Malory, Chivalric Medievalism, and New Imperialist Masculinity
Abstract
Over the course of the nineteenth century, Sir Thomas Malory’s fifteenth-century work of Arthurian romance, Le Morte Darthur, underwent significant reevaluation, from being warily considered a trivial, morally problematic text to being hailed as a national epic with a central place in the English canon. This shift in Malory’s status coincided with the rise of an increasingly competitive and unabashedly aggressive model of imperialism in the 1870s, which historians conventionally term New Imperialism. At the same time, a new model of masculinity emerged, one that bemoaned the “decadence” of the modernized, leisurely man and that celebrated the hypermasculine ideal of the “savage” and the “barbarian.” It turned to “primitive” models of masculinity which it located in non-Western cultures such as the Zulus, and in the past, celebrating the heroism of ancient Greeks and Romans, Viking warriors, and medieval knights. I argue that Malory’s ascent to canonical status was largely due to this rise of ultranationalism and atavistic masculinity. Le Morte Darthur provided England with a prestigious, national epic to rival other European nations, and its presentation of chivalric masculinity became the inspiration for the imperial masculinity promoted by the British Empire’s champions, including writers like Rudyard Kipling, Sir H. Rider Haggard, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I examine Kipling’s consideration of empire, progress, and heroic masculinity in Puck of Pook’s Hill, where he explores these issues in the context of medieval English history. I then look at the genre of Victorian romance, focusing specifically on King Solomon’s Mines and Sir Nigel, examining the ways in which these works dramatize masculinist fantasies of English gentlemen reverting to “primitive,” medievalist masculinities as an antidote to the “effeminized” masculinity of fin-de-siècle England. I conclude with T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, an unorthodox reworking of Le Morte Darthur that uses Malory’s narrative to critique the militarism, imperialism, and chivalric masculinity of the New Imperialists. Throughout the thesis, I examine the trajectory of hegemonic forms of masculinity, imperialism, and medievalism, over a span of nearly a hundred years, as they intersect with the reception and adaptation of Sir Thomas Malory’s chivalric ideals.