Quote of the Day

While reading aloud with my wife last night, I ran across this deliciously ironic passage from T. H. White's The Once and Future King:

"If it is difficult to explain about Guenever's love for two men at the same time, it is almost impossible to explain about Lancelot. At least it would be impossible nowadays [1940], when everybody is so free from superstitions and prejudice that it is only necessary for all of us to do as we please. Why did not Lancelot make love to Guenever, or run away with his hero's wife altogether, as any enlightened man would do today?

"One reason for his dilemma was that he was a Christian. The modern world is apt to forget that several people were Christians in the remote past, and in Lancelot's time there were no Protestants--except John Scotus Erigena. His Church, in which he had been brought up--and it is difficult to escape from your upbringing--directly forbade him to seduce his best friend's wife. Another stumbling block to doing as he pleased was the very idea of chivalry or of civilisation which Arthur had first invented and then introduced into his own young mind. . . . He believed as firmly as Arthur did, as firmly as the benighted Christian, that there was such a thing as Right."

To be honest, until I read this passage, I thought White's take on the Arthurian legends was too goofy to enjoy fully. I may need to reconsider that opinion.