While some modern Americans may think of Great Britain as the cradle of refined, European civilization, medieval Britain was a violent and war-torn place marked by endless invasions, broken alliances, and defeated hopes. Yet these ideas are still very much a part of our experience and culture, and an examination of the Arthurian myth can help clarify the historical and literary sources of such thinking. This idea of stouthearted men defending helpless ladies - along with the ideals of the Round Table and the Quest for the Holy Grail - may be somewhat clichéd in the twenty-first century, rooted in an imaginary past. Burke assumes that his reader will immediately understand what he means by "chivalry": defending the honor of a royal woman by means of physical force. Like many of his contemporaries, Burke had read Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, a collection of tales and exploits of England's greatest and most world-renown figure: King Arthur. That of sophisters, economists and calculators has succeeded and the glory of Europe is gone forever." In his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), Edmund Burke, the Irish philosopher and statesman, describes his disappointment in how the French thought of Marie Antoinette, their Queen: "I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with insult.
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