Arthurian Literature XXVI [26] 1843842114, 9781843842118

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spine 23mm A 5 Oct Sep 09

Archibald and Johnson (eds)

Amanda Hopkins, Ronald Hutton, Norris Lacy, Jonathan Passaro, Raymond Thompson.

Cover: King Arthur’s vision of Fortune’s wheel, from La Mort le Roi Artus, c.1316, BL MS Add. 10294, f. 89 (© British Library Board).

ARTHURIAN LITERATURE 26

The Arthurian material collected in this volume ranges widely in time and space, from a Latin romance based on Welsh sources to the postChristian Arthur of modern fiction and film. A reprint of Derek Brewer’s classic introduction to his edition of the last two tales of Malory’s Morte Darthur is followed by studies including a possible source manuscript for Malory’s first tale; the ‘Arthuricity’ of the little-known Latin romance Arthur and Gorlagon; images of sterility and fertility in the continuations of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal; and early modern responses to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s dealings with Rome. Norris Lacy ranges widely over the evolution of the Arthurian legend, and Ronald Hutton considers representations of both Christian and pagan religion in modern novels and cinema. The volume ends with a bibliographical supplement on recent additions to Arthurian fiction. Contributors: Derek Brewer  †, SiÂn Echard, Thomas Hinton,

Arthurian literature 26

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd

PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY14620-2731 (US) www.boydell.co.uk / www.boydellandbrewer.com

Edited by Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson

ARTHURIAN LITERATURE XXVI

ARTHURIAN LITERATURE Incorporating Arthurian Yearbook ISSN  0261–9946 Editors Elizabeth Archibald, University of Bristol David F. Johnson, Florida State University, Tallahassee Editorial Board James Carley, York University Julia Crick, University of Exeter Tony Hunt, University of Oxford Marianne Kalinke, Illinois University Norris Lacy, Pennsylvania State University Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan, Cardiff University Andrew Lynch, University of Western Australia Felicity Riddy, University of York Alison Stones, University of Pittsburgh Toshiyuki Takamiya, University of Keio Raymond H. Thompson, Acadia University Michael Twomey, Ithaca College Arthurian Literature is an interdisciplinary publication devoted to the scholarly and critical study of all aspects of Arthurian legend in Europe in the medieval and early modern periods. Articles on writings from later periods are included if they relate very directly to medieval and early modern sources, although the editors welcome bibliographical studies of all periods. Articles may be up to 20,000 words in length; short items, of under 5,000 words, are published as Notes. Updates on earlier articles are also welcomed. Material for consideration should be sent to Boydell & Brewer: contributors should follow the style sheet printed at the end of XII of the series. The contents of previous volumes are listed at the back of this book.

Arthurian Literature XXVI Edited by ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD DAVID F. JOHNSON

D. S. BREWER

©  Contributors 2009 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2009 D. S. Brewer, Cambridge ISBN  978–1–84384–211–8

D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc, 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne

CONTENTS General Editors’ Foreword

vii

List of Contributors

ix

I

Introduction to the Morte Darthur, Parts 7 and 8 Derek Brewer

II

Malory’s Text of the Suite du Merlin Jonathan Passaro

1 39

III Why Arthur at all? The Dubious Arthuricity of Arthur and Gorlagon Amanda Hopkins

77

IV The Aesthetics of Communication: Sterility and Fertility in the Conte del Graal Cycle Thomas Hinton

97

V

‘Whyche thyng semeth not to agree with other histories ...’: 109 Rome in Geoffrey of Monmouth and his early modern readers Siân Echard

VI Arthurian Texts in their Historical and Social Context Norris J. Lacy

131

VII The Post-Christian Arthur Ronald Hutton

149

VIII The Arthurian Legend in Literature, Popular Culture and the Performing Arts, 2004–2008 Edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Norris J. Lacy

171

general editorS’ FOREWORD We start this volume with a tribute to the late and much missed Derek Brewer (1923–2008). During his long career he made invaluable contributions to Arthurian scholarship on two fronts: through his own publications, especially on Malory, and through his publishing company D. S. Brewer, founded in 1972. As Boydell & Brewer, it has come to play a crucial part in medieval studies; Arthurian scholars are particularly indebted to him as the ‘onlie begetter’ of the series Arthurian Studies, now up to its 74th volume, and also of this journal. The essays in the present volume deal with subjects that range from a Latin romance based on Welsh sources to the post-Christian Arthur of modern fiction and film. The first is a reprinting of the introduction to Derek Brewer’s edition of the last two tales of Malory’s Morte Darthur; first published in 1968, it remains stimulating and informative. The volume continues with Jonathan Passaro’s discussion of the source manuscript for Malory’s first tale; in a closely argued essay he argues persusively that Malory worked with a version of Cambridge University Library MS add 7071, pointing to numerous verbal and structural parallels, and indeed that this may be the actual manuscript he used. Amanda Hopkins considers the ‘Arthuricity’ of the little-known Latin werewolf romance Arthur and Gorlagon, which deals with metamorphosis, misogyny and bestiality; and Thomas Hinton discusses images of sterility and fertility in the complex continuations of Chretien’s Conte du Graal. Moving beyond the Middle Ages, Siân Echard describes some early modern responses to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s dealings with Rome in the writings of antiquarians such as Camden; and Norris Lacy ranges widely over the evolution of the Arthurian legend, linking texts to contexts. Finally, Ronald Hutton considers representations of both Christian and pagan religion in modern novels and cinema, again in relation to cultural context. The volume ends with a supplement on recent additions to Arthurian fiction by Norris Lacy and Raymond Thompson, further evidence, if any were needed, of the perennial popularity of the legend. Elizabeth Archibald Bristol, UK David F. Johnson Tallahassee, Florida

Contributors Derek Brewer, who died in 2008, was Professor of English at Cambridge and published widely on medieval literature. He was especially influential in Chaucer and Malory studies. In 1972 he founded the publishing company D. S. Brewer, which in 1979 merged with the Boydell Press to form Boydell & Brewer. Siân Echard is Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar at the University of British Columbia. Her publications include Arthurian Narrative in the Latin Tradition (1998) and Printing the Middle Ages (2008). She is the editor of the forthcoming Arthur of the Latin Tradition (2010). Thomas Hinton is a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. He is completing a PhD at King’s College London on the aesthetics of the Conte del Graal cycle and its influence on Arthurian verse romance. His next project is a study of the effect of the growth of literacy on conceptions of the past in vernacular French and Occitan texts. Amanda Hopkins teaches at Warwick University in the departments of French and English and Comparative Literary Studies. Her research interests include the narrative Breton lay and its dissemination, the treatment of the erotic in medieval narrative, and the transmission and acculturation of medieval narrative in Europe. She is the editor and translator of ‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’: Two Old French Werwolf Lays (2005), and the co-editor (with Cory Rushton) of The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (2007). Ronald Hutton is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, and the author of twelve books, including Witches, Druids and King Arthur: Studies in Paganism, Myth and Magic (2003). Norris J. Lacy is Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of French and Medieval Studies at Pennsylvania State University. His many Arthurian publications include The Craft of Chrétien de Troyes (1980), The New Arthurian Encyclopaedia (3rd edn, 1996), The Arthurian Handbook (2nd edn, 1997), and A Companion to Chrétien de Troyes, co-edited with Joan Tasker Grimbert (2005). He is past president of the International Arthurian Society. Jonathan Passaro received his BA from the University of Pennsylvania, took the MPhil in Medieval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge, and is now studying law at Harvard University.

Raymond H. Thompson, Professor Emeritus at Acadia University, Nova Scotia, is the author of The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction (1985); an associate editor of The New Arthurian Encyclopedia (1991) and its supplements; and co-editor of the Merlin Casebook (2003) and Gawain Casebook (2006). He has also conducted a series of interviews, Taliesin’s Successors: Interviews with Authors of Modern Arthurian Literature .

I

Introduction to The Morte Darthur, Parts 7 and 8 Derek Brewer

Editors’ Note In 1968 Derek Brewer’s edition of the last two tales of Malory’s Morte Darthur appeared in the York Medieval Texts series published by Edward Arnold. The introduction, which we reprint here (omitting only section VIII, A Note on the Text), is still remarkably fresh and relevant over forty years later. He was ahead of his time in his interest in anthropology, for instance; but he also situated his comments in a broad historical context, referring both to the fall of the Roman Empire and to the effects of the Second World War. His account of what he calls ‘the honourable society’ demonstrates not only his erudition and elegant style, but also his humanity. We have not attempted to update the bibliography, but have expanded individual references to give fuller citations, and have silently corrected punctuation and spelling where necessary. Brewer’s page references for Malory are mostly to his own edition; we have added in square brackets references to the three-volume Vinaver/Field edition of 1990, and also to Caxton’s book and chapter divisions. His references to earlier sections of the Morte are taken from the first Vinaver edition of 1947; we have updated them to the page numbering of the fuller second and third editions. Elizabeth Archibald David F. Johnson

I Malory’s series of stories has delighted five centuries of readers, whether or not their own lives have been as exciting as his book. The Arthurian tales, that mixture of myth, adventure, love-story, enchantment, tragedy, live in his work as the essence of medieval romance, yet always with a 1



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contemporary relevance. This combination of romantic remoteness with contemporary relevance was true even in his own day. He wrote in the middle of the fifteenth century, a period of sagging confidence, and bewildering change, when England’s empire had been almost entirely lost. He was looking backward to an imagined, more primitive, if glorious past. Contemplation of this past, however, was to provide, besides its intrinsic interest, an analysis of the problems of the present, and also an ideal for the future.1 The Morte Darthur was a part of the movement that transformed the medieval knight into the English gentleman. It expresses those potent ideals of the gentleman’s private virtue and public service that despite many failings activated English society and influence up to the first half of the twentieth century. Even in the present day we respond to Malory’s art and intent. The circumstances of knights in armour are remote from us, and interesting in their remoteness, yet the symbolic power of The Morte Darthur can also speak to the enduring contemporary need to reconcile the individual’s demands with those of society, to recognize and cherish personal integrity, and true love, and to create a good society. Nothing bears witness more strikingly to the human power of Malory’s work than the way it haunts the imagination of modern writers. Hardly a year passes without some retelling of the tale. The Arthurian legend, in remotest origins Celtic, a medieval bestseller in twelfth-century Latin, which developed in the various European vernaculars into perhaps the largest single body of imaginative literature that the world has known, survives into the modern world as a living work only in English, at the hands of almost its last remodeller, Sir Thomas Malory. It is one of the many paradoxes of The Morte Darthur that it both is and is not Malory’s. He is very much a translator, and rarely moves without help from sources. Yet he is also fully independent in handling his sources and unquestionably a great artist. He has suffered somewhat at the hands of critics by often being read in the light of other writers with different aims. We must recognize that his book is built up on the foundations of earlier works, or we shall misunderstand its nature, but it is the aim of the present essay to consider The Morte Darthur in its own right, as a great work of art. Many generations of readers, including men of genius and affairs from Henry VIII to T. E. Lawrence, have valued it, but literary critics from Ascham onwards have usually deplored or ignored it, misunderstanding its nature or assuming it to be merely derivative. Its real power and grasp as a book in itself have yet to be fully evaluated. Although it is the aim of this introductory essay to further that evaluation,

1

See A. B. Ferguson, The Indian Summer of English Chivalry (Durham, N.C., 1960), p. 41.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

and some new judgments are made, its brevity necessarily leaves many things only suggested or partly developed. Malory’s blend of fantasy and relevance is reinforced by his formal directness, whereby he reduces the complex elaborations of earlier Arthurian storytellers to a sequence of coherent tales which draws the reader along. Caxton, his first editor and publisher (whose edition of 1485 was for almost five centuries the only source of Malory’s text), confused this strong direct form by dividing it, as he tells us, into twenty-one books, and into many, often illogical, chapter-divisions. Only when an unedited manuscript was discovered in Winchester College Library in 19342 was it possible to see without distraction Malory’s true form, whereby the whole book is divided into eight main parts with subsections. No doubt the essential clarity of Malory’s design has always been grasped, if unconsciously, by the common sense of readers, in Johnson’s phrase, ‘uncorrupted by literary prejudice’, since Malory’s book is the only version of the huge corpus of medieval Arthurian literature that is still naturally current. The other versions, more sophisticated in art and learning, have become immured within their own mazes, to which specialists alone have the key. Nevertheless, our natural appreciation of Malory’s work has very much benefited now that the Winchester Manuscript is available, presented with all Professor Vinaver’s learning in his splendid edition, though Professor Vinaver in his reaction from Caxton seems in his turn to have gone beyond Malory’s intentions by creating absolute divisions between the eight sections, putting asunder what Malory had carefully joined together. The text offered in this edition presents an integral portion of Malory’s great work, that is, the last two main parts, where the whole work, and Malory’s own art, rise to their climax. The text is taken principally from the Winchester Manuscript, occasionally corrected by reference to Caxton, except for the final pages of the manuscript, which are missing, and which therefore have to be taken from Caxton alone. The text is modernized in spelling. Little is lost by this and much is gained. Most modern English spellings would be recognizable, and many were current, in the fifteenth century, but the vagaries of fifteenth-century spelling are distracting for the modern reader, interposing a veil of irrelevant quaintness.

2

By Mr. W. F. Oakeshott. See his account, ‘The Finding of the Manuscript’, in Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (London, 1963), pp. 1–6.

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II The Growth of Arthurian Legend The true nature of Malory’s book can hardly be appreciated without recognizing how different its situation is, and was, from a modern book, particularly a novel. Most people nowadays know a bit about the Arthurian legend before they read Malory, and this has always been the case. If we pick up a modern novel, on the other hand, we are disgusted if we find that we know the story, and that parts are even copied from earlier novels. Modern novelists, poets, dramatists, must, in the significant words of Ezra Pound, ‘make it new’. Before the eighteenth century writing was different. Shakespeare, for example, always used earlier writings as a base, sometimes hardly changing a word, as in his description of Cleopatra, taken from North’s Plutarch. None of the great earlier writers, English or European, sought new material as the modern novelist must, or must pretend to. The same stories were constantly rewritten. For example, the story of King Lear had been told, though often very briefly, more than fifty times before Shakespeare wrote his play, which itself may have been founded on a previous play on the same subject. In this respect imaginative writers were more like modern historians than modern novelists. They sought novelty and freshness, of course, but they sought it in presentation, in taking a different view of known facts, in presenting new evidence. The similarity with historians must not be pressed too far. Older writers invented their new evidence as modern historians do not. But it may be recalled that those who are still accounted the greatest historians, Thucydides and Tacitus, certainly invented the speeches they put into the mouths of historical characters, just as Malory invented some of the speeches he put into the mouth of his main ‘historical’ character, King Arthur. Such an attitude to writing as Malory’s has important results. First, every reader can be expected to know the story roughly, at least. The author need not worry too much about ‘unity’ (see below, p. 23). He has received a given mass of material. Again, he need waste no time in building up certain effects, because they are already known, as the ­characters, in outline, are known, too, and he can rely on the reader’s co-operation. He can achieve effects of irony and distance, along with familiarity. The author is also limited. He may change the quality of personality of a given character in the story (some writers even degraded the character of King Arthur), or the interpretation of an event, but he can hardly change a principal event completely. Secondly, the writer, taking over a story perhaps already elaborated several times, is taking over a structure of several layers. The advantage of this is that several layers may have effects both powerful and obscure, surviving underneath more superficial and recent though equally interesting layers of event 4



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

and commentary, much as an oil painting by a great master has a play of different tones through the several layers of paint (the painted-out first thoughts and mistakes, even the dirt and varnishes of later years may contribute to the final effect). On the other hand, the disadvantage of an old and much rewritten story is that it may incorporate misunderstood earlier passages; or passages from earlier and later rewritings may be inconsistent with each other. The classic examples of such inconsistencies are to be found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The example of Hamlet also suggests that such inconsistencies are not very important in a work of art. They violate that realism or naturalism that the nineteenth century has taught us to demand, but which the twentieth century, in art as in literature, is teaching us to abandon. We must abandon it also for Malory. The Morte Darthur, whatever it is, is not a novel, with the typical novel’s unity and naturalism. It is a complex, layered structure of great fascination, with its own internal laws (see further, p. 20 below). How do these layers come about?3 The origin seems to have been a successful Romanized British (i.e., in modern terms, Welsh) war-leader of the British, or Gaelic, peoples, whom the Anglo-Saxons were conquering or driving out of what is now England, in the fifth century AD. The first account of Arthur is in the story of the wars between the British and the English given by Nennius, a British (i.e. Welsh) priest, who wrote his Historiae Britonum about 800. Another mention of Arthur, however, comes in a Welsh poem perhaps of the seventh century. Other later historians preserve and slightly extend Nennius’s account and Mordred appears as Arthur’s last enemy. Other Welsh poems show Arthur as a mythical hero, in a supernatural world, capable of strange exploits, but already accompanied by Kay and Bedivere. History and legend in various forms are the two chief elements in the Arthurian story, with now one dominating, now the other, now each in balance. History and legend were brought together for the first time in the same work by Geoffrey of Monmouth (his origin is significant) in his History of the Kings of Britain written in Latin and usually dated near 1135. It may be said of Geoffrey’s combination of the two elements that it was achieved by giving legend the sober presentation of history. It is a fascinating situation. Geoffrey, whose parents may have been Bretons, was probably born in Monmouth and educated at Oxford; he wrote in Latin for a Norman-French audience, about a Welsh hero, who was king of England. Geoffrey derived Arthur’s ancestry from a line of kings which included Lear and Cymbeline, went back to the grandson of Aeneas, 3

The many problems are the subject of a vast scholarly literature, most of which has little relevance to Malory. The most useful brief and interesting account is in R. S. Loomis, The Development of Arthurian Romance (London, 1963). For fuller details see R. S. Loomis, Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages (London, 1959) and its bibliographies.

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called Brutus, and so back again to Romans and Trojans. His work was immensely successful in England and Europe. The tangled skein of ­European culture was further interwoven by the enthusiasm with which European courts took up Geoffrey’s account of Arthur. More Celtic legends were garnered from the Welsh, or from Brittany, to enrich the harvest. The Arthurian concept was so strong that it attracted other stories, of remote and separate origin, like that of Tristram. Elements from classical Latin literature, and a certain sophistication of literary culture, were employed in making Arthurian tales by clerkly court poets, especially by the French poet Chrestien of Troyes. Chrestien was probably the most influential writer – the invention of Lancelot and his love for Guenevere are perhaps his – but all the major European vernaculars produced many Arthurian stories. Although the stories are so numerous and varied, the significant point they have in common is that they used Arthurian mythology to provide a mirror in which to see the romance of their own lives, the lives of knights and ladies. Orthodox Christian story could not be so completely adopted partly because of its intrinsic nature, partly for historical reasons (though one must not forget the importance of saints’ lives in the development of romance). Every society has an imaginative need to see itself not quite as it is, but as it essentially thinks of itself. Medieval courtly European society imagined its secular self in terms of knight-errantry, conflict, love of ladies, high ideals of noble behaviour. The developing individualism of the twelfth century relished the presentation of a single knight’s solitary quest, of his personal initiative, freedom from social pressures; it required the record of victories not only over normal enemies and competitors but also over monsters that are really the indwelling terrors of men’s own minds. That the day-to-day actuality was often different from the literature need hardly surprise us – the same is true of novels in relation to ordinary life even today. We read novels because we hope both to lose and to find ourselves. Literature, fortunately, is not life. The fantasies of chivalric romance, especially those of Chrestien, clearly met important imaginative needs in their own time, and are attractive even now. In them, however, the element of legend, which from the twelfth century we had better call romance, predominated. The realism is limited, the historical and social elements subordinate. From the point of view of Malory’s work it is the French and a few later English versions that are important. In the thirteenth century the verse romances of Chrestien and others were turned into French prose and much enlarged, for example, by the story of Lancelot’s early years, by accounts of Merlin, and by much else besides. The most important additions are the books of the History of the Holy Grail and the Quest of the Holy Grail. The Grail was thought to be the vessel in which Christ’s blood from the cross was received, though scholars have sought the history of the idea in pagan Gaelic culture. The intention of the Grail 6



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

stories is to denigrate the chivalric life of the knight-errant and to exalt its complete opposite, the virginal, ascetic, meditative, untravelled life of the monk. The authors are thought to have been Cistercian monks. They used the chivalric myths to deny chivalric values. They wrote a serious allegorical parody of wordly chivalry to exemplify the unwordly life of the spirit. Nothing more clearly shows the tremendous imaginative power of the myth of chivalry. The Grail stories were apparently as successful as the other Arthurian stories in French prose in the thirteenth century, partly because of their literary art, and, partly, no doubt, because their audience, unlike their authors, were able to believe both in the chivalric virtues and in spiritual virtues. Most people live with such inconsistencies easily enough and no one avoids them. The Grail stories were joined with other principal Arthurian stories, such as those of Lancelot and Guenevere (a romance of adultery), and of the death of Arthur. Thus a huge composite series of romances was put together, now known, because of its popularity, as the Vulgate. The Vulgate romances are also sometimes known as ‘cyclic’ romances, because of the way they were narrated, by a method also known as interlacing. That is, the story of one knight was told for a few pages. Then he was left, and the tale of another taken up for a similar space. Then again a third, and so back to the first. It was these cyclic romances of the French Vulgate version that Malory knew, and that provided him with most of his material. They may not have given him his original inspiration. They are deficient in practical historical realism and directness. These qualities Malory found nearer home, particularly in Morte Arthure, an alliterative poem written in English in the fourteenth century. From the middle of the fourteenth century till sometime in the fifteenth century a number of English poems are found in the alliterative metre that goes back to Old English times. At first they seem to be associated more with the Northern and Western parts of the country. They usually have a strong, provincial, old-fashioned, patriotic, aristocratic seriousness with considerable political and religious interests. Such at least is the case with the alliterative Morte Arthure.4 Several of the alliterative poems show a patriotic interest in Arthur, but the alliterative Morte treats his triumph and death extensively. In this poem the author goes back to the original historical concept of Arthur, though he knows something of later romance. Gawain, not Lancelot, is Arthur’s principal knight, and there is no love-interest. Lancelot is a minor figure. What is most striking is that although Arthur is king of ‘Britain’, he is thought and spoken of as English, as ‘our’ king, his 4

There are some variations from this pattern, naturally, in the greatest of these poems, Piers Plowman, which is clerical and London-based, and not aristocratic, and in the varied works of the Gawain-poet. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alliterative verse spread widely, and was reabsorbed into the national tradition. Cf. D. S. Brewer, ‘An Unpublished Late Alliterative Poem’, English Philological Studies 9 (1965), 84–8.

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men ‘our’ men. It is a poem of characteristically English self-­glorification – Arthur creates an Empire from Ireland to Rome – and equally characteristic self-castigation, for Arthur is criticized as well as glorified. The English audience is expected to identify itself with Arthur and his men, and it is possible that Arthur himself is quite deliberately designed to represent in certain ways Edward III (who was himself a keen Arthurian).5 In other words, we have in this poem that sense of historical and political relevance on English ground that the French romances so notably lack. Such fantasy as there is in the alliterative Morte, like Arthur’s fight with the giant, is presented with military realism, not untouched by a grim humour. Other elements of fantasy are presented through dream, the most realistic method of presenting fantasy. One of Arthur’s dreams is of Fortune’s Wheel, central to the tragic concept of the poem, as it is to the form that Malory eventually adopted. Malory translated Morte Arthure. He made a number of changes in it. For example, he suppressed much of the heroic Gawain, and in turn exalted Lancelot, inventing new episodes to his glory. Since Lancelot as the lover of Queen Guenevere was well known in the fifteenth century, the effect of this is to introduce an element of romance, and reduce the unduly nationalistic tone, for Lancelot was a Frenchman. At the same time Malory maintained the historical and political relevance, for Professor Vinaver shows that there is good reason to suppose that Malory slightly recast Arthur’s route in his expedition through France to accord better with that of King Henry V. In this section of Malory’s work Arthur is probably to some extent an image of Henry V as in the alliterative poem he was of the equally heroic Edward III. The ‘prosification’ of the alliterative Morte, though it appears as the second section of the Winchester MS and as Book V in Caxton,6 may have been, as Vinaver argues, Malory’s first ‘work’. Although, as the reader already knows, the present writer does not agree with Professor Vinaver’s further thesis that all the sections are entirely separate works, his view that the alliterative Morte was the first Arthurian section to be handled by Malory is an attractive one. He gives a sensible historical theory for the quality and success of Malory’s work, showing fantasy grounded in historical relevance. It also helps us to grasp Malory’s form. Malory did not, obviously, simply translate Morte Arthure through from beginning to end, or he would have come to Arthur’s death before he had well begun. Yet the Morte gave two valuable leads to Malory. First,

5 6

The Order of the Garter, founded by Edward III in the middle of the fourteenth century, is based on an Arthurian mythology. Caxton ‘edited’, that is, cut, this section more ruthlessly than any other, and undoubtedly here improved on Malory. See S. Shaw, ‘Caxton and Malory’, in Essays on Malory, ed. Bennett, pp. 86–106.

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it is an example of a straightforward Arthurian story, enriched, certainly, by relevant digressions in the manner of medieval narration, but without the tiresome elaboration of interlacing. There were other examples of straightforward narration within or without a larger frame, but Morte Arthure was right in the centre of Malory’s interest. The second lead is more complicated. Morte Arthure provides an example of medieval tragedy in the upward and downward movement of Fortune’s Wheel, that great medieval image. Malory took the moment of triumph, but for the moment postponed the fall. His section on Arthur and the Roman Wars, taken from the alliterative Morte, does not, like the Morte, go on immediately to the discovery of Mordred’s treachery and so to Arthur’s return and death. Naturally, Malory knew that this was the end to which he would have to work, as a matter of history. But he wanted to dilate on the splendour of Arthur’s achievement and on the achievements of Arthur’s knights: here the romances, the mirror of chivalry, came to his aid. With their material Arthur’s moment of triumph is prolonged, and we hear many adventures, including that of the Grail. Malory does not return to the alliterative Morte Arthure until he comes to the tragic end. The downward turn of Fortune’s wheel is all the more tragic when we see the glory and complexity of what is destroyed. When he comes to Arthur’s end Malory does not use only the alliterative Morte. He has learnt to blend and select from various sources. So he uses a French source, and another English poem, the stanzaic Morte Arthur, to supply the material he works on. The way Malory worked on his sources has been shown in fascinating detail by Professor Vinaver, and following him, by other scholars.7 Briefly, Malory has selected from his sources those stories which he requires, thus ‘breaking up’, as Professor Vinaver has shown (Works p. xlvi), ‘the complicated structure’ of the cyclic romances and ‘using its fragments for smaller narrative patterns’. He makes ‘(a) a rearrangement of episodes consistent with [his] own narrative technique, and (b) a series of connecting passages designed to link together the episodes so rearranged’ (Works p. 1588). Whereas Professor Vinaver sees the ‘fragments’ as entirely separate, it seems fair to say that most scholars now see the fragments arranged in the form of a larger whole (perhaps suggested by the alliterative Morte), which tells the whole life and death of Arthur and the marvellous deeds of his knights, with all that is implicit in them of romantic and historical significance.8 History (of a kind) and romance are now in Malory grown together. It is not literal historical truth for us, of course, since King Arthur never 7 8

See especially the work of Professor Lumiansky’s team in Malory’s Originality, ed. R. M. Lumiansky (Baltimore, 1964). See my account, ‘the hoole book’, in Essays on Malory, ed. Bennett, pp. 41–63 and see also Malory’s Originality, ed. Lumiansky, passim.

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existed as Malory thought of him (though to many medieval Englishmen he did). It is not unreasonable, however, to think of Malory’s feeling for England, for a special personal situation, for what creates and destroys great human institutions, as generally ‘historical’, with a practical human relevance. This human relevance feeds green sap through the romance of chivalric adventure and love; the events are no dry leaves of dream but living gleaming images of human life. Malory grafts on to the sturdy stock of Morte Arthure the exotic flowers of French romance, achieving the exchange and mutual enrichment of strength and beauty.

III The Morte Darthur The Morte Darthur is the name traditionally given to Malory’s work, though, as the words of the colophon (see p. 158 [1260n]) presumably written by Malory suggest, the subject of the work is ‘Arthur and his knights from the beginning to the ending’. Caxton first named it The Morte Darthur, though he noted that more was meant. The short title signifies the most important single event, which is certainly Arthur’s death. Although Professor Vinaver concludes that the short title The Morte Darthur can apply only to the last of eight main parts, to which it literally belongs, practically the same title, Morte Arthure, had also been given in the fifteenth-century manuscript to the whole alliterative poem which contains many other events. In the same way, The Morte Darthur covers the whole of Malory’s book. As will have been gathered from the discussion above, The Morte Darthur is a very long book, with many adventures intermingled. It cannot but contain some inconsistencies, though the effect of these is not disastrous. Most of them arise in the narrative of the adventures of knights in the middle section, when the Round Table is at the height of its glory. These adventures may be thought of as roughly parallel in the general time sequence. Such inconsistencies arise less obviously in the last two sections. A novelistic naturalism is, however, not to be expected, and the superficial resemblance of the book to a novel is misleading. Nevertheless the book treats a coherent and cohesive mass of material, sorted with great care. The Arthurian stories had for long been known as ‘the matter of Britain’ (one of the three great topics of medieval romance), but for Malory, as for the author of Morte Arthure, the subject is not Britain but England. That Malory’s chief hero, Lancelot, is French only shows that Malory’s feeling is not a form of post-Renaissance xenophobia. The people and the vague localizations of the French sources are given an 10



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

English local habitation which is named.9 The castle of Meliagaunt is seven miles from Westminster. To get to it in a hurry, as Lancelot once had to, to rescue the queen, you make your horse swim the Thames at Westminster, and land at Lambeth. Queen Guenevere, about to be married, goes up to London to buy her trousseau. Camelot is actually, Malory tells us, Winchester. Many other places are similarly identified. At another level Malory leaves no doubt of one of the themes that preoccupy him when he makes his well-known apostrophe to his fellow-Englishmen, reproaching them for their instability (p. 139 [1229; XXI.1]). He fits Arthur’s reign into what was known of pre-Anglo-Saxon chronology, and dates it in the fifth century. His interest in history is not ours; not impersonally political or economic, or social. His history was incarnate in the person of Arthur, and in Arthur’s achievements and knights. Naturally it was real historywriting, a story, not annals. The story is of the rise and fall of King Arthur, with which is closely involved the achievement and disaster of Lancelot, Arthur’s principal knight, the strongest and bravest of all, who comes to a sad but pious end. The lives of the two are closely interwined, and their double thread holds all the great, varied, and beautiful tapestry together. Malory tells how Arthur is begotten, in a way that already plants the seeds of tragedy. He comes to the throne unknown, but chosen by fate and justified by his own bravery and honour. He establishes a great Empire, stretching from Ireland to Rome, and a brotherhood of warriors, the knights of the Round Table, whom he causes to be vowed to an ideal of equity, bravery, justice, help for the weak and oppressed, personal goodness. Many knights come to his court, attracted by the glory of the Round Table. From the court they depart on many strange adventures, returning to increase its glory. The strangest adventure of all is the search for the Holy Grail, symbol of healing for the Waste Land, to be attained only by the pure in heart. Three knights achieve it, notably Galahad, the son of Lancelot; Lancelot fails, for this adventure demands a perfection not given to even the best of ordinary mortals, and it is part of Malory’s literary achievement that even Lancelot, ‘the greatest knight of a sinful man’, as Malory calls him, is yet so human. Lancelot comes nearer to achieving the Grail than any of the other ‘ordinary’ knights, but, strong and noble as he is, he is also proud and – by some standards – unstable. He is not unstable in the ordinary sense, because in his adulterous love for Arthur’s queen, Guenevere, he is all too stable; but unstable in his desire for moral perfection, as we all are. The signs of Lancelot’s instability are his pride and his obsessive love for Arthur’s queen. Lancelot, after the Arthur of the earlier sections of the whole work, is the prime architect of the fame of Arthur’s court. 9

Cf. G. R. Stewart, ‘English Geography in Malory’s Morte D’Arthur’, Modern Language Review 30 (1935), 204–9.

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After his return from the Quest of the Holy Grail he is at the precarious height of his glory, the supreme ornament of that supreme institution, the Round Table. But the fine crack in the golden bowl of noble achievement that the Grail Quest has clearly revealed begins to widen. Because he loves Guenevere, and because he is honourable and loyal, Lancelot cannot desert her. Yet he cannot be the lover of Guenevere and remain honourable and loyal to Arthur. His pride must drive these honours and loyalties to destroy each other, and much else. Lancelot’s own faults are emblematic of the evil that exists among some other of the knights. They are not necessarily adulterous, though many are incontinent; some are envious, others are vengeful (which are not faults of Lancelot), and some are proud. In a word, they are human. But the worst is Mordred, who is himself the illegitimate product of Arthur’s own early sin, in his brief incestuous (though in this respect ignorant) affair with his half-sister. Mordred and others force the reluctant Arthur to recognize Lancelot and Guenevere’s adultery; the lovers must abscond. Arthur must attack them; Mordred rebels in Arthur’s absence and in the last battle mortally wounds him before dying himself at his own father’s hand. The whole glorious and humanly insecure institution of chivalry, so briefly once achieved in that England where Malory later contemplated it with joy and sorrow, is brought crashing down. The death of the most noble knights of all the world, and the most noble king, is brought about by the faithful love of the best of them all. Had Lancelot been worse or better none of it would have happened. Arthur is carried off to the mysterious Avilion. Lancelot and Guenevere withdraw separately into lives of penitence and solitude until they die. Lancelot’s soul goes to Heaven. This is in briefest outline the story that Malory tells, or rather retells. It is the great secular story of Western medieval Christendom. Within the whole body of legend are found the grandest public themes and the dearest private concerns: the Great King and the Great Society; secret love and solitary death. Arthur himself is by turns, as the story develops and as he grows older, Hero, King, Father, finally destroyed by his son Mordred and surrogate-sons Gawain and Lancelot. They themselves are respectively villain, half-villain, hero. There is a whole range of motifs of the deepest antiquity, such as the modern conscious mind may barely recognize, of hope and doom, strange sicknesses, mysterious healing, enchantments, quests and journeys, conflicts, fatal or lucky chances. They are gathered together from the Celtic, Classical, Eastern past, mingled with and transformed by the Christian thought and passion of many different centuries. Malory welded them together in the image of England; his sober treatment of what was once wildest fancy reflects a political, military, historical concern. He is rationalistic in his cutting down of marvels, in his refusal of folk superstition. He is realistic in his estimate of what a man may do. He loves and admits high ideals and strange marvels, but cautiously, and after testing, so that they appear the more noble and 12



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

marvellous. He senses both the development of a new individualism, and a new concept of the nation-state as a great institution, and finds in the clash between them some part of his tragic structure. He does not think in terms of mass society, or of jingoism. He thinks of the brightness and eclipse of the ideal yet corrupted society that he imagined as Arthur’s English court; of the glory and corruption of good men, in particular of those two aboundingly good men, Arthur and Lancelot, but also of some few intimates like Gawain and his brothers, and some few dozen more whose adventures brought them to the court, and who made up the noble fellowship of the Round Table. Specific as it was, localized in time and place, vivid, there, nevertheless Malory also created in his work an image, a model, that may be widely applied throughout one’s own experience, and throughout our knowledge of human society in any country. Malory’s book is about an ideal society, and its fall; good men and their faults; an exciting way of life, and a great tragedy. Like all great authors his inclusiveness is such that he seems to us to be balanced at a significant point between past and present, and to hold together elements naturally in tension – the individual and society, passion and faithfulness, honour and sanctity, glory and shame. Even in form and structure he achieves an astonishing blend of the medieval and modern: his work has elements that relate it to the old cyclic romances, to the modern short story and novel, to The Faerie Queene, even to Proust’s great work; yet it maintains its own distinctive form, both between and of different worlds.

IV The Style of a Gentleman Malory’s style is supremely well suited to his matter; it is both colloquial and ceremonious – the style of a fifteenth-century gentleman. He is not scholarly, genteel, nor boorish.10 He is at one with Shakespeare’s courtly Hotspur, who required his wife to swear ‘a good mouth-filling oath’ ‘like a lady’; with the ceremonious Lord Chesterfield, who thought 10

Malory’s style has been regrettably little investigated. H. C. Wyld in what he describes as his ‘lighthearted’ History (H. C. Wyld, History of Modern Colloquial English, 3rd edn (London, 1936)) neglects Malory but for a few words of general praise. He points out, however, the colloquial yet ceremonious speech of gentry from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, and emphasizes the close relation between the written and spoken word. Jan Simko (Word Order in the Winchester Manuscript and Caxton’s Edition – a Comparison (Prague, 1957)) in the most elaborate, but still limited, treatment of Malory’s language so far available finds in Malory’s style the ‘earthiness of popular speech’, contrasting with him Caxton’s ‘tradesman’s’ anxiety about ‘correctness’. See also The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. E. Vinaver, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1967), p. 1653.

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it extremely rude to answer yes or no, without adding Sir, My Lord, Madam, according to the quality of the person addressed; and with the aristocratic Lord Byron.11 The colloquial vigour – there is no need to call it popular, if this implies what is non-aristocratic or non-gentrylike – is everywhere apparent. It appears in a blunt directness: Sir Lancelot ‘sank down upon his arse’ (p. 55 [1074; XVIII.12]) according to the Winchester MS; Caxton has ‘buttocks’, a more genteel middle-class word. Caxton’s version is here not likely to be Malory’s).* Not surprisingly, Malory comes out best with the spoken word of dialogue, vigorous, laconic, expressive. What richness of implication is rendered in Lancelot’s sharp words to the queen. ‘Have ye no doubt, madam, I allow your wit. It is of late come since ye were waxen so wise.’ The restrained sarcasm tells a tale of personal relationships that Malory might have found it hard to put in more abstract, analytic terms – and which, had he done so, we should have found a good deal less interesting than its dramatic and concrete expression. The colloquial energy of Malory’s writing is particularly revealed by his syntax, which is plain enough, and rarely gives trouble, but which often has a fine unconcern for rules of proper relation, coordination, and subordination. He slides from clause to clause in a way that makes it difficult to impose modern bookish punctuation on his syntactic structures. Very often the interposed dash of a fluent letter-writer, did it not look typographically rather odd, would be the best punctuation to separate clause from clause. This sliding syntax is everywhere apparent, but most noticeably where Malory is writing on his own, unguided by the more formal French, as in the passage on May season (p. 100 [1161; XX.1]). Occasionally it degenerates into mere muddle (e.g. p. 150 [1250/6; XXI.8], where one feels that Malory must have been sleepy indeed; but more typically it occurs in the transitions between narrative, reported speech, and direct speech. Such a slide from one mode to another is not uncommon in Middle English generally, because Middle English writing is closer to colloquial speech than is most modern print, but in Malory it is especially frequent. It shows his confidence, his freedom from either social or scholarly anxieties; it is one of the ways in which his remarkable unity with diversity of tone is maintained. The colloquial power of Malory’s style cannot be properly estimated without recognizing what is a strange conjunction to the twentieth-century reader; the conjunction of the colloquial with the ceremonious. We tend to think that colloquial style is in every sense ruder and lower than other *

Brewer refers here to his ‘Note on the Text’ (Section VIII), which we have omitted.

11

Cf. Wyld, History, pp. 17ff., and Byron, Don Juan Canto, ed. L. A. Marchand (Boston, 1958), XI, especially stanzas XLII–XLIV. [Brewer did not specify an edition of Byron.]

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

styles, and in its nature opposed to any form of high style. That is not the case with Chaucer,12 who was also a writer for the gentry and who could use a coarse word with courtliness; and it is not the case with Malory. Within the range of the spoken word and an unbookish diction his style easily comprehends a casual simplicity at one end of the scale and a deep-toned stateliness at the other. An obvious example of his style at its highest is Sir Ector’s threnody for the dead Lancelot (p. 157 [1259; XXI.13]). It rests on the simple use of a well-known rhetorical device, anaphora or repetitio, the repetition of an introductory phrase. This device had previously been very effectively used by Chaucer at the end of Troilus, at a similar point in the story, also summing up certain qualities of his hero, in the lines beginning ‘Swich fyn …’ (Troilus V.1828–32), with which Malory’s passage may be usefully compared. Malory has less ambivalence, is more directly moving, and has his own complexity. He takes over the traditional paradoxical attributes of the Christian knight, his fierceness and gentleness, and by placing them in the mouth of a brother and faithful comrade gives them more expressive dramatic force of personal speech than could be obtained by direct author’s comment. The use of the second person singular is also significantly moving, as will be later shown. Yet he does not aim at a realistic naturalism. The speech is not sobbed or gasped out, though we are told of the extremity of Sir Ector’s grief. The speech has a liturgical solemnity, arising from a complex parallelism of phrase and idea that has its roots in the old alliterative poetry (see the notes), and possibly in biblical parallelism too. The speech is naturally at one extreme of Malory’s stylistic range, just as bluntness of description, or Lancelot’s sarcasm, is at the other. Between these extremes Malory modulates with extra­ordinary skill, keeping all the time an evenness of tone that is instantly recognizable. There is no disputing the sense of a living speech. ‘“Fall whatsomever fall may”, said sir Agravain’, or, as we now say, ‘Come what may’. The words are entirely natural in their unforced expression of absolute determination. Living and natural as the colloquial tone is, it is not the clumsy inexpressive jargon of the downtrodden populace, deprived of so much of intellectual as of other riches. Malory may not have been an educated man in the way a clerk was educated, but he could and did read, like his own characters. His style was partly formed by the stateliness of the French prose with which he lived for what must have been many years. And he reflects the high manners of a society in which to speak well was itself one of the main expressions of good manners. There is a casual dignity of expression everywhere. Even in the amusing passage where Lancelot’s own dignity is punctured by an arrow in the buttocks, Lancelot speaks 12

See my essay ‘The Relationship of Chaucer to the English and European Traditions’, in Chaucer and Chaucerians, ed. D. S. Brewer (London, 1966), pp. 1–38.

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with a crisp irritation that shows a delightfully gentlemanlike self-control in speaking to however errant a lady. Everywhere in the book the characters speak to each other in terms of ceremonious address – Sir, Madam, My Lord, My most redoubted king, Mine own lady, Fair maiden, Fair sister, and so forth. The most striking example of Malory’s language in its careful modulation of tones, revealing both its colloquial liveliness and ceremonious dignity, is to be found in his use of the second person of the personal pronoun. The normal pronoun of address is the second person plural, the polite, public form. It is almost always the form used between Lancelot and Guenevere. In their desperate plight when Agravain has trapped Lancelot in Guenevere’s chamber, Lancelot still uses this polite, respectful form. Then, ‘ “Nay, sir Lancelot, nay!” said the queen, “Wit thou well that I will not live long after thy days.” ’ How moving is that brief change to the warmth and intimacy of the second person singular. Malory achieves a delicate effect here with minimal means. Guenevere immediately reverts to the plural and only once again does she use the second person singular to Lancelot, even more movingly, when she banishes him for ever: ‘And therefore, sir Lancelot, I require thee and beseech thee heartily, for all the love that ever was betwixt us, that thou never see me no more in the visage...’. And so the sad, tender, cruel words go on. Lancelot himself never uses the second person singular to her. There is much implicit here of their whole relationship and respective characters.13 Other uses of the second person singular as expressive of deep feeling, easily overlooked by a modern reader, but striking in themselves, are the rare occasions when Arthur uses it. The polite public plural form is almost always used by Arthur, even though he is always in the position of a superior addressing an inferior. Nothing points more clearly to his grace and courtesy as a king than this. But even Arthur breaks forth in sorrow and tenderness at Gawain’s death-bed, ‘Alas, sir Gawain, my sister son, here now thou liest, the man in the world that I loved most’; 13

For purposes of comparison it may be noted that in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde the lovers never use the second person singular to each other. In contrast, it is almost constantly used between the friends Troilus and Pandarus, though Pandarus has a tendency to use the second person plural at the beginning of a conversation with Troilus, presumably in acknowledgment of Troilus’s superior social rank as a prince of the blood royal. One wonders indeed if there is not a shade of presumption in Pandarus’s almost constant use of the singular form.   In the early fourteenth-century romance Guy of Warwick, probably intended for an audience less aristocratic than either Chaucer’s or Malory’s, the second person singular is very promiscuously used.   Caxton’s text sometimes confuses thou and ye. The only place where the Winchester MS scribe seems wrong and Caxton right is on p. 137 [1221/12; XX.22], where Caxton has the singular for the plural and the Winchester MS the reverse. I have corrected the text.

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and again, later, after the great defeat, ‘ “Ah, sir Lancelot”, said King Arthur, “this day have I sore missed thee!” ’ Almost as moving is his use of the second person singular to Sir Bedivere, when Arthur is desperately near death, and must have Excalibur properly consigned to the lake, though the tenderness here becomes mixed with an imperious indignation which again is quite appropriately conveyed by the use of the singular form. His final words to Bedivere, harsh as they must be with the harshness of all inevitable partings, are nevertheless softened, made warm and human, by the use of the singular in the final request: ‘in me is no trust for to trust in. .. . And if thou hear nevermore of me, pray for my soul.’ The note of intimate appeal is also marked by the fleeting use of the singular by Sir Urry just before he is cured by Sir Lancelot; and by Lancelot himself in his prayer, on the same occasion, where the intimacy of the address to God is not harmed by the accompanying formality – a mixture which, fossilized in the liturgy, is the only survival of the potency of the second person singular in English today. Lancelot also uses the singular form in brief prayer when trapped by Agravain. The fullness of feeling which the singular form can convey in appropriate context reaches its effective climax in Sir Ector’s noble threnody for his brother and comrade, the hero of the whole book, with its repetition, both stately and intimate in a combination modern English can no longer match, of the second person singular itself; ‘thou, sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou were ... thou were’, and the reiteration of ‘thou were’ eight times more. This is stylistically as bold as Lear’s five times repeated ‘never’, though it has the additional weight of the peculiar mixture of feeling conveyed by the form itself. There are other uses. Occasionally the singular form simply denotes the social superiority of the speaker to the person addressed, though there may also be a touch of other feeling present, such as anxiety or a sense of haste. Examples are Queen Guenevere’s speech to the child who serves her, and whom she sends to Lancelot for rescue when Meliagaunt captures her; and Lancelot’s own speech to the carter whom he asks for a lift to Meliagaunt’s castle. This note of superiority is different from that of intimacy; the duality is of course perfectly familiar in second person singular usages in other European languages, though democratic levelling has removed it from English. The sometimes implied superiority, as well as the expressiveness, is essential for that other – again well-recognized use – of the singular form, as insult. To take Lancelot’s adventures on the way to the castle of Meliagaunt again as an example, when he meets the archers he of course uses the plural form since there are more than one of them. But they add to the injury they do his horse the insult of using the singular form to him. It is insulting because they are socially inferior and also strangers. The first carter is similarly rude in using the singular form, being also one of Meliagaunt’s men. But when Lancelot has struck him dead, the second carter is very careful to use the second person plural! 17



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When Lancelot arrives at Meliagaunt’s castle he storms in with angry insult, calling on Meliagaunt, ‘Thou false traitor’. The modulations from the polite and dignified plural to the insulting singular can be followed in the relationships between Lancelot and Gawain, after Lancelot has so unhappily killed Gawain’s brother Gareth. Gawain constantly uses the insulting singular. Lancelot, with noble forbearance, with a grievous sense of his own fault, and of Gawain’s partial justification, normally uses the plural form, but now and again is so sorely tried that he replies in the singular. When Gawain, after his wound, loses his hatred of Lancelot, he begins to use the plural form. There is another interesting set of contrasts in the scene where Agravain and Mordred trap Lancelot with the queen. In insulting excited triumph Agravain constantly uses the singular form. Lancelot, calm, courtly, determined, grim, is never shaken out of his self-control: he always uses the plural. Whether Malory was self-conscious in his use of the various grammatical forms it is impossible – and unimportant – to know. The subtlety of their use is there, part of the structure of the book, and no reader will wish to remain insensitive to it. It is indicative of many other subtleties still insufficiently realized which this essay can only touch on. Some of them may be summed up in pointing to the dramatic terseness that also characterizes Malory’s style, indicative of a certain practical, manof-the-world’s tone, of a desire to get on with the story, and an English gentleman’s feeling that he does not need to underline the effects and significance of his words. The social and personal insight conveyed by the varying use of a simple grammatical form can be matched in a hundred brief speeches where our alertness is rewarded by a richness and a sophistication that would not shame Chaucer, though it has been unaccountably overlooked by critics. A single brief example must serve here. When Sir Gawain seeks the knight of the red sleeve who had done so well at the tournament (and who is Lancelot incognito) he eventually comes to the house of Sir Bernard, the father of the fair maiden of Astolat, where Lancelot had stayed. Sir Bernard had lent Lancelot the shield of his sick son, Sir Tirry, and Sir Bernard’s daughter, as she calmly and openly says, had fallen irrevocably in love with Lancelot. Gawain politely questions Sir Bernard and his daughter about the identity of the unknown hero, who had left his own shield with them. ‘Ah, fair damsel’, said sir Gawain, ‘please it you to let me have a sight of that shield?’ ‘Sir’, she said, ‘it is in my chamber, covered with a case, and if ye will come with me ye shall see it.’ ‘Not so’, said sir Bernard to his daughter, ‘but send ye for that shield.’

The innocence and goodness of the girl could hardly be made more delightfully plain. They are the basis of her honesty in love, and of the pathos of her fate. At the same time the entirely proper, sharp, worldly 18



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caution of her father removes any touch of sentimentality. The realism of the little scene extends from the ‘shield in the case’ to the intangibilities of character. The presumed French source is a long way away: it includes an otiose scene in which the promiscuous Gawain attempts to make love to the maiden, who repulses him. Gawain is a better man than this in Malory’s last two main sections. The stanzaic English poem which also partly serves as source is equally remote from Malory; while not making Gawain so amorous the poem interestingly allows the maiden ‘hend and fre’ to take Gawain to her chamber to show him Lancelot’s armour, left with her. Malory’s worldly wit and wisdom, his sense of character and feeling, are in this, as in so many other places, enormously superior to, and really quite different from, his sources, whatever hints he may have received from them. The terse dramatic realism of Malory’s style, with its economic presentation of the essence of character and action mainly through speech, though apparent everywhere, can be seen with extraordinary vividness in the scene where Lancelot and Guenevere are trapped by Agravain and his followers. One can measure Malory’s quality by presenting him in comparison with and contrast to his sources: here one can also do it by considering an effective modern treatment of the same episode in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King (1958). White’s account is about three times the length of Malory’s, though the most crucial part of the fighting is evaded. It is much more realistic in giving everyday details. Lancelot spends a page brushing Guenevere’s graying hair! The dialogue is full of the meaningless colloquialisms of normal modern speech: ‘well’, ‘it was nice’, ‘do you know’, ‘really’, etc. Much more attention is paid to, or at least more words are spent on, psychological motivation, and on the explanation of underlying psychological forces in a generalizing language attributed (rather unconvincingly) to the characters themselves. It is a touching and enjoyable scene completely and very competently in the manner of the conventional modern novel. By contrast, Malory has no love-chat, no cosy domesticity. He deliberately refrains from prying into what the lovers were about – the physical details are not his interest; he knows what physical life is like, and assumes a similarly cool attitude in his readers. His dialogue reflects the essential attitudes and actions of the characters, and gives necessary information. It is not skimped, but not a word is wasted in the interests of a superficial verisimilitude. He notes physical actions as they reflect the essential situation; for example, ‘Then he took the queen in his arms and kissed her.’ The fighting is not only stirring, it is technically quite convincing, granted Lancelot’s strength, partly because Malory does not, like White, deprive Lancelot of even a sword to start with. In a word, where realistic detail is really needed, Malory can select and present more artistically and more convincingly. (In general, Malory’s realistic touches show his sense of practical necessity, as in the occasional references to 19



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money and treasure, which Professor Vinaver comments on rather scornfully (Works p. xxviii).) The picture that this selective drawing presents is remarkably full. Guenevere shows herself passionate, loving, selfish, cool, and entirely convincing – here, as elsewhere, the most fascinating, exasperating, and human of all medieval heroines. Lancelot similarly reveals himself in all his magnificence, unshakeable and splendid in love or battle, noble yet disingenuous, proud and adulterous, yet never failing in courtesy, and with a simple piety. Economy and pace are never sacrificed to realism and ceremonious manners. The comparison with T. H. White is not intended to denigrate his remarkable though lesser achievement, but to emphasize Malory’s strength. The realism of conventional novelistic technique forces White into various kinds of triviality. Malory, though realistic, escapes trivial realism and constantly uses what White himself calls, but can only occasionally use, the High Language. There is an exalted tone in Malory’s style, which reflects, no doubt, the true quality of his imagination as it rises to meet the greatness of his story. It would be a mistake to equate Malory’s High Language only with the ceremoniousness I have already noted (though ceremony is an essential part of the High Language) if the emphasis on ceremony were to deny the poetic force also deriving from what is colloquial and direct and simple. Malory’s supreme art lies in this, that his High Language, the poetic force of his style, is made up of his whole range of tone, and is as much simple as ceremonious. Similarly, his art moulds into a whole the other paradoxical compounds of violence and tenderness, worldliness and piety, realism and romance. All is held together in a style that springs from a culture and a literary imagination that in its rhythms could maintain these opposites in balance, in fruitful conjunction; a culture in which, despite Malory’s own fears, the centre could hold. Rhythm is the most potent, least analysable, quality of literary style. We feel it on our pulses. We sense the living passionate voice in Malory’s powerful, masculine movement; we respond to a deep (if narrow) sensibility and to an unshaken nerve: we are moved by the noble style of Malory’s mind, that with unselfconscious dignity looks around his be­leaguered world to save what he can. This is the style of Malory; the style of a gentleman.

V Structure The steady progressive movement of the style in detail is reflected in the general sequential line of the book as a whole, though sequence is less marked in the middle of The Morte Darthur, not given here, than in 20



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

the final movement. From the end of the Grail story the narrative moves firmly onwards in a clear line, with certain constant preoccupations. We feel the compulsions of progressive cause and effect, while gradually the possibilities of choice before Lancelot and Guenevere narrow, as previous decisions begin to realize their inevitable effects. The clear narrative development does not sacrifice richness to clarity. Although there is no interlacing, the narrative weaves its own pattern. The development of significant pattern may be most easily demonstrated in the series of stories leading to the first great crisis, when Guenevere and Lancelot abscond. In each story the recurrent main motif in the pattern is their love: next is their almost equally constant discordance, due to Guenevere’s jealousy. Another motif is Lancelot’s tendency (who can blame him?) to disappear. In all three stories misfortune comes to Guenevere, who is rescued at the last minute by Lancelot. (The first of these stories, The Poisoned Apple, is omitted from the present edition because of lack of space.) The stories, though signifi­cantly similar in outline, are not repetitious. They describe a relationship and its development, showing both nobility and the progression of guilt. In the first story, The Poisoned Apple, both Guenevere and Lancelot are entirely innocent, but they are shown to live in a dangerous environment. Then Lancelot’s lovable greatness and goodness in so many ways is emphasized in the beautiful and touching story that follows, The Fair Maid of Astolat, which also shows us more of Guenevere, and which is completed by Lancelot’s success in the Great Tournament, There follows in due sequence Guenevere’s second dangerous adventure, this time her capture by Meliagaunt in the story entitled The Knight of the Cart. During this adventure she and Lancelot become morally in the wrong, though Lancelot when he fights Meliagaunt is technically in the right. (The advantages he gives Meliagaunt are further subtleties in favour of Lancelot.) Then again follows a brief episode to the greater glory of Lancelot – The Healing of Sir Urry, in which Malory, with his long lists (partly omitted in the present text), gathers up, as it were, all the glory of the Round Table, and sets Lancelot – whom we have recently seen to be now compromising his own integrity – at the peak of his glory. Lancelot weeps after his miraculous cure of Sir Urry; surely at the thought of what he might have been. It is a wonderful climactic stroke of characterization. Then we move into the eighth part of the whole book with no sense of discontinuity as we come to the third episode of Guenevere’s danger, after she and Lancelot have been caught together in her room, where it is now clear that the chivalric convention that right is might has been reversed by Lancelot. Guenevere and Lancelot are known to be guilty, but Lancelot is prepared to brazen it out by fighting anyone who speaks of their guilt. Right is no longer might. Might bewilderedly asserts that it is right. The appearance of honesty fails to correspond with reality. Ultimately reality will break through, to the destruction of all. Meanwhile Lancelot for the third and 21



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final time comes at the last minute to rescue the queen, and in the melee kills the unarmed Gareth. The death of Gareth initiates another chain of ironic cause and effect, for it is specifically Gareth’s death which arouses his brother Gawain’s unrelenting hostility to Lancelot, which in its turn drives Arthur on against Lancelot in the next series of episodes. The killing of Gareth is thus a bridge. Malory has carefully prepared it in the episode of the Great Tournament, which rounds off the story of The Fair Maid of Astolat. Malory had strongly emphasized the goodness of Gareth and his devotion to Lancelot, as well as Lancelot’s love for him. The nature of Malory’s artistic concern to make connexions and build up cumulative patterns is plainly seen here. What is even more clear is how Malory can use one event to achieve multiple effects. Implicit in our knowledge of Gareth is the whole of his past history, related in the fourth main section of the whole book with notable prominence. From that section the charm and endeavour of the unknown knight, his successful adventures, his love for and marriage to the lady whom he rescued, and especially Lancelot’s knighting of him, are remembered, if only vaguely. That Lancelot should inadvertently kill Gareth is thus in itself one of Malory’s most effective and painful ironies. It is also fraught with heavy consequences, symbolic of the internal destructiveness which causes the final collapse of Arthur’s court. It is part of a long sequence of events which are related to each other and which build up patterns of event, theme, and underlying concept. The distinguishing mark of Malory’s narrative in this respect is its sequaciousness, its connectedness. One sentence leads to the next, one event to the next. There is in almost every case even an explicit verbal connexion between the eight major sections of the whole book.14 This connected narrative sequence weaves patterns whose effects come from events which are held in memory by the reader, and which thus interact as it were out of time. The patterns of event, character, theme, with the implicit concepts of loyalty, love, bravery and the rest, act over the whole book. Mordred, who is active in the last two main sections, is begotten by Arthur in the first main section. The three principal characters of the whole book, Arthur, Guenevere, Lancelot, are all introduced in the first main section and are active throughout. The ethical ideal, the High Order of Knighthood, is instituted in the first section and is an implicit basis for all that later occurs. It has been said above that it is Malory’s purpose to chronicle this ideal, as embodied in Arthur and his knights and as grounded in English history, in its rise, its glory and its fall, on Fortune’s wheel, through the procession of time. A note at the end of this introduction sets out the structure of that chronicle schematically, as it is shown in the eight main parts.* In that scheme, and in the various continuities of event, character, *

Brewer refers here to the note on pp. 39–40 of his edition, which we have omitted.

14

For proof see Brewer, ‘the hoole book’, in Esssays on Malory, ed. Bennett.

