A lot of us agreed today on how Malory’s telling of stories we have previously read by French authors (The Knight of the Cart, The Death of King Arthur from Vulgate Cycle) were a bit distant and a little dry. I certainly felt that way at least. Even though the events of the narratives were the same in both stories, there was a big difference in the way the authors told them and these difference are very telling of the British and French cultures.
The French stories we read focused a lot on the character’s feelings and thoughts. The narrator either got inside the characters head or revealed enough of their thoughts through speech that the reader can understand and sympathize with them. Even though we know Lancelot and Guinevere are going behind Arthur’s back you still want things to work out for them because the author wants us to understand their love, and if we understand it we’ll most likely want it to triumph. Not just L&G though, readers are meant to explore the internal workings of all principle “good” characters in these stories. Eric, Enide, Perceval, Lunete, Gawain, Arthur, Yvain, etc. At some point in the story, we feel for these characters. Because, even if they are “misbehaving”, their thoughts and feelings are still exposed to us. So, the reader understands and sees a bit of themselves in them (once you get past the intense idealization of course).
These French qualities became more apparent after reading Malory. Malory’s characters are more distant and less dimensional. Mordred is 100% bad, and Arthur is 100% good. We get to know his characters by either his description of them or by what other characters are saying about them – never through their own thoughts. By doing this the characters actions and words become our only ways of judging them. When they do something bad we see them as bad, or if they speak and act like a hero then we believe they are a hero. Since we never know what is going on internally their appearance is all we can build an opinion with.
These differences in the way the British and French authors write implies a lot about the ideals they are endorsing. The French are concerned with the individual. They focus on why people behave the way they do, the qualities all humans have and the forces all humans succumb to (love, duty, jealousy, pride, etc.) They perpetuate the idea that humans are complex creatures and that nobody should be judged based simply on what they do because you never know what they may be thinking. Even though Enide disobeys her husband time after time, she is actually doing it because she is so madly in love with him. And even though Erec is so rude to his wife, he is actually battling a deep insecurity.
The British are more focused with the society and an individual’s image. They value society’s opinion so that an individual’s actions define who they are. Nobody knows your thoughts, feelings, or intentions so besides your actions and words how else can we judge you? They endorse the idea that one should really behave nobly in order to be respected. That society’s opinion of you is the only one.
I hope these generalizations about the British and French are taken with a grain of salt, I don’t mean to stereotype anyone. Just pointing out how by reading two versions of the same story we can now see some beliefs/attitudes/ideals about the cultures they came from. The French individualism in Chretien’s “The Knight of the Cart” would not have been as noticeable if we didn’t have Malory’s British-society-image-actions version to compare it with (and vice versa). Anyone else see this? or disagree?