Natur(a) im Streik! Dystopische Verschränkungen von Ethik und Ökologie im Reich des Grals

Abstract

Dreadful atrocities committed by the nobility— brutal rape and malicious murder—make the Arthurian land of Logres, the Grail’s realm, lie completely fallow and depopulate; and ever since, the formerly magnificent Fisher King’s castle, the Holy Grail’s hoard, has been untraceable. Since then, the inhabitants of the unfertile land once chosen by God as the Grail’s home have been longing for a noble saviour, the world’s best knight (Gauvain and Perceval), to save them from their ecological crisis. This remarkable interweaving of ethics and ecology in Logres’ dystopian conditions within the French and German Arthurian epics (12th and 13th centuries) can be linked to two medieval concepts: first, the School of Chartres’ notion of Nature as a procreatrix put into office by God for the world’s perpetual renewal (creatio conti­nua); second, the transfer (translatio) of rule (imperium), learning (studium), knighthood (militia), and even Nature (natura) on their travels from region to region. Searching for a suitable home among the peoples, these concepts apparently choose a certain region as their temporary habitat in accordance with its ‘ethical fingerprint’. They will rest while the ruling classes in situ still behave in an exemplary manner. As soon as the local morals decay, however, these concepts (and Nature) will start migrat­ing to an ‘ethosphere’ that is more favourable to ethical living. Therefore, by remaining or withdrawing, they ethographically indicate that a certain region is thriving in the right way or not. The local nobility’s immorality renders the living space ‘ethically uninhabitable’ and, thus, deeply dismays Nature, prompting it to escape from it.