The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - John Steinbeck

[troisoiseaux]

Re-read The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights by John Steinbeck, which I read a couple of years before I really got onto my Arthuriana kick and have been meaning to re-read since. The first five of the total seven stories/chapters are more or less a straightforward translation of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, and I found myself more surprised than I should have been by how much it Smacked Of Gender— all broad sweeping statements about "the inborn craft of maidens" and "inborn helplessness of men" and "the detachment of ladies for other ladies" in the place of any individual characterization for, e.g., Nyneve (Nimue). My Arthurian reading of the past five years has skewed towards women authors and/or recent adaptations with intentionally 21st century attitudes, which might be why this felt so jarring?? On the other hand, this might technically have more women per page than most... what I guess I'd call character-focused(?) retellings, since a knight apparently could not throw a stone in the Arthurian Britain of Malory-by-way-of-Steinbeck without hitting a damsel, often accompanied by several of her friends, who would provide a random quest or otherwise notable encounter; I kept thinking of a post I saw... somewhere... about how often the "damsels in distress" of Arthurian legend show up to demand violence be done on their behalf.

On the third hand, my favorite story/chapter - "Gawain, Ewain, and Marhalt", which as pointed out by Christopher Paolini's foreword is the point where Steinbeck starts to mix things up, inventing scenes and "delv{ing} into the characters' thoughts and feelings in a way Malory never did" - flips the first point delightfully on its head. The titular three knights encounter a trio of ladies, who bestow the quest of each picking a lady to go off and adventure with for one (1) year— impetuous Gawain picks the beautiful fifteen-year-old, who proceeds to complain constantly and then bail on him after a week for another knight since Gawain literally will not shut up about himself; solid Marhalt picks the thirty-year-old veteran adventuress (or "dame errant"), who's so comfortably competent that she feels like a Pratchett heroine; and young Ewain picks the oldest woman, who turns out to be a sort of Arthurian [insert karate movie mentor here], secretly training untested young knights into perfect fighting machines. It's fabulous.

The other stand-out is "The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot of the Lake", which reminded me a lot of T.H. White, although maybe the comparison is inevitable. (Side note: I feel like positive depictions of Lancelot have kind of fallen out of fashion, retelling-wise?) Steinbeck's Lancelot is ascetic, alternately insightful and bewildered by other people, uncomfortable with the extent of his fame; the doomed Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot love triangle hangs lightly but inescapably over this story and pays off with one of the most deliciously *drags hands down my face screaming* takes on it I've read.

Also interesting to (re-)discover that I had highlighted a couple of quotes back in 2018:

In a corner lay the giant’s hoard. Gold and silver, jewels and bright cloth, crucifixes of precious things and chalices set with rubies and emeralds, and along with these colored stones and pieces of broken glass from church windows and quartz and knobby crystal and shards of blue and yellow pottery—a mighty mixture of great wealth and great nonsense. And Sir Marhalt, looking at the heap, said sadly, “Poor thing. He didn’t know the difference. He couldn’t learn to steal only valuable things as civilized men and women do.”

“Then it is better, sir, to love whom one cannot have?”
“Probably better,” Lancelot said. “Certainly safer.”

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Hmm. Trying to invoke both precious metals and jewels without repetition, maybe? The phrasing hadn't caught my eye until now, actually; the bit I'd actually highlighted was only the ironic last statement ("He couldn’t learn to steal only valuable things as civilized men and women do") but I liked the overall passage on re-reading it.