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tone and underlying preoccupations, we may legitimately seek and find the ‘unity’ of structure in Malory’s whole book. At the same time we should not force our sense of unity. When a reader first comes to Malory’s work, besides recognizing it as one mass, he also sees something that may be likened to the forest of pinnacles, spires and towers that rise within the walls of a medieval city. They are all in the one city – but what a bewildering variety! A few tower above the rest, are easily recognized, and are most important. Some are in obvious relationship to each other – a west-end tower to a central spire, a row of pinnacles leading along a great nave to another steeple. But there are many others. We reach them from the central square, but there is a bewildering complexity and many a tall building of ancient date seems only where it is because it is. There are stories in Malory’s whole book which give one the same impression. They are there because they are there. They contribute to the variety, the richness, the interest, the pleasure; they are part of the general style and content of the book, as an old building is part of a town, but no one could claim they are part of an organic unity. How such an accumulation could come about has been explained above. Here the nineteenth-century concepts of ‘organic unity’ can only mislead. The whole book is the work of one man, but he has worked on the diverse material of many other men in various ages. Different points of view have been included with different stories. Some of the unity of the book is no more than the product of its history, a matter of mere incorporation of an interesting adventure. In this respect the narrative is like a circumambulation of the walls of a city, enclosing a variety of dwellings, as the walls of Chester or York enclose buildings of every date from Rome to the present day, yet still make one medieval city. It must be insisted that medieval writers – and I include Shakespeare as well as Anglo-Saxon writers – tolerated a degree of inconsistency, of multiplicity of points of view, within one piece of writing, that the artistic totalitarianism of the twentieth century finds hard to bear.15 This does not 15

Cf. G. T. Shepherd, ‘Scriptural Poetry’, in Continuations and Beginnings, ed. E. G. Stanley (London, 1966), pp. 10–11, 14–15, for Anglo-Saxon poetry; Mrs E. Salter considers that ‘Chaucer could never have intended [Troilus] to be seen as a unified whole’ (‘Troilus and Criseyde: a Reconsideration’, in Patterns of Love and Courtesy, ed. J. Lawlor (London, 1966), p. 106). The inconsistencies within Shakespeare’s plays are self-evident, though critics sometimes waste time trying to explain them away. The Bible as one book is the great example of contained discontinuities, and such containment is characteristic of many separate books of the Bible as well. Cf. D. E. Nineham, Saint Mark, The Pelican Gospel Commentaries (New York, 1963), especially pp. 29–30, for comments pertinent to the literary problem. Benson’s valuable article on apparent inconsistency and tragedy in the alliterative Morte Arthure came to hand too late to be fully used, but supports what is argued here: L. D. Benson, ‘The alliterative Morte Arthure and Medieval Tragedy’, Tennessee Studies in Literature XI (1966), 75–87.

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mean that there is no general cohesion in the subject-matter, overriding, or at least not totally denied by, the separate constituents, especially in the last two main sections of The Morte Darthur. In such literature it will be found that one principal event, usually near the end of the work, effectively dominates the heterogeneous material. In the Bible it is the Crucifixion and Resurrection. In Troilus it is Criseyde’s betrayal of the hero. With Malory it is the death of Arthur, with all that that implies of the tragedy of the honourable society he had created.

VI The Tragedy of the Honourable Society The main events of Malory’s story he cannot alter. They are his ‘matter’. But the interpretation of matter, the finer points of character, the general ethos, which in medieval French literary terminology were summed up as sens, the ‘sense’, are mainly his, as Professor Vinaver has shown.16 Malory has his own view of the characters and often modifies the material supplied by his sources. A clear example of his independence in the present selection is the character of Gawain.17 In the earliest chronicle versions, and in later works based on them, Gawain is Arthur’s chief knight. He was displaced by Lancelot in the twelfth-century French versions, and being described in these versions as of an amorous, promiscuous nature, was presented in an unfavourable light by the Grail authors, with their ideal of the monk’s life of chastity. Malory accepts Lancelot’s predominance, but presents a Gawain of some complexity in the last two main sections. He is bold but not amorous; somewhat ambivalent in his attitude to Lancelot, yet not against him until the unfortunate killing of Gareth. He is then shown as angry and vengeful, inspired not only by love of Gareth but by the spirit of ancient family feud. At his death he repents. He is a simple, stubborn man, an outstanding fighter, formidable in his depth of feeling, passionately proud and fierce in his personal and family honour. There is nothing in him of the light-of-love, and Malory, as already noted, omits, for example, the French Gawain’s genial attempt to seduce the Fair Maid of Astolat. Malory inevitably relies on his sources for most of his material, but never hesitates to take what he wants, to add, and to reject. He then presents the character economically and dramatically almost entirely through event and speech. The other characters, even minor ones, have a similar solidity. How clearly, for example, is Meliagaunt’s slippery nature presented; and yet 16 17

Works, pp. lx ff. Cf. B. J. Whiting, ‘Gawain: His Reputation, His Courtesy’, Medieval Studies 9 (1947), 189–234.

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we feel his genuine love for the queen. How clearly the admirable ‘steadfast Bors’18 comes through; brave, loyal, sensible, stolid. How subtle is the presentation of Arthur, the wise king, with his touch of irritable weariness, with his constant concern to hold together his great creation, his good society. If there are uncertainties in our knowledge of his character it is because Malory has deliberately left them so. Similarly with Guenevere, so variable, always uneasy and jealous in her love for Lancelot, querulous and queenly. We catch a glimpse into her heart at times; at others, as with people we know in actuality, what she feels is a mystery; her speech is what she is. Exasperating in her imperious vagaries, she is perhaps victim as much as queen in a man’s world. When considering the variety and success of Malory’s characterization one must also recognize that characterization as such is not his aim. The event has come first; the character’s plausible speech comes next, as part of the interpreta­tion, the sens. The interpretation itself is necessarily part of some general views or concepts implicit in the book. Malory himself rarely generalizes, and when he does it is but a brief passing comment, not itself to be taken at a very high level of generality. It would be mistaken, nevertheless, to think that his work did not have general implications. Malory’s presentation of love is clearly of great importance and has been well analysed recently by scholar-critics.19 The love between Lancelot and Guenevere is represented as in itself good. When Lancelot and Guenevere are together, ‘love that time was not as love nowadays’; that is, love was genuine, not merely lust. Malory says that he does not intend to discuss ‘whether they were abed or at other manner of disports’. His French source says bluntly that they were in bed together. Malory is not avoiding such a plain statement because he is squeamish. Perhaps he is in part simply trying to palliate Lancelot’s offence, and his later lies, but he is also making a point about their love’s moral quality. Again, the whole episode of Elaine the Fair Maid of Astolat shows his sympathy with love and his open treatment of it. Elaine’s innocence and goodness are in no way impaired because she openly confesses her love. Her dying speech is Malory’s own invention and he surely agrees with her refusal to obey the priest’s command to forget Sir Lancelot for whom she is dying, when she says, ‘for my belief is that I do none offence, though I love an earthly man, unto God, for he formed me thereto, and all manner of good love cometh of God’ (p. 68 [1093; XVII.19]). That she would have had Lancelot even as a paramour, rather than not have him at all, does not bother Malory, or us. Malory’s moral concern is deep but he is not a narrow moralist or moralizer. The same episode, along with others, shows 18 19

R. M. Lumiansky, ‘Malory’s Steadfast Bors’, Texas Studies in English 8 (1958), 5–20. See P. E. Tucker, ‘Chivalry in the Morte’, in Essays on Malory, ed. Bennett, pp. 64–103, and R. T. Davies, ‘The Worshipful Way in Malory’, in Patterns of Love and Courtesy, ed. Lawlor, pp. 157–77.

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that he has little interest in the elaborations of fine amour. It is honest faithful open love, in ‘every lusty heart’, with gentleness and service, that he approves of, as he says when talking about the month of May, which gives all lovers courage (p. 78 [1119; XVIII.25]). Again, love must be free; as Lancelot says, one cannot be constrained to love by egotistical demand. Yet love must be ‘stable’. Gentleness, service, unselfishness, kindness, faithfulness (stability), all these are the distinguishing marks of true love, which is natural, formed in men and women by God, and so virtuous. Thus it is clear that Lancelot’s love for Guenevere is in itself virtuous. Lancelot’s love is also criminal. Through the love that he and Guenevere loved together was the best fellowship of knights in the world destroyed. How can this be? For here is tragedy. To consider an answer we have to seek still deeper down among the general concepts that underlie The Morte Darthur, into concepts of honour and community, radical to the book, and indeed – like love – to our own lives. Honour,20 which Malory calls by its Old English name, ‘worship’, still the usual word in his time, may be said to be the strongest single motivating force in the society which Malory creates. It is stronger even than love, even than Lancelot’s love for the queen: at least, when Bors and his friends advise Lancelot to rescue the queen in her third and most dangerous predicament, it is to Lancelot’s honour, and not his love, that they refer: ‘it is more your worship that ye rescue the queen from this peril, insomuch that she hath it for your sake’ (p. 108 [1172; XX.6]). Nor does Lancelot dispute this motive, though there is no doubt of his love. How is honour obtained in this fierce, masculine, aristocratic society? Primarily, as numberless instances and remarks will show, by fighting bravely in battle or tournament; specifically, by defeating the enemy, or by helping friends who are in difficulty, and by fighting fairly. Secondarily, by associating with those who already have honour, especially, of course, with Arthur and Lancelot. Again, many incidents and more or less casual remarks anywhere in Malory make this plain. Presumably ladies’ honour is also acquired by their association with honourable men. It clearly, as in Guenevere’s case, need not derive from their chastity or marital faithfulness. It is however implicit that a lady cannot associate with more than one or two men. But there are so few women in this society, and they (even Guenevere) are so much at the disposal of some man, that it is hard to generalize about them. Honour demands certain personal loyalties. The first is to the king. The second is to one’s ‘friends’. It is clear from the associates of Gawain and of Lancelot, for example, that ‘friends’ include a kinship group, and another 20

For a very suggestive series of essays on this topic, in which the one by Professor Pitt-Rivers is especially relevant to Malory, see Honour and Shame: The Values of Mediterranean Society, ed. J. G. Peristiany (London, 1966).

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different but overlapping group of those in a feudal relationship (perhaps holding their lands in fee from the same lord). Also included among persons to whom one must be loyal are those whom one has been helped by; but this is not always an overriding obligation. Gawain has several times been helped by Lancelot, yet becomes his enemy. That Gawain is nevertheless under such obligation makes for deeper sadness and bitterness. Also included among friends are those whom one has knighted or been knighted by. The particular example in the present text is Gareth. That Lancelot should even accidentally kill him whom he knighted is bitterly ironical; combined with the fact that Gareth is Gawain’s beloved brother, it further interweaves the tragic pattern.21 Finally, among friends bound by the obligations of honour are included those who simply like each other. The outstanding practical example is Sir Lavain’s love for Lancelot, but the friendship between Lancelot and Gareth is another important instance, while naturally brothers and feudal comrades may well also love each other. Loyalty to the king and to friends should naturally reinforce each other. It is part of the tragedy that these loyalties became contradictory. The third obligation of loyalty required by honour is toward the lady one loves. In a good man such love is virtuous. Lancelot thus has a clear obligation in honour towards Guenevere. In a true society the knight’s loyalty to his lady should coincide with loyalty towards king and friends, and again, a prime element in the tragedy is the mutual incompatibility, for Lancelot, of his loyalty to his king with that to his lady, In honourable societies the deep question is the relationship between honour and goodness. Professor Pitt-Rivers, in his important study, asserts that honour and goodness are quite separate,22 though society attempts to ‘blur’ the distinction. In dealing with the problem Malory in The Morte Darthur is not entirely clear: he has a rich inconsistency. But however one understands his treatment there can be no doubt that one of the most powerful underlying themes of the whole book, which is highly important in the culminating sections of it presented here, is the relation between honour and goodness. In the earlier parts of The Morte Darthur the identity of honour and goodness is assumed and the consequent behaviour incumbent on a knight is summed up in that ethical ideal, dear to Malory’s heart, which he calls the High Order of Knighthood. It is expressed by the oath, mainly Malory’s invention, which he tells us in the first main section that Arthur, having consolidated his kingdom and conquests, and having instituted his court of the Round Table, makes his knights swear every Pentecost:

21 22

The speech by Arthur on ‘worship’, significantly placed at the end of the section ‘The Great Tournament’, is important. J. Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’ in Honour and Shame, ed. Peristiany, pp. 17, 30, 36.

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Then the king stablished all the knights and gave them that were of lands not rich, he gave them lands, and charged them never to do outrage nother murder, and always to flee treason, also by no mean to be cruel, but to give mercy unto him that asketh mercy, upon pain of forfeiture of their worship and lordship of king Arthur for evermore: and always to do ladies, damsels, and gentlewomen and widows succour; strength them in their rights, and never to enforce them upon pain of death. Also that no man take no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no love ne for no worlds goods. So unto this were all knights sworn of the Table Round, both old and young. And every year so were they sworn at the High Feast of Pentecost. (Works 119–20 [Caxton III.15]; text constructed from Caxton and Winchester MS)

This ideal of behaviour is an implicit standard throughout the whole book. When contemplating the actions described in the present selection the reader should have it constantly in mind, for Lancelot, for example, clearly engages in a wrongful quarrel for love. After making due allowance for the chivalric and literary conventions in which and through which the ideal is expressed it is clearly seen to be a noble and satisfying ideal of human behaviour; even within its conventions it is an excellent symbol for some of the most important concerns of all human life. In the oath the association of honour with goodness is very close, for to do wrong is to forfeit honour (‘worship’). There is another sanction, too: loss of the lordship of King Arthur; that is, in more modern terms, those who do wrong will be punished by ejection from society. The close association of honour with goodness is not the same as complete identification of the two. What honour and goodness here have in common is a reference to the same society, summed up as the ‘lordship of King Arthur’. The notion of fellowship, which, if it does not in Malory’s work itself extend to a full concept of society, may at least be thought to symbolize society, deserves a little more emphasis. Its supreme exponent is of course King Arthur, whose constant care it is to foster his noble company of knights, and who in this surely has Malory’s deepest sympathy. When Lancelot rescues the queen from burning in the third of her misfortunes, and absconds with her, it is for the fellowship of knights of the Round Table, which is destroyed, that Arthur laments, and not for Guenevere. ‘And therefore’, said the king, ‘wit you well, my heart was never so heavy as it is now. And much more I am sorrier for my good knights’ loss than for the loss of my fair queen; for queens I might have enough, but such a fellowship of good knights shall never be togethers in no company’ (p. 114 [1184; XX.9]). To take another example, the noble threnody for Lancelot’s death spoken by Sir Ector (p. 157 [1259; XXI.13]) expresses Lancelot’s greatness, as much as anything in terms of social relationships. The comradeship that Malory feels so sympathetic towards is the pattern of a society that is, within its own conventions, confident, admirable, delightful, dynamic. It is composed of like-minded men, for the most 28



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

part, and in it the individual can find both his friends and his own identity. Such a fellowship might well stand as a model for the supreme temporal, perhaps even the supreme eternal good, imaging a condition to which all social institutions and the men that make them might justly aspire. Malory expresses something of its successful achievement in his third, fourth and fifth main sections and its destruction is the theme of the seventh and eighth sections as given here. The tragedy has multiple causes; among them, Arthur’s own fault in begetting Mordred, Mordred’s and Agravain’s malice, Lancelot’s pride, his adultery with Guenevere, and so forth. Arthur himself may be thought to be at fault in that he is concerned so entirely with community, that is, with public virtues and necessities, that he neglects private virtues and necessities: that is, he fails to cherish his wife as an individual. Lancelot, on the other hand, is so concerned with his private obligations, in particular his obligation, which is clear, however immoral, towards Guenevere, that he denies public values. Arthur’s fault, if such it be, may be seen as a particular instance of a more general development which brings about the tragedy – the divergence of the values of honour and goodness from each other. The divergence is especially marked with Lancelot, for whom honour is the supreme value, as community is for Arthur. The clearest statement of the divergence of honour from goodness is made by Sir Bors when the queen is in peril of death because of the accusation of her adultery with Lancelot. Bors tells Lancelot he must ‘knightly rescue her; for and ye did any other wise all the world would speak of you shame to the world’s end. Insomuch as ye were taken with her, whether ye did right other wrong, it is now your part to hold with the queen.’ (p. 108 [1171; XX.6])

Distinction between right and wrong must go when honour’s at the stake. Thus an honourable man must sometimes tell lies.23 Lancelot is justified by honour in his various quibbles, prevarications and downright lies to preserve the queen’s good name (‘name’, or reputation, being a typical aspect of honour). Early in The Morte Darthur a maiden asks Lancelot for his love. He, the lover of Queen Guenevere, disclaims all interest in love. Critics have been puzzled. Is not this an inconsistency? No, it is a lie. Similarly, like an honourable gentleman, he lies to Arthur himself (p. 117 [1188; XX.11]). Honour may permit, if it does not encourage, adultery or indeed promiscuous sexual intercourse. Lancelot is an adulterer, and Gawain, even in Malory, not chaste; but each is honourable. On the other hand, Lancelot considers he would be dishonourable if he were unfaithful to Guenevere, 23

Cf. Pitt-Rivers, ‘Honour and Social Status’, in Honour and Shame, ed. Peristiany, p. 32.

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and he resists the attempt of Meliagaunt’s damsel to seduce him. He can kiss and lose no worship, but nothing more (p. 91 [1136; XIX.8]). Ladies also, if of high rank, may be honourable and unchaste: witness Guenevere and Iseult. Men of honour recognize this. Arthur, for example, is as prepared as King Mark to take back his wife after she has been living for some time with another man. But they must have an appearance of chastity; they must not be spoken of as unchaste. A nice example of the difference between honour and virtue is the universal fact that a cuckold, but not an adulterer or seducer, is dishonoured. (There is an obvious biological force on the side of honour here, but that is true of other parts of honour, like physical prowess. For biology, might is right.) Arthur therefore is dishonoured as Lancelot is not by Lancelot’s seduction of Guenevere (or by Guenevere’s seduction of Lancelot). Gawain reminds Arthur of this. But to bring dishonour on the man to whom one owes loyalty is, if not dishonourable, at least ungrateful. That Lancelot clearly feels this makes his portrayal paradoxically more sympathetic. If honour does not necessarily depend on virtue, it certainly depends on reputation, on what people say. Thus, although Guenevere’s honour and shame (they are two sides of the same coin) do not depend on her chastity, they do depend on not being talked about. The importance of speech is clear in Bors’ words quoted above. Honour’s connexion with speech has given trouble to critics more virtuous or more simple-minded than Malory. For example, Malory keeps us in the dark about just how much Arthur knows of Guenevere’s and Lancelot’s adultery. The attempts by those excellent scholars Lumiansky and Moorman to work out in terms of novelistic realism how Arthur must have known all about it before the Grail Quest, how there must have been a reconciliation scene, and forgiveness, and a promise by Lancelot not to do it again, etc., are ingenious. They Bradleyize Malory, and The Morte Darthur is strong enough to stand the process. But the book is not a nineteenth-century novel, and such realism is beside the point, as Bradley’s speculations about what goes on behind the scenes in Shakespeare’s plays are often beside the point. So long as the lovers are reasonably discreet, and nobody speaks of them to Arthur’s face, he can remain apparently ignorant and need do nothing. Arthur is not a fool. He has a ‘deeming’ but he does not want to know. He was ‘full loath that such a noise should be’ (p. 102 [1163; XX.2]). Malory observes a similar honourable discretion. Honour and shame progressively throughout these final pages live more and more in men’s mouths, less and less in relation to the actual state of affairs. Mordred forces Arthur’s hand by witnessing Lancelot with Guenevere in her chamber and by telling Arthur so to his face. Malory shows us an Arthur very unwilling to have his hand forced. He knows Mordred is no friend to him. But once the ‘noise’, that is, the speech, is out, he is obliged by his own honour to act. Arthur has to say ‘I may not with my 30



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

worship but my queen must suffer death’ (p. 110 [1174; XX.7]). It is one of Malory’s subtleties and ironies that he here makes Gawain offer the king a way out by a lenient, though possible, interpre­tation of Lancelot’s presence in Guenevere’s chamber. But Arthur will not accept the way out, being for once, apparently, moved by a purely personal emotion, his ‘ire’ (p. 110 [1174/19; XX.7]). He asserts that Guenevere shall ‘have the law’ and be burnt. (Legality offers yet another structure within society, not necessarily coinciding with the structure of honour and virtue. Malory is not much interested in law, however – not surprisingly if our author is the Malory of Newbold Revel! – and we need not pursue it further here. Later on the king is ready to take Guenevere back and forget about the law.) Arthur is the man of greatest honour in the kingdom (p. 94 [1146; XIX.10]),24 and here his honour puts him in a cruel position. But apart from personal anger he also invokes the law and by implication virtue as coincidental with his honour. We see once again here that Arthur’s function is to draw together the various systems into one fellowship, with which he equates his honour. We may say that for Arthur, and perhaps for Malory, true honour coincides with virtue and law, and all together constitute the supreme value of fellowship. The story shows how fallen humanity fails to reach, or at any rate, to maintain, the ideal; ‘things fall apart, the centre cannot hold’. Fellowship breaks, honour, virtue, law, separate themselves from each other. Honour becomes selfish, virtue corrupt, and law is set aside. When the honourable are not good, and when law becomes an instrument of revenge, when loyalties clash and good men are at odds, then treachery flourishes. The bonds of society fall apart and chaos is come again. It has happened often enough since the fifteenth century for us to be compelled by Malory’s fifteenth-century symbol. By a tragic paradox, that honour which has created the good society brings about its collapse. Arthur’s honour has created the High Order of Knighthood, foundation stone of a potentially ideal society. The same honour forces him, once the adultery is public, to enforce public law by condemning his queen to be burnt at the stake. Lancelot’s honour leads him to perform brave deeds and loyally to keep his personal obligations whatever the cost to himself. The same honour forces him to rescue the queen, whose love was also the inspira­tion of his honour. His honourable love and his love of honour lead him to be disloyal to Arthur, and also to conflict with an aspect of ‘worship’ as presented in the Pentecostal Oath of the High Order of Knighthood – that he should take on no battles in a wrongful quarrel for no love. Yet although Lancelot grieves over his disloyalty to Arthur and its result in the destruction of the whole society, 24

Here Malory appears to disagree with Pitt-Rivers, who asserts that the king is above the honour-system. Probably the difference here lies between the medieval concept of kingship, represented by Malory, and the later concept represented in most of PittRivers’s sources.

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he hesitates only a little to do what in honour bound he feels he must. His fault is very great, but it is Malory’s achievement that we never pause in our love and admiration for Lancelot, and that Lancelot himself always appears so noble. It is part of the tragedy that one so greatly endowed with physical and spiritual gifts, in no way perverted or corrupt, the chief support of the glory of Arthur’s court, should also be the chief agent of its destruction; that honour should destroy the honourable society. The Morte Darthur tells the story of a tragedy, and if modern definitions of tragedy cannot encompass it, so much the worse for their definitiveness. The tragedy is the complex of the success and failure of the Round Table, and particularly of Arthur and Lancelot. They are not individualized tragic heroes, any more than the whole book is the unique production of one individual. Just as the book expresses in some sort the mind of the whole grand medieval episode of Europe’s social and political history, so the heroes express in themselves something of English and European ideals and destinies, public and private. It is not fanciful to hear, as we watch the collapse of Arthur’s empire, the long, slow, menacing echoes, rarely completely silent in European ears, of the grinding disastrous fall of the Roman Empire, and indeed, through the power of literature, of other empires since the fifteenth century, gone down in a rumble of dust and suffering. In Europe we still know the horror of disorder and collapse. Though The Morte Darthur tells the story of such significant tragedy, it does not stop there. Medieval authors (and we may include Shakespeare and most of his contemporaries with them) did not call down the curtain at the moment of disaster. Europe knows that some life and words continue even though empires fall. But no one who lives through disaster is unchanged. Arthur can only die, since all that he has lived for has gone, and Malory, with his aristocratic rationalism, will have no truck with the folk-superstition of his return. The tragedy for Arthur lies not in the moment of his death, but in what had led to it, as is the case with Shakespearean tragic heroes. Lancelot and Guenevere turn to ‘perfection’. The outline of the story is in Malory’s sources, both French and English, although much of the detail and emphasis is Malory’s own. Here again we deal with something deep in the European mind, which is the result of many men’s strivings, experience, and meditations. Lancelot’s and Guenevere’s turning to perfection, to saintliness, is something more than the expression of profound regret for their sins. It is also a repudiation of their whole previous way of life. Here we stumble across a basic paradox – or inconsistency – of medieval Christianity, perhaps of all Christianity, possibly of all human existence. Put simply, the best is the enemy of the good. Yet we find it hard enough to be even ordinarily good. In terms of Malory’s book, all the characters attempt to be ordinarily good Christians within the context of what is for them ordinary decent society. This is true even of Lancelot, who may be said to excel only within the context of ‘ordinariness’, because he has received greater 32



INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

gifts than anyone else. And so, when caught in Guenevere’s chamber, he naturally and casually invokes the help of Jesus to get out, and we warmly sympathize with him. C. S. Lewis is surely wrong when he denies that the persons in this society are Christians because in the end they come to repent.25 If those only are Christians who have nothing to repent, then Christians are few indeed. These knights are not saints, and have much to be sorry for, but that is true of nearly everyone. Yet it is right to see a different quality of life, a different standard and different point of view invoked when Lancelot, and Guenevere, and others, turn to penitence. Their saintliness repudiates not only their past vices but their past virtues too. Saintliness, as the anthropologists have observed, cuts wholly across the honourable society. There have been hints of this earlier in the story. For example, the hermit who looks after Lancelot in the story of The Fair Maid of Astolat was once a member of the Round Table, a knight of honour and prowess, but now being a hermit, vowed to God, he has consciously abandoned his loyalty to Arthur and the Round Table (p. 55 [1075; XVIII.13]). Again, much of Lancelot’s own honour, and even his good deeds, arise from pride, as he himself confesses (for example, p. 155 [1256; XXI.11]) and as was driven home to him in the adventure of the Grail. His worldly pride is source of both virtue and vice. Lancelot’s repudiation, in itself tragic in intensity, adds another light on the tragedy of the honourable society. His saintliness repudiates honour and shame, and substitutes for them the concepts of innocence and guilt, which are standards of goodness, not honour, and which are also, in our kind of society at least, expressions of an internalized, individual, set of values, held, if necessary, in utter unconformity with the crowd. The individualism that conceives of guilt, therefore, by that very conception may need to reject the whole notion of society, as Lancelot does by becoming a hermit, who is the expression of a pure, unsocial (but not anti-social) individualism. Lancelot’s destiny also shows, in Arthurian terms, how the Cistercian authors of the anti-chivalric story of the Grail finally achieved their end. The monkish otherworldly ideal overcomes, through sheer persistence, the moral and chivalric this-worldly ideal. Here we may well be reminded of the similar transcendent destiny of another great medieval hero, Chaucer’s Troilus, who, after death, surveys and despises secular sufferings, and by implication his past way of life. In this respect The Morte Darthur is, like the Troilus, as Professor Shepherd has well said,26 a ‘romance in a tragic mode’. The shift of the plane of narration at the end, the invocation of transcendent values, expresses that mysterious sense of destiny, of the total relativity of earthly 25 26

C. S. Lewis, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Cambridge, 1966), p. 1. G. T. Shepherd, ‘Troilus and Criseyde’, in Chaucer and Chaucerians, ed. Brewer, p. 86.

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life and of all our most passionately followed desires and even values, that is one of the great powers of medieval tragedy. Not merely have we agonized over the destruction of the honourable society: by a last twist of tragic irony we are told that we need not, so it now seems, have agonized at all. When we are young this is too bitter a tragic pill to swallow. The ‘tears in things’ are sweeter than this. But perhaps there are few who are middle-aged or more who cannot recognize some of their experience here; as if to say, in trivial mundane terms, ‘I was miserable over nothing’. Still this is not all. The shift to transcendence can also suggest a sense of mysterious fate, the ineluctable process to an inescapable end, the abiding question of the ultimate values that surround life as well as penetrate it. None, or few, can nowadays accept the specific, historically conditioned formulation of the transcendent heavenly destiny of humanity as it appears in medieval fiction. But we can recognize the validity of the perceptions which underlie that formulation: and even if we do not believe in heaven we know that at least we shall shift from the plane of earthly existence: we shall die. Death is the mystery that surrounds all life. Medieval tragedy, not centred on the individual, contemplates instead the universal progress from life to death and the inevitable dualities in life that such contemplation reveals. It is useless to complain of inconsistency. Death is inconsistent with life. Although Malory’s work can properly sustain such generalizations it is typical of its layered richness that these are not the only reflections we are left with. Although Lancelot’s fate impugns the very concept of the honourable society, the validity of the good chivalric fellowship on earth, Malory himself does not fully accept this. It is still possible for him at the very end to refer to ‘worshipful’ men with respect. The superb threnody spoken over Lancelot’s dead body by Sir Ector exalts again in Lancelot the great European heroic ideal, found as early as Beowulf, the ideal of the knight fierce as a lion in the field, gentle as a lamb in the hall, which is reiterated throughout medieval literature, and potent in the later, derived, concept of the gentleman.27 This is a worldly, though noble, ideal. And paradoxically Lancelot’s good end, though in one way a condemnation of his earlier life, is also a validation of it. He was a good man in the appropriate circumstances of the various ages of man. Malory’s contemporary, Sir Stephen Scrope, as Ferguson in his valuable book points out,28 recommends in all serious actuality that when a knight becomes too old and feeble for earthly chivalry, he should take up spiritual chivalry, moral contemplation, and spiritual deeds. Shakespeare makes Prospero do much

27

28

It seems to be a European ideal. My very able Japanese students confronted with Chaucer’s formulation of it in the description of the Knight in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales thought that Chaucer was being comic. The samurai were different. Ferguson, The Indian Summer, p. 56.

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INTRODUCTION TO THE MORTE DARTHUR, PARTS 7 AND 8

the same. Whatever one may think of the morality of this it is certainly human and – given the premises – sensible. So we return once more to the relation of honour and goodness, to the maintenance of true fellowship. Arthur lives and dies by this ideal. Lancelot goes beyond it. All individual men, from kings to those peasants whom Malory so totally disregards, must in their individual selves go beyond it, to the alone. But at another level society continues, even through disaster. Perhaps this is one of the basic confidences of English and European society which the very absurdity of the pseudo-history of the Kings of Britain, especially as received in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, might be taken to illustrate. Even from Troy, through its fall, to rise in Rome, through its fall, to rise again, as Christen­dom in all its struggle and difficulties had risen; from far back, and through whatever setbacks, the faith in human fellowship continues. So it happened in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England’s transformation of difficulty into dynamism, through the efforts of many men who shared Malory’s views, and no doubt in part through the effect of The Morte Darthur itself. The sense of general survival and continuity is strong in Shakespeare’s tragedies, especially, of course, in King Lear. A good deal of this feeling has gone into English society, which has sought solidarity within itself, and successfully survived apparently overwhelming threats to its existence, for a good many centuries now. Something of such confidence comes at the end of The Morte Darthur when we are told that Constantine ruled this realm, England, ‘worshipfully’. The honourable society must always, being human, collapse, and must always be left behind, and yet must always continue. Malory asserts the possibility that honour may be the same as goodness; that Christians may be good men, even if most of them do not want to be monks, and cannot be saints;29 and by a fruitful paradox of inconsistency he asserts the validity of this worldly ideal as well as of the transcendental ideal. He asserts, in fact, through and along with his tragedy, the possibility, and indeed the requirement, for English gentlemen, of living good lives here on earth in a good society. And this assertion is fully in accord with the sober rationalistic realistic temper of so much of his book. I express his assertion in local terms here, for obvious his­torical reasons. But everyone of good will, of whatever race and society, can see the symbol in his own terms, recognize its significance for his own ideals, take it to his own business and bosom.

29

Cf. T. C. Rumble’s interesting study in Malory’s Originality, ed. Lumiansky, ‘“The Tale of Tristram”: Development by Analogy’, pp. 118–83.

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VII The Author and Date of The Morte Darthur30 At the end of The Morte Darthur the author says he completed the work in the ninth year of the reign of Edward IV (i.e. between 4 March 1469 and 3 March 1470), names himself ‘Thomas Maleore knyght’, and asks his readers to pray for his deliverance, presumably from prison. In the Winchester Manu­script he makes the same request for deliverance at the end of The Tale of Sir Gareth, and at the end of The Tale of King Arthur he names himself again as a ‘knyght presoner’. Records so far known appear to reveal only one knight-prisoner named Malory (which has several different spellings) between 1460 and 1470, though he seems to have had a somewhat surprising career. He was a gentleman of an old Warwickshire family who succeeded to his estate at Newbold Revel in Warwickshire in 1433 or 1434. He served at Calais in the train of the Earl of Warwick with one lance and two archers, and married some years later. Then in 1450 to 1451, when he was about forty or more, he was charged with several major crimes – robbery, theft, two cattle-raids, extortions, rape, attempted murder. He was imprisoned, escaped by swimming the moat, and is then alleged to have broken into and robbed an abbey, repeating the offence the next day. He was imprisoned from August 1451 to 1454, with a brief interval, and on release continued, it is alleged, offences such as cattleraids, in Essex. He was gaoled in Colchester, then London. In 1455 he was pardoned; in 1456 he served as Member of Parliament for his shire. He had several spells in prison afterwards, in some cases perhaps for debt, but he was in the train of Edward IV when he went to Northumberland in November 1462, and with the Earl of Warwick at the siege of Alnwick in January 1463 – which may account for the mention of Alnwick, and even of Bamborough (of which the siege was raised on Christmas Eve, 1462) in the last section of The Morte Darthur (p. 155 [1257/28; XXI.12]). He was specifically excluded from two general pardons granted to members of the Lancastrian faction in 1468, and may have been in prison again. He died on 14 March 1471 and was buried near Newgate. The book, finished in 1469, must have occupied parts of the last decade or two of his life, from about forty to sixty, presumably when bouts of prison (of a gentlemanly kind, with books and paper, pen and ink allowed) gave him

30

In this summary account I follow Works, p. xix et seq.; Vinaver; and Baugh (A. C. Baugh, ‘Documenting Sir Thomas Malory’, Speculum 8 (1933), 3–29 and Journal of English and Germanic Philology 29 (1930), 452–7). At the time of writing a publication by William Matthews apparently disputing the identification of the author with Malory of Newbold Revel has been announced but has not appeared [William Matthews, The Ill-framed Knight:A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory (Berkeley, 1966)].

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leisure to write. His work, especially the final parts, is the distillation of mature and varied experience. His career is by no means necessarily that of a scoundrel. Leaving aside the point that allegations are not proof and assuming that Malory did some things that may well have been like those he was charged with, one must also take into account the violent factionalism of the time of the Wars of the Roses. The Warwick interest supported now Yorkists, now Lancastrians, and some, perhaps most, of Malory’s deeds may have been for him a warlike pillage, while the accusation may be similarly inspired. Cattle-raiding is not necessarily beneath a gentleman, as many a Highland chief could witness. Malory is accused of twice forcing Joan, the wife of Hugh Smith. Without wishing to palliate an evil crime, or traduce a dead woman’s name, it might also be said that while to be forced once was misfortune, to be forced twice by the same man argues carelessness on someone’s part – or some degree of affection. In a word, to parallel a remark made by C. S. Lewis, we might think differently even of Lancelot if the only evidence of his life that we possessed was the charges prepared by King Arthur’s solicitors during the war. The truth is that even if Malory of Newbold Revel was the author of The Morte Darthur we shall never know in any significant degree what kind of man he was: the aim of the above remarks is simply to show that it is not inconceivable that a man with such a record, however we interpret it, could have written such a book. The author of the book, we can have little doubt, was a gentleman, vital and passionate, of an intense, even obsessive imagination, who, no doubt, like almost everyone else in this world, behaved much less well than he ought to have done and probably than he wanted to do. It is all too possible to know the good and follow the bad: ‘the evil that I would not, that I do’. Although there is a connexion between a man and his book it is indirect and obscure at the best of times. We have no real evidence for the personality of Malory the man, and are not likely to get it even if he turns out to be from somewhere else than Newbold Revel. And anyway, the man is dead. The book lives.

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II

Malory’s Text of the Suite du Merlin Jonathan Passaro Although many scholars have studied Malory and his sources, exploring the way he worked and attempting to determine the extent of his knowledge of Arthurian material, no one has successfully established a link between a particular manuscript and Malory’s work. This paper explores the relationship between Le Morte Darthur and Cambridge University Library MS Add. 7071, a Suite du Merlin manuscript.1 Malory composed Le Morte Darthur from a variety of sources; his main source for the first part of his work – corresponding to Books I–IV in Caxton and the first seventy folios of the Winchester manuscript – is the Suite du Merlin.2 Like many of his other sources, it is a French prose romance related to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle. The Cycle has a complex literary history, and scholarly debate on its formation remains unsettled.3 The Suite is a late addition to the Cycle, designed to draw elements of the romances together; Annie Combes describes it as ‘a long bridging narrative’ to ‘connect the Merlin of 1210 harmoniously to the Lancelot of approximately 1220’ by adding new material and ‘creating links between narratives and characters that are largely unconnected’.4 The Suite forms the middle third of the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal, which was composed between 1225 and 1240; it is preceded by the Estoire 1

2

3 4

Hereafter cited as Cam. I would like to thank Helen Cooper for directing me towards the manuscript that is the subject of this study, and for her continued guidance and support. Deepest thanks also to Emily Steiner, David Wallace and Rita Copeland. Merlin: Roman en prose du XIIIe Siècle, ed. G. Paris and J. Ulrich, 2 vols. (Paris, 1886). A modern English translation by M. Asher is available as The Merlin Continuation in Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation, ed. N. J. Lacy, 5 vols. (New York and London, 1993–5), IV, 161–V, 109; but translations are my own unless otherwise cited. E. Kennedy, ‘The Making of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle’, in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. C. Dover (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 13–22 (p. 13). A. Combes, ‘The Merlin and its Suite’ (trans. C. Dover), in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Dover, pp. 75–85 (pp. 77, 83–4).

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du Saint Graal and followed by the Queste and Mort Artu.5 The coherence among the constituent parts of the Post-Vulgate is due largely to the fact that it ‘was from the outset conceived as a complete work’, in contrast to the Vulgate.6 The Suite, therefore, plays an important unifying role for the Arthurian romances that provide much of the material for Le Morte Darthur. Throughout the Suite, references to the other parts of the PostVulgate abound, testament to the fact that the author of the Post-Vulgate ‘attempted to produce a more homogeneous and closely knit whole [than the Vulgate], of which Arthur and the history of his kingdom, rather than Lancelot, was the central character’.7 The author of the Suite sets into motion many narratives that are later resolved in other portions of the Post-Vulgate; for example, the conception of Mordred ultimately brings about the death of Arthur in the Mort Artu.8 Understanding the relationship between Le Morte Darthur and the Suite is thus essential for grasping the full meaning of Malory’s work. His use of this text is especially fitting because of its portrayal of Arthur: as Combes argues, ‘Nowhere else in the Cycle is he magnified so greatly: an excellent warrior, a clever strategist who heeds Merlin’s advice, a generous king to his vassals, a fervent supporter of Christianity’.9 It is the Suite which, in many respects, first presents the Arthur we have come to know through Malory. One challenge of this study is that of choosing the best edition of Le Morte Darthur. Scholars continue to question the editorial integrity of the standard scholarly edition, edited by Eugène Vinaver. Derek Brewer, William Matthews, Helen Cooper, Carol Meale and others have attempted to rediscover Malory underneath Vinaver’s work, which divides Malory’s text into eight separate ‘works’.10 Upon close examination of Caxton and the Winchester manuscript, some scholars observe, many of ­Vinaver’s arguments begin to melt away: some explicits anticipate upcoming ­material; other textual divisions in Vinaver at times have no correspond-

5

6 7 8 9 10

F. Bogdanow, ‘Rewriting Prose Romance: the Post-Vulgate Roman du Graal and Related Texts’, in The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature, ed. G. S. Burgess and K. Pratt (Cardiff, 2006), pp. 342–52 (pp. 351, 342). Bogdanow, ‘Rewriting Prose Romance’, p. 349. Bogdanow, ‘Rewriting Prose Romance’, p. 348. Bogdanow, ‘Rewriting Prose Romance’, p. 350. Combes, ‘Merlin’, p. 84. D. Brewer, ‘ “the hoole book” ’, in Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford, 1963), pp. 41–63; W. Matthews, ‘A Question of Texts’, in The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. B. Wheeler et al. (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 65–107; H. Cooper, ‘Opening up the Malory Manuscript’, in The Malory Debate ed. Wheeler, pp. 255–84; C. Meale, ‘“The Hoole Book”: Editing and the Creation of Meaning in Malory’s Text’, in A Companion to Malory, ed. E. Archibald and A. S. G. Edwards, Arthurian Studies 36 (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 3–17.

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MALORY’S TEXT OF THE SUITE DU MERLIN

ence with those in the Winchester manuscript.11 The following study relies upon Stephen Shepherd’s 2004 edition of the text, which is free from some complications presented by the Vinaver text.12 Vinaver’s edition tacitly presents his arguments for conceiving of Le Morte Darthur as a series of separate works; Shepherd’s text does not pursue such an agenda. Further, Shepherd avoids Vinaver’s attempts at establishing the Morte by emending W and Cx with material from Malory’s French sources – an intervention which is clearly counterproductive to a study that attempts to understand the interplay between author and source. Like Vinaver, Shepherd’s edition uses W as a base text, adding or correcting ­material based on Cx when necessary. I have verified the specific passages I discuss below in both W and Cx (W, however, lacks its first nine folios). Following Shepherd, I adopt Caxton’s title Le Morte Darthur to refer to Malory’s work in order to reflect its status as a cohesive text rather than the eight separate ‘works’ Vinaver conceived. Even without a detailed textual study of the manuscript, Cam presents itself as a good candidate for Malory’s direct source. The Syndics of the Cambridge University Library purchased the manuscript for £650 in 1945.13 It is the most complete surviving copy of the Suite14 and is the only such extant manuscript known to have been in England in the fifteenth century.15 Cam was discovered in the nineteenth century in a trunk in Ribston Hall, Wetherby, Yorkshire, along with several deeds dating back to the twelfth century; the exact date when Cam came to rest in the trunk remains unknown.16 P. J. C. Field places Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel – the most likely candidate for the author of Le Morte Darthur – in Northumberland about eight years before he began composing the text. There, Malory ‘repaid the attentions the Yorkist lords had given him by following them north … to the siege of the northern castles of Alnwick and Bamburgh, which the Lancastrians had seized’.17 Though far from 11 12

13 14

15 16 17

Cooper, ‘Malory Manuscript’, pp. 258–9. Throughout this paper, I refer to Caxton as Cx and the Winchester manuscript as W. Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. S. Shepherd, Norton edn (New York, 2004), abbreviated hereafter as MD. For ease of reference, Caxton’s book and chapter divisions are given in square brackets after Shepherd’s page numbers. From the brief description of Cam by A. F. Scholfield, archived with the MS. The second most complete text is contained in the Huth Manuscript, London, British Library, Additional 38117 (hereafter H). Roger Middleton notes that, of the LancelotGrail manuscripts in England, H is ‘the most recent import’, having arrived in the early 1870s from France. See R. Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England and Wales: Some Books and their Owners’, in A Companion to the LancelotGrail Cycle, ed. Dover, pp. 219–35 (p. 233). See also La Suite du Roman de Merlin, ed. G. Roussineau (Geneva, 1996), p. XLI for a description of H. Middleton, ‘Manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail Cycle’, p. 223. G. Dent, personal letter, 4 September 1944, archived with Cam. P. J. C. Field, ‘The Malory Life Records’, in A Companion to Malory, ed. Archibald and Edwards, pp. 115–30 (p. 117). Field also notes that Malory’s participation in the

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providing any conclusive connection, the limited information we have about the manuscript and Malory means that it is at least possible that he encountered the manuscript and its owners at some point in his lifetime. A look inside the manuscript reveals further connections between Cam and Malory. Cooper presents an extensive study of W’s practice of abbreviating Merlin’s name to a single red ‘M’ at various points, a common practice in Cam.18 She explains that Cam ‘commonly – almost as a matter of course – abbreviates the name Merlin to M. The initialisation appears more telling still in light of the fact that such an abbreviation never appears in W after the point in the text where Malory ceases to use the Suite as his source’.19 Finally, the manuscript contains an explicit reference to Malory’s work. A late fifteenth- or early sixteenth-century reader flagged the section of text that corresponds to Le Morte Darthur’s opening events with a marginal note: ‘Ci commence le livre que Sir Thomas Malori Chevalier raduce in Engloys et fuist emprente par William Caxton’ [Here begins the book that Sir Thomas Malory, knight, reduced into English, and that was printed by William Caxton] (Cam, fol. 189r).20 Still, the manuscript has received little critical attention, especially with respect to Malory studies. The absence of such studies may be due in part to Eugène Vinaver’s assessment of the manuscript in his critical edition of what he calls Malory’s ‘Works’: Malory’s ‘French book’, even if it was not the original Suite, was probably more authentic than either of the extant French versions, and such differences as may be found between these and Malory’s text need not always be ascribed to his invention. This is especially true of the minor details of the narrative which are not at present traceable to any French source, but which a lucky discovery may yet show to be part of the French tradition.21

As Cooper observes, however, Vinaver never specifies his reasons for eliminating Cam as a candidate for Malory’s source manuscript; retracing his examination of the manuscript is especially difficult because he refers to all of Malory’s French sources as ‘F’ in his edition.22 The most extensive studies of Cam’s relationship to Le Morte Darthur limit themselves to the rebel kings episode of the Suite – the largest section of material absent from H but present in Malory. One is an unpublished MA dissertation completed in 1953 by Ruth Gilpin (which contains a corresponding

18 19 20 21 22

sieges ‘left their mark on Malory’s book, in his suggestion that Lancelot’s castle of Joyous Garde was either Alnwick or Bamburgh’ (p. 142). H. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, in Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami, ed. M. Kanna et al. (Tokyo, 1997), pp. 93–105. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, p. 95. Suite, ed. Roussineau, p. XLIV. Sir Thomas Malory, Works, ed. E. Vinaver, 3rd edn, rev. P. J. C. Field (Oxford, 1990), p. 1281. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, p. 95.

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MALORY’S TEXT OF THE SUITE DU MERLIN

critical edition of the relevant material). 23 The 1950s also yield the two other major studies, by Robert Wilson.24 Gilpin ultimately concludes that ‘Malory knew a version very close to [Cam]’, though Wilson disagrees.25 The present essay offers a study of the entire text in Cam that corresponds to Le Morte Darthur, building upon the work of Gilpin, Wilson and others in order to re-examine the relationship between Malory’s work and Cam. Quotations from Cam derive from my own transcription and are minimally edited; citations from H refer to the Paris and Ulrich 1886 edition of the Suite.26 Though this edition is old, it is useful here because it uses H as its sole text; the most recent edition of the Suite, by Roussineau, offers some corrections from Cam that would pollute my study. I consulted Roussineau in order to check possible variant readings from Suite fragments which were also unknown to Paris at the time of his edition. This study begins with a close textual analysis of specific passages of Malory, H and Cam. I start with an examination of material unique to Cam and then, where possible, offer side-by-side comparisons of both H and Cam against Malory. Next, I present an examination of the similarities in rubrication between Cam and W. Because Cam contains a faithful representation of Malory’s source text, it allows for a fresh look at Malory’s methodologies. Therefore, the final section of this essay is a brief study of Malory’s editorial and translation practices. Though extensive analyses of Malory’s authorial methods and style already exist – most notably those by P. J. C. Field and Mark Lambert – they tend to focus on Malory’s literary output rather than his approach to texts.27 Such studies 23

24

25

26

27

R. Gilpin, ‘A Critical Edition of ff. 205 recto–229 verso of Ms. Add. 7071 of the Cambridge University Library with Introduction, Select Glossary and Notes’ (unpublished M.A. dissertation, University of Manchester, 1953). R. H. Wilson, ‘The Rebellion of the Kings in Malory and in the Cambridge Suite du Merlin’, University of Texas Studies in English 31 (1952), 13–26, and ‘The Cambridge Suite du Merlin Re-examined’, University of Texas Studies in English 36 (1957), 41–51. It is important to note that Gilpin wrote her M.A. dissertation at the University of Manchester while Vinaver was a member of the faculty: see the obituary by AHD, ‘Eugène Vinaver’, French Studies 33 (1979), 501–2. As part of this project, I transcribed the entire text of the Suite that corresponds to Malory, with the exception of the rebel kings episode edited by Gilpin. Other editions of small sections do exist, most notably Bogdanow’s short edition, for The Romance of the Grail (Manchester, 1966), of the ‘Dolorous Stroke’ episode on fols. 269c–272a (pp. 241–9); J. Mann edited fols. 284rb–285va and 270va–b in the notes accompanying ‘“Taking the Adventure”: Malory and the Suite du Merlin’, in Aspects of Malory, ed. T. Takamiya and D. S. Brewer (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 71–91; P. C. Smith edited fols. 314ra–340rb in Les Enchantemenz de Bretaigne, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 146 (Chapel Hill, 1977), pp. 3–84. I silently expand abbreviations, add basic punctuation to clarify sense, and distinguish between ‘i’ and ‘j’, ‘u’ and ‘v’ according to modern French convention. P. J. C. Field, Romance and Chronicle (London, 1971); M. Lambert, Malory: Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur (New Haven, 1975).

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are useful for understanding what is typically Malorian and for gaining a sense of his goals as an author. For the purposes of this essay, however, they do not probe deeply enough. With this in mind, I describe several of Malory’s methods of adaptation in an effort to explain his editorial approach to his sources, rather than focusing on the final product. I am, of course, heavily indebted to Field’s and Lambert’s work.

Malory and the manuscripts of the Suite du Merlin: a close textual comparison As the most complete extant text of the Suite du Merlin, Cam is, for many passages, the only text against which we can compare Malory. In an extensive study of the Suite, Fanni Bogdanow describes some of the key differences between H – the only other largely complete known text – and Cam: [Cam] is of considerable importance for the study of the Suite du Merlin, for it continues beyond the point where the Huth MS. breaks off and fills all the lacunae of the latter. Moreover, it includes, after the story of Arthur’s coronation, an episode not found in the Huth MS. – an account of Arthur’s wars against the rebel kings adapted from the Vulgate Merlin continuation.28

Discrepancies between H and Cam, with respect to material Malory adapts for Le Morte Darthur, can thus be attributed both to lost folios and to Cam’s more extensive narrative. H’s major lacuna corresponds to Malory’s ‘dolorous stroke’ episode during which Balyn wounds King Pellam.29 It intentionally breaks off before Cam (and, correspondingly, Malory) ends.30 Malory is consistently more faithful to Cam than to H; in addition, the sections found only in Cam – where side-by-side comparisons with other manuscripts are impossible – contain the building blocks of their corresponding sections in Le Morte Darthur.

28

29 30

Bogdanow, The Romance of the Grail, p. 25. That Cam continues beyond H is not due to missing folios in H; the text ends deliberately with ‘Si laisse ore a tant li contes a parler et de l[a] dame et del roi et de toute la vie Merlin, et devisera d’une autre maniere qui parole dou graal, pour chou que c’est li commenchemens de cest livre’ [and here the story stops speaking of the lady or of the king or of the life of Merlin, and will begin a new section that speaks of the Grail; because this is the beginning of this book] (Suite, ed. Paris, II, 254). A decorative bar line completes the last line of text in the MS, and the rest of the folio is blank (BL Add. 38117, fol. 226rb). MD, p. 56 [II:15–16]. Cam also breaks off before the section dependent upon the Suite ends. Unlike H, however, it is due to missing folios at the end of the MS.

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Material unique to Cam Gilpin’s 1953 study of Cam, which focuses on the rebel kings episode, yields much information about this section of the Suite and its relationship to Malory: In several instances C[am] contains the counterpart of material in M[alory] which has not hitherto been found elsewhere and consequently, on certain occasions, has been attributed to M’s own invention. Two of M’s characters, the knights ‘Pynnel’ and ‘Clarinaus de la Foreyste Saveage’, have thus been attributed to the author’s invention but now appear to derive from a version similar to C[am]. The same is true of the incident of King Ban’s horse being slain by the King of a Hundred Knights, the list of knights who lead the final attack on the rebels in the Battle of Bedigran, the description of Merlin disguised as a fowler, and the naming of the child of Arthur and Lienors ‘Boorz’.31

Gilpin’s study also touches upon some confusions in Le Morte Darthur that seem to derive from Cam. One glaring error occurs during an encounter with King Lot, when Arthur ‘drewe his swerd Excalibur’, though he has not yet received it (MD, p. 14 [I:9]). Cam makes the same error, erroneously assigning the name Excalibur to the sword Arthur drew from the stone; the manuscript also agrees with Malory that the sword ‘rendi si grant clarete … que ceo fussent .xxx. cierge alume’ [cast as great a light as if there were thirty lighted candles] (Cam, fol. 206ra; MD p. 14 [I:9]). Malory follows shortly thereafter with another error, when Ulphins and Brascias clash with a group of King Claudas’ knights. Though they encounter eight knights, Malory describes the defeat of only six before declaring that ‘there was none of the eyght knyghtes but he was hurte sore othir brused’ (p. 15 [I:10]). Cam presents a similar confusion: Arthur’s knights defeat only seven knights before moving on (fols. 209ra–210ra). Ulphins defeats one knight on his own in the French; Malory’s numbers thus differ from Cam because he describes only the three passes he completes alongside Brascias.32 While some passages in Malory have no direct counterpart in Cam, each of these is comparable to invented material found elsewhere in Le Morte Darthur. For example, Malory adds a transitional passage between Arthur’s initial skirmish with the rebel kings and his journey to London

31 32

Gilpin, ‘Ms. Add. 7071’, pp. xi–xii. The reason for Malory’s confusion here is also the complexity of the passage, in which every unhorsing is interrupted by conversation. Despite the fact that Cam keeps count for part of the encounter (numbering the remaining enemy knights standing after the first two jousts), the passage necessitates an unusually thorough read in order to keep track of the proper number.

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to strengthen his forces (p. 14 [I:10]). The material contained in the passage adds no new plot elements, but summarises material in the Suite while adding dialogue to provide a concise transition. In some instances, Malory mentions knights not present in Cam, or omits others that are. However, he frequently alters or adds names in order to provide links to other sections of Le Morte Darthur. Early on, this technique helps develop the Round Table and anticipate characters important later in the narrative. For example, before Arthur pulls the sword from the stone at Pentecost, Malory names ‘Syr Bawdewyn of Bretayn, Syre Kaynes, Syre Ulfyus, Syre Barsias … with many other’ where the Suite mentions no such group (MD, p. 11 [I:6]). During the rebellion episode, Malory adds two names to the Suite’s list of prominent knights: Brascias and Morians (MD, p. 26 [I:17]). As Gilpin notes, his addition of Brascias comes naturally after Ulphin, as they are usually mentioned as a pair. 33 His addition of Morians stems from a confusion of the name ‘Belianz lamoreus du chastel as puceles’ [Belianz the amorous of the castle of maidens] which he divides into two: ‘Bellaus, Morians of the Castel Maydyns’ (Cam, fol. 223vb; MD, p. 26 [I:17]). The alteration is simple: Malory interpreted the ‘u’ in ‘lamoreus’ as an ‘n’, and read it, or chose to read it, as a separate name rather than an adjective modifying Belians. In the absence of any other manuscript witness, it is impossible to know if Malory might have found this distinction already made in his source. The most complete published study of the rebel kings section to date, by Robert Wilson in 1952, claims outright that Cam ‘cannot have been Malory’s source’.34 However, Wilson offers only one specific example that, according to him, makes it unlikely that Cam contains the exact text Malory consulted for Le Morte Darthur: After the story of Arthur and Lionors, the Vulgate text makes a second announcement of the impending departure for Carmelide – an announcement which is missing from Cambridge but was very likely present in Malory’s source.35

Wilson refers back to the Vulgate Merlin, the prose text out of which the Suite eventually developed.36 Wilson’s objections probably stem from Malory’s restructuring of the Suite rather than the presence of additional material. Malory alters the structure of the Suite’s narrative here in a characteristic simplification of entrelacement, grouping plot elements by time

33 34 35 36

Gilpin, ‘Ms. Add. 7071’, pp. xvi–xvii. Wilson, ‘Rebellion of the Kings’, 13. Wilson, ‘Rebellion of the Kings’, 16. Part of the Vulgate text is also incorporated into the beginning of the Suite in H and Cam; see Bogdanow, Romance of the Grail, p. 2 n. 5.

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and subject. The fact that the announcement to which he refers does in fact exist in Cam, in nearly identical form, suggests an error by Wilson. 37 Despite occasional deviations, Cam’s text resonates throughout the rebellion episode of Le Morte Darthur. Malory often seems to echo the very wording contained in Cam; his diction at times replicates sound as much as meaning: E apres firent une tornoie entreus e se partirent li chevalier en .ij. parties, e furent bien .vij . c. de chescun part; si furent bien .ccc. du reaume de Benoic qui se tornerent a une part. (Cam, fol. 211rb–va ) [And next was a fight among them and the knights set forth in two parties, and there were 700 from each side; there were 300 from the Kingdom of Benoic who fought on one side.] And Kyng Arthure with the two kyngis lette departe the seven hondred knyghtes in two partyes; and there were three hondred knyghtes of the realme of Benwyke and Gaule that turned on the other syde. (MD, p. 16 [I:11])

The basic elements of this passage are similar, but of special interest is the word ‘turned’, an indication that Malory’s source probably contained the same wording as Cam. Rather than offer a translation of ‘tornerent’, Malory renders it with its closest English equivalent. Although Malory employs the word ‘turned’ throughout Le Morte Darthur, it most often appears in the context of individual knights literally turning to face one another in a joust; here he uses it to describe the collective action of a group of knights at a tournament. Specific details of battle also reflect similarities, especially evident when they veer towards the extraordinary: Breciaus … fiert si le primer par mie le heaume que il le fent jusques as denz e puis fiert si un autre par mie le bras que il li fait voler enmi le champ a tote l’escu; e puis fiert si le terce par mi l’espaule senestre que il li part e sevre du coste. (Cam, fol. 221ra ) [Breciaus struck the first on the helmet so that he sliced him down to the teeth and next he struck another halfway down the arm so that he made it fly into the field along with the shield; and next he struck the third on the left shoulder so that he split it and severed it from the side of his body.] 37

In the Suite, the King of the Hundred Knights explains that ‘li rois Arthus e li rois Boorz e li rois Bans, ses freres, s’en vont fors du pais e de la tere e vont soccoure le roi Leodogran de Camelirde qui est en grant guere au roi Rion d’Irlaunde’ [King Arthur and King Boorz and King Bans, his brothers, set forth from the country and the territory and go to aid King Leodogran of Camelirde who is engaged in a major war against King Rion of Ireland] (Cam, fol. 227va). The announcement to which Wilson refers in the Vulgate is nearly identical: ‘li rois artus & li rois bans & li rois bohors satournent por aler el roialme de carmelide pour secoure le roy leodegan encontre le roy rion qui le guerroie’. See The Vulgate Version of The Arthurian Romances, ed. H. O. Sommer, 7 vols. (Washington, DC, 1908–13, repr, New York, 1979), II, 126, trans. R. Pickens in Lancelot-Grail, ed. Lacy, I, 236.

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Sir Brascias smote one of them on the helme, that hit wente unto his tethe; and he rode unto another and smote hym, that hys arme flowe into the felde. Than he wente to the thirde and smote hym on the shulder, that sholdir and arme flow unto the felde. (MD, p. 21 [I:14])

Order, wording and sentence structure in the above passages are similar, and the unique details indicate that Malory’s source contained the same information as Cam. Echoes of Cam’s diction occur frequently in the rebel kings episode of Le Morte Darthur, as when the proximity of enemies is compared to ‘com home traisist d’une arc’ [as a man shoots from a bow] in Cam and ‘as nyghe … as a bowedraught’ in Malory (Cam, fol. 222va; MD, p. 23 [I:15]). The final section of the Suite that corresponds to Le Morte Darthur is likewise absent from H. Again, similarities run through the text while Malory’s characteristic augmentation, redaction and restructuring colour his English version of the romance. Malory’s editorial technique grows in complexity as he progresses through the Suite, which may in part explain why the final section deviates from Cam more than others. As Malory builds towards the fast-approaching explicit that divides this section from the Roman War episode which follows, a more inventive technique helps him bring the tale to as tidy a close, and as gentle a transition, as possible. The most significant differences in the final passages of this section concern the Pelleas–Ettarde–Gawain love triangle.38 The first notable discrepancy is the beloved’s name in Cam – Arcade – though the difference could be a scribal error, or a shift in spelling due to Malory’s adaptation.39 The Suite, as recounted in Cam, describes Gawain seeking out Pelleas after the latter has discovered the former in bed with Arcade. He persuades Pelleas to return to Arcade, who in turn accepts his longheld, but never realised, affection. Pelleas forgives both for their unfaithfulness to him. As the events stand in the French, their lack of appeal to Malory is evident. Gawain comes across as faithless and Pelleas as pathetic, whereas Arcade provokes both knights’ susceptibility to women. The story takes on an entirely new character in Le Morte Darthur: the change is signalled by Malory’s Pelleas resting his sword upon the throats of Gawain and Ettarde when he finds them sleeping in each other’s arms; the French Pelleas timidly places it in their bed (MD, p. 105 [IV:23]; Cam, fol. 336vb). Malory’s Pelleas refuses to reconcile himself with Ettarde: ‘when he saw hir, he knew her – and than he hated hir more than ony woman on lyve, and seyde, “Away, traytoures! and com never in 38

39

This is the last passage for which a comparison between Cam and Malory can be drawn. When both texts turn back to Marhaus, they seem to diverge; but Cam breaks off before the text returns to Ywain, so it is impossible to reach any conclusions about the relationship between the two texts here. The only other witness for this section, Paris, BnF, fr. 112, also names the lover Arcade (Suite, ed. Roussineau, II, p. 402, trans. Asher in Lancelot-Grail, V, 5–13).

