Degrees of Veracity in the Morte Darthur: Elements of Malory’s Chronicle Style*This article began as a contribution to the round table in honour of Edward Donald Kennedy on the topic ‘Chronicles and Romance’, which took place at the XXIIIrd Triennial Congress of the International Arthurian Society in Bristol (2011), and remains dedicated to Professor Kennedy both for his scholarship and

Abstract

Abstract: Within his masterful use of the chronicle style, which imparts at least a provisional truth value to the subject, Sir Thomas Malory’s prose implies varying and shifting levels of veracity. The Morte Darthur’s famous incipit ‘Hit befell’ – a characteristic feature of the chronicle style – may suggest the matter’s historical veracity on the one hand, even if, on the other, it may signal an unhistorical tale imitating an historical one. Again, Malory consistently backs up the authority, or veracity, of a statement with reference to ‘the French book’. Elsewhere he purports to relate only ‘auctorysed’ events. However, when he is narrating King Arthur’s death, Malory must distinguish the truth value of his account from that of ‘men in many parts of England’ who say that Arthur will return from Avalon and ‘he shall wynne the Holy Crosse’. Malory’s own historiography requires that he reject such hearsay. This, however, is a most cherished piece of hearsay; as I argue, Malory’s prose reflects the care with which he must proceed to its rejection. By what standard, in a text founded overwhelmingly on romance traditions, does Malory sort out the ‘real’ story of Arthur’s death and burial from the ‘false’ one? More generally, at what point before Arthur’s death did we enter a self-consciously historical or unhistorical representation of history? What consistency can we impute any particular level of truth in the Morte? The rhetorical conventions Malory uses are those of a chronicler, but, as I shall argue, the romance-nature of his material keeps him, and his reader, alert to just such questions.