...Analysis of Chivalry in the Movie Excalibur) This past week in room 303 we have watched the movie Excalibur. This movie is about King Arthur and his life. This movie also involves chivalry and what it means to be a knight. Chivalry is the code of conduct and moral views of knights during the medieval ages. In the movie, there are a few good examples of chivalry. Chivalry is shown with Arthur’s brother, Lancelot, and the father and son in the woods during the movie Excalibur. The first example of chivalry that is shown in the movie is when Arthur’s brother gives up everything knowing what it could bring.. In the beginning of the movie, Arthur pulls the sword from the stone, not knowing how important it was. Not only that, but he had no idea of the responsibilities that would come from being worthy of the sword. He was led to pull out the sword because he had lost his brother’s sword, and was in search for another one. When he pulls out the sword, he hands it to his brother so he has a sword to fight with. His brother, knowing how important the sword is and what it could bring to him, tells everyone it was Arthur who pulled it out. This shows honor because he could have easily said it was him and been able to become king. This shows how noble his brother really is. It shows that he was not overcome...
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...Of the many concepts that are prevalent in the study of the Middle Ages, few of them are as fluid and abstract as the idea of Chivalry. Chivalry is a concept that shows its head in many different pieces of literature from the time period as well as in the actions of many of the era's most prominent individuals. Knights, kings, soldiers, nobles, and more all followed the ideals of chivalry to one extent or another. The problem with examining their actions, however, lies in the fact that people within each of these groups interpreted chivalry differently. Whereas one person may view the act of war as chivalrous, others may look towards maintaining their estates and income as more important to their chivalrous valor. This makes simply defining...
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... King arthur satire essay Chivalry was the great code of conduct respected by the knights and heroes during the romantic medieval era. Marked by honor, courtesy, and generosity, chivalry included skill, valor, loyalty to both God and the king, having sympathy towards the sick, oppressed. Within the same general area of chivalry was courtly love. The men fought to attain their ladys affections and love by waging war in their name, or by romancing them. Knights were to devote themselves entirely to one woman.This love was was between a knight and a married woman. However, in each of these pieces are also characters who stray from this ideal code of conduct, Seen in Monty python and the holy grail. Sir Gawain in the Green Knight is a story about chivalrous values and trickery. This story involves the Green knight’s arrival at King Arthur’s feast one evening. The green knight challenges the king to his game and just as King Arthur accepts Sir Gawain insists on accepting the challenge instead. The Green knight is beheaded, but picks his head up and tells Sir Gawain that he must meet him in one year so that he can return the challenge. Sir Gawain sets off on his journey one year later and arrives at a castle. He is graciously let inside where he stays a few days. The lord / the green knight creates a game of his own involving the Lord hunting and Sir Gawain remaining at the castle with the game to test his chivalry and his faith. In m...
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...Chivalry and its importance to knighthood Chivalry is one of the most important themes in the Arthurian culture. It is clearly present in both marte de Arthur and gwain and the green knight. Chivalry is the code of ethics and laws that the knights and king must hold themselves too. The most important virtues are courtly love, bravery and loyalty. Bravery is one of the highest acts a knight can do. Bravery is when a knight acts courageously and completes a dangerous act despite fear. Bravery is virtue held highly and because of it, it allows knight to climb in rank, the braver the knight the more respect he receives at the round table. Lancelot shows his bravery when he defeats Maleagant after saving the Queen, and is named the bravest of all knights....
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...Although Batman and King Arthur both ended up becoming heroes, King Arthur did not have the desire to become king once he pulled the sword out of the stone. Initially Arthur pulled the sword out of the stone in order to give it to his foster brother, Kay. Arthur did not obtain the sword for his own benefit and personal well-being. As a result of Arthur pulling the sword out of the stone he ended up becoming the new king of Camelot. Engraved on the sword was this saying, “Whoso pulleth out this sword of this stone and anvil, is rightwise king born of all England.”(McBride). Arthur became the king to help the people and to instill a code of ethics; he did not want to become king for the glory or honor that came with it. However, Batman did have...
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...The Knightliest of Knights I find these passages significant because Sir Gawain shows how and what it takes to be a chivalric knight of the Round Table under King Arthur. The first time we see the chivalric knighthood of Sir Gawain is when he accepts the challenge presented in front of everyone from the Green Knight. During a time of feasting and frolicking, the Green Knight enters King Arthur’s court and makes his presence known to everyone. He then offers a challenge to everyone in the court, including the King and all of his knights of the Round Table. When a hush falls over the court and nobody steps forward to acknowledge the challenge, King Arthur takes the axe offered from the Green Knight and heaves it over his head. Before he can strike the Green Knight, Sir Gawain emerges and stops the King. He tells King Arthur that he will take the challenge and the melee shall be his. This is the first example we see of the chivalry presented by Sir Gawain. A knight must be loyal to his lord and to God and a knight must never run from a challenge; Sir Gawain definitely shows loyalty to King Arthur when he takes the challenge from the King so the King does not lose his life in the end being as the person who accepts the challenge has to give the Green Knight a strike from the same axe. The second time Sir Gawain’s chivalry is presented is when he sticks to the challenge he accepted from the Green Knight and finds him in a year’s time to give the Green Knight his due. Most...
