Arthuriana -- all things King Arthur ! discussion

Is there good and evil in Le Morte D'Arthur The Winchester Manuscript?
If so what definitions are being used?
So far I can't see an over arching good vs evil theme running through this work. I see ideas of honour, reputation, striving for a knightly idea of perfection...but not much good vs evil.
This seems to be a common theme in retellings but not in Malory. Possibly a striving to retain order (social structure, kingship etc) over chaos (civil war, lack of feudal order) at whatever cost or by whatever means, but not really a good vs evil.

Good versus Evil certainly predates Malory, but Malory seems to rate questing, specifically the Grail Quest, as the supreme good of Medieval. In refusing that high vocation, Arthur's England was doomed to ruin.

We modern's focus on adventures and love triangles as the Malory's themes. And they were, just not central. He wrote at a time when whatever ideal the Medieval Ages had was in decline. In a way, Morte D'Arthur anticipates Don Quixote.

One of the goals of Courtly Love was to "gain glory." Men achieved glory by writing poems as much as by saving damsel's in distress.

(General background can be found in C. S. Lewis' The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Specifics in his Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature. Both from his "day job" as Professor of Med. & Ren. Lit. at Cambridge.)

My previous entry misleadingly implies that the Grail Quest is the central theme of the Arthurian legend. While it is a central feature of Malory's telling, the versions of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Alfred Lord Tennyson, T. H. White, Mary Stewart and others emphasize themes appropriate to the taste and times of those authors.

J. R. R. Tolkien in "On Fairy Tales" from The Tolkien Reader suggests that legends such as Arthur draw from a great "stew pot" of story elements with each author choosing and arranging elements as seem good to him or her. As mentioned elsewhere, the historic Arthur, if he existed, certainly had no knights in shining armor, no Round Table, no Merlin, no Lancelot and Guenevere, and no Grail Quest. While some of those elements may predate Arthur, they were not melded into his legend until Monmouth or Malory or Tennyson added them.

Emphasis on good versus evil (or not) therefore depends on the taste of the storyteller. Malory had other fish to fry. The focus of later renditions of Arthur (on national power, feminism, inner struggle, etc.) would seem as quaint to him as his emphasis on questing seems to us.

Ron thanks for the hints on books. This isn't really my period. Just reading Malory for the first time in 25 years (was the 2 vol penguin then), so coming at it relatively fresh.
Now, obviously we all bring a bit of our world view to the book and I'll read it differently to a 15th century jousting fan.
But I don't see the focus on the questing. OK, there is the questing beast thing going on in the background, and then the grail quest (Arthur not too happy about this as all his chaps wander off pretty much AWOL on this for this portion of Morte). Apart from that the errantry of knights seems just to revolve round finding "adventures", which consist mainly in fighting folks in cases of mistaken identity...OK, there are a small number of bad guys. And Mordred is pretty much Gawain's grumpy brother so far, no overarching evil plot to bring down his infanticidal father...yet.
And both the Tris and Lance story lines are around the cuckolding of a fuedal lord rather than questing.
I think at times it's like the gossip mags of today, who's sleeping with who, who's climbing the joust tables.
Still, I'm loving the re-read. Onto the final battle...

The questing beast is something entirely other.

Some Great Authorities suggest Malory thought Arthur should have been more interested in the Grail Quest.

Yes, the errantry was a big part of Courtly Love. And Courtly Love was probably the background culture of Malory's version of the Arthur legend.