What are the weaknesses of the round table?

Question

how do the actions of Sir Lancelot, Sir Gaheris, Sir Gwaine, Sir Tarquine and Sir Bors show the weaknesses of the Round Table King Arthur created?

Answer 1

This really sounds like one of those school questions meant to make you "open yuor eyes" and "find the deeper meaning". There is no deeper meaning. The chivalrous romantic epics of Arthur are pure fantasies, made up out of Alfred Lord Tennyson's dreams. The real Arthur was a post-Roman occupation Briton warlord who united the southern Celtic tribes against foreign invaders. He was Romanized, meaning that the Roman way of life was deeply enmeshed with the Celtic culture, and he therefore wore Roman armor, clothing, and bore Roman weapons. He commanded a sizeable force of calvary in order to move up and down the coasts at speed in order to repel invaders. France at that time did not exist, so there was no "Lancelot" - he and Guinevere were added centuries later to include the ideals of courtly love and chivalrous romance. There was no "Round Table", but there may have been a Roman style amphitheater for meetings and discussions. Such a room would have been circular, with ascending rows of seats so the speaker on the floor below could be heard by all - also giving rise to our saying, "the speaker has the floor" - as only the person standing on the floor could speak, if you were seated, you stayed quiet.

The "actions" of the "knights" only show the weakness that the author wants to show you, and any teacher that believes this nonsense of Tennyson's needs to open a book on the history of Rome and the history of Brittania, circa the Dark Ages to realize what Arthur must really have been.

Answer 2

1.Despite the king's careful preparations, the idea of a Round Table failed and it became a place of open dissent. . .

2.Though, the Round Table represented the world, it was an imperfect world, because the knights were flawed (except for Galahad, who was spiritually perfect). The knights were imperfect and had human weaknesses.

I hope it helps.

Answer 3

This is an odd question.

You are quite right that Lord Bearclaw’s description of his own version of an Arthur that he believes might have existed has nothing to do with Arthurian legend which does exist as legend. He knows magically that the real Arthur was Roman not a Briton culturally (though Gildas claims that Ambrosius as the last of the Romans) and that his wife was not named Gwenhywfar. But White’s Arthur was mainly based on Malory and White’s own imagination, with almost no Tennyson influence. The Lancelot of the Prose Lancelot is a Breton by birth an breeding, his grandfather having moved from Great Britain to Gaul and his father being in the service of King Hoel of Little Britain, Lancelot was not a Frenchmen in the modern sense, and the authors in any case almost always refer to “Gaul” rather than to “France’', and to “Logres” rather than to “England”, being aware of the anachronism of talking about countries by names that came into use much later.  Malory in his adaptation tends more the refer to France and England. It is as though Lord Bearclaw was ripping into a discussion of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet'' by pointing out that Hamlet in the earliest account is a dark-age prince of Jutland, not a prince of Denmark schooled at Wittenburg, and would point out that there are numerous historical errors in Shakespeare’s “Macbeth''. That misses the point of talking about the world of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” or his “Hamlet”.

But this looks like the kind of question where the teacher has his or her own interpretation already set out and expects you to find it, whether it is right or wrong.

In the medieval romances and Malory, the idea of knights battling for right isn’t much emphasized. But White very much makes Arthur’s idea to be the harnassing of might in the service of right. Lancelot messes up by falling in love with Guinevere. Sir Gawain is vengeful and careless in his use of violence. Sir Gaheris beheads his own mother. Sir Bors would rather die than fight his aggressive brother Lionel.

So all the knights fall short of the ideal knight that would be necessary to make Arthur’s dream work.

Sir Tarquine was an evil knight able to defeat all comers until he met Lancelot, which I suppose shows that might for right is likely to be defeated in the real world by might for wrong.

White's Arthur suggests trying to bring in religion, but that Quest for the Grail happens at that time and is a disaster for most knights of the Round Table. Arthur then turns to law as a source for attempt to enforce right, but finds himself imprisoned by his own law codes. This rather breaks his allegory, as the burning of a Queen for adultery was not a medieval law or custom. Even Malory makes clear that this was a supposed ancient custom of Arthur’s day, not of his own day.

I don’t know if this helps you.