C.S. Lewis and the Greatest Arthurian Epic
Reading (and Appreciating) Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
“[This book’s] whole pleasure…standeth in two especial points, in open manslaughter and bold bawdry.” This disparaging literary assessment comes from Roger Ascham, the great sixteenth-century scholar (and one-time tutor of the young Elizabeth I). The book denigrated by Ascham here was a work of Arthurian fiction — a book about the adventures of King Arthur and his knights of the Round Table. The only “pleasure” to be had from it, according to Ascham, is the debased one of enjoying lawless murder and blatant, unashamed obscenity (“bold bawdry”); that’s because, Ascham continues, in this book “those be counted the noblest knights that do kill most men without quarrel, and commit foulest adulteries by subtlest shifts.”
In other words, this is a book whose crude idea of a “noble knight” is simply whichever knight murders the greatest number of innocent people and uses the “subtlest shifts,” or tricks, to commit the “foulest adulteries.” Not a glowing recommendation, to say the least! “This is good stuff,” Ascham observes scornfully, “for wise men to laugh at.”
Ascham’s low regard can be contrasted with remarks made on by C.S. Lewis on the virtue, moral excellence, and refinement to be found in a book of Arthurian stories; of this book, Lewis writes “I find in it…an unforced reverence not only for courage…but for mercy, humility, graciousness, and good faith.” The book, Lewis says, puts on full display “the civilization of the heart” and exhibits “a fineness and sensitivity, a voluntary rejection of all the uglier and more vulgar impulses.”
Violent, lewd, celebrating deception and sexual immorality on the one hand; gracious, sensitive, revering mercy and humility and rejecting all that is crude, ugly, and obscene on the other — it would be natural to conclude that Ascham and Lewis were talking about two different books, two different portrayals of the Arthurian legend. Lewis must be demonstrating the way such stories could appear in a noble and Christian light, contrary to the book lambasted by Ascham.
The only problem is that Ascham and Lewis were not discussing two different books. They were both describing — or claiming to describe — the same book: Sir Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Arthurian epic, Le Morte d’Arthur.
Two Takes on Le Morte d’Arthur
Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is a massive, sprawling narrative that chronicles the rise, decline, and eventual downfall of Camelot — the adventures, and later the breaking, of the fellowship of the Round Table. All of what we regard today as the classic, quintessential features of the Arthurian story are there (and then some): Arthur’s sword Excalibur; the wizard Merlin; the Lady — really Ladies — of the Lake; the quest of the Holy Grail, the healing of the Maimed King and restoration of the Waste Land; Lancelot and Guinevere’s love affair; the rebellion of Arthur’s ill-begotten son, Mordred; Arthur’s final departure over the waves into the distant isle of Avalon. More than any other single work, Le Morte d’Arthur is the one that later storytellers have most drawn upon, whether Tennyson’s cycle of blank-verse poems Idylls of the King, T.H. White’s novel The Once and Future King, or John Boorman’s 1981 film Excalibur.
Lewis and Ascham’s appraisals of Malory’s book, quoted above, couldn’t be more different. The book Ascham condemns as depraved and immoral, Lewis praises as having an exquisitely refined moral center; the book Ascham characterizes as low, base, and corrupt, Lewis characterizes as noble and lofty. As quoted above, Lewis saw in the Morte a “rejection” of our “uglier and more vulgar impulses,” whereas Ascham clearly regards the book as, not only exhibiting, but fostering in its readers those very same impulses. The best Ascham can say about Le Morte d’Arthur is that it can safely be read, for entertainment, by “honest men”; but this somewhat grudging admission is a far cry from Lewis’ celebration of the book as deeply and fundamentally ennobling.
It must be said that the total contrast between Lewis’ and Ascham’s views on Le Morte d’Arthur is characteristic: in the 540 years since the book’s publication in 1485, opinions have tended to be sharply divided between those who find the book, on the one hand, to be morally deficient — if not outright repugnant — and those on the other hand who see in the book something edifying and noble. (Lewis’ contemporary, T.S. Eliot, described Malory as “a kind of crude northern Homer”; and while Eliot expressed admiration for the Morte’s grand sense of tragedy, he nevertheless characterized the book’s “morality” as fundamentally “tribal” and “primitive.”)
Lewis, though, was a lifelong admirer of Malory’s epic, starting from the time he first read the Morte as a teenager. (Lewis’ exhilarated first reading of George MacDonald’s Phantastes, and the profound effects that novel had on his spirit and his imagination, is well-known; so it’s worth mentioning that when the teenage Lewis first discovered MacDonald, he wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves to declare he’d found an author “quite as good as Malory”!) As Lewis mentions in his autobiography, his love of Malory only deepened the older he got — the more he read (and studied: Lewis was also a scholar of Malory), the more he appreciated the profundity and gravitas of Malory’s epic tale. In August 1963, when a weary and sick Lewis sat house-bound, he received a visit from his friend Tolkien. It would turn out to be their last earthly meeting: Lewis died two months later. Among the topics of conversation in Tolkien’s and Lewis’ last conversation was Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur.
