Subject to His Subjects: A Performative Reading of the Socially-Constructed King Arthur Anonymous College

Fourteenth and fifteenth century England saw significant social changes in the rise of the merchant class, the expiration of feudalism, competition over nobility, and in the nation’s struggle to form a cohesive national identity and security. All of this resulted in overall social and political instability that caused citizens to reevaluate and reconstruct internal identities and roles in society, particularly as the class structure in England was constantly altered. Sir Thomas Malory himself appeared to experience and internalize this fluctuation and consequential confusion over identity, evidenced by his turbulent public reputation and lifestyle. The confusion and struggle over one’s personal identity and the identity society imposes upon one was represented not only through discourse and social relations, but also through literature. In his work Le Morte D’Arthur, Malory indeed deals with such problems of identity in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and within his own self by projecting the phenomenon of constructed identity upon his main character, King Arthur. In the following essay, I argue that Arthur’s identity is a social construct inextricably linked to his kingship that must be accepted, believed, and performed...