King Arthur and Chivalry

In this course of twenty-four lectures, we will explore the emergence and development of the legendary King Arthur and its intertwining relationship with the chivalric mentality in the imaginative literature of the Middle Ages. The vast stock of stories about the legendary King Arthur and his Round Table companions form the central thread around which we weave our study of chivalry. In these lectures, we look at the traces of chivalric life gloriously reflected in medieval literature, especially as it was pressed into the mold of King Arthur and his companions. The medieval nobility was not only a military and political force but also a social elite: the chivalric knight fought well and, by the High Middle Ages, developed the practice of living well. Knights faced battles and tournaments with intense courage, and off the field, they channeled their vehemence into passionately crafted relationships. To live well required one to shape one’s life as a form of heroic art. King Arthur was an inspiring model of heroism and honor, and Arthurian tales provided a major source of entertainment in this culture. He was chivalry’s pinnacle image, just as the Round Table was its ultimate social model. We will see how the chivalric hero and the Arthurian moment become permanently bonded in the “matter of Britain.” We will follow King Arthur and his companions from the mists of Tintagel to the edge of modernity. The course begins with the pivotal point in the search for Arthur, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s monumental History of the Kings of Britain, written in the mid-twelfth century. A glance at the actual history of chivalry in medieval life lets us see how close the fictions we study are to life as it was lived. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the harbinger of chivalry, but it was the French poet Chrétien de Troyes who brought chivalric literature to its first full flowering by yoking the Arthurian story to the new literary genre of chivalric romance. We also discuss the compelling and terrifying ideology of erotic passion codified in Andreas Capellanus’s bizarre tract On Love so that we can assess the relevance of the term “courtly love” to the works of Chrétien and later Arthurian writers. We see how King Arthur’s Round Table is born, flourishes, and is extinguished. We close by considering briefly the post-medieval impact of Arthurian chivalry.