Is The Theme Of Chivalry In Monty Python And The Holy Grail

The British comedy Monty Python and The Holy Grail is the story about a man, King Arthur, and his knights on a mission to find the Holy Grail. On their quest they endure the many tough obstacles of the Middle Ages. Some of these obstacles being realistic and others on the more impractical side. The movie’s filmmakers were aiming to satirize every branch of the Middle Ages such as the medieval Catholic Church, learning and education, the knight’s code of chivalry, and feudalism. One example would be the use of coconuts to imitate the sound of the horses’ hooves hitting the ground. Pathetic jokes like that were used all along the flick’s storyline.

Monty Python ridicules the institution of the code of chivalry in the film with both people and animals. As mentioned before, coconuts were used instead of the knight’s horses. Back in the Middle Ages, for a knight and even a king, the horse was crucial in transportation and defense against enemies. It was apart of their code of chivalry. In

Catholics would flagellate, or cause themselves pain to make up for the sins of the people who coped with the Black Death epidemic. Though, the monks, instead of whipping themselves as abuse, they would hit themselves in the head with a wooden board as they walked through the village. Also, in the Catholic Church, sisters could be nurses and care for the sick and injured, but when a knight approaches castle Anthrax, he is bombarded with care from the sisters.

The movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail gives the audience a very comical way of looking at the Middle Ages. While some points were exaggerated, other situations were completely different from the way life was. Themes of chivalry, education and learning, feudalism, and religion were satirized through the many jokes in the film.Even though a majority of the scenes in the movie were fictional, there were true circumstances present