I wrote this paper in 1975 during my final year as a graduate student majoring in English at DePaul University. It sparked a battle between me and the instructor, Dr. Ellin M. Kelly. The fallout was that I graduated with the M.A., but not with honors. I needed an A in the course to get the honors, but got a B. You can find the entire discussion about this paper in another section on this website called Literary Criticism and Notes. ____________________________________________________________________
“Every age is fed on illusions, lest man should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.” — Joseph Conrad
In his Poetics, Aristotle notes that the difference between the historian and the poet is, simply, that the poet deals with what could happen while the historian deals with what has happened. Consequently, writing what has happened is less philosophical than writing about what could happen; history deals with the particulars whereas poetry deals with universals.
Today, however, a question arises in my mind concerning the writing of any history: can anyone write what has actually happened? In other words, given any event – even in the most recent past of a minute ago – and given the historian as an actual spectator to the event, is it feasible to conclude that said historian can write and record for future generations what has actually happened[1]?
Seemingly, history is educated speculation, the speculation taking on the appearance of fact: A assassinated B, C beheaded D, and so forth. Now knowing such facts that have happened is always nice because it makes one feel a sense of confidence, a kind of control along with the vulgar factual knowledge. Yet, what does one do with these facts? Just as in an accident, where each spectator to the event will have varied versions of what has happened, so too with the recording of historical facts. Suddenly, the confidence, the vulgar knowledge of facts[2] that was present dwindles away like cigarette smoke; historical knowledge emerges as nothing more than something nice to have around the house, like a dog or a cat.
It seems to me that Aristotle, by calling poetry more philosophical than history, was aiming at the point that De Quincey[3] elaborated in his “Literature of Knowledge and Literature of Power” – that poetry moves the inner man through universals to action. It is poetry, then, or the act of presenting what could happen that solves the problem of what to do with the vulgar historical facts. Consequently, it is not relevant whether King Arthur existed in history, for the argument of poetry surpassing history can likewise be applied to a prose that presents what could happen. Furthermore, the prose of Geoggrey, Wace or Malory is that much more philosophical as it moves away from what has happened and presents what could happen.
Before turning directly to my topic, however, another problem arises that must be clarified: Malory’s book has been terms a romance. In Rousseau and Romanticism, Irving Babbitt calls romantic that which is more wonderful rather than probable. Le More d’Arthur[4] fits this notion in that the events (such things as, “The Lady Lynet appeared; going up to the decapitated knight, she took the head, and covering the exposed flesh with ointment, fixed it back on the trunk. The knight immediately revived and walked calmly out of the hall.” – 158) do seem more wonderful than probable. Does this mean that the work has no value philosophically since, if the poet’s job is to write about what could happen, and certainly the majority of the events in Malory go beyond the possible, it is a romance?
When Einstein proved that it doesn’t matter whether you say the earth moves around the sun or the sun moves around the earth, that they mean the same thing, a new way of seeing things came about. Absolutes, like the historian’s facts, became cigarette smoke. What is important to seeing is one’s reference point. Given a reference point, deductions and conclusions can be drawn that fit that particular point; one says the earth moves around the sun with the sun as the reference, the sun around the earth with the earth as a reference. The point is still the essential thing, without which the facts drawn from it are useless.
Applying this idea to Malory, it can be easily seen that given the reference point of his book, a world where magic and miracles do exist, then the events as depicted by Malory could occur. What I am suggesting is that the romance can be more philosophical than history. In other words, Malory’s book has more value when read AS romance, just as Geoffrey’s, Wace’s or Layamon’s books have more value when read in this way; it is only by reading them as romance that the philosophical implications get the chance to emerge. The mind must be moved before any philosophy takes place; facts as facts do not move: they feed.
What this paper hopes to discuss, then, are some of the philosophical implications found in Malory’s Le More d’Arthur. Naturally, to discuss all such implications is beyond the scope of the paper; I will, therefore, limit myself to the ethics, a branch of philosophy, of King Arthur’s Court.
Properly defined, ethics is an investigation of human conduct, a science of conduct in that it deals with cause and effect. It aims to tell us about the good life where freedom of choice is involved. Since without freedom there would be no ethics, we must determine before anything else if the characters of Malory’s book are free.
The fact that Merlin is present in the book with his divinely accurate predictions would seem to indicate that the characters have no freedom of choice, and that trying to find an ethic in this totally deterministic world is a waste of time.
On the other hand, it must also be noticed that though Marlin predicts, the characters may still choose to act differently. Consider, for example, the circumstances surrounding Arthur’s choice of a queen. Merlin tells Arthur:
“She is certainly as beautiful as one could wish, and if indeed you are set on making her your queen, I suppose that you must do so, although many more as beautiful, and more happily destined, could be found.”
“Why do you say that?
