The Once and Future King Literary Analysis Paper The book The Once and Future King by T.H. White, takes place around the era of King Arthur in medieval England and France. The book is a lot about King Arthur and his story. The main theme to this book is chivalry, satire and medieval life. Many times in this book it talks about the theme. The tale of King Arthur has many different stories and versions. For example Chrétien de Troyes' Four Arthurian Romances and Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur. In all these versions the knights are seen as heroic and highly chivalric. It reads in book 1 chapter 2, “Before the clink there were just the beeches, but immediately afterward there was a knight in full armor, standing still and silent and unearthly, among the majestic trunks…All was moonlit, all silver, too beautiful to describe.” The knights in this book were so majestic they even had their own chivalric code. The code was about medieval tradition of knighthood. It entailed ideals of honor, courtly love, courtesy, gallantry and service to others. Some of the people did question the knights though. For example in book 2 chapter 2 Merlyn is talking about the chivalry. “What is all this chivalry, anyway? It simply means …show more content…
When everyone thinks of Medieval times, they think of jousting and knights. And that is exactly what happens in The Once and Future King. An example from that is when King Pellinore and Sir Grummore challenge each other to a jousting match in Book 1. “With a blood-curdling beat of iron hoofs the mighty equestrians came together. Their spears wavered for a moment within a few inches of each other's helms…and then they were galopping off in opposite directions. Sir Grummore drove his spear deep into the beech tree…King Pellinore, who had been run away with, vanished altogether behind his back.” I imagine the knights were very clumsy with all that heavy armour on and got winded very