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my syght” ’ (p. 106 [IV:23]). The changes have obvious value to Malory, whose Pelleas is stronger and more dignified than in the Suite. More difficult to explain, however, is Malory’s insertion of Nynyve, who casts a spell over Pelleas while she retrieves Ettarde. After Pelleas rejects his former love, Nynyve tells him ‘take your horse and com forthwith oute of this contrey, and ye shall love a lady that woll love you’; he agrees, and they ride off together (p. 106 [IV:24]). Viewed with respect to the entirety of Le Morte Darthur, the change is less peculiar than it immediately appears. In this early section of his book, Malory foretells the problematic role of women in King Arthur’s court and the part that love interests will play in Arthur’s downfall. When Pelleas is knighted at the close of the section, Malory observes that ‘Pelleas loved never aftir Sir Gawayne but as he spared hym for the love of the Kyng’ (p. 112 [IV:29]). He then hints at the human inability to forgive completely and the limitations of Arthur’s power over his knights when he adds the qualification ‘but oftyntymes at justis and at turnementes Sir Pelleas quytte Sir Gawayne’ (p. 112 [IV:29]). The ending of Le Morte Darthur echoes the resolution of the Pelleas–Ettarde–Gawain episode. Arthur – whose woes begin with the exposure of Guenevere’s affair with Lancelot – is spirited away by, among others, the Lady of the Lake. Indeed, Malory mentions Pelleas at the close of Le Morte Darthur: Also there was Dame Nynyve, the chyff lady of the laake, whych had wedded Sir Pellyas, the good knyght; and thys lady had done muche for Kynge Arthure. (And thys Dame Nynyve wolde never suffir Sir Pelleas to be in no place where he shulde be in daungere of hys lyff, and so he lyved unto the uttermuste of hys dayes with her in grete reste.) (p. 689 [XXI:6])

The symmetry thus created meshes with the previous material in the opening section of Le Morte Darthur during which Malory delicately assembles the ingredients of disaster for the Round Table. Pelleas’ feud with Gawain is one of many ominous clouds over King Arthur’s court; his marriage to Nynyve is both a foil to fickle mortal love and a reminder of the ability of the supernatural to intervene at moments of crisis. The changes that Malory does make, when considered in light of his translation technique as well as the high degree of correlation between Cam and Le Morte Darthur, are both characteristic and minor. The basic elements of the story remain the same; the parallels between this section of Cam and the corresponding material in Malory are consistent with the bulk of the material studied in this essay. The overarching similarities – which give Malory the skeleton from which he composes his text – coupled with the specific similarities mentioned above, offer support for the theory that Cam represents Malory’s source text. Instances of nearidentical passages in Malory and Cam far outweigh the few instances of direct disagreement between the two texts. For sections where H and Cam provide text for parallel examination – that is, most of the relevant section 49



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of Le Morte Darthur – Malory’s fidelity to Cam manifests itself. Numbers, word-choice, phrasing and other stylistic and substantive elements show a faithful correspondence between the two texts. Of course, Malory’s modus operandi prevents an easy one-to-one comparison between his text and any of his sources. With this in mind, however, we can systematically compare Malory’s text against Cam and H. Numbers The easiest place to begin such a comparison is with numbers. Quantitative descriptions appear frequently in Malory’s text and his sources, and provide a quick litmus test of the similarities among the three versions of the text discussed in this paper. None of the texts entirely agrees with any other. As is to be expected, Cam and H demonstrate a considerable degree of correlation; Malory at times agrees with neither. All three texts disagree in only one instance: when the lady of the castle where Balyn and Balan have their fatal battle enters with her entourage, each text gives a different number of knights, damsels and yeomen.40 On eight occasions, Cam and H agree but Malory differs. Authorial liberty can explain these disagreements, especially because the concordance of Cam and H seems to indicate that these numbers are fairly consistent across manuscripts of the Suite. One instance in particular seems motivated by Malory’s desire to clarify and remove contradictions: when Balyn sets off to find Garlan in the Suite, his host informs him that Garlan’s brother ‘tendui court graunte et efforcie de dimanche en viij jours au chastel de palaice perillex’ [held an important and powerful court starting Sunday eight days hence at the castle of the perillous palace’]; according to Malory the ‘grete feste … shall be within thes twenty dayes’ (Cam, fol. 269rb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 22]; MD, p. 55 [II:14]). The probable explanation for the change comes a few lines later in Malory, when we find that Balyn and his companions ‘had fyftene dayes journey or they com thydir’; this number agrees with H and Cam, which both explain that they rode ‘ensambel tout la semaine et l’auter aprez’ [together all week and the week after] (MD, p. 55 [II:14]; Cam, fol. 269va [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 23]). In order to provide harmony between Balyn’s transit time and the projected date of King Pellam’s feast, Malory adjusts the date of the festival. 40

Malory’s damsel is accompanied by ‘four knyghtes and six ladyes and six yomen unto them’ (MD, p. 60 [II:18]); Cam describes an entourage comprised of ‘.vj. serganz e .vj. damoiseles que tut tens la servoient e un chevalier tant seulment’ [6 soldiers and 6 ladies who served her all the time and only one knight] (fol. 278vb); H’s lady arrives with ‘sis serjans et sis damoiseles qui tous tans la servoient, et set chevaliers tant seulement’ [six soldiers and six ladies who served her all the time and only seven knights] (Suite, ed. Paris, II, 54). There is a lacuna here in W, so Cx is the only source available to compare Malory with the Suite for this passage.

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More telling are instances where H and Cam disagree with one another. In paying attention to the idiosyncrasies of these two slightly different versions of the Suite, we get a better sense of which is closer to the text with which Malory worked. There are eight instances where H and Cam disagree with each other. One is described above (the lady of the castle’s entourage in ‘Balyn and Balan’), where neither agrees with Malory. In the remaining seven instances, Malory agrees with Cam six times and H only once. The agreement between H and Malory occurs when Arthur first receives Excalibur and Merlin explains to him the properties of his newly acquired sword and scabbard. When Arthur declares that he prizes the sword more greatly than the scabbard, Merlin immediately informs him that ‘the scawberde ys worth ten of the swerde; for whyles ye have the scawberde uppon you, ye shall lose no blood, be ye never so sore wounded’ (MD, p. 38 [I:25]). The valuation corresponds to H, which agrees that ‘li fuerres vaut mieus que teuls dis espees ne font; car il est d’un cuir qui a tel viertu que ja hom qui sour lui le porte ne perdera sanc’ [the scabbard is worth more than ten swords; because it is made of a leather that has a special property, such that no man who carries it on him will ever lose any blood] (I, 199). Cam, however, describes an even more valuable scabbard that ‘vaut meuz que teus .c. espees car il est d’une quire qu’il a tel vertu que ja hom qui sor li la porte ne perdra sanc’ [worth more than a hundred swords because it is made of a leather that has a special property such that no man who carries it on him will ever lose any blood] (fol. 243vb). The agreement between H and Malory here may indicate that he worked from a text that mediates between H and Cam. It is possible, however, that in this instance of valuation of multiples, Malory chose to substitute 10 for 100 for other reasons: it sounds less exaggerated, or it furthers Merlin’s point without devaluing the mythical Excalibur, for example. On the other hand, it is just as likely – especially given that Malory’s holograph has never surfaced – that Caxton, the Winchester scribes, or Malory himself may have erred during the process of textual transmission. The frequency with which Malory agrees with Cam lends further support to the explanation that errors committed at some point in the transmission of the text are responsible for the agreement between Malory and H described above. In the remaining six instances where H and Cam disagree on numbers, Malory corresponds to Cam rather than H. Two such examples are disagreements of phrase rather than number. In the first, a knight explains to Balyn that his lover is ‘But six myle from their present position’ (‘il n’i a pas plus de .vj. leus engleches) (MD, p. 57 [II:16]; Cam, fol. 274rb).41 H omits the negative and the knight instead 41

This passage occurs during a lacuna in W, so only Cx is available for comparison with Cam and H.

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explains that ‘il i a plus de sis liues englesques’ [it is more than six miles] (II, 37). In the second such instance, all three texts agree that Balyn ‘rode eyght dayes or he mette with any adventure’ (‘si chivalche ensi en tiel manier .viij. jours ensi cum sa voie le menoit sanz aventure trovez’ [so he rode in this manner eight days as his path guided him without finding any adventure]) (MD, p. 57 [II:16]; Cam, fol. 272va [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 31–2]). Just after, however, H says that ‘Au nuevisme jour li avint que aventure l’amena en une forest grant et parfonde’ [On the ninth day it so happened that chance brought him into a large and deep forest] while Cam maintains that Balyn arrives in the forest ‘al utisme joure’ [on the eighth day] (Suite, ed. Paris, II, 32; Cam, fol. 272va). Malory’s text agrees more closely with Cam: it describes Balyn entering the forest ‘at the last’, rather than on the next (ninth) day (p. 57 [II:16]). The remaining concordances between Cam and Malory where both diverge from H are more straightforward. Ten knights guard the sword in the stone in Cam and Malory, while nine do so in H;42 Merlin disguises himself as a fourteen-year-old in Malory and Cam, and a four-year-old in H;43 a feast lasts eight days in Malory and Cam, but fifteen in H; 44 and ‘plus de cc mors’ [more than two hundred deaths] occur in a battle in Cam, and ‘lytyll paste two hondred’ in Malory, but H claims ‘plus de cinc cens’ [more than five hundred] dead. 45 Weighed against the one instance in which H and Malory agree against Cam, the numerical evidence suggests that Malory’s text of the Suite was remarkably similar to Cam. Though numbers offer some evidence in favour of Cam, the cases in which Cam and H agree with each other and not with Malory remind us that Malory was ‘not … a timid translator/abridger/compiler at the mercy of his originals and incapable of doing anything other than follow them slavishly’.46 Further, they are reminders that he and his scribes are as susceptible to copying errors as are those of H and Cam. In one instance, for example, W and Cx disagree on the number of knights Arthur has found to complete the Round Table. Cx, Cam and H agree on forty-eight (the correct number, according to the two empty seats mentioned shortly thereafter), while W claims twenty-eight.47 Nevertheless, the level of agreement among numbers in Cx, W and Cam is significant – the correlation is indeed much greater than among Cx, W and H. 42 43 44 45 46 47

Cam, fol. 200ra; MD, p. 8 [I:5]; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 135. W lacks its first eight folios, so only Cx is available for comparison here. MD, p. 31 [I:20]; Cam, fol. 231vb; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 153. MD, p. 33 [I:21]; Cam, fol. 237rb; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 173. Cam, fol. 307vb; MD, p. 82 [IV:4]; Suite, ed. Paris, II, 166. T. McCarthy, ‘Malory and his Sources’, in A Companion to Malory, ed. Archibald and Edwards, pp. 75–95 (p. 81). Caxton’s Malory, ed. J. Spisak, 3 vols. ( Berkeley and London, 1983), III, 2; Cam, fol. 281vb; Suite, ed. Paris, II, 65; The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile (Oxford/Early English Text Society, 1976), fol. 35v.

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Differences in details between H and Cam Throughout Le Morte Darthur, Malory presents information found in Cam that is not present in H. Some details are small, as when H fails to mention that the noise of ‘une glas des chiens qui faisoient trop grant noise com sil fussent .xxx. ou .xl.’ [a yelping of dogs which make a very great noise as if they were thirty or forty] emanates from the belly of a beast Arthur pursues; Malory, too, mentions ‘the noyse … in the bestes bealy [lyke unto the questyng of thirty coupyl houndes]’ (Cam, fol. 230vb; MD, p. 30 [I:19]). Cam and Malory also agree against H in another, later description of a group of animals: H:

le chiers estoit tous blans, mais tout li autre chien estoient noir. (II, 77) [The hart was completely white, but all the other dogs were black.]

Cam: le cerf qui tut estoit blanc e li brachet autresi tut blanc, mais tuit li autre chien estoient tout noire. (fol. 284va ) [The hart who was completely white and the brachet was also all white, but all the other dogs were completely black.] MD: there com rennynge inne a whyght herte into the hall, and a whyght brachet nexte hym, and thirty couple of blacke rennynge houndis com afftir with a grete cry. (p. 66 [III:5])

Since the description of the hounds should include a dog of a differing colour than ‘tout li autre’, there is probably a scribal error in H. This instance of agreement between Cam and Malory against H nonetheless offers additional support for Cam being closer to Malory than H. Cam and Malory contain various additional details not found in H. For example, when a damsel demands that Torre decapitate a knight at his mercy, she justifies her request by describing his allegedly murderous past: H:

‘il m’ochist mon frere et voiant mes ieus, ne onques ne m’en vaut escouter lau ge li crioie mierchi tout en plorant.’ (II, 111) [He killed my brother before my eyes, never bothering to listen as I cried mercy, weeping all the while.]

Cam: ‘il occist mon frere, voiant mes oez, ne ainz ne me vout escouter la ou jeo li crioie mercie a genoilles tut en plorant.’ (fol. 293va ) [He killed my brother before my eyes, never bothering to listen as I cried mercy on my knees, weeping all the while.] MD: ‘he slew myne owne brothir before myne yghen – that was a bettir knyght than he, and he had had grace. And I kneled halfe an owre before hym, in the myre, for to sauff my brothirs lyff.’ (p. 72 [III:11])

Cam and Malory both describe the damsel kneeling before the knight, 53



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while H describes only her vocal pleas. An even more striking case where Cam and H diverge is in the name of Launcelor’s paramour. H names her Lione; Malory and Cam both call her Columbe (Suite, ed. Paris, I, 230; MD, p. 47 [II:8]; Cam, fol. 252ra). Thus we have seen that throughout the opening section of Le Morte Darthur, Malory repeatedly corresponds more closely to Cam than to H. In two clear instances, however, H contains information not found in Cam. In the first, Malory’s description of a dwarf is closer to H than to Cam: Cam: lors [Accalon] voit venir vers li un naim petite e gros e out les cheveus noires e la bouche e le nef petite e camus (fol. 311ra ) [Then [Accalon] saw come towards him a small, fat dwarf who had black hair and mouth and a small, flat nose] H:

lors [Accalon] voit venir viers lui un nain petit e gros, e ot les chaviaus noirs e la bouche grant e le nés petit et chamus (II, 179) [Then [Accalon] saw come towards him a small, fat dwarf who had black hair and a large mouth and a small, flat nose.]

MD: And ryght with that there com a dwarf with a grete mowthe and a flatte nose (p. 86 V:8])

Malory eliminates most of the dwarf’s description in his source, focusing solely on his mouth and nose. Though Cam describes his mouth as small and H and Le Morte Darthur agree that it is large, Malory could have easily added in the word ‘large’ of his own volition. It creates a more exaggerated caricature of the figure more in line with his evil portentousness; with the addition of a single word, it also creates a richer description than that in Cam. Finally, there is some indication that such a description of a dwarf is generic. For example, later in Le Morte Darthur Gawain encounters a dwarf ‘with a grete mowthe and a shorte nose’ (p. 101 [IV:21]). While H breaks off before the corresponding section in the Suite, Cam again lacks the identical description. Here, Malory’s use of the same description applied to Accalon’s dwarf is thus some indication that such a stock character merits a readily recycled stock description. A similar case presents itself a short time later in Malory and the Suite when the dwarf and Accalon discuss the supernatural circumstances leading up to the impending battle: Cam: ‘Coment vien jeo ca? Le ses tu?’ ‘Nenil, certes,’ fet li naims, ‘fors que ces sunt unes des aventures de Bretaigne ou des enchantemenz. Car d’aventure si merveilluse cum ceste est noi jeo onques mais parler ne pres ne long.’ (fol. 311rb ) [‘How did I come here? Do you know?’ ‘Certainly not’, said the dwarf, ‘except that these are adventures of Britain or it is sorcery. Because, near or far, I have never heard talk of an adventure as marvellous as this.’] 54

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H:



‘Et comment vi(e)n ge cha ? le sés tu?’ ‘Nennil voir’, che dist li nains, ‘fors que che sont des aventures de Bretaigne ou des enchantemens de ceste terre.’ Et cil respont qu’il cuide bien que chou ait esté enchantement, car d’aventure si miervilleuse comme ceeste fu(stes) n’oi onques parler ne près ne loing. (II, 180) [‘And how did I come here? Do you know?’ ‘Truly not’, said the dwarf, ‘except that these are adventures of Britain or sorcery of this land.’ And he replied that he well believed that this had been sorcery, because, near or far, he had never heard talk of any adventure as marvellous as this one was.]

MD: ‘Now I suppose’, seyde Accalon, ‘[Morgan le Fay] hath made all this crauftis and enchauntemente for this batayle.’ ‘Sir, ye may well beleve hit!’ seyde the dwarff. (p. 86 [IV:8])

Malory reflects Accalon’s acknowledgment, found in H, that his arrival is the result of magic. Cam does, however, contain all of the relevant information adopted by Malory; what is missing is the exchange between the dwarf and Accalon in which they both state their agreement that sorcery is responsible for Accalon’s arrival. However, it is common practice for Malory to add or otherwise alter speakers from his sources. In addition to being much less frequent than variances between H and Malory, disagreements such as these are also much more likely to be the result of authorial licence. Syntax and diction McCarthy reminds us that Malory is an inconsistent adapter, and that ‘Paradoxically, it is essential … to remember that one of the liberties of the traditional writer (whom the spectre of plagiarism never haunts) is, precisely, to follow his source slavishly if he so chooses. And from time to time, but not often, Malory does just that.’48 McCarthy explains in relation to the Grail book that ‘certain passages can be traced back to the French text word for word’49 – and the same, at times, proves true of the section discussed in this paper. Malory’s English frequently echoes word choice and sentence structure in his French sources, but of particular interest are the passages where his phrasing echoes Cam but not H. Consider Accalon’s pledge at the moment he realises that his opponent (soon revealed to be Arthur) will have the better of him in hand-to-hand combat: H:

48 49

‘Occirre me poés vous, s’il vous plaist, sire chevalier, car vous en estes bien au dessus, che m’est avis. Mais l’outranche que vous me requerés n’orrés vous ja, se Dieu plaist. Mieus voel que vous m’ochiés.’ (II, 208)

McCarthy, ‘Malory and his Sources’, p. 81. McCarthy, ‘Malory and his Sources’, p. 81.

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[‘Kill me you may, if you please, sir knight, because you are clearly victorious, that I can see. But the outrage you demand of me you will not hear, if it please God. I would rather that you kill me.’] Cam: ‘Occire me poez vus, s’il vus plaist. Car vus estes au desus ceo m’est avis. Mais l’outrage que vus me requerrez norrez vus ja de ma bouche issir si deu plaist. Meuz voil que vus m’occiez.’ (fol. 318rb) [‘Kill me you may, if you please. Because you are victorious, that I can see. But the outrage that you demand of me you will never hear from my mouth, if it please God. I would rather that you kill me.’] MD: ‘But for I promysed’, seyde Accolon, ‘to do this batayle to the uttirmyst and never to be recreaunte while I leved, therefore shall I never yelde me with my mowthe – but God do with my body what He woll.’ (p. 89 [IV:10])

In both versions, Accalon declares that he would rather die than yield himself to his opponent. In Malory and Cam, however, his pledge is more specific than in H: rather than simply refusing to utter defeat, he specifically refuses to have the words emanate from his mouth. H does not contain the word ‘bouche’ anywhere in Accalon’s declaration. A simple scribal error could account for the omission in H, but the brevity of the missing material (‘de ma bouche issir’) makes eye-skip error unlikely. Furthermore, Cam contains much material not present in H, so could simply reflect a different stage in the development of the Suite than H – one closer to, or identical to, that which Malory uses. Another case in which Cam and Malory agree more closely than H and Malory occurs when Bagdemagus leaves Arthur’s court after being denied a seat at the Round Table: H:



Quant il ont un poi chevauchié, il truevent au chemin forchié une crois qui estoit faite de nouviel. Si tost que Baudemagus voit la crois, il descent e s’agenoille devant; e quant il a une grant pieche esté a genous et il ot dites ses priieres et ses orisons tels comme il les savoit, il jura seur la crois, oiant le varlet, que ja mais en la court le roi(s) Artu(s) ne retournera devant qu’il ait conquis en bataille cors a cors auchun des compaignons de la table reonde. (II, 171–2; emphasis added) [When they had ridden a bit, they found at a forked path a cross that was newly made. As soon as Baudemagus saw the cross, he dismounted and knelt before it; and when he had been on his knees for some time and he had said his prayers and his orisons as he knew them, he swore on the cross, as the squire listened, that he would never return to the court of King Arthur before he had conquered in battle, body-to-body, any one of the companions of the Round Table.] 56

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Cam: Quant il a un poi chevauche il troverent une chimin forchie a une crois qui estoit fait de Novel e si tost com Baudemagus voit la croiz il descent e sa genoille devant. E quant il a une grant piece este a genoilles e il ont dit ses priers e ses oreisons teles com il les savoit, il jura sor la croiz, voiant le vallet, que jamais a la court le Roi Artur ne returneroit devant quil ait conquis en bataille cors a cors aucun des compaignuns de la Table Reonde. (fol. 309ra; emphasis added) [When he had ridden a bit, they found a forked path at a cross that had been newly made, and as soon as Baudemagus sees the cross he dismounts and kneels before it. And when he had been on his knees for a while, and he had said his prayers and his orisons as he knew them, he swore on the cross, as the squire looked on, that he would never return to the court of King Arthur until he had conquered in battle, body-to-body, any one of the companions of the Round Table.] MD: And therefore soddeynly he departed frome the courte and toke his squyre with hym, and rode longe in a foreste tyll they come to a crosse, and there he alyght and seyde his prayers devoutely. The meanewhyle, his squyre founde wretyn uppon the crosse that Bagdemagus sholde never retourne unto the courte agayne tyll he had wonne a knyght of the Table Rounde, body-for-body. (p. 83 [IV:5]; emphasis added)

Here we see an example of Malory closely following his source, echoing the ‘cors a cors’ present in both H and Cam with ‘body-for-body’. The three distinctly diverge, however, in the actual events that take place: in Malory, Bagdemagus finds his fate prophesied on the cross, while in the Suite he pledges it himself. The differences between Cam and H offer a possible explanation. Where H describes the squire ‘listening’ to Bagdemagus’ prayers (‘oiant’), Cam’s squire is ‘seeing’ Bagdemagus (‘voiant’). Malory eliminates the phrase ‘il jura’ and has his squire discover the edict on the cross. Le Morte Darthur’s echo of Cam, (‘voiant le vallet’) seems too close to be coincidence. Whatever the reason for Malory changing the course of events – inspiration by Cam’s use of voiant or confusion at the subordinate clause – it seems likely that Cam most faithfully represents Malory’s direct source. Other instances are less clear-cut, but again suggest that Cam is, at the very least, remarkably close to Malory’s source manuscript. When the Lady of the Lake appears at Arthur’s court and demands a favour from Arthur, her speech follows Cam slightly more closely than H: H:

‘Je vous demanc’, fait elle, ‘la teste [de] la demoisele qui cele espee aporta chaiens ou dou chevalier qui l’a. Et savés vous’, fait elle, ‘pour coi je demanc si mierveilleus don? Sachiés que chis chevaliers ochist un mien frere preudomme et boin chevalier, e ceste damoisiele fist mon pere occhire.’ (I, 219) 57



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[‘I demand of you’, said she, ‘the head of the damsel who brought this sword here, or of the knight who has it. And do you know’, said she, ‘why I demand such a marvellous favour? Know that this knight killed one of my brothers, a gentleman and a good knight, and that this damsel had my father killed.’]

Cam: ‘Jeo vus demande’, fait ele, ‘que vus me dones la teste du chevalier qui ceste espee en veut porter, ou le chef de la damoisele que la porta caeinz. E savez vus’, fait ele, ‘pur quoi jeo demande si merveilluse don? Sachez que cil chevaliers occist un mien frere prodom e bon chevalier, e ceste damoisele fist mon pere occire.’ (fol. 248va ) [‘I demand of you’, said she, ‘that you give me the head of the knight who wanted to carry this sword, or the head of the damsel who brought it here. And do you know’, said she, ‘why I demand such a marvellous favour? Know that this knight killed one of my brothers, a gentleman and a good knight, and that this damsel had my father killed.’] MD: ‘I aske the hede of thys knyght that hath wonne the swerde, other ellis the damesels hede that brought hit. I take no force though I have both theire hedis, for he slew my brother, a good knyght and a trew; and that jantillwoman was causer of my fadirs deth.’ (p. 43 [II:3])

At first glance, the more concise wording of H seems closer to the compact phrasing of the first part of this passage in Malory – but it is in keeping with Malory’s reduction of his sources that he would alter the phrase ‘I ask that you would give me the head’ to simply ‘I aske the hede’. A more substantive difference occurs shortly thereafter, where Malory’s sentence structure nearly perfectly replicates that of Cam where both diverge from H: Malory’s Lady, like Cam’s, demands the head of the knight before that of the damsel, and both Cam and Malory offer a lengthier description of the knight (‘la teste du chevalier qui ceste espee en veut porter’ is closer to ‘the hede of thys knyght that hath wonne the swerde’ than H’s ‘[la teste] dou chevalier qui l’a’). Cam and Malory also discuss the knight before mentioning the damsel, while H does the opposite. An especially poignant moment in Malory and the Suite occurs after Balyn slays Launceor, whose lover arrives just in time to see him die. Malory lifts the damsel’s chiasmus almost directly from the Suite as reflected in Cam: H:

‘Ha! sire, deus cuers avés ochis en un et deus cors en un, et deus ames ferés perdre pour une.’ (I, 227) [‘Oh! Sir, two hearts have you killed in one and two bodies in one, and two souls have you made lost for one.’]

Cam: ‘Ha; sire chevaliers, .ij. cors avez occis en un cuer e .ij. cuers en un cors, e .ij. asmes ferez perdre pur une.’ (fol. 251ra ) [‘Oh! Sir, two bodies have you killed in one heart and two hearts in one body, and two souls you have made lost for one.’] 58

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MD: ‘A, Balyne! two bodyes thou haste slayne in one herte, and two hertes in one body, and two soules thou hast loste.’ (p. 46 [II:6])

The passage is translated almost word for word from Cam; the exchange between body and heart in Cam and Malory contrasts with the fusion of two distinct bodies and two distinct hearts in H. Another example of similar sentence structure occurs as Balyn prepares (unwittingly) to battle his brother. Just before their joust, a knight (a seneschal in the Suite) offers him a new shield: H:

‘Sir’, fait li seneschaus, ‘vostre escus ne me samble mie moult boins; se il vous plaisoit, je vous feroie autre aporter qui millours seroit.’ (II, 46) [‘Sir’, said the seneschal, ‘your shield does not seem to me very good at all; if it would please you, I could bring you another that would be better.’]

Cam: ‘Sir’, fait li seneschaus, ‘vostre escuz ne me sambel mie moult bons. S’il vus plaisoit, jeo vus en ferroie aporter .i. meillor.’ (fol. 276vb) [‘Sir’, said the seneschal, ‘your shield does not seem to me very good at all. If it would please you, I could bring you a better.’] MD: ‘Syr’, said a knyght to Balyn, ‘me thynketh your sheld is not good; I wille lene yow a byggar, therof I pray yow.’ (p. 58 [II:17])

While one can debate whether ‘byggar’ is in fact a justifiable translation of ‘meillour’, Malory uses almost exactly the same phrasal structure as Cam (‘.i. meillor’, ‘a byggar’). Discrepancies between Malory and the Suite du Merlin There are, of course, elements in Le Morte Darthur missing from both H and Cam. While it is impossible to tell whether these are cases of Malory’s inventiveness or evidence for his possession of a different version of the Suite, his authorial technique warns against eliminating a manuscript as a candidate for Malory’s source on the grounds that it lacks some material which corresponds to his text. Some cases seem to point clearly to Malory’s authorship, for example the frequently cited passage at the close of ‘The Weddyng of Kyng Arthur’ where Arthur’s knights swear to uphold the honour of the Round Table (p. 77 [III:15]). Other divergences further Malory’s vision of Arthur and his kingdom. Where the Suite indicates that King Lot’s wife, the soon-to-be mother of Mordred, ‘estoit descendue com del Roi Utherpendragon’ [was descended from King Utherpendragon], Malory claims that ‘she was syster on the modirs syde, Igrayne, unto Arthure’ (Cam, fol. 230ra [Suite, ed. Paris, I, 147]; MD, p. 30 [I:19]). Earlier in Cam, however, readers are told that when 59



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Utherpendragon marries Ygraine, he ‘dona la fille le duc au Roi Loth d’Orcanie,’ [gave the daughter of the duke to King Loth of Orcanie] and the text confirms that from ‘la fille quil dona li Roi Loth issi Mordres’ [the girl that he had given to King Loth issued Mordres] (fol. 195ra). Malory has good reason to take this reading rather than the contradictory one that follows some folios later. Malory’s Arthurian court depends heavily upon strong bloodlines and noble heritage, and the act of incest between two of Utherpendragon’s direct descendants invites questions about Utherpendragon’s nobility and moral character. By downplaying the connection between Morgawse and Utherpendragon, Malory is thus able to preserve Arthur’s fatal (though unwitting) moral misstep without condemning the bloodlines that legitimate his claim to the crown. Though Malory’s style of composition – he is part editor, part author, part translator, afraid neither to translate wholesale nor to invent completely – makes a comparison between Le Morte Darthur and any of his source texts difficult, Cam has clear resonances with his text. In addition to the presence of material found in no other known manuscripts of the Suite, Cam explains many of the confusions found in Le Morte Darthur. Syntax and diction are almost identical in some sections; the similarities are especially striking when distinguished from H, the most complete surviving Suite aside from Cam. Instances where H seems to agree more closely with Malory than Cam are rare and likely to be the result of authorial convention or scribal errors. Considered individually, most of the similarities between Malory and Cam seem matters of happy coincidence. Taken together, however, the concordance between Cam and Malory is striking, and strongly suggests that Cam is a faithful representation of the copy text Malory used when composing Le Morte Darthur. Next I turn to evidence that Cam could be the very manuscript from which he worked.

Physical similarities between Cam and W The abbreviation of names in Arthurian manuscripts is common, especially for names that appear repeatedly within a given text. Cam and W share the unremarkable practice of abbreviating Merlin’s name to a single ‘M’, and the much less common practice (at least in manuscripts of the Vulgate) of rubricating proper names.50 Merlin’s abbreviation is similar in both manuscripts: a red ‘M’ topped with the abbreviation usually signal-

50

Cooper notes that ‘It was by no means uncommon for the French Arthurian prose romances to abbreviate the names of leading characters to initials (G for Gauvain is especially widespread), and the practice was sometimes carried through into print’ (‘M for Merlin’, p. 94).

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ling ‘er’ and followed by a punctus.51 While H often abbreviates Merlin’s name to an ‘M’, proper nouns, including ‘Merlin’, are never rubricated. In her essay ‘M for Merlin’, Helen Cooper examines the W scribes’ practice of abbreviating Merlin’s name to a rubricated ‘M’. As she mentions, the practice is inconsistent,52 but significant because Merlin’s is the only regularly abbreviated name in the manuscript. The scribes rubricate other names (and occasionally other proper nouns), but write them out in full; a quick glance at any folio of W immediately impresses the reader with names splashed across the page in red. As Carol Meale notes, ‘The effect of the changes in ink is considerable … this form of highlighting enables a reader to find his or her way around the text more readily’.53 Meale’s observation underlines the significance of naming in Malory; readers of W could use the appearance of proper nouns to navigate through the text. While Merlin’s name is by far the most frequently abbreviated and rubricated name in Cam, other names occasionally receive similar treatment. Unlike that of W, Cam’s rubrication was added after the text was written, and is always limited to a dab of red on the first letter of a word. As a result, the practice is less consistent than in W, though the effect is much the same: glancing at Cam reveals a series of names and places that stand out in marked contrast to neighbouring words. Names in Cam are often rubricated but rarely represented by a single letter. As in W, rubrication sometimes accents other proper nouns, emphasising the significance of certain objects and places – for example, Benoic and Cornewaille are commonly rubricated.54 Rubrication is part of Cam’s hierarchy of division; the first word in direct speech, or the first word in a new section, is often rubricated. Rubrication drops off significantly after fol. 303r, though several folios after this point exhibit scribal marks indicating future rubrication. While it is fitting to abbreviate ‘Merlin’ to a single letter in the Suite (where he is the most significant character), the habit is more peculiar in W. Le Morte Darthur’s opening sections – the only sections where Merlin figures heavily – primarily concern Arthur. Here, Malory details his conception and coronation, followed by trials that prove his eventemperedness and wisdom. Arthur’s name, especially in the first seventy folios, appears more than that of any other character; Merlin’s name is comparatively rare. Yet Arthur’s name, like that of every other character aside from Merlin, is rarely abbreviated. Indeed, the W scribes seem reluctant to abbreviate names; on folios where a name is mentioned a 51 52 53 54

In Cam, a punctus also precedes the ‘M’. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, p. 97. Meale, ‘The Hoole Book’, p. 10. Cam, fols. 209va, 211va, 212rb, 215va, 218va, 218vb, 222ra; 216vb, 216vb, 226ra, 227vb, 228ra.

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dozen times, or two names are mentioned repeatedly, the scribe diligently writes out the names in full each time. By contrast, W’s scribes abbreviate Merlin’s name even when it could prove confusing for readers: on fol. 26v Merlin is abbreviated despite the repeated mention of Mark. Merlin is, in effect, isolated from his fellow characters as a result. W’s representation of Merlin with a single letter reflects his peripherality, which his disappearance bears out: Malory states matter-of-factly that Nynyve entrapped him in a rock, ‘departed and leffte’ him (p. 79 [IV:2]). The rubrication in W is meticulous. At times, a scribe begins to write a name with a dark pen before realising his mistake and switching to red ink.55 At one point, a scribe forgets to rubricate a name altogether and instead underlines the name in red ink.56 Cooper offers several suggestions for the motivations behind W’s abbreviation of Merlin’s name, including superstition and a visual nod to Merlin’s tendency to disguise himself. 57 Whatever the reasons, the practice provides a striking visual link between the two manuscripts. Cooper argues that ‘The fact that both scribes involved in the copying of Winchester make the abbreviation suggests, though it does not prove, that they are adopting it from their own exemplar.’58 The overall similarities between the rubrication in Cam and W – rubricating proper nouns and often abbreviating Merlin to a single ‘M’ – are not proof that Malory ever encountered the manuscript. Still, they suggest that Malory’s source text contained similar visual elements. Studies on the extent of this kind of rubrication are rare, but it is by no means standard practice in manuscripts of the Vulgate. Rubrication figures heavily in manuscripts of prose romances, but usually in chapter headings or other textual divisions, and rubrics are often, especially before the fifteenth century, almost strictly associated with illustrations.59 Cam’s rubrication signals divisions in many instances, but its use of rubrics selectively to highlight proper nouns distinguishes it, at the very least, from the most universal characteristics of prose romance manuscripts. The effect in both manuscripts is striking and immediately draws attention to names and places. Names are of special significance for Malory; he carefully reproduces lists of names from his sources and adds such rosters where they do not exist in his French texts. He replaces nameless knights with ­established characters in order to produce consistency, and recalls such characters at various points in his lengthy narrative. If Malory created his own copy-text, he may well have been inspired by Cam to rubricate proper nouns in his text in order to offer a visual signifier of the 55 56 57 58 59

W, fols. 13r and 39v. W, fol. 40v. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, pp. 96 and 97. Cooper, ‘M for Merlin’, p. 96. G. Hasenohr, ‘Les sytèmes de repérage textuel’, in Mise en Page et Mise en Texte du Livre Manuscrit, ed. H. J. Martin and J. Vezin (Paris, 1991), pp. 273–88 (p. 274).

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importance of names. The significance of names and naming in Malory is reflected both in Le Morte Darthur’s frequent litanies of knights and in W’s rubrication. Rubrication has the power both to visually emphasise characters and to underscore Merlin’s mysteriousness. Cam’s own rubrication, which so effectively impresses upon readers the significance of people and place names, would certainly have impacted Malory if he did indeed encounter the manuscript.

Understanding the relationship between Malory and his sources Malory is far from a consistent author-editor. As he composed Le Morte Darthur with material from his French models, he relied on a variety of techniques to create not the most faithful translation, but a wholly new work with freshly depicted characters and revised plots. As Terence McCarthy describes Malory’s work, he ‘borrows and assembles in order to recreate, to give new form to old stories in a way that does full justice to what he sees as their true significance’.60 Cooper observes that Malory’s work is not ‘mere translation or adaptation’ and that ‘he both alters his Cycle material and combines it with different sources in French and English’.61 Malory’s adaptation is more ad hoc than systematic; each passage of his French source requires unique adjustments. Critics have already noted Malory’s range, from the basic translating and paring down of his sources in the Grail Quest and Tristan sections to the highly complex and multisource tapestry of the final section of his work where he ‘manipulates several texts at once, selecting from them, abandoning first one then the other, and rearranging the chronology to suit his purpose’.62 The following section explores Malory’s adaptation of the Suite du Merlin. Abbreviation and augmentation Malory is no simple editor. Though a word-count comparison against his source texts indicates his penchant for cutting out material, he frequently adds details in order to aid his readers.63 In addition to their tortuous plots, Malory’s sources contain an unforgiving number of characters who constantly enter and exit the story as they embark on or return from their aventures. In order to reduce this number, Malory combines minor characters in much the same way that a stage director assigns multiple parts to the same actor. In one such instance, Malory has Sir Outlake stand in 60 61 62 63

McCarthy, ‘Malory and his Sources’, p. 78. H. Cooper, ‘The Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England: Malory and his Predecessors’, in A Companion to the Lancelot-Grail Cycle, ed. Dover, pp. 147–62 (p. 147). McCarthy, ‘Malory and his Sources’, pp. 81 and 86–87. Field, Romance and Chronicle, p. 73.

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for a nameless knight in his source (Cam, fol. 321vb; Suite, ed. Paris, II, 221; MD, p. 93 [IV:14]). The practice plays a part in the technique Cooper describes whereby ‘Knights who appear in the sources only for the early parts of his work are brought in again at the end; those who figure in his sources for the end are often given pre-histories’.64 In addition to simplifying material, these substitutions provide greater unity in Le Morte Darthur. Malory discusses many characters, but he provides context to help his readers remember the prosopography of his cast; these details become especially significant in later sections of Malory as the Round Table disintegrates. Malory reminds us that Ector is ‘Sir Kayes fadir’, that Urien had ‘wedded [Arthur’s] sistir Morgan le Fay’ and foretells that ‘Sir Gawayne revenged the deth of hys fadir the tenthe yere aftir he was made knyght, and slew Kynge Pellynor hys owne hondis’ (MD, pp. 21 [I:14], 82 [IV:5], 51 [II:10]). Relationships and allegiances drive much of the plot, and Malory’s additions serve as important reminders to readers. At other times, Malory augments his sources with original text. Such material can stand in for complex passages that resist summary, or can provide a transition from one section of edited material to another. A good example of both occurs at the end of ‘The Weddyng of Kyng Arthur’. Here, Merlin explains to Pellinore that a distressed damsel he ignored whilst on adventure – and who died as a result – was Pellinore’s own daughter. Malory’s Merlin is sober and straightforward as he immediately reveals the tragic truth: ‘that lady was youre owne doughtir’ (p. 77 [III:15]). The French Merlin is more playful and the French Pellinore unable to pick up on Merlin’s heavy-handed hints that the damsel was his progeny. The Suite, in a move characteristic of Old French interlaced romance, takes the opportunity to travel back in time to a festival at Pellinore’s court when a woman informs him that ‘par ta mauvaisce e par ta negligenz larras tu ta char devorer as lions celi an mesme que tu te serras mis en autri subjection’ [by your malevolence and by your negligence you shall let your flesh be eaten by lions the same year that you shall be placed under another’s rule] (Cam, fol. 298ra [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 129]). The story, with its layers of history and innuendo (however unsubtle), is far too complicated for Malory’s more straightforward style. Rather than delve into the tangle of time and destiny, Malory completely changes the character of Merlin’s revelation. Suggestion becomes outright declaration; there is no hint of turns of fate or prescient characters. The passage also meshes more smoothly with Malory’s moral landscape than the French, in which Pellinore’s daughter’s demise seems more directly a result of his submission to Arthur than punishment for his lack of chivalric integrity. Malory’s Pellinore suffers because of his blatant disregard

64

Cooper, ‘The Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England’, p. 160.

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for a woman in distress; this lapse in knightly behaviour leads directly to the loss of his daughter. Malory immediately follows Merlin’s revelation with another addition. Rather than a reinterpretation of his source, however, the end of ‘The Weddyng of Kyng Arthur’ is Malory’s own. He quickly concludes the three quests that dominate much of the preceding section and then focuses on Arthur. Malory emphasises the king’s even-handed and scrupulous rule: The Kynge stablysshed all the knyghtes and gaff them rychesse and londys – and charged them never to do outerage nothir mourthir, and allwayes to fle treson, and to gyff mercy unto hym that askith mercy, uppon payne of forfiture of their worship and lordship of Kyng Arthure for evirmore. (p. 77 [III:15])

The oath continues in similar fashion, building towards the end with a chivalric cadence until at last Malory closes the section with an affirmation of King Arthur’s strength: ‘So unto thys were all knyghtes sworne of the Table Rounde, both olde and yonge; and every yere so were they sworne at the hyghe feste of Pentecoste’ (p. 77 [III:15]). As Cooper observes, ‘The knights’ oath of chivalry, based by Malory on the oath taken at the ceremonial of the Order of the Bath … becomes a measure of chivalry that underlies the whole work.’65 Malory’s interactions with his source material are more complicated than the removal of material he deems extraneous or the puzzling out of interlaced narrative. Malory adds as well as subtracts in order to craft a unified narrative that maintains a degree of logical and moral consistency throughout Le Morte Darthur. At times, Malory changes his speaker in order to achieve continuity. Arthur demonstrates his humility when he praises Kay for striking down two rebel kings while he and his companions each tackle one. In the Suite, Gawain, Grifflet and Arthur together praise Kay and declare ‘bien vus avez tenu covenant de ceo que vus nu promistes’ [you have kept well the promise that you made to us] (Cam, fol. 307ra [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 164]). Malory, however, has Arthur alone tell Kay that ‘worshipfully haste thou holde thy promyse’, once again shifting the focus towards Arthur, who as Kay’s lord holds the responsibility to praise and honour him (p. 81 [IV:3]). Similarly, after Pellinore unhorses him, Arthur humbly concedes that he has ‘loste the honoure on horsebacke’, a change from the French, in which Pellinore declares his own feats ‘le plus bele de la bataille’ [the best of the battle] (MD, p. 36 [I:23]; Cam, fol. 241vb [Suite, ed. Paris, I, 190]). By altering the speaker, Malory keeps his readers’ attention fixed on Arthur and emphasises his humility even in the face of defeat.

65

Cooper, ‘The Lancelot-Grail Cycle in England’, p. 160.

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A change of speaker once again serves Malory when Arthur and Merlin chastise Pellinore for the death of his daughter. In the French, Arthur explains that Pellinore is ‘trop a blamer, car jeo quit verraiement que si vus fussiez returnez a celi point que ele vus appelloit si durement cum vus mesmes recontes ele ne fust pas oncore mort’ [very much to blame, because I truly believe that if you had turned around at the moment when she was calling to you so painfully, as you told me, she would not yet be dead] (Cam, fol. 297vb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, p. 128]). Malory, however, changes the speaker to Guenevere, whose comment ‘ye were gretly to blame that ye saved nat thys ladyes lyff’ offers a moral judgment on a knight’s obligation to defend women in trouble (p. 76 [III:15]). Guenevere’s shortened speech, ending with the alliterated ‘ladyes lyff’, emphasises the victim’s femininity more directly than the casual ‘ele’ in the French which is the sole indication of her gender. That Malory’s speaker here is Guenevere, rather than Arthur, is significant. The alteration underlines the distinction between the male and female spheres in Le Morte Darthur. Throughout his work, Guenevere acts as advocate for wronged damsels; Arthur tends to concern himself with knights and knights alone.66 Finally, this section occurs near the close of ‘The Weddyng of Kyng Arthur’. The recent marriage of Arthur and Guenevere provides an opportunity for Malory to establish the political implications of their union and to delineate their roles for the remainder of Le Morte Darthur. Malory seems less willing than his source to have his characters deviate from their expected behaviour. The result is a more consistent cast of characters with more focused portrayals. In one passage in the Suite, Merlin, disguised as a fourteen-year-old, appears before Arthur and then teases him later that day. Merlin comes across as a sort of jester as he playfully asks, ‘qui quidez vus que cil fust qui parla a vus hui a la fontaigne en semblaunce d’un enfant?’ [who do you think it was who spoke to you today at the spring in the guise of a child?] (Cam, fol. 234va [Suite, ed. Paris, I, 163]). Arthur’s confused answer, ‘Jeo ne savoie que quidier … mais or pense jeo bien que ceo fustes vus’ [I don’t know what to believe … but I think it was you] makes him seem almost dopey – hardly the kind of conversation one would envision between one of the Nine Worthies and his most trusted advisor (Cam, fol. 234va [Suite, ed. Paris, I, 163]). Malory tweaks the exchange so that his Merlin offers the sober and direct ‘I was he in the chyldis lycknes’, and Arthur’s confusion becomes awe directed mostly at Merlin’s prophecy that he will one day die in battle (p. 32 [I:20]). Malory makes a similar change in the story of Balyn’s pursuit of Garlan, the villainous and cowardly knight who renders himself invisible and slaughters knights. As Balyn delivers the coup de grâce in the Suite, 66

See, for example, Guenevere and Sir Pedyvere, MD, p. 175 [VI:17].

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he declares ‘Ore ne m’en chaut que home face de moi, car jeo ai bien ma quest acheve’ [Now I care about nothing but the man before me, because I have well fulfillled my quest] (Cam, 270rb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, p. 26]). Rather than triumph in personal revenge, Malory’s Balyn seems more interested in chivalric justice. His proclamation, ‘With that troncheon thou slewyste a good knyght, and now hit stykith in thy body’, emphasises the moral underpinnings of his action (p. 55 [II:14]). By slaying Garlan with the very weapon he used to kill unjustly, Balyn reminds readers that Garlan has brought about his own downfall. The scene resonates well with themes that run strongly throughout Le Morte Darthur, and Malory’s selfless Balyn meshes seamlessly with the chivalrous characters who surround Arthur. Structural alterations While Malory’s minor additions to his sources and his significant redaction of them allow him to create his own work out of largely existing material, it is his structural changes to the narrative – where he changes the order, rather than the content, of plot elements in his sources – that demonstrate his talent as an editor. It is his ability to expertly tease apart storylines in the Suite that gives him the raw material to make the changes described above and slowly mould his sources into Le Morte Darthur. The Suite, like his other French sources, relies on the narrative style known as entrelacement. Characterised by the simultaneous progression of several storylines, French interlaced narrative constantly shifts among several different characters each pursuing their own aventures. As Elizabeth Archibald notes, ‘It is often remarked that Malory disliked the French interlace style of romance-writing … Generally he prefers to undo this complex interlace structure in favour of complete, discrete episodes and concise narration of action’.67 The result is a cleaner narrative that is easier to follow. The structure demands changes from Malory at the outset, but he begins modestly, making small adjustments to the Suite’s narrative sequence. Frequently, Malory shifts the position of revelations or prophecies so that they are either more closely paired with their subject, or so that they do not interrupt the action scenes of which he is so fond.68 In both the Suite 67 68

E. Archibald, ‘Beginnings: The Tale of King Arthur and King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius’, in A Companion to Malory, ed. Archibald and Edwards, pp. 133–51 (p. 136). Field observes that Malory’s ‘narration is simple and unobtrusive, tending always to a single narrative line, interrupted by a little prophecy, recapitulation, and commentary. The predominantly paratactic prose in which it is related gives the story a remarkable objectivity, and the simple past tense of the verbs puts the story firmly in a distant and unalterable past. The description of action, such as tournaments, meals, and travelling, is generally brief, factual, and formulaic, not in any way imaginative; so the attention

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and Le Morte Darthur, Merlin appears to Arthur first in the form of a child, then of an old man, and prophesies his downfall at the hands of Mordred. In Malory, Merlin, still disguised as an old man, reveals his identity and immediately explains that he has also disguised himself as the young child (p. 32 [I:20]). The latter revelation comes slightly later in his source, and is interrupted by a squire’s arrival and the beginning of Arthur’s journey back to Carlion (Cam, fol. 234ra–va; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 161–3). In the same scene, Malory draws in a revelation from much later in the Suite: just after Merlin describes Arthur’s destruction, he alludes to his own ‘shamefull dethe, to be putte in the erthe quyke’, while he assures Arthur that he ‘shall dey a worshipfull dethe’ (p. 32 [I:20]). The revelation comes four folios later in the Suite, in the course of Gryfflet’s introduction (Cam, fol. 238va; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 178). Malory’s move creates a more consistent dialogue and reduces interruptions during Gryfflet’s knighting. Similarly, Malory shifts discussion of the Round Table and the Sege Perelous so that it is concentrated in one passage rather than scattered throughout the story of Torre. The Merlin of the Suite discusses the Sege Perelous before Torre is introduced, explaining that ‘ja chevalier ne se asserra qu’il ne mure ou qu’il ni soit mahaignez desques autant que li bons chevaliers i vendra qui mettre a fin les merveilluses aventures del realme de Logres cil asserra e li apposera’ [if ever a knight shall sit here he will die, or else he will be gravely injured, until the good knight arrives who will bring to an end the marvellous adventures of the Kingdom of Logres, he shall sit there and shall remain] (Cam, fol. 281va–b [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 66]). Malory, however, keeps this information in reserve until Arthur knights Sir Torre and Merlin directs Pellinore to one of the empty seats. Le Morte Darthur thus exploits the easy transition from description of the remaining places around the table to Merlin’s declaration to Pellinore that ‘Thys is your place, for beste ar ye worthy to sitte therinne of ony that here ys’ (p. 65 [III:4]). In addition to focusing scattered information in the Suite, minor structural changes help Malory to craft continuously forward-moving plots from the more circuitous narrative in his source. Arthur’s battle against Royns and Nero presents a particular challenge in the Suite, with its overarching description of military strategy interspersed with detailed battle scenes. Malory makes significant reductions – most notably, he omits sections where Merlin dictates every move to an obedient Arthur who ‘tout ensi com Merlin le conseilla … tout ensi le fist’ [just as Merlin advised him . . . so he acted] – but he also shifts around some elements of the campaign so that the narrative pushes forward steadily rather than continuously shifting time and place (Cam, fol. 256va [Suite, ed. Paris, I, remains on the subject, not on a controlling mind behind it’ (Romance and Chronicle, p. 146).

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249]). In a simple move, Malory discusses Merlin’s distraction of King Lot ‘with a tale of … prophecy tylle Nero and his peple were destroyed’ in the course of Arthur’s opening battles against Nero (p. 50 [II:10]). Malory thus introduces unity in time: in the Suite, Merlin’s actions are discussed after Nero’s defeat is largely under way (Cam, fols. 257vb–258rb; Suite, ed. Paris, I, 254–6). Malory’s move thus shifts the event so that its causeand-effect relationship with Arthur’s victory is more apparent; Lot’s failure to act facilitates the successes of Kay, Arthur and Balyn that immediately follow (p. 50 [II:10]). As Malory progresses through The Tale of King Arthur, structural changes become more subtle and complex. The events preceding Arthur’s marriage to Guenevere provide Malory with an opportunity to demonstrate his editorial skill. The resulting section in Malory – most notably the introduction of Torre and Pellinore’s installation at the Round Table – is a reinterpretation of the French that attempts to strike a balance between suspense and confusion. Malory’s first significant change is to Aryes’ explanation of Torre’s knightly aspirations. In the Suite, Aryes immediately explains that, unlike his other sons, Torre refuses to consider any labour ‘fors a estre chevalier’ [except to be a knight] (Cam, fol. 282vb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 70]). Then, with prodding from Arthur, he offers a more complete explanation of Torre’s siblings and upbringing. Malory, however, maintains a forward progression, first establishing Aryes’ thirteen sons before explaining that Torre ‘woll nat laboure for nothynge that my wyff and I may do, but allwey he woll be shotynge, or castynge dartes, and glad for to se batayles and to beholde knyghtes’ (p. 64 [III:3]). In addition to presenting information in a more logical order, Malory offers more concrete examples of chivalry than the French Torre’s simple refusal to perform common labour. This scene demonstrates the significance of names in Le Morte Darthur. While readers of the Suite do not learn Aryes’ or Torre’s names until well after Arthur has agreed to knight the young man, the two almost immediately introduce themselves in Malory. Torre’s identity seems much more a concern for Malory than for the author of the Suite. It is only after Arthur ‘prent lespee que cil portoit e … doune la colee [à Torre]’ [took the sword that he carried and touched it to Torre’s neck] that the French Merlin reveals the young knight’s true lineage: he is the son of King Pellinore and ‘prudome serra il e bons chevaliers’ [he will be a gentleman and a good knight] (Cam, fol. 283rb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 72]). In Le Morte Darthur, Malory establishes Torre’s past and future well before Arthur knights him. Malory’s world is too strictly regimented to allow anyone to ascend to knighthood until they prove that they bleed noble blood. The scene demonstrates the different strategies of Malory and his source. The Suite invites questions about Torre’s worthiness and cultivates curiosity about his chivalric pretensions, later offering release through Merlin’s clarification. Malory, on the other hand, leaves readers 69



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in suspense as Torre’s past is slowly teased out amid scenes not found in his sources until much later – including the subpoena of his mother and her subsequent interrogation (reminiscent of Ygraine’s testimony before Arthur’s court about her son’s regal heritage). The Suite’s narrative structure permits this sort of revelation as the narrative jumps ahead and Merlin offers a backward glance to justify Arthur’s actions. Malory, on the other hand, seeks a more forward-driven narrative; he must solve his characters’ problems and clear up any confusion before his Arthur can dub Torre a knight. As shown above, Malory’s structural changes throughout The Tale of King Arthur tend towards the minor and deliberate. He is less interested in completely reworking the structure of the Suite than in presenting a tale that is less confusing, more evenly paced and arranged for a stronger dramatic effect than his source material. Most of his changes involve moving single sentences rather than whole paragraphs; the result is a narrative where tension replaces confusion and rapid pushes forward replace leisurely oscillation. These structural changes work in tandem with his other textual alterations to create a modern, anglicised romance with material from his French source. Reworkings Throughout The Tale of King Arthur, Malory’s structural alterations to his source text gradually increase in complexity. Then, near the end, Malory’s level of comfort with his source blossoms and he drastically reworks the plot structure. Malory shifts around whole episodes not simply to tease apart individually interlaced plots, but to lay out events in exactly the order he wants in order for maximum effect in a narrative that more distinctly becomes his own. A good example of such reworkings occurs at the start of the adventures of Arthur, Accalon and Urien following their encounter with a ship full of enchantresses. Once again, Malory untangles the Suite’s interlaced narrative to present the tales according to his own taste. However, his editorial work in this section goes far beyond what is necessary to create a more straightforward narrative. The section also presents a new challenge for Malory because it is so well suited to entrelacement: Arthur and Accalon begin in the same tale but are then separated and pursue their own aventures, which subsequently become intertwined again when they unwittingly battle one another. Malory first simplifies this section of the Suite by extracting the story of Merlin’s demise and briefly describing it before he moves on to the story of Arthur and Accalon. Once again, in addition to simplifying the narrative, this move magnifies the focus upon Arthur. In the Suite, the tales of Nynyve’s deception of Merlin and Morgan’s deception of Arthur unfold alongside each other, intensifying one another with their parallel subject matter. In Malory’s hands, however, Merlin’s 70



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disappearance is a short aside in which he is entrapped in a stone tomb such that ‘he come never oute for all the craufte he coude do’; Malory then draws together the elements of Morgan’s plot, which drives all of the action in this section (p. 79 [IV:2]). By focusing on Morgan’s plot against her brother, Malory underscores Arthur’s primacy as protagonist in Le Morte Darthur. Malory’s interpretation of the Suite creates a steady progression to the climax of Arthur’s and Accalon’s battle, free from the distraction of Merlin’s disappearance (which, in Le Morte Darthur, has already taken place). The major shifts of plot elements provide the raw material for the passage. Throughout, however, Malory continuously takes small passages from his source and repositions them to facilitate his pacing. Many of these small alterations deal with Morgan; we learn immediately, for example, that Accalon has promised to ‘do that batayle to the uttirmoste withoute ony mercy’ for Arthur (MD, p. 86 [IV:8]). The revelation in the Suite that Morgan ‘avoit fait fiauncer Acalon qu’il ne se partiroit du champ jusque il auroit cope le chief au chevalier encontre qui il sentrecombatroit’ [made Accalon pledge that he would not leave the battlefield until he had cut off the head of the knight against whom he would fight] comes more than two folios later in Cam (Cam, fol. 313vb [Suite, ed. Paris, II, 190]). Small shifts also help Malory reveal the story of Damas and Outlake simultaneously and explain how each came to need representatives on the battlefield. Once again, Malory creates original material to provide a transition away from Arthur’s battle with Accalon. As in the Pellinore passage discussed above, Malory gives Arthur an opportunity to demonstrate his chivalry and fortitude through an extended speech. He condemns Damas as ‘an orgulus knyght and full of vylony, and nat worth of prouesse of youre dedis’ and praises Outlake as ‘a good knyght and full of prouesse, and trew and jantyll in all youre dedis’, consequently promising ‘ye shall be a knyght of myne’ (p. 91 [IV:12]). The passage is a marked departure from the French, in which the two brothers immediately kiss and reconcile their differences (Cam, fol. 319ra; Suite, ed. Paris, II, 211). Malory attempts to restore some moral balance by working out a scheme by which Damas technically holds the manor over which he and Outelake fought (after all, Arthur has won it for him), though Outlake has the rights to it by giving Damas a horse each year (p. 91 [IV:12]). At the close of the passage, Malory’s Arthur reminds his readers that ‘this batayle was ordeyned aforehonde to have slayne me, and so hit was broughte to the purpose by false treson and by enchauntment’ (p. 91 [IV:12]). Arthur’s skill as a politician, his concern for equitable justice, and his natural ability to rule shine through in this passage. Malory’s focus on Arthur marks a departure from the Suite, which emphasises the dangers of seductive enchantresses and has Damas and Outlake immediately disappearing from the scene after Arthur concludes his battle with Accalon. 71



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Malory uses various means to strive for, and often to achieve, similar ends throughout The Tale of King Arthur. His alterations to the Suite – ranging from subtle shifts in plot to large-scale narrative reworkings, augmentations and deletions large and small, and the addition and removal of characters – continually direct the reader’s focus to Arthur. As Malory develops the character of the king who will reign for the remainder of Le Morte Darthur, he shifts dialogue to establish Arthur’s sphere of influence and makes calculated additions that emphasise his morally driven, even-handed rule. He strives for greater consistency than his source provides, altering action and speech to correspond better with a unified vision of the ideal monarch and his courtiers. Finally, as early as this section, he establishes the complicated allegiances among family and chivalric brotherhood that, along with Arthur’s fatal engendering of Mordred, will eventually bring the Round Table crashing down.

