Malory's Morte Research Articles

The Genesis of Narrative in Malory's Morte Darthur by Elizabeth Edwards (review)

The Genesis of Narrative in Malory's Morte Darthur by Elizabeth Edwards (review)

The Arthur of the English ed. by W.R.J. Barron (review)

112ARTHURIANA W.R.J. Barron, ed., The Arthur ofthe English. Cardiff: University ofWales Press, 1999. Pp. 395. isbn: 0-7083-1477-5. $65. In his introduction to the University ofWales's Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, series editor W.R.J. Barron remarks on the changes in Arthurian studies since the appearance ofRoger Sherman Loomis's Arthurian Literature in theMiddUAges in 1959. The expansion ofArthurian scholarship has meant that AEMAs successor is actually a series ofvolumes, each representing a particular culture. In TheArthur oftheEnglish, the second volume in the series, the cultural (rather than linguistic or national) emphasis of the volumes in the series is immediately evident. The first essay, Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan's 'The Celtic Tradition,' deals with Welsh material, while the second, a chapter on 'Dynastic Chronicles' by Barron, Françoise Le Saux, and Lesley Johnson, considers Middle English works alongside the Anglo Latin and Anglo Norman chronicles with which they share obvious affinity. Catherine Batt and Rosalind Fields chapter on 'The Romance Tradition' casts the net yet more widely, placing Chrétien and continental romances alongside Marie de France and Anglo Norman romance. While the essays on later works focus on Middle English, the linguistic and geographical range ofthis early section is an important indication ofthe scope ofthis collection. This recognition ofthe intertextuality of Arthurian literature is manifested as well in many essays which consider relationships between various versions ofthe same story, or between Middle English works and their analogues: two examples are Elizabeth Williams's treatment of Sir LandevaU, Sir Launfal, and Sir Lambewell, and Flora Alexander's discussion ofLanceht ofthe Laik and Sir Lanceht du Lake. Another welcome feature of this collection is the attention paid by many contributors to the manuscript record (though I would have appreciated a list of manuscripts as part ofthe Reference Bibliography, rather than the single collective entry in the Index). As one would expect, this emphasis is more pronounced in some essays than in others, and it takes various forms. Karen Hodder, for example, deals with issues of ownership in her short essay on the Prose Merlin; Maldwyn Mills considers the reshaping done by scribe-redactors in the various manuscripts of Lybeaus Desconus; and Lesley Johnson points to the discrepancy between the widespread manuscript circulation ofRobert ofGloucester's ChronicU and modern disparagement of this once-popular work. Diane Speed's short essay on The Grene Knight includes the sobering reflection that, had the manuscript ofSir Gawain and the Green Knight perished in the Cotton fire, this Percy Folio poem would have been our only version ofthe story. Finally, P.J.C. Field's chapter on Malory spends considerable time on the Caxton/ Winchester debate, and deals as well with the editorial tradition of Malory's Morte. This Malory chapter—a masterful and elegant summary, worth in itselfthe price of admission—brings me to another feature of the collection, and that is, the considerable variation in approach to the works being considered. Some works are summarized: Barron offers a useful précis ofGeoffreys Historia and CaroleWeinberg summarizes the Stanzaic Morte Arthure as she offers her reading of it, for example. Others are presented chiefly through specific readings, as in Mills's emphasis on the REVIEWS113 competing claims ofkinship and chivalry in AV PercyvellofGaUs. There is a useful critical survey by Johnson in the essay on the Alliterative Morte Arthure, while Rosamund Allen's piece on the Awntyrs offArthure is a complete, self-standing overview in the survey style. Some contributions are written with considerable verve—I noted with pleasure Gillian Rogers's definition ofthe Carle narratives as 'eclecticism run riot' (207); Barron's description ofLady Bertilakas a self-interested sexual flytrap' (171); and Fields's assertion that, whatever little details he may get wrong, 'Malory gets the nobility right' (244). Sometimes the categories which have been created for the romances are carefully defined at the start, as in the long chapter on 'Chivalric Romance.' Sometimes the definitions clarify only retrospectively, as for example at the end ofthe section on 'Dynastic Romance.' And sometimes there is a clear-eyed recognition that all attempts to subdivide romance are at best imprecise, as in Rogers's remarks about the 'sliding scale between...

Review: The Genesis of Narrative in Malory's Morte Darthur

Review: The Genesis of Narrative in Malory's Morte Darthur

The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory's Morte Darthur ed. by D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. and Jessica G. Brogdon (review)

The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory's Morte Darthur ed. by D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. and Jessica G. Brogdon (review)

"Always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour": Women and the Chivalric Code in Malory's Morte Darthur

"Always to do ladies, damosels, and gentlewomen succour": Women and the Chivalric Code in Malory's Morte Darthur

