Response to 'Response to Arthuriana Issue on Adultery'

Abstract

THE ROUND TABLEI41 RESPONSE TO RESPONSE TO ARTHURIANA ISSUE ON ADULTERY The 'Response to the Arthuriana Issue on Adultery' (7.4, Winter 1997) by Maureen Fries itselfrequires a response on several grounds. First, even though this special issue as a whole is decidedly histoticist in critical approach, Fries's response is consistently a-historical. She fails even to mention the opening essay by the distinguished historian.Vernon Bullough, and consistently overlooks the historicist approaches of the other three essays: Wilson-Okamura relating his interpretation ofArthurs adultery in the Post Vulgate Cycle to the renewed interest in biblical history in the thitteenth century; Sturges relating his reading ofLancelot and Guinevere's alleged adultery in the Morte Darthur to developments in late medieval philosophy; and I relating mine to late medieval chivalric culture, the growth of English nationalism and the rising popularity of contemporary treatises on the mixed life for laypeople. Rather than consider the merits of these historicist readings, Fries contradicts the authors, particularly Wilson-Okamura and myself: we are wrong and she is right. Next, Fries allows her irritation, particularly with my historicist 'mis-readings' of the Morte, to affect het professional standards and critical judgment. On one occasion she puts quotation marks around a paraphrase which distorts my meaning and then inserts an editorial '[!] 'in the middle ofthe misquotation (93, citing 71). On another she reveals both het irritation and possibly het ignorance of late medieval chivalric culture by protesting that 'Honor has nothing to do with 'Arthur's adultery with the wife of King Lot, his greatest vassal (94). Even more regrettable, Fries's angry assumption of'critical correctness' destroys the possibility offruitful dialogue between Arthurian critics ofdiffetent theoretical persuasions. It also betrays a lack ofawareness that het 'correct' readings have clearly been influenced by her own mythic (and essentially a-historical) approach to Arthurian romance. Fries concludes by approving Sturges's thesis, which she paraphrases as the 'rich ambivalence' of Malory's text 'requirfing] our moral assessment ofhis adulterous lovers always to be deferred' (94). Apparently she does not realize that the 'cotrect' readings she so vigorously defends in responding to my essay repeatedly contradict this conclusion. However, as her use of the adjective 'adulterous' in the paraphrase suggests, Fries may have missed the point of Sturges's essay. Certainly, given het 'common sense' conviction of a 'fully guilty affair consummated long before the Knight of the Cart episode' (96), she could not possibly agree with Sturges's conclusion that Malory's text does not allow the reader ever to knowwhether Lancelot and Guinevere actually committed adultery. BEVERLY KENNEDY Marianopolis College ...