Conclusion As the most complete extant manuscript of the Suite du Merlin and the only manuscript of the text known to be in England around the time that Malory wrote Le Morte Darthur, Cam is of enormous interest to Malory studies. A careful look reveals that the text has a much closer relationship with Malory than first appears. Field’s biographical sketch of Malory places the author north of Yorkshire (where the manuscript was discovered) some years before he began writing Le Morte Darthur in prison;69 the contacts he made while assisting a Yorkist siege could possibly have placed Cam in his hands during his incarceration. Further, a marginal note in Cam indicates that at least one of its readers was familiar with Malory’s work and made the connection between the two texts. A deeper study of the manuscript yields more compelling support for the claim that Cam represents the text from which Malory drew the first major section of Le Morte Darthur. Equipped with an understanding of Malory’s methods and characteristic techniques, however, we can begin to grasp how Le Morte Darthur grew out of Malory’s French sources. Such an understanding is integral to determining the likelihood that Malory worked with any particular manuscript, and goes a long way towards explaining most of the discrepancies between Cam and Le Morte Darthur. A comparison of Cam, H and Malory yields still more evidence in favour of Cam as the source manuscript. Disagreements between these two Suite manuscripts repeatedly come down in Cam’s favour when compared with Malory. Confusions unique to Cam persist in Le Morte Darthur, and Malory reproduces syntax and diction unique to Cam with 69

Field, ‘The Malory Life-Records’, p. 117.

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remarkable fidelity. Instances where Malory agrees with H over Cam are rare and likely to be the result of his free approach to adapting sources. At the very least, then, Cam contains an extremely faithful rendering of the same text that Malory used to compose Le Morte Darthur. Acknowledging this role for the manuscript is important for Malory studies; a faithful witness of one of Malory’s source texts offers invaluable information about the ways in which he used his sources, and can also provide guidance for best practices when editing Le Morte Darthur. The manuscript evidence, however, allows us to push further still. Once we consider the rarity of the text, the location where this manuscript was discovered and the idiosyncrasies and scribal errors in Cam that readily explain some corresponding peculiarities of Malory’s text, it seems very likely that this is the actual manuscript Malory used. This textual evidence, coupled with the physical properties that Cam and W have in common – the practice of rubricating names and proper nouns – offers compelling support for the claim that we have at last identified one of Malory’s source manuscripts. Appendix Cambridge, University Library, Add. 7071 sec XIV 34 × 21.5cm Double columns of 27 × 7.5cm 43 lines of text in Estoire, 44 in Suite (with occasional variation) Estoire del Saint Graal and Suite du Merlin French, occasional Anglo-Normanisms70 1. fols.1r–158r Estoire del Saint Graal begins fol. 1r: ‘Cil qui la hautesse’ ends fol. 158r: ‘braunche en tele manere.’ 2. fols. 159r–342v Suite du Merlin (incomplete at end) begins fol. 158r : ‘Mult fu irez li enemis’ ends fol. 342v: ‘dedenz la piere sir fait il si vous’ This manuscript, purchased in 1945 by the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library for £650,71 was found in a trunk in Ribston Hall, Wetherby, Yorkshire in the late nineteenth century; deeds and seals 70 71

See Vinaver, letter of 5 February 1945 accompanying Add. 7071 in CUL. Scholfield, note accompanying Add. 7071 in CUL.

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concerning the property rested in the trunk along with the manuscript. The then owner stated that the manuscript had come to rest there under a previous owner; its subject matter would have been of interest to the Knights Templar, who owned the estate from 1217 until the Order was dissolved in England in 1312, at which point the estate was transferred to the Knights Hospitallers of St John of Jersualem.72 Along with the text that is the focus of this study, the MS contains the Estoire del Saint Graal. The opening section of the Suite du Merlin corresponds in all MSS to the Vulgate Merlin (fols. 159r–202v); no break occurs in the text and they effectively form a cohesive whole, so no distinction has been made in the physical description above. Bound in wooden boards which are covered in sheepskin, the manuscript is written on good-quality vellum. Fol. 267 is torn, leaving some text missing on 267b and c; a tear down the side of fol. 298 leaves text missing from the end of each line at the top of 298b and c. Each column of text contains 43 lines in the Estoire and 44 in the Suite (with occasional variation). On replacement folios added in the fifteenth century, columns range from 39 to 47 lines. The manuscript is written in a clear, even textura hand with frequent abbreviations. Text is mostly punctuated by a simple punctus to divide up sense, but the punctus elevatus is occasionally used for increased emphasis (often for exclamatio). A hierarchy of divisions breaks up the text: the openings of the Estoire and the Suite are demarcated by large decorated initials in red and blue; smaller blue initials, filled in with red floriate or animal designs and surrounded by red penwork, indicate smaller section breaks; rubricated paraphs demarcate less significant sections. Further dividing the text, and of particular note for this study, are rubricated letters. Rubrication has been added after the body text was written, and takes the form of a dab of red ink on the first letter of the emphasised word. It often accompanies paraphs, and is further used to indicate the first word in direct speech (though this is by no means applied with any consistency), along with significant proper nouns. The Suite is incomplete at the end. Also missing are fols. 269–273, 276 and 335–342, which have been replaced by folios in a fifteenth-century hand. These replacements for the original text appear to be faithful copies, though the language ‘tout en présentant les mêmes caractères insulaires que le reste de la copie, est teintée de picardismes’.73 The manuscript is quired in groups of four bifolios, with some exceptions;74 quiring is also noted on most folios in a hand later than that of the body of text. 72 73 74

R. V. Taylor, ‘Ribston and the Knights Templars’ (Part III), Yorkshire Archaeological Journal 9 (1885), 71–98 (pp. 73 and 81). Suite, ed. Roussineau, p. XLIII. See M. R. James, quiring diagram included with Add. 7071 in CUL.

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Marginalia are rare; one instance in particular is of special interest for this study. The top of fol. 189 contains a note in a late fifteenth-century hand indicating that ‘Ci commence le livre que Sir Thomas Malori Chevalier raduce in Engloys et fuist emprente par William Caxton’ [Here begins the book that Sir Thomas Malory, knight, reduced into English, and that was printed by William Caxton]. Another marginal note, written in a sixteenth-century hand on fol. 158r refers to Thomas Jackson, Robert Constable and Thomas Ballyns, whose identities remain unknown.75 Drawings occasionally appear in margins, in the form of simple faces76 and, in one instance, a sketch of two daggers.77

75 76 77

Suite, ed. Roussineau, p. XLV. fols. 197r, 230v, 237r and 261r. fol. 247r.

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III

Why Arthur at All? The Dubious Arthuricity of Arthur and Gorlagon Amanda Hopkins The story of a knight who changes into a wolf and is trapped in wolf form by a perfidious woman, most often the knight’s wife, occurs in several medieval texts. Probably the best known of these is Marie de France’s narrative lay, Bisclavret.1 However, in presenting a ‘natural’ werewolf, that is, a man who by nature periodically changes into wolf form, Marie’s tale differs from the other narratives, except for Biclarel, which is closely modelled on it.2 The other versions concern a knight whose lycanthropic transformation is not a naturally occurring periodical event, but instead is induced by enchantment, involving a magical item, such as a ring or potion, or a spell, or a combination of these. In Marie’s tale, and in Biclarel, it is the theft of the knight’s clothes that traps him in his lupine shape. Three medieval werewolf redactions include Arthurian material. Two of these are in Old French octosyllabic couplets. One is Biclarel, which, while following Bisclavret fairly closely in the details of its plot, recasts the knight’s feudal lord as Arthur, so that it is Arthur himself who protects the supplicant wolf and oversees his transformation back into human form. However, the Arthurianization is minimal: Arthur is mentioned by name on only four occasions and no other Arthurian names occur in the 1

2

Lais: Marie de France, ed. Alfred Ewert, Blackwell French Texts (Oxford, 1944, repr. 1987), pp. 49–57. Quotations are taken from this edition; translations of all primary texts cited in this essay are my own unless otherwise stated in context. ‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’: Two Old French Werwolf Lays, ed. and trans. Amanda Hopkins, University of Liverpool Online Series: Critical Editions of French Texts 10 (2005), http://www.liv.ac.uk/soclas/los/Werwolf.pdf [accessed 18 September 2008], pp. 51–82. Biclarel is employed as an exemplum of the dangers of marriage in the earlier version of Le Roman de Renart le Contrefait, written 1319–22 by the self-styled Clerc de Troyes. It is excised from the later version, written between 1328 and 1342, although it appears with other expunged material in the Appendix of the sole edition of the text (ed. Gaston Raynaud and Henri Lemaitre, 2 vols. (Paris, 1914), II, pp. 235–9); for the texts’ dates, see the editors’ ‘Introduction’, I, p. vi.

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text. The other Old French version, the narrative lay Melion,3 tells of a knight trapped in wolf form by his wife, using a ring with magic stones. Here, the werewolf’s tale is fully integrated into the Arthurian world. Melion is Arthur’s vassal, and Arthur is the king who protects the wolf and oversees the démorphose. Other Arthurian knights are mentioned, and Gawain has an active role in insisting that the wolf Melion be taken to a chamber to ensure privacy when he changes back into human form. The latter part of the narrative takes place in Ireland, and the text gives a plausible political reason for Arthur to journey to the Irish king’s court.4 The third werewolf tale set in the Arthurian world is the Latin prose Arthur and Gorlagon.5 While there are parallels between this text and Bisclavret and Melion, the narrative diverges from these versions in numerous ways. One of these is that the tale, alone among the redactions, is told by the shape-shifter himself, so that the Arthurian material, instead of being integrated into the werewolf’s tale, serves as a frame, an excuse for the story to be told. Thus the first twenty lines of the text, in Day’s edition, explain how Arthur, having angered his wife by a public display of affection, is so stung by her accusation ‘ “agnoscas te nunquam ut ingenium mentemue femine comperisse” ’ (208/16–17: you reveal that you have never discovered the nature and mind of a woman) that he determines to find out exactly what these things comprise. The next section of the narrative, some sixty lines, depicts Arthur setting out with Kay and Gawain. They first arrive at the castle of King Gorgol, who directs Arthur to his brother, King Gorleil; arriving then at Gorleil’s castle, Arthur is advised to travel further still to consult King Gorlagon, yet another sibling. Here, at last, Arthur receives a response, in the form of a lengthy tale told by Gorlagon, at the end of which, to complete the Arthurian frame, Arthur asks questions of his host. Arthur is not an active participant in the main narrative, but an audience listening to the recounting of past matters; nor is he invited to comment on what he hears: his opinion of the events is not solicited, his judgment not required. Indeed, his quest seems pointless, for, as Day states, he returns ‘little the wiser’; Siân Echard concurs, observing that, at the end, ‘neither Arthur, nor we, have learned the answer to the question

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‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’, ed. Hopkins, pp. 83–106; repr. with a dedicated introduction in French Arthurian Literature IV: Eleven Old French Narrative Lays, ed. and trans Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Brook, with the collaboration of Amanda Hopkins for Melion, Arthurian Archives 14 (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 413–66. The Arthurianization of the texts is discussed in the introduction to ‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’, ed. Hopkins, pp. 22–6 (cf. Melion, ed. Hopkins, pp. 421–3). Latin Arthurian Literature, ed. and trans. Mildred Leake Day, Arthurian Archives 11 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 208–35. Quotations from the Latin text are identified by page and line number(s) separated by a forward slash.

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posed at the outset’.6 However, despite his evident lack of necessity to the plot, Arthur’s presence in the text is repeatedly emphasized, not only at the beginning and end of Gorlagon’s storytelling, but in a series of interpolations. Arthur’s journeys from one court to the next are connected by a familiar motif: each king hospitably invites Arthur to share a meal. Although Arthur has declared that he will not take food until he has completed his mission (208/18–20), at the first two castles he is persuaded to eat and, having eaten, receives no solution to his conundrum, only information that directs him to the next castle in search of an answer. At Gorlagon’s court, however, Arthur refuses to eat, not once, but again and again. Here, the motif of (not) eating is emphasized by numerous interruptions to Gorlagon’s story, as Gorlagon himself frequently breaks off his narrative to invite Arthur to dismount from his horse and break his fast. Although Arthur’s answers display variation, and increasing exasperation, the construction of Gorlagon’s invitations is identical in each case: ‘Arture, descende et comede, quia magnum est quod queris, et pauci sunt qui illud agnoscunt, et cum tibi retulero parum inde doctior habeberis.’7 (‘Arthur, dismount and eat, for what you seek is great, and they are few who understand it, and when I have answered you, then you shall be little better informed.’)

The formulaic structure of these repetitions underlines their superfluousness and Arthur’s own.8 Yet even the title ascribed to the text in the manuscript’s list of contents – Narratio de Arthuro rege Britanniae et rege Gorlagon lycanthropo (The story of Arthur, king of Britain, and King Gorlagon, the werewolf) – prioritizes Arthur, suggesting that his role will be pivotal. The author, or the medieval redactor, seems intent on making certain that it is never forgotten that this is a tale set in the Arthurian world, but his reasons are not immediately obvious. It may be that the author is simply maintaining a fundamental connection between Arthur and the werewolf story. An examination of the tale’s origins certainly offers parallels which might indicate such an association. George Lyman Kittredge and Kemp Malone, both of whom under6

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Latin Arthurian Literature, ed. Day, p. 43; Siân Echard, Arthurian Narrative in Latin Tradition, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 36 (Cambridge, 1998), p. 212. Day observes (p. 44) that ‘[t]he combination of the quest motif and the treacherous queen’s punishments, but without the Arthurian connection, is widespread in folklore’. Repeated verbatim at 212/26–8, 218/17–19, 222/23–4, 224/14–15, 226/31–2, 228/31–2 and 230/18–19, and with a short addition at 216/25–7. Echard observes that, through these interpolations, ‘the story draws attention to itself as a story throughout’ (Siân Echard, ‘Reading Latin and Reading Arthur’, in New Directions in Arthurian Studies, ed. Alan Lupack, Arthurian Studies 51 (Cambridge, 2002), pp. 49–67, at p. 63). Echard’s purpose is to demonstrate how Arthur and Gorlagon functions as a parody of vernacular storytelling, and here it is the parodic exaggeration itself that underlines the dubiousness of Arthur’s presence in the text.

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took detailed analyses of the relations between the various versions of the werewolf tale, agreed that Melion and Arthur and Gorlagon derive from two separate branches of a version of the narrative that developed from the original source, designated O, which had fed Marie’s tale.9 In Kittredge’s stemma, O bifurcates into B – Marie’s Bisclavret – and x, representing a further development of the narrative; x splits into two branches, M (Melion) and y, representing another development of the tale which then forks to provide offshoots G (Arthur and Gorlagon) and I, the various Irish analogues.10 However, John Carey challenges both the basis of Kittredge’s reconstruction and its interpretation, observing that, in the schema, ‘Bisclavret is in most respects the most primitive version, being independent of x. The most natural interpretation … would be to see “The Werewolf’s Tale” as deriving from Breton tradition, while the Arthurian associations found in Melion and Gorlagon [sic] represent an innovation by x’; yet Kittredge’s determination to rely on the influence of the Irish tales ‘obliged him to postulate that different versions of the story were exported from Ireland on three separate occasions (the original version to provide the basis for Bisclavret, x to give rise to Melion, y as the source for Gorlagon), and that the references to Brittany and to Arthur which seem to link some of the versions are coincidental in all instances’.11 Carey argues, from the evidence of medieval Irish sources, that ‘all of the versions of “The Werewolf’s Tale” descended from x have Arthurian connections. Accordingly it seems most reasonable to suppose that these were also present in x.’12 This implies that one branch of the werewolf tale has an intrinsic affiliation with the Arthurian world. Yet, whether the Arthurianization is thought to occur at x or y, these interpretations are rather undermined by all the critics’ failure to consider Biclarel, which is both (admittedly quite loosely) Arthurianized and closely modelled on Bisclavret, a text agreed by all three scholars to derive directly from an original source unconnected either with x or with its descendants, that is, a source devoid of Arthurian connections. Adding the evidence of Biclarel suggests that it is possible, and even likely, that Marie had reworked a version of the tale which was (possibly minimally) Arthurianized, and simply anonymized the king, most likely for the sake of maintaining consistency between her narratives, since the 9

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George Lyman Kittredge, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 8 (1903), 149–275, pp. 167–74 et passim; Kemp Malone, ‘Rose and Cypress’, PMLA 42:2 (June 1928), 397–446, pp. 416–18. Kittredge’s stemma appears on p. 175 of ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, Malone’s on p. 416 of ‘Rose and Cypress’; the stemmata are reproduced in ‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’, ed. Hopkins, pp. 19 and 20 (cf. Melion, ed. Hopkins, pp. 419 and 420). John Carey, ‘Werewolves in Medieval Ireland’, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 44 (2002), 37–72, p. 42. Thanks are due to the author for kindly furnishing a copy of his article. Carey, ‘Werewolves in Medieval Ireland’, p. 43 (Carey’s emphasis).

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benevolent Arthur of Bisclavret would directly contradict the characterization of him in Marie’s Lanval.13 This hypothesis suggests in turn that the werewolf tale had been amalgamated with the Arthurian world early on, and was a connection which certain authors maintained, and perhaps developed, and others removed. Yet, in the Latin text, the role customarily allocated to Arthur, that of the benevolent king, has been allotted instead to Gorlagon’s younger brother and Arthur placed in the margins of the narrative. This is nothing like his role in either of the Old French redactions which retain him. Melion does indeed begin at Arthur’s court in a lengthy episode which seems to have only a tenuous bearing on the main narrative, and at first suggests a framing structure; but the Arthur­ ianization is in fact maintained throughout the narrative, with Arthur performing the beneficent role, a function he reprises in Biclarel. This suggests that Arthur, or at least his position as king, is important; but comparison of Arthur and Gorlagon with the analogues only emphasizes that Arthur seems redundant in the Latin text. Essentially, Gorlagon’s tale is very similar to other medieval werewolf stories: the narrative explains how a king – Gorlagon himself, as it later transpires – was enchanted into wolf form by his wife, but was eventually restored to human form through the wise actions of another king – later identified as Gorlagon’s brother, Gorgol – who recognizes humanity in the wolf’s unusual behaviour. Like Bisclavret’s wife, Gorlagon’s wife is in love with another man; like Bisclavret’s wife, the queen persuades her husband to reveal a secret which will undo him. As is familiar from the other texts, the werewolf’s restitution to human form begins with a supplication scene: like that in Bisclavret, it takes place during a hunt, although this hunt has been organized with the intention of killing the wolf, echoing the hunt in Melion. Like Melion, the werewolf in Arthur and Gorlagon interacts with wild wolves and takes a journey by boat. Like Melion and Bisclavret, the lupine Gorlagon makes judicious attacks on members of the court. Like the wives of Bisclavret and Melion, the queen has retained, rather than discarded or destroyed, the means by which the wolf can be transformed back into human form. 13

Cf. ‘Melion’ and ‘Biclarel’, ed. Hopkins, pp. 24–5, and Melion, ed. Hopkins, p. 422. Arthur is also absent from another medieval narrative in which a werewolf features, Guillaume de Palerne (Guillaume de Palerne: Roman du XIIIe siècle, ed. Alexandre Micha, Textes littéraires français 384 (Geneva, 1990)), although there seem to be echoes of Melion in the Middle English redaction, notably when the beast hides on a ship and, as he leaves the vessel, is chased by the mariners and hit by one with an oar (Melion lines 219–45; William of Palerne: An Alliterative Romance, ed. G. H. V. Bunt, Mediaevalia Groningana fasciculus VI (Groningen, 1985), lines 2721–81). Melion’s influence on the text is discussed by Bunt in his introduction (pp. 32–3), with close reference to the work of Charles W. Dunn (The Foundling and the Werwolf: A Literary-Historical Study of William of Palerne, University of Toronto Department of English Studies and Texts 8 (Toronto, 1960), pp. 9–10).

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The theme of the treacherous wife, however, is redoubled in Gorlagon’s tale, for a second story has been incorporated into the main narrative of the werewolf. Gorlagon’s wife, having rid herself of her husband, takes a pagan prince in his place, but Gorgol’s wife also commits adultery, with the king’s seneschal. While Gorgol is away on business, he leaves the wolf behind, although, sensitive to the queen’s fears, he orders that the beast be chained up at night in his bedchamber; the queen, however, has the creature tethered constantly. Surprisingly, given her fear of the wolf, this same bedroom is where the queen chooses to commit adultery with the seneschal, making the werewolf an unwilling and disapproving voyeur. As the queen and her lover copulate, the wolf breaks his chain and attacks the seneschal. To conceal the lovers’ treachery, the queen declares that the wolf has eaten her child and that the seneschal was wounded in trying to rescue the infant, and she hides the baby to support her story; but when her husband returns, the wolf leads him by the cloak first to where the child has been hidden and then to the injured seneschal, who eventually confesses.14 The language chosen for the narrative identifies a clerical redactor, whose misogyny outdoes even that of the authors of Melion and Biclarel. In Arthur and Gorlagon, the duplication of the faithless wife motif itself explicitly emphasizes that women are naturally inclined to adultery and treachery, and both queens in Gorlagon’s story are presented as distinctly lacking in intelligence. Gorgol’s queen and her lover, as mentioned above, choose to copulate in her husband’s own bed, their desire making them hardly aware of the presence of the wolf, chained up close by (222/33–2) and demonstrably loyal to the king. Gorlagon’s wife makes a serious error when reciting the simple spell which, used in conjunction with a branch from a tree associated with the king, will turn her husband into a wolf in

14

Kittredge (‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, 163–7 et passim) identifies an Irish tale, ‘Morraha’, as the closest analogue to the central narrative of Arthur and Gorlagon, since ‘Morraha’ contains both sections of the werewolf’s tale. The motif of the wrongly accused pet, Type 178a in the Aarne–Thompson classification scheme (see Antti Aarne, The Types of the Folktale: A Classification and Bibliography, Translated and Enlarged by Stith Thompson, 2nd rev. edn, Folklore Fellows Communications (Helsinki, 1961)), corresponds to the Welsh legend of the faithful dog unjustly killed by its master, retold by Gwyn Jones as ‘The Man who Killed his Greyhound’ (in Welsh Legends and Folktales [1955] (Harmondsworth, 1979), pp. 235–7); this dog, supposedly buried at Beddgelert in Gwynedd, is often identified as Gelert and the man as a prince, either Llywelyn ap Iorwerth or Llywelyn ap Gruffudd (see James McKillop, A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology (Oxford, 1998); University of Warwick, Oxford Reference Online (2009), http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t70.e418, s.v. ‘Bedd Gelert’). Unlike the Welsh legend, in which the man’s grief and anger drive him to kill the dog immediately, in Arthur and Gorlagon Gorgol reasons that the wolf would not be rushing joyfully to meet him had it committed the dreadful deed attributed to it (224/31–2).

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form and mind;15 instead of saying ‘ “Sis lupus, et habeas sensum lupi!” ’ (214/8–9: ‘Be a wolf and have the mind of a wolf!’), she stipulates that he should retain his human understanding: ‘ “sensum hominis … habeas” ’ (216/21: ‘have the mind of a man’).16 As might be expected, what Arthur discovers from Gorlagon’s tale is not so much a direct answer to the question of what women want, but that women are naturally adulterous, deceitful, treacherous and even murderous. These qualities feature in the tale’s analogues, which are often determinedly misogynous, but make the point much more briefly.17 As Echard points out, this text ‘seems an elaborate construction for the rather simple task, for a medieval author, of proving that women are untrustworthy’.18 Of course, his discovery has implications for Arthur’s own marriage: perhaps the queen’s anger at his public display of affection is due to her own affections lying elsewhere. This possibility highlights another interpretive issue, as A. Haggerty Krappe observes:

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Jan R. Veenstra summarizes the circumstances succinctly thus: ‘This tree was the king’s double, since they shared the same stature and were “born” on the same day’ (‘The Ever-Changing Nature of the Beast: Cultural Change, Lycanthropy and the Question of Substantial Transformation (From Petronius to Del Rio)’, in The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, ed. Jan N. Bremmer and Jan R. Veenstra (Leuven, 2002), pp. 133–66, at p. 151). The author’s clerical mentality is also shown through various moral comments and aphorisms. Gorlagon’s wife, for example, is described as ‘ualde decora’ (214/16: extremely beautiful), but the relation between her appearance and her nature is explicitly made, as the author explains that her very beauty led to her ruin, ‘quia pulcra uix inuenitur casta’ (214/16: because beauty seldom attains chastity). Like Bisclavret (lines 147–8), the hunted wolf Gorlagon kisses the king’s foot in supplication, but Gorlagon also groans (‘gemitibus’) like someone ‘ueniam petens’ (220/11: seeking forgiveness); Day’s translation has ‘whimpering like a penitent asking for pardon’ (p. 221). However, explicit Christianization of the narrative is minimal – the frame’s setting opens with Arthur celebrating the feast of Pentecost (‘festum diei Pentecostes’, 208/2) and the object of Gorlagon’s wife’s affections is referred to as a pagan (214/18, 232/14) – and some elements which might have been expected to be Christianized retain a pagan flavour; for example, in determining to find out about the nature of women, Arthur swears an oath of some ambiguity: ‘ “Omnia celi obtestor numina” ’ (208/18: ‘I call to witness all the powers in heaven’, cf. 214/30–1); Day’s rendering, ‘ “I swear by all the gods in heaven” ’ (p. 209), translates the metonymy, thereby removing the ambiguity and giving the oath an explicitly non-Christian slant. On the habitual misogyny of the werewolf lays written by (apparently) male authors see Amanda Hopkins, ‘Bisclavret to Biclarel via Melion and Bisclaret: the Development of a Misogynous Lai’, in The Court Reconvenes: Courtly Literature across the Disciplines. Selected Proceedings of the Ninth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, ed. Barbara Altmann and Carleton W. Carroll (Cambridge, 2003), pp. 317–23, and the ‘Introduction’ to ‘Melion’ and Biclarel’, ed. Hopkins, passim. Echard, Arthurian Narrative, p. 213. She adds that the misogynous asides might be seen ‘as an expected reflex in a Latin writer’, an interpretation equally applicable to the interpolations relating to spirituality.

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Arthur’s queen must know Gorlagon’s tale if she … imposed the quest upon her husband. But we are not told how she happens to know it. … [and] we are at a loss to know what conceivable interest the queen can have in thus undeceiving her husband in regard to women. Her own interest, one would think, would rather suggest a contrary course, and one would expect her rather to pull wool over his eyes.19

Krappe determines an underlying logic in supposing – not entirely convincingly – the existence of an earlier version of the narrative, now lost, in which the queen already knew the story that Arthur hears and indeed ‘sent him out in the fond hope that he would never come back’.20 However, it scarcely seems necessary for Arthur to hear Gorlagon’s tale firsthand, as it were, much less to leave the court in order to discover the nature of women, a quest that removes the king from his duties for the best part of three weeks and might indeed have taken much longer. Since the source proposed by Krappe is lost, and its logic not incorporated here, why should an author as competent as that of Arthur and Gorlagon wish to impose or to retain – and in either case to emphasize – an Arthurian framework whose logic can be found only by reading between the lines? What is Arthur’s purpose in the narrative? Why Arthur at all? One possible reason is that the Arthurian framework may perform a mitigating role, allowing for the inclusion of material that might otherwise need to be censured or censored. Medieval Arthurian romance frequently blends or blurs the boundaries between Celtic magic and Christian miracle, as it does, for example, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where Hautdesert suddenly looms out of the mist as the hero crosses himself at the end of his prayer for a lodging where he can celebrate mass at Christmas.21 Thus, while a Christian ethos is often stamped on medieval Arthurian chivalry,22 Arthurian settings frequently reflect, sometimes simultaneously, an early, even pre-Christian, world in which supernatural events are permitted and even expected, as the Wife of Bath suggests: ‘In th’ olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour, / … / Al was this land fulfild of fayerye.’23 Just like the story Dame Alysoun tells, Gorlagon’s tale is founded on enchantment and shape-shifting. The supernatural is at 19 20 21

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A. Haggerty Krappe, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, Speculum 8 (1933), 209–22, p. 213. Krappe, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, p. 216. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, 2nd edn, rev. Norman Davis (Oxford, 1967), lines 743–802. On the ambiguity of Hautdesert’s abrupt appearance, cf. Helen Cooper, ‘The Supernatural’, in A Companion to the GawainPoet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson, Arthurian Studies 38 (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 269–91, at pp. 289–90. Dean A. Miller, The Epic Hero (Baltimore, 2000), p. 11. Geoffrey Chaucer, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, in The Canterbury Tales, ed. Larry D. Benson et al., The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford, 1988, repr. 1990), lines 857–9. Helen Fulton refers to Welsh Arthurian material’s ‘dominant mode’ as ‘fantasy, expressed through “magic realism” ’ (‘Arthur and Merlin in Early Welsh Literature: Fantasy and

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the core of Arthurian romance, and the genre in turn comes to function as a licence for narratives to incorporate otherwise unacceptable content. Since they involve no transference between disparate bodies or species, certain kinds of shape-shifting in medieval narratives, for example from hag to young woman, as in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, may have been more easily acceptable than others;24 however, like its analogues, Arthur and Gorlagon is more problematic because it presents therianthropy, the transformation between human and animal form, as if it were a fact.25 As Joyce E. Salisbury observes, early Christian theologians, having considered the matter in detail over several centuries, had concluded that therianthropy was untenable. Animals were different from human beings, fundamentally because they lacked reason: Ambrose in the fourth century defined the unbreachable difference between the two species by claiming that humans have reason and animals are irrational. Augustine, too, confidently expressed humans’ superiority to ‘brute animals’ because humans are ‘rational creatures’. And Thomas Aquinas … said that animals are ‘without intellect’ and thus they were ‘not made in God’s image’.26

Veenstra offers this belief in a basic and immutable difference between human and animal intellects as a possible reason for the emphasis on Gorlagon’s queen speaking the wrong word when she repeats the simple charm that will complete the transformation of her husband into wolf form: the queen’s ‘mistake … conveniently parallels the theological and philosophical convictions that man’s heart and mind cannot be altered’.27 This is an attractive hypothesis, since the emphasis on the retention of

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Magic Naturalism’, in A Companion to Arthurian Literature, ed. Helen Fulton (Oxford and Malden, MA, 2009), pp. 84–101, at p. 84). Such shape-shifting may simply have been understood as wish-fulfilment fantasy by the medieval audience (see, for example, Martin Puhvel, ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale: Mirror of her Mind’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 100 (1999), 291–300), but this is not without contention: C. David Benson is clearly unconvinced when he suggests that the story ‘can be read as the Wife’s wish-fulfilment, if one so desires’ (‘The Canterbury Tales: Personal Drama or Experiments in Poetic Variety?’, in The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, ed. Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 2006), pp. 127–42, at p. 136), and William Anthony Davenport observes that, in the case of ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’, the apparent fantasy may instead be ‘a subtle piece of antifeminist irony’ (Chaucer: Complaint and Narrative, Chaucer Studies 14 (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 55–6). Although the third-person narrator makes no explicit declaration of the truth of the content, unlike the narrators of the analogues (see, for example Bisclavret, lines 315–16, Melion, lines 591–2 and Biclarel, lines 47–8). Joyce E. Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages (New York and London, 1994), p. 5. Veenstra, ‘Ever-Changing Nature’, p. 151. Caroline Walker Bynum also considers the erroneous pronouncement, but instead reads it as ‘underlin[ing] the full humanity of the werewolf’ (Metamorphosis and Identity (New York, 2005), p. 95).

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the human mind in the wolf’s form is echoed throughout the analogues, whose authors must have been faced with the need to resolve the same issue; yet the concept of metamorphosis remains fundamentally problematic within a theological framework: in De Civitate Dei, Augustine of Hippo specifically contemplates lupine metamorphosis in classical sources (18:17), before denying that ‘[n]on … solum animum, sed ne corpus … in membra et liniamenta bestialia ueraciter posse conuerti (18:18: not only the soul, but also the body can truly be changed into beast-like limbs and features).28 For Augustine, the mutability of ‘man’s heart and mind’ is not the only point at issue: the body cannot be altered either. Notwithstanding theological pronouncements, stories involving metamorphosis were widespread in medieval Europe, and Marie de France, thought by some scholars to have been in orders herself,29 apparently sees no difficulty in Yonec (lines 145–90) in having an otherworldly knight transform himself not only into a hawk, but also into the form of his lady in order to take communion and prove his inherent goodness to her, an episode vastly more questionable.30 With the werewolf tales, the key aspect of the transformation is the retention of the human mind in the wolf form: most of the narrators state explicitly that the beast still has its human intelligence,31 and all the texts show the wolf acting unlike an animal in the presence of people; most also underline the point by having characters remark on this.32 This behaviour, which in the analogues of Arthur and Gorlagon is contrasted with the sudden enactment of what eventually is

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Text from the online edition at The Latin Library, Ad Fontes Academy, Centreville, VA (2007): (stable URL) http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/august.html. June Hall McCash offers a detailed rebuttal of the hypothesis in ‘Was Marie de France a Nun?’, Le Cygne: Journal of the International Marie de France Society n.s. 4 (2006), 7–26, in which she compares manuscript images of female saints and women in orders with graphical representations of Marie to demonstrate that the medieval world did not present her as a nun; a summary of the key points at issue can be found in the ‘Introduction’ to The Life of Saint Audrey: A Text by Marie de France, trans. and ed. June Hall McCash and Judith Clark Baraban (Jefferson, NC, 2006), pp. 6–7. Like several of Marie’s other texts that feature Celtic magic, this narrative has no mitigating Arthurian framework, although Marie’s Lanval, which itself employs a Celtic supernatural framework, is set in the Arthurian court and thus may offer mitigation by extension, since the manuscript evidence suggests that the narratives are intended as a collection; on the manuscript tradition, see, for example, the ‘Introduction’ to Lais, ed. Ewert, pp. xviii–xxi. Like Dame Alyson, Marie also delineates a distant temporal setting, for example at the end of Guigemar’s prologue where she refers to the narrative as based on ‘un’aventure / Ki … / Avint al tens ancïenur’ (lines 24–6: an adventure that happened in ancient times), and at the end of Milun where she describes the lay’s composers as ‘li auncïen’ (534: the ancients). For example, Melion, lines 217–18; Biclarel, lines 315–16; Arthur and Gorlagon, 218/23. For example, Bisclavret, lines 154, 157; Melion, lines 409–12, 426, 430; Biclarel, lines 331–2, 337–8; Arthur and Gorlagon, 220/8–11, 20.

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revealed to be justified savagery against an enemy,33 is the feature which more than any other leads to the discovery of the beast’s true identity. The narratives which present a ‘natural’ werewolf also refer to the practicalities of the lycanthrope’s sylvan existence. Marie describes how a garwaf, or garualf, ‘Hummes devure, grant mal fait, / Es granz forez converse et vait’ (lines 10–11: devours people, does great damage, lives and goes about in the great forests). Similarly, in wolf form, Biclarel ‘Demouroit beste par le bois: / Avec autres bestes onjoint / Et char de beste crue manjoit’ (lines 40–2: would live as a beast in the forest: he would be in company with other beasts and eat the raw flesh of beasts). To a greater or lesser extent, Marie and the Clerc de Troyes distance their heroes from savagery: both authors depict such behaviour by way of prologue and Marie relates it to the species in general, carefully separating her protagonist from such acts. As Alexsander Pluskowski observes of Bisclavret, ‘the vision of the demonic beast of the prologue lurking within the depths of the forest is undercut by the portrayal of the hero as a reluctant werewolf, a forced exile’.34 In wolf form, the ‘natural’ werewolf is also a solitary creature. Conversely, as Veenstra notes, in Melion and in Arthur and Gorlagon, in which the lupine condition is brought about by enchantment, ‘the lycanthrope’s life among the wolves is elaborated upon’.35 Unlike Bisclavret and Biclarel, Melion interacts with real wolves, becoming for a while the leader of a pack (lines 267–320); and even though his lycanthropic state is not natural, having been brought about by magic, Melion apparently kills people with the rest of the wolfpack (lines 273–8), although not, it would seem, without them. Arthur and Gorlagon also has its werewolf interact with wild wolves, and, as in Melion, the wolves are involved in the werewolf’s attempts to wreak vengeance on his perfidious wife. In Gorlagon’s case, however, the victims are not (dispensable) peasants, but the queen’s own kin: first the wolves tear to pieces the young sons the queen has borne to her lover (218/3–7) and later they disembowel the queen’s brothers (218/11–14). Like Melion, Gorlagon subsequently loses his lupine companions when they are trapped and killed; like Melion, he himself manages to escape because he is ‘astutior ceteris’ (218/16: more cunning than the others; cf. Melion, l. 322), demonstrating human intelligence in response to the situation. Like Melion, the wolf Gorlagon demonstrates grief for the loss of his lupine companions (218/20–1), but unlike Melion, who seems helpless and unable to continue his rampage

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The hero’s wife in Biclarel (lines 369–80, 417–31), the wife and, earlier, her new husband in Bisclavret (lines 196–202; 231–5) and, in Melion, the squire who accompanies the hero’s wife to her father’s court (lines 491–8). Alexsander Pluskowski, Wolves and the Wilderness in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), p. 177. Veenstra, ‘Ever-Changing Nature’, p. 151.

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alone, Gorlagon’s rage and savagery increase, manifested in nightly attacks on livestock (218/21–7). All the texts, then, present the amalgamation of human mind and wolf body, and all describe werewolves performing savage acts at one point or another. Because the Arthurian framework is not employed in all the analogues, being notably absent from Marie’s Bisclavret, there is thus far no conclusive evidence that the Latin narrative requires Arthur to perform a mitigating role. However, a distinct reason is articulated for the escalation of Gorlagon’s fury at this point in the narrative, a reason that underlines why the text might well require palliation, for Arthur and Gorlagon differs from the analogues in the depiction of the werewolf’s interaction with wild wolves: Gorlagon’s lost wolves are more than simply his companions; they are, in fact, his family. The narrator states unequivocally that Gorlagon mates with a wild wolf, resulting in the birth of a pair of cubs: ‘Lupus … se lupe agresti coniunxit. Duosque ex illa catulos progenuit’ (216/33–4: the wolf mated with a wild bitch. He sired two cubs on her). Although, as Adam Douglas observes, ‘[t]his action is not criticized within the story’,36 its presence is startling, and is intensified by the wolf-Gorlagon’s emotional reaction to his lupine family’s death, surely intended to represent the response of the human, rather the wolf, in Gorlagon. While metamorphosis had been a theoretical issue to be debated and finally dismissed as a superstition to be discouraged, bestiality was a practical problem in the Middle Ages. While the early penitentials ‘rank bestiality close to masturbation, making it a mild sexual sin’,37 in the later Middle Ages it was treated on a par with certain other sexual acts that were deemed unnatural and heinous, such as sodomy, and elicited a similar penalty.38 In the thirteenth century, Thomas Aquinas discussed bestiality (bestialitas) in the Summa Theologica, defining it as a sexual act (concubitus) performed ‘ad rem non eiusdem speciei’ (II-II, 154:11: with a thing not of the same kind). His understanding of the sin is clear and unequivocally condemnatory: bestiality is an act which ‘repugnat rationi rectae’ (II-II, 154:11: is opposed to correct reason) and is the most grave of sexual sins (‘[g]ravissimum autem est peccatum bestialitatis’,

36 37 38

Adam Douglas, The Beast Within: Man, Myths and Werewolves (London, 1993), p. 125. Salisbury, The Beast Within, p. 90. In a chapter examining Europe between the sixth and eleventh centuries, James A. Brundage observes that the later penitentials ‘tended to associate bestiality with homosexuality and accordingly punished it with greater severity’ (Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago and London, 1987), p. 168); cf. Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London and New York, 1991), p. 30.

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II-II, 154:12).39 The Latin term species more generally signifies shape, form or outward appearance;40 but, given the theologians’ belief that one kind of animal cannot transform into another, Aquinas’ meaning is plain: bestiality means copulating with something that has a different form from one’s own, that is a different species in the scientific sense. However, the clerical author of Arthur and Gorlagon is presenting a narrative in which transformation from one form into another is possible, and furthermore a narrative in which the retention of the human mind within the wolf form is repeatedly emphasized. Indeed, there is a reminder of Gorlagon’s human mind, his ‘humanus … animus’ (216/35), in the sentence immediately following the description of the mating of the werewolf with the wild wolf-bitch. This combination of wolf-form and man-mind complicates the moral issues at stake in the tale. Since Gorlagon retains his human mind, how is his mating with the wild wolf-bitch to be understood? Certainly, the evidence of the medieval bestiaries suggests that this is not an expression of sexual avidity. While the bestiaries remark ‘Lupus a rapacitate dicitur, unde et meretrices lupas vocamus’ (the wolf is named for his rapacity, from where indeed we call prostitutes she-wolves), they also note that ‘Lupi toto anno non amplius quam dies xii coeunt’ (wolves do not mate more than twelve days in the whole year),41 an observation which accurately reflects the breeding season of wolves.42 The brevity and practicality of the description of the mating in Arthur and Gorlagon displace any potential for eroticism – this is not a lingering or lascivious portrayal, and the most committed medieval zoophile would surely have eschewed a lupine partner as both impractical and extremely dangerous – but the fact that the mating features at all is 39

40 41

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Sancti Thomae de Aquino, Summa Theologiae, secunda pars secundae partis a quaestione CXLVI ad CLIV (Rome, 1899), ed. Roberto Busa, SJ, online: Corpus Thomisticum (University of Navarra, Fundación Tomás de Aquino, 2006), (stable URL) http:// www.corpusthomisticum.org/sth3146.html. Unfortunately there is no evidence for the date of Arthur and Gorlagon: Day observes in the introduction to her edition that the narrative ‘remains anonymous and undated’ (p. 41); as for the manuscript, she reports that dates between the later fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries have been offered (p. 40), while Echard dates it to the late fourteenth century (Arthurian Narrative, p. 205). This may, of course, mean that references here to Aquinas are anachronistic; however, as the manuscript certainly postdates the saint, the point remains pertinent, since the later redactor or copyist would surely have been as likely as the earlier one, if not – with benefit of Aquinas’ wisdom – more so, to identify the inclusion of bestiality as problematic. D. P. Simpson, Cassell’s Latin–English, English–Latin Dictionary, 5th edn (London, 1987, repr. 1990), s.v. species (p. 564). Willene B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-Family Bestiary – Commentary, Art, Text and Translation (Woodbridge, 2006), XXVII, ‘De lupo’ pp. 142–5 (pp. 142, 145). Wilma George and Brunsdon Yapp, The Naming of Beasts: Natural History in the Medieval Bestiary (London: Duckworth, 1991), p. 50.

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problematic: notwithstanding the sexual continence of wolves, the presentation of Gorlagon mating with a wolf-bitch – in wolf form, but with his human reason expressly intact – is deeply unsettling. It would seem, then, that Arthur might have a valid purpose in this narrative after all: to supply a Celtic supernatural framework in order that questionable material, in this case the sexual congress between the werewolf and a pure wolf, be made acceptable. There are other texts whose redactors, also perhaps sensing their subject matter to be disquieting and in need of palliation, adopt similar methods in comparable circumstances. Welsh literature certainly offers intriguing parallels, if not direct analogues, and indeed such narratives may be particularly relevant, since Kittredge identifies Arthur and Gorlagon as ‘a translation or adaptation’ from a lost Welsh text, although he observes: ‘Whether the Arthurian elements were added by the Welsh redactor or by the author of the Latin G[orlagon] cannot be determined – very likely by the latter’.43 Kittredge mentions in particular some close correspondences between Arthur and Gorlagon and Math uab Mathonwy, the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi.44 The relevant episode in the Welsh text is The Rape of Goewin. The narrative concerns two brothers, Gwydion and Gilfaethwy, who are magicians and nephews of King Math, himself a magician of no little power. Gilfaethwy burns so much with love for the king’s virginal footholder, Goewin, that his brother invents an elaborate ruse that will cause Math to be occupied elsewhere, thus allowing Gilfaethwy access to the girl, whom he rapes. On his return, Math discovers what has happened, takes Goewin in marriage and punishes his nephews by transforming them into a series of animals in whose form they are to remain for the space of a year: deer, wild boar and wolves.45 Math performs the transformation by striking the young men with a magic wand (hutlath),46 itself evoking parallels with the cutting (virga) required for the metamorphosis in Arthur and Gorlagon. Accompanying Math’s use of the wand are speeches which, like the charm in the Latin text, provide unambiguous instructions as to the form of both 43

44 45

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Kittredge, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, p. 209; concurring, although she does discuss opposing evidence (p. 205, n. 31), Echard observes that ‘it hardly matters if the author was a Welshman, when it is so clear that he knew Welsh forms and methods’ (Arthurian Narrative, p. 205). Kittredge, ‘Arthur and Gorlagon’, p. 207–8; see pp. 200–9 for Kittredge’s complete analysis of Welsh elements in the text. Math uab Mathonwy in Pedeir keinc y Mabinogi, ed. Ifor Williams, 2nd edn (Cardiff, 1951), pp. 67–92; citations refer to the online version of the text electronically prepared by Elena Parina (2003–5), TITUS version by Jost Gippert, at TITUS: Thesaurus Indo­ germanischer Text- und Sprachmaterialien (Frankfurt am Main, 2005): http://titus.unifrankfurt.de/texte/etcs/celt/mcymr/pkm/pkm.htm [accessed 18 April 2009]), to which line numbers are appended; references will show page and line number(s) separated by a forward slash. A translation into Modern English can be found in The Mabinogion, trans. Sioned Davies, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford, 2007), pp. 47–64. Not, as Kittredge states, ‘his enchanted ring’ (p. 207).

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mind and body, and here, too, the mind is intended to conform with the outward appearance: Math tells his nephews that they are to be ‘“yn un anyan a’r gwyduilot yd ywch yn / eu rith”’ (75/6–7: ‘of the same nature as the beasts in whose form you are’).47 Unlike Gorlagon’s meta­morphosis, this is a punishment, and one that, as Michael Cichon observes, strictly fits the crime: ‘[t]he bestial nature of the criminals is emphasized by their transformation into wild animals’;48 unlike Gorlagon, Gwydion and Gil­faethwy are made beasts in body and mind. However, Math’s punishment has further ramifications, for in the first year Gwydion is turned into a stag and Gilfaethwy a hind (carw and ewig); in the second year, Gilfaethwy becomes a male boar (baedd coed) and his brother a sow (carnen); and in the third year, the genders are transposed again, so that Gwydion becomes a dog-wolf (bleid) and Gil­faethwy a bitch (bleidast). At the end of each year in bestial form, the brothers return, bringing with them a male offspring: fawn, piglet and wolf-cub. This series of transformations thus ‘forces incest upon them’;49 as in Arthur and Gorlagon, metamorphosis is not simply about transformation, but leads to grave sexual transgression.50 In The Rape of Goewin, the treatment of events is different from Arthur and Gorlagon. Where Gorlagon’s mate and cubs are killed well before the king’s transformation back to physical humanity, Math changes his nephews’ offspring into human form (75/20–1, 76/5–6, 76/17–19); furthermore, there is apparently no bar to their being formally accepted into the community, even though their natural form and nature seem to be bestial, and their parents are, of course, two men. In the introduction to her translation, Davies observes that the society of ‘The Four Branches of the Mabinogi’ ‘predat[es] any Norman influence’ and ‘[i]ndeed, the action is located in a pre-Christian Wales’.51 However, the social acceptance of Math’s greatnephews in this episode is placed firmly into a Christian framework by the medieval redactor, who refers to the ceremony as baptism (bedyd), a term which elsewhere is qualified in the Four Branches: the baptisms of Gwri Gwallt Euryn (23/14–15) and of Blodeuwedd (83/26–7) are ‘o’r bedyd 47 48

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50

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Cf. 75/23–4 and 76/11–12. Michael Cichon, ‘Eros and Error: Gross Sexual Transgression in the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi’, in The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain, ed. Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 105–15, at p. 108. Cichon, ‘Eros and Error’ (p. 108); he also notes that this ‘punishment is unique in medieval literature’ (p. 106). Brundage observes that incest between brothers was included, and viewed harshly, in the penitential of Theodore of Canterbury (Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 167). Andrew Welsh suggests that, even before the metamorphosis and mating, certain elements in the narrative imply that Gwydion and Gilfaethwy may already be ‘closer than just brothers’ (‘Doubling and Incest in the Mabinogi’, Speculum 65 (1990), 344–62, pp. 359–60). The Mabinogion, trans. Davies, p. xxv.

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a wneynt yna’ (of the baptism that used to be done), demonstrating that ‘the author acknowledges that baptism is an inappropriate term for the “naming-ceremony” described here; the tales are, after all, set in the preChristian past’52 and that the redactor ‘is aware of himself as occupying a boundary between two worlds – his own rational, scholarly, literary world and the more fantastic world of ancient myth and legend from which the tales have come down’.53 With reference to the quasi-baptism of Dylan, later in the Fourth Branch (77/21–3), Sarah Larratt Keefer stresses the importance of the fact that it is ‘Math who takes responsibility for naming, and hence characterizing the child with an identifier’.54 A further Welsh analogue occurs in the episode of Rhymhi in Culhwch and Olwen,55 in which a female wolf (bleidast) and her two cubs are located and surrounded, and then simply changed into human shape ‘o Duw y Arthur’ (l. 940: by God for Arthur). It is not clear how or why the three are in wolf-form or whether their minds are human or lupine; the transformation is said simply to be ‘yn eu rith e hunein’ (l. 940: into their own form), from which, as the editors Bromwich and Evans point out, ‘it must be deduced that the bitch Rymhi [sic] and her pups were transformed back into the form of human beings’,56 so, in fact, it is not even certain that their original form is human. Early Welsh sources thus seem to take a flexible approach to such matters, but they also manage to avoid setting up conflicts between the depictions of metamorphosis and potentially deviant sexual practices on the one hand and the theological problems arising on the other. In the case of Rhymhi, the metamorphosis is performed through God’s benevolence, which is, of course, beyond explanation and, more importantly, beyond criticism. Similarly, Math’s order that the resulting offspring, once changed into human form, be at once baptized seems to articulate divine approbation, while, with the shape-shifting of Gwydion and Gil­faethwy, the medieval author is careful to state that both body and mind are trans-

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The Mabinogion, trans. Davies, p. 231, n. 18. Sioned Davies, ‘Storytelling in Medieval Wales’, Oral Tradition 7:2 (1992), 231–57, p. 236. Sarah Larratt Keefer, ‘The Lost Tale of Dylan in the Fourth Branch of The Mabinogi’, in The Mabinogi: A Book of Essays, ed. Charles William Sullivan III (New York and London, 1996), pp. 79–98, at p. 83. The essay was originally published in Studia Celtica 24/5 (1989–90), 26–37. Culhwch and Olwen: An Edition and Study of the Oldest Arthurian Tale, ed. Rachel Bromwich and D. Simon Evans (Cardiff, 1992), lines 929–41; Davies supplies a translation in The Mabinogion, pp. 179–213 (the episode of Rhymhi, p. 205). Culhwch and Olwen, ed. Bromwich and Evans, p. 147, n.; cf. The Mabinogion, trans. Davies, p. 273, n. The whole episode is completed within thirteen lines (929–41), of which the first ten describe Arthur’s information-gathering and travel across the sea; the capture and metamorphosis are narrated with extreme brevity, in under two dozen words.

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formed, so that the procreative acts cannot unequivocally be defined as bestial and are therefore neutralized. The offspring situation is sidestepped in Arthur and Gorlagon, for both the wolf-bitch and her cubs are killed during a hunt. The deaths are expedient, allowing Gorlagon to regain his human life seamlessly.57 However, it would seem that here God cannot be evoked to smooth over questionable content: notwithstanding – or more likely because of – its clerical authorship, God is notably absent from the bulk of Arthur and Gorlagon, separated both from any connection to metamorphosis, with its blend of animal form and human mind, and from the highly dubious sexual act perpetrated by the werewolf. Arthur, however, is overtly, exaggeratedly present, despite the fact that his role could easily be expunged from Arthur and Gorlagon, since, once the werewolf narrative has begun, his only active role is in repeatedly urging his host to continue his narration in response to Gorlagon’s apparent reluctance to complete his story. The removal of the frame and the interpolations would leave only Arthur’s final question – about the woman he sees kissing a man’s bloody head on a platter (232/24–7) – to be absorbed into the narrative proper. Yet it 57

He makes some domestic changes, taking a second (or is it third?) wife, keeping his first wife at the court and having her kiss the embalmed head of her dead lover whenever Gorlagon kisses his new wife (234/1–8), a punishment that itself demonstrates a refined form of bestial savagery. Yet all punishments in the text are extreme: Gorgol’s queen is torn apart by wild horses and her remains burned, and her lover, the seneschal, is condemned to be flayed alive and then hanged; Gorlagon’s wife’s lover is executed. This, however, accords with the social framework of the narrative since Gorlagon’s replacement in his bed has also occupied his place on the throne, and Gorgol’s wife and seneschal have committed treason. Douglas suggests that the wolf Gorlagon displays greater savagery than his counterparts in the analogues because the author ‘found it hard to accept the essential goodness of a werewolf who indulged in sexual relations with a real wolf, and coloured his accounts of the werewolf’s deeds of violence accordingly’ (The Beast Within, p. 125). However, although Melion’s killing of people (albeit peasants) with the pack is not described in detail, it also represents a high degree of savagery, and lacks the justification of specifically selected targets: since Gorlagon’s victims are the queen’s children and her brothers, it seems more likely that these killings, like the punishments of the adulterers, are politically motivated. The nature of the penalties reflects this for, as Trevor Dean observes, ‘Public punishment for the political crime of treason often involved the tearing or hacking apart of the body of the traitor’ (Crime in Medieval Europe, 1200–1500 (Harlow, 2001), p. 118, cf. p. 124), while burning was a common penalty for women since it was thought that ‘dead women were far more likely to become revenants and to cause harm precisely because of their powers and malice’: ‘any physical remains of an executed woman criminal had to be thoroughly disposed of. The principle of apotropaeics, or the removal of the harmful dead, was clearly articulated in women’s sentences’ (Esther Cohen, The Crossroads of Justice: Law and Culture in Late Medieval France (Leiden, New York and Cologne, 1993), pp. 97, 96). Despite the severity of these punishments, Gorlagon himself seems to be above or beyond any form of penalty, returning to his place as monarch apparently without any degree of censure for his bestiality, nor indeed for adultery, which his copulation with the wolf-bitch, strictly speaking, must be.

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is clear that the clerical redactor, or his source, was determined to retain Arthur. The separation of Arthur from Gorlagon would cause no disruption to the werewolf’s story (and indeed, without the constant interruptions, would smooth its narration), but it would result in a different kind of tale, despite the text’s intentional humour58 which goes some way to lighten its dark carnival of violence and sexual transgression. Many acts of violence and transgressive sexuality occur in medieval texts without apparent need for such mitigation; but the depiction of the more serious sexual sins is rare, and it would seem that the element most in need of indulgence here, however briefly mentioned, is the act of conscious bestiality which is presented uncritically, as though natural, excused, even condoned by the author. Arthur and Gorlagon’s analogues avoid this issue entirely and yet several are given an Arthurian framework, perhaps to provide justification for their therianthropic subject. Palliation seems far more necessary in the case of bestiality. Discussing sexual offences, Pierre J. Payer observes that ‘[t]he earliest Welsh documents mention bestiality’ and that ‘all of the penitentials have at least one provision’ relating to the sin.59 Payer suggests that this is a response to everyday practicalities – ‘[i]t might be expected that such activity would not be uncommon in a predominantly rural society’60 – yet the Welsh statements of prohibition may also be responding to key early Welsh narratives with their propensity to include – uncritiqued – therianthropy and attendant bestial relationships.61 If nothing can be stated conclusively about the tale’s original author, it is certainly possible that the clerical redactor of Arthur and Gorlagon knew these secular Welsh narratives, as Kittredge suggests.62 It is also probable that he was aware of 58 59

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Day, Latin Arthurian Literature, p. 46; Echard, Arthurian Narrative, pp. 213–14. Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550–1150 (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1984), p. 44. Payer points out that these Welsh documents are not themselves penitentials, but ‘works containing penitential-like prescriptions which were incorporated into the early Irish manuals’, which occurred ‘during the creative, formative period prior to 813’ (pp. 10, 6). Payer, Sex and the Penitentials, p. 46; cf. Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society: ‘[t]he comparative frequency with which penitential writers referred to sexual activity involving animals presumably reflected the rural character of early medieval society, where opportunities for sex play with domesticated animals were commonplace, while sexual opportunities with human partners were restricted’ (p. 168). Given the care that priests needed to take to avoid offering their flock suggestions for novel methods of coitus (see, for example, Pierre J. Payer, The Bridling of Desire: Views of Sex in the Later Middle Ages (Toronto, Buffalo and London, 1993), p. 77), it would be surprising if Church teaching did not respond to localized cultural influences in this way. Davies expresses the difficulty of dating the Mabinogion narratives, but suggests ‘that they were written down sometime between the end of the eleventh and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries’ (Mabinogion, trans. Davies, p. xvii), with general agreement of ‘between c.1060 and 1120’ (p. xxvii); the lack of a date for Arthur and Gorlagon means that the author’s familiarity with the Mabinogion narratives cannot

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the authoritative pronouncements on metamorphosis and bestiality to be found in canonical texts. It is well understood that redactors edited their source material as they saw fit,63 for example, adding a Christian slant to problematic material, as has been done with The Rape of Goewin and the Rhymhi episode in Culhwch and Olwen. Arthur’s presence may function similarly, perhaps where explicit Christianization might be deemed inappropriate because of the nature of the content. Corinne Saunders points out that ‘[m]edieval Arthurian legend … reflects a Christian world view in which the supernatural is assumed to play a part, and in which religion does not negate the possibility of magic’.64 The imposition of an Arthurian setting, which inherently defines the temporal setting as ‘manye hundred yeres ago’ and may well include at least one ‘outtrage awenture’,65 may be a simple way for medieval clerical authors and redactors to neutralize questionable content in source narratives and even simultaneously to bring them into the Christian fold. Christianization of Arthur and Gorlagon is barely perceptible and this is unsurprising given the transgressive sexuality at the heart of the tale. Even if magic and metamorphosis can be licensed quite easily, as the analogues suggest, here the act of conscious bestiality requires additional mitigation. In Arthur and Gorlagon, this seems to be fulfilled not simply by Arthur’s presence, but by the text’s insistence on it. Arthur’s exaggerated role in this text is ultimately not dubious at all, but serves to palliate the heinous sin of bestiality in Arthur and Gorlagon.66

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be proven, a problem highlighted earlier in relation to Thomas Aquinas’s views on bestiality, although Davies’ preferred range again predates that of the Latin manuscript (cf. n. 39 above). For an overview of the kinds of changes that might routinely be made by copyists to their models, see John Benton, ‘Entering the Date’, in A New History of French Literature, ed. Denis Hollier et al. (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1994), pp. 1–6, at p. 5. Scribal alterations to source material might be more severe, such as the clerical excision of female figures from Arthurian sources described by C. Scott Littleton and Linda A. Malcor (From Scythia to Camelot: A Radical Reassessment of the Legends of King Arthur, the Knights of the Round Table and the Holy Grail (New York and London, 2000), p. 167 et passim). Corinne Saunders, ‘Religion and Magic’, in The Cambridge Companion to Arthur, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter (Cambridge, 2009), pp. 201–17 at p. 201. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, line 29; The Wife of Bath’s Tale, line 863. Thanks are due both to the Learning and Development Centre and the Department of French at the University of Warwick for contributions towards my attendance at the Twenty-second International Congress of the International Arthurian Society at Rennes in 2008, at which I presented a version of this essay. I am also grateful to Elizabeth Archibald and to the publisher’s anonymous reader for their valuable suggestions for strengthening the essay.