Sovereign fantasies: Arthurian romance and the making of Britain

During and after the Hundred Years War, English rulers struggled with a host of dynastic difficulties, including problems of royal succession, volatile relations with their French cousins, and the consolidation of their colonial ambitions toward the areas of Wales and Scotland. Patricia Ingham brings these precarious historical positions to bear on readings of Arthurian literature in Sovereign Fantasies, a provocative work deeply engaged with postcolonial and gender theory. Ingham argues that late medieval English Arthurian romance has broad cultural ambitions, offering a of insular union as an imagined of British sovereignty. The Arthurian legends offer a means to explore England's historical indebtedness to and intimacies with Celtic culture, allowing nobles to repudiate their dynastic ties to France and claim themselves heirs to an insular heritage. Yet these traditions also provided a means to critique English conquest, elaborating the problems of centralized sovereignty and the suffering produced by chivalric culture. Texts such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Caxton's edition of Malory's Morte Darthur provide what she terms a sovereign fantasy for Britain. That is, Arthurian romance offers a cultural means to explore broad political contestations over British identity and heritage while also detailing the poignant complications and losses that belonging to such a community poses to particular regions and subjects. These contestations and complications emerge in exactly those aspects of the tales usually read as fantasy-for example, in the narratives of Arthur's losses, in the prophecies of his return, and in tales that dwell on death, exotic strangeness, uncanny magic, gender, and sexuality. Ingham's study suggests the nuances of the insular identity that is emphasized in this body of literature. Sovereign Fantasies shows the significance, rather than the irrelevance, of medieval dynastic motifs to projects of national unification, arguing that medieval studies can contribute to our understanding of national formations in part by marking the losses produced by union.

Re-writing Malory: Vinaver's Selected Tales

This essay scrutinizes the editorial choices Vinaver made in King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales by Sir Thomas Malory and examines the way those choices radically reconstitute the substance, shape, and thematics of Malory's Morte Darthur .

Reading Romance: Literacy, Psychology, and Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur.' by Margaret DuMais Svogun (review)

144ARTHURIANA Margaret »uMais svogun, Reading Romance: Literacy, Psychology, and Malory's 'Le Morte D'Arthur' Studies in the Humanities: Literature—Politics—Society 51; Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 2000. Pp. 144. isbn: 0-8204-4522-3. $45.95. Margaret duMais Svogun attempts to dovetail an archetypal view ofthe functions of romance with speculations on the psychology of reading and the impact of printing on literacy. Malory's Morte, here presented unproblematically as a romance, attracts such analysis by virtue of its having been 'one of the first works reproduced by the new technology of typography' (2). Few scholars, probably, would disagree that certain mythic patterns underlie chivalric romance, and Svogun has some interesting insights to offer about episodes such as the 'Knight with Two Swords.' Moreover, she has put her finger on an important issue in noting the Morte's position on the cusp between manuscript and print. Her book, however, cannot be considered a work of medieval scholarship. The fact that the Morte is cited in modernized spelling, from outdated editions, is overshadowed by the astonishing fact that it is the only primary source cited. Secondary sources on Malory are hardly more numerous. Moreover, the work is shockingly out of date. A perusal of the short bibliography turns up few sources published after 1980, and none published after 1985. The shock wears offa bit once one decides that Svogun's book is, really, a form of pop psychology. A variety ofpleasant ifrather dated theories are patched together to produce the ambitious conclusion that Malory's Morte helped transform human consciousness at the eve of the modern age. The logic is, briefly, that romances, as archetypal narratives, concern and lead the reader on a quest for evolved consciousness. The development of writing and later ofprint 'revolutionized human thought processes and self-concepts,' while 'the comparatively lately [sic], universally accessible mode of private, silent reading' promoted critical thought and interiority. The Morte, as one ofthe first romances published, brought all these consciousness-transforming features together, vastly amplified by the expanded literacy and wide readership created by print (49). These principles are laid out in three short chapters of theory, while a long final chapter examines the psychology ofsome Malorian characters and episodes. The argument as presented begs innumerable questions, and relies on the broadest of generalizations. Any detailed acquaintance with Malory, Arthurian and romance tradition, the Middle Ages, or the history of written and print culture would have vastly complicated Svogun's thesis. Even as psychology the argument falters. The chapter on Malory tries to identify archetypal patterns ofpsychic integration in various heroes, while at the same time searching out dualities as evidence ofthe mental crisis and extreme ambivalence of medieval man induced by the literacy-inspired cleavage ofconsciousness' (109). Not only does Jung sit uneasily with Ong, but literacy was of course a cultural given in England many centuries before Malory, and Malory can hardly be reflecting the impact of a technology that arrived in England five years after his death. Svogun's is a short work—113 pages of text—and even at that length padded out with repetitions and plot summaries. Technical oversights and errors abound. REVIEWS145 Eisenstein is given as Eisentstein (26, 133), for example; the famous article on literacy by Goody and Watt is credited to Watt and Goody (21, 25, 133). Articles in anthologies are not cited separately, making them impossible to locate in the bibliography. Since the illumination on the cover is nowhere identified or discussed, some readers may assume that the man shown writing in the Tower is Malory; it is, ofcourse, Charles d'Orléans (from British Library Roy. 16 F.ii). JOYCE COLEMAN University of North Dakota Richard UTZ and Tom shippey, eds., Medievalism in the Modern World. Essays in Honour ofLeslie Workman. Making the Middle Ages Vol. 1. Turnhout: Brepols, 1998. Pp. xiv, 452. isbn: 2—503-50166—2. Price unavailable. The word 'medievalism' has been coined to describe the construction ofthe Middle Ages in the post-medieval period in both 'high' and 'popular' culture. Medievalism in the Modern WorU is a welcome addition to medieval scholarship because it requires us to think about the extent ofmodern debts to the...

'Every man of worshyp': Emotion and Characterization in Malory's Le Morte Darthur

Le Morte Darthur has characters who are believable as coherent individuals.

