“By portraying the perfect, Arthurian literature exposes the contemporary imperfect.”
In the light of this statement, explore the ways in which Malory, Tennyson and Monty Python present chivalry.

Chivalry is the preconceived moral code by which medieval knights would behave. As the 18th century critic Richard Hurd acknowledges, chivalric knights would demonstrate ‘their romantic ideas of justice; their passion for adventures; their eagerness to run succour of the distressed and the pride they took in redressing wrongs and removing grievances’. Throughout the works of Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Monty Python, this definition of chivalry remains constant, although with a particular focus on the tropes of physical prowess, superhuman endurance in combat and dutiful respect of ladies. However, as Leigh Hunt remarked of Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, the poem ‘treats the modes and feelings of one generation in the style of another’. I would argue that, in fact, this applies directly to all three writers. Malory presents the reader with an earthy, realistic, yet anachronistic representation to demonstrate the worth of such ideals in a country wrought with decline and chaos during the Wars of the Roses. Tennyson idealizes this knightly conduct: this glamorization of chivalry functions as a model which, for Tennyson, reflects the applauded propriety of Prince Albert and other Victorian gentry. Monty Python, in tune with the 1960/70s synonymous with the radical and subversive, deride the chivalric values which to them seem impractical and unrealistic.
In medieval Arthurian literature, physical prowess was a knightly imperative. Being seemingly undefeatable in battle was the basic underlying currency of the medieval feudal system. For example, Thomas of Chestre’s fourteenth-century warrior, Sir Launfal, slays ‘Syr Valentyne’, who ‘was wonder