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LLT 180 Lecture 14 1
As we start today, I'd first like to go back since at this point all our TV audience, too, should have hopefully seen Excaliber, and straighten out a few things. The reason I didn't let you see Excaliber before we had our first test was you can see you started mixing up some things. Are there three sisters or was there just Morgana? What's going on here? And we -- just to reiterate some comments I made along -- which, of course, people seeing this on TV weren't fortunate enough to hear my kibitzing -- Land and King are one. What they do is, in the art theory and material -- and we're gonna really beat this up at the end. This is why we're gonna see Monty Python. If we really have -- if we have some extra time, actually seeing Indiana Jones in the search for the Grail really has some good stuff and we could talk about it, too. But what they do traditionally, King Pelles of Cobinek is the fisher king in the first completed Grail romance by Wolfgang Fineshenbach. The Grail king is called Enfautus or Anfautus. And so the fisher king appears with a couple of different names. But the fisher king and Arthur are separate people. When we go back to the Chrétien material, when we go back -- if we were to go back to some of the same time material written in German literature on the same topics, they're truly not about Arthur. Arthur is kind of this -- you know, not great presence out there. He's kind of this golden presence out there, held up as an ideal. But we're really seeing knightly romances. We're seeing the adventures of the knights. And so here we're reading about Arthur. Another figure that's a totally separate figure is the fisher king, and the fisher king
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is the keeper of the Grail. And when the land becomes ill, it's because the fisher king is ill. When we get to that point, actually the fisher king is a fertility symbol or lack of fertility symbol. The fisher king can't walk because he's been being a bad boy. He's been out, you know, lusting after women and stuff. And in a battle he takes a lance that goes through both his thighs, and on the way through his second thigh he goes through his scrotum. And so this obviously impairs his fertility. And so when he loses fertility, the land is laid waste. And so the questor after the Grail has nothing to do with restoring Arthur. This is just a separate quest. But it's important to keep the Grail -- the ideal of the Grail alive because, again, this is religious material, too, religious ideals, and the Grail is evidence of God's presence. That God did exist. It's a real manifestation that God did exist at some time. And so good stuff at the end, of course -- you wonder if fairy tales were reacting -
- I can spell. I know potato doesn't have an e. I'll tell you I can. Happy ever after, how fairy tales end. Here, of course, there is gonna be no happy ever after, even though Guenever says, at one point in the material we read today, "Oh, you know, we can still be happy ever after." You fool, you ignorant person. But in Germanic material, everybody has to be dead at the end. You know, it's very fatalistic. Not destiny. It's very fatalistic and so everybody's gonna be dead. Arthur -- we're gonna do the best we can. That's a very good ending, and I told you really kind of an upbeat ending if you go into the little simplistic color symbolism and stuff in the end of Excaliber. Because he goes off in a boat. It's not like First Knight
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cannot ignore it anymore. Again, everybody acknowledges that Arthur has this tremendous sense of justice. He has this tremendous sense of right, of what is right, in that he's gonna be bound up. He's gonna be limited in his action by these things. And so they said, "Well, you've got to help us trap them," and he says, "No, I won't do that, but I will continue to act as I have before." So he was off on a hunt and Lancelo t -- you know, I don't see why he's going to see Gwen because here he's dressed in his gay dressing gown, you know? I don't know if that's opposed to his heterosexual dressing gown or not. Languages obviously change. I had an Assembly of God minister's wife in class years and years ago. And we were reading a thing from the early 1800s, a short novel in German. And I came into class one day and she was like really upset. And I said, "What's wrong?" She said -- and I forget the character's name, but she said, "Is so-and-so really a dearna ?" And you might -- they have these for kids. A dirndl -- do you know what a dirndl dress is? No, you don't. Dirndls are -- they call them dirndls in America. They're those little fancy dresses for little girls they have with the extra aprons on and stuff. Those are dirndls. Well, anyway, this comes from the word for country maiden which was dearna. Well, dearna now means prostitute. I guess a lot of the country maidens, when they came into town, became prostitutes. So she said, "Is she a dearna ?" I said, "Yeah." She said, "A prostitute?" And I said, "Oh, no, no, no." Words change with time. So when you look up words, you have to be careful. Anyway, the point is here he doesn't have much on because he's going off to see Gwen. Gareth -- we're gonna go right up to him getting killed and Gaheris gets better.