“Because Gwynevere is destined to love Sir Launcelot, and he her, and many disasters will result from their love.”
The freedom of choice is entirely Arthur’s; he does not have to choose Gwynevere. At the same time, Merlin’s warning – and because this is a world where magic is legitimate – would seem to indicate a stupid move on Arthur’s part. Merlin is totally accurate in predicting things; why didn’t Arthur chose a different wife?
Immediately the deterministic shadow is felt hovering over the characters again. Merlin himself seems subject to this shadow:
“Surely,” said Arthur, “with your foreknowledge and magic you can avert your own destiny?”
“That is not so,” replied Merlin (69)
To be rid of this deterministic shadow, and to explain why Arthur chose Gwynevere, consider this question: are emotions logical? It is only after Merlin falls in love that he tells Arthur he cannot change his destiny; and it is after Arthur has fallen in love that Merlin explains what the future holds for Launcelot and Gwynevere. The fact that Merlin and Arthur chose in spite of the future merely reaffirms their freedom to choose. And as far as emotions are concerned, sometimes it’s nice to break things as Dostoevsky’s Underground Man says; sometimes we love in spite of the logical arguments proving we should do otherwise.
Making a choice and accepting the results of that choice is not determinism; it is a quality that makes Arthur a man of feeling and thought. Not to know and choose is animalistic; knowing and making a choice is human. Consequently, it is human choices that always carry with them a certain nobility. Let me clarify these ideas of choice and results further, as they are central to the ethical world in King Arthur’s Court.
Saying one does not know what is going to happen merely means that one cannot see all the results of a given choice. It is this constant decision and choosing – often unconsciously – that gives man his nobility. But Malory’s book, the results of choice are seen by Merlin; it is because of this ne feels one is moving in a deterministic world. Yet, the determinism is nothing more than seeing all the results of choices; and since this is a world where magic exists, a person who can see all these results is permissible.
What makes Arthur and his knights so interesting, at least to me, is their stubbornness in choosing to go against these predicted results. It is like a man who sees a wall, is told that it will not move, yet proceeds to smash his head against it again and again, in the hope of making it move.
Return to Merlin once again. When he falls in love with Nyneve he went to Arthur, “and told him that he was leaving his court forever, because he knew that now his own destiny, which was to be buried alive, was close at hand” (69) What is important in this sentence in relation to what was said about choice are the words “he knew.” Despite the results implicit in the choice itself, Merlin chose to live out his destiny. Only the results are determined once the choice was mace; the choice itself, and the decision to act out the resulting destiny (like Arthur’s) is entirely his own.
Through this choice, Merlin changes from a simple court advisor into a tragic figure. And it is the force his love carries in its results that is responsible for the change.
Love is, in fact, the prime motivating force behind the ethical conduct of Arthur and his knights. It is the energy that causes the knights and ladies to act as they do. In one sense, one loses one’s freedom by falling in love, but in another more important sense, falling in love releases one from oneself.
Arthur tells Launcelot and Gwynevere, “The knight who puts his heart in bondage loses himself.” (453). Yet Arthur himself is such a knight: “The king had suspected for many years that his queen was unfaithful to him: but because of his love for Sir Launcelot and for her, he had never wished to prove it.” (473). It is through love that he gained the greatest fellowship in Christendom.
Yet because love is an energy, it is like a strong wind, knocking down everything in its path once it begins. In Arthur’s world, there are some women who die because they love too much; love is also the cause of the eventual destruction of the fellowship itself. So great is the force of love, is that it can and does define all other ethical concepts in Arthur’s world. Examine, for example, Launcelot’s speech to Arthur while he is under siege:
“My liege, you charge me with killing your knights, and I repent it! But I beg you to consider that I did so only in self-defense, and to save your queen. You charge me with consorting with the queen; and I answer you, has any knight, excluding yourself and Sir Gawain, come forward to prove it by force of arms? They have not, and if they did, the queen would be proved as innocent as any woman living.” (431-82)
The queen is not innocent, but love and the force it carries can maintain and prove her innocence.
This idea of love being behind the ethical conduct of the characters is very human when one thinks about it: people do tend even today to become savage when someone they love is threatened. And like Merlin, they sometimes go walking into living graves knowing all the time what is going to happen.
It seems, then, that because this emotion carries such a force in Arthur’s world, it makes the characters in their defiance of destiny (the results of their love) that much more real. Indeed, the unique and distinct feature of Arthur’s ethics is that in spite of the destiny that catches each character in its grip as a result of a choice, they remain very human in attempting to force something contrary. And once they see that the contrary cannot be forced, they live out fully what their individual destinies have written for them.
