The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of 'Le Morte Darthur' by Bonnie Wheeler , Robert L. Kindrick , Michael N. Salda (review)

Abstract

952 Reviews The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of 'Le Morte Darthur3. Edited by Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda. (Arthurian Studies, 47) Cambridge: Brewer. 2000. xxii + 42opp. ?45; $75. ISBN 0-85991-583-2. This important volume of essays on the rival merits of the manuscript and printed texts of Le Morte Darthur is divided into three parts. The firstis devoted to a recon? struction of William Matthews's thoughts on Caxton and, in particular, the printing ofthe Morte. The second part presents responses to Matthews's arguments ranging from 'whole-hearted endorsement' through a middle position to thoroughgoing rejection . The essays in the third part 'consider the next steps in the ongoing editing of [. . .] Le Morte Darthur' (p. xiii). There is some interesting cross-referencing in the volume since a number of the contributors were able to read and comment on each other's work?an excellent idea that must have imposed demanding deadlines on all concerned. To my mind the most stimulating essays are those by P. J.C. Field, Helen Cooper, Edward Kennedy, and N. F. Blake. Field's appears in its third printing in five years (no doubt a record) but it is a major article, indispensable to this volume and central to the 'Matthews debate'. Cooper has many interesting points to make and (like Field) the experience of her recent work editing Malory makes them all the more pertinent. Her comments on the layout of the manuscript show clearly how Vinaver either dis? regarded it or interpreted it to confirm his own idea of what Malory had produced. One is almost tempted to say that the 'symple connynge' of Caxton became simple cunning chez Vinaver. Cooper's remarks on the rubrication of names are especially observant: the use of red ink 'turns the whole manuscript from being an account of adventures into a roll of honour' (p. 274). How right she is. If Malory himself did not give instructions for this feature of the manuscript, whoever did was eminently sensitive to the author's outlook. Cooper's comments on punctuation are also perceptive. Modern punctuation never quite does justice toMalory's prose, with its suddenshifts?mid-sentence?fromnarrative to speech (and even collective speech), while the battle scenes lose much of their energy and violence when the text is submitted to the conventions of present-day pub? lishing. D. Thomas Hanks, too, deals interestingly with punctuation and shows how the clause should be seen as the basic element of textual perception for Malory's first readers (p. 290); but though his proposal to print the differentclauses on separate lines is an interesting idea, making Malory look (on the page) like a sort of poet, it is ultimately unhelpful. It is true that modern conventions are a problem in editing Mal? ory. They make his prose seem syntactically discordant; at times almost incompetent. They create a style which is 'awkward and repetitive in ways Malory would surely have been mortified to behold' (p. 297). But I wonder. 'Awkward' and 'repetitive' are judgements that are just as modern as the punctuation we inevitably add, and I find it hard to believe that Malory would have been mortified by such reproaches. I suspect that he probably would not have understood them. His ideas of literary and linguistic decorum are not ours. Anyone who has tried translating passages of Malory into French (a language with all the rigours of the Latin period behind it) is forced to admit that his style is, let's say,homespun. But that doesn't really matter. Plain, rough perhaps, well made, and with a simple dignity of its own. It does, in a straightforward manner, the job it was designed to do. It can be haunting and eloquent but there is more often a tone of 'no nonsense' about it. Ill at ease in French, Shakespeare's Henry V said to his future bride 'I speak to thee plain soldier', and plain soldier is a language Malory spoke fluently.If modern punctuation makes him seem unsophisticated , that doesn't matter either. Sophistication isn't all that it is cracked up to be. Both Blake and Kennedy write in...