98
Studies in Medievalism
thoughtful is Simon Schama, "Cljo at the Multiplex: What Hollywood und Herodotlls Have ill
Common," 11/(~ New Yorka (Jallu<lry 19 1998), 38-43. Far more imaginative is Robert A.
ROSCIlS\OllC, though he is lJ(unpcrcd by the proprietary fcelings of the professional historian; he
asks, impeninelltly ill my opinion, "By what right do filmmakers speak of the past, by what
right do they do history?" (Visions rf the Past: The Challenge (~f Film to Ollr Idea of History
!Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1995], (5). Nevertheless, lJ(~ arrives al the persuasive conclusion
thaI "it is lime for the historian to accept the mainstream historical film as a new killd of
history" (78),
52. I would extend this claim 10 a shot of a cathedral, since it is the task of thc "master of
the fabric" to maintain the structure against the weathering of time. The vcry stOllC we sce
today mayor may not be medieval in origin. St:e Denis Smith (The Gothic Cathedral: A
Landmark ill EII,~illeerin,~, dir. Colin Gremshaw ISussex V,ideo, 1986J) 011 cathedral
maintenance, and compare MOllet's series of paintings of the cathedral of RoueH for the
shifting visual impact of the same stones,
5:1. My attitude re.mains the sallle when a filmmaker touts authellliUlting research, as is the
case with Luc Besson, The Messenger: The Story of Joal/ of Arc (1999), publicized as "An
Exclusive L~)ok Beyond the IcolI," The narrator of the documentary called "The SC<-Irch for the
Rca! Joan of Arc" (dir, Brian Burton, included in the DVD of the film by Columbia Tristar,
2000) says ill .voice.-oYer, "The filmmakers' research unearthed a wealth of information," as
images of manuscripts suggest that the film drew on primary sources rather than the work of
historianli, II appears that Besson and his team reaily did consult lluliJUscripts (as the images
attest) and the transcripts of Joan's trial, bllt of course these materials were already well
knOWll,lu1l1Y view, Besson should be thanked, rather than criticized, for his efforts to ensure
the artistic effect of authenticity.
The Subversion of Medievalism in
Lancelot du lac and
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Brian Levyl and Lesley Coote
The aim of this article is to combine'the disciplines of history, medieval
literature and film studies, It falls into two sections, each focusing upon
cognate but independent cinematographic treatments of a key medieval
subject. We have chosen two films for comparative analysis, one V'reneh, one
English: Robert Bresson's Lancelot du lac, and the Terry Jones-Terry Gilliam
collaboration Monty Python wul the Holy Grail. It would be hard to think of
two more diilerent movies in concept or effect; yet both draw on the same area
of the Arthurian Grail Quest, both were in production at the same: time (quite
independently of each other), and both appeared in the same year, 1974. We
freely acknowledge an initial debt to Kevin Harty, whose compendium, The
Reel Middle Ages, is an indispensable tool for all scholars working in this
field.' Our aim has been to build on this, to go beyond a study of the cinema's
"revisionist" view of the Middle Ages and to investigate the extent to which
medieval material - sources, stylistics, or the socio-historical background may have survived the camera lens and the director's cut, and fol' what
reasons.
Robert Bresson: Modern AuteurislII and Medieval Allctoritas
In the galaxy of the cineastes, Robert Bresson is very much an auteur's
auteur, creating and developing his minimalist style and scrupulously staged
screenplays through an intense and instantly recognizable corpus of barely a
dozen films. Brcsson's work has been called "a sparse canon of daunting
beauty and difficulty,,,2 in which "Lacanian discourse has a complex and
multiply determined relationship with Cathoiieism.,,3
Central to Brcsson's films - central, because of its long gestation period,
over fifteen years - is his 1974 Lance/Of du lac, his rewriting of the Arthurian
myth. Here he recasts the original medieval. conventions in his own discourse,
and film critics have been quick to trace the ways in which he has
101
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelot du lac and Monty Pylhon
subordinated his source material to classic "l?ressonian" theory and practice,
with particular emphasis on guilt patterns, on Jansenist concepts of
predestination, and Oil the operation of the death drive, rhanalOs. II is
noteworthy, however, that outside the circle of Bresson critics this particular
"Arthurian" film has been far less frequcnlly studied than have its (frankly,
flawed) rivals, Eric Rohmer's 1978 Perceval Ie Gu/lois and John Boorman's
Exca/ibur of 1981. Even among "Bressonians" there is a tendency to devote
less space to this than to the Master's other films,4
The critics have pointed out that, whatever his subject matter, Bresson
creates and peoples his own filmic world, and that his Lmu..x:/ol du lac is a
nominally "medieval" film which in fact lies quite o·utside any recognizably
5
historical timcline: it has been extracted, and abstractcd. Joel Magny makes
the point for many: Bresson's inner vision has enabled him to uncover new
aspects of his source I11nterial, and profoundly to alter our own traditional
G
approach to it. In this respect, of course (and with a nice irony), this 1110st
individual and independent of film directors is actually following closely in
the footsteps of the original medieval poets and nut-hors who themselves used
the very amorphous, intangible nature of the Arthurian myth to reconstruct a
courtly chivalric world set apart from the real world of feudal society. By
posing specific social, ethical, moral and religious problems arising out of
their characters' relationships with one another, Marie de France, Chretien de
Troyes and their successors imposed their own meaning (sen) upon the
existing material (matiere). In a vcry similar manner Robert Bresson presents
us with a fresh conjointure, a new interpretation, a new way of looking at
tense game of chess, underscoring the conflict between two charaders (here,
between the loyal Gauvain and the mocking Monh·ed).
That Bresson is at home in the Middle Ages is dear from his deliberate use
of the original trial documents in his earlier, closely focused Le Proces de
Jeanne d'Arc of 1962. For his take on Arthur, hc is similarly familiar with
several aspects of medieval literature and culture. He has admitted to an
appreciation of Celtic myth and the old romances, and, as Paquette has
plausibly indicated, his knowledge of La Mort /e roi Artu would most likely
have been via the immediately available modern French translation by .lean
Frappier (1936). In his monograph on Bresson, Michel Esteve notes that the
director may also have gained awareness of medieval "courlly love" through
the filter of Denis de Rougemont's classic 1939 book 011 L 'Amour et
['occident.]2 In the course of a rather vague comment on the influence on
Bresson of medieval French literature in general, Rene Predal points out,
reasonably enough, that medievalism was very much part of a "mode~relro" in
cinema and popular culture of the 1970s, and that in any case L.anee/of du lac
remains essentially a traditional tragic love story inevitably following a pattern
lJ
laid down by medieval romance.
More interesting connections, with
medieval art, have been suggested by Jean Semolue: some of the film's images
are evocntive of Albrecht DUrer and "Triumph of Death" iconography, while
others seem to mirror works by one of Bresson's favourite painters, Paolo
llccello (notably, his "Hunt in the Forest" in the Ashmolean, and the surviving
panels depicting the Battle and Rout of San Romano),14
We may of course agree with Kristin Thompson when she points out that
Bresson is following his own personal agenda in the film, which is by no
means that of the Mort Arlu, with its very post-Lateran IV stress on
ls
redemptive penitence, for example. Nevertheless, the more one studies
Lanceiof du lac with a medievalist's eye (and car .. ,), the more one may
detect echoes and parallels which bind the film still more to its medieval roots,
Bresson himself is on record as stating: "Jc voudrais retl'Ouver l'cpoque
intuitivement," and it is the aim of the present study to indicate something of
the extent 10 which his [inc·· tuned intuition has in fact led him. 1(, The following
items represent what might be called a research sampler, indicating not so
much direct or conscious influence as examples of the ways in which themes,
motifs and mentalites may find common cause across the centuries, even when
translated from one culture to another, and from one medium of expression to
another. These suggestions are not intended to be in any way exhaustive.
Indeed, on a far larger thematic scale (with its ironic commentary on the
failure in turn of the Grail Quest, of Round Table chivalry, and of human
relationships), Lancelof du lac displays Bresson's continual preoccupation
with concepts of lack, absence, and loss, and these arc also essential
overarching concepts of many, equally jronic~ medieval epic and romance
texts, from the Song of Roland to Tristan, and from the Arthurian Prose Cycle
to the lyric conge, Again, Bresson's fascination with Celtic folklore - for him
it is full of magic and enchantment, conveying messages of love and fate - is
100
things.
If we pursue this point, it becomes apparent that there i!':> indeed much more
that medievalists can make of the Bresson version of Arthuriana. To date,
apart from brief passing references, there have not been many specific
contributions from this particular part of the academic forest. 7 r'ran\-,ois de la
Breteque has noted - but again, somewhat briefly _. how the careful
codification of the medieval tournamcnt lends itself ideally to an analogous
cinematographic rewriting of the code, and that Bresson above all has sensed
the nature of the tourney's syncopated rhythm, where all is sound, visual
fragmentation, and the beating of horses' hooves:'\ lean-Marcel Paquette has
perhaps done the most to cast a trained medievalist's eye on Lance/or du lac.\!
He notes how Bresson stripped the thirteenth-century La Mort Ie roi Arlu
down to some basic essential fealures in order to recreate it in the episodes of
his film.lo On the other hand, Bresson actually remodels and heightens, for his
purposes, two tiny clements appearing in the original medieval prose romance:
the figure of an old pcasanl woman (whom he transforms into a central but
ambivalent healer-guide and prophetess of fatality), and a great tempest
(which becomes a doom-laden omen of the hero's death), II Even more
intriguingly, Bresson includes in his film a very commOn medieval literary
motif, which, however, does not actually feature at all in the Morl Arlu itself: a
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelot dll lac and Monty Python
clearly displayed in the film's Breton atmosphere;J7 and this is, of course,
precisely the ambience of the medieval Matter of Britain itself.
"As we have seen and heard ... "
102
Clash of Arms
Much has been written about the impact of arlllour on Lance/of du lac.
Bresson insists on his actors wearing semi-realistic,
semi~"traditional­
medieval" armour throughout the film (explained inlhe screenplay, in a nicely
resonant mise en abyme, by Artus's own order to his knights to remain under
arms). The result is to create an Order of Cyborg Chivalry - half-man, ha1[machine - and once helmets are donned, the metamorphosis is complete, with
Arthur's knights reduced to so many anonymous, dehumanised, clanking
"metalmcn," engaging in a combat that will confine them all ultimately to the
18
scrap heap, blood gushing from their iron sheils. There is a further striking
element to this key feature of the film. Bresson quite deliberately focuses upon
the actual arming process (for tournament or battle), by means or quick,
rhythmical clltting, showing one knight mounting after another, one lance aftcr
another grasped in a mailed fist and helmet visors snapped shut one after
another. Further, he will often restrict our view of the w.hole by close-ups of
the individual armoured parts. This is to all intents and purposes a renewed,
cinematographic visualization of the formulaic arming rituals in the Old
French chansons de geste: parallel sequences of epic stanzas itemizing the
donning of hauberk and helm, the mounting of steeds, and the grasping of
weapons and shields. This epic rhythm is enhanced still further by Bresson's
use of the triple motif to punctuate his film, echoing to a remarkable degree
the strong trifunctional patterning of such medieval poetics. Knights
frequently come into shot in groups of three, mount in threes, close their visors
in threes, and the whole action is framed by three great set-piece armed
combats: the shocking slaughter which opens and closes the film being
19
counterbalanced at its dead centre by the mock battle of the tournamcnt.
