The Knight in Rusty Armor

The self-help genre that 21st-century readers are familiar with “grew out of radical working-class organizations like labor cooperatives and mutual aid societies” (Wilson, Jennifer. “Useful Books.” The Nation, 2020). However, this best-selling genre now bears little resemblance to its grassroots origins. Through the latter 19th and early 20th century, various social factors pivoted self-help toward an audience of the “aspirational middle classes,” who believed the genre’s advice might help them “remake themselves so that their manners, interests, and values reflected those of the aristocracy” (Wilson). This turn associated the self-help genre with capitalism and the New Thought movement, which posited that disenfranchisement is individual rather than systemic, and “any individual could achieve prosperity,” gain capital, and climb socially with enough motivation and self-betterment (Wilson). The Knight in Rusty Armor pushes back against this trend in contemporary self-help literature: Merlin explicitly critiques ambition from the mind, which fosters competition and betterment for the accumulation of material goods and wealth. He instead promotes ambition from the heart, which serves communities and spurns social advancement and the accumulation of material wealth.

Many therapists and psychologists continue to recommend The Knight in Rusty Armor, first published in 1987. The Maynard Counselling Center writes that the eponymous knight is searching “for a way to free himself” and in doing so meets “his real self for the first time.” In this way, they continue, “[h]is insights become our insights as we follow along on this intriguing adventure of self-discovery” (“Our Book Recommendations.” Maynard Counselling Center). This is because the novel is an allegory: “[A] story that has a hidden moral or political message” wherein “characters and plot often symbolize real-life people, events, and ideas” (“Allegory.” SuperSummary). An allegory might have a character moving through physical, material spaces, but the conflicts and struggles they encounter are meant to be interpreted symbolically. Specifically, this novel is a conceptual allegory, a story whose allegory correlates to a larger moral meaning rather than specific real-life events. For instance, when the knight visits the “Summit of Truth” while he is scaling a literal mountain, his real challenge is accepting himself and the hard truths in his life. In this way, allegories use figurative storytelling to help readers gain skills to work through their own struggles.

While the “self-help genre” is relatively new, allegories with didactic moral meanings are as old as storytelling itself. Many global religious stories have allegorical meanings. The Knight in Rusty Armor is a work of 20th-century medievalism: a post-medieval genre that uses medieval tropes and figures. As such, its allegory is heavily reminiscent of medieval allegories found in texts such as William Langland’s Piers Plowman or Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame. As Merlin encourages the knight to seek truth by passing through locations like the Castle of Silence and the Castle of Knowledge, in Piers Plowman, the wise allegorical figure of “Holy Church” encourages the poem’s protagonist, Will, to seek “Truth” through locations like the “Fair Field of Folk” and the “Barn of Unity.” In allegorical tales such as these, physical locations are used to represent intangible entities that are useful for the protagonist’s journey toward self-discovery.