Moreover, it’s clear that Lewis found in Malory (and other medieval and Renaissance authors) a model of the virtuous chivalry that he sought to exhibit in The Chronicles of Narnia; and Lewis certainly hoped for the Narnia books to possess the “fineness and sensitivity” and “rejection of all the uglier and more vulgar impulses” that he saw in Malory. But what about those assertions that Le Morte d’Arthur is fundamentally ignoble? What about Ascham’s claim that Malory’s notion of a “good knight” is the one that commits the most adulteries and kills the greatest number of innocent men, and Eliot’s claim that Malory’s moral compass was “tribal” and “primitive”? Did Lewis simply misread Malory? Because what we might call the “Lewis view” and the “Ascham view” on Le Morte d’Arthur (though again, these conflicting viewpoints have been expressed by many) simply aren’t mutually compatible; someone, either Ascham or Lewis, was reading Malory wrong.
“Bold bawdry” or “Fineness and sensitivity”?
Let’s look at two stories from Book III of Le Morte d’Arthur that exhibit the kind of content that Ascham objected so strongly to. At this point in the book, the Round Table has just been established, and several newly-minted knights ride off on quests; two of these quests, those of Sir Gawain and Sir Pellinore, are unmistakably marked by the knights’ callousness and ruthlessness, and both quests result in the death of an innocent bystander — in both cases a defenseless woman.
Sir Gawain’s quest leads him to a castle where he encounters (an admittedly hostile and bellicose) enemy knight. After being bested by Gawain and struck to the ground, he pleads with Gawain for mercy; but, Malory says, “Sir Gawain would no mercy have,” and removing his enemy’s helmet, he raises his sword to deliver the killing blow — but the stroke of the sword falls instead on an innocent young woman who tearfully interposes herself between Gawain and his intended victim.
Sir Pellinore’s quest, meanwhile, takes him through the wilderness, where he encounters a young woman, alone and helpless, who pleads with him — in the very name of Christ — to stop and aid her; Pellinore merely rides on past. “He would not tarry,” Malory writes, for “he was so eager in his quest.” When he later returns that same way while heading back to Camelot, Pellinore (and the reader) are met with the sudden and chilling sight of the damsel’s severed head lying in the grass: we learn retroactively that Pellinore’s refusal to help her drove her into deep despair, and she committed suicide, after which her corpse was devoured by wild animals. And it gets worse: upon his return to Camelot, the wizard Merlin reveals to Pellinore that this young lady, whose cries for help Pellinore ignored, who died a cruel death alone in the wilderness, was none other than Pellinore’s own daughter.
Gawain’s bloodthirstiness, his refusal to grant mercy to a fallen foe, is profoundly (and obviously) unchivalrous; and the thought of an innocent damsel dying by a knight’s sword (however accidental) is monstrous. As for Pellinore, his case seems especially perverse: a knight refusing to stop and help a lady in distress because he’s too busy with his quest? What does he think a quest is? Surely helping a lady in distress is the very quintessence of the knightly quest! And, of course, the fact that the lady in distress was Pellinore’s own daughter means that Pellinore failed as both a knight and as a father.
All in all, the impression that comes across in these (mis)adventures is one of unchecked, domineering knighthood: forceful and strong, but indifferent, callous, and pitiless. This must be the kind of thing Ascham had in mind when he denounced the book’s preponderance of “bold bawdry” and “open manslaughter.” Nevertheless, the idea that Le Morte d’Arthur revels in — and condones — scandal, sin, and cruelty can only be maintained by a surface-level reading of the book. Let’s look now at the reaction of other characters to Gawain’s and Pellinore’s misdeeds? Gawain’s ruthless bloodthirst is condemned by his own brother, Gaheris, who declares Gawain’s actions to be “foul and shamefully done”; Gaheris adds, for good measure, “that shame shall never [depart] from you.” Gawain’s slaughter of the maiden may have been accidental, but it is presented as a direct result of Gawain’s unknightly and unchristian lack of mercy; as his brother tells him, “ye should give mercy unto them that ask mercy, for a knight without mercy is without worship.” (By “worship” Gaheris does not necessarily mean here “praise,” but rather the word’s older sense of “merit, value”: a knight without mercy is a knight without worth.)
Pellinore is likewise reproached by Queen Guinevere for failing to intervene and rescue his daughter; and although Pellinore repeats his earlier justification, that he was too intent on his quest to stop — “I was so furious in my quest that I would not abide” — he cannot escape the truth, the sheer force, of the queen’s condemnation: “ye were greatly to blame that ye saved not this lady’s life.” It’s easy for modern readers to miss the importance of Guinevere’s words, accustomed as we are to using “greatly” as a vague intensifier; when she says “ye were greatly to blame” she means Pellinore was hugely to blame, that his guilt is massive.
