The Knight without the Sword:A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry by Hyonjin Kim (review)

Abstract

reviews135 HYONJiN KiM, The Knight without the Sword.A Social Landscape ofMalorian Chivalry. Arthurian Studies Vol. XLV. Cambridge and Rochester, NY: D.S. Brewer, 2000. Pp. viii, 155. isbn: 0-85991-603—0. $75. In this subtle and learned study Hyonjin Kim traces three 'light-colored portraits' behind 'the strong silhouette of archetypal knight-errant' in the Morte Darthur's foreground: knights concerned with economics of the land, engaged in politics, obsessed with self-identity (138). These concerns are those ofthe author and his gentry audience. To discover the three palimpsests, Kim immerses himself in cultural and class history ofthe later fifteenth-century; he also masterfully employs source material and semantic study. Kim thus reveals the mentality of Malory's audience while he brings to modern readers a nuanced understanding of late medieval chivalry. In The Knight without the Sword Kim argues against earlier critics who read the Morte Darthur as nostalgic escapism (Chambers) or those who see Malory separating to the gentry's business and political concerns from his portrayal ofchivalry (Benson). Kim's first chapter deftly moves through the biographies ofthe three leading candidates to argue that the Morte 'originated in the late fifteenth-century community of the greater gentry—more specifically in the circle of the rural landowners who assumed leading roles in their localities and were possibly a little more conservative in behavior and outlook than their neighbors' (6). Relying on historians like K. B. McFarlane, Christine Carpenter, and Chris Given-Wilson, Kim defines the gentry as a group different from the nobility 'in degree rather than kind' and proposes 'to find beneath that timeless exterior of Arthurian chivalry the anxieties and aspirations of the real fifteenth-century aristocracy—especially squierarchical landowners such as the author himself (17). In three subsequent chapters, Kim admirably articulates those anxieties and aspirations. In the second chapter on 'The Economy of Love' Kim ranges throughout the Morte Darthur to demonstrate that Malory's view of love always embraces a concern for the knights' landed wealth. Heroes like Lancelot, Bors, and Tristram gain their paternal patrimonies early in their careers, which is manifestly not the case in Malory's sources. (Kim's notes on these points of difference with the sources—here and throughout the book—make almost as good reading as the main argument.) Welllanded heroes tend to prefer adulterous relationships or at least avoid marriage, while unpropertied younger sons—Gareth, Alisuander—find wealth through marriage. These details are all quietly present in the text; Kim's marxian analysis brings them out. Startlingly insightful is Kim's suggestive reading of Lamorak and Morgause's murders as a violent end to the rivalry between the widow's family and her potential second husband. Like members of the Paston or Stonor families, Malory's knights allow economic factors to determine the course of love. Kim's 'politically engaged knight' most clearly appears in the Tristram, whose relationships mimic McFarlane's bastard-feudal society. The overarching point, that 'Malory exploited the complex network of loyalty and friendship that he found in French prose cycles' to reflect contemporary English politics (64), is convincing. At 136ARTHURIANA times, however, the argument becomes so dense that Kim relies on lists: There are four points to be made on the 'Malorian fabric ofloyalty and friendship' (61); another four ways in which 'the aristocratic lifestyle of French romans courtois became in Malory the métonymie and occasionally realistic representation of. ..late medieval English society' (68). Individual claims are fascinating, for example, that fifteenthcentury political language—as in the phrase 'well-willers'—infiltrates the romance (72). Yet Kim's extension of business or political language sometimes rings false: I was fine with Malory's 'best knights'—Lancelot, Tristram, Lamorak—becoming 'magnates' or 'barons' with 'affinities,' but is Gareth really Lancelot's 'young client?' In the final section ofthis chapter Kim analyzes three more lists, the catalogues at the start ofthe MorteArthur-proper, to illuminate Malorian power politics on the eve of war (85). Kim depicts Lancelot as an archetype ofgood lordship in contrast to Gawain. It is worth wading through the sometime thick details to gain an insight that is hidden in full view: The demise of Lamorak and Tristam...