On being a child of one's generation, redux.

I hate the way Sir Thomas Malory writes Gawain. I am used to Chretien de Troies's easy-going, charming Gawain -- "the Ladies' Knight" because he acquires a new lady-love in each story he appears in -- who occupies the position of Top Knight in King Arthur's court by virtue of being Arthur's sister's eldest son,* of being the best fighter out of the normal members of the court (as I recall, he is once knocked off his horse by Perceval in "Perceval, ou le Conte du Graal"; once battles Yvain to a weary sundown truce in "Yvain, ou le Chevalier au Lion"; and otherwise handily defeats all rivals), of being both brave and level-headed (brave enough to join Lancelot's quest to save the Queen in "Lancelot, ou le Chevalier de la Charrette" (sp?) without Lancelot's ulterior motive, level-headed enough not to charge the preoccupied Perceval but speak to him. In both these instances, Kay plays the rasher, more anti-social reflection of Gawain's good impulses, and is rewarded by being kidnapped himself in the first and having his arm broken in the second). He is the Compleat Knight, pious in measure and worldly without corruption, a fine fighter who fights without regret and so bold a lover, he is the only knight willing to woo a woman with dark hair (the marvelous Lunete, first adviser to Yvain's wife in "Yvain")! He is not always right -- his advice that Yvain leave his wife immediately after the wedding to go questing is obviously foolish, and nearly leads Yvain to lose her altogether -- and he is not always successful (each tale must have its own hero, and he is the hero of none). But he is clearly, and appropriately, Top Knight. And he is a terrible charmer to boot. Chretien wrote in the fourth quarter of the twelfth century. By the Prose Lancelot Gawain remains Top Knight at Arthur's court, but has been thoroughly displaced in the heart of the reader by Lancelot, who to this day is enshrined as Official Top Knight in popular culture. The triangle between Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere is central to many modern depictions (as to the third section of the Prose Lancelot, the section I read many years ago under the title The Death of King Arthur in Penguin, unless I'm totally mixed up), and "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" mentions the name "Gawain" only to offer him to one beast or another -- the ravenous rabbit, I believe. To Malory in 1475, Gawain has nothing of the Top Knight about him at all. He is viler than anything in Chretien's world, even the enemies. He is probably about the tenth-best fighter, but easily and plainly outclassed by Lancelot, Tristan, Lamorak (!! Perceval's older brother; in Chretien's tale, Perceval's elder brothers all died when he was a child and achieved no great fame), Palomides (Tristan's self-declared rival, the pagan knight who also loves Yseut la Blonde), and probably several others including his own younger brother Gareth, whom he doesn't fight directly, at least as far as I've gotten. (Somewhere not so very far into Book II.) He is called "the Ladies' Knight" not because all the ladies love him but because at nineteen he swears a special oath of protection to ladies after having accidentally chopped off a lady's head in a chapel instead of her lover's/. Chretien's Gawain is patient enough to suffer abuse at the hands of ladies who pronounce him a merchant wearing armor to avoid taxes because he does not fight in a tournament as a true knight would, and not fight at the tournament because it would be foolish to risk a wound when he is on a quest; Malory's Gawain is so angered by others' acknowledged superiority that his brother ends up killing their mother.** And on, and on. I have little patience with the elevation of Tristan (and less with the spelling "Tristram") to a high place at Arthur's court; I love Tristan and Yseut but they are a different story. I have other quarrels with Malory: even so strange a tongue he can render samey and sing-songy. But my real problem is how he treats Gawain. And this is where the title of this post comes in. Upon being struck by how difficult this actually made it for me to keep reading at a certain point, I thought: "So this is how it feels to have a headcanon." * Sister's son has long been recognized as a place of special honor in Arthurian legend: Tristan is also Mark's sister's son, and his maltreatment at Mark's hands is rendered especially bitter by the expectations his narratively special place has set. ** Lamorak's tourney victory enrages Gawain who believes Lamorak the killer of G's father Lot, so G persuades his brother Gaheris to follow Lamorak -- it turns out, to a tryst with their mother Morgause, where Lamorak denies having killed Lot. Gaheris announces that it would be unchivalrous to murder a naked knight and promptly kills his mother instead.