In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke, the Irish philosopher and statesman, describes his disappointment in how the French thought of Marie Antoinette, their Queen: "I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is gone forever."
Like many of his contemporaries, Burke had read Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, a collection of tales and exploits of England's greatest and most world-renown figure: King Arthur. Burke assumes that his reader will immediately understand what he means by "chivalry": defending the honor of a royal woman by means of physical force. This idea of stouthearted men defending helpless ladies — along with the ideals of the Round Table and the Quest for the Holy Grail — may be somewhat clichéd in the twenty-first century, rooted in an imaginary past. Yet these ideas are still very much a part of our experience and culture, and an examination of the Arthurian myth can help clarify the historical and literary sources of such thinking.
