LLT 180 Lecture 11 Part 1

Let's get done with this. This gets us through the first half today so we can have a test next time. We left -- we're in the northern areas. Again, we're still alternating chapters. And some of what's in here is extremely silly because part of it's extremely serious as we move Arthur toward resolution of what he's gonna try to accomplish. They explain again -- we were on 272. Isn't that where we were, 272? I think, in the middle of that chapter. Morgause, who has been kind of captivated by the three knights who showed up, has now decided that they're ridiculous and, as women are wont to do, is giving up on them at this point. And we see again this different order, the idea that this world -- you know, they keep being referred to as the old ones -- that this world, the world where these people are, where Gareth and his brothers come from, is somehow an older world, has secrets that the Norman world does not. They talk some about the fort. And when Gareth finds his brothers, it's the basic nature of the Orkey faction of the four brothers to not get along very well. And we get these stereotypical kinds of representations again that Gareth is the peacemaker, that Gawaine is the forceful one, and Agravaine is just kind of a pain; and that we can see a fight coming, and it's rather in the form of a tableau. We could probably get some people up here and -- you know, it's very theatrical. It almost sounds like a stage direction to a play as he describes the action -- we're over on page 275 -- the action of the little battle. And basically, again, to show the hostility of the brothers and something particular about three of them: Agravaine, Gawaine and Gareth. This whole deal with the counterfeit beast is just silliness, but we do get some insightful statements. Part of what we're seeing is finally that Pellinore is growing up. That he, even with the counterfeit beast, doesn't seem to have much interest in pursuing the beast, even when they try to get him interested. They think this is what is wrong with him. He's not even particularly interested in talking about it. And so finally, over on 277, they say, "Hey, we saw the beast." He doesn't want to play word games. He just seems really into himself. The Questing Beast -- and, you know, I'm not sure exactly why this is -- Glatisant is a she. And so I don't know if somehow symbolically he's supposed to be striving after the ideal she, and it takes him all these years to find her, and then it's Miss Piggy, and so he doesn't need the Questing Beast. I don't know. Let's ask somebody in the Psychology Department. The king says what? In other words, if he's finally growing up, he's gonna leave. We get back to this childish -- I don't think my brain is connected to my hand today. We're leaving these childish things behind. And so now all of a sudden he says that this Questing Beast is stupid, whereas before it was pretty much the focus of his life. And he even says, at the bottom of 277, what? It's like his life hasn't been logical. Like, "Why am I doing this? Why have I been chasing this Questing Beast?" And so all of a sudden it's like he's saying the very nature of part of being a knight, of accepting any quest and pursuing it to its logical conclusion, is not logical. He's still thinking about Miss Piggy. He doesn't refer to her as Miss Piggy. That's the, you know, large, fat, pink thing coming to my mind. But rather just Piggy. Unfortunate. This was written obviously way before that, but I just can't get Miss Piggy out of my mind whenever -- and, you know, they don't give her a very kind description anyway. So it's like, "Miss Piggy. He's in love with Miss Piggy." I'll try to straighten up. So anyway, he talks about the Queen of Flanders' daughter and he really did love her, and so he really feels that because he had to accept this new quest, when the magic barge appeared, he missed out on this. That she really understood him, she was understanding of him, tolerant of him, and he even has had an idea he's gonna have four sons and he's already picked out names for 'em. And these names are important. These are gonna be important characters later in the work, especially two of them. The two -- the names are even on the bottom of page 278, about 10 lines up. And the two that are gonna be important are obviously Percivale who, in the original tradition, he is going to be the knight who finds the grail. He's very, very, very important. And Lamorak is very important for some other reason. And I don't want to ruin the story for you, but -- well, anyway. I just want to tell you so bad 'cause it's so weird. It belongs on daytime TV. Anyway, he's been chasing this beast forever and ever and they said -- well, you know, they're trying to get him interested. And he's not interested. He's interested in Piggy -- not