third of the population of Europe and shaken confidence in traditional ways. New weapons including longbows, cannons and muskets were rendering the traditional warfare, together with most of the knightly traditions, obsolete.