Sir Thomas Malory's knights, by contrast, very often undergo periods of severe injury or illness that cause them to lose their prowess for a time. The story of Elaine of Astolat is driven by Lancelot getting seriously injured and needing to spend time in her care in order to recover. Often knights who are injured are cared for by religious men who were themselves formerly knights. It is a more complete picture of what a life of risk and hardship entails, and identifies ways in which good things can come out of such periods. (In Elaine's case, a very good thing might have happened if only Lancelot had not been so set upon Guinevere; instead it is of course a tragedy.)
Often I have mused on how non-Arthurian fairy tales are very good models for how to live life up until adulthood; once you have married, you're just supposed to live 'happily ever after.' (Chesterton thought so too; two chapters of Orthodoxy are on the subject of fairy stories as a model for life.) Only the Arthurian stories seem to provide much help for those who aren't still coming of age, but are grown men expected to deal with the hardships and temptations of life.
Hopefully I'll be mostly better in another day or two. Once I am, I'm hoping to start the winter reading/commentary that we usually do here. I think this year I will not do a philosophical work but one allied to philosophy: Xenophon's Anabasis, a heroic story that involves quite a bit of hardship and suffering. Xenophon was an Athenian who didn't really get along with the leadership of Athens, partly because of his friendship with Socrates, and partly because he preferred Sparta's ideals and ways. Anabasis is the story of his leadership of a group of Greek mercenaries, "The Ten Thousand," as they survive a losing battle in Persia and then have to walk all the way back to Greece.
If any of you wish to join me, I'll hopefully be starting that series soon. (UPDATE: I will be reading the Rex Warner translation, because I have it on hand. The Gutenberg translation is by E. J. Chinnock. I doubt the differences will be major, but if we run into anything confusing the Greek is available to check which translation was most accurate.)
6 comments:
I must not be all here either--I first read the title as "Heroic Virtue and the Flu" -- an evocative combination.
I hope you get over it soon. Some variants last a month or so.
You make a good point about illness and suffering. I'd guess that demands of the medium require action, and watching somebody be "idle" (unless he's the Great Detective) slows the plot too much. Conan took that to an extreme that comes close to parody (That last interaction damaged your tendons, son; you're not going to be running much for months.)
So I wonder if Mallory's attention to the recovery times is his idea, or was it part of the literature of the era?
Both, I think. Malory was in fact a knight, and understood that a certain amount of injury goes with the territory. Yet his sources also do a lot more with injury and illness, as well as imprisonment (a matter he knew a lot about personally!). A lot of what he wrote was drawn from the prose Lancelot, which runs to a massive length in the French. UGA's library had a complete copy in translation, which I spent a lot of time with back in the old days in between classes and such.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancelot-Grail
There isn't much to write about with sickness and injury. Unless you have got a Brother Cadfael or Elaine angle to keep the plot going, recovery is rather tedious to experience, and even more tedious to read about. At book group today I just mentioned how the Spanish Flu killed millions but was little-mentioned only a few years later. Families talked about lost individuals. We know more about the Sacks of Rome, but the Plague of Justinian killed more and may have been the greater blow. In out own time we lost millions to Covid, but now all we talk about is the government's response. It looks like there is something about nature that we want to put some things behind us collectively, and they are important to us only as individuals.
Get well soon!
I used to get 3-4 really nasty colds/flu per year, then I started taking 1000mg Vitamin C per day. I haven't been sick for years since.
Single datum, to be sure, but....
In any event, get well.
Eric Hines
Feel better. I swear by hot honey, lemon, and whiskey.
I look forward to the winter reading since I've been laying off to read a version of that story for years.
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