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IV

The Aesthetics of Communication: Sterility and Fertility in the Conte del Graal Cycle Thomas Hinton Chrétien de Troyes’ final, unfinished Arthurian romance, the Conte del Graal, has captured the imagination of many scholars over the years. One such enthusiast is the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, who has revisited it several times through the course of his career.1 Lévi-Strauss used Chrétien’s narrative as the exemplification of ‘Percevalian’ myths, which he viewed as being inversely symmetrical to ‘Oedipal’ myths in their treatment of the theme of communication.2 Oedipal myths are characterised by accelerated communication: the hero has the answer to the Sphinx’s riddle, but this communicative success becomes excess in the breaking of the generational taboo of incest. The plague visited on Thebes as a consequence of this transgression can be considered a reflection of this disruption of natural cycles. In contrast to these three instances of excessive communication, Lévi-Strauss proposes interrupted communication as the defining feature of Chrétien’s Perceval narrative: the hero fails to ask the question which will elicit the awaited response at the Grail Castle; in doing so, he misses the opportunity to heal the Fisher King and his barren Waste Land of a kingdom. As R. Howard Bloch argues, the interruptions of linguistic communication and natural rhythms are also in 1 2

See in particular Le Regard éloigné (Paris, 1983), pp. 301–24; Paroles données (Paris, 1984), pp. 129–40, and Anthropologie structurale deux (Paris, 1970), pp. 31–5. The concept of ‘communication’ used in this essay is derived from that developed by Lévi-Strauss, a term which embraces the semiotic structures which for him underlie all forms of cultural representation. Linguistic communication thus constitutes merely one form of semiotic exchange between participants in a culture; other forms of particular relevance to this article include representations of genealogy (intergenerational communication), literary continuation (communication between authors) and fertile and sterile environments (communication between humans and the natural world). On the basis of his engagement with the Grail tradition, Lévi-Strauss has suggested that ‘all mythology leads, in the final analysis, to the posing and resolution of a problem of communication’: see Anthropology and Myth, trans. R. Willis (Oxford, 1987), p. 107.

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a relation of interdependence with that of genealogical continuity; like a game of mirrors, each one of these parameters refers to, and can itself be read through, the other two.3 The impetus for this essay came from the observation of a different kind of interruption. In common with most critics of the Conte del Graal, Lévi-Strauss limits his analysis to the portion attributed to Chrétien de Troyes and edited apart or within collections of Chrétien’s romances. Yet this text spawned a vast amount of further material – four continuations and two prologues – without which it was rarely transmitted, and it is a shame that critics working through Lévi-Strauss’s problematic have not pushed their interest beyond Chrétien’s part of the narrative.4 Only four of fifteen manuscripts contain Chrétien’s work without any of the later material, and the others overwhelmingly present the Conte del Graal and its continuations as a single, unified work. It is my contention that the corpus may best be studied as a cycle, so that the unity and coherence which medieval scribes and audiences evidently found in the text might be understood.5 Moreover, the elaboration of this corpus, from the final quarter of the twelfth century to the second quarter of the thirteenth, is contemporary with the cyclification of the Guillaume d’Orange material and the development of the prose Vulgate Cycle, such that one can place it alongside these vast works as part of a ‘cyclic turn’ in medieval French literature. Though Lévi-Strauss’s interest was confined to delineating mythic substrata, the theme of interrupted communication is well suited to the literary analysis of this cycle, which is both unified and disparate; the product of several authors, centred primarily around one hero, Perceval. This article will pursue the shifting cyclic aesthetics of the Conte del Graal corpus through the theme of intergenerational communication as played out in the text. I will demonstrate how the theme of sterility, a hallmark 3 4

5

See R. H. Bloch, Etymologies and Genealogies: A Literary Anthropology of the French Middle Ages (Chicago, 1983), pp. 198–207. S. Sturm-Maddox, ‘Lévi-Strauss in the Waste Forest’, L’Esprit créateur 18 (1978), 82–94, is an insightful discussion of Chrétien’s Conte del Graal in relation to LéviStrauss’s comments on Perceval, which could have benefited from extending its scope to the rest of the corpus. The general tendency in Perceval scholarship has been to marginalise or even ignore the Continuations. Matilda Bruckner’s thoughtful piece on ‘Intertextuality’ in The Legacy of Chrétien de Troyes, ed. K. Busby, D. Kelly and N. Lacy (Amsterdam, 1987) was among the first to use the term ‘cycle’ in relation to the corpus; the same appellation is suggested in a short piece by Keith Busby: ‘The Other Grail Cycle’, in Cyclification: the Development of Narrative Cycles in the Chansons de Geste and the Arthurian Romances, ed. B. Besamusca, W. P. Gerritsen, C. Hogetoorn and O. S. H. Lie (Amsterdam, 1994), pp. 176-8. More recently, Etienne Gomez, working on vows, oaths and promises in the corpus, has reached a similar conclusion, arguing for a cyclical perspective in an article forthcoming in Eidôlon in 2009 (‘Les effets de cycle dans le cycle du Conte du Graal’).

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of Chrétien’s part of the narrative, is opposed from the First Continuation onwards by the notion of generation as a means of producing additional narrative, taking as an example the figure of Gauvain’s son, who makes an appearance in each of the first two Continuations. This important diegetic theme is reflected in extradiegetic narratorial pronouncements, as the different authors struggle to define the genealogy of the cycle they are helping to create. The issue of the viability of intergenerational communication thus goes to the heart of the question: how to continue a preexisting text? How does one write new material whilst remaining faithful to what has gone before?6 The Waste Land inhabited by the Fisher King and his subjects is only the most prominent instance of the theme of sterility which pervades Chrétien’s part of the text. The opening lines of the narrative, which constitute the audience’s first encounter with Perceval, set the tone for what is to follow: ‘Ce fu au tans qu’arbre florissent, / Foillent boschage, pre verdissent … / Que li fix a la veve dame / De la gaste forest soutaine / Se leva  …’ ‘It was at the time that the trees blossom and regain their leaves and the fields become green that the son of the widowed lady of the isolated Waste Forest got up’].7 The fertile imagery of the début printanier is immediately undermined by a series of identifications which raise the spectre of a troubling loss occurring before the time of the story itself: who is this son, and why is his mother a widow? Why is the forest ‘gaste’? As for Perceval in the crucial episode of the Grail Castle, the answers apparently embedded in this opening make little sense to an audience as yet unsure of what questions to ask, nor of what is at stake. A little later, we learn a few details about the disappeared father: he was a widely feared knight who, wounded ‘parmi les jambes’ (Conte du Graal, 436) [between the legs] and paralysed, was unable to maintain his lands, which fell into disrepair. As with the Fisher King later in the narrative, the location of the father’s wound suggests a sterility in symbiosis with that of his lands. The same connection between reproductive and environmental sterility is insisted upon by the Hideous Damsel who berates Perceval 6

7

I limit my analysis here to Chrétien’s work and the four Continuations, leaving aside the Bliocadran and Elucidation prologues which admittedly could have formed part of this discussion. The Elucidation in particular has much to tell us about notions of narrative fidelity in medieval literature, since it lists a series of tales to be recounted which, on the face of it, have virtually nothing to do with the narrative as it then develops through the corpus. Its omission is partly due to my focus on the practice of narrative continuation (the additions effected by both Elucidation and Bliocadran are diegetically anterior rather than posterior to the pre-existing corpus), and partly because I intend to discuss this fascinating (and understudied) text in detail in a later essay. Le Roman de Perceval ou Le Conte du Graal, ed. K. Busby (Tübingen, 1993), lines 69–76.

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for his failure at the Grail Castle, forecasting that as a result ‘Dames en perdront lor mariz / Terres en seront essilliees / Et puceles desconseillies’ (4608–10) [‘Ladies will lose their husbands, lands will be lain waste and damsels abandoned’]. Communication and sexuality are explicitly linked from the beginning, as Perceval’s mother instructs him in the manners appropriate to a knight. The advice she offers him on interacting with women includes the following stricture: ‘S’ele le baisier vos consent, / Le surplus je vos en desfent, / Se laissier le volez por moi’ (547–9) [‘If she agrees to let you have a kiss, I forbid you to take anything more, if for my sake you are willing to forsake it’]. This advice almost immediately backfires, as Perceval’s first encounter upon leaving his mother’s house, with a damsel in a tent, is the source of incomprehension all round – he misapplies his mother’s commands which he doesn’t understand, the damsel is upset by his actions, and the damsel’s ami misinterprets the situation as adultery and punishes her. The simulacrum of rape which occurs here replaces any possibility of a genuine sexual encounter; later, after winning Blancheflor’s love, Perceval turns his back on the possibility of marriage and legitimate sexual activity (unlike Chrétien’s earlier heroes, Erec and Yvain) and leaves her to seek the mother who had forbidden him the ‘surplus’. The other hero of this part of the text, Gauvain, fares even worse in terms of sexual communication, meeting with a series of blocked encounters whose nature precludes the development of physical love: the narrative episodes which might have led to sexual development involve an underage girl, his enemy’s sister, and his own sister. Symbolically, his horse loses a shoe during the pursuit of a white doe, which ends in failure (5659–702). The next time Gauvain goes riding for sport, in the First Continuation, events unfold quite differently, and the contrast nicely illustrates the differing treatments of sexuality in Chrétien’s section and later parts of the cycle. He comes to a tent where he meets a beautiful damsel, who he later discovers belongs to a family whose relative he had killed; the episode thus recalls both Perceval’s mock-courtly ineptitude at the start of the narrative, and Gauvain’s encounter with the daughter of the King of Escavalon, whom he is accused of killing in treasonous conditions. The deviation from the established pattern of blocked sexuality is then all the more significant, as the maiden reveals that she has been saving her body for Gauvain, with whose description she has fallen in love. Whereas interrupted communication characterised the early events of the narrative, in this episode communication is harmonious and effective. No wooing occurs until Gauvain has proved his identity to the damsel’s satisfaction, and thereafter sexual and verbal intercourse remain intimately related: ‘Des jeus d’amors sanz vilenie / S’ont puis ansamble tant parlé / Et bonemant antr’eus jöé / Qu’elle a perdu non de pucelle, / S’a non amie et damoiselle.’ [‘They then discussed at length and without baseness the 100

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games of love, and joyfully played them, so that she lost the name of maiden and gained that of lover and damsel’]. 8 This communication is effective in another, important sense, as the First Continuation replaces the sterile mock-sexual encounters of ­Chrétien’s section with what might be termed an aesthetics of consequence. The damsel’s brother, swearing to avenge this perceived disgrace to the family’s honour, follows and almost kills Gauvain. After they have agreed to resume their combat at a later date, the text follows Gauvain back to Arthur’s camp, announcing: ‘Ici remaint de Bran de Lis / Et de sa seror au cler vis / Qui remaint anceinte d’anfant’ (First Continuation [LR], 6607–9) [‘Here the text leaves Bran de Lis, and his sister with the fair face who is left expecting a child’]. The casual way in which this information is let slip initially conceals its significance for the narrative; after all, the text thus far has accustomed its audience to various blind alleys, with all sorts of narrative threads remaining resolutely undeveloped. Yet the cyclic impetus of the continuations is nowhere more apparent than in their capacity to recuperate and revive plot details abandoned in the preceding material, and the matter of Gauvain’s son is a case in point. The First Continuation revisits this character extensively, first as a child and then as a young man. Seven thousand lines after the conception is announced, Gauvain finds himself in a castle belonging to Bran de Lis, and their enmity is revived. In a memorable scene, the resumption of hostilities is interrupted by the mother’s introduction of the child between the two opponents. The sight of the boy reaching out to touch the shining swords convinces Arthur to intercede and make peace. As Gauvain’s son and Bran’s nephew, the child represents a blood bond between the men that dissolves any simmering antagonism; unable to reach Gauvain without cutting down their shared bloodline, Bran is eventually convinced to forget his grievance. The cycle at this point is entertaining a genealogical aesthetic, whereby the restoration of narrative harmony is achieved through the intercession of the next generation. The narrative of Bran’s vendetta having been concluded, the character of Gauvain’s son could potentially become the focus of new narrative development. Twice this possibility is suggested by the First Continuation; twice it is suppressed. First, the boy is kidnapped, prompting Arthur and his knights to mount a search and rescue operation. The only characters to opt out of this quest are Keu and, surprisingly, Gauvain himself, as if the father fears becoming too closely associated with – even eclipsed by – his son’s narrative. Gauvain’s Laius-like reflex 8

The Continuations of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chrétien de Troyes. II: The First Continuation, Long Redaction of mss. EMQU, ed. W. Roach and R. H. Ivy, Jr (Philadelphia, 1950), lines 6332-6. The First Continuation is edited in three distinct redactions; unless otherwise stated, I give quotations from the Long Redaction (abbreviated to [LR]).

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is, initially, endorsed by the text, which weaves the tale of his visit to the Grail Castle out of his return to court to attend the Queen. Yet later, following Gauvain’s Grail Castle failure, the narrator reminds us of the narrative possibilities embodied by the mysterious disappearance of his son, in a long passage of which the following extract gives a flavour: Ne [ne m’orroiz parler] de monseignor Bran de Liz, Qui fu de son neveu marriz, Si sai molt bien de veritez C’onques par euls ne fu trovez. Por ce qu’il me covient entendre A la grant matire comprendre, Qui l’enbla ne qui le norri Ne m’orroiz ja parler ici; Ne de celui qui l’escola, En quel maniere l’enseingna Sor totes riens a tenir chier Ses armes et son bon destrier  (First Continuation [LR], 17865–76) (Nor [will you hear me tell] of sir Bran de Lis, who was sad for his nephew; indeed, I know very well that they [the search party] never found him. Because I have to concentrate on including all of the great tale, you will not hear me speak here of who hid him, nor who fed him, nor how or by whom he was taught to value his arms and good horse above all things.)

In the space of a few lines, the boy has become a young man learning the basics of knighthood. As we follow his initial exploits in the following episode, the text shows all the signs of making him a new Perceval around which to build a narrative: he displays an inherited natural aptitude for chivalry; he has grown up without a father, and does not know his own name; and he shares the young Perceval’s tendency to naivety, refusing to use his shield in combat in case it should get damaged. This narrative potential is again nipped in the bud by Gauvain, who arrives on the scene and recognises his son, bringing him back to court but in the process overshadowing him. The young man is loved at court ‘por le preudome qui l’avoit / Engendré’ (18324–5) [‘for the sake of the worthy man who had fathered him’], and the king’s attention is primarily focused on Gauvain’s account of his adventures with the Grail; the next narrative development will again be Gauvain-related, as we hear about an adventure which befell his brother Guerrehet whilst he was seeking him. Gauvain’s son does reappear twice in the Second Continuation, but by this time he, along with Gauvain and the rest of Arthur’s knights, has become a secondary character in a cycle that is clearly centred on Perceval. The genealogical aesthetic with which the First Continuation flirts is thus roundly suppressed by the rest of the cycle, which succeeds instead in promoting 102

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a biographical aesthetic. This is reflected in the corpus’s manuscript transmission, where the First Continuation is not found without the Second.9 The prologue Bliocadran, meanwhile, which aims to fill in the narrative of Perceval’s father left untold by Chrétien and the continuators, remains marginal to the manuscript tradition, appearing in only two copies. If the cycle ultimately opts not to become a genealogical romance, the repeated return of Gauvain’s son nevertheless speaks of a close relationship between continuation and generation. In proposing and then declining to make this figure a narrative centre, the text presents itself as communicating with the wider Arthurian romance intertext, and the Fair Unknown tradition in particular. We have one surviving romance in French about Gauvain’s son, whom Arthur calls the ‘Biaus Desconneus’ because he cannot give his own name, which he later discovers to be Guinglain. Perceval’s mother stresses the importance of naming at the beginning of our cycle, when she tells her son: ‘N’aiez longuement compaignon / Que vos ne demandez son non; / Et ce sachiez a la parsome: / Par le sornon connoist on l’ome’ (Conte du Graal, 559–62) [‘Do not stay long with a companion without asking his name; and know this in the end: by the name, one knows the man’]. In the matter of Gauvain’s son’s name, the First and Second Continuations offer different approaches. In the First Continuation, the narrator tells us that he was called ‘Lioniaux’ for his wildness and his beauty: ‘En la chambre com hom sauvages / Se porfichoit, et fu trop biax; / Ilec fu nonmez Lioniaux’ (First Continuation [LR], 18082–4) [‘He wandered through the chamber like a wild man, and was very handsome, so they named him Lioniaux’]. There is no known intertextual corroboration for this appellation, and the awkwardness of attaching a different name to a character well known by the time the manuscripts were written perhaps explains why three manuscripts give him the name ‘li oisiaux’ here.10 The liberties taken by the First Continuation in its dialogue with the Fair Unknown intertext are in fact symptomatic of its approach to literary antecedence in general: thus Gauvain’s visit to the Grail Castle differs in crucial details from Perceval’s in Chrétien’s section, most significantly (for our purposes) in presenting the Fisher King as a hale and hearty knight who strides into the room to greet Arthur’s nephew.11 Refusing 9

10 11

The exception to this is Paris, BNF, fr. 1450, which includes just the first couple of episodes from the First Continuation. Paris, BNF, fr. 794 breaks off the narrative after Episode 5 of the Second Continuation (episode divisions are taken from those made in Roach’s editions). The manuscripts concerned are Montpellier, BI, Sect. Méd. H 249; Paris, BNF, fr. 1429; Paris, BNF, fr. 12577. On the differences between these two accounts of the Grail ritual, see A. Combes and A. Bertin, Ecritures du graal (Paris, 2001), pp. 35–42, and W. Roach, ‘Transformations of the Grail Theme in the First Two Continuations of the Old French Perceval’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 110 (1966), 160–4.

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the theme of sterility, the First Continuator demonstrates the extent to which continuation can free itself from the strictures of narrative precedent, treating its pre-text as a pretext to innovate. The Second Continuator’s agenda, by contrast, is to restore the links to what has gone before. Returning the narrative to Perceval for the first time in over 20,000 lines (in the longest redactions), it retraces its hero’s footsteps, sending him back to the Grail Castle, but also to Blancheflor and to his mother’s home. Unsurprisingly, then, when Gauvain’s son first appears, he is fully cognisant with his own identity: ‘Li Biaux Desconneüz ai non; / Einsint m’apellent li Breton. / Messires Gauvains est mon pere.’ [‘My name is the Fair Unknown; this is what the Britons/Bretons call me. Sir Gauvain is my father’].12 The reference to ‘li Breton’ is doubly significant, encompassing both Arthurian society within the text and the literary tradition of the matière de Bretagne within which the character exists. The second time he appears, meeting Gauvain, his self-identification is even more comprehensive: ‘ “Sire,” fait il, “j’ai non Ginglains, / Vostre filz, que li roi Artuz / Mit non li Biaux Desconneüz” ’ (Second Continuation, 3107–72) [“Sir” ’, he said,“ ‘I am called Guinglain, your son, to whom King Arthur gave the name Fair Unknown” ’]. If, as Donald Maddox argues, the restoration of interrupted communication between the filial and the paternal generations is the fulcrum of the Fair Unknown romance tradition, it is emblematic of the Second Continuation’s concern for the viability of literary communication that it should present Guinglain at a time after restoration has occurred and he has been integrated into Arthurian society.13 Moreover, this reference to the Bel Inconnu intertext effectively erases the alternative narrative of his formative years provided by the First Continuation. On Arthur’s own authority, Guinglain’s nickname is not ‘Lioniaux’ but ‘li Biaux Desconneüz’. The Second Continuation’s cyclifying approach turns Chrétien’s incomplete romance, left not just unfinished but with open threads hanging all over the place and both main characters on apparently impossible quests, into a coherent corpus unified around the figure of Perceval. In a rapid sequence of symbolic moves after meeting the Bel Inconnu, our hero wanders to Biaurepaire, where he finds Blancheflor again, and returns to his mother’s home where he meets a sister of whom he (and the audience) had hitherto known nothing. In both case, the return to the landscapes of the past is accidental, and in both cases hero and audience go through a stage of mystification before they are able to identify the setting as belonging to the textual memory of the tale. As part of this process, 12 13

The Continuations of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chrétien de Troyes. IV: The Second Continuation, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia, 1971), lines 22387–9. See D. Maddox, ‘Lévi-Strauss in Camelot: Interrupted Communication in Arthurian Feudal Fictions’, in Culture and the King: The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legend, ed. M. B. Schichtman and J. P. Carley (Albany, 1994), pp. 35–53 (p. 38).

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the sterile environments of the earlier material are rewritten into fertile communities. On Perceval’s first visit to Blancheflor’s castle of Biaurepaire, both the castle and the land around it are described as ‘gaste’. Having lifted the siege which was starving the area’s inhabitants, he does not return until the Second Continuation, where he finds the landscape so changed that he fails to recognise it: ‘Molt se mervoille Percevaux / An quel païs il est antrez, / Que bien avoit deus anz passez / Que n’avoit mes terre veüe / Qui de toz biens fust si vestue, / Ne replanie ne pueplee’ (Second Continuation, 22560–5) [‘Perceval wondered what land he had entered, for it had been two good years since he had seen fields so filled with crops and abundantly peopled’]. Perceval’s passage has clearly restored communication between the inhabitants of Biaurepaire and the natural world on which they depend, and a return visit in the Gerbert Continuation provides another opportunity to emphasize the extent of the change, with derivatives of ‘plein’ occurring with as much insistence as ‘gaste’ did in Chrétien’s description: ‘Et les forés grans et plenieres / Sont d’autre part, de bestes plaines, / Et li pré et les terres plaines.’ [‘And the large and fertile forests are full of animals, as are the fields and the plains’].14 This time it is Blancheflor’s uncle Gornemant, travelling with Perceval, who is ‘ebahis’, ‘[c]ar ainc puis n’i avoit esté / Que Clamadeus avoit gasté / La terre et le païs d’entor’ (Gerbert Continuation, I, 6215–17) [‘For he had not been there since Clamadeus had lain waste to the land and the surrounding area’]. The transformation wrought by Perceval upon the land, which is also that wrought by successive continuators upon the textual mass which they had inherited, is witnessed here by Gornemant, a representative of Chrétien’s early material. His joy at the restoration of the land’s fertility implies a desire on the part of Gerbert to promote a harmonious transition between the different generations of textual material. Indeed, in their different ways, the various parts of the cycle all show a concern for justifying the project of continuation. Gerbert’s Continuation goes about this in perhaps the most direct way, explaining that Chrétien had begun the tale of Perceval, but that death had prevented him from completing it: ‘Ce nous dist Crestiens de Troie / Qui de Percheval comencha, / Mais la mors qui l’adevancha / Ne li laissa pas traire affin’ (Gerbert Continuation, I, 6984–7) [So tells us Chrétien de Troyes who began the tale of Perceval; but death, which overtook him, did not let him bring it to an end].15 Having reported the Father’s death, Gerbert announces that he has made the project his own and vows to complete it: ‘Mais or en a faite sa laisse / 14 15

Gerbert de Montreuil, La Continuation de Perceval, vols. I and II, ed. M. Williams (Paris, 1922–5); vol. III, ed. M. Oswald (Paris, 1925): I, 6200–2. This is the only basis for the oft-repeated statement that Chrétien’s death, rather than some other factor, is responsible for the incomplete state of the original Conte del Graal.

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Gerbers, selonc le vraie estoire; / Dieus l’en otroit force et victoire / … / Et que il puist la fin ataindre / De Percheval que il emprent’ (7000–5) [But now Gerbert has made it his text, following the true story; may God give him strength and victory for it, and allow him to reach the end of the tale of Perceval, which he has undertaken]. The Gerbert Continuation is transmitted in only two manuscripts produced in the same workshop (Paris, BNF, fr. 12576 and Paris, BNF, n. a. 6614), and it says much about the especially strong cyclic impetus of these particular codices that they not only include Gerbert’s material, but also attribute the awkward First Continuation to Chrétien, writing his name into two episodes as author and authority.16 The Manessier Continuation, meanwhile, justifies itself by omitting to mention Chrétien’s name. Instead Manessier proposes a filiation of patronage: taking responsibility for ‘mon livre’, which he has completed in the name of his patroness Jeanne de Flandres, he notes that it was begun ‘[e]l non son aiol’ [in the name of her ancestor].17 Indeed, Chrétien’s prologue dedicates the text to Philippe de Flandres, Jeanne’s great-uncle, whom he claims provided him with the source book for his tale. Thus the game of ‘authorial relays’ is carefully obscured behind a narrative of familial heredity.18 Manessier’s ending, intended as the last word on Perceval, is authorized by the continuity of the noble family’s interest in the story. The texts of the Conte del Graal cycle manifest in various ways a recurring concern for issues of literary heredity and narrative authority. By establishing a filiation with the story’s originating author, as Gerbert does, or by inscribing the cycle as an inherited family concern, as Manessier does, the authors demonstrate that the discourses of intergenerational communication and literary continuation are closely intertwined. Chrétien’s part of the text is itself characterised by ambivalence around the issue of continuation: the overwhelming influence of sterility in the diegetic environment and lack of clear narrative programme for the development of the threads left hanging when the text breaks off are at odds with the prologue, which opens with the image of the author as gardener: ‘Crestïens semme et fait semence / D’un romans que il encomence’ (Conte du Graal, 7–8) 16

17 18

See The Continuations of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chrétien de Troyes. I: The First Continuation, Mixed Redaction of mss. TVD, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia, 1949), lines 1234 and 4418. The first passage is of particular relevance, as the narrator invokes Chrétien as his ‘garant’ for the continuation’s description of the Grail Castle. The Continuations of the Old French ‘Perceval’ of Chrétien de Troyes. V: The Manessier Continuation, ed. W. Roach (Philadelphia, 1983), lines 42652-3. The term ‘authorial relay’ is taken from the first chapter of Matilda Bruckner’s recent book on the Conte del Graal and its continuations. See M. Bruckner, Chrétien Continued: A Study of the Conte du Graal and its Verse Continuations (Oxford and New York, 2009). This work, the first full-length study of the corpus, intersects with the concerns of this essay in a number of ways, notably through its interest in the changing value of authorship through the cycle.

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[­ Chrétien sows the seeds of a romance which he is beginning]. This image is richly suggestive for trying to understand how Chrétien’s text positions itself in relation to the prospect of continuation. The first line, citing the proverb ‘Ki petit semme petit quelt’ [He who sows little reaps little], hints at a poetic project in which the proliferation of narrative threads is like a scattering of seeds on the ground in the hope that some will take root in the imaginations of the audience and prompt a response. Rather than a clear programme for conclusion, the challenge proposed to potential continuators is to make something from the tangle of open narratives bequeathed by the first 9,000 lines of text. Chrétien’s ‘romans’ ultimately did become ‘semence’, acquiring an originary status as the first move in a literary game which, going by the numbers of extant manuscripts, enjoyed a certain amount of success with medieval audiences.19 As if to underline this process, the continuators revisited Chrétien’s images of sterility, rewriting them into the vocabulary of fertility. In revisiting the ground sown by their predecessors, the continuators also made use of the narrative possibilities afforded by the principle of generation. The figure of Gauvain’s son, in particular, stands out as representing a means both of charting potential narrative directions and of establishing a filiation with the extant Arthurian intertextual tradition. We can thus define the aesthetics of continuation in this cycle as balanced between two conflicting demands. On the one hand, continuation is a process which inevitably involves working with inherited material. On the other hand, our continuators seem to have needed to write themselves free from their inheritance. One might say that the birth of the Continuation requires the death of the Mother Text. More exactly, continuation in our cycle takes place somewhere between these two poles of parricide and filiation. The textual aesthetic is therefore well embodied by its hero Perceval who, on hearing of his mother’s death, announces ‘Autre voie m’estuet tenir… / Les mors as mors, les vis as vis’ (Conte du Graal, 3625–30) [my fate lies down another path… the dead to the dead, the living to the living]; yet his wanderings bring him repeatedly back to the landscapes of his early years. The closing moments of the text, with Perceval seeking the Grail Castle one final time, demonstrate in fitting fashion how the forward movement of this cycle is also always a matter of restoring and maintaining communication with the inheritance of the past: Ne sot ou le chastel querre Car ne sot mie bien la terre 19

Excluding fragments, there are fifteen manuscripts containing Perceval, ten of which contain or were planned to contain only Conte del Graal material, along with manuscript Bern, Burgerbibl. 113 which includes the Second Continuation in a compilation of narrative material. This tally compares quite favourably with the manuscript traditions of Chrétien’s other texts: eight each for Cligés and Yvain, seven for Erec and Lancelot.

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De la entor ne le païs Et si en estoit il naïs. De la Gaste Forest ert nez, Mes n’estoit mie bien senez, Quant de sa mere se parti Ne onques puis n’i reverti.  (Manessier Continuation, 41853–60) [He did not know where to seek the castle, for he did not know the land or its surrounding area well – and yet he was born there. He was born in the Waste Forest, but he was not very wise when he left his mother and never returned to her.]

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‘Whyche thyng semeth not to agree with other histories ...’: Rome in Geoffrey of Monmouth and his early modern readers Siân Echard The first edition of William Camden’s Britannia, printed in 1586, contains only two illustrations. The first is a careful rendering of the inscription, in letters described as ‘barbaric’ and quasi Gothicum, on the Glastonbury Cross, discovered along with Arthur’s tomb in the 1190s.1 The second is a drawing of an archway from the church of St John sub Castro at Lewes, inscribed with what Camden (1551–1623) calls ‘rude little verses, in curved work, in obsolete character, which announce that a certain Magnus, formerly of the Danish royal blood, is buried there’.2 Stuart

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William Camden, Britannia siue Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio … (London, 1586); ESTC 4503. The inscription is found on p. 104; Camden calls the letters ‘barbarum quiddam, et quasi Gothicum’ on p. 103. All translations from Latin sources are my own. For a recent, thorough overview of Camden’s life and work, see Wyman H. Herendeen, William Camden: A Life in Context (Woodbridge, 2007).   The discovery of the tomb was twice described by Gerald of Wales, who claimed to have been an eyewitness to the exhumation; his accounts can be found in the De instructione principum and Speculum Ecclesiae. However, Gerald reports that the inscription reads ‘Hic iacet sepultus inclitus rex Arthurus cum Wenneveria uxore sua secunda in insula Avallonia’. Adam of Damerham’s account of the exhumation in his Historia de rebus gestis Glastoniensibus includes an account of the new tomb constructed for Arthur after the exhumation. The epitaph’s various forms are reviewed in Michelle Brown and James P. Carley, ‘A Fifteenth-Century Revision of the Glastonbury Epitaph to King Arthur’, in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James P. Carley (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 193–209; they discuss John Leland’s account of the mausoleum constructed to hold the remains on pp. 196-8. Aelred Watkins considers the cross ‘an over-ingenious forgery’, ‘The Glastonbury Legends’, in Glastonbury Abbey, ed. Carley, pp. 13–27 (p. 20). Leslie Alcock dates the cross, on epigraphic grounds, to the tenth or eleventh century, thus associating it with the changes made to the cemetery some time around 945; Arthur’s Britain (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 73–80. Camden, Britannia (1586), p. 159. The illustration occupies more than half the page. The Latin reads ‘in cuius parietibus arcuato opere inscribuntur rudes versiculi, obsoleto

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Piggott points out that early modern textual studies necessarily involved taking account of the physical appearance of texts: ‘In the first place, texts in manuscripts were inevitably linked to texts in inscriptions – monumental upon stone, in miniature on coins, gems and minor objects – and as accurate transcription was textually important, epigraphy went beyond transliteration as letter forms were seen to have value in themselves (in parallel to manuscript palaeography) and so inscriptions were drawn in at least approximate facsimile’.3 This interest in exact representation can be seen as well in works whose primary focus is not textual scholarship, though the textual emphasis of much antiquarian inquiry leads, as in the case of the two objects described above, to a privileging of artefacts which include words. While there are no other illustrations per se in the first edition of Britannia, there are, for example, several typographical renderings of Roman inscriptions. One such section reproduces inscriptions from some of the monuments near Riblechester, using Roman capitals and setting the inscriptions off from the text by indenting to do so, and records as well what Camden calls a ‘hobbling rhyme of the local people’ regarding the history of the place, this latter as part of the text, but rendered in black letter.4 The use of different typefaces here – black letter for the English saying, and block Roman capitals for the inscription – is primarily intended, I think, to have an interpretive function. Camden routinely uses Roman, black letter, and Saxon letter forms to differentiate the languages visually on his Latin page, and his remarks about both the inscriptions and the folk-rhyme suggest a clear hierarchy, with the Roman at the top.5 By the third printing of Britannia, in 1590, the inscriptions have been joined by illustrations of coins, and these too mix Camden’s Roman and British preoccupations. The first coin to be pictured is found in the section on Hertfordshire, and Camden’s comments record contemporary controversy over whether coins such as these are pre-Roman: ‘Some men wish to see these as having been coined before the arrival of the Romans, but I am

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charactere, qui innuunt Magnum quendam è Danorum regio sanguine oriundum ibi conditum’ (p. 158). Stuart Piggott, Antiquity Depicted: Aspects of Archaeological Illustration (London, 1978), p. 13. Camden, Britannia (1586): ‘incole claudicante rythmo’ (p. 431). The English rhyme reads ‘It is written vpon a wall in Rome, / Ribchester was as rich as any Towne in Christendome’. The Roman inscriptions come from Salesbury Hall in Lancashire. Leslie W. Hepple, ‘William Camden and Early Collections of Roman Antiquities in Britain’, Journal of the History of Collections 15 (2003), 159–74 (p. 160), notes that these Roman remains were discovered in 1578 and reported to Camden, who then made a trip to see them. I discuss the ideological deployment of type in the early modern period in my Printing the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2008); see ch.1, ‘Form and Rude Letters: The Representation of Old English’, pp. 21–59.

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not of their belief.’ 6 In this case, he argues that these are Romano-British tribute coins, citing the opinion of the Welsh antiquary, David Powell (c. 1549-98), that ‘Tasc’ is British for tribute (in fact, the coin pictured does indeed belong to a pre-Roman, British ruler, Tasciovanus (d. c. 10), and comes from his mint at St Albans). But Stuart Piggott has pointed out that Camden parted from antiquaries like Leland in recognizing that the British kings did have their own coinage at the time of the conquest, and the three other coins illustrated in the 1590 edition Camden knew to have been minted for Cunobelinus (Cymbeline).7 These appear in the section on the Trinobantes (Trinovantes), but while Camden recognizes the existence of British coinage, this recognition does not necessarily accompany any explicitly anti-Roman sentiments. For example, two of the Cunobelinus coins illustrate Camden’s discussion of Camalodunum, a section which recounts the arrival of Claudius, who, Camden writes, put the Britons to flight and ‘easily took control of this Camalodunum’.8 Successive printings of Britannia expanded both content and illustrative material, and much of this material naturally addressed the Roman remains still to be found all over Britain. The 1600 edition included seven pages of plates of British and Roman coins, followed by notes on the same, and a map of Roman Britain.9 British remains were pictured as well: in the 1607 folio edition, for example, the drawing of the Glas6

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William Camden, Britannia siue Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio  … (London, 1590); ESTC 4505: ‘Hos aliqui ante Romanorum aduentum cusos esse volunt, sed non ego credulus illis. Alij nummos Tributarios fuisse existimant, qui in caput, & agros impositi quotannis à Romanis exigebantur, his non refragabor. Antequam enim Romani aduenerint, Britannos pecuniam signasse vix credam. Memini tamen, quod de illis scribit Caesar’ (p. 314). Stuart Piggott argues that ‘Camden’s work on British coins, contained in the Remaines and in the Britannia, is of pioneer importance. Leland had denied the existence of a native coinage at the time of the Roman Conquest, but Camden not only recognized the non-Roman coin types for what they were, but correctly appreciated the significance of the abbreviated titles and mints’; ‘William Camden and the Britannia’, Proceedings of the British Academy 37 (1951), 199–217 (p. 204). More recently, Wyman Herendeen remarks upon Camden’s ‘considerable skill’ in the use of numismatics, noting that he was ‘among the first in England to turn such materials to historical use’; William Camden, p. 248. Camden, Britannia (1590), ‘transmisso Tamisi Britannos qui in ripa aduenientem exceperunt, signis collatis, fugauit, facileque hanc regiam Camalodunum coepit’ (p. 343). William Camden, Britannia siue Florentissimorum regnorum, Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio… (London, 1600); ESTC 4507. The coin plates begin on p. 69. On the final plate, the roundels are in fact blank, a problem which would gradually be rectified in later editions. Sean Keilen reads the blank at the end of the coin plates in the 1610 edition (though he refers to 1586, the year of the first edition, he pictures and quotes the 1610 English text) as a nod to ‘the missing pieces … of a genuinely Roman Britain that time has ruined’, and as a demonstration of ‘two different cultures that failed to integrate

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tonbury inscription is replaced by an illustration of the cross itself.10 Stonehenge appears from 1600 onwards. But the sheer volume of Roman remains, particularly when matched to the early modern fascination with numismatics and epigraphy, meant that the British past was largely seen through a Roman visual lens. Antiquarians fed each other information, and thus contributed to drawing (in some cases quite literally) this picture of the Romano-British past. For example, from 1600 onwards, printings of Britannia included careful illustrations of a Roman altar found by John Senhouse on his estate in Cumberland, and seen by Camden and his friend Sir Robert Cotton on their tour in 1599; the illustration was based on a drawing done by Cotton.11 When Camden’s work was finally translated into the vernacular, his delineation of Britain’s past became even more widely available. In the 1610 translation by Philemon Holland, there are eight full plates of British and Roman coins, followed by extensive notes; the British coins now occupy the first three plates.12 In place of the original twelve Roman inscriptions found in the first, Latin edition of Britannia, there are over 110.13 Once we reach Edmund Gibson’s 1695 revision of Camden – a work whose title-page advertised ‘Large Additions and Improvements’ – plates which unselfconsciously mix British and Roman objects with fossils suggest that by the end of the seventeenth century, the British past had become, at least in visual terms, a glorious jumble of ‘curiosities’.14

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themselves’; Vulgar Eloquence: On the Renaissance Invention of English Literature (New Haven, 2006), p. 80. William Camden, Britannia, siue Florentissimorum regnorum Angliae, Scotiae, Hiberniae, et insularum adiacentium ex intima antiquitate chorographica descriptio: nunc postremò recognita, plurimis locis magna accessione adaucta, & chartis chorographicis illustrata … (London, 1607); ESTC 4508; p. 166. The inscription is arranged on the cross differently than it appeared in the epigraphical illustration from 1586 onwards; that is, while that first illustration copied the letter-forms, this illustration suggests a desire to show the inscription in its original context. The altar is illustrated in several views on p. 695 in the 1600 edition. Hepple, ‘William Camden’, writes that Senhouse was one of five significant collectors of Roman antiquities associated with Camden’s work; the others were Lord William Howard at Naworth, Reginald Bainbrigg at Appleby, Robert Cotton at Conington and Francis Godwin at Mathern in South Wales, pp. 159–61. In 1587 two altars had been reported on Senhouse’s grounds; there were in fact ten altars and inscribed stones, including this red sandstone altar with the inscription ‘Genio loci’; Hepple, ‘William Camden’, p. 162. William Camden, Britain, or, A chorographicall description of the most flourishing kingdomes, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the ilands adioyning … translated newly into English by Philémon Holland ... (London, 1610); ESTC 4509. The coin plates are pp. 89–96. Hepple, ‘William Camden’, p. 160. William Camden, Camden’s Britannia, Newly Translated into English: With Large Additions and Improvements … (London, 1695). See, for example, the table of ‘Curiosities’ on p. 697, which combines Roman coins and pavements, Celtic crosses, and

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The growing early modern interest in antiquities, traced here through something of the history of illustration in Britannia, has been linked to the central role of material objects in self-fashioning on both the personal and the national scale.15 For the purposes of this essay, those first objects in the early editions of Britannia offer a starting point for the exploration of stories related to these preoccupations – the foundation stories that Camden and his contemporaries both sought and tripped over. Camden’s coins, I argue, manifest a tension in Camden’s own work over the importance of certain facts in the British national past. The first Britannia included Roman inscriptions, but its only pictures were of two non-Roman objects, the inscription from the Glastonbury Cross, and the Saxon-Danish archway of St John sub Castro. The 1590 edition added to these images only the three British coins mentioned above, each pictured as part of discussion of the British-Roman relationship. Camden began the Britannia with a Roman framework, provided by classical descriptions of the Celtic divisions of Britain, and by the Antonine Itinerary, a list of the routes across Britain with the names of Roman forts and settlements along the way. His work included both reading old histories and travelling the landscape; these travels, and his vast network of correspondents, provided much of the material for later editions of the Britannia. But both parts of this work revealed, as Graham Parry has pointed out, ‘that there was much more history to be investigated than that relating to the Roman occupation’,16 and I would argue that Camden’s visual representation of non-Roman objects, along with such things as his fondness for medieval Latin verse, suggest the appeal of this other history.17 Piggott writes that

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fossil ferns, described as ‘Mock plants out of a Cole-pit near Neath in Glamorganshire’ (p. 695). For example, see Marjorie Swann, Curiosities and Texts: The Culture of Collecting in Early Modern England (Philadelphia, 2001). Herendeen argues that Camden, by focusing on antiquities and chorography, ‘decisively locates himself among the antiquarians, and … does more than any other writer in England to establish the firm distinction between the two’ (William Camden, p. 244). In separating himself from historians Camden is not, of course, separating himself from a national consciousness, and Herendeen points out that Camden’s imagined audience is the ‘civic-minded reader’ who can ‘recognize and value the symbolic, or semiotic significance of antiquities’ (p. 247). Graham Parry, The Trophies of Time: English Antiquarians of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1995), p. 3. Parry, Trophies of Time, writes that Camden was one of the first antiquarians to show an interest in medieval Latin literature (p. 46), and Piggott, ‘William Camden’, also remarks on this interest (pp. 203–4). Examples of Anglo-Latin verse are scattered throughout Britannia and the Remaines, and the anthology of poems found in the latter text begins with excerpts from Joseph of Exeter; William Camden, Remaines of a greater worke, concerning Britaine … (London, 1605); ESTC 4521. Herendeen argues that the anthology is the first time we see ‘an historical appreciation of British poetry  … in its own right, as an expression of its own cultural identity’, William Camden, p. 439.

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‘To the Roman skeleton Camden added English flesh and blood’.18 Some of the flesh came from uncovering the traces of that English (or British) history; some of it came from debunking parts of that history.19 Here, then, is where we come to Geoffrey of Monmouth, Arthur and Rome. For English antiquarians in a period of imperial ambitions and humanist preoccupations, the Romans were an obvious resource and model, but there was, at least potentially, a problem with viewing British history through the Roman lens – this was, after all, a history of defeat and occupation. Herendeen argues that Camden ‘presents the period of Roman hegemony as the glue that held the world in place for civilized growth’.20 Such a view could be seen to mute the more disquieting aspects of Romano-British history. There was also, however, an available indigenous history which allowed a connection to the imperial Roman paradigm and yet did not require a recollection of unchallenged Roman superiority. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century depiction of Britain’s foundation and early history would seem to offer the perfect solution to any Briton wanting Romanitas without its possible negative associations. The Historia regum Britannie’s greatest king is Arthur, and his greatest victory is the battle of Saussy, against the Romans. In fact from the moment Brutus sets foot on his new realm, Geoffrey undercuts the achievements of the continental Romans, descendants of Aeneas, while exalting the deeds of the ‘other’ Trojan refugees. This is, then, an account seemingly ripe for early modern exploitation. Certainly the English (as distinct from the Romano-British) past had been put to ideological use in Camden’s own day. Matthew Parker (1504-75), Archbishop of Canterbury, drew on Anglo-Saxon texts to assert a native history for his English church. For the 1566 printing of the Testimonie of Antiquitie, Parker commissioned special Old English type, and presented these homilies by Aelfric as

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Piggott, ‘William Camden’, p. 208. ‘English’ and ‘British’ are fraught terms, of course. I have preferred ‘British’ in this essay because I am working in the framework set down by the Brutus foundation story, and by the victories of the Britons as led by Arthur; this is the sense ‘Of or pertaining to the ancient Britons’, as recorded in the OED from the ninth century onwards. The later, imperial use first appears in the seventeenth century, and is also relevant for the latter part of the period I am discussing. As for ‘English’, in Arthur’s historical period it would of course have applied to the Germanic invaders, and later to the Saxon settlers/ conquerors; in Camden’s day, however, ‘English’ was the common term to denote ‘Of or belonging to England or its inhabitants’. There is the further complication of what, exactly, was understood to constitute England in geographical if not political terms: the first edition of Britannia has separate sections for Scotland and for Ireland and the British Isles (Wales was included in the main body of the county-by-county survey, as the territory of the Silures). Herendeen, William Camden, p. 262. Herendeen notes the restraint that characterizes Camden’s rhetorical treatment of Rome’s history, while also remarking on his Roman bias (pp. 256–64).

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evidence for the antiquity of English ecclesiastical practice.21 The lawyer and antiquary William Lambarde (1536–1601) collected Saxon laws and also made use of special type in printing them in his Archaionomia of 1568.22 But these efforts looked back to the Saxons, not the Britons. Any attempt to use the resources of the pre-Saxon past had to deal with the Roman fact. Geoffrey of Monmouth had, I think, a good bit of fun doing so; early modern antiquaries seem to have decided, though reluctantly, that he was having rather too much fun. Geoffrey consistently presents Roman and British history in such a way as to suggest British superiority, at least until the final Roman retreat from Britain. He opens his Historia with his famous bewilderment over having in his researches read next to nothing about ‘the kings who lived in Britain before the Incarnation of Christ, and nothing indeed about Arthur and all the others who followed on in turn after the Incarnation’.23 But then, he goes on, ‘Walter, archdeacon of Oxford, [gave me] a certain very ancient book in the British language, which continually and in order, in most beautiful language, displays the deeds of all these men, from Brutus, the first king of the Britons, up to Cadwallader, the son of Cadwallo.’24 We are most familiar today with that section of the Historia that deals 21

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A testimonie of antiquitie shewing the auncient fayth in the Church of England touching the sacrament of the body and bloude of the Lord here publikely preached, and also receaued in the Saxons tyme, aboue 600. yeares agoe (London, 1566); ESTC 159.5. I discuss Parker’s typographic programme in Printing the Middle Ages, pp. 25–30. Parker was also interested in the story of Joseph of Arimathea, another source for demonstrating that Britain had an indigenous (here British) Christian history; I would like to thank James Carley for making this point to me. William Lambarde, Archaionomia, siue de priscis anglorum legibus libri sermone Anglico, vetustate antiquissimo, aliquot abhinc seculis conscripti, atq[ue] nunc demum, magno iurisperitorum, & amantium antiquitatis omnium commodo, è tenebris in lucem vocati … (London, 1568); ESTC 15142. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia regum Britannie, in Geoffrey of Monmouth: The History of the Kings of Britain: An Edition and Translation of the De gestis Britonum, ed. Michael D. Reeve, trans. Neil Wright (Woodbridge, 2007), ch. 1, p. 5: ‘nichil de regibus qui ante incarnationem Christi inhabitauerant, nichil etiam de Arturo ceterisque compluribus qui post incarnationem successerunt repperissem’. I have indicated chapter numbers, as well as page numbers keyed to Reeve’s edition, for the convenience of readers who may be making use of older editions of the Historia. All translations from the Historia, as of all the Latin in this essay, are my own.   I should note that, despite Reeve’s argument for titling Geoffrey’s work De gestis Britonum, an argument based on the title’s occurrence in an important group of manuscripts and in Geoffrey’s own Vita Merlini (Reeve, Geoffrey of Monmouth, p. lix), I have continued to use the familiar Historia regum Britannie, in part because the early modern antiquarians with whom I am concerned tend to describe Geoffrey’s work, whether they are writing in Latin or in English, as a history. In the address to the reader at the opening of Britannia, for example, Camden calls Geoffrey’s work historia; William Camden, Britannia (1586), n.p. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 2, p. 5: ‘Walterus Oxenefordensis archidiaconus ... quendam Britannici sermonis librum uetustissimum qui a Bruto primo rege

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with the reign of King Arthur, and I will return to Arthur shortly. But Arthur’s Roman exploits in the Historia are simply the strongest expression of what is in fact a quite systematic shifting of British history away from any kind of subjugation, military or cultural, to Rome. The work opens by linking Britain to the Roman paradigm through its founding by the Trojan refugees led by Brutus, and Geoffrey then proceeds to write over, around and through the Romans. First there is the history of the pre-Roman kings, including Bladud, who built the town of Kaerbadum (Bath) and the baths there; Belinus, who built the beautifully straight stone roads running north–south, east–west, and diagonally across the island; and his brother Brennius, who with Belinus’s help sacked Rome and ruled in Italy until his death. Then follows the account of Roman incursions into Britain. Geoffrey is now dealing with history documented by Caesar, Gildas, Bede and ‘Nennius’ (the purported author of the Historia Britonum) and cannot, therefore, avoid some known battles. Nevertheless, he is more than willing to shift their emphasis, and even to change their results. For example, when Julius Caesar plans his second attack on the island, the British king Cassivelaunus sows the Thames with iron and lead stakes, to rip the bottoms out of Caesar’s ships. According to Bede, ‘When the Romans detected and avoided [the stakes] there, the barbarians, not able to resist the charge of the legions, hid themselves in the woods, from which they made repeated sorties and often seriously harmed the Romans.’25 Geoffrey’s version is a sharp contrast: But when [Caesar] sailed up the Thames towards the city he sought, his ships encountered and foundered upon the stakes that had been fixed there. As a result, thousands of soldiers were drowned as the river rushed in through the gaping holes in the ships and sucked them down. When Caesar realized what was happening, he furled his sails as best he could and struck swiftly for shore. Those few who had survived the great danger clambered with him onto the dry land. Cassivelaunus, who was watching this from the shore, rejoiced at the sinking of so many ships, though he was sorrowful at the fact that some men were safe.26

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Britonum usque ad Cadualadrum filium Caduallonis actus omnium continue et ex ordine perpulcris orationibus proponebat.’ Bede, Historia ecclesiastica, in Bede: Historical Works, ed. and trans. J. E. King (Cambridge, MA, 1930), I.ii, p. 24: ‘quod ubi a Romanis deprehensum ac vitatum est, barbari legionum impetum non ferentes, silvis sese obdidere; unde crebris eruptionibus Romanos graviter ac saepe lacerabant’. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 60, p. 73: ‘Nam dum per Tamensem praedictam ciuitatem peteret, naues eius, praefatis palis infixae, subitum passae sunt periculum; unde ad milia submergebantur milites dum ipsas foratas ingrediens fluuius absorberet. Cumque id Caesari compertum esset, uelis maxima ui retortis ad terram reuertere festinauit. Ipsi quoque qui in tanto periculo superfuerant uix elapsie cum illo tellurem scandunt. Hoc igitur Cassibellaunus ex ripa que aderat aspiciens gaudet propter periculum submersorum des tristatur ob salutem ceterorum.’

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If Bede gives us the British as, at best, barbarian guerilla fighters who manage to damage the Romans even after the failure of their ill-planned strategy, Geoffrey shows us Britons who are both cleverer and braver than the foolish and cowardly Romans. Geoffrey’s version of this incident is not completely without precedent. The account in the Historia Britonum does suggest the stakes worked, though it is less categorical about the results: ‘This invisible artifice was a great peril to the Roman soldiers, and they retreated without peace on that occasion.’27 The description which easily suggests the Roman survivors dragging themselves like half-drowned rats onto the riverbank is Geoffrey’s own. Caesar does eventually defeat Cassivelaunus in Geoffrey’s account, but only through the treachery of Androgeus, and even in this story of betrayal, the British are shown to be more formidable than the Romans. Once Cassivelaunus is defeated, Androgeus persuades Caesar to accept tribute and leave, and Geoffrey is careful to suggest that Caesar’s reaction is a cowardly one, as he is said to be ‘swayed by his fear of Androgeus’.28 Cassivelaunus is succeeded by Tenvantius – this is Tasciovanus, whose coin Camden unwittingly reproduced – who is in turn succeeded by his son Cunobelinus (Cymbeline). Cunobelinus also pays tribute, but Geoffrey suggests that the tribute is a result of Cymbeline’s fondness for the Romans: ‘Cymbeline … was a strong warrior whom Augustus Caesar had fostered and endowed with arms: he stood in such friendship to the Romans that, although he could well have withheld the tribute, he paid it to them freely.’29 And while Camden used Cunobelinus’s coinage at the start of an account of the British defeat at the hands of Claudius, Geoffrey recounts the same battle as a British near-victory. The Romans, he says, were about to be defeated (the verb he uses is dissipo, a strong word which suggests to demolish or overthrow), when one of their own dressed himself as a Briton and manoeuvred himself close enough to the British king Guiderius to kill him and then steal away, having won what Geoffrey calls a nefarious (nefanda) victory. The British cannot be defeated by the Romans in straightforward battle, in other words; as was the case with Caesar’s victory, the Britons are shown to be weak only if they betray themselves.

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Nennius, British History and the Welsh Annals, ed. and trans. John Morris (London, 1980), ch. 20, p. 64,: ‘Discrimen magnum fuit militibus Romanorum haec ars invisibilis et discesserunt sine pace in illa vice.’ Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 63, p. 81: ‘Timore igitur Androgei mitigatus’. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 64, p. 81: ‘miles strenuus, quem Augustus Caesar nutriuerat et armis decorauerat. Hic in tantam amiciciam Romanorum inciderat ut cum posset tributum eorum detinere gratis impendebat.’

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The end of the Roman occupation of Britain is dealt with relatively quickly and through a British lens; in fact, the lines between British and Roman occasionally blur. Constantine, son of the Roman Constantius and the British Helen, captures Rome and ‘obtain[s] the rule of the whole world’,30 and the Roman Maximianus is invited to rule Britain because he is a Briton on his father’s side. His ambition to create a second Britain in Gaul strips the island of many of its inhabitants, so that after his death, the surviving Britons turn to the Romans to protect them from the ravaging hordes of Scots, Picts, Norwegians, Danes, and others. Geoffrey does not hesitate to show the British in a poor light at this point. Both Gildas and Bede are scathing on the subject of the British appeals to the Romans for protection, and Geoffrey juxtaposes Guithelinus’s rousing speech urging self-reliance, with a rueful acknowledgement that ‘it is easier to make a hawk behave like a kite than it is to suddenly turn a peasant into a learned man’.31 Geoffrey relies heavily on Gildas for his account of the Roman retreat from Britain and its consequences, but even here he may be seen to be resisting the Roman glamour at least in part. Gildas tells of two Roman rescues, each in response to pitiful letters from the Britons. His Romans are awesome, hastening ‘like eagles’ to ‘fix in the necks of their foes the claws of their swords’; they are as irresistible as ‘a mountain torrent, augmented by tempest-swollen streams’.32 In Gildas’s account it is the Romans who urge the Britons to defend themselves. As for Geoffrey, he condenses the two Roman interventions into one, and uses no metaphors to describe his Romans. Guithelinus’s speech may well be undermined by the inability of the Britons to live up to it, but the effect of reducing the impact of the Romans, in tandem with the rhetorical fireworks offered by the feisty bishop, leaves rather more space for recovery than does Gildas’s inspired polemic. Thus as the Romans leave Britain forever, Geoffrey is poised for the history of his greatest British king, Arthur. The Arthuriad occupies something like a third of the whole of the Historia, and Arthur, as many critics have pointed out, is an imperial figure, conquering all of Britain, Norway and Gaul before moving on to the Romans. The Roman campaign is initiated by a demand for tribute which Arthur, tellingly, rejects on the grounds of the military conquests and ancestral connections outlined above. Geoffrey’s account contrasts the British forces with those of the Emperor Lucius, the latter a mixed

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Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 80, p. 99: ‘monarchiam totius mundi obtinuit’. Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 91, p. 113: ‘facilius est accipitrem ex miluo fieri quam ex rustico subitum eruditum’. Gildas, The Ruin of Britain and Other Works, ed. and trans. Michael Winterbottom (London, 1978), ch. 17, p. 94: ‘volatus ceu aquilarum … tandem terribiles inimicorum cervicibus infigunt mucronum ungues … ac si montanus torrens crebris tempestatum rivulis auctus’.

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group of Africans, Egyptians, Libyans and Romans. Arthur’s speech before the decisive Battle of Saussy hits several racialized notes: Doubtless, when they proposed to claim tribute from you and make you enslave yourselves, these Romans judged you to be like the indolent eastern races. Did they not know of the wars you waged against the Norwegians and the Danes and the leaders of the Gauls, freeing them from their shameful submission and subduing them to my power? We who were strong enough to win that mightier battle will surely prevail in this much less significant one over these demi-men (semiuiros).33

Lucius’s counter-speech is in fact rather noble and manly, and Geoffrey remarks that the Romans fight bravely, but Arthur once again harangues his troops: ‘What are you doing, men? Are you going to let those girlish men (muliebres) get away unhurt? Not one of them must escape alive! … Remember your liberty, which these half-men, who are so much weaker than you, want to take away!’34 Arthur himself kills the kings of Libya and Bithynia, though when Lucius dies, it is by an unknown hand. The Romans who surrender in the aftermath of the battle are characterized by Geoffrey as acting like women (muliebriter). Arthur sends Lucius’s body back to Rome as his ‘tribute’, but never enters the city himself, as the news reaches him of Mordred’s treachery back home. While Geoffrey’s Arthur does not become emperor of Rome, then, there is little doubt that he has soundly defeated the Romans. The contemptuous descriptions of the Roman army, when set against the rather more positive portrait of Lucius, suggest the balancing act in which Geoffrey is engaged, as he simultaneously denigrates the Romans while also supplying a worthy adversary for his great British king. The end of the Arthuriad is not quite the end of Geoffrey’s concern with Rome. The Historia’s denouement includes the arrival in Britain of Augustine, the Pope’s emissary, who is to convert the island. However, he discovers on his arrival that the Britons are already Christian (an argument Matthew Parker would make many centuries later), and have no interest in converting the Saxons, who, they point out with some asperity, are the enemies they have been fighting so persistently. But finally even Geoffrey can hold out no longer, and the Saxons at last consolidate their rule, with Cadwallader, last king of the Britons, obeying the Angelic Voice that tells 33

34

Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 169, p. 237: ‘Sane orientalium gentium segnitiam in uobis esse existimabant dum patriam uestram facere tributariam et uosmet ipsos subiugare affectarent. Numquid nouerunt quae bella Dacis atque Norguegensibus Gallorumque ducibus intulistis, quos meae subdidistis potestati et ab eorum pudendo dominio liberauistis? Qui igitur in grauiore decertatione ualuimus in hac leuiori sine dubio praeualebimus … semiuiros illos.’ Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia, ch. 174, p. 245: ‘Quid facitis, uiri? Vt quid muliebres permittitis illaesos abire? Ne abscedat ullus uiuus …. Mementote libertatis uestrae, quam semiuiri isti et uobis debiliores demere affectant.’

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him to journey to Rome. By this time Geoffrey has reached the end of the seventh century, and William Leckie notes that one of Geoffrey’s most audacious alterations to British history as it had been hitherto understood is in fact this postponement of the moment of final Saxon domination.35 I would add that the shift subtly alters the overall shape of the Historia, so that while it remains a narrative of conquest, these conquests are not shown to be swift or easy. By the time the Saxons finally conquer, the Romans in particular have faded well into the background, and the British, thanks in large part to the unequal narrative attention given to Arthur’s reign, have appeared more often in the role of formidable conquerors, than of pathetic victims. The taking up of Geoffrey’s version of British history is well known. While there were immediate dissenters – William of Newburgh and Gerald of Wales among them – there are hundreds of surviving manuscripts; a separate tradition for circulation and commentary upon the Prophetia Merlini; and of course the vernacular adaptations and expansions in the world of both chronicle and romance.36 The print tradition is more restrained: a Parisian edition in 1508, a second printing of this in 1517, and Hieronymus Commelin’s Heidelberg edition of 1587 represent the early scholarly tradition.37 Geoffrey does appear in other ways: explicitly, as in John Stow’s 1565 Summary of English Chronicles,38 for example, 35

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R. William Leckie, The Passage of Dominion: Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Periodization of Insular History in the Twelfth Century (Toronto, 1981). Leckie writes that before Geoffrey, the year 449, the arrival of Hengist and Horsa, had been treated as the dividing line between British and Saxon dominance, but Geoffrey offered an alternative vision in which history had a British emphasis well into the seventh century (pp. 3–9). The manuscript traditions are well documented in Julia Crick, The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth III: A Summary Catalogue of the Manuscripts (Cambridge, 1991) and The Historia regum Britannie of Geoffrey of Monmouth IV: Dissemination and Reception in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1989). See also the introduction to Reeve, Geoffrey of Monmouth, pp. vii–li. For the circulation of the Prophetia, see Caroline D. Eckhardt, The Prophetia Merlini of Geoffrey of Monmouth: A Fifteenth-Century Commentary (Cambridge, MA, 1982), and ‘Another Manuscript of the Commentary on Prophetia Merlini Attributed to Alain de Lille’, Manuscripta 29 (1985), 143-7. Britannie utriusque regum & principum origo & gesta insignia ab Galfrido Monemutensi ex antiquissimis Britannici sermonis monumentis in latinum sermonem traducta … (Paris, 1508); this edition was the work of Ivo Cavellatus, and was printed again with some small changes in 1517. The Commelin edition is Rerum Britannicarum, id est Angliae Scotiae uicinarumque insularum ac regionum, scriptores uetustiores ac praecipui (Heidelberg, 1587). For a recent account of these printings, see Reeve, Geoffrey of Monmouth, pp. lxii–lxiii. John Stow, A summarie of Englyshe chronicles conteynyng the true accompt of yeres, wherein euery kyng of this realme of England began theyr reigne, howe long they reigned: and what notable thynges hath bene doone durynge theyr reygnes … (London, 1565); ESTC 23319.