MALORY'S OWN MARGINALIA

Northrop Frye has memorably characterized the modern view of literature as 'a secular scripture'.1 One of the consequences of the possession of a scripture is that the priests and Levites who are its custodians will take an interest in even the most unpromising parts of the sacred object, conscious that the most uninviting passage may preserve some important truth that might be made manifest by their special skills. The most unpromising part of Malory's Morte Darthur might well be thought to be the marginalia in the Winchester Manuscript, which have had very little attention since the manuscript was discovered in 1934. Most of them were recorded in the apparatus criticus of Eugene Vinaver's remarkable editions,2 but without comment. A generation after Vinaver's first edition, Neil Ker described them briefly in the introduction to his facsimile edition of the Winchester manuscript,3 and Hilton Kelliher added some supplementary notes in an essay on the early history of the manuscript.4 More recently, a subtle and observant essay on the manucript by Helen Cooper included a section on the marginalia, pointing out that they are the earliest evidence we have for reader response to the Morte Darthur, pre-dating even Caxton's famous preface.5 There may, however, still be more to be said. The marginalia fall into two principal groups, those that were written by the scribes who copied the main text, and those that were not. The non-scribal marginalia need not detain us long. There is a good deal that is enigmatic about them, but those that can be said with certainty to postdate the copying process are evidence for the provenance of the manuscript rather than its text.6 A few of the non-scribal marginalia, however, may not postdate the copying process, if that is understood in its fullest sense. These include three words written in the same clearly non-scribal hand, two as clarifications ('strene' on fol. 22v and 'strange' on 61v), and one as a correction ('shame' on fol. 215v ). The hand that wrote them is strikingly neat, professional, and characterful, and contemporary with the text.7 It could be that of a supervisor who chose occasionally to act as a corrector. We must consider another marginalium in this category later. It is notable how few corrections there are among the marginalia written by the original scribes. In the 473 surviving folios, there are only two such corrections. Both are single words marked for insertion in the text ('thus' on fol. 139 and 'prayde' on fol. 279) , both by Scribe B. Neil Ker faintly praised Scribe B as being, unlike his partner Scribe A, `not entirely oblivious to what he had written'.8 My experience of editing this manuscript, however, suggests that neither scribe was oblivious to what he had written, but that both wanted above all to produce a handsome page and had no qualms about sacrificing meaning to achieve that.9 Allowing themselves only two words of marginal correction in 473 folios is a measure of the importance they gave to clean margins. It is surprising, therefore, to find them copying out a large number of seemingly non-essential marginalia. There are eighty of these, forty by each scribe, scattered from fol. 11t to fol. 477r. They all refer to events related in the accompanying text, but the aspects of the narrative to which they refer are very various, as can be seen from the appendix below (pp. 23 5-7). Their forms of expression are various too. They come in four distinct styles. The first style is found only in the first marginalium: a single word in Latin. The rest are all in English and longer, but they mix three styles, some beginning `Here (is)', some beginning 'How', and some consisting of a bald phrase with no verb. The order in which the different styles recur seems to be random, and certainly does not correlate with the identity of the scribe who wrote them. The physical presentation of these marginalia is very varied too. As Helen Cooper pointed out, Scribe A liked his marginalia set out in lines of decreasing length, and he enclosed about half of them in shield-like shapes. …

The Song of Guinevere: A Defense of Arthur's Wife in Verse by Alicia Snow (review)

