The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman

by Mark Girouard

Preface
Survival & revival
Sir Walter Scott
The age of Abbotsford
The broad stone of honour
Radical chivalry
The Eglinton tournament
Victoria & Albert
Muscular chivalry
A mid-century miscellany
The public schools
The return of Arthur
Modern courtly love
Knights of the empire
Playing the game
Chivalry of the people
The chivalrous gentlemen
The great war
Notes to the Text
Index
Photographic Acknowledgments

Genres: History, Nonfiction, British Literature, 19th Century, Cultural, Chivalry, Arthurian

320 pages, Hardcover

First published September 10, 1981

About the author

Mark Girouard FSA was a British architectural historian who was an authority on the country house, and Elizabethan and Victorian architecture.

Reviews

[Wealhtheow · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girouard set out to trace the resurgence of chivalry in England. The book starts out well, with a description of the most popular play of 1912, "Where the Rainbow Ends." In it, a collection of school children battle the Dragon King and their aunt and uncle, who are cruel and unpatriotic. With the help of St.George and a pet lion, they defeat the villains, and "audience and cast sing the National Anthem together." Girouard points out the chivalrous origin of various other ludicrous events of the time (Titanic, the Eglinton Tournament, etc). After Elizabeth I, chivalry fell out of favor, and only revived in the early nineteenth century. A national obsession with the (very idealized) medieval era began. Chivalry led to the formation of the Boy Scouts, sports as a school activity, trade as ungentlemanly, colonial rule, and especially the crazed way Great Britain entered WWI.

The thesis is interesting and the period a favorite of mine, but I had a hard time getting through this book. One problem was that Giouard flits about in time a great deal; tracing the development of knightly metaphors is made far more difficult when the writer suddenly jumps 50 years. The other problem I had was that at least half the chapters were almost catalogs of poets and pieces of art--very little analysis, but long lists of names.

[Beth TeVault · Rating 3 out of 5]

enjoyed this immensely, but can't imagine a less critical perspective on wealth, class, empire, gender.... With that caveat, meticulously researched, engagingly written, and beautifully illustrated.

[Audrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Useful reference on the chivalry revival

[Mary Catelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about chivalry, but not as it was known in the Middle Ages, as it was revived in the Victorian era -- as an ethos rather than a military code -- in Great Britain.

It touches on Sir Walter Scott who revived interest in it despite his distaste -- he regarded the code of manners of his own day as immensely preferable -- and Kenelm Digby, whose Broad Stone of Honour was immensely popular and treated it as an ethos applicable to the modern day and indeed preferable to it, and whose disdain for making money and trade, and intellectualism, were deeply if not always fortunately influential. Describes the unfortunate Eglinton Tournament and how Victoria came to be interested in chivalry and medievalism (chiefly Albert, actually).

And it touches on how it influenced all sorts of areas. Architecture, some -- public schools, Boy Scouts, Muscular Christianity, politics of all stripes, Imperialism (where it was less common as a motif, Imperial Rome being favored, but still appeared), Arthurian literature, and courtly love. (The mainstream Victorian chivalry emphasized chastity far more than the medieval version, but there were strains of courtly love, too.)

And World War I and how hard it was on the chivalric ethos.

An interesting study in the evolution of an attitude and how it got used in all sorts of setting and what parts got emphasized -- or used at all -- where.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was given me by a person I met at a local cafe. Both of us were studying philosophy in graduate school at the time, me at Loyola, he at DePaul, the ice being broken between us when I inquired about the book he was reading (Hegel...or was it Heidegger?) at the table beside me.

Stockton was an impressario in addition to being a student, sponsoring early music performers appearing in Chicago and recording their work. Indeed, he was into lots of things antique and most things English. Nowadays he lives in Great Britain.

This book is representative of an aspect of Stockton's interests at the time. It's an example of "reception studies", which is to say the study of the history of how history is creatively appropriated. In this case it's the 'history' of King Arthur and his knights in particular and of medieval chivalry in general as they were seen and emulated by elements of the English upper class during, mostly, the nineteenth century. As might be imagined, the book is at once amusing and rather sad. It also raises consciousness about how we may also be apeing imaginary pasts and their heroes.