The Knights of Modernism

Book excerpt: According to the customary literary-historical and theoretical notion, the fact that the first modern novel represents a parody or travesty of the chivalric ideal merits no particular attention. Failing to become attuned to the real role of the chivalric ideal at the beginning of the era of the modern novel, commentators missed the chance to adequately review the role of chivalry at the end of that period. The modern novel did not only begin, but also ended with a travesty of the chivalric ideal. The deep need of a significant number of modernist writers to measure their own time according to the ideals of the high and late Middle Ages cannot, therefore, be explained by a set of literary-historical, spiritual-historical or social circumstances. The predilection of a range of twentieth century novelists for a distant feudal past suggests that there exists a fundamental poetic connection between the modern (or at least the modernist) novel and the ideals of chivalry.