Miss Piggy, but Piggy -- and he's in love and he's preoccupied. So they say, "Well, you know, we'll drive it toward you." They go dressed as the beast -- you're gonna read this. It's all very silly, obviously. It really gets good, though, over on page 282 -- really, you know, kind of comical, when they are dressed as the beast, trying to make their way toward Pellinore. And unbeknownst to them, we find out later, Glatisant and Piggy have been picked up by the magic barge. They've been looking for Pellinore together and the magic barge has gone back and picked them up. So they're here. And so Glatisant sees them and he's in love. And so she starts kind of bumping him from the back and making amorous sounds, and the knights are kind of freaked -- as any sane person would be -- and so they run for it. This goes on and on. And finally, on page 283, the one knight feels for what's out there and he feels something cold and slippery. Does it move? "It moves, and--it snuffles!" "Snuffles?" "Snuffles." At this moment the moon came out. "Merciful powers!" And they run for it. So they try to run away. Pellinore -- and then we see this one little brief thing where they're talking about Pellinore, and Pellinore is totally not into it. He's thinking about Miss Piggy. And he finds them trapped by the Questing Beast. So we leave, then. So again, this serious, funny, comical, whatever, alternation of chapters by their content. As we go to Chapter 10, what our expectation would be: "Okay. We've been having fun. We're relaxed now. We're theoretically in a mood that we can read something serious and not throw the book away. We are ready as readers to learn something else." Merlyn -- and it's all the way at the very end of this. Merlyn keeps coming back to this -- "I forgot to tell Arthur something" -- and he just can't remember what it is. It's the night before the battle and he keeps asking, on 285, "Did I tell you this? Did I tell you that?" And, of course, Arthur says, "Yeah," or "I don't care," but he doesn't touch upon the key point. And Merlyn only can't remember what is important. He tells him he does remember that it's vital and it has to do with what happens at the very end, and that is who his mother is. He's told him Uther's his father but he's never told him who his mother is. So Arthur still doesn't know that Morgause, Morganda -- I'm sorry -- Morgause, Elaine and Morgan la Fay are his half- sisters. He tells him another parable -- and a parable, we all know, is a short piece of fiction that somehow reveals a moral attitude or a religious principle -- and this is a pretty simplistic little story. We start reading on 286: "In the East, perhaps in the same place which that Rabbi Jachanan came from, there was a certain man who was walking in the market of Damascus when he came face to face with Death. He noticed an expression of surprise on the spectre's horrid countenance, but they passed one another without speaking. The fellow was frightened [understandably], and went to a wise man to ask what should be done. The wise man told him that Death had probably come to Damascus to fetch him away next morning. The poor man was terrified at this, and asked however he could escape. The only way they could think of between them was that the victim should ride all night to Aleppo [however you pronounce that], thus eluding the skull and bloody bones. "So this man did ride to Aleppo--it was a terrible ride which had never been done in one night before--and when he was there he walked in the market place, congratulating himself on having eluded Death. "Just then, Death came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. 'Excuse me,' he said, 'but I have come for you.' 'Why,' exclaimed the terrified man, 'I thought I met you in Damascus yesterday!' 'Exactly,' said Death. 'That was why I looked surprised--for I had been told to meet you today, in Aleppo.'" And so the point here is, to Arthur is, we used these words before that he can't -- and I think in the book it does use the word destiny -- that you cannot avoid your destiny. Whatever you are allotted in life in a larger sense will happen. He also -- he's always taught Arthur stuff and he says, "We are both coming back" -- on the top of 287. I will tell you something else, King, which may be a surprise for you. It will not happen for hundreds of years, but both of us are to come back. Do you know what is going to be written on your tombstone? [And he gives the Latin.] Do you remember your Latin? It means, the once and future king." "I am to come back as well as you?" "Some say from the vale of Avilion." The King thought about it in silence. It was full night outside, and there was stillness in the bright pavilion. The sentries, moving on the grass, could not be heard. [Asking, I think, an excellent question.] "I wonder," he said