REVIEWS83 Professor Lehmann is an excellent translator. But occasionally there are more of these poems than the narrative requires, and they seem to be there for their own sake and not for the sake of the novel, as if in this instance scholarly instincts have taken precedence over literary ones—an impression enforced by a list of'manuscript sources of early English, Irish, and Welsh poetry quoted in Blessed Bastard.' Nevertheless, Blessed Bastard is a very readable novel and one that achieves the difficult goal of making the character of Galahad a man ofwhom Lancelot—and Lehmann—can be proud. ALAN LUPACK The University of Rochester Alicia snow, The SongofGuinevere: A DefenseofArthur's Wife in Verse. San Francisco: Belgrave House, 1999. Pp. 588; 6 illus. isbn: 0-9660643-6-4. $29.95 (paper); 16 compact discs, isbn: 0-9660643-5-6. $49.95. 'Not another book about the Arthur-Guinevere-Lancelot triangle!' you say. Yes, but with a difference. Alicia Snow's The Song ofGuinevere is written in poetry, a form which dominated English Arthurian literature until about 1940 when it virtually disappeared. Furthermore, it is written from the woman's perspective, providing the first detailed, psychologically convincing biography of Arthur's queen. Snow initiated The Song ofGuinevere as a riposte to Alfred, Lord Tennyson's Idylb ofthe King, choosing the same blank verse narrative form (with occasional rhyme) divided into books. She is no rival in the art ofpoetry, lacking the Victorian's philosophical grandeur and pictorial power. But her serviceable iambic pentameter, sometimes prone to cliché, effectively mimics the diction of ordinary discourses to establish the realistic mode which pervades this work and makes it so accessible. Major sources are the Historia Brittonum (with Arthur's battle sites providing the geographical structure) and Malory's Morte Darthur, stripped of Celtic magic, chivalric entertainments, courtly love and Grail allegory. The setting is Dark Age Britain from 486 A.D., when twelve-year-old Guinevere is introduced, to 520, when the exiled queen ruefully sums up her life. There are vivid localisations such as the civilized villa at Aquae Sulis (Bath) where Arthur's aunt Paulina maintains a Roman style ofliving or the demonic Bassas Fort where terrified Britons are besieged by the Angle invaders, but setting is subordinate to characterization and plot. (Robert Allen Gordons six colour illustrations, romantic and anachronistic, fail to evoke the menace of disintegration). Neither a figurehead nor a destroyer, Guinevere is distinguished by her role as healer. Educated in Latin and Greek, she begins as a child to learn from Mettodora, a woman trained in Roman medicine, then from books (Galen, Hippocrates), nuns, and the practical experience oftreating Arthur's wounded warriors, animals, women and children, even enemies. The medical lore is authentic—ointment of sempervivium and rose oil for the nuns' scorched skins, infusions of betany and goldenrod for wounds, anaesthetic mandrake root, wine and henbane to ease the pain ofcauterising, suturing, and amputation. A royal beauty, a scholar, a harpist, a 84ARTHURIANA just ruler of the realm inherited from her mother, a builder, a peacemaker, a loving and obedient wife, Guinevere provides everything Arthur requires except a son. To the archetypal roles of dux bellorum, Christianissimus rex, Pendragon, Conqueror, golden-haired Arthur adds irresistible charisma. Lancelot, 'a man ofstunning power in the battlefield,' intelligent, sensitive, exquisitely attuned to the demands ofhonour, completes the triangle. Snow intensifies the tragedy by stressing the characters' sympathetic aspects so that the reader will be emotionally strained as the conflict between love and loyalty develops. Within the familiar plot lines involving Morgause and Mordred, Gawain and his brothers, Lancelot, Elaine and Galahad, new people are introduced to individualize the protagonists. Interest is maintained as well by treating traditional motifs in original ways. For example, the image of the Virgin Mary which, as the Annales Cambriae record, Arthur carried into battle, becomes evidence ofthe king's adultery with the fair Angelica, as does the Torre-like peasant boy, 'too fine to be a shepherd's son,' who bears Arthur's bright blond curls. Guinevere's kidnapping, one ofthe oldest motifs on the evidence ofthe Modena archivolt, is the crisis which clarifies moral evaluations. Transposed from a courtly milieu...

Gloom and Doom in Mark Twain's Connecticut Yankee , from Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur

Taylor Roberts' recovery of Mark Twain's own copy of Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur rekindles questions concerning Twain's process of composing A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.(1) As a specialist in medieval English literature, I wish to document more minutely than have Americanists Twain's use of his direct source, purchased in 1884. This article will compare Twain's experience of reading the unabridged Morte Darthur to his expectations primarily based on its condensation as The Boy's King Arthur, which he had owned since 1880. This comparison can help circumscribe the impact on American literary culture of idealizing Europe's past--that is, of the phenomenon now termed medievalism.(2) Connecticut Yankee retains evidence of one significant moment in diachronic literary change, which seems so often to lurch onward just out of sight, like Malory's questynge beeste. Our glimpse of that moment occurs at the oft-discussed disjunction between the first and second paragraphs of chapter 21 of Connecticut Yankee. I suggest that in 1887-88, at some point in between the two summers when he wrote those two paragraphs, Twain finally faced up to amoral nihilism in the real Morte Darthur and therefore, according to the best information then available to him, in the real Middle Ages. A time frame is well established for the composition of Connecticut Yankee. Early in 1886 Twain wrote the opening frame and chapters 1-4; during the summer of 1887 chapters 5-9, 11-20, and the beginning of 21; then one year later the remainder.(3) After the first paragraph of chapter 21, the novel's plot and comic tone collapse. Thereafter loosely linked episodes writhe with inconsistent characterization, vacillating objects of mockery, and gratuitous bloodshed. Scholars have documented external events that could have affected what Twain wrote during the summer of 1888: family illness, financial problems (notably overinvestment in the Paige type-setting machine), national or international politics, and his musings about capitalist industrialization, a trip downriver in 1882, or a visit to Hannibal in 1885. Scholars document also Twain's relevant reading, including History of European Morals from Augustus to Charlemagne, other historical and scientific works, fantasy stories by Max Adeler, an attack on America by Matthew Arnold, a magazine series on Russian atrocities, and pseudo-medieval fiction, notably that by Miguel de Cervantes (beloved by Twain) and Walter Scott (detested).(4) In addition to these other factors, I propose, Twain during 1887-88 finally found time to finish reading the whole of Morte Darthur, in the mass-marketed Globe edition he purchased December 6, 1884.(5) The course of composition of Connecticut Yankee reflects not only outside events and readings but also Twain's escalating disillusionment with his primary source text. As one result to be discussed, his novel's Last Battle feels horrific even to readers familiar with its far gorier prototype: the civil war that destroyed legendary Camelot. In its entirety, Malory's very long book came to confirm what Twain began to suspect while reading its opening chapters, on Sundays and trains during a lecture tour. Le Morte Darthur stands solid witness against any Golden Age of childlike innocence. From Malory Twain learned that the alleged glory days of British chivalry provide no admirable heroes, no moral or ethical standards, no inspirational ideals. Contrary to medievalism's rose-colored reconstruction of the Middle Ages, contrary to the pure-hearted world created in meticulous excerpts for The Boy's King Arthur, contrary to the Globe edition's effusive introduction, Twain discovered for himself that King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table lie and cheat and steal and make solemn vows intending to break them. They casually commit rape and adultery, betray friends and feudal lords, seek blood revenge contrary to law, shrug aside the slaughter of women, children, kin, innocent bystanders, and each other. …

Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck

Retellings, Derek Brewer re-reading the story of Herod in the Middle English innocents plays, Theresa Coletti Chaucer's Adams, Alfred David sacred and secular exegesis in the Wyf of Bath's Tale, John V. Fleming old wives' tales and masculine intention, Thomas Hahn The Book of the City of Ladies as a twice-told tale, Ronald Herzman the legend of the learned man's android, Sarah L. Higley victimization and legal abuse - the Wycliffite retelling of the story of Susannah, David Lyle Jeffrey telling it like it was? - Mark Twain's re-reading of chivalry in Malory's Morte Darthur, Richard Kaeuper Thomas Chestre's revisions of manhood in Launfal, Anne Laskaya Elizabeth Stuart Phelps - rebel against the story, Alan Lupack the burghers of Calais - chapters in a history, Monica E. McAlpine Chaucer's manciple - voice and genre, Charles A. Owen (re)dressing Cinderella, Eve Salisbury Huntington 140, Chaucer, Lydgate, and the politics of retelling, Lynn Staley Segwarydes' wife and competing perspectives within Malory's Tale of Sir Tristram and its mdoel, the prose Tristan, James I. Wimsatt Scripture Veteris Capiunt Exempla Futuri - John Gower's transformation of a fable of Avianus, Robert Yeager.

Political Allegory in Later Medieval England (review)

154 Reviews Astell, A n n W., Political Allegory in Later Medieval England, Ithaca and London, Cornell University Press, 1999; cloth; pp. xi, 218; R.R.P.£25.95; ISBN 0801435609. The rise of New Historicist criticism in literary studies has encoura appropriation of medieval texts as witnesses to historical events, and as direct or indirect commentaries on contemporary issues. Following in the path of recent scholars such as Paul Strohm, David Bevington and John M. Bowers, A n n Astell argues persuasively for readings of major fourteenthandfifteenth -centurytexts as allegories of contemporary political events. Thus Piers Plowman and the letters of John Ball are claimed to be directly concerned with the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, Gower's Confessio Amantis with the Merciless Parliament of 1388, Chaucer's work with the troubled reign of Richard II, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with the events leading up to the deposition of Richard II in 1399, and, finally, Malory's Morte Darthur (specifically Book 8) with the death of Joan of Arc. Some of these connections are more original than others but, with a chapter assigned to each text, an historical context is confidently outlined, providing a clear vision of h o w these texts m a y havefittedin to a larger cultural and political landscape. Despite some striking and well-assembled congruences between text and context, there are theoretical and methodological problems. Apart from a confusing section on Augustine in the Introduction, there is little attempt to define allegory and therefore to distinguish it from other types of text. There is no satisfactory explanation as to w h y allegorical meanings might have been 'hidden' (as Astell says) within texts which otherwise discursively proclaim themselves to be courtly romances or beast fables or anything else except allegories. Issues of intentionality and audience—whether these texts were meant to be allegories, and if so, w h o was supposed to decode the hidden meanings and w h o was supposed to be oblivious to them—are relevant to Astell's project but are not sufficiently addressed. Though Astell does not theorise her understanding of allegory, the model she uses is that of the coded message, where authentic meanings can be 'read off' from the allegory, providing one has the correct key to the code. For scholars such as D. W . Robertson, the key to most medieval texts is the Bible and its associated commentaries. For Astell, on the other hand, the key is the historical record provided by contemporary Reviews 155 chroniclers and even by poets themselves. The possibility that more than one key can be used to read off equally valid meanings undermines the model. Thus a Robertsonian reading of Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale sees Chauntecleer as a flawed cleric like the Nun's Priest himself, whereas Astell sees him as representing Richard II in his vulnerable youth, prey to pride, flattery and self-ignorance, w h o yet managed to outface the angry mob in 1381 just as Chauntecleer escaped from the fox through his own wit. Which of these meanings is the 'right' decoding? Another problem lies with Astell's use of history as the key to the code. Before arriving at her ingenious and often attractive readings, Astell must first construct a singular version of historical 'truth', from a very selective range of sources, in order to match it to the literary texts. There is more than a hint of circularity in this process. Caxton's reference to Joan of Arc's pregnancy leads Astell to conclude that there was 'considerable anxiety about the English treatment ofJoan ofArc' (in prison), which then becomes the historical 'fact' which prompted Malory to invent, some thirty years later, a more noble fate for the penitent Guenevere, whose identification with Joan of Arc is unconvincingly traced through Margaret of Anjou. Astell's reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight treats it as an allegory of the last years of Richard II's reign, in which Arthur represents Richard, Gawain represents Richard's close friend Robert de Vere and Bertilak represents the earl of Arundel, beheaded for treason in 1397. This is based on some suggestive parallels, but...

