Chivalry In The Green Knight And Morte D Arthur

Chivalry Back in the medieval period, Chivalry was a set of rules that were to be followed by the Knights. The Chivalric Code was made up of many different ideas such as: honesty, forbearance, courtliness, humility, loyalty, sovereignty, and respect for women. In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Le Morte d’Arthur, and King Arthur they follow these rules, which has some advantages and disadvantages. In which version do the characters best display chivalry? Which version’s characters are the most admirable and why?

Sir Gawain and The Green Knight In Class Writing Chivalry is the code of conduct of the medieval Knight. According to that code, a Knight was to be a loyal servant to his lord or lady and a perfect example of virtues such as bravery, courage, courtesy, honesty, faith and gentleness. Sir Gawain does not uphold the ideals of Chivalry in his adventure with the Green Knight.

In this world now, people think of chivalry as men behaving courteously towards women; for example, holding the door for them or offering them their jackets when they are cold. However, the story of Sir Gawain and The Green Knight portrays a different aspect of chivalry: that of the medieval times. The chivalry of the medieval times suggests that it is more than just being courteous to women. In the story,Sir Gawain gets challenged by the Green Knight. Sir Gawain then goes to find the Green Knight.

Courtly love in the medieval romance story of Lancelot (also known as The Knight of the Cart) is the driving force of this famous romance beloved for generations. This proves to be an interesting subject, seeing is a lot of other medieval stories do not focus on love and instead, show it in a rather negative light. This was obviously seen in another medieval story, Njal’s Saga, where not only were marriages arranged and sometimes unwanted by one or both parties, the relationships between men and women were rought with conflict, hatred, and sometimes even murder. The women were not beautiful, diminutive, helpless creatures; they were as strong as their male counterparts. Men also had relatively no interest in love, only of going on grand adventures

When his challenge is met with silence, the Green Knight demands, “Whose fame is so fair in far realms and wide? Where is now your arrogance and your awesome deeds, Your valor and your victors and your vaunting words! [. . .] Overwhelmed with a word of one man’s speech” (1.305 - 1.315). Shocked by the physical differences and brash challenges of the Green Knight, Arthur’s court forgets to abide by the chivalric code, which dictated the conventional understanding of human nature in that time period.

Sir Gawain succeeded in upholding his virtues and the Chivalric Code countless times throughout the story. One of the earliest signs of chivalry Sir Gawain shows can be seen at King Arthur’s court, where the Green Knight first appeared before the Knights and challenged them to a game. Sir Gawain shows courage by bravely accepting the challenge, but he also shows humility by praising the other knights and degrading himself by saying, “I am the weakest, I know, and the feeblest of wit, and to tell the truth, there would be the least loss in my life.” (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl Poet, pg. 8)

The three Ideas of Chivalry (How Chivalry is connected in the stories?) Have you ever been taught how to treat a lady? Have you ever been told how you should be treated? Today, respect for women is different, but I think it’s the same way for men as well. In the old ways, women had to respect their men, and obey them.

There was once a time where knights were meant to be the epitome of chivalry; they symbolized honor, courage, justice and much more. However, not every knight matched the narrative of what a true knight should be. One way to teach people a certain value is through exemplary texts such as, “The wedding of King Arthur”. This story uses the knights and their actions to instruct the reader to be honorable by punishing the, shameful, dishonorable knights while rewarding the true and honorable one hence, guiding the reader towards a more honorable path. Sir Gawain does not show mercy to a defeated foe and is punished for it.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the theme is based on integrity, all of which is categorized in a romance. Knights are judged by their behavior and also by the code of chivalry. In this poem, King Arthur and his knights are challenged. The chivalry of King Arthur’s court is challenged by the Green Knight” however, in embarrassment of his fellow men King Arthur takes on the challenge himself only for Sir Gawain, his nephew, to take him on instead as he claims he has nothing to lose. To put it differently, Gawain’s integrity was challenged.

Chivalry was a code where knights would vow to do no wrong, be loyal to the King, to give mercy to those who ask for it, and to be courteous and helpful to women (Doc E). Knights beliefs were also very religion centered, as shown in The Son of Roland “God, I acknowledge my guilt and I beg for Thy mercy for all the sins, greater and lesser, which I have committed from the hour my birth until this day … Angels descend out of heaven and come to him” (Doc

Much of Lancelot's character and story are based off the topics of love and chivalry, and are prevalent in many of the accounts of Lancelot. Despite that the legend shifts its focus from Lancelot’s chivalrous

(Document E). Parallel to this, knights follow a code called, ‘The Code of Chivalry’. In this code, the knight has to be loyal to the king, give mercy to all and live a well-rounded life all together. Meaning, he must be kind and respectful to ladies and must serve his king with a great deal of loyalty. Breaking this code was a huge disgrace to any knight.

The concept of Chivalry has baffled countless medieval historians throughout the years. Chivalry was supposedly a code that knights and nobles lived their lives by. Similarly to other social structures that were in place in the past historians have struggled to draw conclusions as to the extent to which people lived according to chivalric principles. Sir Walter Scott believed that knights aspired to the code of chivalry, but that in the real world the code was impossible to live according to such a code. This conclusion gives a clear picture of chivalry.

Chivalry isn’t just for the knights anymore. It applies to life now, how we all should be, we should all act with chivalry. We should all want to be chivalrous and perform acts of kindness being selfless. We need to take from our history, we need to see how the knights acted with such honor and loyalty and apply it to today's world. We need to improve our society, we can not allow chivalry to

(p.61-62). Chivalry was a big rule and King Arthur firmly believed in it, making him a fair yet strong ruler and a great guy in general.     King Arthur proves he 's a brave leader because he would risk anything for his Country, a loyal leader because he only has affection for Guenevere, and a chivalrous leader because he counts everyone as equal and is willing to help anyone in need. King Arthur was the greatest ruler in medieval times known to