Equally epic afC the latter scene's extended repetitions: Lancelot triumphs
ovcr nine adversaries in precisely staged sliccession, each shot in the sequence
functioning as part of a filmic [aisse parallete. It may also be noted that
Bresson divests his characters of their armour on precisely three occasions,
each linked ironically by a chain of visual and symbolic associations, and each
stressing the vulnerabilily of the soft human body without its carapace. In the
course of his third meeting with Guenievre, hoping to make love! L.ancelot
begins to undress, his discarded armour lying in a heap (as if prefiguring the
final scrap heap of death). Later, he will lie in bed alone in the peasant hut,
recovering from his wound received at the tourney, and now - in a reverse
process - the old woman and the young girl will bring him the pieces of his
armour, and help dress him. Finally, it will be the turn of Gauvain to lie
similarly stripped of armour, undressed and wounded! but in this case he is
dying of his wound~, and will never bear arms again.
j
103
Bresson's cinematographic theories relating to sight and sOllnd arc well known
(having been expressed in interviews and throughout his almost Pascalian
Notes sure Ie cinematographe). He has always reacted against the tendency to
devote so much attention to the visual medium of film that the soundtrack is
20
neglected or all background noise muffleci. In his films raw sounds are
heightened, forcing themselves upon the first level of our consciousness and
possessing a life and rhythmical significance of their own. Here Bresson is
seeking far more than banal complementarity. ]::"or him the eye must not
merely duplicate what is for the car (or vice versa);2l each sense should work
in turn, as in a series of alternating relays. These principles are manifest in
Lance/Of du lac, as primacy is accorded now to visual effects and close-ups,n
now to the clanking of armour, to the sound of horses stamping or Whinnying,
to the ringing of the chapel bell, or to suddenly intrusive birdcalls. These are
all motifs carefully judged to form a' commentary on human activity. human
love and human fate. n
When taken in conjullction with Bresson's declared desire to work with
(and on) heart and senses, and to involve spirituality and intuition rather than
intelligence, these essential features of his art also find interesting parallels in
medieval concepts of the senses. A particularly strong analogy here might be
found in the importance attached in the Middle Ages to the eyes and the ears
as separately tuned instruments of instruction and comprehension; these
organs arc in effect perceived as doors to the human mind and soul. In the
religious sphere, [rom the twelfth century onwards (led by such princes as
Bernard of Ciairvaux, Abbot Suger and Robert Grossetesle), lhe Church laid
great stress on the inspiration of divine light beaming down from heaven to
impress its message upon the eyes of the faithful, and of the equally divine
sounds of musica anliqua or the preacher's sermon falling upon their ears. On
the more secular level of fin 'amor, thc process of falling in love depends both
OIl visual impact (the attraction of the "fair face" and of courtly gestures) and
on the auraJ seduction of the "sweet voice" and persuasive speech - each
operating and influencing at different moments,I.4 Finally, one should mention
the key medieval principle of validation: auctoritas being essentially that
which has been not merely seen, but also heard/-~
Speech l)atterns and the Alies Poetritle
The particular clement of "Things heard" may be pursued still further. E~ven
olle of the 1110st idiosyncratic features of the Bressonian film, the deployment
of spare dialogue, "read" by the actors _. or, rather~ by his untrained but highly
coached "models"
in a deliberately repetitive, unaccented, practically
unemotional way, has its analogue in many passages of direct speech found in
the Arthurian Prosc Cycle (and indeed, in the earlier verse tradition of
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lance/o/ du lac and Monty Python
Chretien de Troyes and his followers), This dialogue in texts of the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries is often circumscribed by the conventions of oral politesse,
26
with any indication of heightened emotion left to the surrounding narrative.
Time and again, writers on Bresson have defined his film direction and
script, with their stark yet pure spiritual and moral message, as an art poetique,
full of rhythms and cadcncc. 27 There is something firmly medieval about this
patterning, and the point has been well taken by Lindley Hanlon, in- the
opening pages of the chapter devoted to Lallce/of du lac in her 1986
n
monograph on Bresson's film stylc. Hanlon is, however, ultimately intent on
suggesting a Jansenist connection, and on comparing Bresson's poetry to the
style and structure of seventeenth-century Racinian vei'se. For the medievalist,
watching a Bresson film like Lmu:elot du Jar (and taking in all its examples of
parataxis) is instantly, and even more forcefully, to be reminded of the style of
medieval rhetoric, as laid down in its essentials in the Poefria nova of
Geoffrey of Vinsauf. 2<J Bresson's lines may be spoken unemotionally by the
director's moddes, but they also happen to contain many of the carefully
plotted devices of School rhetoric. As the dialogue punctuates the film, we
encounter some strikingly apposite examples. There is repefitio (a single
spoken phrase taken up and repealed for added effect by another character):
I':"'urthermore, Bresson achieves his celebrated cinematographic minimaiism by
employing reduction techniques which the medieval Schoolmell would well
have recognised: abrevhllio (the whole boiled down to its essentials -'
illustrated right from the pre-credits crawl, which sums up the entire Grail
Legend in a few lines); reductio (the !l10r! Artu stripped to a few main
episodes: the return from the- Grail Quest; the- Escalot tournament and its
aftermath; Lancelot's rescue of Guinevere; and Mordred's treachery leading to
the final battle); or syn(.'ope (cutting away material in the middle, in order to
concentrate on beginning and- enciing):12 Throughout the film, Bresson's
camera work (with its restricted, low-·angled close,,,ups of the human or animal
body, and its lingering shots of ground, trees or stones) renders visual the old
rhetoric of symbolism: synecdoche, the llse of onc part to represent the whole;
and metonymy, the use of an image - sllch as the mockingbird, ·Lancclot's
blank shield, Of the window of Gucnievre's chamber in thc tower - to convey
an association with something or someone else. To conclude this rhetorical
point: the auteur's whole discourse has exemplified the essential principle of
translatio~ the old arte has been redefined in modern audio-visual,
cinematographic terms.
Old Woman: "He whose footfalls are heard before he is seen will die
within the year."
Peasant Child: "Even if it is those of his horse?"
Old Woman: "Even if it is those of his horse."}O
Colour Symbolism
104
There is the counterpointing effect of antithesis, and of frequentatio (a listing
of multiple actions or attributes):
Guenicvrc: "You did not want the Grail, you wanted (iod.
. You were
implacable, killing, pillaging, burning, turning on each other ... "
There is anorninatio (a rhythmical sequence, with a single clement, oftcn
onomastic or personalised, changed at each point of the sequence), and lhe
related device of enumeratio:
Artus: "Here was seated Y dietl, here Clamadieu, here lJrien, here
Galesan .... Here Perceval, and there Claudas, and there, and there, and
there ... ,,31
and again:
Lancelot: "Greetings, Lionel. Grectings, Lambeglls.
Greetings, Eors ... "
J 05
Lancelot du lac is Bresson's first colour film, and critics have been quick to
note how the director still seeks the striking overall chiaroscuro effect of
black-and-white cinematography - particularly, in those sequences showing
darkness closing in, both symbolically and literally. Less noted has been the
often remarkable way in which his llse of colour echoes medieval conventions.
Firstly, and most obviously, the colour suggests a military-cum-social
identifying agent, reflecting the rise of heraldry from the later thirteenth
century onwards, in response to the metallic anonymity of increasingly full
armour. In the film's central tournament episode, each knight has his coloured
pennant, and it is the hoisting of this pennant, accompanied by a Breton
bagpipe fanfarc, that sets the rhythm of the jousting sequence. In addition, in
the various arming and mounting scenes here and elsewhere, each knight's
hose is effectively colour-coded in the bright primary reds, greens and blues
that were very costly fashion accessories in the Middle Ages (Old French
romances often referring to "freshly-dyed" garments). The film also respects
the medieval Prose Lancelot's coded convention of having its hero, when
n
incognito, appear with blank white anns ..
But Bresson is Bresson. and in his hands this very medieval aid to
identification serves paradoxically to enhance the deadly anonymily: precise
heraldic associations with individual knights are never really made (except in
two or three symbolic cases, as noted below); the tournament pennants are
literally divorced from the individual participants by being flown from a flagpole, while the camera focuses in medium close-up upon the coloured hose,
107
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lance/Of dl! lac and Monty Python
never once moving up to lake in a rccogni~able face. Secondly, and more
subtly (and as by a remarkable coincidence), Bresson's film enters a world of
medieval colour symbolism,3'1 His reds arc redolent of sin and sacrifice:
Lancelot's saddle-cloth is blatantly crimson; and a lantern's ruddy glow
through a tent, staining its pristine whiteness, is metonymic·- ominously so-~
of the opening and closing images of blood gushing out onto the ground, or of
the martyred Gauvain's life-blood spreading through the white of his bandage.
Gucnievre's white linen elzaillse shines sometiT)1CS with the reflected red of
transgression (in the trysting scenes), sometimes with the ironically
inappropriate blue of virginity, and sometimes again with the equally ironic
green of the promise of love's renewal - but at" the end, as she leaves
Lancelot's side to return, redeemed, to Artus, it radiates beneath her mantel
with the pure white of an immaculate vestment.
has closed in upon him. "1 have lost my way," he says to fhe old peasant
woman, the reality of his present situation symbolic of his entire condition. A
medieval audience would have perfectly comprehended this scene and its
senefial1ce, as it would have recognized (here, and subsequently) the motif of
the hovel or cell in a clearing in the middle of the forest, occupied by a figure
- an old woman, or a hermit -- who, while offering the hero succour and
guidance, remains nonetheless as mysterious and elemental as the forest itself.
For the rest, any entry into the forest of Escalot is a perilous one: whether it be
Artus and his troop riding through on their way back from the tournament and
closing their visors against their surroundings; or the knights returning from
their fruitless search for the lost Lancelot (and swearing, "This is the dcvil's
forest!"); or again Mordred, who becomes a very creature of the woods,
possessed by the spirit of darkness as well as by his own malevolence, as he
picks his way through the trees, treacherously following Lancelot to his
meeting with Guenievre, and visible like some Green Man from the window of
their trysting-place.