The Quest for the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art 1840-1920 by Christine Poulson (review)

REVIEWS135 Westminster Manuscript the leitet O is in blue, the ornamental pen-work flourishes in red, the text written in brown ink. It would be advisable for Garland to drop the —, appropriate in typewritten text, but not for printed typescript in published books, which instead use en and em dashes. Garland could also investigate a better font than the one awarded Brant Pelphrey's fine use of Greek. JULIA BOLTON HOLLOWAY Hermit of the Holy Family, Fiesole, Italy Christine poulson, The Questfor the Grail: Arthurian Legend in British Art 1840— 1920. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press and St. Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. xix, 268. isbn: 0-7190-5379-?. $79.95 (cloth), isbn: 0-7190-5537-7. $29.95 (paper). The Industrial Revolution in Britain created a demand for a new definition of 'gentleman,' one that went beyond landowners, Anglican clergy, military officers and men of law to include an increasingly large and wealthy middle class. A suitable model, combining ideals ofservice, courtesy, fellowship, piety, fidelity and devotion to a monarch, was found in medieval knighthood, especially as depicted in Malory's Morte Darthur. In The Questfor the Grail, Christine Poulson chooses a particular chivalric adventure as a basis for surveying eighty years of art. The exemplary role ofArthurian chivalry was confirmed early in Queen Victoria's reign when William Dyce was commissioned to decorate the Queen's Robing Room in the new Palace of Westminister with frescoes based on Malory, despite the fact that the adulterous courtly love and Catholic religion were subjects 'scarcely appropriate for such an apartment,' as Dyce reminded Prince Albert. Poulson discusses Dyce's strategies in adapting the material for a respectable Protestant society. Malory was also the source for another programmatic series, the Oxford Union murals, begun in 1857. The artists, who came to be known as Pre-Raphaelites and among whom were D.G. Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones and William Morris, being Anglo-Catholic in sympathy, were so attracted to the Grail legend that they continued to represent it in painting, stained glass and tapestries for the next forty years. An alternate source for Arthurian art was Tennyson's poetry—the early works such as 'The Lady ofShalott,' 'Sir Galahad' and 'Morte d'Arthur' (1842) and the extensive IdylL· ofthe King. Tennyson 'sieved out the undesirable elements and reworked what remained' so that 'the legends could be a useful source of didactic and sentimental subjects.' A significant development ofthe Grail legend's hero by way ofOF. Watts's painting 'Sir Galahad' (1862)—attached to the Quest by its title alone—was the knight's transformation from a lonely contemplative to a memorial figure commemorating young men who had died in war or in peacetime acts ofcourage. To Poulson's substantial list of memorials could be added the window in Moberley's parish church honouring George Mallory, who died in 1924 while trying to conquer Mt. Everest and whose body was recently discovered on the frozen slopes. 136ARTHURIANA The addition of angels in Grail art Poulson attributes to afin de siècle interest in the occult as expressed in Freemasonry, Theosophy and Spiritualism. But as the motif appeared much earlier in Rossetti's and Burne-Jones's art, its source is more likely the medieval iconology retrieved to decorate the numerous Gothic Revival Churches. The second part ofthis study shows the difficulty ofencompassing British Arthurian art under the Grail Quest umbrella when Arthur, Tristan, Merlin, the Fays and the courtly ladies (except Perceval's sister) were not participants. Burne-Jones's personal myth was the non-Christian story of Merlin's enchantment while Morris's was the romance ofTristram and Isoud. The most popular subjects, however, from 1850 to 1914 were Tennyson's women, here discussed in the context of current feminist criticism. WH. Hunt and J.W Waterhouse, we are told, presented the Lady ofShalott as a fallen woman who, because she has stepped out from her appointed sphere and surrendered to sexual temptation, is exposed to judgement and punishment. When King Arthur is the subject, it is his death that interests painters, allowing them to commemorate Prince Albert and to create autumnal sunsets or winter nights, not, I think, influenced...

Malory: Texts and Sources by P.J.C. Field (review)