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or lurking, as in the 1508 abridgement by Ludovico Pontico Virunio, an English printing of which appeared in 1585, the year before the publication of Camden’s Britannia.39 And what of Camden himself? I have suggested that Camden’s encounter with the British past, constrained as it is by his Roman framework, nevertheless suggests he might feel the appeal of a position like Geoffrey’s. I do not intend to rehearse here all the arguments regarding Arthur’s historicity, arguments that began in the manuscript culture of the Middle Ages and accompanied the King into print, via William Caxton’s preface to his edition of Malory.40 Instead, I wish to sketch out the beginnings of a more particular response; that is, to Geoffrey’s particular vision of Romano-British history, and to Arthur’s part in it. As I have indicated, Geoffrey’s first contribution to the Roman story was the Trojan foundation myth, and by the time of Camden, antiquaries had been arguing about the story for some time. Despite the famous ‘battle of the books’, a struggle over the true nature of British history that began with Polydore Vergil’s debunking Anglica historia of 1534 and John Leland’s rebuttal in his Assertio inclytissimi Arturii of 1544, the Trojan story proved remarkably persistent.41 While it was frequently contested, it still had its champions into the eighteenth century.42 Aaron Thompson begins his 1718 English translation of the Historia by acknowledging, ‘I am not unsensible that I expose myself to the Censures of some Persons, by publishing this Translation of a Book, which they think had better been suppressed and buried in Oblivion, as being at present generally exploded for a groundless and fabulous Story, such as our modern Historians think

39

40

41

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Pontici Virunnii viri doctissimi Britannicae historiae libri sex magna et fide et diligentia conscripti: ad Britannici codicis fidem correcti, & ab infinitis mendis liberati … (London, 1585); ESTC 20109. There, the canny printer advanced the ‘but there was no King Arthur’ position, and then placed its refutation in the mouths of the noble gentlemen who were apparently hammering on his door demanding the book. This response included reference to the many remaining Arthurian relics that littered the late medieval and early modern landscape – an object-oriented defence which might seem to anticipate the obsessions of Camden and those like him. For an overview of medieval Arthurian relics, see Robert Rouse and Cory Rushton, The Medieval Quest for Arthur (Stroud, 2005). For a thorough discussion of the ‘battle of the books’, see James Carley, ‘Polydore Vergil and John Leland on King Arthur: The Battle of the Books’, in King Arthur: A Casebook, ed. Edward Donald Kennedy (New York, 1996), pp. 185–204. The competing texts are Polydore Vergil, Anglica historia … (Basel, 1534), and John Leland, Assertio inclytissimi Arturij Regis Britanniae … (London, 1544); ESTC 15440. See Ernest Jones, Geoffrey of Monmouth 1640–1800 (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1944). The legend was particularly popular in the Elizabethan period; see for example Helen Cooper’s remarks on the power of the myth as part of the Elizabethan nationalist agenda, The English Romance in Time: Transforming motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the death of Shakespeare (Oxford, 2004), p. 24.

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not worthy relating, or at least mention with Contempt.’ 43 He then spends over 100 pages in his preface on a defence of Geoffrey’s version of British history, and in particular of the Trojan myth.44 The grounds for the defence include the former high regard in which Geoffrey’s Historia was held, the ancient book in the British tongue which Geoffrey claimed to be translating (a claim Thompson believes), the appearance of the Trojan story in other sources, some predating the Historia, and linguistic and etymological arguments concerning the name ‘Britain’ and the relationship between the ancient Greek and British languages. But the nationalist appeal of the Trojan story is also clearly at play here. In a section in which he acknowledges doubts over similar foundation stories for other European nations, Thompson staunchly asserts the rights of the British to their story: ‘if other Nations for Want of Grounds to support their pretended Founders, are now ashamed of them; this is no Reason why the Britains should despise and destroy their most ancient Records, and give up what their Ancestors esteem’d the Honour of their Nation in a meer Compliment to Foreigners. And such were all the learned Men Camden mentions as Enemies to our British Founder.’45 Thompson’s epigraph, drawn from the preface to Livy’s history of Rome, Ab urbe condita, makes clear the desire to link into the Roman paradigm, for like Geoffrey, Livy began with a Trojan foundation story. 46 There are two important points to be made here. One is that the combination of epigraph and defence demonstrates that the problem of the Roman conquest I suggested at the outset remains. As Rosemary Sweet has pointed out, by the eighteenth century it would have required a particular perversity to stand against the common understanding of Rome as the pinnacle of civilization. And yet, as she also notes, British patriotism found itself necessarily somewhat ambivalent in the face of that recognition and the concomitant understanding of the ancient Britons as backward savages.47 The Brutus story allows the two threads to co-exist to some extent and

43 44

45 46

47

Aaron Thompson, The British History, Translated in English From the Latin of Jeffrey of Monmouth … (London, 1718), p. vi. In contrast to the time spent defending the Historia in general and the Brutus story in particular, Thompson spends less than a paragraph on Arthur, simply referring the reader to Leland’s Assertio (pp. lxvii–lxviii). The emphasis is the same as Polydore Vergil’s, though with opposite effect; he too spent most of his time on Brutus, in his case to dismiss the story as groundless. Thompson, The British History, pp. lvii–lviii. Thompson’s epigraph, ‘Datur hæc venia antiquitati, ut miscendo humana divinis, primordia urbium augustiora faciat’, appears on the title page of his translation; it is drawn from the chapter prologue to the first book of Livy’s work. The epigraph may be translated, ‘This latitude is given to antiquity, that in the mixing of human affairs with divine, it makes the first origins of cities more august.’ Rosemary Sweet, Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Hambledon and London, 2004), p. 156.

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from that fact comes, we may imagine, Thompson’s impulse to defend it, even after most serious historians had (however reluctantly) let it go. Even more interesting is the fact that it is the early eighteenth century before the whole of the Historia is widely available in English translation. While Geoffrey’s work had been quoted, and fought over, for centuries, most readers would have encountered it piecemeal, as channelled, with or without attribution, through the plethora of antiquarian texts and summary chronicles that delivered the Middle Ages to the early modern period. This practice of lifting pieces out of the whole – most notably the stories of Brutus and Arthur – disconnects those pieces from Geoffrey’s broader themes. The process began even before Geoffrey saw print (I am thinking here of the incorporation of parts of the Historia into other medieval Latin chronicles), but the proliferation of printed books accelerated and accentuated this fragmentation. It has been pointed out that the issues in the ‘battle of the books’ are in fact larger than Arthur: that what is at stake is the harnessing of Arthurian history to the Protestant cause, a move similar to the appropriation of Old English writing by Matthew Parker which I described earlier.48 It is all the more surprising, given this context, that Geoffrey’s apparently promising vision of Roman inferiority is allowed to fade, but I would argue that nationalism, paradoxically perhaps, contributed to that disappearance, precisely because of the desire to defend Arthur. Polydore Vergil had in fact spent hardly any time on Arthur himself, concentrating instead on Geoffrey’s overall methods and reliability, but Leland and other British antiquaries,49 objecting in particular to what they saw as a foreign, unpatriotic questioning of their greatest king, often tended to subordinate the larger questions of Geoffrey’s whole book to their defence of Arthur, as in Leland’s Assertio.50 These were not, in other words, wholesale attempts (as Vergil’s had been, or indeed as Thompson’s would be) to assess Geoffrey’s total enterprise. It was more important to argue that Arthur existed, than to support the earlier part of Geoffrey’s account.51 Yet even when sixteenth-century readers do take on

48

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50

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Allan Maccoll, ‘The Construction of England as a Protestant “British” Nation in the Sixteenth Century’, Renaissance Studies 18 (2004), 582–608 (p. 584); see also Carley, ‘Polydore Vergil’. Carley points out that while Leland himself credited Polydore Vergil’s intelligence and style, his followers often expended considerably more ‘fury’ on ‘Vergil’s supposed insult to the British past’; ‘Polydore Vergil’, p. 192. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, Thompson, too, argued that Vergil’s dismissal of the Historia ‘has been shewn to proceed from his Vanity in extolling his Countrymen the Romans, whom he would by no means allow the Britains to rival either in Valour or Nobility of Descent’; The British History, p. xi. Although Thompson, for his part, would make his defence of the Trojan foundation story in part because of his awareness that the debunking of that story was then used as a reason to reject the rest of the Historia as well.

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Geoffrey’s whole work, his particular treatment of Rome in that work is rarely preserved. John Stow’s Summarie, for example, necessarily covers much of the same Romano-British history as does Geoffrey, but without either magnifying British victories or dancing around British defeats. Belinus and Brennius do not join forces to sack Rome; Brennius is simply made captain of the Gauls when they ‘made their viage’ there.52 Stow does not tell the story of the stakes in the Thames at all, retaining only the Britons’ futile, forestbased activities. In Stow’s summary, Caesar conquers Cassivelaunus in a straightforward manner and accepts the submission and tribute of the Britons. He also, notably, builds many structures on the island, being credited with the castles of Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, Exeter, and the Tower of London, along with the towns of Salisbury and Chichester – this in marked contrast to Geoffrey’s persistent desire to remove from the Romans things they undoubtedly did build, like the road network and the (Roman) baths. Finally, Stow’s Caesar sails away ‘lyke a conquerour with a great numbre of prisoners’.53 Arthur’s appearance in Stow is much reduced from Geoffrey’s account, and while the battle against Lucius does appear, Stow expresses clear doubts about this famous victory: Arthure, when after many and dyuers battailes, he hadde sette his lande in some quietnes: he betooke the rule thereof to hys nephewe Mordred, [Note: Galfride. ] and with a chosen army (as saithe Galfride and other) sayled into Fraunce, where he dyd meruaylous thynges, and vanquyshed Lucius Hibertus, the Romain Capytayne, whyche thyng semeth not to agree with other histories.54

Richard Grafton, who claimed that Stow had more or less plagiarized his work,55 is simply silent on the matter in his Abridgement of the Chronicles of 1563: ‘Kyng Arthure, after he had brought this realme of Britayn into some good staye, he betooke the rule thereof vnto Mordrede hys nephew, and sayled hym selfe into Fraunce, where he dyd manye merueylous thynges.’56 Leland’s more exclusive focus on Arthur ends with a 52

53 54 55

56

Stow, Summarie, fol. 14r. The whole of this early section is very condensed; that is, one cannot assume Stow is singling out Geoffrey’s sentiments regarding the Romans. Whatever the cause, however, the effect is to give Stow’s brief account a flavour very different from Geoffrey’s. Stow, Summarie, fol. 19v. It might comfort British hearts somewhat to read that ‘shortely after he was slayne with bodkyns’. Stow, Summarie, fol. 31v. See Alfred Hiatt, ‘Stow, Grafton, and Fifteenth-Century Historiography’, in John Stow (1525–1605) and the Making of the English Past: Studies in Early Modern Culture and the History of the Book, ed. Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie (London, 2004), pp. 45–55. Richard Grafton, An abridgement of the chronicles of England, gathered by Richard Grafton, citizen of London (London, 1563?); ESTC 12148; fol. 21v.

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similar emphasis: after recounting Arthur’s famous twelve battles, he has the king move on to France, where he fights the monster of Mont Saint Michel, lives for nine years, and thence returns for the final battle with Mordred. The battle against the Romans does not appear in these (or many other) early modern versions of Arthurian history. The willingness of Leland, Grafton, Stow and others variously to entertain accounts of giants, monsters, and even Arthur himself would seem to suggest it is not merely sober academic suspicion that leads to this silence. Instead it is perhaps the case, for those desiring to preserve some historicity for Arthur, that the giant is ultimately more believable than a defeat which even the most partisan of Roman historians would have found it impossible not to mention. The tendency to reprint, borrow and compile that characterizes the many chronicles of the period (as illustrated by the Grafton–Stow dispute) makes it potentially dangerous to lift out a particular moment as I am doing here; what these works reflect in part is the emphases of their chosen sources. But this is nevertheless a process of choice – there are different versions of Romano-British and Arthurian history available, and whether by accident or design, by the time Camden comes to his encounters with the textual and material remains of the British past, he has various narratives available to him. And it is at this point that another aspect of Geoffrey’s movement into print culture becomes important. Camden’s antiquarian work is informed by his linguistic, as well as his material, interests. Thus Geoffrey’s foundation myth appears in the section which opens Britannia, a section that discusses the various etymologies advanced for the name ‘Britain’, and while Camden expresses a genteel scepticism about Geoffrey’s Trojan account, he is clear that the ‘comments of foreigners’ (exterorum commenta), as he labels other (often less flattering) etymologies, are also often ridiculous.57 He expresses reluctance to judge the story, proceeds to dismantle it, and yet at last stands back and suggests various ways in which it can be preserved (through a link to the Gauls; through a link forged by the Roman occupation). Thus for Camden, Geoffrey’s foundation story seems to retain an appeal, whatever its truth status.58 Thompson, who spent much of his defence pointing out that Camden had in fact been very careful about Geoffrey, began his translation by remarking, ‘we see in this History the Traces of venerable 57

58

Camden, Britannia (1586), p. 5. Camden casts his net widely, and labels both English and non-English theories as foolish, before setting out to explore the Brutus story. He ultimately suggests that the original name for the inhabitants of Britain was Cumero, and that for some reason they came to be called, either by themselves or by others, Britones (pp. 19–20). Herendeen suggests that Camden seems to have viewed the demythologizing process as ‘a dirty job that has to be done’, one which he approaches ‘tactfully’ as well as ‘firmly’; William Camden, p. 238.

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Antiquity, obscured indeed and perplexed with a Mixture of Fable, as are all the profane Histories of those ancient Times. But where we want sufficient Light to Distinguish Truth from Fiction, the Reverence due to one should make us bear with the other.’59 Both Camden and Thompson are treating the traces of the past – textual and also, in Camden’s case, linguistic, geographic, and physical – and these traces, however obscure, point to important truths. Camden’s section on the names of Britain ends, ‘Indeed, in considering these languages, we cannot but admire greatly and praise the divine goodness of the most high creator towards our Britannos … who, while they were conquered and triumphed over by the Romans, Saxons, and Normans, nevertheless up to this day preserve the name of their ancestors, and their original language.’60 Geoffrey’s Historia, particularly in its early sections, recognized the power of language as he built his history out of place names, telling his readers how Britain was named for Brutus; Cornwall for Corineus; Loegria, Albany, and Cambria for Brutus’s sons Locrinus, Albanectus, and Kamber; Bath for Bladud; and so on. His London had two (British) foundation stories to explain its names: it was both Brutus’s Troianovantum, and Lud’s Kaerlud. As for Camden, while he may not share the whole of Geoffrey’s vision of British history (nor his willingness to invent likely-sounding eponymous stories), he has a similar reliance on etymology.61 In the exploration of the names of Britain, Camden spends considerable time on the significance of ‘Brutus’, and this mode of investigation and presentation has implications for Camden’s presentation of Arthurian history as well. Arthur is written across the landscape in Britannia, as Camden mentions his associations with Camelford, Tintagel, Cadbury, Glastonbury, Badon, Winchester, Silchester, Dover, Arthur’s Seat (both of them), and Caerleon. It is in the section on this last city that Camden makes his only reference to Arthur’s Roman escapade, when (quoting Gerald of Wales), he writes ‘It was here that the ambassadors came from Rome to the famous court of that great King Arthur.’62 This example brings us to a central point: Camden, unlike Geoffrey, is not

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Thompson, The British History, p. ix. Camden, Britannia (1586), p. 19: ‘In hac verò linguarum consideratione non possumus non maximè admirari, & predicare diuinam summi creatoris benignitatem in nostros Britannos …, qui quamuis a Romanis, Saxonibus, & Normannis deuicti & triumphati fuerint: auitum tamen nomen, & primigeniam linguam … hactenus conseruarint.’ The dissection of words and names is, indeed, a preoccupation of many generations of antiquarians. In the seventeenth century, for example, Aylett Sammes (c. 1636-79) produced Britannia antiqua illustrata, or, The antiquities of ancient Britain, derived from the Phoenicians (London, 1676), arguing on philological grounds that Britain was first founded by the Phoenicians. Camden, Britannia (1586), p. 363: ‘Hic magni illius Arthuri famosam curiam Legati adiere Romani.’

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writing chronicle history.63 Geoffrey’s eponymous stories are set in the overall frame of his British history. Camden’s British history is set in the overall frame of his chorographical description of Britain, a history and a description drawn, as we have seen, not only out of old texts, but also out of old objects, languages, and names. The linguistic and archaeological emphases of Britannia, then, preserve pieces of the Trojan and Arthurian traditions, but these same emphases simultaneously pull those pieces apart, separating them from each other and from the thematic coherences of Geoffrey’s vision in order to deploy them across Camden’s chorographical pages. This dispersal means that what in Geoffrey was a single, unified vision – a history of the Britons which suggested the true descendants of Aeneas were to be found in England, matched to a proof of that superior descent through the great British king who subdued the Romans – is split into three parts: the Trojan foundation story, the Romano-British history, and the Arthurian history. The first was frequently repeated but (pace Thompson) viewed with increasing scepticism; the second could be substantiated, though Geoffrey’s improbably pusillanimous Romans would have been rather difficult to swallow; and the third offered a strong British hero-king who perhaps belonged with Brutus as both desirable and, alas, mythical. John Speed (1551/52–1629) makes clear the problems raised for early modern antiquarians by the linkages forged by Geoffrey. In his History of Great Britaine (1611), Speed spends considerably more time on the Romans than did some of the other antiquaries I have dealt with thus far, and his account of the Roman defeat of the Britons leaves no room for national pride. He knows about British writers who ‘doe varie from Caesar in relating these his proceedings, and speake more honourably of their owne resistance then himselfe hath set downe’,64 and he is aware that Caesar was likely to have cast his own exploits in the most favourable light possible. Nevertheless, he chooses a version of Romano-British history which paints the British as showing almost no resistance at all. In his account of the stakes in the Thames, for example, Caesar not only avoids the stakes, but seems to find the Britons unworthy even as opponents: ‘All which notwithstanding, the Romans passed with the repulse of their enemies, and Caesar, who grew now to the height of his honour,

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A point Herendeen makes frequently, and one which he ties to the success and longevity of Britannia; for example, he connects Camden’s chorography with the taste for popular atlases, and argues that ‘the Britannia’s antiquarian enterprise thus conceived is palpably bourgeois and carries with it political and social values that inhere in that essentially commercial social stratum. Its chorographic, guidebook design invites a reader with a degree of mobility; its variety of methods and media, however much based on scholarly premises, appeals to the amateur’; William Camden, p. 267. John Speed, The history of Great Britaine under the conquests of ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans... (London, 1611); ESTC 23045, p. 187.

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marched further into the Continent.’65 It is not surprising, then, that Speed doubts Arthur’s Roman exploits; what is interesting is his desire to strip details like this from Arthur’s story in order to preserve some possibility of Arthur’s historicity. Expressing his doubts about many of Arthur’s more famous exploits, he writes: This hurt therefore those ouer-zealous Monkes haue done to the Subiect whereof they wrote, that through an ouer-much conceited opinion, with the vertue and fame of the person, they haue mingled such matters as may iustly be reiected, whereby their worths are not only depriued of their trulydeserued honours, but which more is, euen their persons suspected to be nought else but fictions, as Hercules in Ouid, or Hector in Homer. And so hath Geffrey done by this most worthy Prince Arthur, whose warres against the Saxons for defense of this Iland, he hath enlarged with the Conquests of other Kingdomes and Countries, wherein he neuer came: which hath made not onely his Acts to be doubted of, but euen his person to bee called in question, whether any such Arthur euer ruled in Britaine.66

Thus far Speed falls in line with such medieval historians as William of Malmesbury, who (even before Geoffrey’s inventions) wrote that Arthur deserved to be written about in true histories, rather than dreamed about in lying fables.67 But then Speed turns to the Roman wars story, and here adds something surprising. Where other antiquaries had left the story aside (Grafton) or expressed doubts (Stow), Speed recounts at least some of it as fact. He does so, however, in a decidedly non-chauvinist spirit, recounting Arthur’s rejection of the request for tribute in order to demonstrate that Arthur was, in fact, really a Roman: ‘Whereby is manifest his bloud was from the Romans. Let not therefore any of our Britaines take exceptions against me for this.’68 Speed did throw a sop to any potentially outraged Britons. Each of the sections for British (and Roman) rulers in his History opens with illustrations of these rulers’ coins and/or shields. Some of these spaces for pictures are left blank, but both Arthur and his father Uther have at least some of these visual proofs filled in. Speed’s illustrations, then, add support for Arthur’s historicity, as the suggestion of actual artefactual and heraldic survivals underlines visually Speed’s tilt towards sober, demonstrable history (however much of a fiction these arms actually are). Speed’s illustrations return us to the role of illustrations in antiquarian texts. The increasingly visual response to the British past that I outlined at 65 66 67

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Speed, History of Great Britaine, p. 186. Speed, History of Great Britaine, p. 317. William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum / The History of the English Kings, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors; completed by R. M. Thomson and Michael Winterbottom, 2 vols (Oxford, 1998), i.8.2, vol. I, p. 26: ‘dignus plane quem non fallaces somniarent fabulae sed ueraces praedicarent historiae’. Speed, History of Great Britaine, p. 317.

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the beginning of this essay further underlined the movement of Arthur – whether Geoffrey’s or anyone else’s – from the world of national history into the realm of curiosity and myth. Edmund Gibson’s 1695 revision and expansion of Britannia includes among its new materials an illustration and discussion of a Celtic disc recently unearthed at Ballyshannon. The story of how it came to be discovered is recounted: ‘The late Lord Bishop of Derry, …, happening to be at dinner, …, there came in an Irish Harper, and sung an old Song to his Harp. … his Lordship [not] understanding any thing of Irish, … [was] at a loss to know what the Song meant. But the Herdsman being called in, they found by him the substance of it to be this, That in such a place (naming the very spot) a man of a gygantick stature lay buried, and that over his breast and back there were plates of pure gold.’ The listeners go to where the bard’s song has directed them and unearth the disc, and the account continues, ‘The passage is the more remarkable, because it comes pretty near the manner of discovering King Arthur’s body, by the directions of a British Bard.’69 The reference is of course to the story first told in the twelfth century by Gerald of Wales, and it brings us back to the first illustration in Camden’s first Britannia, of the inscription in ‘barbaric’ lettering on the Glastonbury Cross. This late addition, slotted into the capacious framework provided by Camden, demonstrates that once antiquarianism, chorography and history combine in their characteristic early modern stew, many figures of the past are on their way to becoming footnotes, illustrations, and curiosities – and thus a different generation of Britons achieves some kind of control over the history of the island, Roman and British alike.

69

Camden, Britain (1695), col. 1022.

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VI

Arthurian Texts in their Historical and Social Context Norris J. Lacy The invitation to present a plenary lecture at the congress of the International Arthurian Society was naturally a distinct honour, but I hesitated before accepting.1 I feared that the conference theme that I was invited to discuss (and that constitutes the title of the present essay) might easily prove either too simple or too difficult. On the one hand, if we simply seek correspondences between specific literary artefacts and historical or cultural forces, we will undoubtedly find a great many, but that, by itself, will tell us little that was not already self-evident. Moreover, some of the connections may well be tenuous and a matter of coincidence rather than cause and effect. On the other hand, a serious effort to identify and analyse fundamental causal relationships on a large scale would be both a delicate and a huge undertaking, the subject for a very long book rather than a plenary paper or a published essay. In addition, if we can discern, sometimes with relative ease, the influence of history on literature, influence in the opposite direction is ordinarily far more difficult to trace. In principle, we would all doubtless acknowledge that literature can influence history and social structures, but the instances of such phenomena are less easy to identify than are influences in the opposite direction: few texts, Arthurian or other, provoke a reaction such as the one unleashed, for example, by Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses – and few too are the Arthurian (or other) scholars who, I imagine, would welcome that particular reaction. In the pages to follow, I shall do my best to deal with all three elements of my title – texts, history, and society – and to identify and discuss 1

The occasion was the triennial congress of the IAS, held at the Université de Rennes II (Rennes, France) in July 2008. The present article remains relatively close to the form in which the lecture was presented; in addition to normal editorial revision, I have deleted one section and have added a small amount of material. In addition, I have chosen to retain some, though by no means all, of the stylistic informality of the plenary presentation.

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specific influences. However, instead of limiting myself to a particular group of texts or even a limited period, I propose to cast a much broader net. I have chosen to offer an unsystematic excursion through Arthurian chronicle and literary history extending, though with very large gaps, from the twelfth century to the present. I will begin, however, at what may seem a rather odd place: an Arthurian text by John Steinbeck.

Introduction: Steinbeck and modernized Malory In the late 1950s Steinbeck set out to write a modernized Malory. He intended to reduce the length of the original and write in a language that was not archaic, perhaps even writing, he suggested, ‘in American’.2 He would give us Malory in a form intelligible to readers, not only because the language would be updated, but because no one – he said – had really tried by that time to understand what Malory was about and how the texts work. In fact, in a letter dated 11 July 1958 he asked, ‘why has nobody read this man? Increasingly I come to believe that the scholars have not read him at all – at least not with the intention of understanding what Malory meant and what he conveyed to his listeners.’3 For a time, Steinbeck resolutely tugged and poked at Malory, producing finally a text titled The Acts of King Arthur and his Noble Knights (published posthumously in 1976). The work was unfinished, or at least not finished as he had envisioned it. It ends when Lancelot and Guinevere kiss. Steinbeck, distinguished author and Nobel laureate that he was, obviously found himself bested by his enterprise. Even a cursory reading of the work suggests why and where something may have gone awry. Beginning by modernizing Malory, he soon started to depart, in spirit and sometimes in fact, from his source, indulging in humour where Malory had not, modifying characters, offering digressions here and there, and veering into sentimentality, sometimes in odd places. More importantly, Steinbeck became progressively more frustrated and even cynical in his depiction of chivalry, of love, and, indeed, of the Arthurian ethos in general: Arthur’s is a realm that is doomed to fail and impossible to redeem. As Raymond Thompson puts it, in Steinbeck’s text, ‘heroic effort … proves futile’.4 In the letter cited above, Steinbeck went on to write, ‘When Malory tries to throw everything into one basket – action and genealogy, past and future, personality and customs, I have to kind of sort it out in so far as I

2 3 4

J. Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights (New York, 1976), p. 325. Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur, p. 323. R. H. Thompson, The Return from Avalon: A Study of the Arthurian Legend in Modern Fiction (Westport, CT, 1985), p. 141.

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am able.’5 That sounds very much like a determination to undo interlace and some of the textual redundancies from his sources – and this even though Malory had already undone a good deal of the interlace used to such advantage in his French sources. Steinbeck himself acknowledged it: ‘Malory removed some of the repetition from the Frensshe books. I find it necessary to remove most of the repetition from Malory.’6 Moreover, Steinbeck was particularly preoccupied with temporal dislocations: he wrote that ‘this going back and forth in time may have to be worked on’, and as an example he suggested that in Malory’s age, readers would doubtless accept the fact that Elaine is identified as the mother of Gawain [sic]7 even though Gawain has yet to be born. That, he says, ‘might be a little confusing to a modern reader’.8 Ultimately, Malory refused to become what Steinbeck wanted or needed him to be. Even with considerable scholarly advice and direction (ably provided by one of the giants in our field, Eugène Vinaver), Steinbeck’s text insisted on having its own way, which is of course what fictional texts always do. The cultural matrix out of which Steinbeck’s work grew – or, more often, declined to grow – was far removed from that of Malory’s time. If we no longer read Malory as Steinbeck did, that is further evidence of the cultural divide not only separating the fifteenth century from the twentieth, but separating also 1958 from 2008. However, Steinbeck very nicely summarized one of the ironic realities of his project. It had become more complex than he had anticipated, yet he explained that ‘It is the problem of simple things, some of them not understood in our time and perhaps some of them not understandable in our time.’9

Medieval Chroniclers and Kings Let us now retreat some 800 years, to the 1130s, with Geoffrey of Monmouth and other chroniclers. In dealing with chronicles, I am drawing considerably on the important book by Martin Aurell, La Légende du roi Arthur, 550–1250. As Aurell points out, when Geoffrey describes Arthur as the king of the Britons or Bretons, he makes it clear that, after a time, the term means guallenses: Welsh.10 Geoffrey also expresses admiration for the Bretons (in this case the Armoricans or their descendants). None of this is particularly surprising, since Geoffrey himself was 5 6 7 8 9 10

Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur, p. 321. Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur, p. 321. Curiously, Steinbeck wrote ‘Gawain’ rather than the expected ‘Galahad’, the latter’s mother – but not Gawain’s – being frequently identified as Elaine. Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur, p. 321. Steinbeck, The Acts of King Arthur, p. 323 (my emphasis). Martin Aurell, La Légende du roi Arthur, 550–1250 (Paris, 2007), p. 123.

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presumably either Welsh or Breton. In any event, Aurell points out that Arthur’s grandfather, Constantine, was Breton, and he emphasizes the contributions of the Bretons to the struggle against the Saxons. Aurell summarizes, concerning Geoffrey: ‘Son patriotisme breton, et par voie de conséquence, gallois, voire cornouaillais ou armoricain, ne fait pas de doubt’ [his Breton and therefore Welsh (that is, Cornish or Armorican) patriotism cannot be in doubt].11 Despite the influence and popularity of Geoffrey’s chronicle, he had of course a great many detractors. Among them was William of Newburgh, whose anti-Welsh sentiments were strong enough to justify Aurell’s characterization of them as xenophobic.12 A good many other chroniclers and critics took issue with Geoffrey’s interpretations, and although some objections arose over the verisimilitude (or lack of it) of parts of his Historia, there were often lurking behind those objections clear nationalist or regional loyalties from which easily sprang the enmity that could set Welsh against Saxon or Norman, Norman against insular Briton, and so on. A good many Scottish chroniclers in particular took umbrage at Geoffrey’s representation of Arthur as an enemy of the Scots. For a number of them, though not all, Arthur represented a clear threat from the south. As Karl Heinz Göller puts it, ‘To Scottish nationalists Arthur was the embodiment of every English ruler who had hoped to conquer Scotland; to the minority with British sympathies, however, he was a symbol of the reconciliation and union of all races of the island.’13 Grounds for the former, anti-English, view could be multiple, but one of the telling examples comes from John of Fordun’s Scotichronicon (dating from the fourteenth century), and it is a point made repeatedly by others. According to John, Arthur was an admirable leader but not a legitimate king, owing to the circumstances of his conception and birth. On the other hand, Uter and Igerne did have a legitimate child, Anna, and only she could legally have taken the throne.14 And since she did not do so, the natural succession should have been to one of the two children of Anna and Loth: Gawain and Modred. Given the question of Arthur’s legitimacy, it is not surprising that Modred, at that time, was often presented in a more favourable light in Scotland than in some other regions and periods. However, he was to be painted more darkly again later, once the legitimacy of current (and past) rulers was no longer in doubt.

11 12 13

14

Aurell, La Légende, p. 113. Aurell, La Légende, p. 123. K. H. Göller, ‘King Arthur in the Scottish Chronicles’, trans. E. D. Kennedy, in King Arthur and the Scottish Chroniclers, ed. E. D. Kennedy (New York, 1996), pp. 173–84 (173). Göller, ‘King Arthur’, p. 175.

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My observations about the political ramifications of Geoffrey’s and other chronicles require a consideration of the connection of the Plantagenets (the Angevins) to Arthur.15 We may begin with a ceremony reconfirming the rule of Henry I. Martin Aurell suggests that details of the ceremony were inspired by Geoffrey’s descriptions of Caerleon, and concludes that section of his book with a statement concerning the reciprocal influence of text on society and of society or history on text. In Henry’s ceremony, he notes, ‘une création littéraire aurait ainsi influencé les pratiques du pouvoir royal, et non pas l’inverse’ [a literary creation doubtless influenced the practices of royal power, rather than the opposite].16 Indeed, in the relationship of an Arthurian text to its context, influence is sometimes, though by no means invariably, reciprocal: the literary work reflects its culture (though occasionally negatively by reacting against cultural currents) and may also, to a degree, reshape that culture in the process. However, the influence of texts on history, though evident in many instances, may elsewhere be negligible, or it may be so subtle and sometimes gradual as to be imperceptible. Contrary to some common assumptions, there is not a great deal to say of Henry II’s connection with Arthur. Of course he was, if Giraldus Cambrensis is to be believed, responsible for revealing the location of Arthur’s mortal remains, which were conveniently disinterred in 1190 or 1191 – after Henry’s death. Henry’s motives in regard to the Arthurian burial are unknown, but some have speculated that he merely wanted to prove that Arthur was dead. In any case, he seems to have made no particular effort to establish a link between himself and Arthur, and Aurell concludes emphatically that contemporary mentions of Arthur in connection with Henry II are very few and that there is no evidence that Henry used the Arthurian legend for propaganda purposes.17 But if Henry II and Arthur were no more than casual acquaintances, the same cannot be said of Henry’s successor, Richard the Lionheart, or of his successor John. In popular lore of the time, both of them were associated with Arthur, often claimed as his actual descendants, and it is an association that both of them appear to have welcomed and even cultivated aggressively. For Richard there was at least one direct connection. His sister Joanna had been imprisoned by Tancred of Lecce. That and other acts by both men created a considerably less than cordial relationship between the two. (One such act, in October 1190, was Richard’s pillaging and burning of Messina, an event that appears to have displeased not only 15

16 17

It is in regard to the Angevins that I depend most on Aurell’s invaluable treatment. I have tried to make my debt apparent by my specific citations of his work, but in fact my debt goes beyond such citations. His book was both timely and outstanding, and I am pleased to record here the uses I have made of his work. Aurell, La Légende, p. 141. See Aurell, La Légende, esp. pp. 186–209.

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Tancred but also, and understandably, a good many residents of Messina.) Eventually, though, there was a truce, Joanna was released, and the men exchanged gifts. My reason for recounting this is that the gift offered by Richard to Tancred was – as attested by Benedict of Peterborough and others – Caliburn, that is, Excalibur, ‘the sword of Arthur, former noble King of England’. There are a couple of intriguing elements here. First, the description suggests that Richard was completing the metamorphosis of Arthur King of the Britons into Arthur King of England. Second, there is the identity of the sword itself, important because Tancred and presumably Richard accepted it as authentic. Unsurprisingly, there has been no dearth of Arthurian relics.18 We should note in particular that when Richard’s brother John succeeded to the throne, his regalia included the sword of Tristan. Later the Welsh presented Arthur’s crown to Edward I. And Gawain’s skull could be seen in Dover. There is much more to say about relics, but for the present I will limit myself to the Grail, and about it I shall have but a single comment: the Grail question is too complicated to discuss in detail in the present space, and there are just too many Grails to deal with. There are also too many monarchs to treat adequately or even minimally in this essay: Edward I, Edward III, Henry VIII, and others are important figures for the present subject, but they have been studied by other scholars and will receive additional attention in future articles and books. In any event, the point is that Arthuriana were regularly co-opted for political purposes, whether we are speaking of Britons, Welsh, Scots, or others. Nationalist interests compounded by personal ambitions led often to the cultivation of the Arthurian legend. Territorial disputes, tensions related to royal succession, military and political rivalries, and other forces meant that Arthur, or at least an Arthur, was needed, and when one is needed, one can always be found. And of course each age makes for itself the particular Arthur it needs and wants. And in England, as James P. Carley observes, Arthur was for a very long time more prominent as a (presumably) historical personage than as a legend or figure of fiction.19 Despite my slightly sceptical assumptions about the effect of Arthurian texts on society and history, there are undeniable and major influences in certain instances. There are times when the Arthurian legend, and especially courtly/chivalric romance, may have had a very specific social function. In a recent essay, Will Hasty suggests that the tendency of such romance to displace armed aggression from court and contribute to 18 19

See E. M. R. Ditmas, ‘The Cult of Arthurian Relics’, Folklore 75:1 (Spring 1964), 19–33; also Aurell, La Légende, pp. 199–201. J. Carley, ‘Glastonbury, the Grail-Bearer and the Sixteenth-Century Antiquaries’, in The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur, ed. N. J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 156–72 (157).

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what he calls ‘aggression management’ serves a double purpose: it assists in fostering peace at court while creating a context in which preparation for martial enterprises such as the Crusades can be better organized and managed.20

Patronage and Grails My subject requires some information, however cursory, about patronage. C. Stephen Jaeger has argued that ‘patrons did not make courtly romance; courtly romance made patrons’.21 Jaeger suggests that an author would certainly have mentioned a patron had he had one. He illustrates the point by citing Layamon, who wrote that Wace presented his Roman de Brut to Eleanor of Aquitaine. Had she been his patron, surely he would have mentioned her, Jaeger argues, citing as evidence the fact that Henry II asked Wace to write what would become the Roman de Rou. In the introductory section of the work, Wace appropriately praised Henry (and Eleanor) for their generosity and hoped for reward – which he received; here, says Jaeger, ‘patronage and gifts followed literary success’.22 Implied in his statement is the fact that the relationship of patrons and authors of romance was often symbiotic. Whereas a writer whose economic situation was fragile might accept any literary commission available, the successful author might well find his services actively solicited by a noble. The notion of patronage leads us to a brief consideration of the Valois Dukes of Burgundy. The dukes were hugely prosperous despite the strains of war, and it was a prosperity made possible by their astute abstention from some of the most costly battles of the Hundred Years War. Related to that was their political power and influence, significantly increased by the weakness of the French monarchy. They, and particularly Philippe le Bon (1396–1467; duke from 1419), were avid patrons of the arts. In addition to being enthusiastic collectors, they also commissioned a good many works, leaving eventually a library of some 900 volumes. The works added to the Burgundian library between the inventory of 1420 and that of 1467 included, among the Arthurian titles, Tristan, Lancelot du Lac, Erec, Chevalier au lion, Conte de la Charrette, Cligès, Meraugis de Portlesguez, Merlin, Quete du Saint Graal, and a number of others.23 20

21 22 23

W. Hasty, ‘Bounds of Imagination: Grail Questing and Chivalric Colonizing in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival’, in The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur, ed. N. J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 48–61 (48–9). C. S. Jaeger, ‘Patrons and the Beginnings of Courtly Romance’, in The Medieval Opus, ed. D. Kelly (Amsterdam, 1996), pp. 45–58 (46). Jaeger, ‘Patrons’, pp. 56–7. See G. Doutrepont, La Littérature française à la cour des ducs de Bourgogne (Paris, 1909), p. 484.

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We must be grateful that the dukes were inveterate bibliophiles. We might have expected them to curtail these activities in times of war, but the conflict did not impoverish them or devastate their lands, as happened in and around Paris and elsewhere. Instead, they continued to expand their land holdings but also continued buying, restoring, and commissioning manuscripts. Nearly fifty years ago David Daiches observed that it is in times of social stress and instability that we see the most striking innovations in literary approach, that is, in the selection of material and the means of expressing it.24 His theory may well explain in part the radical linguistic and formal invention that is François Villon’s work in Paris, while Burgundian tastes ran to the collection, preservation, and updating of literature – but not so much to literary experimentation and technical innovation. The Crusades obviously contributed in important ways to the lionization, whether justified or not, of some literary patrons. And here I turn to Chrétien de Troyes. Martín de Riquer identified probable, or at least possible, connections between Chrétien’s Perceval and the unfortunate Crusade adventures of his patron, Philippe de Flandre.25 In a recent article Antonio Furtado picks up the thread and adds some intriguing speculation to the subject.26 He suggests ‘that the marvelous objects that dominate the narrative – the Bleeding Lance and the Grail – as well as several of its characters and episodes, were modeled to a significant extent on elements extracted from the history of the First Crusade, centered on the rise and fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem’.27 He argues that Philippe served as a model for Perceval. He also identifies, as possible models available to Chrétien, a number of Crusade events, personages, and objects, including, perhaps unsurprisingly, the Sacro Catino (now in Genoa) as a likely inspiration for the Grail. (That was before the vessel, long thought to be carved from a single gigantic emerald, broke and was revealed to be merely a simple, albeit attractive, green glass bowl.) Furtado’s suggestions, which go far beyond what I am pointing out here, are intriguing and are recommended as an important effort to trace connections among literary texts, patrons, and historical events. The practice of tracking possible historical models for literary figures is always tempting but also hazardous. An earlier example of such speculation, now thoroughly discredited, dates from the very early twentieth 24 25 26

27

D. Daiches, The Novel and the Modern World (Chicago, 1960), esp. p. 98. El Cuento del Grial de Chrétien de Troyes y sus Continuaciones, trans. M. de Riquer and I. de Riquer (Madrid, 1989), p. xix. A. Furtado, ‘The Crusaders’ Grail’, in The Grail, the Quest and the World of Arthur, ed. N. J. Lacy (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 28–47. I should add that Furtado is admirably scrupulous in acknowledging the necessarily speculative nature of his conclusions thus far. Furtado, ‘Crusaders’ Grail’, p. 29.

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century, when Joseph S. Tunison suggested that Galahad was ‘invented’ to represent Young Henry, son of Henry II.28 (In this instance, as Helen Nicholson points out,29 Tunison’s conclusion involves the assumption that Walter Map was the author of the Queste del saint Graal, the impossibility of which authorship we now recognize.) But Nicholson herself, in Love, War, and the Grail, offers elaborate speculation about possible historical underpinnings of Wolfram’s Parzival, involving among other subjects the Templars. Her point of departure is the reasonable contention that Wolfram’s audience would certainly have associated the Grail Castle with Jerusalem.30 She then suggests that the king of that castle might well represent the emperor, most likely Otto of Brunswick. However, matters begin to get more complicated when she suggests that Parzival himself might instead have been ‘intended as Otto’.31 Her evidence includes the facts that, ‘just as Parzivâl’s connection with the Grâl Castle is through his mother, so Otto’s connection with Jerusalem was through his mother, Matilda …’.32 These connections, though factually accurate, may be tenuous, as is her argument for a connection between Parzival and Otto based on the fact that both had crusading fathers.33 Moreover, the uncle– nephew relationship of Anfortas and Parzival parallels that of Richard the Lionheart to Otto; yet, that means that if Parzival himself represents Otto, Wolfram would have had to consider Richard the Lionheart to be the ‘true heir to the throne of Jerusalem’.34 And another piece of Nicholson’s evidence is that both Parzival and Otto had fathers who married a second time, a point that leaves me unconvinced. I have no desire to be dismissive of Nicholson’s scholarship, but I offer this example, along with Furtado’s – and we could add others, such as possible connections between Richard and the Lanzelet of Ulrich35 – in order to underline differing approaches to the links between historical biography and Arthurian fiction, and also in order to suggest the attendant perils of some of them.

Arthurian Eclipse and Revival It used to be believed by many (and perhaps still is) that the High Renaissance and the Enlightenment – both, of course, forces for good in their own way – did their best to kill Arthur off. We may recall that Montaigne 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

J. S. Tunison, The Graal Problem from Walter Map to Richard Wagner (Cincinnati, 1904). H. Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail (Leiden, 2001), p. 116. Nicholson, Love, pp. 110, 123. Nicholson, Love, p. 130. Nicholson, Love, p. 126. Nicholson, Love, p. 129. Nicholson, Love, p. 130. Aurell, La Légende, p. 240.

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expressed his disdain for Arthurian works by describing them as ‘trifles,’ of interest only as stories for children. And yet, even as new Arthurian works were created, older romances continued to be updated, printed, and obviously read through much of the sixteenth century. As Jane Taylor notes in a forthcoming article, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the ‘social language of romance … is appropriated, as a rhetorical and ideological enterprise, to affirm the nostalgic values assigned to Arthurian romance’.36 Such nostalgia, a clear example of the transformation of literature by cultural forces, is attributable to a number of factors, including the social and cultural climate of the period (wars, social instability, ambiguous views of both past and present, etc.), but we cannot neglect the growth of readership both in pure numbers and across class lines. If the sixteenth century retained its taste for things Arthurian (pace Montaigne and some others), the seventeenth century, especially but not exclusively in France, can legitimately be considered to mark the Arthurian eclipse. Yet even that century produced works of social and political significance if not of literary distinction. For example, Marc de Vulson took Arthurian themes very seriously, at least for their pedagogical value: he composed Le Vray Théâtre d’honneur et de chevalerie, ou le miroir héroïque de la noblesse and offered it as a book of instruction – or a mirror for princes – for the young Louis XIV.37 On the other hand, parts of the legend, and especially the character of Merlin, did largely become material for nursery rhymes, silly songs, and children’s stories. It is instructive to read what was written about romances in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An example, from 1715, is offered by Huetius in The History of Romances (‘made English’ by Stephen Lewis).38 He writes that ‘Taliessin, who lived about the Middle of the Sixth Age, under that King Arthur so famous in Romances; and Melkin, who was somewhat younger, writ the History of England, his Country, of King Arthur, and the Round Table’, 39 and he suggests that they are filled with fables, by which he means ‘a mass of lies grosly conceived’. Furthermore he writes that French, German, and English romances, and all the Fables of the North, are the Fruits of those Countries, and not imported from Abroad: That they never had other Originals than the Histories stuffed with Falsities, 36 37 38

39

J. H. M. Taylor, ‘ “Hungrie Shadows”: Pierre Sala and his Yvain’, forthcoming in Arthuriana. M. de Vulson, Le Vray Théâtre d’honneur et de chevalerie, ou le miroir héroïque de la noblesse (Paris, 1648). The History of Romances: an Enquiry into their Original; Instructions for Composing them; An Account of the most Eminent Authors; With Characters, and Curious Observations upon the Best Performances of that Kind, written in Latin by Huetius; Made English by Mr. Stephen Lewis (London, 1715). Huetius, History of Romances, p. 101.

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and made in Obscure Ignorant Times, when there was neither Industry nor Curiosity to discover the Truth of Things, nor Art to describe it, if ’twas found; [and] these Histories have been well received by the Unpolished and Half-barbarous People.40

Elsewhere in his pages, Huetius acknowledges that romances may be accused of encouraging not only ignorance but much more: ‘They exhaust our Devotion, and inspire us with Irregular Passions, and corrupt our Manners.’41 The Arthurian eclipse was followed, naturally, by the Arthurian revival. The revival did not of course burst into full bloom overnight, as witness the preface to the 1816 edition of Malory (or rather, the 1816 flawed reprint of Caxton). That preface sounds a bit like Huetius, quoted above. It suggests that in the Middle Ages, in ‘the absence of literature and literary taste, romances were very generally read, and served to fill up the hours that are now devoted either to study, or to more refined amusements’.42 It is a long way from that view in 1816 to the enthusiasm evident in so many nineteenth-century Arthurian creations in literature, the visual arts, and other forms. To talk about the social and historical changes that both fostered and reflected this interest would require a detailed discussion – impracticable in the present space – of the birth and development of Romanticism, involving efforts to recover (or at least exploit) the past as well as to create a new kind of art. The distant past, the cult of the individual, the emphasis on chivalry, the idea of a noble but futile (or fatal) quest – all of these factors and others contributed to the Arthurian Revival. To be sure, there were also revivals elsewhere, but on a far smaller scale than in Britain. Selectivity requires me to give the nineteenth century woefully short shrift; I can offer only the most cursory of observations. One of the perils of trying to define Arthurian (or other) works in their social and historical context is the risk of looking at large social and cultural shifts while ignoring the role played by influential individuals in producing those texts and in shaping the cultural landscape. For modern English literature, that brings us of course to two individuals: Malory, following the republication of his work (or works) in 1816 and 1817, and Tennyson, whose ‘The Lady of Shalott’, his first Arthurian poem, was published in 1832. Despite the important work then being done by serious scholars (John Colin Dunlop, Sir Frederic Madden, and others) and despite the influence of numerous painters and authors alike, much 40 41 42

Huetius, History of Romances, p. 133. Huetius, History of Romances, p. 143. Sir Thomas Malory, The History of the Renowned Prince Arthur, King of Britain, with His Life and Death, and all his Glorious Battles. Likewise, the Noble Acts and Heroic Deeds of his Valiant Knights of the Round Table, 2 vols. (London, 1816), p. v.

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of the popularity of Arthur in the nineteenth century and beyond can be traced to Malory and Tennyson – or to Malory by way of Tennyson. Incidentally, in Germany, the twin medieval influences of Wolfram and Gottfried, renewed by Wagner, have continued to inspire authors and to shape texts to the present day. (That is an overstatement, but only, I believe, in that it does not account for the popularity of Merlin in nineteenth- and twentieth-century works by Karl Immermann, Gerhard Hauptmann, Tankred Dorst and a good many others.43) Perhaps oddly, the situation is less clear in France. We might expect Chrétien de Troyes to be a major influence, but to the extent that he was, that influence was indirect, through the Vulgate Cycle, and even that, until recently, was not nearly as well known as it should have been. Instead, the strongest influences on twentieth-century French Arthuriana may well have been Wagner and, quite likely, Joseph Bédier, whose Tristan (1900) has gone through well over two hundred editions and has inspired imitations, translations, and films.44 Returning briefly to Tennyson, it is worth reminding ourselves that his poetry was hardly an unqualified glorification of the Arthurian epoch. The Grail quest in particular is presented as rather a destructive influence on Camelot, divesting the court of its knights and perhaps depriving the knights of their virile powers, or at least wasting those powers. Only a little later, and across the Atlantic, Mark Twain was offering his own cynical version of the legend (and even more cynical view of his own time). To a great extent, both Tennyson and Twain were reacting, though in radically different ways, against the blight, both physical and moral, of industrialized modernism. So, just as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries rejected the Middle Ages, and as the Romantic age revived and embraced pseudo-medieval influences, so too did authors and others begin to react strongly against what the industrial age had wrought. And there is of course a direct line from these views to T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land, with its invective against the dystopia that is the modern city.45

The Twentieth Century and Beyond I suggested above that ‘each age makes for itself the particular Arthur it needs and wants’, and if that is so, we may be hard-pressed to know just what kind of Arthur the twentieth century wanted. In a century (plus a few years) that included two great wars (and many others that are not negligible), the atomic and nuclear ages, the cold war, terrorist threats and acts, 43 44 45

K. Immermann, Merlin (Leipzig, 1832); G. Hauptmann, Der neue Christophorus (Weimar, 1943); T. Dorst and U. Ehler, Merlin oder das Wüste Land (Frankfurt, 1981). J. Bédier, Tristan: Le Roman de Tristan et Iseut (Paris, 1900). T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, in Poems: 1905–1925 (London, 1925), pp. 63–92.

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and systematic genocide here and there, we might expect to find a great many Arthurian works with war or anti-war themes. Curiously, though, that occurs far less frequently than one might think. My authorities here are Daniel P. Nastali and Phillip C. Boardman, whose monumental Arthurian Annals document everything Arthurian in English (except specialized scholarship) from 1250 to 2000.46 Here we find listed, with full publication history, some 11,300 works, about 8,000 of them from the twentieth century. Yet, in their index listing themes and motifs, the First World War is the setting or inspiration for only twenty-three works, and the Second World War has thirty-two. Moreover, a good number of these are very short poems or comic books. Perhaps we should not be entirely surprised. Wars, cold or hot, can profoundly influence literature without providing the setting or explicit themes of individual works. We might therefore return to the point made by David Daiches: that times of turbulence and insecurity foster literary experimentation, especially in form and technique – but to the extent that such times influence the choice of subject matter, that choice may lead us to take shelter in remote legend as an escape from modern and postmodern angst. Yet there are a few important instances in which the events of the twentieth century spawned new forms, new interpretations, and a search for originality. The first war gave us – to mention a single example – some of the poetry of David Jones, a fine Welsh poet. His In Parenthesis, though not published until 1937, used Arthurian images to treat his experiences in the trenches of World War I, when the battlefields strongly evoked the waste land.47 Then, following the war, Eliot produced his Waste Land (1922). The events leading to the next war also provided in part the context within which Joyce wrote Finnegans Wake (1939), which uses the Tristan and Isolt story (and especially Mark’s cuckoldry) as structure.48 And we cannot overlook T. H. White, whose novels become increasingly bitter and contain images of brutality (including cruelty in the animal world), as well as explicit references to storm troopers and other allusions unmistakably related to political realities and the war.49 There are, as noted, some novels that depict Arthur’s own part in the war. The best example of such a novel, in my view, is Donald Barthelme’s The King, a brilliant novel of light-hearted and humorous surfaces concealing serious and sober conclusions.50 Postmodern in conception and method, it is a novel in which Arthur and Churchill are contemporaries. Barthelme’s Arthur has not returned because he never died, and 46 47 48 49 50

D. P. Nastali and P. C. Boardman, The Arthurian Annals: The Tradition in English from 1250 to 2000, 2 vols. (Oxford, 2004). D. Jones, In Parenthesis (London, 1937). J. Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London, 1939). T. H. White, The Once and Future King (London, 1958). D. Barthelme, The King (New York, 1990).

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now Churchill considers the anachronistic Arthur to be nothing more than a decrepit nuisance. Here, in an interesting inversion, the Grail is the atomic bomb, to which Arthur has access. However, he exercises what he calls ‘negative capability’, which means not doing something that one has the power to do. The result is a first-rate comic, anti-war, postmodern Arthurian novel. Perhaps the most impressive fact about modern Arthurian creations is their proliferation both in pure numbers and in the varieties of approach. The numbers are staggering, especially in English. I turn again to Nastali and Boardman. The first of their two volumes offers the main listing with information about publication history, content, etc.; it is 810 pages long (not counting preface and introduction). As I noted, the volume includes Arthurian material in English from 1250 to 2000, a 750-year period, with the chronological midpoint thus falling at the year 1625. Yet if we open the volume at the midpoint (p. 405) we find ourselves reading not about the year 1625, but rather 1968. Thus, assuming that entries average roughly the same length over hundreds of pages, we discover that half of all Arthurian works in English date from the last three decades of the twentieth century. No less striking is the fact that if we look at the threequarters mark in the book, around page 600, we are already at the year 1991, suggesting that nearly 3,000 Arthurian creations date from a single decade. Those are astonishing figures: they work out to roughly three hundred per year or almost one per day! Arthurian creations multiply in other languages as well, in far smaller numbers but perhaps with similar proportions century by century. So why this explosion of interest during the twentieth century? Why another Arthurian Revival of late? And why the acceleration as we reach the end of the century and begin a new one? Given my announced subject, we should be defining, were it possible, the relationship between the unparalleled recent appeal of the Arthurian legend and certain cultural phenomena that fostered and favoured it. We can speculate only briefly here. There is first of all the element I have mentioned more than once, a reaction to social and cultural instability, which surely deepened nostalgia (conscious or unconscious) for a presumed Golden Age, whether or not such an age ever existed. Moreover, my references to instability call to mind one of the most astute observations about the subject. It is offered by Ulrich Müller and Werner Wunderlich in the last chapter of The Arthur of the Germans. They write: The recent ‘comeback’ of King Arthur in German is largely due to the socio-political climate in the last decades of the century. … Distrust of the effects of nuclear power, concerns about the deterioration of the environment, natural catastrophes, fear of war itself, the collapse of powerful ideological and political systems, all these have influenced personal and public belief so that nightmarish visions of a tormented future exist beside a deep-rooted desire for a solution in which hope, peace, idyllic nature and brotherhood are united. Attempts to articulate these concerns can find a 144

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fruitful source of inspiration in the world of King Arthur and the Holy Grail and in the world of the wizard and magician Merlin. At the same time, the often fragmented interactions of past and present, myth and history, fiction and ‘reality’ which characterize recent reinterpretations of Arthurian material are also key features of postmodernism as a broader phenomenon in contemporary European and American culture.51

Those are major elements in the fracturing of the Arthurian legend into countless and disparate pieces in the late twentieth century. A contributing factor to the burgeoning interest in Arthur (or perhaps, conversely, a result of that interest) may be the flurry of books and films – some of them admirable pieces of scholarship; others little more than fantasy or conspiracy theory – purporting to tell ‘the Truth’ about Arthur’s historical existence. We may think in this regard of a very mixed collection of subjects, embracing both of the categories just mentioned. Consider, as a small sample, Cadbury-Camelot, Sarmatians, Riothamus, Votadini, the bloodline of Jesus, and … The Da Vinci Code. But the cultural context is complicated here. To consider just my last example: did Dan Brown’s novel stimulate new interest in the subject or instead tap into an interest that was already there?52 In this case, I suspect, the influence is reciprocal.

Revisionist Arthurian Fiction Of course, none of these events could occur were not the Arthurian legend, by its nature, infinitely renewable: the malleability of the legend permits continual reinterpretation and re-creation. Just as we have long had revisionist history (by whatever name), so have we had revisionist fiction, though that term, insofar as I can determine, is relatively recent.53 As long as authors have written Arthurian texts, they have been reacting to – or against – other texts as well as the culture in general, remaking the legend factually or ideologically. But the adjective ‘revisionist’ seems particularly applicable to Arthurian texts of the twentieth century, and especially of its last quarter. In both themes and approaches, modern and then postmodern sensibilities have produced extraordinary varieties of Arthurian fiction. One of the most striking innovations is the growing body of Arthurian literature focusing primarily on female characters and written, in most but not all cases, by women. Feminist or not, these works 51

52 53

U. Müller and W. Wunderlich, ‘The Modern Reception of the Arthurian Legend’, in The Arthur of the Germans, ed. W. H. Jackson and S. A. Ranawake (Cardiff, 2000), pp. 303–23 (312–13). D. Brown, The Da Vinci Code (New York, 2003). An internet search done in early 2008, as I was preparing the oral presentation of this study, yielded between 300 and 400 occurrences of this term. The same search on 17 October 2008 yielded 906 hits. By way of contrast, a search for ‘revisionist history’ on that same day produced 349,000 hits.

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generally have in common the presentation of a feminine consciousness as a prism through which male and female characters, and Arthurian events as well, are reinterpreted. The result is both an expansion and a refocusing of the legend. No less remarkable is the proliferation of first-person narrators. Medieval narrators address us, sometimes directly, but are rarely the overt centre of consciousness for the text. The modern use of first-person, dramatized narrators is common and permits personal reflections, uncertainty, and sometimes rationalizations or self-delusion. Revisionist Arthurian fiction, especially during the last half-century, is perhaps most notable for its sometimes radical reinterpretation of characters and events. New characters and new adventures can be invented, but more striking are instances in which familiar conventions are overturned. Mordred may be presented as a heroic or at least positive figure, and we can find other works in which Arthur is a villain and Guinevere either heroine or whore or both. The urge to revise has been accommodated by the exploration of new vehicles of creation and transmission: film and television (and the stage, with Spamalot in particular),54 but also comics, computer and role-playing games, and even action figures. Film should be one of the most productive media for the treatment of Arthurian themes, and the pity is that so few filmmakers do Arthur well. Mine may be a minority and cynical view, but I consider just a half-dozen Arthurian films to be genuinely good, with Monty Python and the Holy Grail the best of them, but with Hans Jürgen Syberberg’s very strange but – in my view – brilliantly innovative film of Parsifal (1981–82) richly deserving of our attention.55

Inquest Narratives Before concluding, there is one kind of revisionist Arthurian fiction that I would like to mention in particular, and that is what I once described as ‘inquest narratives’.56 Under that rubric I include two kinds of works. The first presents fictional reflections on, and evaluations of, the king’s times and accomplishments. Parke Godwin, in Firelord, presents a dying Arthur himself reflecting on his life.57 Michel Rio (Merlin, 1989) has the enchanter, at age 100, looking back upon his own and Arthur’s lives.58 Wilhelm Kubie, in Mummenschanz auf Tintagel [Masquerade at 54 55 56 57 58

L. A. Finke and S. Aronstein, ‘Got Grail? Monty Python and the Broadway Stage’, Theatre Survey 48 (2007), 289–311. H. J. Syberberg, Parsifal: Ein Filmessay (Munich, 1982). N. J. Lacy, ‘From Roubaud to Griffiths: Arthurian Text as Inquest’, Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society 47 (1996), 311–19. P. Godwin, Firelord (Garden City, NY, 1980). M. Rio, Merlin (Paris, 1989).