106
A Medieval Spirit of Place: the Forest
It is true that Bresson has deliberately stripped from his medieval film almost
all the toponymic indicators which inform the "itinerary" of the medieval
prose romance. The name of Camelot is never mentioned, and Lancelot's own
castle of Joyeusc Garde is reduced (in every sense of the word) to an
anonymous ruin - returning, as it were, in a highly medieval piece of cyclic
parallelism, to its original name of "Dolorous (i'arde," Only Escalot remains,
and the spirit of this place takes over the entire film, in the form of its doomladen Breton forest, encroaching all the time upon Arthur's world (as -- the
only thing visible from the window of their secret meeting-place - it
encroaches ominously upon the two lovers, Lancelot and Guenievre), Paquette
comments that Bresson has transformed the structural interlace of the
medieval text of La Mort Ie roi Artu into "la linearitc pure. et absolue. de recit
filtnique";"'~ in facl, however, the film director has set up a no less medieval
alternating rhythm I his scenes moving between the two poles of within-andwithout the forest. In the film's violent opening sequence, it is as though this
sinister forest is actually accompanying the Quest knights and imposing itself
upon them as they descend into pointless slaughter and desecration, This is
itself extremely "medieval," in its evocation of the Other: the shot of the
skeletal corpses hanging from the trees in the middle of this sequence is
particularly telling in its suggestive imagery of human sacrifice to the Forest
God, This image is duly reprised in the concluding sequence, as the archers
hiding in the branches appear as so many organic extensions of the killingtrees. In this ending is indeed the beginning, the film corning full circle, and
the forest providing a new setting for the final bloodbath: the Fall of Arlhur
will take place, not on the Salisbury Plain of the original prose romance, but
hemmed in by the dark trees of EscaJot, with a pall of smoke hanging
overhead,36 Immediately after the opening sequence, our very first view of
Lancelot is of a fully armoured and mounted knight riding through a forest that
The Chivalric Pavilion
Although toponymic onomastics are lacking\ and although such as there is of
Camelot castle, through the operation of Bresson's visual rhetoric, is reduced
to extracted, abbreviated elements (drawbridge and gate, the Round Table, the
chapel, the Queen's chamber seen from without and within), the film does
H
give pride of place to the tent. Tents are regularly in view, partly to provide
the director with the pure whites and ruddy translucent glows tiUlt he is
seeking in so many shots (as a strong visual counterpoint to the darkness of the
forest), but also in order to silu"le lhe aClivily of lhe knighls. The Round Table
chamber has been locked, and Arthur has ordered everyone to remain fully
armed; the tents thus come to define a world of chivalry decamped and
tl'ansilionai. Arthur leaves his tent to greet Lancelot's arrival (and towards the
end will take the Queen back into his lent pitched at the edge of the forest); the
wounded remnants of the Grail Quest are transported to tents; throughout the
film knights come and go between tents, entering and leaving them,
confronting each other inside them. Although the physicaJ appearance of these
tents in LanceJot du lac is anachronistically modern - and deliberately so;
together with doors, tables and chairs (and for that matter, with the knights'
1970s haircuts and Guenievre's less-than-authentic gowns), they form part of
Bresson's fe-created world which needs to convey the sense of something
incomplete, lacldng"1S _. their function touches a key medieval nerve, Medievai
texts themselves are equally full of tents: in both Old French epic and
romance, the tref, or pavellon, plays an important role, at once practical and
symbolic,39 As in Homer, the warrior hero will be associated with - almost
defined by - his tent; while Artus's knights ride through the camp OJ] their way
to the Escalot tournament, the camera carefully picks out through the open flap
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelof du lac and Monty Python
of his tent an Achilles-like Lancelot, left behind and visible, head down,
Again, the scene in the film showing the heraldic pennants fluttering above the
tcnts may be matched by many illustrations of battle pavilions in the
manuscripts of medieval chronicles (one thinks of the heraldic-heroic
iconography of Froissarl manuscripts, or of the Grande.\' Chroniques de
France). At the same time it should be noted that Bresson links this colourful
image unerringly to two equally medieval pieces of metonymic symbolism:
aftcr the great storm, the knights look up at Lallcelot's pennant, fluttering all
tattered oyer his pavilion, as though announcing his death~ while, an instant
later, the camera takes in the criminal Mordred's own banner, blown down and
now lying sodden on the ground at the entrance to his tent. Tents dramatically
pitched before battle may abound in the panoramic medievalism of the
Hollywood epic (such as Anthony Mann's EI eM); only Bresson turns the tent
into a very medieval image of the individual psyche, and of the world's
impennancl1ce,
accompanied by the harsh notes of a jackdaw (we see it at one stage, perched
on a dark tree-branch), constituting an ironic, mockingbird commentary on
their anguished slate. In the opening and closing sequences, however, the bird
is a bird of death: a cawing carrion crow, first picking at the dangling
skeletons, and then wheeling over the final scene of cal'llage.'ll Yet, right at the
end, there may be an enigmatic metamorphosis: as Lancelot falls dead (after
his equally enigmatic last word, "Guenievrc"), the camera cuts to the sky! just
in time to catch the bird, now seeming to SOHI' up and away, as though
embodying the hero's departed souL
Some Bresson critics may too eagerly (if understandably) have
concentrated upon the semiotic parole--c!cTiture connotations of the director's
celebrated note that "Le cinemalographe est une ecriture, avec des images en
mouvement et des sons.,,'12 The ecriture that is present throughout Lance/of du
lac is above all very much that of the medieval text, in all its poetic
patternings, imagery and complex symbolism. It remains the aucfaritas which
the "auteur" has reworked into the modern medium of film, and Bresson is
himself fully conscious of the paradox binding him to the spirit of the original:
"I feel that I am most faithful to igreat works of literature] by being
unfaithfLtI,,,43 This article has sought to show how Bressonian minimalism
contains within it much of the power, and the richness, of medieval poetic
style; as F. Baron states in his review of thc film: "In the sparse medieval
world of Camelot, where everything ... takes on the air of a formal ritual,
Bresson is in his element. ,,44
108
Hortus COllelusus: Locus Amoelllls •••
The film's use of the tent to provide interior space leads to a further medieval
parallel. Bresson employs interiors as dcvices to define personal relationships:
the tents themselves; the briefly seen Round Table chamber (marking not just
the doleful end of the Grail Quest, but also the first time Mordrcd is seen in
physical opposition to Lancelot, Gauvain and Artus); the castle chapel
(encompassing the tension between sacred and profane love); the peasant
hovel in the wood of Escalot (a way-station on the hero's fateful journey
tow"l'd his death); and above all the recurring place image of the stable barn
(ironically serving both as a secret place of freedom for the two lovers and as
their confinement), In Bresson's film, walls arc everyv,there: stone, wooden
and canvas; openings (flaps, doors, windows) are not so much conduits as
boundary definers, There is here more than an echo of the medieval topical
convention of the horfus conclllslls: of characters inhabiting their own
delimited, defined, and refined space. But this is a post-lapsarian, morally
circumscribed space, coloured by a bleak Bressonian message: L~mcelot and
his Queen find thcrnselves in no courtly Eden, no Romance of the Rose
Lovers' Garden; and the ultimate hortus conc/uslls will be the death-pile of
chivalry, hemmed in by the blackness of the forest. As for exterior decor - a
tree, a tower, a tournament field - it has been transmuted into an emblematic
backdrop: a new variation on the medieval {OCIIS amocnus, the conventional
stage-setting against which the characters play out their pre--allotted roles. Part
of the traditional .fin'af1}or setting includes the tapas of birdsong: the
nightingale or the lark, birds of evening and morning, their calling responding
in turn to the lovers' joy, then to their sweet parting. Lance/Of du lac is also
full of birds and their calls, but for his inspiration, Bresson has tapped into a
darker, Celtic. imagcl'y.'lO Throughout the film the progress of the two lovers is
109
The Repressionlnherent in the System: the Comic Strategies of MOllty
Pytholl alld the Holy Grail
"Come and see the violence inherent in the system! Help! Help! I'm being
rcpressed!" These are the cries of Dennis, the "Marxist" peasant, as he is
manhandled by King Arthur for his determined qucstioning of the king's
divine right to rule, This scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail is one
of the most memorable and most frequently quoted. It forms one of a series of
four scenes at the beginning of the film in which the person of Arthur and the
nature of his kingship are explored. In these four scenes Arthur's sole
companion is his squire/"horsc" (that is, the one who bangs the coconut shells
together), Patsy; he has not yet met any of the knights who will join him in the
quest for the Grail. These four scenes establish both the human fallibility of
the king, and the irrational, repressive nature of his authority. This authority is
continually qnestioned and challenged by lower-class soldiery, peasant
demagogues, an unthinking warrior, and the imperatives of everyday life and
survival (as represented by the inhabitants of the plague-ridden village and the
man who pulls the dead-rart).
Each of these scenes is characterized by· images of people being dominated
and silenced by those who hold authority over them. In the case of Dennis and
1I I
Studies ill Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelof du lac and Monty Python
the plague villagers, they then dominate and silence those who are weaker than
themselves. His increasingly pathetic attempts to argue against them or divert
their attention having failed, Arthur "silences" the soldiers' argument about
swallows by simply turning his back, ignoring tl~el11 and "riding" away with
Patsy, The soldiers get rid of him by exploitillg their location of power on the
castle ramparts, a position continually emphasised by the camera angles inlhis
scene. During the shot/reverse-shot sequences, the camera tilts upwards from
Arthur's point of view when watching the soldiers, and down from the soldiers
to Arthur. The whole scene is dominated by the castle wall, a physical
1l1ctonym for the psychological and class barriers that separate them. The
theme continues in the plague scene, in which the 'mud-covered peasant
householder argues with the deaci--cart man whilst the old person over his
shoulder attempts to speak, The old man is finally silenced with a sharp blow
to the head. Arthur thell rides through the scene, followed by Patsy,
cornpletely ignoring his surroundings. The dead··cart man declares that the
intruder mllst be a king, because "He hasn't got shit all over him,"
This confirms Arthur's personal position as that of "holy fool," and reemphasizes the difference of class and inherited power implied in the first
scene. These will be brought into stark contrast in the ncxt scelle, in which
Dennis the peasant defies Arthur's attempts to justify his temporal power in
terms of spiritual tlUthority and the Arthurian legend itself.~5 The contrast
between the white-surcoated king, the Lady of the Lake's "purest shimmering
samile," and the filth-gathering peasants is a stark onc. The humour in this
scene is used not only to demonstrate human nature, but also to emphasize this
very serious point. The whole is dominated by the ultimate medieval image of
"silencing," a wheel-gallows complete with rotting corpse. In the fourth of
these opening scenes, the Black Knight attempts to silence Arthur by
employing brute force. He is both a symbol for the macho Hollywood super··
hero and a metonym for the employment of mindless violence by authorities
thai will not be gainsaid. Arthur, once again, is the "fool" who cannot
understand why this warrior will not give up when he has no limbs left.
These four scenes establish two central points about the film. i"'"irsl, its
central character is a peripatetic na~l; who is used to reveal, criticizc and
satirize thc nature of his world. 4h The persistcnt anachronisms - the intrusion
of "modern" ideology and dialogue - are used to suggest to the audience tha1
this film is also about their world. Secondly, this world is characterized by
repression, by the silencing of some by those others who have more power
than they do. Socially or officially sanctioned authority is particularly rnarked
for comedic attack, especially when it involves the silencing or suppressing of
individual expression. The comedic weapons employed by the Python team for
this purpose bear much similarity to those found in medicval carnivalcsque
humour, as represented in popular art by animal characters, such as Reynard
thc fox and his "friends," and in the comic tales known as fablimo;,47 Monty
Python and the Holy Grail reproduces this form of "world upside down"
h~JJ110Ur, filtered thr~ugh the lens of Thomas Malory's A10rte Dartflur and
Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury 'J'ales, both well known to either one or both
of the film's direct.ors. 4 t! It is represented in a particularly graphic form in Terry
Gilliam's subversive, coarse anel frequently violent animations, which owe
much to carnivalesque manuscript illumination (bare bottoms are very
eomrnon in medieval pictoria! art and sculpture). The idea of farting through
trumpets is also a medicval one, and devils are often envisaged as carrying
firecrackers between their bare buttocks on the medieval and early
Renaissance stage.
Much of the humour of this type of medieval comedy comes from the fall
of a stupid <luthority figure engineered by [l clever, streetwisc individual.
Sometimes this individual then becomes too clever, and falls in his or her turn.
This is the case in most Chaucerian examples; it happens to Nicholas the
learned clerk in The Miller's Tale, the false friar and the immoral summoner in
The Summoner's Tale and The Fr;clr's Tale, the two students in The Reeve's
Tale, the homicides in The Pardoner's Tale, and the sly, unfaithful wife in1'lw
Shipman's Tale. None of the authority' figures who suffer these pratfalls
actually engages the audience's sympathy, so their falls are greeted with
laughter. The characters in A10uty Python and the Holy Grail are mostly
stereotypes possessed of one overriding unattractive quality which sets them
up for a fall. Most of the characters descrve their fate because of this fault,
which is a prominent factor ill their downfall. This is true of the rapacious,
ovcrbearing father in Swamp Castle, the rapacious women in Castle Anthrax,
the randomly homicidal guardian of the Bridge of Death, the gullible and selfopinionated Dennis, Sire Robin the Not-ql.litc··so-Brave~as-Sir··Lancelot (with
the chicken on his shield to emphasize the point), the unreasonably violent
Black Knight, and Sir Lancelot, trapped in his violent "idiom,!' dangling
helplessly on the end of his rope asking for a "push. ,,~<J Even the poor old
plague victim is so pathetically weak and stupid that his fate raises a laugh,
rather than pity or angeL
Stereotyping also helps to create sufficient' distance between the audience
and the characters 10 ensure that their ultimate discomfiture will be funny
rather than tragic. Chaucer's characters are less stereotyped than those in the
nUlllerous less complex examples of comic stories from thc medieval pedod,
which feature a cavalcade of sinister minstrels, sharp gamblers, sly squires,
virile and sexually aroused young men, amorous andlor rapacious priests, and
stupid husbands. The characters in Chaucer's comic stories, although less
stereotypical, demonstrate the samc general characteristics. Knights, standing
at the apex of the lay (i,e., 11()l1··ciericClI) order in medieval society, arc usually
presented as slow-witted, pedantic and otherwise insouci,ini figures of fun in
fahlioux. The knight in The Summoner's Tale strongly resembles Sir Bedevere
in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. When prescnted by his local friar with
the fact that the friar has been insulted by Thomas thc peasant, who gave him a
gift by farting into his hand, the knight is really only concerned with the
philosophical, l11ock··scholarly question of how the fart can be divided so that
the friar's brethren can have a share. The knight's missing the point entirely
110
112
Subversion in Lancelot du lac and Monty Python
Studies in Medievalism
50
results in very un savoury consequences for the friar and his convent. In the
film, Sir Bedcvcre's mock-scholastic pedantry over the details of how to tell if
a woman is a witch, and his detailed but ultimately useless Trojan Rabbit
(perfect but there's nobody inside it) produce a very similar comic effect. At
one point he is also briefly shown supervising an attempt to attach coconut
shells to the legs of a bird, a reference to the "swallow" joke which surfaces at
the beginning and end of the film.