110arthuriana p.j.c. field, Malory: Texts and Sources. Arthurian Studies XL. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, N.Y: Boydell & Brewer, 1998. Pp. x, 313. isbn: 0-85991-5360. $90. Malory: Text and Sources assembles twenty-three essays which the learned and assiduous P.J.C. Field published separately in edited collections and scholarly journals between 1972 and 1996. As one would expect from the reviser of The Works ofSir Thomas Malory cd. Eugene Vinaver, Third Edition, a concern with the texts ofboth Caxton and Winchester dominates a number of essays, including "I he Earliest Texts of Malory's Morte Darthur,' 'Author, Scribe and Reader in Malory: The Case of Harleuse and Peryne,' and 'Malory's Place-Names: Westminster Bridge and Virvyn.' Several essays are combative in tone. 'Caxton's Roman War' deals with an academic controversy initiated at the Exeter Arthurian Congress in 1975 when a paper by William Matthews proposed that Malory himself revised from a longer account the version of the Roman war which Caxton printed. Charles Moorman's defence of the theory, published in Arthuriana (5.2 Summer, 1995), Field, relying on Yuji Nakao's statistical proof, condemns as 'inaccurate,' 'implausible,' and 'false.' Claude Luttrell's complaint that the hunt associated with Arthur's wedding feast is obscure and confused in the Morte compared with its French source (Arthurian Literature IX, 1989) is countered in 'Hunting, Hawking and Textual Criticism in Malory's Morte Darthur.' Not only had the English author developed a different kind ofstory-telling technique, one that aimed at conciseness, speed, and heightened suspense, but his own expertise in hunting matters led him to add realistic details that departed from the French source. Moreover, some discrepancies can be blamed on scribal error. Medievalists are suigeneris hypothesists. Expressions such as 'perhaps,' ' suppose,' 'would have had to have been,' 'something very like it could well have appeared,' and 'a reasonable guess' are frequent throughout this collection. Sometimes the assumption of lost manuscripts and scribal additions or errors is used to support theories when mere coincidence might provide a more reasonable explanation. Consider Malory and The WeddingofSir Gawain andDame Ragnell which proposes Malory as the author of the metrical romance. In the fifteenth century when the London standard ofEnglish prevailed in written works and when the language had not yet been enriched by abundant Renaissance imports, a commonality ofdiction and expression, particularly in the romance genre, is more likely to explain the seven examples ofsimilar wording. Nor do the common motifs relating to hunting, marriage, and happy endings prove that one work was drawn from the other. One is also dubious about the number ofbooks that this impoverished knightprisoner , a military man not a scholar, is said to have known. Given that the 800 volume library ofCharles V, which the Duke ofBedford acquired in 1425, contained only thirteen Arthurian texts, it is unlikely that in addition to his five major French sources and two English metrical romances Malory could also have acquired Perlesvaus, Arthur and Merlin, The Avowing ofArthur, Lybeaus Desconus, Ywain and REVIEWS111 Gawain, the Suite de Merlin, Robert de Baron's Joseph, Chrétien de Troyes' Yvain, Lancelot and Erec, Sir Triamour, Girart d'Amiens' Escanor, not to mention Hardyng's Chronicle, Chaucer's Trodus, Knight's Tale' and 'Franklin's Talc' and other volumes as suggested in 'Malory's Minor Sources,' 'Malory and Perlesvaus! 'Malory and Chrétien de Troyes' et al—to which Field adds, Tt is unlikely that we yet have a full list.' On the subject ofwhat particular manuscripts constituted Malory's 'Frensshe bookes,' however, 'Malory and the French prose Lancelot' describes a procedure which might bring us closer to answering this perennial question. Using as his base the sixteen Lancelot manuscripts now in the British Isles along with Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale MSS fr. 119-20, Field compares the Malory text, episode by episode, with the French texts and tabulates significant agreements. The results indicate that in choosing as his yardstick London, British Library Additional MS. 10293, Vinaver 'could hardly have chosen worse.' Alexander Michas Lancelot, based on Oxford, Bodleian MS. Rawlinson D.899 is closer, giving a better image ofMalory's source manuscript 'which must have stemmed from early...

Caxton's Prologue to Malory and the Welsh Brut

The mysterious 'Welsh books' on Arthur mentioned by Caxton in his preface to Malory were probably Welsh translations of Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain .

Malory: Texts and Sources by P.J.C. Field (review)

io8arthuriana alternative, and arguably more 'popular,' tradition of the terrifying corporeality and malevolence of the dead. Perhaps for him such revenants lie outside the scope of his book: they are emphatically animated corpses, not ghosts. But they feature in several of his sources and it would have been valuable to hear more about how he sees the two traditions co-existing. William ofNewburgh's stories (82-3), for instance, show a local population preferring their own methods of dealing with vampires— involving dismemberment and cremation—to the Church's less bloodthirsty solutions. As a ireasure-trove of stories, some of them purportedly autobiographical, the book is irresistible. But it is what Schmitt then does with his material that constitutes the real tour deforce. He offers a nuanced and subtle interpretation of how the presentation of ghosts changed, and what this has to tell us about contemporary assumptions. He points out, tor instance, that the ghosts' response to their questioners shows how long it took the doctrine of Purgatory to become standardised (180-1). The stories, in other words, do not just embody an official 'line,' but, in spite of their clerical provenance, let us glimpse the extent to which the Church's teaching was being absorbed. The evidence of the ghost stories allows Schmitt to identify what he sees as a fundamental shift in the relationship of the living and the dead in the early thirteenth century, although his summary avoids any judgement on whether change was being driven from above or below. This is an important and fruitful book, which for the first time treats medieval ghosts with the sort of intellectual seriousness and sophistication which more recent revenants have begun to enjoy. Schmitt has been well served by his translator, and the few technical slips (such as minor orders' for Minorites on p.23 and the misunderstanding ofsaisir on p.221) stand out for their rarity. ROSEMARY IIORROX Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge p.j.c. field, Malory: Texts andSources. Arthurian Studies XL. Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, N.Y: Boydell & Brewer, 1998. Pp. x, 313. isbn: 0-85991-5360. $90. Malory: Texts and Sources contains twenty-three articles, all but one of which have been previously published. In light ofthis it can fairly be said that the volume offers its reader little that is new, but much that is useful. Indeed, there are several pieces in this collection that no one thinking to publish on Malory, and in a perfect world, no one preparing to teach Malory, should leave unread. T he volume may well be viewed as a companion to Field's revision of the third edition of Ihe Works ofSir Thomas Malory (edited by Eugene Vinavcr, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990). Ofthe twenty-three articles in the current volume, fourteen were published after rhat editorial task was completed. These articles range from very short pieces on place and character names or particular editorial cruces, to full length articles that significantly alter our understanding ofMalory and our use ofthe standard edition of his works. Among the latter is 'Malory and the French Prose Lancelot,' which REVIEWS109 points out the serious weaknesses in Vinaver's comparisons between Malory's text and the prose Lancelot. This article, a significant extension of one of Field's notes in his revision of The Works (p. 1426, n.286), provides a good example of Field's methods and the importance of his results. He compares Malory's 'Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake' with its corresponding sections in eighteen manuscripts of the prose Lancelot. His results show that in Vinaver's selection of a manuscript for source comparisons with Malory's text, '[Vinaver] could hardly have chosen worse' (215). Field's careful tabulation ofcorrelations and his analysis of them can make for some slow going for readers not already steeped in the minutiae of editing and source analysis. At the same time, the results are important for all who base arguments about Malory's relation to his sources solely on the information in Vinaver's commentary. The one piece offresh scholarship here, 'The Choice ofTexts for Malory's Morte Darthur,' clearly responds to the issues of editing Malory which have risen in the last...

