Le Morte d'Arthur | From Grail Quest to Inquest: The Death of King Arthur and the Birth of France
In this essay, R. Howard Bloch draws a parallel between the collapse of the Arthurian world and the decline of feudalism in France in the years after La Mort le roi Artu was composed, arguing that both were brought about by the "crisis of values and institutions."
For a novel which begins in earthly splendour and spiritual plenitude La Mort le roi Artu ends in a curious spectacle of chaos and decline. This final sequel of the enormous thirteenth-century Lancelot-prose cycle contains what should have been the golden age of Arthur's court, knighthood having returned to the native soil of Camelot after the distant Grail quest. Instead, it proclaims the twilight of the Arthurian world, the steady disintegration of the courtly and chivalric ideals which are the very stuff of romance. Of the hundred thousand knights who gather for the last battle...
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