Tag Archives: chivalry

Round Tables

It is no mean feat for writers to create an imaginary world that readers will come to see as true and historically accurate.  Fashioning something from one’s imagination that resonates with readers, a tale that merges with their perception of reality, is not easily done.

Two relatively recent examples of such efforts are Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and Martin’s Game of Thrones, both of which have convinced many an avid reader of their legitimacy.

As a young boy at the dawn of the 1950s, it was the magical tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table that captured my fancy.  I first read them in The Boy’s King Arthur, a version of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, which abridged and bowdlerized items from the original text, sexual and otherwise, that were deemed unsuitable for children.

I was completely captivated by the legends of the Lady of the Lake, Arthur’s conception at Tintagel, his seizing of the sword Excalibur, his alliance with the magician Merlin, his ultimate battle with Mordred, and his laying to rest in Avalon.  Most intriguing of all was the notion that he had not died, that he was merely sleeping, that he would rise again, the ‘once and future king’.

I eventually graduated to the reading of unexpurgated versions, but in the beginning I fancied myself as many of those brave warriors:  Lancelot, until I learned of his treachery with Arthur’s queen, Guinevere; Gawain, who bravely faced the Green Knight in a chivalric romance told in Middle-English alliterative verse; Perceval and Tristram, whose feats of derring-do enthralled me; and of course, Galahad, whose sacred quest for the Holy Grail seemed the most inspired.

I subsequently read about that storied quest in other works, and learned from more than one that two phrases in French—san graal and sang royale, pronounced almost identically—translate to two different things: Holy Grail and royal blood.  This assertion expostulated the theory that following Christ’s death, his wife and children fled to France, where his bloodline continued anonymously, eventually merging with the Merovingian dynasty, then the Carolingian dynasty, all the way to William the Conqueror—who, in a tidy completing of the loop, came to rule over Arthur’s ancient kingdom.

True or not, the story affirmed for me that the greatest Arthurian quest came to fruition in the merging of these two fanciful tales, one religious, the other mythical.  And for a long time in my youth, I believed.

The lasting impression I took from this childhood reading, however, was the concept of the Round Table.  In its simplest form, I thought it presented an ideal way of governing or managing a kingdom, an empire…or any enterprise.  Everyone sat around the circular table, each facing everyone else, and all had an equal say in the decisions that were made—all but one, of course.  The King, by virtue of his position, reserved the right of veto.

In such a setting, the objective of any group’s deliberations is always to achieve consensus on matters discussed, the theory being that everyone will have a greater commitment to decisions made when they feel they’ve contributed to them.  The process involves give and take, it usually means no one gets all of what they want, but it allows everyone to get some of what they hoped for.  Some might call that win/win.

As a young teacher in the mid-1960s, chock-full of enthusiasm for and faith in the teaching/learning paradigm, I furnished my classroom with circular tables, not individual desks.  My thirty-plus students sat in groups of five or six around these tables, groups whose membership rotated periodically, based on their accomplishments and interests. 

Our interactions, the teachings and learnings we shared, usually (but not always) were conducted with me sitting around a table with them.  To this day, I find it remarkable how much self-discipline, cooperation, and independent learning took place among the young people at those tables.  Only rarely did I ever have to exercise my right of veto.

Twenty years after leaving the classroom, installed as the CEO of a school board district, I still favoured round tables.  In my office, senior staff met weekly around a large, circular oak table, where everyone had a valued voice.  We didn’t always agree on how best to proceed with certain matters, but when we concluded our discussions, each of us felt we’d had the opportunity to make known our views.  And all of us acted on the consensus decisions with total commitment.  And again, I almost never had to decide arbitrarily on a course of action.

In the boardroom, where elected trustees met weekly to discuss and make policy, they sat at desks arranged in a circular shape, each of the fourteen with a direct view of the others.  The chairperson of the board managed the meetings according to established rules of order, and only occasionally overruled a colleague.  Decisions were made by voting, as required by the Education Act, but only rarely were those votes disputatious…and never acrimonious.  I believe there was something about sitting in the circle formation that elevated the level and tone of discussion, that enabled consensus decision-making.

As a young father, I sat with my wife and two daughters around a circular kitchen table, virtually every night, for dinner together.  Any of us might miss now and then, given our respective work and school commitments, but sitting down around that table was the established custom, one we all honoured until the girls headed off to university.  Our discussions centred on what all of us were doing at any given moment, and everyone contributed freely.  No topic was off-limits (although when the girls were very young, some issues were covered only cursorily, appropriate to their age).  Looking back now, I consider the learnings we all experienced with each other as indispensable to our family’s enduring ties.

And to think, it all began for me with my fascination for the Arthurian legends I first read as a boy, stories of the Knights of the Round Table that imbued me with a sense of romanticism and chivalry that I still value today.

