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COPYRIGHT 2002 Adam Mickiewicz University Press
ABSTRACT
The article demonstrates the performative character of chivalric culture portrayed in Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur. I refrain, however, from the investigation of all explicit forms of theatricality, in favour of a closer and more detailed look at the socially constructive nature of knights' linguistic behaviour and its bearing upon character portrayal. My research is based on J. L. Austin's model of speech act theory centred upon illocutionary expressions invested with executive power by socio-historical dynamics of conventional interaction. There are some points of convergence between Austin's and medieval views on oaths. For Austin these declarative utterances generate communal reality, and in the Middle Ages an oath was regarded as a verbal act activating the reality of a moral commitment, existing independently of an individual. Austin's reasoning about social and conventional character of speech acts also seems to be close to St. Augustine's description of human language, in which the validity of a word's meaning was supposed to depend on common consent. Additionally, in Austin's model as much as in earlier Augustian delineation, the effect of public utterances depends upon felicity determined by a character's intention. The contemporary approach has been adopted in this study of Le Morte Darthur because it provides convenient analytical tools, which help to scrutinise the implications of perfomative language for which Malory's work reveals the predilection. The power of an oath to establish social reality is demonstrated in this article on the example of the Pentecostal oath, shown as a potent mechanism, which brings into existence the fellowship of the Round Table knights and determines their identity, channelling the knightly energy towards socially desirable ends. The ties consolidating Arthurian community are also engendered in Le Morte Darthur by more personal declarations that the individual knights make, such as pledges of loyalty, promises of help and friendship or the acts of yielding oneself t o a mightier opponent. At the same time the ability or inability of keeping one's word may also be indicative of a degree to which a knight adheres to the chivalric pattern. Consequently, speech acts produced by the knights of the Round Table not only construct Arthur's world but also help Malory to encode in his work the entire typology of chivalric behaviour.
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The world of late medieval England was saturated with the idea of public spectacle evident in the ritualised and ceremonial forms of civic and courtly culture. Processions, biblical pageants, magnificent royal entries as well as the colour and splendour of chivalric customs and rites clearly marked the dominant expressive mood of this culture described by James J. Paxon as "a self-constituting, performed social process ... interdependent with textual modes of cognition" (Paxon 1998: 2). In this publicly oriented world every utterance could be invested with ideological depth and function as a social act. A promise or an oath, due to its role as the structuring element of feudal chivalry and due to its fully formalised structure, is an explicit example of such a social deed operating in the context of medieval performativities.
As historical records prove fourteenth and fifteenth century vows taken in connection with tournaments or feats of arms in real war could be very fanciful, sworn upon a bird or accompanied by the adoption of a golden chain or other conspicuous signs of a binding promise, creating, thus, public spectacle intended as a display of chivalric values (Keen 1984: 212). Although the oaths of Malory's knights do not seem to be so extravagant, they also generate a dramatic effect attributable to their performative nature. This means that their utterance is aimed at the achievement of a particular public effect -- consolidation of the chivalric community and the assertion of knightly virtue. They construct the chivalric culture in which sworn loyalties have to be adhered to in the name of God and earthly honour. Additionally, owing to their public role in the social texture of mutually binding commitments, word bonds, as Jefferson (1993: 177) observes in her study of Prose Lancelot, may provide a ground for the portraya l of individual characters as well as inter-relations between them. Malory apparently also makes use of the narrative potential of the word bond motif, frequently depicting the act of promise making and endowing it with ideological implications facilitating characters' delineation and their comparative evaluation. At the same time a promise does not only operate in Le Morte Darthur as a textual device encoding character features but also functions within the narrative world as an element of the code of chivalric behaviour a knight may exploit in his pursuit of worship. The performative character of a promise in Malory's Arthuriad is thus manifested not only in its capability of shaping the structure of the chivalric world but also in its involvement in character self-fashioning.
As it is commonly known, a word as a bond functioned in European feudal society as its master code, regulating the transmission of power and property, guaranteeing political alliance and continuity of power. Various forms of the pledged word, like the pledge of allegiance or betrothal could enforce political and sexual fidelity essential in the culture which was both patriarchal and patrilineal (Canfield 1989: xi-xiv). The chivalric code of the word with its prerequisite values of loyalty, constancy, and trust performed a reasserting and protective function towards this social order and, hence, defined the transgressors as traitors posing a threat to the existence of the whole community.
The social and political significance of word bonds was further enhanced by their ethical and religious dimension. It is worth noting that if secular law could be concerned with the consequences of oath taking, the validity and interpretation of an oath belonged to the jurisdiction of the Church. According to Aquinas' definition, an oath...
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