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Tintagel],59 has Bedivir presenting, as Müller and Wunderlich put it, ‘a somber view of the downfall of the Arthurian world’.60 And there is JeanPierre Le Dantec’s Graal-Romance (1985), in which Gautier de Bath is commissioned by Arthur to write the history of his reign.61 Ten years after the king dies, Gautier interviews the survivors (Merlin, Guenièvre, and Viviane) and hears radically conflicting accounts; his task is complicated by his own recollection of Arthur as a drunken, self-pitying coward. Here is revisionist fiction with a vengeance. The second type of inquest narrative involves the self-referential acknowledgment of multiple and competing versions of the legend and the challenges facing the narrator who deals with them. For example, Jacques Roubaud in Le Roi Arthur au temps des chevaliers et des enchanteurs (1983) suggests that a particular event has three possible explanations, and because he does not know which one is correct, he offers all three.62 There is also Paul Griffiths’s The Lay of Sir Tristram (1991), where we encounter passages such as the following: ‘[The story is about a woman lying, weeping] in a darkened room, alone. Or it may be that she is not in a darkened room but in a forest at night.… [She is surrounded not by human bodies but by trees – ] or else not trees but the timbers of a ship’.63 It is surely no accident that, with one exception, all of the works I have just mentioned date from 1980 or later, and many of them reflect the fragmentation of fiction that itself surely reflects some of the uncertainty of the age. Ultimately, though, this fragmentation, unsettling though it may be to some readers and scholars (including medievalists), is also the surest indication of the legend’s vitality and continuing appeal.

Conclusions Although I have tried to provide here some concrete examples, I have left out far more that needs to be said about the relationships between text and context. The omissions are regrettable but unavoidable. In closing, I shall simply return here, with a few supporting details, to a problem already mentioned in the preceding pages: the direction of influence between literature and history or society. To an extent (as I noted), the relationship between text and context is – at least in theory and sometimes in fact – reciprocal. In practice, the cultural climate may foster or discourage certain kinds of texts far more 59 60 61 62 63

W. Kubie, Mummenschanz auf Tintagel (1937; Linz, 1946). Müller and Wunderlich, ‘The Modern Reception’, p. 311. J.-P. Le Dantec, Graal-Romance (Paris, 1985). J. Roubaud, Le Roi Arthur au temps des chevaliers et des enchanteurs (Paris, 1983), p. 111. P. Griffiths, The Lay of Sir Tristram (London, 1991), p. 2.

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often or at least more discernibly than texts transform society or culture. Yet there are numerous exceptions, some of them exceedingly visible and a few of them ominous. The ‘benevolent’ kind includes the medieval Round Tables, events for which participants assumed Arthurian dress and comportment for purposes of jousting and feasting. And we should note also the founding of the Orders of the Garter, of the Golden Fleece, etc. In modern times, there are not only such pseudo-medieval groups as the Society for Creative Anachronism, but also other organizations such as the Boy Scouts, whose founder, Sir Robert Baden-Powell, insisted that their real leader was King Arthur.64 In the ominous category we must consider another kind of Round Table: the one established by Heinrich Himmler in Wewelsburg Castle.65 And we can read, if we wish, numerous accounts of various Grail quests conducted – purportedly – by the Nazis. If any of those quests indeed took place, they are proof that Arthur and the Grail remain powerful sources of inspiration, even if they are not always the ennobling forces that they seem to remain in the popular imagination. Prominent among the subjects omitted from the present article are Hispanic, Italian, Dutch, Welsh, and Norse Arthurian works. I find those omissions particularly regrettable because I have, in recent years, been gratified to observe the progressive de-marginalization of those Arthurian literatures. They, however, must await another occasion, and I close by returning to John Steinbeck and suggesting of the present article what Steinbeck said of Malory: ‘It is the problem of simple things, some of them not understood in our time and perhaps some of them not understandable’.

64 65

See A. Lupack, The Oxford Guide to Arthurian Literature and Legend (Oxford, 2005), pp. 165–6. See for example J. E. Schulte, Die SS, Himmler und die Wewelsburg (Paderborn, 2009).

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VII

The Post-Christian Arthur Ronald Hutton For most of his literary career, Arthur has been the Christian hero of a Christian people, and this role has taken two different forms. The first is that in which he appears in his earliest recorded personification, as the champion of the post-Roman British against heathen Anglo-Saxon invaders. It features in the earliest known source to mention him, the ninth-century Historia Brittonum, where he fights bearing the image of the Virgin Mary, and is found, on and off, into the mid twentieth century, where it is the theme of John Masefield’s novel, The Badon Parchments. The second form is that of the romances which survive from the twelfth century onward, in which he presides over a conventionally pious high medieval society, in which heroic activity is transferred from Saxonslaying to individual knightly quests, above all that for the Grail. This too has a long pedigree, from the stories of Chrétien de Troyes to the novels of T. H. White and the poetry of Charles Williams in the 1930s and 1940s. Nor has either tradition died out. Since 1960, the high medieval Christian king has appeared in a wholly traditional form in the novels of Jim Hunter, Robert Nye and Kevin Crossley-Holland, and the fighter against the Anglo-Saxon heathen in those of J. T. Haar, John Emlyn Edwards and Anne McCaffrey.1 Other recent fictional works which deal with Arthur, such as those of Joan Wolf, Elizabeth E. Wein, Jack Whyte and Nancy Stringer, have chosen to ignore the issue of religion altogether.2 On the other hand, even when all these authors are grouped together, they are greatly outnumbered by those who, over the same period, have introduced a new factor into the legend, making Arthur the ruler of a 1

2

J. Hunter, Percival and the Presence of God (London, 1978); R. Nye, Merlin (New York, 1977); K. Crossley-Holland, The Arthur Trilogy (London, 2000–3); J. T. Haar, King Arthur (London, 1973); J. E. Edwards, The Adventures of Arthur Dragon-King (London, 1984); A. McCaffrey, Black Horses for the King (London, 1996). J. Wolf, The Road to Avalon (New York, 1988); E. E. Wein, The Winter Prince (New York, 1993); J. Whyte, The Camulod Chronicles (London, 1992–9); N. Stringer, I Am Mordred (New York, 1998).

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British society that is itself deeply divided between Christian and pagan. This clash or reconciliation of rival faiths is turned in these other books into a major theme of their stories, and dealing with it into an important function of Arthur’s kingship, in which, according to the tale, he either fails or excels. The same element has entered cinematic depictions of the king in the same period. Some attention has been drawn to it by other scholars, notably Dan Nastali and John Marino.3 None, however, have made any extended treatment of it: of the two cited, the first merely drew attention to it in passing, and the second dealt with it only with reference to the Grail legend and with a selective use of examples placed in an American context. Marino did, however, make the important point that the legend had become caught up in a recent culture war, between Christian absolutism and relativist pluralism: in his words, ‘a modern clash between conflicting spiritualities is imposed on a medieval clash between Christianity and paganism in post-Roman Britain’.4 This is perfectly correct, but only part of a larger and longer story, which has taken different forms over time and on opposite sides of the Atlantic. The purpose of this essay is to make a systematic study of that. The Trojan horse for an initial introduction of a pagan element into Arthur’s court turned out to be Merlin, who had a double qualification for the role. The first was, of course, his semi-demonic descent and his association with powerful sorcery. The second and more particular was the existence of a body of medieval Welsh poetry, written under his name. It is now recognized as being, in its present form, a thirteenth-century production, but until the mid nineteenth century scholars accepted it on face value as the work of a sixth-century poet and prophet. As such, many of them interpreted the dream-like, allusive and mystical imagery of some of the verses as embodying memories of Druidical teaching. This need not have turned him into a pagan, any more than his wizardry, because the same scholars also believed that the Druids had practised a wholesome religion based on the teachings of the Hebrew patriarchs, which evolved naturally into Christianity.5 None the less, the two traits gave him an association with non-Christian ways. The author who first turned this into an identity seems to have been C. S. Lewis, who is most often regarded as a Christian polemicist, but also, it has been argued, had a secondary but strong affection for ancient paganism.6 3

4 5 6

D. Nastali, ‘Arthur Without Fantasy: Dark Age Britain in Recent Historical Fiction’, Arthuriana 9.1 (1999), 5–22; J. B. Marino, The Grail Legend in Modern Literature (Woodbridge, 2004), pp. 68–81. Marino, The Grail Legend in Modern Literature, p. 68. R. Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe: The History of the Druids in Britain (London, 2009), pp. 146–82, 241–86. R. Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur: Studies in Paganism, Myth and Magic (London, 2003), pp. 215–37.

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This is certainly manifested in his novel published in 1945, That Hideous Strength, where Merlin is resurrected in a modern world, and presented as a Druid pure and simple, without any apparent need to explain or defend it. As such, Lewis makes him the personification of primeval natural forces, especially those of earth and water, from which he drew formidable magical powers: ‘a sense of mould, gravel, wet leaves, weedy water, hung about him’. The rules of his Druidic order forbid him to use an edged tool on any growing thing, and Lewis portrayed him as a relic of an old world of pagan deities and fairies which was independent of that of angels and devils, and of Christian morality.7 The same kind of Merlin reappeared six years later in a work by another well-known novelist with a romantic affection for ancient paganism, John Cowper Powys’s Porius, but within an altering contemporary context, of the profound cultural changes that were affecting Britain in the wake of the world war. They included the progressive loss of its colonial empire and great power status, the abandonment of traditional moral and religious beliefs, including Christianity, and the threat of the annihilation of civilization itself in nuclear war, or (in a different sense) with the victory of Communism. Powys recognized them all in his preface, comparing post-Roman Britain to his own time by announcing that ‘as the old gods were departing then, so the old gods are departing now’. He represented a fifthcentury world in which several different religions contend and co-exist, including the original animism of the prehistoric inhabitants; a benevolent and tolerant Druid faith with a more sophisticated theology (of the kind imagined in the eighteenth century); a British form of Christianity, Pelagianism, which shares many of the finer characteristics of Druidry; and a newly dominant, fanatical and oppressive Catholic Christianity, to which the medieval future belongs. Merlin belongs to the Druid tradition, but is himself a demi-god, disposing of superhuman powers even more awe-inspiring than those which Lewis accorded to his Druid magician.8 In 1956 Henry Treece, one of the most popular British historical novelists, took up the Druidic Merlin, in the last of a trilogy of stories about Roman Britain; but gave the figure a twist which revealed its negative potential in a modern nation vexed by the same anxieties. This time he is demonic, with clawed hands, burning eyes and foetid breath, giving a terrifying quality to his supernatural abilities, even if these are largely those of illusion, conjuring shapes and sounds and changing his own appearance. He is the leader of a renascent Druid religion of barbarism and bloodshed, centred on human sacrifice and the glorification of a cruel and amoral natural world. This has survived through the centuries of Roman rule in secret, or among the wild tribes across the frontiers, and now seeks to 7 8

C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength (London, 1945): quotation on p. 397 of the 2005 HarperCollins edition. J. C. Powys, Porius (London, 1951); quotation on p. xi.

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re-establish itself, destroying the Christianity which has become dominant under late Roman rule.9 Treece was warning against the forces of savagery that in his view lurked beneath the veneer of civilization, and could erupt again as soon as that veneer was fractured. Thus far Arthur himself had been kept out of the paganization of his society, but in 1960 he was hurled into the centre of it, by Edison Marshall, in a book that was in many respects a complement to that by Treece. His Arthur is a follower of Mithras, the god of Roman soldiers, as part of his general commitment to the maintenance of Roman ways. He finds himself having to contend on the one hand with Christianity, a newly-arrived movement of fools, hypocrites and power-hungry priests, and on the other with Merlin’s Druidry, a better faith and the indigenous one, but still stained by barbarism: Merlin himself attempts to divine the future in the entrails of sacrificed beasts and discusses the possibility of reviving human sacrifice. Arthur’s whole court is as pagan as he, including Mordred who is his loyal friend, and the novel ends with Arthur predicting that the Christian faith is too foul to have any future; the main point of the story is satirical, to emphasize how distorted truth becomes in historical memory.10 At this point it might have seemed that the legend was to become a point of contention between different writers caught up in the painful birth of a post-imperial, post-Christian Britain. Instead, a new and relatively consensual use was found for it, as a means of confronting and allaying the same concerns, and its adoption was both signalled and partly propelled by a best-seller published in 1963. This was Sword at Sunset, by Rosemary Sutcliff, who had established herself alongside Treece in the previous decade as an author centrally concerned with the prospect of the collapse of civilized values, as represented by imperial Rome. Her treatment of the theme had, however, been much more optimistic, its consistent message being that if the upholders of traditional civilized values – of education, dignity, responsibility and humanity – keep their nerve and remain determined to transmit these values, then they will ride out periods of political and social change. This approach informs her treatment of Arthur, who becomes one of the champions of this process, ‘to whom, when the Barbarian darkness came flooding in, the last guttering lights of civilization seemed worth fighting for’. He is himself a Christian, attending church services, finding comfort in monasteries, and being taken to one to die. None the less, he recognizes both that he rules over a land of different faiths, and that for the unity of his kingdom, and especially that of the army recruited from it, he needs to allow pagans, of different kinds, to worship as they please without molestation. Furthermore, all 9 10

H. Treece, The Great Captains (London, 1956). E. Marshall, The Pagan King (London, 1960).

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these different varieties of religion are represented in the novel as essentially good, and Arthur is himself a pluralist at heart: ‘I have always been a follower of the Christos, because it has seemed to me that the Christian faith is the strongest and best fitted to carry the light forward into the darkness that lies ahead. But I have prayed to too many different gods in my time, to set any great store by the names that men cry out to for aid, nor the form of prayers that they use.’ Indeed, in critical moments of battle, he prays to an assemblage in which Christ takes his place alongside Mithras, Lugh, and ‘the Horned One’. His famous emblem of the Virgin, taken from the Historia Brittonum, is now understood as the mother of Jesus by the Christians whom he commands, and as one of their goddesses by the pagans.11 Sutcliff was effectively providing a blueprint for a new multiracial and multicultural Western society, in which Christianity remained the official faith but those who followed others were respected as well as tolerated, and all worked together in the national interest. It was one followed by virtually all authors to treat the subject over the next two decades, and was the more important in that the period concerned saw a dramatic increase in novels that dealt with it. This was partly because, as said, the problems of post-Roman Britain seemed to many people to have some parallels in those of the post-imperial modern one. It was also, however, because Arthur was being pushed into the public eye by historians and archaeologists in a manner not known before. The process occurred in two waves, the first being initiated by the Oxford don R. G. Collingwood in 1936, in a very influential textbook. He argued that the historical Arthur’s success in turning back the Anglo-Saxons had been due to his deployment of a crack force of armoured cavalry on the late Roman model.12 This, of course, was to dress up the high medieval Knights of the Round Table in late antique costume, and Collingwood never supplied any actual evidence for his suggestion, or indeed for a historical Arthur. None the less, he seemed, to the public, to have lent a new credibility to such a figure. Ever since, the concept of Arthur as a leader of an elite force of heavy cavalry has been constant in works of fiction: indeed, Treece and Sutcliff were its pioneers there. The second impetus to belief in such a character came in the mid 1960s, with the publicity given to an excavation at Cadbury Castle in Somerset, which local legend (from the sixteenth century) had identified as the Camelot of medieval romance. An impressive high-status settlement of the postRoman period was discovered, which the leaders of the project believed had more or less proved the basic truth of the legend. Credibility in the existence of a ‘real’ Arthur now reached an all-time high, in an outpouring of works from professional historians and archaeologists between 1966 11 12

R. Sutcliff, Sword at Sunset (London, 1963): quotations on pp. 8 and 120. R. G. Collingwood and J. N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and the English Settlements (Oxford, 1936), pp. 321-4.

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and 1977 which strained all the available evidence to make a case for one. Parallel to these were the very popular books by Geoffrey Ashe, secretary to the team which had excavated Cadbury but himself a freelance writer unfettered even by the small restraint shown by the academic proponents of a historical Arthur.13 These were to form the staple source material for novelists during the next thirty years. Hitherto the hero’s capital had generally been placed by them at Winchester, Colchester or Caerleon, to fit the medieval romances; henceforth it was almost always on the hill of Cadbury. None the less, the non-fictional authors, including Ashe, had continued to identify Arthur, as all the archaeology suggested, as the Christian leader of an unequivocally Christian people. Here novelists rejected the scholarly data, to prefer the Sutcliff formula. Between 1968 and 1979, Arthur featured as the leader of a multi-faith society in the stories of a succession of authors, almost all British: Godfrey Turton, Mary Stewart, Roy Turner, Anna Taylor, Jayne Viney, Barbara Ferry Johnson, Victor Canning, Peter Vansitart, John Gloag and Catherine Christian.14 It is a sign of how timely this idea was that in the same year in which Sutcliff published her book – 1963 – one had appeared from an American, Dorothy James Roberts, which presented it with equal force. The basic argument of Roberts’s novel is that Christianity and paganism are remarkably similar, and can easily co-exist or be combined with each other. The crux of it is presented by a country priest, who asks whether ‘Christ denies us the bounty of his death because we act out at midsummer the death and rebirth of nature’, with a clear suggestion that the answer must be negative.15 To judge by the frequency with which it was cited by later authors, British and American, it was Sutcliff’s book which made the greater impact, but the simultaneous publication of that by Roberts proves how much Sutcliff was responding to a mood of the times. Of the authors in this tradition, the most popular proved to be Mary Stewart, who not merely portrayed with sympathy an Arthurian society of religious pluralism, but suggested, through the mouths of all her most admirable characters, an essential unity of the divine. Her particular hero, Merlin, declares in the first book ‘Oh, there are gods everywhere, in the hollow hills, in the wind and the sea, in the very grass we walk on and the air we breathe … But I believe there must be one who is God Himself, like 13 14

15

This story is told in Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur, pp. 43–58. G. Turton, The Emperor Arthur (London, 1967); M. Stewart, The Crystal Cave (London, 1970); The Hollow Hills (London, 1973); and The Last Enchantment (London, 1979); R. Turner, King of the Lordless Country (London, 1971); A. Taylor, Drustan the Wanderer (London, 1971); J. Viney, The Bright-Helmed One (London, 1975); B. F. Johnson, Lionors (London, 1975); J. Gloag, Artorius Rex (London, 1977) V. Canning, The Immortal Wound (London, 1978); P. Vansitart, Lancelot (London, 1978); C. Christian, The Sword and the Flame (London, 1978). D. J. Roberts, Kinsmen of the Grail (Boston, 1963), p. 340.

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the great sea, and all the rest of us, small gods and men and all, like rivers, we must come to him in the end.’16 On the whole, the men are pagan, with the greatest and noblest of them venerating Mithras, and the women, even in the same households, Christian. Arthur is baptized into Christianity to please his mother and protects churches and monasteries, but personally prefers the old deities even though he joins in those of both faiths and recognizes that Christianity fosters peace and learning. Stewart’s Merlin is a whole-hearted pagan, initiated both into Mithraism and Druidry and honouring the local rustic gods at their shrines, while acknowledging Christ as another god of light and aspect of the great single creator deity. In Sutcliff’s fiction, Arthur and all the more admirable characters are still Christian; in Stewart’s, the balance has been tipped the other way. There is also a warning, missing from Sutcliff, against the innate potential of (all) Christianity for intolerance and repression, not merely because of the temptations to power which lie within its claims that its god is the only good one, but because that god is himself apparently real, and hungry for domination over other deities, and humanity.17 Naturally this group of writers differed over many points of detail, most obviously over Arthur’s own position in the spectrum of belief, and his relations with the different religions upon it. Victor Canning made him a pagan who adopts Christianity to marry his first wife, who was a devout practitioner of that faith, but only in the spirit of a polytheist adding another god to his pantheon. The Arthur of Turton and Vansitart is nominally Christian, and Turner’s a fervent one but of a very unorthodox kind, drawing many ideas from the Druids who, most prominently represented by Merlin, realize that the two religions are very similar. As a historical footnote, it should be pointed out that Turner’s Druidry is actually that invented at the end of the eighteenth century by the Welsh forger Iolo Morganwg, who reimagined ancient Druid belief in the form of a postChristian religion fitted to modernity. The Arthur portrayed by Gloag is a parody of a puritanical young Christian British army officer, gradually converted to pluralism (and a more relaxed attitude to sex) by Merlin, a Druid who understands that all religions are essentially the product of the same higher wisdom. Johnson’s Arthur is himself Christian but a staunch advocate of tolerance. These contrasting figures naturally operate within different religious landscapes. In those of Canning and Gloag, the faith of Christ is slowly spreading in a Britain where the old cults still operate peacefully beside it, and is carried by clergy who are all basically decent. Turton’s portrait of co-existence is similar, but with darker shadows. Paganism’s appeal is mainly erotic, from the nude statues or mosaic figures of goddesses or 16 17

Stewart, Crystal Cave, p. 201. See especially Stewart, Last Enchantment, on p. 7 of the 1980 Coronet edition.

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nymphs to the sexual orgies held at rural festivals. Christianity is the finer religion, of charity, love and rectitude, but being corrupted by the church that it has produced, embodying cruelty, sexual repression, corruption and hunger for power. Regular clergy represent these vices most fully, and it is the monks who bring Arthur down, for refusing to become subservient to them. In Turner and Viney the pagans are disappearing naturally under the impact of the new faith, but in the former the two are blending, and in the latter, at odds, and nastier. Viney’s paganism is a tradition of animal sacrifice, while her Christian church, like Turton’s, destroys Arthur because he will not obey it. Taylor’s retelling of the legend of Tristan and Iseult starkly counterpoises an older religion which is bawdy and rather menacing with a Christian one which can be healing and gentle, but also may suppress human freedom and desire. In a very obvious manner, the cultural hopes and anxieties of the ‘permissive society’ of the late 1960s and the 1970s, desiring escape from old restrictions and authorities while fearing the consequences of freedom, are played out in these fictions in varying ways. What should be emphasized, in addition, is how much similarity there also is between their descriptions. Most make a meticulous description of the British locations and make the historical settings and events correspond as carefully as possible with what was known by then of postRoman Britain. Most, too invest the passing of the Roman world with nostalgia and regret, and record with dismay the physical and moral crumbling of classical civilization into a renewed barbarism: the mood of a post-imperial age is at its peak during these years. Moreover all, as said, emphasize the virtues of religious tolerance and diversity, generally within an officially Christian culture. Canning’s Arthur proclaims that ‘I am as true a Christos man as any for he is a god with other gods. When you are with fever you do not pray to Epona. You send your prayers to Nodens of the Silver Hand. In battle you cry on Badb not Lug who blesses the seed of man in woman. But when a whole nation suffers then you call on all the gods.’18 His Christian chaplain blesses his army in the name of Jesus and three pagan deities. The Arthur of Turton’s book ‘could accept political compromise with Merlin [a pagan priest], show consideration for the worshippers of Flora, but he fought against the heathen Saxons under the emblem of Christ’.19 Vansitart’s Lancelot ‘began prayers to Jupiter, Mithras, Christus, even Artos the Bear, to Cernunus, and Nerthus, earth mother’.20 Christian’s Arthur calls the Grail ‘the symbol all faiths can share, and sharing, bind themselves into one brotherhood’.21 Johnson’s Merlin and Arthur alienate the more zealous Christians by refusing to 18 19 20 21

Canning, The Immortal Wound, p. 73. Turton, The Emperor Arthur, p. 117. Vansitart, Lancelot, p. 127. Christian, The Sword and the Flame, p. 370.

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identify the monarchy more closely with their faith, while the message of Taylor’s book is that love is the force which transcends all religion. It is noteworthy that the single author of the period apparently to breach the rule turns out to prove it. This was Vera Chapman, a leading member of a modern Druid order, who infused her Arthurian novels with the beliefs and motifs of her Druidry, combined with those of modern ritual magic. Her leading characters are fiercely Christian, and war against the powers of darkness, which include some of the more bloodthirsty pagan deities and practitioners. Their Christianity is, however, of a very esoteric kind, and as Merlin, its greatest champion, makes clear, is allied to all faiths which work ‘in the Name of the Lights, in the Name of the Sun of Suns, in the Name of the Flame Within’.22 By the end of the 1970s, interest in Arthur as a subject for popular fiction was waning in Britain, even as belief in him as a historical figure was declining among scholars there.23 It was growing instead in the United States, and with a number of distinctive features, of which the most important were nurtured by the feminist movement of the 1970s and 1980s and the broader liberal culture or counter-culture from which this sprang. Until now, although about half of the novelists discussed above had been women (and both of the most influential), they had almost all been concerned mainly with male characters. Now it was the female personalities in the legend who became the prime focus, of authors who were overwhelmingly women themselves. The historical background, though remaining in the post-Roman period with Camelot at Cadbury, became hazier, as did the physical setting in Britain. The Romans ceased to be admired figures, and were made to seem more foreign and less pleasant, representing imperialism, despotism and patriarchy: they no longer stood for a fading past of British glory but a still potent traditional American society. The books themselves swelled: the average one on an Arthurian subject in the 1970s tended to be around two hundred pages long, but thereafter they grew to five hundred or more pages, often as the first volume of a trilogy of equal size. The works from the 1960s and 1970s had been more or less realistic, explaining away familiar episodes of magic and supernatural intervention in the medieval romances in terms of rational phenomena. Those from the 1980s onward tended to incorporate many more fantastic elements, until some were operating for at least some of the time in parallel worlds to the apparent one. In many of these respects, what the new wave of novelists were doing was abandoning the ‘historical’ Arthur, and the early annalistic sources for him, and reverting to the king of high medieval romance. In another, however, they were simply responding to a publishing fashion: the remarkable success of J. 22 23

V. Chapman, The Green Knight (London, 1975), p. 142. See also her King Arthur’s Daughter (London, 1976). Hutton, Witches, Druids and King Arthur, pp. 50–3.

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R. R. Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, which made American publishers suddenly willing to accept bulky new works of fantasy.24 Two American writers belong to the transitional phase between the two blocs of writing, Gillian Bradshaw, whose trilogy on the legend appeared between 1981 and 1982, and Sharan Newman, whose equivalent threedecker was published between 1981 and 1985.25 Both were still careful in reconstructing a historical post-Roman setting, but Bradshaw’s narrative soon veered off into fairyland, to meet the Irish gods. Despite this, her Britain is still a predominantly Christian land, and her main characters follow that faith, her point being that both Christ and the more benevolent pagan deities are servants to an ultimate benevolent god, the ‘High King, the light who shines for ever’.26 In a manner reminiscent of Chapman, but probably more significantly, in Bradshaw’s case, of the Star Wars films, the cosmos is divided into a perpetual war between the forces of good (light) and evil (dark). This fault-line runs through religions rather than between them, some Romanized Christians being more fully servants of the dark than many pagans. Arthur is the great champion of the light, but opposed by the formal Christian church because he taps its great wealth, of necessity, to support his righteous wars; the anticlerical theme here is as clear as in the books of Stewart, Turton, Viney and Taylor. Mordred, of course, serves the dark, with witchcraft and human sacrifice. Over time, the focus of Bradshaw’s stories came to rest on Guenevere, and she was the consistent heroine of Newman. The latter’s Britain is largely familiar from the novels of the 1970s, multiracial and with a veneer of Christianity over local remnants of the native cults; but it also contains beasts like unicorns. No religion comes well out of her books. The local paganism is centred on blood sacrifice and the young Guenevere is almost offered to the Roman-British goddess Epona, being laid naked on an altar in a sacred grove on Midwinter Night by a demented and murderous priestess who had seemed a trusted family servant. That drama is given a theological twist in that the goddess, cheated of the girl’s blood, curses her instead and so engenders the tragedies of her future career as queen. All the other pagan deities are as real: Gawain is literally the son of Apollo, who appears to him as he dies. The Christian Trinity and saints, on the other hand, make no such demonstrations of their existence, while their followers can be just as unpleasant: having escaped Epona, Guenevere is almost burned alive by Christians who believe her to be a 24

25

26

This was certainly a decisive factor in the shaping of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s bestseller, to be discussed below: see D. L. Paxson, ‘Marion Zimmer Bradley and “The Mists of Avalon” ’, Arthuriana 9.1 (1999), 110–26. G. Bradshaw, Hawk of May (London, 1981); Kingdom of Summer (London, 1981); and In Winter’s Shadow (London, 1982); S. Newman, Guinevere (London, 1981); The Chessboard Queen (London, 1983); and Guinevere Evermore (1985). Bradshaw, Hawk of May, p. 80.

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witch and adulteress. Somehow she and Arthur manage through all this to remain Christians while allowing pagans to worship. Such a balance of sympathy was abandoned in the work which was to dominate the Arthurian literature of the 1980s, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, which appeared in 1983 and was repeatedly reprinted during the remainder of the decade. The author had made a research trip to Glastonbury and Cadbury, but otherwise the physical geography of her Britain is imprecise to the point of confusion. In its treatment of the human setting, it is not really a historical novel at all, but may be termed one of creative anachronism. Its society is still very vaguely that of postRoman Britain, but barely matches up to any known or possible history of the age: rather, it takes the developed Arthurian legend of high medieval romance (essentially that of Malory) and projects a fresh layer of fantasy on it. The Romans are now only as real to the story as Atlantis and fairyland, and much less admired than either of those. The Britain of the tale is multi-racial: at Arthur’s coronation ‘There were crowds of the little dark people. Tribesmen clad in skins and chequered cloth and adorned with the dull-coloured stones from the north, red-haired and tall and bearded; and more than any other, the Roman peoples of the civilized lands. And there were tall fair, broad-shouldered men, Angles and Saxons from the treaty troops who had been settled south in Kent.’27 All of these racial categories were based on Victorian stereotypes, which had been abandoned by the academics of the late twentieth century;28 but they had a long afterlife in fiction, being found in the novels of both Treece and Sutcliff and some of their successors before appearing in that of Bradley. She, however, reversed the Victorian scale of admiration for the different peoples, which those earlier novelists had retained. The ‘small, dark people’ (who in reality never existed) are the indigenous inhabitants from the Stone Ages, whom the previous fiction-writers, following earlier scholarly fantasy, had treated as primitive and rather sinister. Bradley implicitly equates them with Native Americans, as people who live in harmony with nature, and explicitly with the early matriarchal societies of 1980s American feminist mythology, as woman-centred in politics and religion. The (Celtic) tribespeople, whom the Victorians portrayed as arriving in the Bronze or Iron Ages, are in Bradley’s imagination still fairly close to nature and respect women. It is the Romans who are accused by her of having subordinated both to the exploitation of men, while the Anglo-Saxons – of course the dominant cultural group of Bradley’s America – are the worst of all, being brutish, predatory and destructive as well as possessing the unattractive features of the Romans.

27 28

Marion Zimmer Bradley, The Mists of Avalon (London, 1983), p. 246. Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe, pp. 299–303.

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Her portrayal of religion is mapped onto the one of race. Like her predecessors, she makes Arthurian Britain a land divided into rival pagan and Christian faiths, but unlike them she makes this division the centre of her whole story. One of the factors that give the latter its compelling emotive power, moreover, is that the paganism she imagines in Arthur’s Britain bears no resemblance to any historical one, but is the modern, recreated paganism of her own 1970s and 1980s California, projected backwards onto an earlier world.29 The Britain of which she writes is one in which Christianity has become dominant, and is the official religion of all the kingdoms, but exists alongside, and has hitherto tolerated, an older and native pagan religion which has its capital in the magically hidden realm of Avalon. That religion is itself a composite, represented by its dual leadership, by a high priestess or Lady of the Lake and a chief Druid, with the title of the Merlin, both offices being passed down to a succession of holders from antiquity. The Lady’s religion is one of a Great Goddess and of a Horned God of nature who is her son, lover and subordinate partner: effectively, it is a combination of the beliefs of the American Goddess Movement which arose in the 1970s and of Wicca, the modern pagan witchcraft which appeared in Britain in the 1950s. The Merlin leads the more cerebral faith of Druids, which in the novel is born out of Atlantis, and in reality is that of the twentieth-century British and American Druid movements.30 The High Kings of Britain, down to Arthur, are recognized and invested ceremonially with royal authority by both Christians and the powers of Avalon, and pledged to protect both faiths. Part of the tragic plot of the novel is the manner in which Arthur breaks his oath, to fall increasingly under the influence of dogmatic Christians and allow the slow suppression of the old religion and the appropriation of its symbols and holy places, and the severing of the links with Avalon. In large part the book therefore seems, like many before it, to make an argument for the essential unity of the divine and the need for tolerance and pluralism in religious observation. The Druids of Avalon, indeed, set the example by repeatedly stating that all goddesses and gods are essentially the same and derived from a single source, and by having allowed Christians freedom of worship when they first appeared in Britain. This

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Bradley’s personal relationship with this is examined in Paxson, ‘Marion Zimmer Bradley and “The Mists of Avalon”‘. Bradley’s own reading into these traditions is cited in The Mists of Avalon, pp. vii–viii. Key texts for them which are relevant to the novel are G. Gardner, Witchcraft Today (London, 1954); Starhawk, The Spiral Dance (San Francisco, 1979); and The Druid Renaissance, ed. P. Carr-Gomm (London, 1996). For scholarly surveys, see R. Hutton, The Druids (London, 2007); and The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft (Oxford, 1998); and C. Eller, Living in the Lap of the Goddess (Boston, 1993).

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aspect of the novel’s message has been emphasized by Sallye Sheppeard.31 Carol Fry has, however, pointed out that the syncretic religion apparently advocated by the book is one which only the most esoteric varieties of Christian could possibly find acceptable.32 It may be suggested here that the case could be put more strongly: the story gives a consistent impression that Christianity is both a bad and a false religion, by denying all of its fundamental claims. Although good and bad characters can be found in each faith, and essentially good adherents of each can behave badly at times, the more fervent a Christian a person is in the story, the more flawed, misguided or unpleasant she or he is likely to be. The anti-heroine is Guenevere (‘Gwenhwyfar’), who is chiefly responsible for turning Arthur away from his pledges to Avalon and whose narrow-minded ­Christian bigotry is shown as intrinsically related to her own neuroses, insecurities and delusions. Whether Christian clergy are themselves good people, they are all equally given to religious intolerance, sexual repression, the servitude of women, and the suppression of truths about the nature of the world. The paganism of Avalon is consistently shown to be superior in its knowledge of history and science, and its rival is revealed as based on a series of pretensions and misunderstandings. Thus, the Christian god is shown to be merely one aspect of a universal male deity, its Virgin Mary just one face of the Great Goddess, and its Messiah, Jesus Christ, a medley of the pagan image of a dying and returning deity and a great historic holy man in his last cycle of incarnation who had come in his youth to Avalon to study with the Druids. The miracles accomplished by his apostles are shown to be lesser versions of the magical powers routinely deployed by the leading pagans; and indeed not a single Christian in the story is capable of any such acts whereas the rulers of Avalon remain continuously so. The doctrines of heaven and hell, and of sin, salvation and sainthood, are portrayed as fictions, used to gain power over other humans in a cosmos in which the true fate of souls on death is reincarnation. Christianity is shown as triumphing not just because of its determination to destroy all rivals but because of the stark simplicity and ease of its message, offering immediate and assured salvation in exchange for obedience and repentance. The paganism of Avalon, by contrast, requires purification of the soul through a succession of lives, and it is abandoned by most of the population, cutting off its supply of recruits and dooming it to disappearance. In her portrait of the two, Bradley seems to be acknowledging, while disparaging, the fervent and unquestioning affirmation of Christian faith still made by many of her compatriots. Her reply, and the device which gives the story something like a happy ending, is that the elements 31 32

S. Sheppeard, ‘Arthur and the Goddess’, in The Arthurian Myth of Quest and Magic, ed. W. E. Tanner (Dallas, 1993), pp. 91–104. C. Fry, ‘The Goddess Ascending’, Journal of Popular Culture 27 (1993), 67–80.

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of paganism survived by colonizing Christianity – its Great Goddess, for example, manifesting through female saints – with the implication that in modern times they can emerge from it again. After The Mists of Avalon, Arthurian fiction could never be quite the same again, and many of the subsequent works in that genre consisted of responses and adaptations to it. One of the more straightforward varieties of the former consisted of opposed reconstructions of post-Roman Britain by devout American Christians, and the most voluminous and prominent of these was the best-selling quartet of novels by Stephen Lawhead of Nebraska, published between 1987 and 1994.33 Like Bradley he reveals some of the finest of the pre-Christian spiritual traditions of Britain as having arrived with refugees from Atlantis (the next best thing in ancient tradition to America), who blend with the native Druidry; in his case the latter is in fact the recreated religion of Iolo Morganwg. This superior pagan faith is designed, however, to prepare the way for Christianity, which its finest adherents immediately recognize as a still better and more valid religion, and to which they, including Merlin, immediately convert. It operates alongside a degraded Romano-British polytheism, which purveys bad science and medicine as well as false religious teaching, and a yet worse native British paganism which includes human sacrifice. The Mists of Avalon had celebrated sexual freedom; Lawhead allowed sex to his favoured characters only within marriage, and his heroine, an Atlantean princess who marries Merlin, does not remove all her clothes even to bathe. Bradley’s heroine, Morgan le Fay, is turned into a Satanist working with the aid of demons, which are routed by Christian prayer; and, unsurprisingly, the Christians in the book always have access to greater supernatural power than their opponents. The hierarchy of racial superiority is reordered yet again, the Romans remaining civilized and wicked and the Anglo-Saxons warlike brutes, but the small dark aborigines becoming childlike and benighted savages. City dwellers are generally treated as corrupt and decadent, and natural virtue resides in the honest, hard-working, patriotic and pious farming folk of the British Mid West. Arthur is a holy warrior for Christ, pure and simple (in all senses of those terms). Nobody could ever accuse Lawhead of either inconsistency or subtlety in his ideological position. In the early 1990s two more works appeared in this tradition. The first, by Michael Pilla, chronicles the adventures of a converted Roman officer who sets out to evangelize post-Roman Britain. He encounters a series of different kinds of paganism – Roman, Druidic, Germanic and Pictish – and reveals each as based on falsehoods and devil-worship. Christian missionaries win their contests with each by the achievement of miracles, 33

S. Lawhead, Taliesin (1987); Merlin (1988); Arthur (1989); all published at Wheaton, ILL; and Pendragon (New York, 1994).

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made possible by the aid of divine power just as in medieval hagiographies. As John Marino has pointed out, the novel interprets the Grail in thoroughly Protestant fashion, as a spiritual achievement, the acceptance of salvation through Christ, rather than a physical object.34 The second book was Donna Fletcher Crow’s chronicle of Glastonbury, which took the opposite Christian view of British paganism, as a half-good Druidical faith designed to prepare the way for the true one. In her account, the conversion is complete by Arthur’s time, allowing him to function as an uncomplicatedly Christian hero.35 With her book, the short outburst of fundamentalist reaction came to an end. Works from the opposite end of the spectrum, which championed paganism, were even fewer, though it may be significant that they appeared later and have been from British authors. The most prominent was the ‘Guenevere’ trilogy by the British writer Rosalind Miles, which appeared between 1999 and 2001.36 Its world is very much that of The Mists of Avalon, but with one tremendous reversal: Guenevere is the champion of a threatened paganism and not a Christian evangelist. The incoming Christianity which she faces is an appallingly oppressive variety of imagined Roman Catholicism, introduced originally by St Augustine (so sending actual historical chronology topsy-turvy by at least a century) and characterized by power-hunger, corruption, puritanism, sexism, hypocrisy, sadism and deceit. Arthur retains the role that Bradley gave him, as a monarch of dual faith, protecting the devotees of both, who is weak enough to yield to the remorseless pressure of the ­Christians for more control. It is acknowledged that the native paganism had dark aspects in the past, including human sacrifice and some unpleasant deities. By Guenevere’s time, however, it has turned into the religion of modern pagans (and of Bradley’s novel): honouring a Great Goddess and her consort, who is god of the sun and of nature and devoted to love, feminism, selfexpression, ecological responsibility and the satisfaction of sexual desire at will. In a moment of lucidity Arthur sums up the differences between the two, perceiving that ‘The faith of the Christians dealt in guilt and grief, sweating tears and blood over sorrows of the past, and seeking to avoid eternity in Hell. But the Great Ones saw the trembling beauty of the present moment, the feathery difference of every blade of grass, the serene, unending wisdom in the world of nature, so much more noble than anything made by man.’37 34 35 36

37

M. L. Pilla, Barbarian’s Quest (Shippensburg PA, 1992); cf. Marino, The Grail Legend, p. 75. D. F. Crow, Glastonbury (Wheaton, ILL, 1994). R. Miles, Guenevere: The Queen of the Summer Country (1999); Guenevere: The Knight of the Sacred Lake (2000); Guenevere: The Child of the Holy Grail (2001); all published in London. Miles, Guenevere: Queen of the Summer Country, p. 462.

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The other work in this class was produced in 2003 by the Scotsman Allan Massie, who portrayed a Britain dominated by a Roman Catholicism with all the same abhorrent characteristics, and already more victorious. Paganism is effectively reduced to a few scattered adherents, of whom Merlin, a devotee of Mithras, is one. The Pope decides to bring down Arthur because he is an insufficiently obedient ruler, and so puts up Mordred against him as the champion of the fundamentalists (whereas in The Mists of Avalon he had been the last hope of paganism). Mordred duly introduces wholesale religious repression during his period of power, and forms a fascist Iron Guard which murders Jews, heretics and suspected witches. Having stopped him, Arthur dies a convinced pagan, looking forward to an afterlife in the Elysian Fields.38 In a separate category were books which used the legend to make quite different religious points, expressing other anxieties and loyalties. Again, these have been British. The more commercially prominent have been the ‘Warlord Chronicles’, a trilogy from one of the most famous of all recent historical novelists, Bernard Cornwell, issued in the mid 1990s.39 Once again Britain is an island of different competing religions: Christianity, aggressive, expanding and strongest in the south and in towns; Roman mystery cults, of Mithras (for soldiers) and Isis (for women); and the native paganism, populated with deities drawn – in reality – from medieval Welsh literature and the archaeology of Roman Britain, and served by Druids. Arthur is godless, Guenevere a devotee of Isis, and most of their warriors native pagans with the more notable initiates of Mithraism. A few believe in all gods equally. Christianity is presented with a total lack of sympathy, as mercenary, craven and intolerant, but the native paganism is shown as a tradition of superstition and gore, with regular human sacrifice and physically filthy Druids constantly working charms and spells against non-existent spiritual menaces. The overall point seems to be that all religious belief has dangers, and the only security lies in a secular rationalism; though it has to be noted that the leading pagans, such as Merlin, are portrayed as more attractive and impressive characters than the Christians, and seem to wield genuine arcane powers. Cornwell’s work is in other respects a throwback to an earlier British tradition, with a closely observed and realistic use of local landscapes and a nostalgia for the vanished glories and comforts of Rome. At the other extreme of realism was the ‘Mordred’ trilogy of Haydn Middleton, which appeared simultaneously and was a work of increasingly hallucinatory quality barely anchored in any kind of physical or historical

38 39

Allan Massie, Arthur the King (London, 2003). B. Cornwell, The Winter King (1995); Enemy of God (1996); Excalibur (1997); all published in London.

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reality.40 Arthur appears in it as the king of an overtly Christian realm in which paganism survives in the form of folk customs. He is indifferent to religion himself, and Mordred comes to power, overthrowing him, as the Messiah of a completely new cult mixing Christian and pagan themes: the fear here seems to be of new religious movements of the sort which abounded in the Western world during the late twentieth century. Most of the recent fiction devoted to Arthur has, however influenced in other respects by Bradley’s work, continued to embody the attitude of the earlier generation of writers, by arguing for the essential unity of all religion and the need for mutual tolerance and understanding. This was, after all, a theme which The Mists of Avalon had itself embodied, while, after a fashion, subverting it. It has been sounded anew in the past two and a half decades on both sides of the Atlantic, by Nicholas Tolstoy, Persia Woolley, Fay Sampson, Nancy McKenzie, Helen Hollick, Deepak Chopra, Frederick Lees, Patrick McCormack, A. A. Attanasio, Alice Borchardt and Philip Reeve.41 Just as those published in the 1970s had done, these writers differed markedly amongst themselves in their knowledge of history, literature and Britain, and their inclination to take a realistic view of the story or include elements of the magical and fantastic. Predictably, the British writers tended to be both more historically erudite and embody a more literal realism, and the American more prepared to enter alternative realities, but there was no consistency in this rule. As before, they also differed in the degree of sympathy which they accorded to Christianity or paganism, or to varieties of each; though there was an overall slight tendency for their work to become more favourable to paganism as time went on. What remains much more striking is their common message. Tolstoy’s post-Roman kings are advised by both bishops and Druids, who seem to be more or less equal in their virtues, and his hero Merlin is a baptized Christian who otherwise has no dealings with that faith. Sampson describes a world in which the divine forces of dark and light must be 40 41

H. Middleton, The King’s Evil (1995); The Queen’s Captive (1996); The Knight’s Vengeance (1997); all published in London. N. Tolstoy, The Coming of the King (London, 1988); P. Woolley, Guinevere: Child of the Northern Spring (New York, 1987); Guinevere: Queen of the Summer Stars (New York, 1990); and Guinevere: The Legend in Autumn (New York, 1991); F. Sampson, Wise Woman’s Telling (London, 1989); White Nun’s Telling (London, 1989); Black Smith’s Telling (London, 1990); Taliesin’s Telling (London, 1991); and Herself (1992); N. McKenzie, The Child Queen (New York, 1994); and The High Queen (New York, 1995); Helen Hollick, The Kingmaking (London, 1994); Pendragon’s Banner (London, 1995); and Shadow of the King (1997); D. Chopra, The Return of Merlin (London, 1995); F. Lees, The Arthuriad of Catumandus (Hong Kong, 1996); P. McCormack, The Last Companion (London, 1997); A. A. Attanasio, The Perilous Order (London, 1999); A. Borchardt, The Dragon Queen (New York, 2003); and The Raven Warrior (New York, 2003); P. Reeve, Here Lies Arthur (London, 2007)

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kept perpetually in balance, rather than for the latter to overthrow the former, in order for all beings to thrive. Her Britain is nominally Christian but remains pagan beneath the surface: as one local woman comments ‘Most of our gods are like any war lords. They can be beaten. But the Mothers will go on giving birth. You can’t stop them.’42 Both traditions are portrayed as having different strengths; as Sampson’s Morgan le Fay puts it, ‘We need both Father and Mother.’43 Woolley describes a land in which all faiths are expanding and recruiting in the power vacuum left by the withdrawal of Roman rule. Her Arthur declares ‘I’ll not favour one religion above another. I can’t afford to risk losing the people’s trust, and the leader who tries to impose one set of beliefs on all his people deserves to be viewed as a tyrant.’44 In her fiction it is the pagans who turn out to produce the less tolerant and amenable leaders. McKenzie has an Arthur and Guenevere who are comfortable with both traditions and marry each other at Midsummer, as a festival kept by both. In extremis Arthur calls on ‘God. Mithra. The Mother. The Elder Spirits. Any who will listen.’45 None the less, it is the pagans who are capable of worse excesses, and at one point Guenevere is almost sacrificed by the Druids of Anglesey, who worship ‘the dark face of the Goddess’. She herself becomes a devotee of the Virgin Mary, but as ‘the light face’ of the same great deity, rather than as the mother of Christ. Hollick’s Arthurian realm is likewise a multi-faith community, with good and bad aspects to all of the contending religions, who generally get on with each other while Arthur upholds the freedom of all: ‘Most of his men followed this Christ God; he could not deny them their belief because it was not his own. No commander had that right.’46 He himself, however, becomes a follower of Mithras, and none of the Christian characters are admirable and most are decidedly unpleasant, their innate tendency always to seek greater power for themselves being much emphasized. Chopra’s message is supra-religious: that the true deities are inside human beings, waiting to be born, and that the personalities in the Arthurian legend reflect different aspects of the human soul, which must be developed, transcended or defeated for good to prevail. Lees is another to adopt the theme of the monarch of all religions, with an Arthur who uses the Grail as a symbol around which they can unite, mingling the Christian consecrated wine in it with some of his own blood, as a pagan sacrament. As for his more humble subjects, ‘it was not likely to make much difference to these shabby country folk whether they spoke British or Saxon, worshipped Nodens, Christ or Woden, so long as they could 42 43 44 45 46

Sampson, Wise Woman’s Telling, p. 58. Sampson, Herself, p. 52. Woolley, Guenevere: Child of the Northern Spring, p. 345. McKenzie, The Child Queen, p. 277. Hollick, Pendragon’s Banner, p. 329.

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till the land.’47 This easy-going situation is, however, doomed by zealots on both sides, and as in Bradley’s story the contest polarizes between a Christian Guenevere and a pagan Morgan. The Church is bound to win because it understands the nature of power better, but Arthur maintains his doctrine of tolerance to the end, saying in conclusion ‘divinity is in many things – many men, many gods … the great lie is the commandment, the great truth, freedom’.48 McCormack repeats the theme of a contest between creative and destructive forces which runs through all religious forms. His Arthur explains that ‘A holy place is a holy place, regardless of what god is worshipped there’, while a wise Christian hermit affirms that Christ is sometimes called by the pagan names Baldur, Mabon or Lleu.49 Attanasio’s Arthur is a passionately devout evangelical Christian, but one operating in a world populated by pagan deities who are themselves part of the creation of his own god. They are objectively real and powerful, and he has to deal with them both as allies and adversaries, and to allow pagans to venerate them (and to travel to their realms after death) as part of the Christian duty to love. The novel is stylistically unsophisticated but mythologically rich, mixing together Norse and Irish literary tradition with Christian theology and Iolo Morganwg’s modern Druidry. Arthur’s political creed develops into one summed up in the following passage: ‘From his frightful journey into the hollow hills, he knew that the gods these people worshipped were real and worthy of respect. He also knew from his study of the Roman classics that no religion was ever defeated by malice. “Let us live our faith with devotion and celebration, and in time the people will see our Saviour’s merit.” ’50 Borchardt’s Guenevere has little option but to respect the pagan deities, because she is herself the daughter of an Irish god and a mortal woman. Certainly, although her Britain is nominally Christian, and Merlin serves (it seems effortlessly) as both Chief Druid of Britain and Archbishop of Canterbury, it is with these older divinities with whom she and Arthur have constantly to reckon. The highest force, beyond and behind all these terrestrial powers, is itself a hybrid, ‘God the Mother’, who manifests as light and everlasting love. Somewhere in all this, Christ himself has gone completely missing. None the less, his followers are never disparaged, condemnation being reserved for the uncouth and savage AngloSaxons and (above all) for Rome, which is associated with political and religious oppression and grinding taxation of the poor. Most recent of all in this sequence is Reeve’s story, a children’s book based on the cynical proposition that the whole Arthurian legend was a deliberate distortion of reality cooked up by the Dark Age equivalent of spin doctors. His 47 48 49 50

Lees, Arthuriad, p. 155. Lees, Arthuriad, p. 403. McCormack, The Last Companion, pp. 257, 386. Attanasio, The Perilous Order, p. 92.

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treatment of religion is, however, that of what had become an authorial norm, portraying a Britain in which Christianity has become the official religion but is no more than a veneer. Most people are either complete sceptics (like Merlin) or call on both pagan and Christian powers (like Arthur). On the other hand, in his telling paganism is harmless in itself, whereas Christian monks are greedy, cruel and hypocritical, smashing pagan shrines and drowning old women as witches, and the most odious of all is the one who ends up being venerated as a saint. The representations of the legend on cinema and television screens followed a similar trajectory during the same period, although in comparison a much delayed one with a much smaller output. Between the 1950s and the 1980s most retained the traditional image of Arthur as the king of a straightforwardly Christian people, while underplaying the presence of religion: he and Guenevere would, for example, usually get a church wedding. The remainder contained no religious element at all, such as the popular 1960s British-made television series Arthur of the Britons, which returned him to his roots as leader of a post-Roman war band. The single significant breach to this tradition came with John Boorman’s Excalibur, in 1979, where Merlin suggests in one scene that his magic is connected to the natural powers of earth and, as such, a relic of pagan days that must vanish in a newly Christianized world. Arthur and his knights, however, themselves always subscribe formally to Christianity, even though the Grail is represented more as a vessel linked to the life-force and health of the land and its ruler (which are combined in pagan fashion) than as the cup of the Last Supper. In these modest adaptations of cinematic tradition, Boorman was lagging at least thirty years behind written fiction. No other film-maker was bold enough to tackle similar issues until the late 1990s, when Edward Khmara wrote a television series based on the career of Merlin, produced by Dyson Lovell for the American company Hallmark Entertainment and launched in the United States 1998 (being later sold on to a British public network). The clash between pagan and Christian is at last made central to the story, but Merlin’s own role in it is unusual, and fitted into an original plot. In this he is trained in magic by the pagan goddess Queen Mab (a character actually taken from Shakespeare) to drive back an almost triumphant Christianity. He is himself irreligious, but turns against Mab for personal reasons and becomes her most bitter enemy. As such, he ranges himself alongside the Christians, who include Arthur, and eventually brings about the final defeat of Mab and the extinction of her religion: thus he deftly plays a pivotal part in the triumph of Christianity without himself appearing to be a Christian. This may be contrasted with a second television series devoted to Merlin, again taking a brand new perspective on his legend but this time written by Julian Jones for the British Broadcasting Corporation and launched in late 2008. Designed primarily for a young audience, it was accordingly not likely to give religious questions much prominence, but the 168

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same division was still quietly present. The castle of the young Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, has a Christian chapel, and so this is presumably the dominant faith, but it is revealed that Merlin’s own powers, like all magic, come from the Old Religion, which is still served by priestesses in remote places. It would be most unlikely to find a television screenplay based on the Arthurian tradition turning savagely against Christianity and exalting paganism as some of the novels have done. On the other hand, it would see almost as unexpected for a Hollywood blockbuster to do that, and yet this actually occurred in the single major cinematic treatment of the legend to appear in the 2000s. This was King Arthur, released in 2004 and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and directed by Antoine Fuqua. It was strongly promoted as restoring its subject to an authentic historical setting, and certainly stripped it of any magical elements and positioned it, uniquely, at the actual moment of Roman withdrawal from Britain. Its Arthur commences with a passionate loyalty to both the Roman Empire and the Christian faith, and comes to reject both, as equally cowardly, devious and cruel; the foreign nature of the Romans is emphasized by their strong Mediterranean accents. He ends up by going native in both politics and religion, joining the British resistance to the invading Saxons and marrying Guenevere, a local warrior queen, in a pagan ceremony among prehistoric megaliths, conducted by Merlin, a woad-dyed Druid. The audience is expected to find this a completely happy ending, so making a complete break with previous screen tradition in treatment of the figure of Arthur. In most respects the conclusions of this essay should by now be obvious. Historians of religious culture seem to be in general agreement that the 1960s marked the decisive period at which Britain and America – to differing degrees – ceased to be nations characterized by the hegemony of Christianity over cultural norms and attitudes, although that shift was made possible by more subtle alterations in preceding decades. It was in the sixties that they commenced most clearly the transition to multicultural communities with a plurality of religious faiths. This change is very clearly marked in contemporary representations of the Arthurian legend, which, though drawing on developments already apparent in muted form since 1940, adapted to the new context with a remarkable speed and consistency. Almost immediately, and with considerable consistency, novelists transformed Arthur himself from a warrior for Christ or the devout ruler of a tranquilly Christian kingdom into a monarch faced with serious problems of religious division and diversity amongst his subjects. Most of these writers also found the same role for him, as a model leader for a society based on mutual tolerance and acceptance of pluralism. It is that Arthur who has dominated the writing of fiction through the last four decades of the twentieth century and the first of the new one. This dominance has not, however, been unchallenged, as prominent works have 169

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been produced by writers that seek to present him as an adherent, or even a champion, of one particular faith among those vying for supremacy in the Britain of his time. Many of those which do maintain him as an advocate of liberty of conscience, moreover, continue to express unease or hostility towards either Christianity or paganism, or specific varieties of each: Arthur the pluralist is portrayed as a failure more often than he is as a success. Increasingly, if slowly and unevenly, authors of fiction have come to treat the Christian faith as the less attractive and the more dangerous to liberal values. As such, recent retellings of the legend act as mirrors for the hopes and fears of authors caught up in the internal cultural changes of the late twentieth-century Western world, and in particular with relation to the appearance of large-scale religious diversity in it. It may be argued, as some novelists have done, that the Britain of the years around 500, in which any historical Arthur must be located, indeed makes a neat counterpoint for the modern West, as it was the last occasion before the present on which Christianity had to share the island with different faiths which represented serious contenders for the beliefs of its inhabitants. In reality, neither the historical nor the archaeological sources provide any firm basis for such a supposition, all tending to suggest a near-complete victory for Christianity among at least the southern British by the end of the fifth century.51 There is, correspondingly, absolutely no material in medieval versions of the Arthurian legend, early or late, to support an image of Arthur and his followers as other than the Christian elite of a Christian kingdom. The demolition of this convention in the late twentieth century therefore represents a major modern reworking of the tradition. That it should have been so rapid and overwhelming is proof of the depth of the excitements and anxieties present in the modern English-speaking world as a result of its abandonment of a general, if often nominal, allegiance to the Christian religion. Equally, however, it is a further testimony of the enduring value to that world of the Arthurian legend itself.

51

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The Arthurian Legend in Literature, Popular Culture and the Performing Arts, 2004–2008 Edited by Raymond H. Thompson and Norris J. Lacy This, the fifth supplement to The New Arthurian Encyclopedia, extends up to 2008 and, like earlier supplements, includes material overlooked in the past. When other work by an author has been discussed before, we have added a parenthetical reference: NAE for The New Arthurian Encyclopedia and the first two supplements, which were published together in the 1995 Updated Edition; AL 18 and 22 for the third and fourth supplements, which were published in Arthurian Literature XVIII (2001) and XXII (2005) respectively. (To assist users in locating entries, we are preparing a cumulative index of all the supplements; it will be published on-line by The Camelot Project.) Although the spate of thematic anthologies of Arthurian short stories has waned since 2002, two other recent trends continue unabated: the proliferation of series and the opportunities provided by print-on-demand publishing. Bernard Cornwell, Rosalind Miles and Jack Whyte have brought their series to an end: Cornwell’s Heretic (2003) concludes his Grail Quest trilogy; Miles’s Lady of the Sea (2004) her Tristan and Isolde trilogy; Whyte’s The Eagle (2005) his Dream of Eagles Cycle. Others, like James C. Work, Mary Pope Osborne and Gerald Morris, however, push on, and they have been joined by such newcomers as Sarah Zettel, Laura Anne Gilman and Gwen Rowley, though in some series the Arthurian element fades into the background as authors like Kinley MacGregor, Elizabeth Wein and T. A. Barron focus upon the adventures of descendants of Arthurian figures. Publish-on-demand books, though they broaden the range of reinterpretations of the legend, suffer not only from the lack of editorial oversight, but from being too often over-long and over-earnest. The results, inevitably, are uneven. At the other end of the scale some of the best current Arthurian fiction is being written for younger readers by authors like Gerald Morris and Elizabeth Wein. In Canada, Kit Pearson’s A Perfect Gentle Knight (2007) won several awards, including the Governor 171

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General’s Literary Award for best book of the year for young adults; and in the UK, Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur (2007) won the Carnegie Medal, the first Arthurian novel to do so since Rosemary Sutcliff’s The Lantern Bearers (1959). Since artefacts like Excalibur and the Grail, and figures like Merlin and Morgan le Fay, often turn up divorced from their Arthurian context – the most famous recent example being The Da Vinci Code (2003) by Dan Brown, made into a film in 2006 – some of the works cited below may seem only marginally Arthurian, and this situation is equally noticeable when authors deal with Arthurian predecessors and successors, as well as modern characters whose lives seem patterned upon those of Arthurian figures, as in Meg Cabot’s Avalon High (2006). This can be seen, however, as further evidence of the vigour and popularity of the legend as it moves further into the twenty-first century. Once again we have drawn on the talents of a range of contributors, identified by initials at the end of each entry, and as before we thank them not only for the entries themselves, but for bringing additional items to our attention. They are as follows: ACL AH BTL DN KH LG LH LMM MAT NJL RHT RS SSch UM

Alan C. Lupack, University of Rochester Ann Howey, Brock University Barbara Tepa Lupack, Rochester, New York Dan Nastali, Kansas City, Missouri Kevin Harty, La Salle University Linda Gowans, Sunderland, England Leah Haught, University of Rochester Larry Mendelsberg, Teaneck, New Jersey Michael A. Torregrossa, Smithfield, Rhode Island Norris J. Lacy, Pennsylvania State University Raymond H. Thompson, Kentville, Nova Scotia Roger Simpson, Norwich, England Siegrid Schmidt, Universität Salzburg Ulrich Müller, Universität Salzburg

ABRAHAMSON, KAREN, places ‘The Lady of Ashuelot’ (2006) in a modern setting to reveal the consequences of Guinevere’s actions when Lancelot finds her and the Lady of the Lake living in New Hampshire and asks for the return of Excalibur. [LMM] Abrahamson, Karen L. ‘Lady of Ashuelot’. Realms of Fantasy (April 2006), 38–43.