The suggestible knight in the fabliau.r is usu.ally controlled and duped by
the more quick-willed squire, a privileging of the young and marginalized over
the older and well established. This is precisely what happens in Monty Python
and the floly Grail, in which the- young filmmakers 'use their wit to overturn
the representatives of the established order and their ideologies. The most
obvious eXHmple of this is the historian of the "programme for schools," cut
down by a knight on horseback after interrupting the story with his dry-as-dust
comll1el1tary.~1 The historian's fate raises little sympathy because of his
presumption, his lack of imagination, his assumed superiority, overall
"stuffiness," and his silencing of the more interesting voice of the filmmakers.
The historian's sins arc those of the older generation, those still adhering to the
Victorian values of the British Empire. He is out of touch with the rcalities of
the world in thc 1970s. Sir Lancelot prevents Sir Galahad from losing his
virginity because of his own fear of losing control of his son; if the young arc
allowed to mature they will become a threat to the ideologies of the
established, older order. Like the squires and clerks in medieval comic tales,
they must use their wits to take control of their own world for themselves.
Monty Python is their voice.
The use of "marked" words is a feature of medieval comic tales. It involves
an open emphasis upon words not used by "polite" socicty, a forcgrounding of
suppressed language. The most frequent words used in this context are "cunt,"
"prick," "balls," and "fuck," or its Middle English equivalent. "swyve."
Sometimes these words form the core humour of the story, as in the talc of the
young girl who cannot bear to say or hear the word "fuck," but she is only too
52
happy to do it. Stories also feature puns and double entendres based upon
words and expressions, as Chaucer's Reeve '.II Tale centres upon the location of
a mill, the grinding of flour, and the meanings of that word. "Flower" also
means "virginity," and during the course of thc action not only is the flour
ground, but the miller's daughter also has her own "flower" well and truly
ground.~;J The Arthurian legend itself is not safe from the coarse double
entencires of medieval humour. In one comic story a priest is caught in
flagrante with a knight's wife. He jumps, penis still erect, into the river, and is
drowned. His corpse is "rescued" by a fisherman, who cuts off the phallus,
using it to rescue his own marriage to a sex-hungry wife. The redemptive
object (in this case an erect penis) is lifted, Excalibur~like, from the water, to
denote the man's literal, rather than metaphorical. manhood.5.1 These stories
expose the tyranny of those who impose arbitrary controls ovcr language and
imagery. The same abuse is highlighted by the filmmakers in the scene in
113
which Arthur and his knights are confronted by the knights who say, "Ni."
This word, although it has no meaning, is a negative-sounding one, belonging
to the same lexical register as "no," "nyct," and "non." It has been chosen as a
"marked" word, to be feared and shunned by society, by the arbitrary and
irrational decision of the knights, simply because they are big and black, and
people arc afraid of them ..~r, The arbitrary nature of the choice is mirrored by
the equally arbitrary choice of payment which they impose upon Arthur: first
one, and then another, shrubbery. This also identifies them with oldergeneration, middle-class, suburban "Britishness." Eventually, they change
their own taboos so frequcntly that they drown in a barrage of their own
forbidden words.
Much of the humour of medieval comic. tales relies upon undercutting the
cxpectations of both characters and audience. The principal source of irony is
the knowingness of the audience as they observe the ignorance of the
characters. The audience knows that the lusty priest/squire/clerk is trying to
gain access to the wife/daughter, and the ignorance of the husband/father
figure becomes extremely funny in consequence. The audience is aware of the
motives and the means, and is aware that the most knowing of the characters is
the one who is most likely to come out on top, usually literally. Sometimes
this exception is comically frustrated when the trickster suffers a simllHr faU,
due to circumstances and/or over·,confidence. 5 (, The triumph of the trickster is
one of the generic parameters of fabliaux, so the insertion of the unexpected
counter-trick increases the comic effect and enhances the audience's pleasure.
1n Monty Python and the Holy Grail, audiences are frequently tricked by just
such characters. Many modern audience members, however, have generic
knowledge comparable 10 that of some medieval audiences, in that they know
the basics of Arthurian legend (the sword in the stone, the quest for the Grail,
the boat which takes the dying king to Avalon). Many of these ideas have been
absorbed through the medium of Arthurian t1lm.~"
One of the best examples of this is the use of castles in the film. Castles in
the Morte Darthur, and othcr chivalric romances, freguently contain danger,
such as the murderous knights in the Castle of Maidens, or, in Sir Gawain ami
the Green Knight, the unseen danger of temptation. For modem film
audiences, the castle is a symhol of security and comfort - it frequently
appears on insurance logos, for example - anel a metonym for feudalism,
chivalry, and the authority that guaranteed the medieval social and institutional
hierarchy. The castle is invariably associated with knights in armour. Each
time a castle appears in Monty Python and fhe Holy Grail, these associations
arc denied in a comic fashion. At the first cHstlc, Arthur cannot even make the
guards, intent on arguing about the migratory habits and relative physical
strength of swallows, bring his prcsence to the lord's attention. The second
castle has no lord at all, but belongs to Dennis and his collective. The third
castle is Camelot itself. Our initial view of Camelol is revealed (0 be "only a
. model," which then becomes a reaJ castle, inhabited by chivalric "chorusboys" dancing, singing a lot of nonsense about pushing prams, and "playing H
114
115
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lance/Of du lac and Monty Python
each other's helmets with spoons. At the next castle, Arthur and his knights
arc insulted by French guards, who regale them with coarse insults and force
them to retreat by pelting them with livestock, and with Bedeverc's Trojan
Rabbit. 511 Instead of "Charge!" Arthur is reduced to yelling, "Run away!"
Castle Anthrax, despite its forbidding appearance, is inhabited by "eight score
young blondes and brunettes, all between sixteen and ninctecn-and-a-half,"
and its "Grail vision" turns out to be a grail-shaped beacon'on the top of the
tower, which has been lit by "naughty Zoot." Malory's Caslle of Maidens is a
place of deadly danger for Sir GaJahad, but in the film he is only too eager to
"go back in there and face the peril (of spanking and oral sex)," Swamp Castle
is built upon the foundations of its three preciecessc)rs, all of which sank into
the swamp, and its future lord is a camp young man who prefers singing to
fighting, and who does not wish to be a lord anyway. Lancelot attacks the
castle in the manner of a chivalric hero, only to slaughter peaceful dancers,
musicians and wedding guests. Finally, Arthur and Bedevere approach their
goal, sailing across a shimmering lake in a mysteriolls boat to the
S
accompaniment of swelling, epic-style I11Hsic. \) Castle Aaargh, the ultimate
goal of the Grail-seekers, turns out to contain not the Grail, but the same
"Frenchies" who pelted the knights earlier in the film. This time they hurl
sewage instead of livestock. Returning from the castle, the two knights are
rounded lip and locked inside a police van. They arc too dangerous to be
allowed to roam freely through the world inside the film. There is a distinct
similarity between the walls of the castle and the enclosing sides of the police
van. This is a "castle" on wheels; the castle as prison, the ullimate form of
repression, 'I'he final enclosure is aile of the least funny parts of the film - the
Ml
Pythons have been silenced; the fun, like the freedom, is over.
As in the medieval stories, women are stereotyped, They are sexually
voracious, as in Castle Anthrax, where they arc beautiful but dangerous to
rnen, The dowdy wife of the eminent historian is stereotypical, but is also
potentially and actually subversive in that she leads the policemen to the
filmmakers, and. thus engineers the final "silencing" when the film itself is cut.
In medieval "world upside down" scenarios, the woman frequently ends lip on
top. This marks a reversal of the "normal" social order, in which women were
ideologically fixed on the bOHom,61 The only potentially problematic female
character in the film is the witch, but she acquiesces in her own fate,
announcing that "it's a fair cop" when she is condemned for weighing the
smne as a duck. Her stupidity, like the rest of the peasants, makes her downfall
the occasion of fun, and the violence of her undeserved fate ambivalent.
The ambiguity of gender, and reversal of gender roles, is particularly
noliceablc in the film, but is also a feature of medieval humour. Dennis is
addressed by an old woman who,_ as Python enthusiasts would be only too
aware, is obviously Terry Jones in a dress, King Arthur addresses him/her as
"good Jady," On being ushered from Castle Anthrax without having
experienced his spanking and his oral sex, Galahad accuses his father Lancclot
of being "gay," The young man in Swamp Castle has characteristics, such as
his pale complexion, his "small" voice, his passivity and his general
mannerisms and clothing, which would usually be associated with a female. In
medieval comic tales, the woman usually plays an active, "masculine" role,
with the male often being emasculated psychologically - and physically, by
castration. In stories associated with fake doctors, domineering women arc
often depicted as having male genitals concealed underncath their skirts,(':~
There is 110 question that these are men in disguise; despite their concealed
physical attributes, they are definitely women. The ultimate woman with
"balls" is, of course, Chaucer's Wife of Bath, who tells an Arthurian talc about
how a young knight is first tricked and then subjected by an elderly hag, after
raping a young girl. In return foJ' his obedience, the hag becomes a beautiful
young woman; bllt is she not still also the hag? She promises to be faithful and
beautiful for her young husband, but it is still she who wears the metaphorical
trousers, So does the Wife, who has gained control over all her five husbands,
and has achieved a position offinancia! and social independence,M
Gender confusion and cross-dressing are features of Arthurian romance
itself. ]n the Morte J)arthur, Sir L,anceJot is -literally - caught with his pants
down, attempting to rescue a lady's falcon from a tree. Being challenged by a
knight, he grabs a sturdy branch with a spike on it, and attacks the knight in
the manner of a "wild man," wearing only his shirt and waving this large
wooden club. On another occasion he is joined in bed by another knight who,
believing Lancelot to be his mistress, begins to kiss and cuddle him. 65 Galahad
has at least some grounds for accusing his father of being "gay.,,66 Marjorie
Garber has suggested that transvestism is a space of possibility structuring and
67
confounding culture. The stress on gender in the film draws attention to the
anxieties, hypocrisies and insecurities of the apparently stable, authoritative
rulers of society, in a manner similar to the one in which medieval writers
drew attention to the fundamental gender tensions within their own world and
within the literary discourse of romance. Chaucer's squire has a beauty very
611
similar to that of a typical romance woman. His friar is also effeminate in his
appearance, manners and speech, and the Pardoner, with his high-pitched
voice and long, curly blond hair could be either "a gelding or a mare,"
Another point well made in the film is that knights themselves arc also,
technically, men in skirts. The surcoats worn by Arthur and his men, although
correct for the medieval period in which the action is set, resemble modern
feminine attire. It was not until the Tudor period that breeches, associated in
medieval times with lower-class status, became acceptable garments for
fashionable men. The gender ambiguity of this type of clothing for late
twentieth-century <llidiences is emphasised by the scene in which the knights
of Camelot sing, dance and prance like a chorus line in a variety show.('')
Although the king reflects that Camelot is "a silly place," the similarity
between the Grail knights and the Camelot knights is obvious. Is Camelot not
Arthur's court? The audience is made aware of the space they inhabit whilst
they watch the film, ]n this space they 'are made aware of the underlying
tensions, anxieties and hypocrisies not only in medieval society, but also (and
()1
117
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelot du lac and Monty Python
this is even more important) within their own. This is a carnivalesque space in
which many different voices, including those suppressed and denied by the
powclful, may and will be heard. The means by which this space is created is
the various forms of "dressing up" employed 11.1 the film, including crossdressing, and the filmmakers' continued stress on the artificiality of the
medium itself. As a result of continually being made aware that this is a series
of pictures on celluloid, shot in highly manufactured circumstances and edited
together, the audience is made to think about its contents rather than
suspending disbelief and simply accepting it as "lived" narrative:/O The climax,
in which the policeman, the representative of authority and repression, places
his hand over the camera and the tape is "cut," illustrates graphically just how
vulnerable, fragile, nnd therefore valuable, this spHce is. It is, in fact, as
vulnerable and fragile as a strip of celluloid.