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All the G boys, the Orkney or Gawaine faction, are fine. And he comes -- he takes it upon himself to go get against family. Remember all the things Gawaine has been saying about family, blood, loyalty. These things are important. But Gareth is more, you know, into ideals. He idolizes Lancelot, what in his mind Lancelot stands for, and he comes to warn him that Agravaine and Mordred are really after him and he just better be careful. So they've been warned twice. They were warned by Arthur and they've been warned -- or he's been warned by Gareth. He tells them what he didn't know, that they've already confronted Arthur with this material. But Lancelot really isn't concerned. He thought, you know, people have made these charges before and nothing has become of them, and so I just can't get too concerned. Gareth does as good a job as he can, trying to warn him, even says that he thinks tonight is a trap and so please, please don't see Guenever even if you have a chance. He sends him away -- or tries to send him away, and then he tells this story on the top of page 563. And normally I wouldn't pick this out, except in rereading this over the weekend all of a sudden you see this clear parallel back to that story much earlier in the work. In other words, when he was trapped, how things worked out okay and how they worked out okay. Again, once more it was his prowess. It's his ability as a knight that saves the day, saves Lancelot. We read on the top of 563, "Gareth, once when I was a young fellow a lady came skipping past me, chasing after a peregrine which had snapped its creance. The trailing part of the
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knight never goes anywhere without his sword, is what we're being told here. Because certainly there doesn't seem to be any apparent reason for him to take a sword. They're getting old. Guenever is waiting here, doesn't know about Bak's hair color, I guess, so their hair is all gray. Guenever waited for Lancelot in the candle- light of her splendid bedroom, brushing her grey hair. She looked singularly lovely, not like a film star, but like a woman who had grown a soul. Remember way back when in the book when she was 22, and they said that she was in chaos. And that age enabled you to have more composure -- unfortunately, been there, doing that -- and there's a certain amount of truth to that. So Lance arrives. And again, remember when they talked about love and how love is represented in romances. It's more mature people. And so their relationship is much better, in a sense. It's sweet -- I hate to use that word. Lancelot, you know, just brushing her hair and just being a nice guy. They chat. And I wrote in here, "Seems like a long-term couple to me." You know, it's just kind of seeing them as almost in a husband/wife kind of situation.
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Lance tells her about Gareth on 566, just to kind of update her. And they agree that Arthur wouldn't catch them -- we're back to that same idea of Gawaine's. Everybody has to figure out how Arthur is or how to manipulate Arthur unless he must or is made to. Unless he's forced to, you know, he won't do anything. In other words, Arthur's content the way things are. He's simply not gonna let it bother him. But if he's put in a bind because, again, of justice, because something is made in such a way that he has to pursue what is right, he will do something. Talk about Gareth in this little course, setting us up for different things. They talk about Gawaine. But they get back to Arthur in the middle of 566 there, just below the middle, what we've been saying: "Arthur has a terrific sense of justice." And now they remember the conversation when he was trying to warn them: "There was that conversation last week. I thought he was trying to warn us. Listen! Did you hear something?" They don't, but Lance goes -- and they make this big point in order to rationalize how they're safe in there, about how he puts this five-inch thick hunk of oak through slots in the stone wall to protect the door. And unless you've seen some of these old mansion houses, you can't imagine, for all of you who grew up in kind of tract houses with hollow wood doors, on some of these big old mansions. I had a great summer job one summer. My dad had his own business a nd I -- you know, I got really sick of working inside. And so when I was about your age, I told my dad one summer -- I said, "Look, you know. I don't want to work for you this summer. Can't you get a job with one of your friends for me?" So he got a job with a friend who had a small roofing company but all the people who worked for him were all
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right, blah-blah-blah. It talked about Gareth, how we took this younger generation, inculcated him. One of the things, when we get to this later material today, reading about Mordred, they're gonna talk about Mordred's new order. And, you know, we are to assume -- they never delineate exactly what his new order entails, but we just surmise it's totally self-centered, selfish, self-serving. It's all about self and what self wants to accomplish as opposed to a more Kennedy-esque kind of call to do for others. And so we're gonna see a changing of the guard, so to speak, a movement away from Arthur's civilization and call for goodness. Lancelot -- you know, this is really not important. But, you know, about Lancelot's view of Tristram. They talk, though, about the knights of Cornwall, or the old ones, have always hated the best knights and why. Lancelot puts more of an idealistic base on it but Guenever thinks it's more base, that it has to do with envy or jealousy. Lancelot says, on 568, about line 5: "The reason why Agravaine hates me is because I stand for the idea." That is, the ideal, Arthur's ideal. And they hate all the best knights because they're representive of this ideal. It says about line 9 there on 568: "I mean Lamorak [who they killed because he represents the ideal; that's how Lance sees it], Tristram [while they didn't kill him, they were happy to see him dead] and myself have been hated by the Old Ones." Guenever thinks it's simpler. She says in the next paragraph, "He naturally envies anybody who is a better fighter than himself." And if you don't particularly envy -- and I've probably talked about this before so I won't again. But if envy and jealousy are
