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Arthur Q2a: GOOD men
Yvain and Lancelot are, I think, supposed to be "good men." But in these stories, what counts as "good"? Are they "good"? What ideals do they espouse, and what of them are relevant to today?
When are fighting and killings justified? What about adultery? To what lengths should you go to keep a promise? What should you do when you break one? How should you balance personal gain and obligations to others?
How to Yvain and Lancelot compare to other men, such as Arthur, Kay, Melegant (abductor of Guinevere), and Bagdemagu (Melegant's father)?
Comments
I suppose that things like killing and adultery are made more OK if they are driven by some 'noble passion' like 'true love', or if they are done 'against' BAD men. But perhaps the stories were intended to stir some degree of debate/discussion among their audience, so perhaps it's intentionally not all that clear. Perhaps the quotes in the question are in the wrong place - "supposed" to be good men? It seemed to me that keeping one's word was more important than avoiding sin.
I was struck by what an ass Kay is in these stories because he comes across as more noble in later Arthurian stories from what I remember as Arthur's foster brother. Melegant is obviously an ass, and we know that because we have even his own father to tell us so. I can't even remember what role Arthur played!
Pre-moderns thought differently than we do.
One of the main drivers of goodness seems to be that you relentlessly fulfil whatever promise you have made, regardless of what others may think and whatever unexpected obstacles might appear along the way. There doesn't seem to be a get-out clause - you just have to keep your word.
The introduction to my copy of these tales had some discussion of the two main positions on adultery and other such deeds - firstly a "realistic" position that this was a normal and expected part of life at a time when anyone's journey away from home might take months or years to complete, and might prove fatal, and secondly a "fantasy" position where adultery was talked about such a lot as a safety valve to ensure that it didn't actually occur for real. My own feeling is that the "realistic" position is more likely, but I can see that both positions can be defended!
I think these are stories emerging from civilisational collapse in North-western-Europe. I think these remain relevant today, because I'm not sure that civilisation has been restored for these people.
Are these people good, justified etc.? (Why restrict it to men?) Good questions, but I'm not sure anyone can truly answer them other than in actuality. I mean, we like to think we are a type of someone, but we often delude ourselves.
One of the critiques I have of modernity is that it considers answering these questions a personal affair, while I think that most people rely on communities to provide the answers. Submission to community is just easier than having to reinvent the wheel some eight billion times at present, and with every birth.
Answering these questions is one of the principal functions of religion. I think it is the foundational / primordial question for humans as they grow into awareness of self and other, that all other questions derive from the authority and legitimacy that answering these kind of questions provides, but I seem to be in the minority in this.
Most religions and societies have initiations where individuals accept bonds and obligations in return for what the society provides, and these provide the structure to understand the world. These are religious texts in the sense that they provide exemplars of the person they are attempting to produce, and the world they are trying to create. We are looking at the rise of secular society that is carving a space for itself out of the received traditions.
@Apocryphal : In some ways the fluid nature of the personages in this family of stories reveal the way the sausage of North-Western-European secularism was made. As such they remain slightly embarrassing for the folks who now think they have the good sausage, just like collections of religious texts everywhere. We don't live in a world where we can ever stop having to find sustenance.
@RichardAbbott : The idea that one must keep one's promises is not really that odd is it? Although I agree what is odd is that "promises" made to one's self count as equal or more important than promises made to others. These people don't have much of a future in my opinion, though their ideology reproduces itself just fine, especially through the technology of text - pen mightier than sword etc.
About adultery. Do you think the stories represent in any way the actual sexual dynamic between the elite and populace. I mean, are the populace even people who would count for adultery? And how much of our thinking about adultery is a response to these stories of people who just don't care? @clash_bowley in this way aren't they ate least proto-modern?
I didn't see any hint of a sexual dynamic between the elite and the populace. It was all between the elite and the elite. The elite never interacted with the populace at all, just with each other, and with their servitors, who did interact with the populace, apparently. The servitors were the interface between the elite and the populace. There was no hint of anything sexual between Ygrain and the maid, for example, though they seemed close otherwise.
I found this hard to really wrap by brain around for sure. At some points they are supposed to be totally loyal to the King and sacrifice their life for him etc. Then at other points it was totally cool to just be getting it on with his wife. Needing to keep promises is logical, but when those promises mean that you need to actually potentially do terrible things to keep them that's where it got confusing for me and really took me out of the world they were existing in. It all felt extremely arbitrary, even though there was supposed to be this code that they lived up to.
Yvain and Lancelot also just seemed to be given the most honour because they could break the most skulls/
That's the tragedy of Lancelot. He's almost the perfect knight, but his adulterous love of Guinevere is a fatal flaw. (In Mallory, his lust stops him finding the Holy Grail, then an argument over Guinevere is the catalyst for the destruction of Arthur's kingdom.)
The religion angle is an interesting one. These are stories about Christian people in a wholly Christian setting. The contrast between the teachings of Christ and the actions of the knights is clear.
Ahh, makes sense! I am pretty ignorant of this particular set of stories so I didn't know that!
To clarify: by "Mallory" I mean Morte d'Arthur , written in England by Sir Thomas Malory in 1485 (while he was in prison!). de Troyes wrote Knight in the Cart around 1180 in France, so about 300 years earlier.