A Classic Tale Of Broken Relationships
When I was a teen I read 'Le Morte D'Arthur' by Sir Thomas Malory. The Penguin Classic edition then came in two volumes and the print was rather small and dense. I read it in the school library, and then I read it again when I was in first year at Med School. Eventually I lent my two volumes to somebody and they never came back. Went some years without it and it felt like such a hole on my bookshelf. Subsequently I ended top with a hard cover edition.
Historically speaking, this book is a bit of a landmark. William Caxton, who brought the printing press to the UK, published 'Le Morte D'Arthur' in 1485. By the time Caxton came to publishing it, he had already been a publisher of a number of books on the topic of knights and romances. You could say he was middlebrow from the beginning of publishing. He was a businessman who knew what his readership wanted, and it wasn't the Bible. Somehow this is the book that outlasted the rest of Caxton's catalogue. The book itself reads quite a bit like passages of Tolkien in his more terse moods - more Silmarillion and less Lord of the Rings with Tom Bombadil. Of course, it was hard to read it without Monty Python voices going on in my head, even though Malory is about as funny as a haemorrhoid.
In the main, the book is a longwinded account of how King Arthur's court fails, and at the centre of it is that romantic triangle: King Arthur, his wife Guinevere, and his best night Sir Lancelot are in love. The latter two's affair essentially tears down the dignity of Arthur. Arthur's kinsmen are outraged, and so eventually this pits one half of the knights of the round table against the other half. The passions described are primal and wild. And all through this mess, King Arthur just wants his wife to come home. He doesn't seem to judge, he only laments the sate of affairs. It's not entirely clear what good Arthur does as king (or what his fiscal policy settings are, for instance), but it is accepted that he's a good king. The weird thing is just how much energy is spent on the affair in the book. On one level the book is an extensive exploration of the simple phenomenon that women are not for men to own - they have their own volition and they will do as they see fit. On another, it's a laundry list of feats by knights. And if they had a hint of James Brown in them, they would understand that it all means nothing without a woman.
The publishing date of the book is of course closer to the court of Eleanor of Aquitaine where the idea of romance was nurtured, than the first suffragettes to challenge patriarchy; so it's hardly a feminist critique of masculinity in the dark ages. The story does explore the problems of pushing for romantic love in the context of inherently political beings. It's one thing for the baker's wife to be secretly in love with the blacksmith, it is a lot more problematic when they are kings, queens, and generals. As much time as the story spends on Guinevere in the arms of Sir Lancelot away from Camelot, it really centres on the plaintive wish of King Arthur that Guinevere changes her mind and comes home to him. It is not clear whether King Arthur's love for his queen is of the romantic variety, or because he's just meant to love her for the sake of status or the narrative itself.
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