11
Chaucer creates a similar heteroglossic space in his Canterbury 'Tales,, The
characters on his pilgrimage to C~antcrbUJ'y arc representatives of his society,
engaged in a holiday pursuit. During their storytelling game the usual
hierarchical rules of society arc suspended, creating an atmosphcre in which
all may and do speak. The social order is replaced by the drawing of Jots.
Reading was a form of self· improvement in the Middle Ages, and the
pilgrimage setting enhances this. Chaucer is offering his audience a chance to
reflect upon the sodety he presents, as a menns of reflecting upon their own
and their own part in it. The audiences of medieval comic tales arc being
invited to laugh at themselves as well as the characters in the stories, but they
arc also frequently asked to make a moral judgement. At the end of the tale, as
with Chaucer's Reeve's Tale, they arc oiTered a moral, 01' asked to think of the
1110ral implications for themselves. 72 The use of interlaced stories and running
jokes in Monty Python and the Holy Grail has been noted, but what is really
being presented is a series of sketches, related by context and overlying theme,
with the purpose of inviting, indeed forcing; their audience to make moral
judgements about themselves and their society,":; In this the film is closer to
Chaucer than to Mnlory. Chaucer also foregrounds his medium: his narrative,
by inserting a narrator inlo his frame story; and his genre, by calling attention
to the characteristics of the narrative forms he uses in his individual tales. As
in the film, this prevents the audience from total involvement in the story, and
encourages them 10 think abollt its meaning. Chaucer, like the Python team, is
a brilliant satirist, and he employs similar methods to make his audience
engage with his satire.
The basis of CluHlcer's satire is, of course, deadly serious, as is that of the
Python team. Comic tales, such as Iabliaux, may he reactions against
authority, breaking society's rules and presenting potentially shocking images
and language. Despite the (oftcn simple) moral questions they ask, they arc
essentially fun, intended to make their audiences laugh. Chaucerian fab/jaux
are undoubtedly also intended to entertain, but the author introduces some
very dark themes underneath the humorous goings-on. In The Reeve's Tale
there are implications of simony and rape; in The Merchant's Tale the anti-
hero may be accused of mental and physical torture, not just simply being a
"dirty old man." He also, unlike most lab/iau writers, criticises institutions
rather tlwn simply individuals, Even if the story has less of a dark side, as with
The Shipman's Tale or the tales of the friar and summoner, it is the Church as
an institution, as well as individuals, which is called into question. The
shipman's merchant represents also his class and profession, as do the rest of
Chaucer's cllaracters,74 His target is the nature of authority within society. In
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the individual characters are funny in
themselvcs, but the overall target is the same as Chaucer's. As with mcdieval
comic tales, the members of the audience laugh at themselves, but they are
also being required, through the medium of humour, to engage in serious selfexamination and social criticism.
The quest is ultimately fruitless. Alihur and Bedevere reaching Castle
Aaargh to find not the Grail, but the Frenchmen who had insulted them earlier.
This echoes Malory, whose interest was chiefly secular, for whom the Grail
Quest was one of the main causes of -the downfall of Arthur's kingdom,7S
Malory presents the quest as being the result of immature bravado on the part
of the Knights of the Round Table. Gawain vows to find the Grail, aftcr which
each of the knights, not wishing to be outdone, all vow one after the other to
complete the same quest. Arthur then rebukes Gawain, and prophesi"es that this
will be his, and lheir, downfal1. 76 The Grail quest in the film, although given by
God (an obvious Terry Gilliam cut-out), is similarly pointless, being given to
the knights chiefly as "something to do," and because the audience expects it.
In the film's world, as in that of Malory's Arthur, knights needed something to
do in order to have a purpose, to maintain their unity, and to prevent their
chivalric, military ethos (Lancelot's idiom) from becoming a threat to the rest
of society.77 The film audience needs it in order to maintain their bearings
within the film itself, and later to understand that the quest is also theirs, both
inside and outside the film, They mllst continue where the filmmnkers have
been silenced by "the Establishment." Ultimately, their quest may also be
fruitless but, like the filmic· quest, it is still ennobling and worthwhile.
in the Morte Darthur, MaJory's purpose is also serious and didactic. It has
been noted elsewhere that the Arthurian legend, whether seen as historical
truth or not, was always a literary and ideological toO!.7!; This provides an
essential link between Malory and Monty Python, Although Terry Gilliam
went on to make other memorable films as a solo director, Monty Python and
the Holy Grail was very much a team effort, and is essentially a very British indeed, a very English - film. This "English Britishness" lies not only in the
nature of its humour and satire, but also in the way if makes use of the
Arthurianlegend; very similar, in fact, to the way in which Malory used it
In the Middle Ages, King Arthur was a political figure for the British. 1"'01'
the medieval English and Welsh in particular, he was an integral part of the
way in which they perceived themselves as a people, or as a nation under their
rulers,79 By the time Thomas Malory wrote, in the middle of the fifteenth
century, it was usual for politically consciolls English people to expect the
116
Studies in Medievalism
Subversion in Lancelof du lac and Monty Python
advent of a second Arthur, who would be their own king, This individual
would also be a great conqueror, who would take possession of the kingdom
of I"ranee, become Holy Roman Emperor, and drive the forces of Islam horn
the Holy Land to force them to convert to Christianity. He would then hand his
empire to Christ, who would combat and defeat the Antichrist, ushering in the
Last Judgement and the end of (he worlel. As Henry VI (1422--61, returned (0
the throne 1469--71) inherited the kingdoms of England and France, and had
been crowned in Paris, it was expected (and royal propaganda asserted) that he
would be this second Arthur, Arthurian propaganda, ciairning this identity
both for Henry and for his rival Edward IV (1461--83), was a feature of the
period of conflict in the 1450s and '60s (frequentlY termed the Wars of the
tm
Roses).
Malory completed his work in 1464, at the end of a period of brutal civil
war in which the aristocrtlcy of England and Wales was divided against itself.
A lack of authority at the centre of power led to chaos and anarchy, of which
Malory himself was probably a casualty. He tells us that he is a prisoner at the
lime of writing; it is not possible to tell whether he was a cOllvicted felon (one
of the "1'homas Malorys' who might be the Morte author was certainly a
rapist, thief, and all--round aristocratic thug) or whether he was simply
convicted for being on the wrong sick afteI" the battles of Towton in 1461 and
Hexbam in 1464, both won by (he Yorkist supporters of Edward IV. Malory's
own loyalties appear, up to this point, to have lain with King Henry and the
House of Lancaster,!(l It is unclear whether he was writing to exhort 'the
English and Welsh aristocracy to unite behind the new king in the national
interest, or whether he was exhorting them to unite behind the fugitive king,
Henry VI, who became a prisoner in the Tower of London aftcr his capture in
1464. Whichever is true, Arthur was a matter of current political import to
MaJory and his audience. He was the once and velY present king.
\>I/hat is important is that, for Malory and his contemporaries, the Arthurian
legend provided a rncans for considering and criticizing their own political
situation, and even their own rulers. Legend and associated prophecy provided
an anonymous and "safe" way of doing this in the face of what could be all
extremely repressive and dangerolls stale of affairs. Political arrests were made
during the 1450s, and the death penalty could be exacted for what were
perceived as treasonable \vords. t;:>. Maiory died shortly after the Morte Darthur
was completed. He may have simply died ill prison, or he could have been
executed by an authority who considered him a traitor. If the latter is true, his
treason may he seen in his book. In MOllfy PYfhon and the Holy Grail, the
legend is being lIsed in the same way as fhat in whieh Malory and his
contemporaries used i1, as a means of criticizing contemporary society and
politics. It is no longer linked to the belief in a second Arthur's eminent
coming, of course; but the Arthurian world can still be read as an analogue for
contemporary Britain, The legend had been part of the Victorian ideology of
imperial Britain, an ideology under attack from British satirists and
filmmakers during the 1960s and '70s.';:; Middle-class values, middle-class life,
aspirations and pretensions, middle-class foibles, didacticism and the "stiff
upper lip" arc all attacked in Monty Python, as are ll1iddle~cJass sexual
anxieties. It is the bourgeois hypocrisies of the older generation, those in
authority, which are being critiqued by the Python humour. For the Python
team, as for Malory ~ and Chaucer - and their audiences, the Arthurian legend
is about "Englishness," or "English-Britishness."
The criticism of medieval and contemporary society has the effect of
demonstrating its inherent worth. There is a positive value in "Englishness"
(and in "Britishness"); this sociel"y needs to be freed from the repressive evils
it has inherited from its past. This will result from the redemptive actions of
individuals, accepting one another and working together as a society, as King
Arthur and his Grail knights do. In MOllty Python and the Holy Grail, the king
and his knights bicker and jostle for position, complain and insult one another,
but ultimately work together in the quest Whilst exposing the injustices.
repression and imperfections in society, medieval humour affirms its essential
worth.
Medieval society, like a medieval cathedral, was based upon the bair-lncing
of forces, The powerful social forces represented by the carnivalesque
imagination, as revealed in the comic fabliaux stories, arc both balanced and
controlled by the more restrained, authoritative (and thus constrained)
discourses. Bresson's medieval edifice depends upon a sparse reduction or his
material in both mise~e"h~'ce,1e and dialogue; however, he shows no less of a
didactic richness in his usc of topical allusion, translated into his film's motifs
and metonyms. This brings him into close association with his source text, the
Mort Ie roi Arlu. 'fhe binding agent here is the persistent deployment of irony,
which, in both prose romance and film, serves to subvert the ethos of the
Arthurian world. On the othel' hand, the world of Monly Pylhon and the Holy
Grail is characterized by a multiplicity of images, forms and voices that
threaten to reduce the Arthurian ideal to chaos. This is very similar 10 the
ideological and literary strategies of the carnivalesque in the Middle Ages,
which is both an affirmation of and a threat to authorized versions of Arthurian
romance. Both films subvert the (irail image, In Lance/ot du lac, it is
iconically present only as long as the title credits crawl across the screen; in
Monty Python, it is reduced to a Gilliam cartoon and an elusive beacon on top
of Castle Anthrax. Both films exemplify the truth of Guenicvre's assertion that
nobody can ever fully possess the Holy Grail.
118
119
NOTES
'~'his article stems ill part from research supported hy the Higher Education Funding Council
for EngJ:llld, carried Ollt in conjullction with the preparation of a series of online University of
Bull honours courses 011 "The Middle Ages Go to the Movies." As the material developed it
was presented and discussed at various research scminars, including II workshop session <llihe
2002 Leeds International Congrcss 011 Medieval Studies.
120
r
Studies in Medievalism
1
1. Kevin J. Harty, The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western alld I:.:asferll EuroP('(JII,
Middle Eastern, and Asian Films Ahout Medieval Europe (Jcfkrsoll, NC: McFarland, 1999),
2. James Quandt, "Introduction" \0 his edition of collected cssuys, Robert Bressoll
(Toronto: Cinematheque Ontario, 1998), 1.
3. Keith Reader, Robert Bresson (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000), S.
.
4. Even in Reader's excellent and judicious monograph, the chapler on Lance/or tlu ~ac IS
decidedly olllhc short side (1 J6~-25). Arguably the most stimulating sc-holarl~ p~ccc J~ubhshcd
on the film is Kristin Thompson's essay, "The Sheen of Armour, the Whl1llll(~s of Horses:
Sparse Parmnclric Style in LlTlcclot du lac," in Quandt, Robert lJn.'s.w)II,. 339-71...
".
