Summary: The Knights Of The Round Table

Throughout Sir Thomas Malory’s epic romance, Le Morte D’Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table repeatedly find themselves pressured to behave in ways that are contradictory to their knightly code. The restrictive social structure of Camelot, along with the problematic nature of the Pentecostal Oath, produces a paradoxical environment where knights find themselves compromised by opposing obligations and expectations. The incompatibility of knightly and chivalric duties within Le Morte D’Arthur cause the Knights of the Round Table to manipulate their own identities through disguises as a way to free themselves from an unattainable standard of behavior, thus, when they struggle with the inherent discrepancies within their knightly code, the knights’
Arthur, Guinevere and Launcelot all have public duties as King, Queen, and Knight of the Round Table, but they also have private chivalric and courtly responsibilities to spouses, lovers and friends. Analyzing Le Morte D’Arthur from a nature-text standpoint, author influence can be seen in this respect as Sir Thomas Malory “attempts to address and resolve the contradictions of noble life in his own time (Armstrong 29). Because Malory had lived through 15th century England and the War of the Roses, he had undoubtedly experiences “continuous social fluctuation from a variety of factors such as the hastening dissolution of feudal relationships, the rise of the merchant class, and repeated struggles among the nobility for the crown” (Helvie 4). Considering Malory’s turbulent life and the period of unstable identities in which he lived, it makes good sense that Le Morte D’Arthur depicts characters facing similar problems of identity. Therefore, the renegotiation of knightly identity through disguise and anonymity shows a shift in knightly identity around the time of Sir Malory, where chivalric incognito allow knights to construct their identity by deeds and actions rather than medieval reputation and naming conventions (Gathof