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...Honor and Courage Persevere The poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated by John Gardner, is set in the Middle Ages. This was a time in history when people focused on the values and ideals of the Code of Chivalry, a code of honor intended to govern knightly behavior. As Arthur and his knights get together to feast and celebrate Christmas and the new year their festivities were interrupted by a man of green who wandered about searching for adventure so that he can disprove his chivalry. The two values that are most clearly stated in the poem are courage and honor. It will become clear by the actions of the characters that courage and honor is shown in several different areas of the poem. According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, courage is defined as “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.” Courage can be shown in a variety of ways. In this particular instance the Green Knight challenged King Arthur or any of the knights of the roundtable to take his ax and hit his bare neck. He said to them, “And I will stand still for your stroke, steady on the floor, / provided you honor my right, when my inning comes, / to repay” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight 213). Clearly, the Green Knight shows a tremendous amount of courage, knowing the danger that it is going to befall him if one of the knights takes up the ax to his neck. Sir Gawain is another instance where courage was lost and then found. After a year, Gawain...
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...form. What form was each in? Did that form give you any particular difficulties when you read through that work? Next, explain how the form of the work influenced the way the theme came across in each. What sort of an effect did the way the work was shaped have on the theme itself? After reading so many stories in this class there were two pieces of literature that themes were quite similar but written in different forms. These two stories are King Arthur Witten by Sir Thomas Malory and Othello by William Shakespeare. I personally had some difficult reading these two stories however; I was able to understand them after going back and reviewing key points that explained the main idea. The story of King Arthur is based on romance and chivalry and it was difficult to read because it was written in old English as supposed to early Anglo-Saxon literature. This storie had a lot to do with the story of Othello because the plots are similar in some way. In King’s Arthur, The King discovers that his best Knight Lancelot is in love with his Queen Guenevere. That fact was clearly seen in the story when the Queen favors Lancelot above the other Kinights. “Queen Guenever had him in great favour above all other knights, and in return he was loyal to her above all other ladies and damsels all his life, and for love of her he did many deeds of arms, and saved her from the fire through his noble chivalry” (Malroy, 668). Once the King discovered that Lancelot betrayed his trust the King was deeply...
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...King Arthur's Knights Was Arthur a true, historical figure or only a hero of legend? This is truly up to each and every one of us to decide for ourselves. Arthur represents a man who was the epitome of good against evil, light against darkness, and that eternal, never-ending struggle between what is right and that which is wrong. King Arthur is a legendary British leader of the late 5th and early 6th centuries, The details of Arthur's story are mainly composed of folklore and literary invention, and his historical existence is debated and disputed by modern historian. there is no historical evidence, that King Arthur ever exist…But, as people say '' no smoke without fire'' CAMELOT was declared as the chief residence of the High-King Arthur and embroidered the elaborate portrayal that we recognise today. The Tradition: The Name "Excalibur" was first used for King Arthur's sword by the French Romancers. It was not the famous "Sword in the Stone" (which broke in battle), but a second sword acquired by the King through the intercession of his druidic advisor, Merddyn (Merlin). Worried that Arthur would fall in battle, Merlin took the King to a magical lake where a mysterious hand thrust itself up from the water, holding aloft a magnificent sword. It was the Lady of the Lake offering Arthur a magic unbreakable blade, fashioned by an Avalonian elf smith, along with a scabbard which would protect him as long as he wore it.Towards the end of his reign, during the troubled...
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...drives home Merlyn’s point that intelligence and education are more important in a king than being a brave knight, regardless of how many acts of chivalry one may do. Upon entering the badger’s home, Wart does not know “whether to think of it as a college or as a castle” (White 189). The Great Hall, or Combination Room is most striking with its “paintings of departed badgers…lit from above by shaded glow-rooms” (White 189). White’s description of the Combination Room brings to mind the libraries and study rooms of Oxford or Cambridge and brings home the emphasis on education and wisdom. The badger himself even says that if Wart is there to learn, than he has been sent to the right place (White 190). As Wart and the badger talk, the badger tells Wart a parable about how God gave Man “the Order of Dominion” (White 193) over the animals of the world. As Wart and the badger are discussing the parable, the lesson that Wart was to learn becomes clear; humans are the only creatures in existence to wage war upon each other. Though Arthur tries to insist that ants and wolves wage war, the lesson is that, while other species may fight each other, human beings are the only ones to wage war against each other. As the badger says, “true warfare is rarer in Nature than cannibalism” (White 194). Wart, however, misses the point that this trait in human beings is perhaps what makes them a tyrant versus “the king of the animals” (White 193), instead choosing to focus on the glory of war. It...
