Arthuriana

The Round Table Medieval McGuffins: The Arthurian Model NORRIS J. LACY In our continuing efforts to comprehend and define medieval merhods of literary composition, it is crirical ro use, or at least consider, all the approaches available to us. Those approaches obviously include everything we can learn from medieval manuals of rheroric, from authors' own commentary, and other sources conremporaneous wirh the texts in question. However, in many instances a modern concept, even if drawn from a non-literary conrexr, may offer a useful key to the function of earlier texts. This essay will examine the potential applicability of a cinematic phenomenon to a study ofmedieval narrarive, and specifically to Arthurian romance. That phenomenon is the McGuffin. The concept of a McGuffin was fundamentally Alfred Hitchcock's, though it came to him as an anecdote recounted by a friend. As one version of the story has it, Two men were traveling by train from London ro F.dinburgh. In the luggage rack overhead was a wrapped parcel. What have you there?' asked one of rhe men. 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin,' replied the other. 'What's a MacGuffin?' It's a device for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'But there aren't any lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'Well, then, that's no MacGuffin. This anecdote, however amusing, does little or norhing to clarify the term, but fortunately, Hitchcock and others were sometimes less enigmatic and more informative. Here, then, is a preliminary but standard definirion for our purposes: a McGuffin is a plot element that exists to propel the story but that may have little orno intrinsic importance. 'For example, in Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest, thugs are on the look out for a character named George Kaplan. Roger Thornhill, an ad executive, gets mistaken for Kaplan and so he is chased instead. Meanwhile Thornhill himself rries ro find Kaplan who doesn't even exist.'4 An even mote revealing example, I believe, is from Hitchcock's Psycho. It is the robbery ar the beginning. That event leads us to expect a chase and an attempt to recover the money, but of course rhar is not at all what the film is about. The robbery serves simply to introduce Janet Leigh into the motel and into the shower, thus plunging us into the middle ofa situation that we could not have been led to expect. ARTHURIANA IJ.4 (2005) 53 54ARTHURIANA Hitchcock's definitions and descriptions were inconsistent and sometimes even contradicrory. However, in most instances his explanations do agtee on rhe cenrral point: a McGuffin is something—a person, an objecr, an event—the primary purpose ofwhich is to motivate the characrers and rherefore the plot, whether or nor that 'something' possesses any implicit significance. Hitchcock once temarked that in spy films the McGuffin is usually important or 'secret papers,' even though they are often imporrant only because someone has srolen rhem or is trying to steal them, and the consequences oftheir loss might be dire. We may not even know the subject of these documents, and even ifwe did know, what is in them is no more important rhan anything else that mighthe in them. As long as the characrers think something is important, and that 'something' propels rhe plot, we are dealing wirh a McGuffinization. A review ofa David Mamer film, Ronin, says much rhe same thing: The 'McGuffin,' coined by Alfred Hitchcock, is a plot device that drives the motivations of the characters. It is not important what the McGuffin is, or how it works—what is important is that the characters feel that it is important. In David Mamct's directorial debut 'The Spanish Prisoner,' the McGuffin is a mathematical model that would allow a company to profit from the stock market. In 'Ronin,' the McGuffin is the briefcase—nobody knows what's inside, but they do know that it is important enough to kill for it.' One additional example, this one drawn from the current television series 24. The recenr two seasons have presented national crises related to terrorism—a nuclear bomb in one, a deadly virus in rhe other. Each one provides the impetus for exactly one season (twenty-four...