I remain eternally grateful to all writers who have managed to create a world that I and other readers consider enjoyable and aspirational…even if imaginary.

 And I still wonder, even at this great age, if Arthur is merely sleeping at Glastonbury Tor, as the legends maintain, and if we shall ever see his like again, holding forth at his great Round Table.

The Benighted States of America

As a boy and young man, I was fascinated by tales of derring-do and feats of glory by heroes, both real and fictional.  Among the earliest of these were the stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table; to this day, I can name my favourites without a fact-check—Sir Kay, Sir Gawain, Sir Bedivere, Sir Tristan, Sir Lancelot, Sir Galahad.

arthur4

Arthur and his knights, according to Le Morte d’Arthur by Sir Thomas Malory—one of many writers who wrote of their exploits—swore to uphold a code of chivalry, which included:

– never to assault or murder,

– never to commit treason, and

– to provide succor to those in need.

I was too young, of course, to understand the clashes that arose between Arthur and Sir Lancelot, and later between Arthur and his son, Sir Mordred, which stemmed from their illicit love for the faithless Queen Guinevere.  Those led ultimately to the death of Arthur and the end of his glorious reign, and I mourned their failed quest.

A lasting effect of this Arthurian fascination was a propensity as I grew older to favour the underdog in any conflict, to root for those attempting seemingly-impossible pursuits—the Don Quixotes of the world, engaged in Sisyphean tasks to which they would not surrender.  I was an incurable romantic.

So it was unsurprising, I suppose, that a major focus for me in university would be Russian and American history—to wit, the demise of the Romanov dynasty in 1917, and especially the U.S. Civil War from 1861-1865.  In both cases, I found myself on the side of the lost causes—the Czarist regime and the Confederacy—despite knowing the outcome for both.  And like my younger self, who didn’t understand the Arthurian contradictions until much later, it took a long time for me to realize the root causes and lasting implications of those cataclysmic events.

The Civil War, in particular, captivated me.  I read as many as I could of the chroniclers of the period—Bruce Catton, Allan Nevins, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Shelby Foote, Douglas Southall Freeman, Henry Steele Commager.  I favoured the gallant Confederate commanders—Lee, Jackson, Stuart—seeing them as descendants of the Arthurian knights of old.  I was taken by their tales of heroism, their masterful military maneuverings, and dismayed as the tide turned inexorably against them.

civil war

Even still, the names of the battlefields (hallowed grounds for both sides) strike a chord—Manassas, Shiloh, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and of course, Gettysburg.

As I sit here now, however, I have long since come to view things differently.  The young man I was had absolutely no concept of the evils of slavery, the forced subjugation of an entire race of people; the unfettered privilege of landed, white, male gentry, determined to maintain their autocratic position; the venality of elected politicians (again, all male and white) who put their personal interests and the fate of their political party ahead of their vision of a nation of freedom for all.

That young man, the beneficiary of white privilege, had no idea what being white and privileged meant, either for him, or for those to whom it was denied.

But as I said, I have come to view things differently.  And following the killing of yet another unarmed black person in the poor Benighted States of America, it is impossible not to cry, “Enough!”

In a post on this blog a few years ago, On Being White, I wrote:

White privilege explains power structures inherent in our society that benefit white people disproportionately, while putting people of colour at a disadvantage. 

White nationalists believe white identity should be the organizing principle of Western civilization.

White supremacists believe the white race is inherently superior to other races, and that white people should have control over people of other races.

In another post, Of the People, I wrote (quoting Joseph de Maistre, a nineteenth-century writer and diplomat):

 [Such] false opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.

And to that I added:

Many of us, alas, have no idea of the origin or veracity of the so-called truths we champion.  We simply echo them, as if truth can be created through the repetition of a lie…

racism

I realize now that, because that young man I was did not understand the roots from which sprouted those underdog causes he once supported, he accepted at face-value their false opinions.  It was only as I began over time to see them through the eyes of those who were suppressed that I realized their falsity.

Although I decry violence and vandalism, I endorse the legitimate protests of a people who (to excerpt a song from Les Misérables) declare they will not be slaves again.  It has almost always been so, that the downtrodden and oppressed will eventually rise up and seize what they have not been granted, their freedom.

In one of those previous posts, I also wrote:

…[sometimes] we decide not to act, thereby abrogating our democratic opportunity to choose the [society] we prefer.  And when we do that, we leave the right to choose in the hands of others—others whose opinions and beliefs we may not agree with. 

When those others are entrenched in their high positions, they are never eager to surrender their privilege.  But a righteous cause cannot forever be stifled, and many of the American people are deciding in front of our eyes, not to refrain from acting, but to take action to bring about change, despite the decades-long reluctance of those in power to do so.

It will be interesting, indeed, to see what emerges from this latest round of justifiable insurrection against the white bastion of entrenched power and privilege.

History is watching.