at last, "whether they will remember about our Table?" So always the question. It's almost like if we don't remember, we can't summon it back. And so someone -- and this is the point at the very end of the work, Candle in the Wind, that there has to be someone who carries the idea forward. And so when the idea is receptive, that it can be picked up and blossom again. We go back then to Lothian. Pellinore finds out about the traps. Knights are back to silliness again. The Beast, they figure out, has fallen in love with them, and discussion goes on and on about what they're supposed to do, until finally, on 290, Pellinore grabs it by its tail so the two can make a run for the castle. They make it there. They don't know what happened to Pellinore. And the Beast besieges the castle waiting for them to come out because the Beast is in love with them. So we're getting a little transference here from Pellinore to our other two knights. Sir Grummore -- remember Pellinore first jousted with him -- on the bottom of 292, talks above love. He says, "Love," said Sir Grummore uneasily, "is a pretty strong passion, when you come to think of it." And, of course, you know, that's important that he realizes that because that's where Pellinore is. Pellinore is gonna give up his Quest in Life, is gonna settle down and marry Piggy, and have his four sons of whom two will be very important for the plot. Pellinore and Piggy arrive and it's explained how they get there. And one of the things we see in here -- and again, I've had people write papers in this class before and some have chosen to write on -- and it'll become clearer when we get Cretian the role of women in the works. Here again, we can see that women are the strong characters. Pellinore is a total flake. It's like can we depend on him to do anything? Would you count on him to go to the grocery store for you? He'll come back with ten carts full of cookies. I mean, he's just like out of it. He'd be the stereotypical freshman student and all their laundry turns pink. I mean, the guy is clueless. But how about Piggy? Man, she's tough. When -- you know, when the going gets tough. They all try to -- Piggy, Pellinore -- I always want to say Miss Piggy. Piggy -- I have to stop myself -- Pellinore and the Questing Beast all try to run the castle at once. In other words, Piggy and Pellinore get in the castle and they say, "Just put down the drawbridge," and the Questing Beast thinks, "Oh, cool. I'll run in too so I can get to my beloved." And so in the middle of 294 -- these two guys, they'll be hiding deep in the dungeon somewhere: The drawbridge reached the ground and Piggy was speeding across before it touched. King Pellinore, less agile or more bemused by the gentle passion, collided with her in the gateway. [Typical again] The Questing Beast ran into them behind, knocking the King flat. So who's taking charge? Piggy takes charge. She jumps up at the end of that section, just before the break: "Be off, you shameless hussy," she cried, bringing her hunting crop down on the creature's nose. The Questing Beast recoiled with the tears springing to its eyes [I really felt sorry for the Questing Beast at this point] and the portcullis [this is just the word for a gate, the gate that comes down in one of these castle entryways] crashed between them. I think finally we see again here that men -- you know, obviously this is fiction -- that men are little boys and it's difficult for them to ever grow up. I actually think that's reality. And women are grown up, and it's women who kind of, you know, whip men into shape and tell 'em to leave their games behind them. Sad but true. Where Whitson Tide -- which we talked about last time so you all know about Ascension Tide, Whit Sunday is the same as Pentecost and that's when this battle is taking place, on Whitson holiday at Pentecost. I don't think we need to talk about much of this. We might just highlight things. Obviously, the battle's different. Some of these things you wonder -- it makes you wonder what people have read who make movies. For example, in First Knight, if you saw First Knight, one of the things that happens in First Knight is Sean and his boys attack at night and that's very much in keeping with this. And so Arthur's been converted to the idea that knights should fight knights, peasants should fight peasants. And so to make things turn out right, he cannot follow some standard rules. Remember way back when he first saw the two knights fighting, when Arthur wanted to see knights in a joust, he saw Pellinore and Sir Grummore, his friend. And what'd they do? They had this little chat. And then they go back and all of a sudden they have to go through this forum kind of thing. Like, "My name is so-and-so" and "My name is so-and-so. I live at --." So it's kind of like -- battle is like