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Friday, 29 May 2015

Arthur's refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast

Volume 37, Issue 1, March 2011, Pages 62–74
Feasts and Gifts of Food in Medieval Europe: Ritualised Constructions of Hierarchy, Identity and Community

Arthur's refusal to eat: ritual and control in the romance feast



Abstract

Arthur's refusal to begin feasting before he has seen a marvel or heard a tale of adventure is a recurring motif in medieval romance. Previous comment on this ritual has suggested that the source for such a taboo on eating may be found in earlier narratives in the Celtic languages. This paper argues that, although the ritual almost certainly originates in pre-chivalric society, romance authors adapted and developed it to reflect the courtly-chivalric preoccupations of their own world. Arthur's ritual gesture may be seen as a means of containing and controlling both interior moral threats and exterior physical peril, and is intimately connected to the courtly conception of the feast. This study draws on the evidence of religious writing and courtesy manuals and explores some highly-developed treatments of the motif in romance in order to suggest that literary engagements with Arthur's refusal to eat have much to say about contemporary ideas of ritual and reality as mediated through the symbolically-charged arena of the medieval feast.

Keywords

  • Feasting;
  • Romance;
  • Arthur;
  • Ritual;
  • Courtesy;
  • Chivalry
Aisling Byrne is a doctoral student in the Faculty of English at the University of Cambridge. Her dissertation is on the topic of ‘otherworlds’ in literatures from medieval Britain and Ireland and she is supervised by Professor Helen Cooper. She has a BA in English from University College Dublin and an MPhil in Medieval Literature from the University of Cambridge.