5. Reader suggests (l18) the terlll mMiil'al vague as an appropnate.descnptlon .of tlus
approach to the historical paiiL Julic F. Cadell pO~J)ts t,(~ Bresson's ~\'ay 01 dCC~)JlStl~UC~I:lg th(~
Arthurian legend ("Decapitation and Dc.eonstrucllOll: I he Body of the Hero !~l Llllcclot dll
lac," in The Arthurian Rel'ival: Essays on Form, Tradition and TrOtH:formatlOJ/, ed. Dcbra
Mancoff INY: Garland, 19921. 266-·82), but is 1css than precise on some aspects of the
medieval material.
6. J. Magney, "L' cxpcricnce intcricurc de Robert Brcsson," Cit/(>m, 294 (198~): 19-26 (7..0,
22).
.
7. In 11 promisingly titled artiete bascd all his experience of teaching Art!Jurian slmhes at
C\evc\and State, Bruce Beattie makes a disappointillgly brief rcfercuce In Bresson's "grcat and
difficult film" ("Arthurian films and Arthurian texts: problcms of reception. and
interpretation," Arlhllrian Interpretatiolls 2 (1998): 65·-78. Evel: N~rri.s.1; ~~acy, 1ll0S~ emlll~1l1
of Arlhurian scholars, chooses not to analyze Lance/ot till 1(/(' III Jns IllCISlve nnd stllnulatlllg
"Arthurian film and the tyranny of lradition," Artlwrian /lIfl'rpretatioIlS 4 (1989): 75-85.
S. F. de la Bretcquc, "Une 'figurc obligee' du film de chevalerie; Ie tournoi," in Le Moyt.~n
Age all cilJ(>ma (spe.dal double issue of l,es Calliers de la CiI/l!lIlatlu'qlle 42/43 (1985): 21·...{)
(24).
" .
9 . .T.-M. Paquette, "L1 derniere metamorphose d(~ Lancc!ot: Rohert Bre~soll, III .Lanc(:lo(,
cd. Danielle Busehinger (G(")ppingen: KHll1l11crlc, 1984), 139-48; n~pnnted, With slight
modifications, as "La dernicre ll1ctlunorphose de Lancc\ot," in u~ Moyen Age all cinema, .113-.
18; and subsequcntly translated into English as an essa~, "The Last Met~ll1()rphmHs 01
L.1llcelot," in umcdot ((nd GlliIU!l'ere: A Case/wok, ed. Lon J. Walters (NY: (Jarl.and, 1996?,
19~-202. This is an illuminating article, evcn though Olle may dispute some oj' Paquette s
observations: his cxtension of the chess motif to suggest, in Bresson's usc of chiaroscuro
throughout the film, the over-arching symbol of a chessboard; and his citing of the troub~dour
Bertran de Born's .\·irl'ell((fs ill prai1ic of war as a medieval analogy to the riderless horsc 11I the
film's final scene. Rather limn Ihis pacan of bellicosc triumph, it might have been mor(~
appropriate to refer to the more somber and telling Old Frcllcl~ (~pjc l:lOti~' '-. r)l\f~icularl.y
striking in the twelfth-century Gormon! et lsembart - of thc slam warnor falling from 1m
horse, which runs free.
10.In a brief comment on lhi}; point, J. Rider, R. Hull and C. Smith, "The ArthllrianlcgcncJ
ill French cinema: Lanceiot du lac and Perceval Ie Ga\1ois," in Cillema Arrhurianu. /!'\'says 011
Arthllrian Film, ed. Kc'Vin J. Harty (NY: Garland, 1991),41··-56, nole that Bresson has
changed the original elegiac ambience of tbe Mort Arlu into something far bleaker Cmediev.aJ
literature tHlIlsfonned into a cincmatic mask for twentieth··centIlfY alienation") (52). Therc IS,
however, more to be said here, and in terms closer to th(~ spirit of the Middle Ages themselves.
Paradoxically, but with ullerring intuitio]\, Bresson has efrcctive~y r~placed one set of
medieval cOllvcntions and symbols with another: discarding thc dylllg fall, he chooses the
grim closure of the epic lext, bloody and piled with corpses.
..
.
.'
,.
J J. These cinematographic amplifications arc fully ill the SplfI! of medlCval literature. I he
character of the old woman or holy hermit who prophesies is a collveJltioll of the Matt~r of
Britain; while a classic cxampk of the ominous tempest is found. in the most famous .0J Old
French epics, The Song of Rolund: "En France ell ad mult Olerv~~IIJ\ls lurment I Orci', I ad de
tuneire e de vcnt I Pluic1i e greisilz desmeSllfement I. ·1 (0 est 11 grallz dHlors pOl" la mor! de
Roland" (vv. 142~--45, 14~7)·- "All France is hit by a terrifying storm: thundcr and tempests,
drenching rain and haill ... l. This is heavcn's great mourning for the dcath of Roland" (OUf
translation).
Subversion in Lance!of dlilac and Monly Python
121
12. M. Esteve, Rolwrt Bresson, Coli. Cin/III(J d'(Jf~i()lIrd'hllj (Paris: Seghers, lIew cd.,
1974). II may he noted that Denis de Rougemont's L'AmoIlT ell'occident (Paris: PIon, 1939)
was reis1iued in a second edition in 1956 (Pm'is: UGC),just as Bresson was first planning his
"Grail" film.
13. R. Prcdal, Rohert Bressoll. L'Al'elltllre in((>riellre (published as a special issue of
L 'Anmt-scene Om'ma 408/409, 1992), 104. Prcda!'s short section OJ1 Lance/Of dll lac (102--8)
is a reworking of his earlier "Poctique de Robert Bresson: expression plastique et approche de
J'indiciblc dans Lancelot du lac," ill Recherches ef Travaux 37: HOllunage ,1 Robert Deschaux.
Pocsic: Le corps et l',in1C-. 2; Du Moyen Agc au XIXe sjcd(~ (Universitc Stcndhal Grenoble
Ill, 1989), 103-16.
14. J. Sl~mo!uc, Bressoll oul'ac((: pur des metamorphoses (Pari1i: Flammarion, 1993),212,
217. SCll1oluC's perceptive but brief Botes (kserve to be expanded: DUrer's "The Knight,
Death and the Devil" oilers lin image (if llot all i1l1ag('ry, which is tliat of the miles christi's
chivalric steadfastness) remarkably dose to a number of the film's forest scenes (sec below);
and to Uccel!o's general panorama of armollred corpses may be added his foreshortcned
':dose .. up" of the slain body stretched 011 the ground .- very similar to Bresson's equ<ll!y
ioreshortelled shot of the dead Artus, crowned head toward !lS.
15, Thompson, "The Shct!1J of Armour," 346. In her penetrating study of BJ"C.1isoniHn
rcccriture, Thompson is perhaps over··dismissive ill assertillg (342) thai "A detailed
comparison f ... 1 with the events of La Mort Ie roi Arm would be pointless, since Bresson's
vcrsioll bears 1i0 little resemblance to the original ... "
16. Th.is {:QmJ~}(~llt, ~1l the .context of tlw gradual preparation of his l..anceiot projcct, was
made dunng all IIltervleW gIven by Bresson to .lcall-Luc Godard and J. Daniel Valcrozc
(Calliers till Cill(!mtJ 178, MilY 1966). Further testimony to Bresson's instinctive debt to his
mcdieval sources is given by Julien Gracq, in a perceptive rcvimv of Lance/of (/1( lac ("On
~.ompngl~onllage d'exception," Les Nouvelles Lith'raires, September 2~ 1974): on a visit to the
il.lm·set Ill. Brilll:llly,.with i.t1i mass of.medieval artifacts strewll all around, he WIIS struck by the
dlscOllcertll1g way III WlllCh the Middle Ages and the twentieth century had heen blcnded
l(:gether ("Ulle kermesse costulllce, qlli ljgzaguait entre les 1iiccles"), and concluded that the
(hrc.clor was transforming myth into a highly distilled rc-creatioll amounting to "Arthuriall
Reali};m" ~"Ja ll1at6rialisati~)Jl sans nllJJe complaisallce fceriqlle, Presque pauvfe mcme dans
son dcpollillemcnt, d'une lustoire qui n'ajam<lis eu ni modele, Ili lieu rce!..,"),
17. Thc film was shot in the Ile-et·ViJaillc, ncar Noinnolltier, with local Breton sailors and
villagers as extras; and Ihe traditional Breton bill iou, bombarde, and drum music - which cuts
in after the opening sequcnce, dnring the tournament, and announcing the final battlc - is
highly authentic (it should be compared to the recordings made by the' prize-winning Bagad
Kemper band of the early 1970s).
w ' 18'Yll carapace syn~~}()lism., running parallel (if on a somewhat lower level) to Thompson,
Ille Shc(;.JI ~)f Annouf (parl1Cularly 350---1), is.T. Rosenballl):), "The rattle of annour, the
S~)ft.l:ess. of H(~sh: Bresson's Lal/ce/ot du lac," in his MOllies as Politics (Bcrkeley: U of
Cahlol"ll1:1 p, 1997), 201~9. On tlw stricter matter of the "medievalism" of Bresson's ar1110ur,
s~ .I. Delmas, "Robert Bre1ison et ses armures," Jellne Cinema 82 (1974): 19-24; and, ill a
WIder context, H. Nice!, "Arms and Armor ill Ar!burian Film," ill Harty, ed., Cinema
Artlwrialla, 181-201.
19. The SOllg (~r Roland is itself punctuated by three key scencs of combat: the ambush at
l.~oneesvaux, and R()land's dcath; Charlemagne's defeat of the S<lracen Emir Baligant; and the
imal duel between Thierri d'AlljOll and Pinahelto decide the fate of the traitor Gaudoll. III all
anicle .on :'Variatiolls all Arthuriall Legend ill La/u.'e/ot tlu lac: and E\calihur," in Popular
Arthunafl Traditiolls, cd .. Sally K. Slocum (Bowling Green, OI-I: Bowling Grcen State UP,
1984),. 144-53, Ri.eh<~rd ~.:. Bart()l~e llot~s all incidence of triple 'Variation, but docs not pursue
the POlllt beyond hnklllg lito the formalism of Bre1iS(}ll'S cditing technique.
.20. This point is Imide by Bresson in an interview with Yvolllle Baby ("Du fer qui fait du
hnllt," I.e MOl/de, September 29 1974: J 5).
, .21. R.l~ress()J.I,.N()tes sllrle ciflematograp!w (Paris: Gallimard, 1975),60: "Cc qui est pour
I (('line dOlt pas liHre double emploi avec sc qui est pom I'oreille."
?-2. Significantly in this context, many of these c1ose··ups wili focBs upon the human or
e(julIle gaze: the eye coming into its OWll.
f
Studies in Medievalism
122
. 1 ,'Uld allfal motifs
23. Thompson makes some very pcrc~Flivc !JOilliS 011 tIlCSt' visua
mllcttntin" the film ("The Sheen of Armour, 350--,)),
. ff
I b'
1 24 'A g~o{)d note on this particular phenomenoll of mcdicvall'Omancc texlS,'s °l,ere,( ~,
0
0
I
k
0
r
1'0"1
RCll'Irt
or
what
IS
be
lcvlllg,
Patricia Terry, "Hcaring and sccltlg. II; Ill' wor s o . c,
"
.
N(IIIWIlC(! Studies Anllua 4 (1992): 156-8.
C
I
I J" .\
25. This fornlul" is (0 be found throughout mcd.icval ,culture, from. HIll~ on PU) Ie
dcchrillg his feud against l{oiand in the sight and hcanng 01 <Ill (La Chw~s()11 dCI'I~_~)I()I'~d, ~ ",
0
. . "Dcsfi Ie!:> el,
. Slfe,
.
. " "I. () (CS
I' of 00,0,
~
lvel
C
6 ' 377S-7R'
voslrc vClalll,
I, 1'011
... ,'", Ie I)OIgncor ,
"
'.
3~ ,. .
'.
. I ('a -\cs l'aid c si nobilic baron" 1"1 hereby challenge Ihem, Slrc, III yOU!
l111l 1m cllmpaJgnull - J "
J II I .