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...must prove their worth, Sir Gawain must resist temptation to sin, while Beowulf must protect his people and their allies. A giant, green warrior rides into a hall full of King Arthur’s men. Sir Gawain stands up, in place of King Arthur, and delivers a decapitating blow to the Green Knight after Sir Gawain promises to find him to receive a blow in return. As Sir Gawain searches for the Green Knight, he finds shelter in the castle of a local lord, Lord Bertilak, and his wife, Lady Bertilak. In the Church, desires of the flesh are considered evil, and should be avoided. In the chivalric code, one must always obey authority. These two values come in contradiction when Sir Gawain is asked by Lady Bertilak to give a kiss to her. “‘One gracious as Gawain is rightly held to be, with courtesy contained so clear in himself, could not lightly have lingered so long with a lady, but he craved a kiss out of...
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...The Big Three (Three Primary Elements of Chivalry) The first thing that often comes to a person’s head when they hear medieval times is knights. They think of all of the bright shiny armour with the big swords and all of those tags that go along with it. That is really all that they think of when they think of a knight though, they think battle and bright and shiny armour. What people generally don’t perceive is what it took the knight to become a knight. Along with that they don’t realize what really even makes the knight a knight other than the fact that he has to go to battle and fight. In the stories Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by Marie Borroff and Morte D’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory, they go a little deeper into what it actually means to be a knight. They begin to point out the things that actually classify one as a knight. There are three primary elements that classify a knight: courage, loyalty, and honor....
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...Knights of the middle ages were held to a code of chivalry. Also, a knight held a prestigious position. A knight had to show bravery, loyalty, generosity, courtesy and devotion to the liege. Knights believed deeply in the code of chivalry. They had to show mercy to those they defeated. The knights in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” showed good and bad qualities when considering the codes of chivalry. The knight in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” showed loyalty to King Arthur. He showed his loyalty by taking the place of King Arthur’s challenge to the Green Knight: Gawain by Guenevere Toward the king doth now incline: “I beseech, before all here, That...
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...Medieval Literature Themes of Medieval Literature: • The Seven Deadly Sins • The Seven Heavenly Virtues • Physiognomy and "The Humours" • Values of "courtly love" • The Code of Chivalry(CF) The Poets and Authors: Caedmon: First English poet; author of "The Dream of the Holy Rood." Venerable Bede: wrote the Ecclesiastical History of England and the scientific treatise, De Natura Rerum. Geoffrey Chaucer: Famous Medieval author of the Canterbury Tales. Margery Kempe: Author of the first autobiography in English. John Gower: Medieval poet and friend of Geoffrey Chaucer Francesco Petrarch: Italian poet, and a humanist. Famous for his poems addressed to Laura. Dante: Medieval poet and politician. Christine de Pizan: Medieval author and feminist. William Longland: English poet who wrote the Vision of Piers Plowman. Boccaccio: Italian writer who was famous for writing the Decameron. Raphael Holinshed: Medieval author of Holinshed's Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland. (KM) Romance: • Chivalry was the reason behind this type of literature. • The greatest English example of the romance is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. • The romance hero-who often has the help of magic-undertakes a quest to conquer an evil enemy. (KM) Chivalry: • A system of ideals and social codes governing the behavior of knights and gentlewoman. • The rules included: taking an oath of loyalty to the overlord and observing certain rules of warfare...
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...isn’t as radical as it was during the time of King Arthur, in this story, the power that men hold is suddenly withdrawn from their hands and put into the delicate hands of the “weaker sex”. It starts off with a flirty knight who thinks that he has every right to take a maiden’s virginity away, against her will. Of course, the knight knew what he was doing and chose to do it anyways, feeling that he has superior power of the innocent maiden’s virginity. It’s like having a perfect rose in your palm and suddenly destroying it with your own hands. You can’t get that perfect rose to be perfect once again. Once committed, the damage cannot be undone. At this point it is evident that the superiority is held by men. Although when the knight is brought to trial, this is not the case. Being charged with rape, during the medieval times, was a crime punishable by death. King Arthur held his knights to the idealized code of honor known as chivalry and was not going to let one knight stain the reputation of them all. But suddenly his jurisdiction is stripped away by her beloved wife, the queen. She simply asks the king to grant her the power to decide the fate of the sinful knight. Now the queen comes to represent women's sovereignty. Even more amazing then that, she also comes to represent justice when she brings forth judgement over the knight. She decides what punishment will be given to the knight that would have been killed in the hands of Arthur. Women, represented by the queen, also come...
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