When Malory Met Arthur: Sex and Magic in King Arthur's Court

Professor Jack Fritscher’s intricate analysis of Morte D’Arthur reveals Thomas Malory, in the Camelot of his creation, foreshadowing 21st-century fights between religious group fundamentalism and individual human freedom in sex, gender, popular culture mythology, and racial profiling of Saracens (Muslims). Malory sorts the magical thinking of Arthurian legends so that women and family become socially protected from adultery and murder by oaths, magic, and ever-evolving Christian consciousness.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins, Malory dramatizes only adultery and murder in the ruined Eden of Camelot, showing humankind living a paradox where being “good” is bettered by being “best.” Around Arthur as “pater familias,” he spins Lancelot as tragic hero killing brother knights in the centrifuge of the Round Table family. Through Lancelot and Guenevere’s affair of courtly love turning carnal, Malory exposes sexual and religious tensions in the narrative.

Malory (1404-1471) builds on theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) who taught that “grace builds on nature.” The less perfect a person’s physical, sexual, and mental well-being, the harder it is for that person to receive God’s grace. Lancelot may be good, but Galahad is best. Human perfection (natural) is aided by the supranatural (magic, Merlin, Morgan) and the supernatural (God). Arthur, Lancelot, and Guenevere struggle through courtly love to adultery to individual conscience.

Alchemizing Arthurian sources from medieval morality tales into semi-didactic literature, Malory discusses the rule of law, paternalism, sexism, marital fidelity, and social class based on wealth insofar as the moneyed Guenevere becomes not simply a nun but an abbess.