ABSTRACT
A phenomenon such as this-the revival of a set of narratives to serve similar, but contradictory, ends-calls for a cultural as well as a formal analysis. One can easily imagine the lines on w hich such an analysis would be conducted. A structural anthropologist, for example, would want to speak of the ways that the Arthurian narratives served the classic function of m yth-m ediating cu ltural co n flict, recou n tin g and thus reconciling the antinom ies of experience: the conflict betw een civilization and violence on the one hand and ordered and destructive sexual passion on the other. Indeed, we could hypothesize that in a good Levi-Straussian manner the two sets of antinomies speak to, and release the tensions created by, each other. Thus the contradiction of a violence intrinsic to the civilization which conquers violence is displaced into the epic's erotic plot-it is the violence unleashed by sexual betrayal which brings down Camelot. Sim ilarly, the fear of sexuality inherent in the Guenevere plot and enhanced by the Galahad plot upon which Victorians fixated with particular fervor is released by the dem onization of the bestial heathen that the Arthurian knights battle and (intermittently) conquer.
