Fashionable Beards and Beards as Fashion: Beard Coats in Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur

Abstract

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.