)anions· Clnrlcs
:.. .," "I did challenge the- warrior Roland, and Oliver an a I lelr coml < •• " . ' . •
preseille·(:,
I
r I his noble lords"!) to the mi1it,H)' chronicler Robert de Clan InlpresslIlg
he<-ll"( t lliS, atH so ( ! ( ,
.,
.
"')
' I H ' [u veils lle
)on his re'\ders the unique naturc of what he is describllIg ( '\ nques encore...·
. ,
H}
",
_
I
AI
I
M·
-1'11
P'\I"is'
10/18
1991 '. chapter
··s" II 1 COllqu('Yfe de CO/l.I·talltiIlOple, e(.
cxam re
IC},
".
,
•
~ilI) ~) Rid]llnl-~)f Holdingham, author-designer of thc great Hercford Muppa m\lnd~, calling
"ho s-"" or re'ld his work or hear it described: "ou oyrollt Oil lIn-ont on
I, pmyels 0 roll
ror lie
"
.",-"
".
.,
.•
'
001) II)
veront" (sec Scolt D. Weslrelll, The l-ferejord Map (l uwho.ut. Brc!~ols, 2
.'
.
..
,
26. An examplc, drawn at random from La Mort Ie rOl ArIIJ: When th" 'lueel.1 he,lld 11!.1~
they had come, she was more delighled at their arrival. than she had ~vcr ~C:ll befor~ I.. :. J. Ai'
.oon as she saw him come in, she stood up 10 greet hun and hade hnn welcome. He lephe(
~GOd ~i~'e Y~;H joy.' '\ am assured of joy,' she replied: 'because you have, c(~me, and y~t :l
'xpected to be i·'lr removcd from it. However, now I Ihlllk I shall soon rcgam Jt through
e J I 0 I
'. 101" ,0"1)1'·"'1 o's if he did not know wlHIt she was talking about: 'My Lac y,
,"," '"'~, <.
.
.
'I
I I· 'I
,'I'
an I nong 1 you.
0
0,
'III 'lOY and can regalll 11 only through GO( anc I lIong I me.
IlOW IS 1 UI you have lost
. < • '
d
.
lIst saw
'What my Lord')' she replied. 'Do you 1101 know what has happene to me sll~ee you <, ,< ' "
Ie')' I:lc replied 'that he did 1101. 'No?' slJe said. 'Then J shall tell yon everythmg truthlully,.
~~~I;glish translation by James Cable, The Death (~r King Arthllr lHarmoudsworth: PengulIl
o
J
0
i
b;X
,I,
Classics, 1971, JOIl).
I G
"0'
ngnollll'ige
27. For example: Prcdal, 105; Scmoluc, 218-19; all( Jracq,
n coml < <
d'cxception."
.
, . I I I)" k"
UP
28. L. Hanlon, Fragl1u!1l(s: Bresso/J's Film Style (Rllth~rf{)rd, N.J: £-all" el,g I Ie lllson
,
]986); sce chapter 5, 'Chansons e1 gestes: voice and verse III Lancclo.t dulac (l5~-~7).
~
29 For further details of the artes, sec E. Faral, Les Arts poel/ques du Xl~r. (~ du X!lh
siecle.: recherclws et documents sur fa technique litterair.e till moyen llg,e (I~ans: C~I.aI.l;."1.0~1:
1924); and .I<1111es.T. Murphy, ed., Three Mediewd RhetOrical Arts (Berkeley. U of Call olma
0
P,1971).
·1" G
';-'
"Tl 'Cr'Ii!')"
30 A further example: Lancelot: "I lHlve seen the Gral ,
uelllevere:, Ie l < .
•
:) 1: Visual examples of tJllolllillatio in the film concern. all thc prevlOusl~. noted, arnHn~,
mounting alld jousting shots, which sci up a recognisable epic rhyt.h.ll1. [~~ ~~lOlC, gel~e~al, ~~r~~:
Hanlon e()mm~nts well on the camera's response to dialogue repetition ( Chansolls d t~esles,
161-3).
I
II cr more expansionist
32. The Old Freudl prosc lex.t of thc Mort Ie /'Oi ~rtl/ ~mp o?,s a 1 . ' .
.
.
,
devices of medieval rhetorical style: notably, ampldiea//O, dlgres.\"lo, :I.ud ~n~el ~J~)I~ltJO . . , r
'n Freda! notes to a certain extent the film's heraldry and lise of c\uv,llnc COiOUl-CO{ lllg
(Roi)~:~t Bressoll, 1(6). Thompson, "'['he Sheen of Armour," 351-2, has ~0l~1C go~)d con.lIne~::~
to make on Bresson's graphic palette of increasingly abstract colour vanaliOilS (mcludlllg
heraldic clemcllts).
.
f tl 'I ·fting
34. In his Notes Sllr Ie cillCfmatograpile (16)' Bresson conveys 1~ls con~ept 0 Ie .s,~! '.
contextual meaning of colours in words that (for all their c.ollnotatJOlls
l~()sHn~pre~~lOll1S~
acstllC-licism) would not have seemed oul of place in the Middle Agcs: ,l~ f<l~~1 q~I, ~Il:e lll~a~
se transfonne '\1\ contact (I'autres images C01l1me nne conlceur au COlltdCt d dutlCS conlcllls.
bl~\1 ll'cst'pas Ie meme hleu h col6 d'un vert, d'un .ial~ne, d'lIn.rouge. Pa~ d'.art san.s.
I;.ansfonn:ltion." l"An image is inevitably transformed when II COI~ICS Illlo cO>I~tac~ \~lIh .()t~lci
images, just as a colour is whell scI against ot~lCr col(~urs. ~ bl~~c IS no longel thr- Sdmc b ue
alongside a grcen, OJ' a yellow, or a red. All art IS transfOfl;!<lllon. 1
35. Paquetle, "La demicre metamorphose de Laneclot, 142.
2f
llll
I
Subversion in Lancelof du lac and Monty Python
123
36. BH~SSOIl has to a remarkable extent cOl1veyed in the visual terms of his film the deeper
meanings inherelll in the old words "wood" and "forest"; tlH~ former with its Old English
connotations of lll<ldness, the latter deriving from the Latin forest is, "beyond the palc."
37. Thompson ("The Sheen of Armour," 350-1) iucludes tents as one of hef cOllunented
motifs, noting their narrative fUllction, both as "perfeci blank background" material and as
flimsy symbols of the impermanenl.
38. "I wanted conslant anachronisms in the film. One can't hope 10 paint sincerely outside
of lhe present 1... 1 I had wall ted to llaille the film The Grail precisely because of the intensity
of its abscncc .. ," (Bresson, in his inlervi(~w with Y. Baby; English version as "Metal makes
sounds," fi"iddr4Visioll J3IJ9851:4-.~).
39. l\vo telling and contrasting examples: in Marie de France's Lai of Lallval, the magical
HppeaJ"allcc of the fairy mistress is immedialely defined by a Ja\lls1l deseriplioll of her
wondrous len I (vv. 76·-92); while in the latc twelfth-century Old French epic Gaydoll, tents
perform a more politic<lj functioll, as a conllncll\ary on unworthy favourites: "Cil sont dou roi
del tout issi privc I Que Bes cOllseuls ne puet SHllS euIs finer I Vee;>: lor tcates (tm. Ies confondc
Des!) I Com il SOllt pres de eel dcmaine tref ... " (cd. F. Guessard Hnd S. Luce IParis: Franck,
18621, vv. 64~·"7) - "These people arc so privy to the king that he call decide nothing ill
COUllSel without them. Behold their tents, God confound them all! Sec how close the v arc 10
the royal pavilion ... " (our translation).
40, With her usual perception, Thompson has lloted the vflriecl mOlif of birdcalls in the
film, but her points require further amdysis; I cannot agree with hel" condusiolJ that "they
oftell distract us more from the narrative action than their incssential and minimal function
would seem 10 warrant" (,'The Sheen of Armour," 353).
41. The filmic image of the crow is, coincidentally, remarkably close to thai of the grim
!;lle medieval Scots ballad of "The Twa Corbies."
42. Bresson, NOles sllr Ie dfll!matographe, 12.
43. Bresson, interview with Baby (English version), 5.
44. F. Baron, "Robert Bresson's Lance/ot du lac: that Holiow Ring," Take One, 7
(December 1974); 34.
45. Using images and phraseology from MaIory. Ultimately, of course, Arthur docs end up
with shit all over him -thrown by the "Frenchies" from the battlements of C<lstie Aaargh.
46. The importance of the "swallow" scene in rendering Arthur's status problematic has
beellllotcd, but not pursued: E Janc Burns, "Nostalgia Isn't What it Used To Be: The Middle
Ages ill Literature and Film," in G, Slusser alld E.S. Rabkin, cds" Shadows rf the Magic
Lamp: POIl/asy (fnd Science Ficlio/l in Film (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1985),86--97,94.
47. We lise the word "carnivalesque" in the manner of Mikhail Bakhtin, to denote the
popular, scatological discourse ... used ill Jitcra-,ure aJld the ar!.~ to "turn the world upside
dowl\." A good summary of this is contained in P. Morris, cd., A Bllkh!ill Reader: Selected
Writings r~f Bakhtil/, Merhw/ev, al/d V%shill(}v (London: Edward Arnold, 1994), 194-244.
The generic termfahlialix has frequently been Ilsed to denote short narratives of this type in
medieval literature: see.l. Hines, The Fab/jull ill England (London and New York: Longman,
1993). Howevcr lhis article refers illst(~ad 10 "comic" tales or stories, as this form of humor is
discursive, rather than generically based. See 13..1. Levy, The Comic Text: Patlems and Images
ill the Old Fr('llch Fabliaux (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000). This will be further eX\(:lldcd, to
include the hUlllor fOHlld in golianlic poetry, such as "The Land of Cockayue," and iii the
subversive (and frequently coarse) stories of Reynard the Fox, another amoral, successful
trickster in the same mould as the human iwroes of the /lIUfaux. The word fab/iall itself i~
taken to indicate only a short prose narrative, conforming 10 the type described by Hilles and
Levy (no! strictly its content). An approach in this direction has been llHHh~ ill E. Bishop,
"Bakhtin, Carnival and Comedy: The N('w Grotcsque ill Monty Python and fhe Holy Grail,"
Film Criticism 15 (1990): 49·-64. For another, more general approach, see R. Slam, Subversivc
Pleasures: BaklJlil1, Cultural Criticism, alld Film (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins
UJliversity Press, 1992),85-·115.
48. The cditioll of the Morte Darthul" cited is 1-1. Cooper, c(L, Sir Thomas Malo,.y: LA!
Morte Dan/Ill!", Oxford World's Classics (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998). The Callterbury Tales is
cited from Lesley A. Coote, ed., Gerfp·(\, Challcer: The Calliahury Tales, W(;rdsworth
v
T
Studies in Medievalism
124
Poclry Library (Ware: Wordsworth, 2(00), Oil the biu;is that these Iwo c(~i,!ions <lrc both
scholarly lind readily available. For Reynard SC-(: D.D.R. Owen, cd. and trans" 1 he Romance of
ReVllard the Fox (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994), and "The Lmd of Cockaync" is ill R.H.
Rt;bbins, cd., Historica( Poem.\" (~r the XlVIII {llld XVIii Centuries (New York: Columbia UP,
1959), 121~7.
49. Sir Robin "had nearly stood up \0 the viciolls chicken of BristoL" This subverts the
medieval practice of commemorating auspicjous c-xploits of the family Of individual ill its coal
of arms; for example, crusading faniilics or individuals lIsing the "moor's head" on their coat
or arms, or on their crest or supporters.
.
50. It also offers the opportunity for a quick .. witted squirc to make a profit by successfully
offering (I solution. The Callterbury Tales, 253 ..-70 for The Summoner's Tale, in particular
267·-70.