Launcelot goes on the quest of the Grail knowing he will never achieve it; he is, nevertheless, attempting to force a contrary. Arthur makes war on Launcelot knowing that nothing will ever some of it but the destruction of his beloved fellowship. Even Merlin, who admits to being locked in a destiny because of choice, attempts to challenge results and force contraries.
On Merlin’s advice, in order to destroy his bastard son Modred, Arthur commanded that, on pain of death, all babies of the nobility born on May Day were to be brought to the court. Arthur then set them adrift in an unmanned vessel, which eventually foundered. However, the plan failed, for the wreck was discovered by a yeoman who clambered aboard and found a lone survivor, whom he took into his care; and this was the baby Modred. (43)
Why did Merlin do this if there is no hope? Indeed, why do any of the characters act as they do if there is no hope? An essential aspect of the human condition emerges from this, an aspect that is also part of king Arthur’s Court: in spite of there being no hope, the characters, like human beings, do hope.
The idea of “no hope” is important in understanding the implications of Arthur’s ethics of love. The idea itself is brought out not only in the character of Merlin, Arthur and others, but early in the book when the brothers Sir Balin and Balan finally duel:
“When I came to this castle,” said Sir Balan, “I too had to fight the Knight of the Island. I won and was forced to take his place. The same would have happened to you: so, whichever of us had come first, the result would have been the same. There was no hope for us.” (56)
It is this idea of “no hope” along with Merlin’s presence that makes Arthur’s world deterministic; it is almost constantly in the reader’s mind as the characters act.
But the determinism, I have shown, is only the result of choices made by the characters; the idea of “no hope” does not itself necessitate a deterministic philosophy. Instead, is it the logical extension of acting in spite of destiny, of being free to choose and of living fully the results of one’s choice. Hoping when there is no hope terminates in what I call the ethics of the absurd.
To explain what I mean by “absurd” let me borrow from an essay written by Albert Camus called “Absurd Reasoning:”
It (the world) will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular rate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness…Living is keeping the absurd alive. Keeping it alive is, above all, contemplating it…It is a constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.[5]
The “absurd” is above all a feeling connected with man and his existence. I am not trying to imply that Arthur and his knights are subject to this feeling. What I am trying to suggest is that knowing what this feeling is about helps some of the important philosophical implications of Arthur’s ethics come to the surface, specifically the one concerning hope where there is no hope. Understanding their conduct is, after all, what we are after.[6]
Camus also wrote in another essay that, “If it were sufficient to love, things would be too easy. The more one loves, the stronger the absurd grows.”[7] When we connect this idea with what Camus previously said, we see in Le More d’Arthur an entire book as proof of this simple point: for as the love grows in King Arthur’s court, so too does the feelings of absurdity on the reader. It is absurd that Arthur should make war on Launcelot; it is absurd that he should be killed by Modred. The ultimate absurdity is that they cannot choose a different course because they are living the results of their previous choices!
Launcelot is obliged to fight Sir Gawain, just as Arthur is obliged to feel regret for having started the war but is obliged to continue it. “A time comes when one can no longer feel the emotion of love. The only thing left is tragedy…Nothing seems to keep its meaning except the idea of dying for something.”[8] And the fellowship does die for the idea of the fellowship itself, the result of individual choices.
Kierkegaard wrote in his journals that truth is to live for an idea, and that “passion is the real thing, the real measure of man’s power. And the age in which we live is wretched, because it is without passion.” Fortunately, we have the record of an age of passion in Malory’s book. To say why such passion is, is to try and understand something so complex and indefinite, yet something so wonderful, that despite the technology and science of today, man is still no closer to the understanding of his own obscure and changing self than he was in the middle ages.
(1975)
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[1] Through the act of observation, Einstein proved that you actually change things. In Sartre’s NAUSEA, Roquentin finds it difficult to keep up with what he just wrote down.
[2] Professor K wrote in my essay: “You are arguing with value words rather than with concrete evidence.” Made no sense to me then and makes no sense to me now.
[3] Thomas De Quincey was an English writer, essayist, and literary critic. This essay was published in 1848.
[4] This essay was based on the Keith Baines Bramall House edition of Malory’s book with an introduction by Robert Graves. It is based on Eugene Vinaver edited Winchester Ms. Published in 1947.
[5] Albert Camus, “Absurd Reasoning,” in The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays. Trans. Justin O’Brien, (New York: Vintage, 1955), p. 40.
[6] In re-reading this years later, “no hope” is exactly the emotion of existentialism. Because the question of suicide in an absurd world is the essence of what these philosophers confronted. And what do these characters in following their destinies – the result of their freedom of choice that leads to no hope – except commit a kind of suicide by accepting “no hope” and just living it out.
[7] Albert Camus, “Absurd Man,” in the Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Vintage, 1955), p.51.
[8] Albert Camus, Notebooks: 1935-1942, trans. Philip Thody, (New York: Modern Library, 1965), p. 206