Malory’s Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur by Paul R. Rovang (review)

Abstract

PAUL R. ROVANG, Malory's Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015. Pp. xxi, 201. isbn: 978-1-61147-778-8. $75In Malory's Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur, Paul R. Rovang offers the first book-length study of Malory's art of characterization to be published since Robert Henry Wilson's exemplary 1934 study Characterization in Malory: A Comparison with His Sources. Rovang offers fifteen chapters that discuss sixteen Malorian characters: Arthur, Mark, Gawain, Lancelot, Tristram, Galahad and Perceval, Gareth, Kay, Dinadan, Mordred, Palomides, Guenevere, Isolde, Morgan le Fay, and The Lady of the Lake. Rovang's book differs from both Dorsey Armstrong's 2003 Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Kenneth Hodges' 2005 Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur in that it focuses on individual characters rather than groups of characters. It also differs from Beverly Kennedy's 1985 Knighthood in the Morte Darthur in two ways: it examines monarchs and women as well as knights, and it focuses on the development rather than the classification of Malory's characters. Rovang does not engage in source study; instead, he 'examines Malory's thematic characterization of individual rulers, knights, and ladies in keeping with the twin trajectories of his history of the Round Table and contemporary English history' (xv).By presenting a series of separate yet related studies of Malory's characters as either positive or negative examples of or influences on chivalry, Rovang reflects what Le Morte Darthur is: a 'history of the Round Table [containing] a series of self-contained yet closely related tales' that provide readers with models of virtue and vice (xvii). Rovang uses these studies to demonstrate how kings, knights, and female figures contribute to the creation, undermining, and inevitable destruction of the chivalric ideal that Arthur's Round Table fellowship embodies. As he studies an impressively large number of Arthurian characters, the author engages in close-reading of Malory's book and frequent citation of literary criticism on Le Morte Darthur that make this work an insightful and useful introduction for students.Most Malory specialists will readily accept Rovang's conclusion that Malory's Morte Darthur engages readers today because it develops 'flawed, believable, flesh-and-blood characters . . . [that] exemplify different facets and varieties of . …