Briefer Notices: Books, Films, and Videos

126ARTHURIANA viewpoint is communicated directly to the Arthurian courtiers. These courtiers, however, construe ' the silken sash'—Gawain's emblem ofshame—as a 'token' of the young knight's 'valor' and 'victory.' Such conflicting perspectives, along with the Green Knight's view of Gawain's adventure, intensify the ambiguity pervading the original poem's conclusion. Finally, a shadowy, nun-like individual (Sally Mares)—a woman garbed in black—lurks in the background ofthe film. This character, however, is never identified in the movie with Morgan Ie Fay, the magical figure who creates Gawain's adventure. Apart from these individual flaws, the Thames Television film is certainly appropriate for classroom use on both the high school and college levels. Any lacunae in the cinematic narrative or in this movie's thematic framework can be filled in through judicious classroom lectures and discussion. ROBERT J. BLANCH Northeastern University BRIEFER NOTICES: BOOKS, FILMS, AND VIDEOS marie-françoise ALAMICHEL and derek brewer, eds., The MiddleAges after theMiddle Ages. Cambridge, Eng.: D.S. Brewer, 1997. Pp. ix, 166. isbn: 0—85991—508—5. $81.00 (cloth). This volume collects eleven papers delivered at a conference on the theme of the Middle Ages after the Middle Ages held in September 1994 at the Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises of the University of Paris IV-Sorbonne. Three of the essays address matters Arthurian: Claire Vial's 'From Written Record to Legend: The Receyt ofthe Ladie Kateryne as Retelling of the Morte Darthur; James Noble's ' The Mists of Avalon: A Confused Assault on Patriarchy'; and Sandra Gorgievski's 'The Arthurian Legend in Cinema: Myth or History?' All three of the essays still show tell-tale signs of having been delivered as conference papers and then published without extensive revision. Ofthe three, Vial's is the most interesting; the other two cover more familiar territory. The volume contains neither illustrations nor an index, making it more expensive and less user-friendly than it needs to be. Harold R. foster, Prince Valiant: In the Days ofKing Arthur. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1997. 30 postcards, isbn: 1-55670-583-2. $10.95 (Paper). Fans of the long-running Prince Valiant comic strip will welcome this collection of thirty over-sized postcards depicting panels that originally appeared from 1944 to 1946. Because of their size, the postcards require first-class postage for mailing— conveniently, in 1996, the US Postal Service issued a series of32 cent stamps based on famous American comic strips, one ofwhich depicted Valiant. Thomas j. garbáty, ed., MedievalEnglish Literature. 1984; rpt. Prospect Heights, 111.: Waveland Press, 1997. Pp. xvi, 974. isbn: 0—88133-950-4. $49.95 (Paper; especially REVIEWS127 priced for students). Waveland Press has reprinted Thomas Garbáty's comprehensive anthology ofEnglish literature from 1100 to 1500. The anthology includes the following Arthurian texts: selections from Layamon's SrKi, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Geoffrey of Monmouth's History ofthe Kings ofBritain (translation); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie de France's Lanval (translation); Thomas Chestre's Sir Launfal; The WeddingofSir Gawain andDame Ragnell; and a selection from Malory's Morte Darthur. Marginal glosses accompany all texts in Middle English, and explanatory footnotes thtoughout the anthology explain more difficult concepts and passages. Garbáty's anthology is an ideal text for both advanced undergraduate and graduate students. caitlìn Matthews and John Matthews, The Arthurian Book ofDays, The Greatest Legendin the WorldRetold Throughout the Year. 1990; rpt. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1997. isbn: 0-7607-0604-2. $12.95 (Cloth.) Barnes & Noble has reprinted and remaindered the Matthews volume in which each day commemorates an event in the Arthurian cycle. Clearly a volume intended for a general audience, the texts presented here—a different Arthurian tale for each day of the year—appear without citations to their sources, but with a generous selection of full-color reproductions of medieval Arthurian illustrations. john tyerman Williams, Pooh and the Ancient Mysteries. London: Methuen, 1997. isbn: 0—413-70740-7. £10.00 (cloth). In an earlier volume, John Tyerman Williams linked the story ofWinnie-the-Pooh to the world's greatest philosophies; here he does the same with the major ancient mysteries. In a chapter on 'Pooh...

No Pain, No Gain: Violence as Symbolic Capital in Malory's Morte d'Arthur

Romances like Malory's Morte d'Arthur endorse a sexual economy of structured violent exchanges in which masculinity is built around the continual circulation of women and wealth as rewards for sanctioned violence.