Paper Topic:

World Literature

br World Literature

The Disempowerment of Femininity in Malory 's Quest for the Holy Grail Many obvious connections exist between the objectification of women in Sir Thomas Malory 's Le Morte Darthur and the deepening importance of Christian , as opposed to pagan , mythologies on the cultural and social mores of Europe in the Middle Ages . Among these obvious connections is the equation of femininity and more specifically feminine sexuality with a corruptive sense of "worldliness " which can be understood to represent the connection in Christian consciousness between the earth and the

Christian concept of sin . In pre-Christian traditions , nature was associated with sacred space "If there was an Indo-European homeland , there were no temples there , only landscape . Sacral area must therefore in origin be identified by geography , not buildings[ .] "nature ' inevitably underlies the choice of place in which to perform ritual (Dowden 27 . By contrast , in the Christian world-view sacredness was grounded in objects and in persons , rather than in the elemental forces of nature

While it may be obvious to even the casual reader of Malory that Christian mythology plays a central role in his articulation of the myth of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table , what may be less obvious is the complete manner in which Christian ideals and images are intended to replace older , pre-Christian mythologies and ideas which were rooted in a feminine sense of nature and in the ancient Goddess religions . In fact , it is not at all too strenuous an assertion...

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