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not natural components of you, I think it's hard to understand being envious to be somebody else. But, you know, it makes sense for Agravaine as much of a mess as he was. So all this conversation, these people being dead, all of a sudden makes Guenever realize like, "Hey, you know. Maybe Gareth's right. We're in big trouble." So she tries to get him to leave but it's too late. There's somebody at the door. So we're gonna get back to this little story. Agravaine's out there saying, "Open the door," and Mordred's there, too. And I tell you, it's confusing when you try to add up the numbers here about how many people are here. Let me tell you, I've read this too many times. The way I figure it out, and going through all his numbers, there are 12 plus Mordred plus Agravaine, is where I end up. There are 14 and 13 of 'em are gonna get killed. So there are 13 plus Mordred. If you want to view that, that's a bad number. So Mordred got 13 guys. And if you want to really mess this up, though, you say, "No. Agravaine and Mordred got 12 guys. That should've been a good one." Well, whatever. It wasn't good luck for them. But, you know, 13 would've been a better total number. So I don't know if White just wanted to give me something to talk about or, you know, how he was viewing this. Mordred's there, too. They kind of say good-byes. I'm sure they'd be going on for whole pages like this when all these idiots are out there, beating on the door and screaming at 'em and stuff, and waking up everybody in the castle. But again, as with his branch, Lancelot arms himself, on the bottom of 570: He picked up his black cloak and folded it carefully lengthwise into four, after
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that's important. But now, all of a sudden, it's like, "Hey, you know. I warned Agravaine, you know. I told him to let it go. Too bad, you know. I don't care." Mordred is injured. Obviously, Gawaine, Gaheris and Gareth are not happy with what's going on. They describe Gawaine as being gloomy. We get -- a very common device you find in plays a lot of times when you have somebody looking off the wing and reporting what's going on on the battlefield. He uses kind of a window technique a lot. He's gonna have different people standing at the window. He's gonna have Mordred standing at the window, then he's gonna have Arthur -- he's gonna have different people standing at the window, reporting this huge scene of activity. You almost see this as being very dramatic in a sense when you're reading. You kind of visualize it. But what they're doing is, they're gonna get ready to execute Guenever and they're gonna burn her up because she's been a bad doober. Very out of character, on the bottom of 574, Gareth lost his temper. And he's always seemed the total mellow guy. I mean, we've never seen him in battle. But just we expect him -- he's always been the peacemaker. No matter what's been going on. The brothers have been fighting, he's been the peacemaker. And maybe we realize what a point things are getting to that Gareth is behaving this way. On the bottom of 574: Gareth lost his temper completely. "Can't you hold your tongue about it for a minute? Anyone would think that you enjoyed watching people being burned." So the only thing we can think here is that Gareth and certainly Gawaine and
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Gaheris at this point don't view what is happening as necessarily justice for what is right. And somewhere in what we read today we're gonna get to where Arthur even says himself, "You know, I'm losing the ability to discern what is right, what is just." And so maybe everyone is here. Things are not as white and black as Arthur thought. They all think Lancelot will come. They recount the story because we really only saw it in pieces. It's like sometimes when we get information later. On the bottom of 575, "So far as I can understand the story, Mordred, Agravaine went with thirteen other knights, fully armed, and tried to kill Lancelot when he had nothing but his dressing-gown. The upshot was that Agravaine himself was killed, together with all thirteen of the knights--except one, who ran away." So they're gonna start picking on him about, "You little coward. You ran away." He says, "No, I didn't. No, I didn't. He broke my arm." And they're all saying, you know, "Well, how does this make any sense? Why would he let you run away?" Because obviously it was in Lancelot's interest to kill everybody. He killed everybody. There were no witnesses. "We wouldn't be standing here today, we wouldn't be thinking of burning up Guenever." Mordred starts crying when Arthur enters, and Arthur is looking tired, looking old, walking slow. And he explains it by -- I don't think it was real clear when he mentioned this before, but he tells us clearly here that he'd asked Lancelot 10 days ago not to kill his son. And Mordred says, "I wish I'd never been born," and Arthur says, "Me, too." It'd be much better.