that, too. It's like you line up over there and we line up over here. We start assembling about 9:30 so that everybody can have breakfast at 12:00. Since I'm challenging you, you come riding toward me and I'll respond. And Arthur realizes: one, he's badly outnumbered; he'd lose if he followed that rule. And two, that if he does that, that just the people who are unarmed are the ones who are gonna get hurt. And so he doesn't obey these rules for a lot of reasons. On top of 298, though, we read a couple of places here important little things. It says in line 5, . . . he knew for certain now [that is, Arthur knew for certain], it was to be the destiny of his life to deal with every way of twisting decency by threats of Power. So he's gonna still use power. But instead of just having power to get whatever he wants, he's gonna use power and try to improve things for the sake of decency. Some of this as you read -- I found myself referring back to earlier arguments. For example, at the bottom of 298, in trying to justify why Arthur can, you know, do this, why he can attack at night. Remember when Kay and Arthur and Merlyn had this discussion about what justifies war, how can it be justified? And it seems we're trying to get a justification here as much as we can, on the bottom of 298. And Arthur had not started the war. He was fighting in his own country, hundreds of miles within his own borders, against an aggression which he had not provoked. He had made a secret pact with two French kings. This has been kind of alluded to. It's one of the things if you had read the book before would be clear to you. Sometimes when you reread stuff you think, "Aw, they were talking about this before -- you know, our secret plan." And the secret plan is that there are two French kings, Ban and Bors, who are in cahoots with him. And King Ban is gonna be Lancelot's father. So kind of doubly important. And actually, Lancelot is gonna appear at the very end of this section at a wedding party and he's gonna be the kid who wins all the games, wins all the games. In 13, picking up Pellinore again, and now we have all the sons' names. We added Dornar -- which I don't know if that's supposed to be some play on Donar who is Thor in Germanic myth. I don't know. But again, the first and Dornar are not really important, but the middle two, Percivale and Lamorak, are important. Merlyn's up north. Remember, he said after the war he was gonna go on a hike, he was gonna go on a wander, and he's also supposed to meet up with some bimbo babe, Nimue. And she's out there somewhere, waiting for him. She's gonna sap all the magic out of him and the poor boy is not gonna be seen for centuries. It's his fate, his destiny. All the three Cornwall sisters -- Morgan le Fay, Elaine -- and we never really see Elaine at all. Now, there's gonna be another Elaine, Lancelot's, and Lancelot's gonna get together with Elaine later and have a baby whose name is Gallihad. Of course, Lancelot's original name was Gallihad, just to confuse you, but they only use so many names. So we have one, two, and then we have the third sister, Morgause, who is the mother of the kids. And so all of these are witches to some extent. And for -- it's kind of a variation on Sadie Hawkins Day. We have this magic Spancel -- it's pretty scary stuff. We read here on 305 -- and remember, the important thing that Merlyn hasn't told Arthur is who his mother is, who his mother is. All the Queen hears about -- all she hears about after the war is how wonderful Arthur is. About 12 lines from the bottom of 305, The Queen drew herself silently out of bed, and went to her coffer [her trunk]. She had been told about Arthur since the army returned--about his strength, charm, innocence and generosity. At the end of that, what is she finding in there? The Queen opened the coffer in the darkness and stood near the moonlit patch from the window, holding a strip of something in her hands. It was like a tape. \ The strip was a less cruel piece of magic than the black cat had been, but more gruesome. It was called the Spancel. I don't know if I put that in the test. I should have. And what is it, on 306, about line 7: It was a tape of human skin, cut from the silhouette of the dead man. And they tell you exactly how you have to cut it, so you might want to keep this piece of information if you get really desperate sometime in your life. The way to use it. How do you use it? The way you use a Spancel was this. You had to find the man you loved while he was asleep. Then you had to throw it over his head without waking him, and tie it in a bow. [Tie it in a bow?] If he woke while you were doing this, he would be dead within the year. [Too bad.] If he did not wake until the operation was over, he would be bound to fall in love with you. [Grossed out, but in love with you.]