The Generic Features of Arthurian Romances

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Influential 20th century Russian scholar and theorist of communication, Mikhail Bakhtin, in his Speech Genres and Other Late Essays, explores the nature of genre, and theorizes that the utterance, and not the phoneme or the sentence, is the basic unit of analysis for understanding language. To him, an utterance is connected to dialogue, as opposed to diction and syntax, and thus, language appears to him as an unending dialogic web of cross-connected utterances. The three thematic aspects of a linguistic style-the thematic content, style, and compositional structure are indispensably linked to the whole of the utterance and the particular sphere of communication. These are, according to him, dubbed speech genres. He puts special emphasis on the heterogeneity of speech genres, and clearly outlines the difference between primary and secondary speech genres. The secondary speech genres- novels, dramas, and so forth take shape by altering the simpler primary genres. In his essay, "The Problem of Speech genres", Bakhtin indicates that though genre has been studied within the realms of rhetoric and literature, the extra literary genres, existing outside of both rhetoric and literature remain largely unexplored Bakhtin's defensible position seems to attempts reconciliation between the spoken and written discourse, rendering permeable the barrier between speech and writing.

The romance is a story of adventure, dealing with combat, love, the quest, separation and reunion, other-world journeys, or any combination of these. The story is told largely for its own sake, though a moral or religious lesson need not be excluded, and moral or religious connotations are very often present. A commentary on the meaning of the events is normally given, with special attention to the motives of the characters, and descriptions are fairly full. The audience aimed at is generally more cultured than the audience for the epics.

Romances vary in their structure: they can be episodic, or have a unitary linear structure, or follow the more complex pattern of one type of structure predominating in one language or at one period. Similarly, verse is the characteristic medium for romances at one stage (usually only one or two types of verse are used in any language), and later tends to be replaced by prose. Romance as a whole, then, has neither a distinctive structure nor a distinctive medium, but romances of a particular time and language are frequently made more homogeneous by both medium and structure. Finally, the romance (like most other genres) contains sub-genres, such as the Breton lay and the sentimental romances.

Works of medieval romance literature were widely popular between the 5th and 16th centuries, and represented the bulk of major literary output at the time. There are examples of the genre composed in prose as well as in verse, with some of the earliest being poetic works closely resembling the verse epics of Ancient Greece and Rome in both form and content.

By the 17th century, the popularity of the genre was already dwindling, and writers were beginning to explore other avenues of expression. You might say that medieval romance literature received its final deathblow in 1605 and 1615 when the two parts of Don Quixote were published. The most notable work of Miguel de Cervantes is actually a satire and burlesque that contrasts the chivalrous deeds performed in previous romance works with the bounds of reality.

Arthurian Romances are tales and legends about the knights of Arthur’s court. They grew out of chronicles purporting to record the history of King Arthur, his knights, and their martial or amatory adventures. A good number of early works, especially in Welsh and Latin between the 6th and 12th century, alluded to Arthur in lists, enigmatic texts, chronicles, and various fictional creations. However, Arthurian romance as it is generally understood developed first in France, beginning with Chrétien de Troyes’s verse romances in the late 12th century, and soon spread from there to most of the literatures of Western Europe. By its subject matter, it may well constitute the largest body of secular material in the West. Curiously, in very early medieval literature, there was a tendency to remove the king to the periphery of texts, focusing instead on a single knight or a group of them associated with Arthur’s court. At nearly the same time, beginning in the 13th century, authors singly or collaboratively produced vast romance cycles including Matter of Rome, Matter of France, and Matter of Britain, generally in prose, which could unite the biography of Arthur and his knights with the story of Merlin, the illicit love of Lancelot and Guinevere, the quest for the Holy Grail, and in some instances, the Tristan material. Such syntheses began with the French Vulgate (or Lancelot-Grail) Cycle (1215–1235) and led eventually to Malory’s Le Morte D’ Arthur at the close of the Middle Ages.

This genre intrigues us with its wide spectrum of ideas and characteristics. The legends popularized the idea of a chivalrous courtly love. Thus, the utopian world provided by this particular cluster of literature brings into light the societal aspirations of erstwhile Europe.

Arthurian Romances were centred on the adventures of King Arthur and the Knights of the Roundtable. To understand the genre of Arthurian Romances, we need to trace the societal map of the medieval era and understand the position, culture, and relevance of the knights in those days.

Like most periods in history, the era of knights was also one that gradually evolved. The term knight comes from the Anglo- Saxon word for a boy- ‘cniht’. Indeed, most knights were no more than hired ‘boys’ who performed military service and took oaths of loyalty to serve any wealthy nobleman who offered money or material gains. In times of turmoil, land was granted to these men as a gesture of reward from noblemen. These land grants soon became hereditary and began to be taken as a right. The knights climbed the social strata and became involved in local politics. As the medieval period progressed the knights gained more and more power and respect in the societal hierarchy. Their occupation now became more than just propagators of warfare; they became a part of the courtly tradition. The knights were symbols of heroism and idealism, and hence, tales began to be told of their chivalry in court and valour on battle field.

The Arthurian Romances had certain generic features that made them distinct from the other genres of literature. To start with the tales (whether verse or prose), knights were idealized as the epitome of chivalry. They were made an authority on noble and heroic deeds. In these tales, women were mostly portrayed as the damsel in distress