K is for Knights

Kuh-Nig-Hets

You may think that, as a child, I looked up to knighthood as the flower of everything awesome, even making flowers look cooler in the process. Maybe I pretended to joust unknown enemies, save ladies, and unmask evil.

No. First off, saving ladies wasn't in my interests when I was little; they could save themselves if they needed it, and I was pretty gender neutral anyway about who I saved. (Gender neutral rescues: see Indiana Jones's dad, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Captain Picard, Jean Grey, etc.) Second, jousting is such an inefficient mode of settling affairs when you have guns, a bullwhip, lasers, and superpowers. (Generally two at a time.) Third, I already knew what the evil was. It was Nazis.

My pretend-scape consisted of a conglomeration of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, Star Trek, X-men, and every other bit of science fiction I could get my hands on. It was awesome. Knights, in contrast, didn't hold up well. Swords were cool, armor was cool, reading about them was cool, but it wasn't what I saw myself as. Arguably, I had some chivalry going on, but more properly speaking it was a combination of good superhero ethos and Boy Scouts (which has oblique ties to Arthurian themes). Knights, at best, resembled those people in First Knight, which Mom took me to the theater to see. (I still wonder about that choice.)

I started playing video game RPGs in middle school, which often featured lots of swords and medieval themes. I first ran into King Arthur and Shakespeare at that time, and both had knights. I began to like them, but it never was truly internalized. At most, my already nascent disposition to do good was kindled, and I grew a slight fondness for medieval fairs.

The flirtation lasted for a long time. All through high school, they were one of many interests. (I loved - and still love - way too many things for me to devote attention to all of them.) The shift increasingly toward knights was gradual, and not met by a decreasing attention to my pretend-scape. Romantic poetry pricked my thumb, and I was carried away by La Belle Dame Sans Merci and The Lady of Shallot. Other poetry followed. A math professor called me a Renaissance man, which to me is an upmost compliment and close to knights. Cyrano de Bergerac, though not a sir, may as well have been one. In Western Civilization I, we spent an entire half-semester on the medieval period, and though the topic of choice was historiography (what a semester!) I read plenty about knights. I read plenty of fantasy with knights in it, saw plenty of movies with them. Exposure creeped on and on, and it stuck with me. As late as my sophomore year of high school, it was still latent. I still planned to study the twentieth century, and I knew that meant (post-)modernism. I wanted to dance with Sylvia Plath late into the night. I could prick my finger with Neil Gaiman. Jack Kerouac wouldn't be beyond my abilities. And I could delve into science-fiction or fantasy on occasion. It was a plan.

Then as a requirement I took British Culture to 1660, an English course taught by the professor that would become my thesis advisor and one of my favorite professors. For me, it started as a fun requirement. We read Beowulf all the way through. I'd only read it in parts. I loved it. Then we read Middle English poems with knights and ladies, allegories, fairies, and so on. I loved it more. Then we read parts of Le Morte Darthur. It was a strange little book, obviously written by an amateur who nonetheless had such a love for his subject that I was caught up with its energy. I loved the archaicisms, the fights, the occasional tenuous continuity. The knights were good, but not perfect. They were priveleged, but they were human. And I truly loved them then, loved them for what they could be, and could live with what they were. We read I Henry IV after that, and enough otherwise to get me smitten with the Renaissance. But I am writing about knights.

After that, I couldn't get enough. I wrote on Le Morte Darthur for a Feminist Literary Theory course. I took a class on Women Writers in Early English Literature. I loved the knights where they came up (especially in Marie de France), and grew to love new things as well in medieval spirit visions, the querelle des femmes, and so on. And so on. And so on.

Today, I can't imagine myself without knights or ladies at least sometimes running around in my head, both errantly and critically. They are unfortunately gendered and flawed as an ideal and a historical reality, but I'm smitten anyhow with the entire deal: the armor, the sword, the shield, the lance, the quest, the castle, the joust, the ethos, and all the thematic potentials that arise. It's one reason why I'm a medievalist. But I couldn't have imagined it ten or even five years ago.