The Problem with Loyalty in the Alliterative Morte Arthure
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21418542 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Matthew Ward (0000-0002-8846-834X, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Pages | 175-200 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Nottingham Medieval Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0078-2122 • E-ISSN: 2507-0444 |
| Publisher | Brepols Publishers NV (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1484/j.nms.5.144834 |
| OpenAlex | W4407744383 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
Loyalty is one of the conspicuous themes in the Alliterative Morte Arthure. The narrator treats loyalty with ambiguity and incertitude, at times providing the reader with examples of loyal (and disloyal) behaviour which are nuanced. Some of the acts which are generated by loyalty are associated with positive characteristics, while others are connected to more negative traits. Ultimately, the loyalty that many of Arthur’s knights show in the poem contributes to the end of the Round Table, but death in battle was interpreted as an honourable and heroic end for knights in much of the chivalric literature. And acts of loyalty can have problematic consequences: ‘loyally’ relaying a message from one’s lord to another could elicit the anger of the recipient, potentially resulting in the death of the messenger. Readers would not be in unanimous agreement as to whether the protagonists’ actions are loyal or whether the loyalty they show is always righteous. It is argued here that this was the narrator’s intention. The work reminds us that one person’s act of loyalty can be another’s act of disloyalty
Advertising · Art · Business · Loyalty · Political science · Byzantine Studies and History · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Law · Medieval Literature and History
| Highly cited | No |
|---|