51. He turns out 10 have a repressed, dowdy-looking wife who calls him "Frank." He is an
obvious caricature of the "experts" who frequently [lppeareJ Oil "serious" BBC educational
and documentary progmmmes, and on highbrow quiz programmes such as Animal, Vegetable,
Mineral. Such experts, along with pretentious arls interviewers and eritic.'i, were frequently
satirised in Mom), Python's Flying Circlf.)·.
52. La Damoisellc qui lie POOlt o'ir parler de {outre (the YOllng woman who couldn't bear to
hear aboll! fucking): W. Nonmen and N.H ..l. van den HoogaarJ, Nouveall Reel/eil Complet lies
Fabliaux, 10 vots. (Ass en: V[ln Gorclllll, 1983-98),4, no. 26 (three parts); discussed in Levy,
'111<' Comic Text, 199.
53. Tlw Canterbury Tales, 133--46; the hopper is shaped !ike a woman's vagina:
"By God, right by the hoper woll stande,"
Quod John, "and .'Ie how that (he corn gas inne;
Yet sawh I never, by my f[lder kynne,
How that the hoper waggis to and fra."
71u! Canter/J/Ir\' Tales, 138. The hoppcr "wagging to and fro" is a reference to the fcmale
sexual "itch," a fr~quent subject of comic tales. Other w()rd~images include spadc (cun!) aud
purse (scfolllln).
"Yc, for" grote unbocie thi purs!"
"Nay, nay," quod he, "Ihan have I Christ's cursl"
"The ParJoller's Talc," The Canterbury Tales, 485. Oil marked language in general, sec
Hines, The Fabliall ill English, IG~·23.
54. For Ihis lind other Arthurian and mmancc associations, sec Levy, The Comic Text,
127-42. The story of Excalibur is to be found illi-<! Morte Darlhut, \>.29.
55. The w{)rd is tlH:\l used as the verbal equivalent of a gun or baseball bal whcn Arthur
and the knights usc it as an instrument of terror against an old lady, in a mobster-style
extortion sccne.
56. In "The Miller's Tale," Nicholas extends his lovcr's ";use-·kissing" joke too far and
ends up with a rcd-bol ploughshare in his rump, and in "The Rceve's Tille," the miller is so
pleased with himself for tricking the students {hat h.e m~t only. eI.1d.s. up ~ei!lg cnck,olded and
beaten up, hut loses his (},lUghter's value and the gall1s from IllS mJlllll tnck. The Canterbury
Tale.I·, 107--46.
57. For an interesting exploitation of this assumed knowledge, .'iee David D. Day, "Mollt)'
Python <lntlthe Medieval Other," in KJ. Harty, r.d., Cillema Arthuriana (New York: Garland,
1991),83-92.
58. This also has medieval analogues: "Nor ever that day wen: the Venetians or the French
abl(~ to accomplish anything at the walls of the city. When the Greeks saw them withdrawing,
they began to hoot anJ call Ollt more lustily than a great deal, and they mounted on the wall
and let down their clonts and showed them their backsides." Roherl ofClari: the Conquest (d
Constalltinople, trails. E.H. McNeal, 2nd cd. (Toronto: Octagon, 1996),93.
Subversion in Lancelol dulac and Monty Python
!
125
59. Arthurian enthusiasts in the audience would recognise this as the divine boat ill which
Perceval and Bors de Gal1is sail to San-as, homc of the Holy Grail. I.e Morr [)arlhur,
~'alahad.
J75-80.
60. The ultimate irony of this presentation
same castle .'ihol from JiffercllI angles. The
castl.c.'i (~I the last n~jn~llc, Oil the grounds Ihat
~~ laimc of the btuldmg." B. McCabe, Dark
of castle.'i is, of courSe, that mO.'it of them are the
National Trust Iwd denied access to their own
the filmmakers "wouldn't respect the dignity of
Knight.l- al/d /-Joly Fools (London: Orion, 19(9),
6.~. Tl~~ c!assi~~ m~~lie:al soci~l id~ology was l,lH.'ied upon "those who pray" (clergy) at the
top, tho.'ie who hght .(kmgs, klllgills) Il~xt, and 'those who work" (peasants) at the bottom.
Women, whatever their rank, werr_ deSIgnated as a class by themselves, at the hoilom.
Merchants werc problematic, not beiug included ill Ihis scenario. Chancer, son of a London
merchant, was very concerned about this, and addre.'ises both problems (i.e., the situation of
Iller~hallts and wOlllcn) in The Canterbury Talcoi'. The medieval estates and their relationship
to, C.ha~lCer ~~e ve.ry well covered in J. Manll, Chaucer and Mediel'al Estates Satire
(Cambndge: Cambndge UP, 1(73).
~ 62 . Tll,is was also a feature of MOllIY Python's Ffyil1/t Circll.\', in sketches such as "Hell's
(rrmHHC.'i.'
6.3. F~r La dame escoillicc, ill which a false doctor claims he will operate to remove a
donuucermg mothcr··in~law's balls, see Levy, The Comic TexI, 219-·20.
. 64. P ..Beidler, cd:, Geof}i"ey Chaucer: 111e W{te (~l Bath: Complelt', Authoritative Text with
BI{~<It.raphlcal (/I/(~ Iftstorical Colltexts, Criricol Hiswry, (JlId Essays from FiFe COl/temporarv
Critical Per!>pectll'es (Boston: Macmillan, 19(6).
.
65.1-<: Morle Dart/lltr, 100, 117.
6? A. Putter, "Arthurian Literature and the Rhetoric of Effeminancy," in Friedrich
W()l~zet~cl, (:<1., Ar~hll";~111 Romance and Gender: Se/ccrcti Proceeding,,: (~l the XVllth
IntunatlOnal Art/nmon Congress (Amslerdam: Rodopi, 1995),34-49.
67. M. Garber, Vested Interests: Cross-Dressing alld Cultuml Anxiet)' (New York and
Loudon: ROlltledge, 1992), 17.
.
68. Thesquire has hair as curly as if it had beell pressed:
Embrodid he was as it were a mede
Al ful of fresshe flomes, white and ~cedc.
Syngynge he was, or Oowtynge, al the day.
He was as fresh as is the moneth of May.
The CUI/labu!"}' Tales, 9.
, 69. Still popular in theatre and TV in the late I 96()s and early J 9703, for exam pic The Bill),
Cotton Band Show and SUllday Night at tlw London Palladium.
.
::0. For. a slighlly different perspective on this, see Burns, "Nostalgia ISH 'I What it Us(~d To
Be, espeCially 92-·7.
, 71. ,.1 .. ~·::)()k, ."Carnival <~J1~I.tl~e Canterbury TaJes: Only Equals May Laugh," in David Aers,
~~~' Muill.wl L,teraillre: (,/"ItICI.\"II1, Ideology (llId History (New York: Harvester, 1986), 169-"
72.
"Lo, such it is a miller to be falsi
And therto this proverbe is scyd ful soth·~
He thaI' nat weene wc1that evd doth
(He who do(=s evil had bel1(~r not e.xpect good to happen to him)"
The Canler/mr\, Tales, 146.
73. For .this see R.H. Thompson, "The Ironic T;adition in Arliwrian r1ilms since 19()O"
developcd l!l M. Bunlc, "Monty Python's Medieval Masterpiece" Arthuriall Yearbook ")
(1993),3-20, and ill D. Day, "MOllty Python and the Medieval Ollie;," 85-92.
.
.
, 74. Ma.lory examines love and loyally ill Laneelot's betrayal of his lord, the king, by his
,ldultery With the queen.
75. As, indeed, it is for Bresson and his source writer.
76. LA! Morre Dartilltr, 317-18.
. 77 .. In :n~(' C~lII:erlmry Tale.\", Chau~er's k..,llight bas to fight abroad, in crusades and foreign
e,lI11pmgns, III oHicr to he a perfect kmght. Chaucer mel John Hawkwood. For [Ill expJOJ"(ltioll
126
Studies in Medievalism
of the "mcrc{~llary" angle, set:- Terry JOIH:;';, Chaucer's Kl1ir:1u: The Portrait (~r a Medieval
Merccl/(/n' (London: WeidcnfcJd & Nicolson, 1980).
78. B\;rns, "Nostaigi<l Isn', What it Used To Be," 85-8. . . "
. . . . . ".
,.,
79. This is dcscribC{j by Susan Reynolds as "regnal sohd~\rlty; thell" l~tcn\lflCd~l()11 ~IS ':
group under their ruler: S. Reynolds, "Medieval Origines GentIUm and the COllllllUlllly of the
l~ealm" History 68 (1983), 375-90.
.
"
.
SO.' L. Co~tc, Propht'(v (llId Public A.ffairs 111 Late M('dleval Ellgland (York. YOlk
Medieval P in association with Boydell p, 2000), 195--234.
81 Le Mort/' Darthur, x-xi.
. _,
82' A woman who confronted Henry VI in the street about his trcatmcJl,t of Ucanor
Cobha'm, Duchess of Gloucester, was prcs!:Icd to dcatl~. Carnivalesque.d~monslrat](:ns ~ould be
vcry serious: in 1450 a shipman Hallled John Harnes waved a flml l~l front of He-nry -,,~,
announcing that Richard, Duke of Yor~ (potential rival.for ,the croW~l ~f >l:,nglalld~ ~ou~d ~ 1<11,1
his enemies ill 'I similar fashion. Harnes' subscquent1atc IS not recoldcu. III the S,uIH- ) C<11 ,
dt;ring tll(~' pop:i1;\!' disturbanccs known as Cade's Rebellion, a ,gro,up of unkl:ow~~ I~O~IS~­
br(~,tk~rs broke into the Duke of Bu{;kingham's park at Pcnsllurst III Sussex, havmg bla(.kl:d
uP'; and put Oil false beards; they the,ll declared th~l~lse1~es s~~.rvallts of the QU~,CI: of Ih.~
Fairies. R.A. Griffiths, The Reigll of KlIIg Hellry VI: Ihe I!.xerClw oj Royal AuthOl/f) , 1422
]4M (London: Belin, 1981),253,685,643.
83, J. Rich;mls, Films and British National Identity: From DickclIS (0 Dad's Arm)'
(Manchester aud New York: MandlCsler UP, 1997), J 47-72,
"Historians ... Will Say 1 Am a Liar":
The Ideology of False Truth Claims in
Mel Gibson's Braveheart and Luc Besson's
171e Messenger
A. E. Christa Canitz
ClHims of historical authenticity are common fare in medievalist movies, but
though misleading, they are usually harmless. The Dircct'or',<:; Commentary
accompanying the DVD version of the obviously fictional Robin Hood: Prince
of Thieves (1991), for example~ spells out the difficulties in making the movie
"authentic," including the factoid that the research done specifically for the
movie showed that "[medieval] cows were the size of Great Danes" and that
the crew had to scour Europe not only for these small cows but also for
particularly "small pink pigs" in ordet to create an accurate image of medieval
l
England. Yet similar claims arc being made in supposedly historical films,
too, and at much greater length and seriousness, regardless of the actual degree
of authenticity.2 What is more important, however, is that such false truth
claims mask the tendentious ideological messages conveyed by ostensibly
historical films which purport to recover and even restore historical truth in a
new, essentially oral medium accessible to a mass audience,
Mel Gibson's Braveheari (1995) and Luc Besson's The Messenger: The
i
,)'IO(V q/ Joan of Arc (1999) arc excellent examples of this genre.- While
Gibson, in the Director's Commentary, casually admits that certain scenes in
the movie depart from the historical record and that sllch changes were
consciously introduced "in order to be more cinematically compelling," in the
Bravehearl Featurette "A Filmmaker's Passion: The Making of Bravelzeart/'
he stresses the vast quantities of historical research that went into the making
of this film, and he scrupulously acknowledges the apparently single departure
from historical accuracy: the spiked leather wristband with which William
Wallace shreds the face of many a hapless English soldier is not based on any
historical prototype but is Gibson's own invention, Similarly, the Director's
Commentary on Luc Besson's The Messenger goes to great lengths to
emphasize the historical authenticity of the movie as a whole and of its details,
and to stress the original research that has made it so; indeed, the Director's
Commentary is essentially a history lesson, telling viewers about fiftecnth-