Straight Outta Camelot: What King Arthur’s Court Teaches Us aboutBlack Masculinity and Friendship

In the Middle Ages, male friendship bonds played an integral role in constructing one’s social and political identity. The Arthurian court, best known as Camelot, is one of the largest and oldest literary representations of a medieval male network. I argue that using both historical context and Sir Thomas Malory’s opus, Le Morte D’Arthur, allows a post-medieval reader to better understand and critically interrogate friendship and masculinity among Black men—a group that has not garnered enough positive, critical and intellectual attention within friendship studies.