Introduction (1998)

Introduction Ifhuman beings were not divided into two biological sexes there would probably be no need for literature. And ifliterature could truly say what the relations between the sexes are, we would doubtless not need much of it then either. —BarbaraJohnson Towards the conclusion of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, after Lancelot and Guinevere have been captured together in the queen's chamber, after Lancelot has killed the king's nephew, Aggravane, his great nephews Florens and Lovell, and thirteen other knights in order to make his escape, after the queen, sentenced to death, is rescued by Lancelot, who this time murders Sir Belyas Ie Orgulus, Sir Segwardes, Sir Gryfflet, Sir Braundyles, Sir Agglovale, Sir Tor, Sir Gauter, Sir Gyllymer, Sir Raynold, Sir Damas, Sir Priamus, Sir Kay Ie Straunge, Sir Dryaunt, Sir Lambegus, Sir Hermynde, Sir Pertolyp, Sir Perymones, and, most important, the king's nephews Gareth and Gaheris, Arthur laments: . . . wyte you well, my harte was never so hevy as hit ys now. And much more I am soryar for my good knyghtes losse than for the losse ofmy fayre quene; for quenys I might have inow, but such a felyship ofgood knyghtes shall never be togydirs in no company. And now I dare say . . . there was never Crysten kynge that ever hylde such a felyshyp togydyrs. And alas, that ever sir Launcelot and I shulde be at debate. (Malory, III, 1183-84) This lament has been a source of consternation for critics who, having idealized Arthur much the wayTennyson did, are at a loss to explain the ease with which the king dismisses the queen and the difficulty he has blaming Lancelot for the carnage that has taken place. It strikes us that the concerns voiced by the critics mask what truly disturbs them about Arthur's statement. In Arthur's lament we catch a glimpse of a sexual economy in which the bodies ofqueens and knights are seen as goods which maybevalued, compared, and exchanged. Furthermore, the hypermasculine world oftheArthurian court operates within a sexual economy of homosocial desire which attributes far greater value to relationships between men than it does even to the marriage ofthe king and queen. This sexual economy—the term we will use to designate the imbrication ofwealth, power, patriarchy, exchange, sexuality, and history ARTHURIAN* 8.2 (1998) ARTHURIANA in any social formation (Clark 71)—has been in place from the beginning of the Morte d'Arthur, silently negotiating Arthur's ascent to power. It is understood both by the subjects of Malory's narrative and by Malory's fifteenth-century audience, even ifit cannot be openly discussed. When it is, as it is in this passage, theeffect is jarring. Modern critics ofArthurian romance have not, until quite recently, vigorously pursued these intersections between sexuality and economy, apparently unwilling to give up their nostalgia for an idealized, hypermasculine—and heterosexual—society ofthe Round Table.1 It is, however, these intersections, the ways in which social constructions of gender are imbricated in the economic production and reproduction of culture that bring together the five essays in this special issue on 'Symbolic and Sexual Economies in Arthurian Romance.' These essays explore the sexual economies ofFrench and English aristocratic culture between the twelfth and fifteenth century, the culture that monopolized thewealth and patronage that enabled the production and dissemination ofthe Arthurian histories produced by Geoffrey ofMonmouth, Wace, and Lagamon and the romances produced by poets from Chrétien de Troyes to Thomas Malory. These histories and romances both reflected and refracted the cultural anxieties of this class—its nostalgia for a legendary past that never existed and its desire to maintain political and economic hegemony through fictions of aristocratic value and unbroken patrilineage—that were increasingly threatened by the Church and by the emergence ofa wealthy mercantile class. At the center of any sexual economy (as Gayle Rubin argues in her now classic essay, 'TheTraffic in Women') is sexual difference, which both produces and is produced by the sexual economy. Indeed, we use term 'sexual economy' to describe what Rubin calls 'the set of arrangements by which a society transforms biological sexuality into products ofhuman activity, and in which these transformed sexual needs are satisfied...