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a bad action, by doing good ones afterwards? I don't. I have been trying to stopper it down with good actions, ever since, but it goes on in widening circles. It will not be stoppered. [You know, that's a word.] Do you think this is a consequence too?" So I'm back to the key question: Do you think you can stop the consequences of a bad action by doing good ones afterwards? I don't know. What do you think? Do you think you can? Bad actions, make it up with good. [Inaudible student response.] Of course, you know, I'm bothered throughout this -- you know, as I've said before -- in that Arthur did nothing knowingly bad, you know. And I'm always bothered with the idea that, you know, ignorance is no excuse. I know I've been told that as a kid when I was being punished. So I stopped pleading ignorance. Can you make up good things? Jonathan, what do you think? Can you make up bad stuff with good stuff? I'm trying to figure out what the truth is to see if I have any chance whatsoever. Done is done. Can you make up for it, though? Not completely. I guess it gets back, you know, in the idea of mercy. I mean, you certainly can't make up for bad actions. You can kind of compensate for 'em, do you think, and, you know, maybe credit back against your bad actions. I figure I have to live to be about 104 -- no. It certainly had to be his problem. Arthur has to be at the execution to make it official and, of course, Lance-baby is gonna show up, save the day. And as a result of saving the day, however -- and they all talk -- you know, Lancelot -- I mean Gawaine and Arthur are happy by this. They
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think it's right. They think it's the right thing for Lancelot to rescue her because for her to die would be some kind of injustice. And so -- you know, yet the result of this action of doing right is going to be kill -- to kill innocent people who are protecting her or to make sure the execution takes place. And so we're getting all mixed together good actions and bad actions, which would seem to be where Arthur started. Arthur is still optimistic, I guess, that we could save the court, that we can save Camelot, that Lancelot can apologize and somehow things can still be saved, things can still be restored, things can still be made whole, and he can maintain his time of civilization. Gawaine, though, says what? Not as long as Mordred is alive. And that's gonna be true. So since they're gonna kill each other, obviously it ain't gonna work out. You read about 8 lines from the bottom of 584: "I doubt ye will ever patch it up in full, while Mordred is on life." And Mordred shows up and concurs. He reports also that Gareth and Gaheris are among the dead. And this is all very confusing in here about who killed 'em, how they died. Who killed 'em? Chrissy, who do you think killed 'em? Well, who killed 'em and who do you think killed 'em? Does it say clearly? It doesn't say clearly, all right? Who do you think killed 'em? [Inaudible student response.] Who did? Mordred. You know, they didn't have any armor on. I mean, if you try to read this stuff -- and let me tell you, I've read this way too many times. I mean, I've said that a couple of times today, but, I mean, these individual parts I pore back over to see is there some clue here that I'd missed.
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confuses you more -- later when Mordred is trying to incite Gawaine more or again, he says all this kind of fuzzy stuff which fuzzes up our brain, too. Kind of alluding to the fact that, "Well, Gawaine did all this bad stuff. He killed our brothers." But they're not necessarily saying exactly that he did. But kind of the additional piece of proof is on top of 587 when a page has reported that there were 20 dead knights and that Gareth and Gaheris were not among the list. And so it's almost like the slaughter was over, Gwen was freed, and after the fact something happened to Gareth and Gaheris. And who else would've done anything to 'em? If it was Lancelot, he had done it by -- you know, kind of a Gawaineian rage -- you know, lost sense of who was there. But if they die afterwards, well, it makes sense. There's nobody else who would kill them except Mordred. Remember, they are amoral from way, way, way, way back. Queen of Air, you know. They are amoral. Six months later -- so we're skipping time again -- they have been besieging Lancelot and Gwen for six months at Joyous Gaut. Let me tell you, isn't this a bad thing? They're locked up in the castle together? I mean, isn't this what they didn't want? So they'be besieged and they say, "Oh, cool. Besiege us for four of five years, you know. Good deal." You'll have to cut this out, but, you know, lest you missed this on the news, you know, I can -- I'm gonna have to run out and get my issue right away. Paula Jones is gonna be in Penthouse. I'm just so excited. I just can't wait to buy my issue. Wait until Jay Leno gets to talk about this. He'll be on this for about three months. He probably hopes the issue comes out way late, or something. On the news this morning.
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Sometimes I don't know why I watch the news or read the newspaper. They talk about whether he killed Gareth. Arthur's heart, obviously, is not there. They do mention on 591 this New Order of Mordred's. And what's happening here, it's like everyone has gone mad, they say. On the bottom of 591, we talked about this cycle, this cycle we're in, that Arthur started out with chaos, he established civilization, and things are returning to chaos, and this New Order is part of that process. And so they even start using terms here like everyone has gone mad. About 10 lines up from the bottom of 591, "Civilization seems to have become insane," which seems like an oxymoron to me. Civilization and insane are words that belong together. But the point is here, again, times were changing at this particular point for the worse. While Gwen and Lancelot are chatting, they come upon the idea of, "Oh, you know, maybe the church will intervene here and bring about some good. And if that can happen, you know, we could restore peace." And so part of civilization, a part of the good that Arthur has established, is to bring peace. And if they could do this, Gwen thinks, there's still a chance of a happy ending. There's still a chance. We'll pick this up and finish it next time. I thought you should be thinking a little bit -- you probably don't have your list. But if we went back and thought about Arthur as a hero, I didn't read you that part of Aguan's book. But if I just kind of read through the list -- we probably have enough time left. Thinking about Arthur, and we have 22 points, I had threw on the 23rd, that he was naive. And certainly Arthur always remains naive. I think it's part of a romantic temperament, that if you're an idealist you're always stupid enough, naive enough, to
