La Mort le roi Artu by Karen Pratt

Abstract

MLR, I01.3, 2006 843 court. The discussion of misogyny is extended in the analysis of Biclarel, asHopkins indicates how Bisclavret has been deliberately manipulated to emphasize the negative portrayal of the wife. The editors of both volumes offer notes on the establishment of the Old French text, and Burgess and Brook also include notes to the translation. A challenge when translating medieval texts is inevitably whether to preserve the tone of the original or tomodernize it. Burgess and Brook opt for 'straightforward modern English' (p. 8), whereas Hopkins favours amore archaic style; both approaches lead to clear and accurate translations. The user-friendliness of the online version could be improved, to allow jumping between text and notes and by displaying the original text and the translation side by side rather than on consecutive pages, although the format may of course be manipulated once downloaded. The editors have made a welcome contribution to scholarship inmaking these laysmore readily accessible and have also expanded the range of texts available for undergraduate teaching, towhich the choice of text, format, and translations particularly recommends itself. UNIVERSITYOFWALES SWANSEA ALISONWILLIAMS 'LaMort le roi Artu'. By KAREN PRATT. (Critical Guides to French Texts, I37) London: Grant & Cutler. 2004. 1 I2 pp. /7.95. ISBN 0-7293-0444-2. Readers and students of La Mort le roiArtu encounter a text with a split personality: capable of being read as a narrative in its own right, the romance also constitutes an integral part of a larger literary picture, be that the compendium of the Vulgate Cycle, or indeed thewider context of medieval Arthurian legend. Critical approaches to the text must therefore strike a balance between a close textual focus that risks disregarding thework's context, and awider perspective thatmight sacrifice nuanced textual analyses for the sake of the broader purview. The opening chapter of Karen Pratt's study, 'Rewriting Arthurian Tradition', considers theMort as a branche of the Vulgate Cycle, while also citing this text within the wider framework of medieval Arthurian tradition, beginning with Geoffrey ofMonmouth and culminating in the Mort itself (only the Perlesvaus is denied a place in this otherwise comprehensive collage). More an introduction to the Old French Arthurian tradition than to the Mort per se, this chapter nevertheless sets the tone for a study that admirably strives tomaintain the elusive balance between text and context. In her second chapter, 'The Tragedy of Arthur's Death', Pratt opts to couch her analysis of the text's tragedy in an Aristotelian idiom, nevertheless acknowledging that the Poetics would have been unknown to the author of theMort. Exploration of the themes of sin and misfortune leads to the conclusion that the romance presents aChristian tragedy unfolding in the secular world, a suggestive appraisal that points up ever more opportunities for reassessing the text in itsVulgate context. The central narrative themes of sin and misfortune are carried over into the following chapter, 'Interpreting Arthurian History'. Here Pratt notes that medieval historiography has been shown to respond either to a Boethian or to an Augustinian philosophy of man's lot in the world, and goes on to suggest that theMort follows a primarily Boethian model in its representation of the ambiguous role of Fate in precipitating the demise of Arthurian civilization. A fourth chapter investigates the presentation of 'Arthurian Values' in theMort: Pratt reassesses some of R. Howard Bloch's canonical pronouncements on the failures of Arthurian society in order to suggest that simple moral and legal judgements are rejected by the Mort, which ambivalently elicits admiration for the very values that ultimately cause the undoing of the Arthurian world. This book will perhaps be of greatest interest to students who already have some 844 Reviews understanding of the broader landscape of medieval French Arthuriana and are seek ing to situate theMort within awider thematic and textual framework. Those seeking a close reading of theMort might find themselves disoriented by the detours into the work's context; however, the close analyses of the romance's structure in Chapter 5, 'The Art of the Prose Romancer', are more rigidly anchored in the narrative it self. Pratt's arguments are clearly presented and thoroughly cross-referenced to a comprehensive bibliography...