In other words, Malory does not celebrate, but condemns, Gawain’s and Pellinore’s actions. Their misdeeds serve (by way of negative example) to highlight what true knightly virtue looks like, a point driven home by the coda to Book III: following Pellinore and Gawain’s misdeeds, Arthur gathers his knights together and establishes the parameters and criteria for knighthood: “[he] charged them never to do outrageousity nor murder…also, by no means to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy…and always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour, upon pain of death.” Arthur, in short, calls his knights to rise above their base instincts, their self-regard and might-makes-right conceits — to rise above their “uglier and more vulgar impulses” (to use Lewis’ words) into a nobler way of life: abstain from arrogant and immoderate behavior (“outrageousity”), to practice compassion rather than cruelty, and to unwaveringly give help to those in need.
“Do after the good and leave the evil”
Of course, not all of the knights live up to the high charge laid upon them by Arthur. Open any of the subsequent portions of Le Morte d’Arthur, and you will find plenty more of what Ascham (et al.) objected to. The same Gaheris who had reproached Gawain for his lack of mercy will himself later murder his own mother in a fit of rage; Gawain, Gaheris, and their brothers Mordred and Agravain will betray and murder Sir Lamorak — a fellow knight of the Round Table — in the most cowardly of ways, ambushing him and attacking him four against one. Envious rivalry, resentment, maliciousness, and violent retribution continue to recur among the knights.
What Roger Ascham missed, however, and Lewis did not, is that the moral compass of Le Morte d’Arthur points away from all of those deeds of cruelty, ruthlessness, and shamelessness; it honors those knights (like Perceval, Galahad, and Lancelot) who practice loyalty, kindness, compassion, and self-sacrifice. The contrast between the noble and the ignoble, the true and the false, the inwardly beautiful and inwardly repugnant, is intentional.
This contrast was, in fact, noticed by Le Morte d’Arthur’s very first publisher, William Caxton. His 1485 preface puts the matter nicely: in this book, Caxton writes, readers
“may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour; and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke… For herein may be seen noble friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin. Do after the good and leave the evil…all [of it] is written for our doctrine [i.e., our instruction], and for to beware that we fall not to vice ne sin, but to exercise and follow virtue…”
As Caxton astutely pointed out so long ago, Le Morte d’Arthur contains a whole spectrum of goodness and wickedness: his summary of the book’s content quoted just above includes “cowardice” and “murder” as well as “noble friendship,” “virtue” as well as “sin.” The book is not, contrary to Ascham, “good stuff for wise men to laugh at”; it is a call, in Caxton’s words, to “do after the good and leave the evil.”
There is plenty of behavior in Le Morte d’Arthur that is tawdry, corrupt, and malevolent. The volatile ferocity of the hot-tempered Sir Balin brings about the miseries of the Wasteland; Nimue, one of the Ladies of the Lake, brings about Merlin’s demise seemingly for no other reason than that she was tired of Merlin doting on her; Gawain promises to help his fellow knight, Pelleas, win the love of the lady Ettard, and then promptly betrays him; the lady Elaine uses magic to trick Lancelot into bed with her (and nor is Lancelot blameless in this sordid affair: he thought he was getting into bed with Guinevere, Arthur’s wife).
But such instances are counterpoised by the book’s many noble and generous acts, and its high regard for redemption and mercy. Galahad heals the wound inflicted by Balin and restores the Wasteland to life again; Pelleas, coming upon Gawain and Ettard sleeping together, thinks it “shameful” to kill Gawain in such a manner, instead leaving his “naked sword” across the slumbering Gawain’s neck before riding, heartbroken, away. (Gawain’s various acts of ruthlessness and infidelity receive their sharpest rebuke in the search for the Holy Grail: his failure in this most sacred and spiritual of quests is directly attributed to his unrepentantly sinful deeds.)
Moreover, for all the instances of what Ascham called “bold bawdry,” there is scene after scene marked by valor and courage, beauty and sensitivity, and a profound goodness: the tender and tearful reunion of Arthur and his mother, separated from one another since Arthur’s birth; Guinevere falling humbly to her knees to beseech the aid of a haughty and scornful Sir Bors; Gareth’s unflagging courtesy to the sharp-tongued, contemptuous Lynette finally converting her into being his friend; Lancelot, silently praying for God’s grace, and, startled at actually receiving it, weeping uncontrollably “as he had been a child.”
Conclusion
I mentioned above that Lewis’ contemporary, T.S. Eliot, described Malory as “a kind of crude northern Homer,” and depicted Malory’s moral code as “tribal” and “primitive.” I don’t know if Lewis read those words of Eliot’s; but if he did, then he surely thought that Eliot was characteristically wrong on this. In his essay “The English Prose Morte,” Lewis claimed, I think quite correctly, that there was a fundamental difference between the raw warrior spirit of ancient epic literature and the Christian chivalry of Malory’s best knights; as Lewis remarked, none of Homer’s heroes, “even the best of them…could ever have been made to understand why Lancelot wept.” The difference derived from Malory’s “reverence not only for courage…but for mercy, humility, graciousness, and good faith.” No wonder Lewis found a “fineness and sensitivity” in Malory, “the civilization of the heart”; no wonder Caxton characterized Le Morte d’Arthur as being both “noble” and “joyous.”