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Fashionable Beards and Beards as Fashion: Beard Coats in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur
- Parergon
- Australian and New Zealand Association of Medieval and Early Modern Studies (Inc.)
- Volume 31, Number 1, 2014
- pp. 95-109
- 10.1353/pgn.2014.0006
- Article
- Additional Information
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In general, medieval literary beards represent a positive element of masculinity: the more magnificent the beard, the more magnificent the man. This link between physical attributes and masculine capability can be traced from the twelfth-century Holy Land to fifteenth-century England. Thomas Malory, in two separate episodes of the Morte d’Arthur, presents villainous figures who threaten King Arthur’s beard. These beard-related episodes both mark Arthur’s passage from an inexperienced boy-king to a proven leader and establish the Round Table as an ideal chivalric community.