ADDERLEY, MARK, is the author of The Hawk and the Wolf, a novel about Emrys (Merlin), which is set in the first century and tells his story 172

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against the background of British history as recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Emrys loves Boudicea and seeks the sword Excalibur, passed on to the kings of Britain from the time of Brutus but now lost. The novel ends with the defeat of the British by Vespasian, but Emrys has a vision in which he sees that the Romans will not always control Britain and that a king wielding Excalibur will restore British glory. [ACL] Adderley, Mark. The Hawk and the Wolf. Book One of The Matter of Britain. Marrero, LA: Westbank Publishing, 2008.

ANDERSDATTER, KARLA, reinvents the legend of Tristan and Iseult in her novel Of Love and Promises: A Forgotten Tale (2005). Told in the words of Iseult, many of the traditional components of the story are present in this romantic version. The author portrays the lovers not as pawns of fate, however, but rather as two strong individuals who understand that there are consequences to their actions and accept that responsibility. [LMM] Andersdatter, Karla. Of Love and Promises: A Forgotten Tale. Sausalito, CA: In Between Books, 2005.

APSLEY, BRENDA, British author best known for her children’s books, has written ‘The Creation of Camelot’ (1983), a short story, originally published anonymously, tying in with the BBC’s popular Doctor Who television series. Apsley sends the Fifth Doctor and his companion to Camelot, where they thwart the plans of the Master (another Time Lord from the Doctor’s home world), who had been masquerading as Merlin and working in league with Morgan le Fay to protect Mordred. The Master departs, leaving the Doctor to create the Round Table in an attempt to re-solidify Arthur’s rule. In its original form, ‘The Creation of Camelot’ includes a series of uncredited illustrations. [MAT] Apsley, Brenda. ‘The Creation of Camelot’. In Doctor Who Annual [1984]. Manchester, UK: World International, 1983, pp. 22–8.

ARMITAGE, SIMON, British poet and prose writer, whose narrative ‘King Arthur in the East Riding’ (1998) is an affectionate account of an outing made to the coastal resort of Bridlington by members of a Yorkshire working men’s club who have been invited to stage their village pantomime there. Their play shows Merlin gunning down Arthur for not being up to the job. [RS] Armitage, Simon. ‘King Arthur in the East Riding’. In All Points North. London: Viking, 1998, pp. 25–37. Reissued in King Arthur in the East Riding. London: Penguin, 2005, pp. 21–34. 173

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ARTHURIAN POP-UPS (also called pop-outs, pull-downs, or pull-tabs), movable books that feature three-dimensional illustrations, are especially popular among young readers. The earliest Arthurian pop-up is the classic, and now highly collectable, Mickey Mouse in King Arthur’s Court (1933), in which Disney’s ubiquitous mouse rescues Princess Minnie, who has been taken hostage by Mortgage the Meanie, Duke of Dunkingham. For his bravery, Minstrel Mickey is dubbed ‘Sir Michael’. Modern pop-ups often employ Arthurian material in more traditional ways. King Arthur and the Magic Sword (1990), an adaptation of Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights, retells the story of the sword in the stone, while The Legend of King Arthur and the Round Table (1987) illustrates other familiar episodes as well, such as the establishing of the Round Table and Arthur’s last battle with his ‘own half-brother’ Mordred. King Arthur’s Camelot (1993) consists of a large central pop-up castle and four separate storybooks: In Which Arthur Becomes King, In Which Merlin the Enchanter Saves King Arthur, In Which Guinevere Becomes Queen, and In Which Lancelot Becomes a Champion of the Round Table. Like the Disney film of the same name, Walt Disney’s Sword in the Stone focuses on Merlin’s education of Arthur (‘Wart’). A more recent pop-up, Quest for Camelot (1998), based on Warner Brothers’ animated feature film, highlights the adventures of the heroine Kayley, who seeks to become one of Arthur’s knights. Little Merlin’s Book of Magic Pets (1994) similarly focuses on younger characters, as the boy wizard Merlin entertains the lonely little King Arthur with magical creatures that pop out from the pages of a book. Still other pop-ups – like Pendragon Castle (1983), Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin (2005), and Knight: A Noble Guide for Young Squires (2006) – make allusions to Arthurian legend or borrow Arthurian names but have little actual Arthurian content. [BTL] Brown, Graham, and Michael Wells. The Legend of King Arthur and the Round Table. Text by Geraldine McCaughrean. Illustrated by Nick Williams. Paper engineering by Vic Duppa-Whyte and Damian Johnston. New York: Crown, 1987. De Lance, Sir Geoffrey. Knight: A Noble Guide for Young Squires. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2006. [Disney, Walt.] Mickey Mouse in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Blue Ribbon, 1933. King Arthur and the Magic Sword. Adapted from Howard Pyle’s The Story of King Arthur and His Knights. Designed by Keith Moseley. Pictures by John James. New York: Dial, 1990. King Arthur’s Camelot: A Pop-Up Castle and Four Storybooks. Adapted by Lisa Rojany. Illustrations and Paper Engineering by Lászlo Bátki. Designed by Jon Z. Haber. New York: Dutton, 1993. 174

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Patience, John. Little Merlin’s Book of Magic Pets. Paper engineering by Keith Moseley. Los Angeles: Price Stern Sloan, 1994. Pendragon Castle. Designed and illustrated by Keith Moseley. London: Kestrel, 1983. Quest for Camelot Pop-Up Storybook. Ashland, OH: Landoll, 1998. Steer, Dugald A. Wizardology: The Book of the Secrets of Merlin. Illustrated by Anne Yvonne Gilbert, John Howe, Tomislav Tomic and Helen Ward. Cambridge, MA: Candlewick, 2005. Walt Disney’s Sword in the Stone: L.P. Record and Pop-Up Panorama Storybook. n.p., n.d.

BARRON, T. A. (AL 18, 22), has provided a sequel to his Lost Years of Merlin series. In the Great Tree of Avalon trilogy (2004–6), the protagonist, Merlin’s grandson, carries Merlin’s staff and has inherited his magic powers; with others he protects Avalon from the villain Rhita Gawr. Merlin’s role is minimal (though greater at the end of the third book), but references to his deeds and to his Arthurian role occur frequently; the Lady of the Lake also appears. Most recently, Barron has published Merlin’s Dragon (2008), the first in a new trilogy in which Merlin plays a larger role. Basil is a tiny creature destined to grow into a huge dragon, but first he must undertake an epic journey to the farthest edge of the spirit world and confront his own fears if he is to help Merlin against his foes. [AH] Barron, T. A. The Great Tree of Avalon Book One: Child of the Dark Prophecy. New York: Philomel, 2004. ———. The Great Tree of Avalon Book Two: Shadow on the Stars. New York: Philomel, 2005. ———. The Great Tree of Avalon Book Three: The Eternal Flame. New York: Philomel, 2006. ———. Merlin’s Dragon. New York: Philomel, 2008.

BEARDSLEY, MARTYN, British author of the children’s novel Sir Gadabout (1992), whose eponymous hero may be hard-working and polite, but is indubitably the most incompetent knight in the world. When Guinevere is kidnapped by witches, however, he sets off with Merlin’s snide cat, named Sidney Smith, and fortuitously manages to rescue her. Eight sequels have maintained the comic formula. The concept formed the basis for a drastically reshaped adaptation on British television in 2002/3 (see AL 22). [RS] Beardsley, Martyn. Sir Gadabout. London: Dent, 1992. ———. Sir Gadabout Gets Worse. London: Dent, 1993. ———. Sir Gadabout and the Ghost. London: Orion, 1994. ———. Sir Gadabout Does His Best. London: Dolphin, 2001. 175

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———. Sir Gadabout and the Little Horror. London: Dolphin, 2002. ———. Sir Gadabout Goes Overboard. London: Orion, 2004. ———. Sir Gadabout Goes Barking Mad. London: Orion, 2005. ———. Sir Gadabout Goes to Knight School. London: Orion, 2006. ———. Sir Gadabout Out of Time. London: Orion, 2007. All are illustrated by Tony Ross.

BOARD BOOKS, FRENCH, often identified somewhat misleadingly as ‘comic books’, are hardbound and are extensively (and sometimes garishly) illustrated narratives for adults or younger readers, though not for smaller children. The illustration is typically bold and colourful, and a page may have a single image or as many as eight frames. The authors and artists tend to set some elements of their stories in a Dark Age frame, but more generally the setting is an indeterminate past. Castles, for example, are often located on perilous peaks and may evoke a ‘frankensteinian’ castle more than one from any identifiable medieval period. Many of the French board books, including some Arthurian series running to multiple volumes, are published by Soleil Productions in Toulon, France. There are at least two Merlin series. One has run to eight volumes to date; another, titled Merlin, la quête de l’épée (Merlin: The Quest for the Sword), is in two volumes thus far. Other titles are Les Chemins d’Avalon (two volumes), Les Contes de Brocéliande (Stories of Brocéliande; four volumes), Légendes de la Table Ronde (three volumes), La Quête du Graal (one volume). The authors’ approach varies widely from series to series; some are easily recognizable adaptations of Arthurian tradition, whereas others are fanciful creations using little traditional material apart from some characters’ names. In addition, some of the board books contain as many as four distinct stories, whose authorship and artistry may be different for each narrative. Generally there is triple credit for a volume or for an individual story within a volume: credit is given for author (with Jean-Luc Istin among the most prolific), for drawing (e.g., Guy Michel; Eric Lambert), and for colouring. [NJL] BLAIR, J. M. C., has published The Excalibur Murders (2008), first in a projected Merlin Investigates mystery series. King Arthur’s twin sons have been murdered, Excalibur and the Stone of Bran have been stolen, and all the primary residents of Camelot are suspect. It is up to Merlin, his assistant Nimue (who is disguised as a boy) and Britomart to find the murderer/thief and save the kingdom for Arthur. [LMM] Blair, J. M. C. The Excalibur Murders: A Merlin Investigation. New York: Berkley, 2008.

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BRICE, VICTOR C., in Pendragon’s Requite (2007), revives King Arthur, Lancelot and the rest of the Round Table to renew their civil conflict in Baltimore, Maryland, in the twenty-first century. [RHT] Brice, Victor C. Pendragon’s Requite: King Arthur Triumphant! iUniverse, 2007.

BROD, D. C., incorporates the key elements of the matter of Britain in Heartstone (2005), a modern-day thriller. The Heartstone is a missing gem taken from the hilt of Excalibur by Bedwyr before he cast the sword into the lake. Arthur Penn, millionaire philanthropist, controls his charitable organization Caliburnus on the island of Alyssum, waiting for the stone’s return, since legend has it that the woman who replaces the stone will bear the future king. Arthur’s evil half brother Simon Murdoch and Rhys Lewis, the spawn of a mortal woman and a demon, plan to steal the stone, take over Caliburnus, and create a worldwide network of terror and chaos. It is up to Nick, one of Bedwyr’s descendants, and other believers in truth, justice and fairies to thwart their evil intentions. [LMM] Brod, D. C. Heartstone. Waterville, ME: Five Star, 2005.

BRUNNER, FANNY, Austrian theatre producer, composed Tristan und Isold, a chamber play for six actors and four musicians that tells the complete story based upon Eilhart von Oberge. Commissioned by the Landestheater Linz for its ‘off-theatre’ Eisenhand, it proved surprisingly successful. The opening night was in December 2007. [UM] Müller, Ulrich. ‘Tristans Freunde, Tristans Feinde. Zu einer Theaterproduktion des “Tristrant” von Eilhart von Oberge im Linzer Landestheater’. In Festschrift für Lia Secci (forthcoming).

BURGESS, ANTHONY (NAE), author of ‘Hun’ (1989), a novella that recounts Attila’s invasion of the Roman Empire. Attila finds the legendary sword of the king of Scythians and worships it as an emblem of power. Before his death, he sends it to a childhood friend in Rome; but after both men are assassinated, it becomes the property of Ambrosianus, who takes it to Britain where it allegedly awaits another dux Romanus with an A name. [LH] Burgess, Anthony. ‘Hun’. In The Devil’s Mode. New York: Random House; London: Hutchinson, 1989, pp. 152–269.

CABOT, MEG, in Avalon High (2006) recasts the Arthur–Guenevere– Lancelot love triangle in a US high school setting, sardonically described by Ellie, the witty narrator. She, fortunately, turns out to be a reincarnation 177

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not of the helpless Elaine of Astolat, but of the Lady of the Lake, and her gift of a sword this time helps to break the cycle that will lead to doom. Instead Will (Arthur) falls in love with Ellie, while Jennifer pairs off with Lance. The story is continued in manga (comic) format: Avalon High: Coronation 1 (2007) and 2 (2008). Will’s half-brother Marco (Mordred) and his girlfriend Morgan resume their plots against Will and Ellie. The irony that distinguished the novel, however, is replaced by an emphasis upon melodrama. [RHT] Cabot, Meg. Avalon High. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ———. Avalon High: Coronation. Volume 1: The Merlin Prophecy. Illustrated by Jinky Coronado. New York: HarperCollins/Tokyopop, 2007; as Avalon High: The Merlin Prophecy. London: Macmillan/Tokyopop, 2007. ———. Avalon High: Coronation. Volume 2: Homecoming. Illustrated by Jinky Coronado. New York: HarperCollins/Tokyopop, 2008.

CALWAY, GARETH, British poet and dramatist. In two early poems Calway presents two contrasting aspects of Arthur’s queen. While ‘Gwenefore, 539’ voices a passionate Dark Age elegy for her heroic husband, ‘Lady Guinevere’ portrays herself as an assertive High Medieval queen, scornful of all except her beloved Lancelot. His later Margot’s Guinevere, or Letting Go is a play for teenagers, which incorporates rock music and gives particular prominence to female roles. First staged in 1992, it sets the traditional story against a modern background by showing students from a run-down area of Bristol performing a new Arthurian play, an experience that inspires an offstage transformation in their own lives and in the modern Waste Land they inhabit. [RS] Calway, Gareth. ‘Gwenefore, 539’ and ‘Guinevere’. In Coming Home. Norwich: King of Hearts, 1991, pp. 31–2, 37. ———. Margot’s Guinevere, or Letting Go. Cambridge: Sharing Scripts, 2005.

CAMBIAS, JAMES, in his short story ‘Parsifal (Prix Fixe)’ (2006), follows a trio of tourists as they take a detour on their European vacation to search for the Holy Grail. What they find is a surprising revelation. [LMM] Cambias, James L. ‘Parsifal (Prix Fixe)’. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (February 2006), 128–35.

CATTIE, RAY, author of Ard Righ (2005), a novel that draws upon both chronicle and romance traditions to recreate the events leading up to Arthur’s first victory as Ard Righ, or High King of Britain. The narrative 178

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follows Myrddin’s attempts to establish a Kingdom of Summer, marked by compassion and wisdom, to replace the ever-present ‘winter’ of war. A druid who practices both the old traditions and the teachings of Christ, Myrddin is a counselor to kings who hides Caladfwlch, the legendary sword of kingship, until it can be claimed by its rightful owner. After witnessing many kings fail to achieve peace, Myrddin assumes an active role in the creation of Arthur’s kingship. He orchestrates the deception of Ygraine by Uther, places Arthur in foster care, oversees his educational development from ‘Wart’ to ‘Bear’, conspires with Augustine of Canterbury to have Arthur crowned and married, and assists Arthur to defeat the rebellious Lot. [LH] Cattie, Ray. Ard Righ: The Sword on the Stone. Eagleville, PA: DNA Press, 2005.

CLEGG, DOUGLAS, a gay American writer of award-winning horror and dark fantasy, has written Mordred, Bastard Son (2006), a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award and the first novel of a projected trilogy offering a sympathetic, first-person account of Mordred’s life. Resembling a Mordred-centered version of The Mists of Avalon, much of the narrative is a flashback in which Mordred, a gay young man struggling to discover his place in the world, becomes the champion of the pre-Christian powers of Britain and opposes the forces of darkness represented by his mother Morgan le Fay and aunt Morgause. Merlin, Viviane, Taliesin, the Lady of the Lake and Lancelot (who becomes his lover) feature as positive influences on the young Mordred. [MAT] Clegg, Douglas. Mordred, Bastard Son. Book One of the Mordred Trilogy. New York: Alyson, 2006.

CLEMENT-DAVIES, DAVID, sets The Telling Pool (2005), a historical novel for younger readers, in the twelfth century. Young Rhodri, the son of a falconer, is helped by a Merlin figure and by visions from the glorious Arthurian past that contrasts sharply with his own harsh learning experience on the Welsh Marches. [RHT] Clement-Davies, David. The Telling Pool. New York: Amulet, 2005.

COCHRAN, MOLLY (NAE, AL 18), with her fantasy novel The Third Magic (2003), completes the trilogy about the return of King Arthur to our modern world, which began with the two books co-written with Warren Murphy, The Forever King (1992) and The Broken Sword (1997). Arthur is here an eighteen-year-old boy, hiding from the public with Galahad and other knights from the past and resisting his destiny to become the ruler of a reformed society. With the prodding and guidance of a returned Taliesin/ 179

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Merlin, he once again faces a world-class villain and sundry other threats, but finds love with a reincarnated Guinevere and miraculous help from the Grail. [DN] Cochran, Molly. The Third Magic. New York: Forge, 2003.

COLEMAN, LOREN L., reveals the true forces behind the realities and myths of Arthur and Camelot in her short story ‘Sisters of the Blade’ (2006). [LMM] Coleman, Loren L. ‘Sisters of the Blade’. In Hags, Sirens and Other Bad Girls of Fantasy, ed. Denise Little. New York: DAW, 2006, pp. 108–24.

CONLEE, JOHN (AL 22), continues his young adult Arthurian series as told by Cabal, Arthur’s faithful dog. The third instalment, The King of Mud and Grass (2005), is the story of the Battle of Barren Down (Mount Badon), with Cabal, Morgan le Fay, Gwythir the Pict and Merlin all playing central roles. Arthur must face not only the superior numbers of Saxon troops, but a test of faith that will determine his ability to become a true leader and king of all Britain. In the Summer Country (2006) describes Gwinevere’s abduction by Meligraunce, with innovative episodes involving Arthur’s introduction to Lancelot and his winning of Excalibur. [LMM] Conlee, John. The King of Mud and Grass. Williamsburg, VA: Pale Horse, 2005. ———. In the Summer Country. Williamsburg, VA: Pale Horse, 2006.

CONWAY, MONCURE DANIEL (1832–1907), American writer, preacher, and abolitionist, refers to the Matter of Britain in many of his works published from 1860 to 1904. His earliest uses of the legend are Civil War propaganda in the service of the Union cause. ‘Excalibur: A Story for Anglo-American Boys’ (1860) is inspired by the legend of Arthur redivivus and published anonymously in The Dial of Cincinnati, which Conway also edited. Begun just after the hanging of abolitionist John Brown, the story traces the fate of Excalibur, ‘a sword which was sent into this world to fight for the weak against the strong, for the right against the wrong’, from King Arthur’s age to Conway’s own, when it was carried by Brown during his raid on Harper’s Ferry. An anonymous continuator includes this story in Excalibur: A Tale for American Boys (1865; see AL XVIII, 211), and adds to it the activities of the sword from Brown’s death to the then recent assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Conway’s ‘The Magic Duet’ (1860), a second anonymous story appearing in The Dial, retells the beheading episode from The Carle of Carlisle, and it was later reworked for The Rejected Stone: Or, Insurrec180

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tion vs. Resurrection in America (1861), also published anonymously, as an analogy for the fate of the Confederate States, which, like the dwarfish Carl, must be struck down in order to be restored ‘to their full stature’. After the Civil War, Conway composed a series of biographical texts, studies of comparative mythology, and his own autobiography, all of which contain references to Arthurian tradition. [MAT] Conway, Moncure Daniel. Autobiography, Memories and Experiences of Moncure Daniel Conway. 2 vols. Boston/New York: Houghton Mifflin; London: Cassell, 1904. ———. ‘Excalibur: A Story for Anglo-American Boys’. The Dial 1:1 (Jan. 1860), 38–48. ———. ‘The Magic Duet’. The Dial 1:4 (Apr. 1860), 228–36. ———. The Rejected Stone: Or, Insurrection vs. Resurrection in America. Boston: Walker, Wise, 1861. Torregrossa, Michael A. ‘Moncure Daniel Conway and the Matter of Britain: An Assessment of His Knowledge and Use of the Legend’. In From Manuscripts to Cyberspace: Representations of the Middle Ages in Modern Mass Media, ed. Michael A. Torregrossa. Forthcoming.

COOK, SUSAN, transposes the story of Galahad’s quest for the Holy Grail as found in the prose romances to a sixth-century setting in her historical novel The Book of Galahad (2004). In the company of Launcelot, Perceval, Perceval’s twin sister and several ordinary soldiers, a youthful Galahad travels through the lands of the Franks and Ostrogoths to Rome and Constantinople. There he saves his father’s life by preventing him from touching a deadly chalice that is not the true Grail, but ‘the challenge of the Grail’. The novel includes the account of Perceval’s sister willingly sacrificing her life to save a sick girl. [RHT] Cook, Susan. The Book of Galahad. Paul Mould, 2004.

CORNWELL, BERNARD (AL, 18, 22), brings to a conclusion his Grail Quest series with Heretic (2003). Thomas of Hookton, an English archer in the army of Edward III during the Hundred Years War and descendant of the Catharist Vexille family, finally manages to slay his enemies, most notably his own cousin Guy Vexille. In the belief that pursuit of the Grail brings out the worst in people, not the best, however, he throws it into the sea after finding it. [RHT] Cornwell, Bernard. Heretic. London: HarperCollins, 2003.

CURRAN, SHEILA, in her comic novel Diana Lively Is Falling Down (2005), follows the fortunes of the family of an arrogant Oxford Arthurian scholar who must move to Arizona to consult on the creation of an 181

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Arthurian theme park. Discussions of the park and its inspiration result in numerous allusions to the legend and to different scholarly approaches to its status as fiction or fact. [AH] Curran, Sheila. Diana Lively is Falling Down. New York: Berkeley, 2005.

DARBY, CATHERINE (NAE), reassembles the characters of Arthurian legend on the island of Mona in the late eighteenth century to produce this tale of intrigue. Gwendolen Grange, living alone with her over-indulgent father, is thrust into an arranged marriage with Rex Brittain, who is a lord on the Isle of Mona. Rex lives with his sinister half-sister Megan Gorlois and his adopted brother Bedwin. Included in the cast of characters is Uncle Ambrose, Megan’s illegitimate son Morris, and several other familiar players. The author skilfully weaves the legend of the Sangreal into the novel to produce a tightly written transposition of the Arthurian legend. [LMM] Darby, Catherine. Sangreal. London: Robert Hale, 1984.

DAVID, PETER (NAE, AL 22), author of Fall of Knight, the third in his series of Arthurian novels. Arthur, having returned in the twentieth century and having served as mayor of New York and then as US president, has learned of the Grail’s remarkable healing power. He enters into a business agreement with Barry Seltzer to market ‘Grail Ale’, water that has been poured into the Grail and then bottled for sale. Eventually he learns that Barry Seltzer is Paracelsus reincarnated, and he battles him at Stonehenge to prevent the destruction of humanity. [NJL] David, Peter. Fall of Knight. New York: Ace, 2006.

DOHERTY, ROBERT (pen name of Robert Mayer) (AL 22), provides a ‘pre-history’ for his science fiction series Area 51 in Area 51: Legend (2004). Stories from history and legend, such as the building of the pyramids, the fall of Atlantis, and the war between Arthur and Mordred, are integrated into his account of alien conflict. Although Arthur and Mordred represent rival alien factions, Morgana and Gawain are humans from a distant world who organize resistance against the aliens throughout the centuries. [RHT] Doherty, Robert. Area 51: Legend. New York: Dell, 2004.

DUEY, KATHLEEN, in Time Soldiers: Arthur (2004), sends four children through a time portal. Finding themselves in the England of Arthur’s day, they help him pull the sword from the stone and defeat the villainous 182

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Sir Edward. Photographs of actors dressed in costume and acting out the story appear on every page. [AH] Duey, Kathleen. Time Soldiers: Arthur. Illustrated by Robert Gould. Time Soldiers 4. Carlsbad, CA: Big Guy Books, 2004.

DUFFY, MAUREEN, in ‘City of the Dead’ (1975), shifts between past and present to explore British identity. Artor here is a title for the ‘chief of all’, and the individual being prepared for this position by Murddin is a boy who successfully pulls a dagger from a stone. Instructed to return the dagger to the Lady of the Lake, the boy is dismayed when it sinks, and Murddin mocks his expectation for something magical. [LH] Duffy, Maureen. ‘City of the Dead’. In Capital. London: Jonathan Cape, 1975, pp. 15–66.

FARLAND, DAVID, focuses on Merlin’s behaviour at Tintagel Castle and the consequences of his actions while disguised as Sir Jordan, Duke Gorlois’ chamberlain, in the short story ‘The Mooncalfe’ (2008). [LMM] Farland, David. ‘The Mooncalfe’. In Orson Scott Card’s InterGalactic Medicine Show, ed. Edmund Schubert and Orson Scott Card. New York: Tor, 2008, pp. 135–60.

FENTON, ALAN, in his novel The Return of Arthur (2006), reincarnates Arthur at the end of the twentieth century. Guided by Merlin every step of the way, he experiences once again many of the episodes of his earlier existence, as he rises to become Prime Minister of England in order to ‘save the world’ and maintain the ideals of Camelot. Several traditional characters are present with significantly altered roles, while others remain on the fringe of the story line. [LMM] Fenton, Alan. The Return of Arthur. Wimborne, Dorset, UK: Dovecote, 2006.

FILM. While there have been additions to the corpus of cinema arthuriana, a more significant recent development has been the increased critical attention that films which directly or indirectly embrace the legend of the once and future king have begun to receive, most notably in the book-length studies by Susan Aronstein and François Amy de la Bretèque cited below. Ron Howard’s 2006 film version of Dan Brown’s best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code, from a screenplay by Akiva Goldsman, was, despite an all-star cast, a critical and box office disappointment. The earlier Das Blut der Templer (Code of the Templars), directed by Florian Baxmeyer with 183

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a screenplay by Stefan Barth from a novel of the same title by Wolfgang Hohlbein, did more than disappoint when it was released direct to DVD in 2004. The film is a lame attempt to cash in on the popularity of Dan Brown’s novel. Even more disappointing, if it is possible, is another direct to DVD production, Lance Catania’s 2005 Cup of My Blood from an original screenplay by Catania and Ken Nilsson, in which a pornographer becomes the unwitting Grail knight who can alone save the world from impending apocalypse. Not indebted to any version of the Grail legend, but only slightly better than the film version of Brown’s novel – or its cinematic knockoffs – is Doug Lefler’s The Last Legion, with a screenplay by Jez Butterworth from the novel of the same title by Valerio Massimo Manfredi. Shelved by MGM for several years until its release in 2007, the film had hoped to capitalize on the success of Antoine Fuqua’s 2004 King Arthur, until that film was met with indifferent critical acclaim. In Lefler’s film, the boy Arthur is the last emperor of Rome; when faced with invading Goths, he flees to Britain, not yet aware of his legendary destiny. Better is Kevin Reynolds’s recent film version of the legend of Tristan and Isolde from a screenplay by Dean Geogaris (Tristan and Isolde, 2006), which presents a portrait of King Mark that is more fully-rounded, complex, and ultimately sympathetic than usual. But the most interesting recent example of cinema Arthuriana may be Richard Grant’s 2005 autobiopic Wah Wah, which details his childhood in Swaziland until the country obtained its independence from Great Britain. As a parting gesture, the British civil servants stage a production of Camelot, and the film suggests some intriguing connections between the Grant character and the young Arthur as each sets out to embrace his future. By contrast, Luc Besson’s Arthur and the Invisibles (2007), which borrows some elements from Arthurian legend, makes unimpressive use of big-name voice talents when it mixes live action with computer animation in a fantasy for children. [KH] Aronstein, Susan. Hollywood Knights: Arthurian Cinema and the Politics of Nostalgia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. de la Bretèque, François Amy. L’Imaginaire medieval dans le cinema occidental. Paris: Champion, 2004. Review of Cup of My Blood. Chicago Sun-Times 19 August 2005: 32. Review of Das Blut der Templer. German Film Quarterly 2 (2004), 38–9. Review of The Da Vinci Code. Arthuriana 16 (Winter 2006), 83–5. Review of The Last Legion. Arthuriana 17 (Fall 2007), 103–4. Review of Tristan and Isolde. Arthuriana 16 (Spring 2006), 84–6. Review of Wah Wah. Arthuriana 16. (Winter 2006), 117–19.

FINLAY, CHARLES COLEMAN, incorporates myth and fantasy in a fresh and innovative style when he revisits the tale of Percival and the Fisher King in his short story ‘Wild Thing’ (2003). [LMM] 184

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Finlay, Charles Coleman. ‘Wild Thing’. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (July 2003), 6–24.

FORREST, RICHARD. A sword used as a murder weapon is referred to as Excalibur, and a new condominium development as Camelot; but these are the only slight allusions that justify the title Death at King Arthur’s Court (2006), a murder mystery starring Lyon and Bea Wentworth in Connecticut. [AH] Forrest, Richard. Death at King Arthur’s Court. Sutton: Severn House, 2005; New York: Severn House, 2006.

GAMON, MARK, sets his historical novel Briton (2004) in the Dark Ages. Catt, a crippled Dumnonian swineherd with the power to divine the veracity of a person’s statements, narrates this tale of Arthwyr’s demise. The aging warlord is living quietly in a village several years after his major triumphs over the Saxons when he is called on to join the princes of Wales in their resistance to Saxon incursions once again. A tale of treachery and revenge that depicts Arthwyr as a cruel, merciless, intemperate warlord, this engrossing version of the Matter of Britain contains almost all the elements of the traditional tale. [LMM] Gamon, Mark. Briton. Central Publishing, 2004.

GILKISON, GABRIELLE, in her overlong novel The Magic of Camelot (2003), which is set between the years 507 and 543, combines traditional versions of the Arthurian legends with characters and episodes of her own imagining. Gilkison’s protagonist is the beautiful young witch Isabel, who was abducted as an infant by Morgause and betrothed to Mordred, whom she loves, weds, and supports, despite his many indiscretions. As healer of (and later adviser to) King Arthur, apprentice to Merlin, and eventually acting court wizard, Isabel uses her special magic to shape events at Camelot. [BTL] Gilkison, Gabrielle. The Magic of Camelot. 1st Books, 2003.

GILMAN, LAURA ANNE, has composed a fantasy trilogy for younger readers entitled Grail Quest (2006), though the quest for the Grail is subordinated to other, more pressing tasks. The three protagonists are in their early teens: Gerard, an idealistic squire; Ailis, a servant girl with magical powers; and Newt, a practical stable boy. When an enchantment causes all the adults at Camelot to fall asleep in The Camelot Spell, they set off to find Merlin and collect the talismans that will break the magical spell; in Morgain’s Revenge, Morgain abducts Ailis, and her two friends 185

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set out to rescue her; in The Shadow Companion, the three find the Grail and use it, together with their combined talents, to defeat a powerful spirit conjured up by Morgain. During their many adventures, the trio not only encounter marvellous creatures like trolls and dragons, but, more importantly, learn valuable life lessons, such as the importance of open-mindedness and self-control. [RHT] Gilman, Laura Anne. Grail Quest 1: The Camelot Spell. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ———. Grail Quest 2: Morgain’s Revenge. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. ———. Grail Quest 3: The Shadow Companion. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

GOODWATER, WALTER, wrote The Last Pendragon (2002) at the age of fifteen. He recounts the tale of a descendant of King Arthur, Arthur II, as he tries to overcome the seemingly insurmountable obstacles preventing the restoration of Britain and Camelot to their former glory. [LMM] Goodwater, Walter. The Last Pendragon. iUniverse, 2002.

GREENWOOD, ED (AL 22), sets ‘King Harrowhelm’ (2007) ten years after Arthur’s death, when the remainder of Arthur’s knights, including a young squire named Griflet, fight the men of the so-called king, Harrowhelm. Merlin uses these knights and his own magic to restore order through the quest for a new High King. [AH] Greenwood, Ed. ‘King Harrowhelm’. In Heroes in Training, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines. New York: DAW, 2007, pp. 191–206.

GULER, KATHLEEN CUNNINGHAM (AL 22), has released The Anvil Stone (2006), the third volume in her Macsen’s Treasure series. While Uther strives to secure his place as the High King of all Britain, Marcus and Claerwen, in their search to recover Excalibur, must endure exile to separate and unknown venues, the machinations of Myrddin, and constant attempts on their lives by the mysterious ‘assassin’. A fourth volume in the series is planned. [LMM] Guler, Kathleen Cunnningham. The Anvil Stone. Steamboat Springs, CO.: Bardsong, 2006.

HALLIDAY, LIZ, in ‘After Camlann’ (2005), presents a haunting tale of Arthur after the battle of Camlann. Unsure of his identity, toiling as a peasant in the fields, Arthur is once again summoned to take his rightful place as Dux Bellorum and High King of Britain. [LMM] 186

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Halliday, Liz. ‘After Camlann’. In Time After Time, ed. Denise Little. New York: DAW, 2005, pp. 5–15.

HECKART, KELLEY, intersperses explicit sex scenes throughout her novel White Rose of Avalon (2007). Morgaine struggles to retain Avalon’s place in Britain despite the increasing influence of the Christians. Mixing fantasy and mythology, the traditional characters and themes of the Arthurian legend are reconstructed in fresh and imaginative ways. [LMM] Heckart, Kelley. White Rose of Avalon. US: Earthling Press, 2007.

HENDERSON, SAMANTHA, reveals the ‘Lady’ in her short story ‘Shallot’ (2007) to be an insect-like alien, whose final boat journey reflects her realization of the failure of her mission. Henderson uses images from Tennyson’s poem, particularly of weaving, but gives them new context. [AH] Henderson, Samantha. ‘Shallot’. In Fantasy, ed. Sean Wallace and Paul G. Tremblay. Prime, 2007, pp. 51–60.

HENNEBERG, NATHALIE-CHARLES, weaves an alluring tale of a husband-and-wife team of scientists on an alien planet, in her short story ‘Ysolde’ (1979). The pair are emotionally separated by a newly created life form that has an emotional attachment to the husband, dooming their relationship. References to the traditional tale of Tristan and Ysolde abound. [LMM] Henneberg, Nathalie-Charles. ‘Ysolde’. In The Best from the Rest of the World: European Science Fiction, ed. Donald A. Wollheim. New York: Doubleday, 1979, pp. 249–67.

HERTEL, PAUL, Austrian composer and musician, especially for theatre, film, and TV. He composed Elster und Parzival (Magpie and Parzival), an opera for young people, which was premiered in 2003 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin (also produced in Vienna 2003; revised version 2006). The legend of Parzival is retold in the frame of a young boy who dreams he is playing a computer game. Though he finally finds something like a Grail, he encourages the audience to embark on a quest of its own. Parzival is guided through his computer-dream world by a girl named Elster, who is identical with his girlfriend in real life. The libretto was written by the Austrian opera director Paul Flieder. [UM] HETLEY, JAMES A., has written The Summer Country (2002) and The Winter Oak (2004), the first two books of a projected four-book series 187

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dealing with the Faerie-based Old Ones, a hybrid race of magic-users descended from both human and non-human bloodlines. Among these are the Pendragons, an order of Christianized Old Ones founded by Merlin – himself an Old One – centuries ago to guard the gates between worlds (one of which is at Glastonbury) and to protect humans from Old Ones who would use them as slaves or for entertainment. Although Arthur is long dead, one Pendragon, aptly named Brian Arthur Albion Pendragon, resembles him in his struggles with his half sister, the Morgan-le-Fay-like Fiona, who seduces him and becomes pregnant with his daughter. [MAT] Hetley, James A. The Summer Country. New York: Ace, 2002. ———. The Winter Oak. New York: Ace, 2004.

HILL, PAMELA SMITH. Felicity, the protagonist of the teenage novel The Last Grail Keeper (2001), spends the summer in Glastonbury because her mother is a scholar involved in an archaeological dig. When the dig uncovers the Grail, Felicity discovers she has magical powers because she is one of a long line of Grail keepers; taught by Morgan le Fay and others, she must prevent Mordred from destroying the Grail. Most of the novel takes place in the present day, though Felicity briefly travels through time to Camelot and meets Arthur. Some chapter epigraphs quote Malory, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, or Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon. [AH] Hill, Pamela Smith. The Last Grail Keeper. New York: Holiday House, 2001.

HOLDSTOCK, ROBERT, adds to his continually expanding body of Arthurian works (NAE, AL 18) with the first three books of his Merlin Codex series. As in his Mythago Wood cycle, the identifiably Arthurian characters actually prefigure the more familiar literary manifestations of the Middle Ages, and Holdstock here gives us a Merlin who has existed since the dawn of the human race, sustaining his youth by shepherding his store of magic, the use of which ages him. In Celtika (2001), Merlin revives the Greek hero Jason, with whom he sailed as Antiokus on the Argo centuries earlier, and initiates a series of adventures which take them from northern Europe to Greece, and then to Alba, a primitive Britain. The subsequent novels, The Iron Grail (2002) and The Broken Kings (2006), exploit incidents and motifs from both Greek and Celtic mythology in their searches for lost children, journeys to a shadowy otherworld, battles with supernatural warriors and other marvels. Merlin, a sort of beneficent director of human events, sets the Arthurian legend in motion by establishing the succession of Alba’s King Urtha, though he is imperilled himself by his eternal lover and nemesis Medea and the young enchantress Niiv. [DN] 188

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Holdstock, Robert. Celtika. London: Simon & Schuster, 2001. ———. The Iron Grail. London: Simon & Schuster, 2002. ———. The Broken Kings. London: Gollancz, 2006.

HÖLSZKY, ADRIANA, Romanian-German composer. With the assistance of six students of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Rostock and a commission from the Stadtheater Giessen (Germany), she created the chamber opera Der Parzival (1999). The libretto (in sixteen scenes) written by Simon Wehrle, philologist and author, uses and modernizes motifs from Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. Parzival, at the end of his quest, not only fails to find the Grail and any answers, but is also rejected by his wife Blanchefleur. [UM] Der Parzival: Programme brochure. Giessen: Stadtheater 1999 [with libretto].

HOLZBERG, VERENA, see MOHR, WOLFGANG. JAIDINGER, JUDITH, see TERRY, PATRICIA. JAMES, CHRISTOPHER, see PENDRAGON, ARTHUR. JOHANSEN, K. V., relates the events leading up to the final battle between Arthur and Mordred through the eyes of Merlin’s daughter Nimiane, in her short story ‘The Inexorable Tide’ (2008). [LMM] Johansen, K. V. ‘The Inexorable Tide’. In The Storyteller and Other Tales. Sackville, NB: Sybertooth, 2008, pp. 75–94.

KAAMELOTT is a French television series created in 2005 by Alexandre Astier, who also plays King Arthur. The series, on M6, consists of miniature episodes, generally three-and-a-half minutes long, with two of them shown each evening. Whereas some of the earlier episodes have very little to do with the Arthurian legend, others, particularly in recent seasons, parody the legend and contrast what we know of Arthur and the Round Table with the practical problems of dealing with knights (and others) who are generally shown to be incompetent and ridiculous. Much of the humour, both verbal and visual, will remind viewers of the Monty Python approach to Arthuriana. One of the unforgettable scenes, shown after the title, involves Arthur’s pulling the sword from the stone, the effort – or lack of effort? – of which makes him fall backward into a pond or lake, thus returning the sword to the water as soon as he draws it. [NJL]

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KELLER, HILDEGARD ELISABETH, with the assistance of her students, mixes plot summary with original text, dialogue, commentary, and songs drawn from a wide variety of sources (folk, pop and Wagner) to retell Hartmann von Aue’s Erec in an audio-book entitled . . . âventiure vür daz ôre . . . (2005). [SSch] … âventiure vür daz ôre …: Hartmanns von Aue, Erec. An Audio-Book based on the Medieval Novel. Hildegard Elisabeth Keller and her Students. Zürich: Vdf Hochschulverlag, 2005.

KEMP, DEBRA (AL 22), has completed The Recruit (2007), the involving second instalment in her House of Pendragon series. Although freed from slavery and reunited with her parents, Arthur’s daughter Lin continues to face challenges. Repelled by the coldness of her mother Queen Gwenhwyfar, she chooses instead to train as a warrior, and in spite of all the obstacles, notably the demons that haunt her memory from the past and resentment at a female serving in the ranks in the present, she wins a seat at the Round Table. [RHT] Kemp, Debra. The House of Pendragon Book II: The Recruit. Amber Quill, 2007.

KESSLER, JASCHA, in ‘Perceval’ (1985), offers a contemporary critique of the dangers associated with not asking questions. While waiting to talk to his host, the narrator wanders downstairs, where he discovers both a kitchen staff hard at work and the lifeless body of a young girl. Unsure how to respond, he chooses to focus solely upon the feast. [LH] Kessler, Jascha. ‘Perceval’. In Classical Illusions. New York: McPherson, 1985, pp. 145–53.

KNIGHT, ANGELA, an award-winning American writer best known for her erotic fantasies, has written a series of five novels and three novellas, all with sexually explicit content, featuring versions of Arthurian characters and their descendants as immortal supernatural beings – males are the vampire-like Magi and females the magic-wielding Majae – charged with shepherding humanity towards its full potential. Sixteen hundred years ago, a Grail proffered by Merlin and Nimue, extra-dimensional beings from the parallel universe known as the Mageverse, transformed the first of these Magekind, while intercourse with a fully endowed Magus or Maja empowers their progeny. ‘Seduction’s Gift’ (2004) introduces the Mageverse and the cast of Arthurian characters and depicts Morgana la Fay, here a benevolent figure, manipulating Lancelot into turning her granddaughter into a Maja to face an impending threat; Morgana next manipulates Galahad into activating another latent Maja to assist in 190

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destroying an ‘unholy Grail’ in ‘Galahad’ (2005). Both Arthur and Guinevere are also featured in these stories. ‘Moon Dance’ (2007) details the continuing adventures of the Direkind, a class of lycanthropes transformed, like the Magekind, by Merlin’s magic. [MAT] Knight, Angela. ‘Seduction’s Gift’. In Hot Blooded, by Christine Feehan, Maggie Shayne, Emma Holly, and Angela Knight. New York: Jove, 2004, pp. 275–373. ———. ‘Galahad’. In Bite, by Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris, MaryJanice [sic] Davidson, Angela Knight, and Vickie Taylor. New York: Jove, 2005, pp. 133–218. ———. ‘Moon Dance’. In Over the Moon, by Angela Knight, MaryJanice [sic] Davidson, Virginia Kantra, and Sunny. New York: Berkley, 2007, pp. 1–94. Torregrossa, Michael A. ‘Undead Arthuriana: Vampires and the Matter of Britain’. In Monstrous Medievalisms, ed. Michael A. Torregrossa. Forthcoming.

KOONS, JON, brings Arthur and Guenevere together when they are still children, in his beautifully illustrated children’s book Arthur and Guen (2008). They meet in the woods and defeat a band of robbers (helped by the Lady of the Lake’s timely gift of a magical sword), though Merlin casts a spell of forgetfulness to ensure that they do not remember the adventure. They must meet ‘at the proper time’. [RHT] Koons, Jon. Arthur and Guen: An Original Tale of Young Camelot. Illustrated by Igor Oleynikov. New York: Dutton/Penguin, 2008.

KORN, DAVID M. His children’s novel Young King Arthur in Brooklyn (2003) concerns a peasant boy in medieval England who meets an incompetent wizard and pulls a sword from a stone. Trying to claim the throne, he annoys a duke, whose witch transports him magically to present-day Brooklyn; there Arthur learns to value patience, chivalry, justice and equality in preparation for his role as king. [AH] Korn, David M. Young King Arthur in Brooklyn. New York: Jester Books, 2003.

LAHMANN, MEREDITH, in Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight: The Quest (2004) and Sir Gawain’s Challenge (2004), creates a protagonist who is both a diplomat and a warrior. The first novel is based upon the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the second upon a variety of other Gawain romances, including The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle. Lahmann expands upon and adds to her source materials freely in an attempt to make her stories more acces191

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sible to modern readers. Thus readers are privy to Gawain’s psychological reactions to the challenges he is facing: e.g. we see him contemplate whether passively dying in a suicide-like pact or breaking his word by keeping the green girdle is more dishonourable; and we are made acutely aware of his suffering after he loses his wife and must raise their son on his own amidst a growing threat of invasion from France. Both tales ultimately explore strikingly similar themes: love, friendship, honour, duty, loss, fear, and, above all, resilience. [LH] Lahmann, Meredith. Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight: The Quest. Bloomington, IN: 1st Books, 2004. ———. Sir Gawain’s Challenge. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2004.

LAMEDE, JILL. Her children’s story, Tales of the Tintagel Dragon (2003), features a kindly young dragon living on the roof of the Old Post Office at Tintagel. Merlin provides educational support by telling him about Vortigern and the dragons at Dinas Emries, Uther and Ygraine, and the Cave of the Sleeping Knights. The book ends with the Spirit of Arthur returning to befriend the lonely young dragon. [RS] Lamède, Jill. Tales of the Tintagel Dragon. Illustrated by Kaylie Moseley. Trewarmett, Cornwall: Rough Tor, 2003.

LEE, FRAZER, spins a tale of grotesque horror in his short story ‘Pendragon Rising’ (2005). The death of Arthur at the hands of a vampire leads to his return as one of the undead. Surprisingly, this story retains several of the traditional Arthurian elements. [LMM] Lee, Frazer. ‘Pendragon Rising’. In Urbane and Other Horror Tales. London: Robber Baron Productions, 2005, pp. 17–28.

LLOYD, MARGARET, is author of A Moment in the Field (2006), a collection of provocative and highly introspective poems that explore the emotional and psychological implications of specific moments from early Arthurian literature and are told from the perspectives of the characters involved as they reflect on various aspects of their own lives. The poems are divided into seven sections: Igraine, Isolde, Morgan, Elaine of Astolat, Nineve, Elaine of Corbenic, and Guinevere. Although the experiences related are predominately those of women, several male voices are included. For her narrative contexts, Lloyd draws on Welsh poetry and prose, as well as the works of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chrétien de Troyes, and Malory, and she remains refreshingly faithful to the texts themselves while still offering a compellingly modern and evocatively empathetic contribution to the Arthurian corpus. [LH] 192

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Lloyd, Margaret. A Moment in the Field: Voices from Arthurian Legend. West Hartford, CT: Plinth, 2006.

LUPACK, BARBARA TEPA, author of King Arthur’s Crown (2004), a children’s book with full-page illustrations by Debra Joy McWilliams. Set during an unspecified period in the past, this story depicts Arthur as a king who, despite being a famous warrior, prefers peace to war and transforms Camelot accordingly. When Arthur’s crown mysteriously disappears one morning, his knights swear to search the kingdom until it is found, but return empty-handed. Seeing their beloved king’s disappointment, the people of Camelot decide to undertake the costly task of casting a new crown. Touched by their generosity, Arthur realizes that his people’s happiness, not his crown, is the true emblem of kingship, and when Merlin appears later, he throws his magically recovered crown out the window and never wears one again. [LH] Lupack, Barabara Tepa. King Arthur’s Crown. Rochester, NY: Round Table, 2004.

MacDONALD, L. B., has written Merlin’s Candles primarily as a tool for teaching reading to elementary school children. John Merlin, alias Merlin the Magician, has travelled through time to become Michael Halsey’s sixth-grade science teacher. He must protect himself and Michael from the machinations of Morgan Le Fay, who wants to destroy them in order to prevent Michael from fulfilling his destiny as the Once and Future King. [LMM] MacDonald, L. B. Merlin’s Candles. Markham, ON: InterCurriculum Fiction, 2003.

MacGREGOR, KINLEY, in her Lords of Avalon series, portrays the Lords as guardians of ‘good’, who oppose Morgen’s plans for evil world domination, some time after Arthur’s death. In Sword of Darkness (2006), Morgen’s ‘king’ of Camelot, Kerrigan, kidnaps a young woman but falls in love with her and becomes one of the Lords of Avalon instead. In Knight of Darkness (2006), Lancelot’s half-demon son, an assassin for the Lords of Avalon, must prevent Morgen from finding the Grail; he falls in love with Merewyn, a slave of Camelot. Romance novel conventions and explicit sexual content predominate, despite magical battles, time-travel, and superpowers; Arthurian content occurs through names, references to common episodes (Merlin’s and Galahad’s conceptions, the battle of Camlann), and (in the second book) references to Monty Python. [AH]

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MacGregor, Kinley. Sword of Darkness. Lords of Avalon 1. New York: Avon, 2006. ———. Knight of Darkness. Lords of Avalon 2. New York: Avon, 2006.

MADAMS, H. H., recounts Dark Encounter (1980), a ghostly tale of Arthur, in blank verse. With the final decisive battle against the Saxons imminent, Arthur must travel across a mysterious moor alone in order to reach his troops in time. Disoriented and lost, he must test his faith and wits against a vengeful, disenfranchised kinsman and the nefarious intentions of the Witch of Kernick. [LMM] Madams, H.H. Dark Encounter: A Narrative Concerning Arthur and the Witch of Kernick. Bodmin, Cornwall: Fairhaven, 1980.

MAITLAND, SARA, is a British fiction writer whose stories are often cast in a ‘magical realist’ vein, a characterization which would apply to her collection about the experiences of middle age in which ‘Foreplay’ (2003) appears. Guinevere here tells the tale of her long affair with Lancelot, unconsummated for over thirty years but lustful just the same. Her story ends with a detailed erotic account of their first love-making. [DN] Maitland, Sara. ‘Foreplay’. In On Becoming a Fairy Godmother. London: Maia, 2003, pp. 71–90.

MANCUSI, MARIANNE, is author of A Connecticut Fashionista in King Arthur’s Court (2005), in which an associate fashion magazine editor is the latest incarnation of Mark Twain’s Connecticut Yankee. Katherine (Kat) Jones, a hip modern woman, is sent to King Arthur’s Faire to write a five-hundred-word piece on ‘the emerging trend of medieval garb in today’s fashion’. Struck by a piece of a lance from the jousting field, Kat wakes to find herself in Camelot, where ‘women didn’t kick as much ass’ as in the modern world and where she falls in love with Lancelot. When Guenevere is falsely accused of loving Lancelot, she uses a spell to open a portal at Stonehenge so that she, Kat and Lancelot can escape to the future. They overshoot their target and arrive in the year 2110, where they meet a man named Arthur who is CEO of Camelot-dot-com. [ACL] Mancusi, Marianne. A Connecticut Fashionista in King Arthur’s Court. New York: Love Spell/Dorchester, 2005.

MATTHEWS, CAITLIN (NAE), draws from the tale of Culhwch and Olwen for her short story ‘The Wild Man’ (2004), which tells of King Arthur’s justice when judging the cruel and inhuman acts of a kinsman. [LMM] 194

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Matthews, Caitlin. ‘The Wild Man’. In Realms of Fantasy (December 2004), 65–9.

MAYER, ROBERT, see DOHERTY, ROBERT. MAYNE, WILLIAM (NAE), constructs a brief children’s story from references to the hero Bran and to Arthur in the Welsh triads. In ‘King Arthur at the Tower’ (1995), Arthur digs up the head of Bran from its burial spot beneath the Tower of London. After a debate, they agree on the limits of the sovereignty each may exercise. [DN] Mayne, William. ‘King Arthur at the Tower’. In The Fairy Tales of London Town, vol. I: Upon Paul’s Steeple. Illustrated by Peter Melnyczuk. London: Hodder, 1995, pp. 148–51.

McKENZIE, NANCY (AFFLECK) (NAE, AL 22), returns to Guinevere’s adolescent years in Gwynedd in Guinevere’s Gift (2008), a novel for younger readers. At thirteen, the future High Queen is a Cinderella figure: an insecure orphan who must endure the jealousy of her aunt and the bullying of her cousin Elaine. Nevertheless, she draws on her own considerable talents and courage to save both from the plot to start a war against the hillmen and to usurp the kingdom while her uncle Pellinore is away fighting for King Arthur. [RHT] McKenzie, Nancy. Guinevere’s Gift. New York: Random House/Knopf, 2008.

McKILLIP, PATRICIA. The female protagonist in ‘Out of the Woods’ (2004) experiences visions while working for a scholar. Although no names are given to characters in her visions, descriptions allude to Arthurian episodes: Vivien trapping Merlin in an oak tree during a storm, and the Lady of Shalott floating to Camelot. The other visions suggest stories of Briar Rose and of the Wild Hunt. [AH] McKillip, Patricia. ‘Out of the Woods’. In Flights, ed. Al Sarrantonio. New York: ROC, 2004, pp. 333–44.

McMULLAN, KATE, has created The Dragon Slayers’ Academy (1997–), an ongoing series of children’s books illustrated by Bill Basso (later Simon Clare). The protagonist, Wiglaf, is enrolled in the academy and has various adventures. The Arthurian content is primarily through the use of names: the headmaster is named Mordred, for example, and Lancelot, who markets a line of dragon-fighting products, is referred to as a great knight. The most Arthurian of the series are the fifth and sixth books. In the fifth, the prize for an essay contest is a visit from Lancelot, 195

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but something goes wrong. This leads to the quest for the great knight in the sixth book, during which Wiglaf and friends visit Camelot. [AH] McMullan, Kate. The New Kid at School. Illustrated by Bill Basso. Dragon Slayers’ Academy 1. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1997. ———. Knight for a Day. Illustrated by Bill Basso. Dragon Slayers’ Academy 5. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1999. ———. Sir Lancelot, Where Are You? Illustrated by Bill Basso. Dragon Slayers’ Academy 6. New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1999.

MIENSOPUST, MICHAEL, German author, actor, and producer. He conceived the ‘Erzähltheater’ (story-telling theatre) Parzival, which was premiered in July 2002 at the junges theater, Heilbronn (Germany), and was later staged in other German cities. One single actor (the author himself) retells, for young people and adults, the story of Parzival according to Wolfram von Eschenbach, with the medieval happy ending. [UM] MILES, ROSALIND (AL 22), has completed her Isolde Trilogy with The Lady of the Sea (2004). Isolde, now forty, returns to Ireland to rule the land of the Mother-Right, where she staves off the advances of Darath, the young, dashing Pict leader, and negotiates peace. Eventually she is reunited with Tristan, and the lovers confront Mark to renounce their vows to him; but when Andred discovers them kissing, Mark condemns them as traitors. In a reworking of two episodes from Béroul, Tristan leaps from the window of a clifftop chapel after killing Andred, but is saved by the Lady of the Sea; and Isolde suffers many months in a leper colony before Tristan rescues her. When Mark hunts them down in the forest, he is slain by Tristan. Isolde succeeds Igraine as Lady of the Sea, and the lovers assume the throne of Cornwall, produce many children, and after death join the ancient heroic ancestors of the Celts. [JTG] Miles, Rosalind. The Lady of the Sea. New York : Crown, 2004.

MOHR, WOLFGANG, and VERENA HOLZBERG. Holzberg has revised Mohr’s modern German translation of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival and added nineteen songs for the major characters in an audiobook of eighteen CDs of text and two of music, read and sung by Twichet Cicely McArcher (2007). [SSch] Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival. An Audio-Book. Translation by Wolfgang Mohr, revised by Verena Holzberg. German Production: Invisible Sound/DIONETA Audio-Books, 2007.

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MONTY PYTHON’S SPAMALOT will, for some time to come, doubtless remain the comic highlight of Arthurian theatre. Director Eric Idle’s stage version of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (see NAE) was premiered in Chicago in December 2004. It then opened on Broadway in rewritten form in time to win multiple Tony awards the following spring and since has toured around the world. Leaving much of the film’s zaniness intact, the musical imagines that Arthur and all his companions have their own special versions of the Grail – in Arthur’s case finding a venue on Broadway for a Broadway show that just happens, of course, to be called Spamalot. [KH] Finke, Laurie A., and Susan Aronstein. ‘Got Grail? Monty Python and the Broadway Stage’. Theatre Survey 48 (2007), 289–311. Review of Spamalot. Arthuriana 15 (Summer 2005), 73– 76.

MORRIS, GERALD (AL 18, 22), continues to adapt medieval romances as delightful ironic fantasies for younger readers: from Chrétien’s Lancelot comes The Princess, the Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight (2004); The Lioness and Her Knight (2005) is based upon Chrétien’s Yvain; while The Quest of the Fair Unknown (2006) draws upon not only Chestre’s Lybeaus Desconus, but also The Carl of Carlisle and the Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal. Morris makes his stories more accessible by using young protagonists, who learn valuable lessons from their adventures and develop their own particular abilities. In The Princess, thirteen-year-old Sarah displays great resourcefulness in aiding Lancelot rescue the queen from Meliagant’s clutches and is rewarded with a castle to administer; sixteen-yearold Luneta learns the dangers of manipulating others and discovers her healing talents in The Lioness; and in The Quest, Beaufils discovers that Gawain is his father, but chooses to become a hermit rather than a knight. Like the earlier novels in the Squire’s Tales series, all three find humour in the excesses of the romance mode, but they also offer a more serious warning against intolerance and vengefulness. The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great (2008) draws freely upon various episodes in Malory, including the lady with the falcon and the combat against Mador to defend the queen. Since it is aimed at a younger age group than the other novels, however, Lancelot’s love affair with Guinevere is omitted, and Elaine of Shalott is conveniently married off to Lavaine (here an admirer, not a brother). [RHT] Morris, Gerald. The Princess, the Crone, and the Dung-Cart Knight. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004. ———. The Lioness and Her Knight. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. ———. The Quest of the Fair Unknown. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

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———. The Adventures of Sir Lancelot the Great. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2008.

MOSSE, KATE, is the author of Labyrinth (2005), a complex conspiracy novel that interweaves the story of Alaïs, a young woman in thirteenthcentury Languedoc, with the adventures of her 2005 descendant, an American named Alice. The intrigue includes a secret society whose members possess knowledge of the Grail, which is a mystery related to the symbol of the labyrinth, to three magical parchments, and to an elixir. [NJL] Mosse, Kate. Labyrinth. New York: Berkley, 2005.

NASH, JOY, in her Druids of Avalon series of historical romances set in Roman Britain, introduces two Arthurian artefacts: The Grail King (2006) describes the coming of the Grail to Britain; Deep Magic (2008) the creation of Exchalybur by a Roman blacksmith and a British druidess and its subsequent use against an evil sorcerer. [RHT] Nash, Joy. The Grail King. New York: Love Spell/Dorchester, 2006 ———. Deep Magic. New York: Love Spell/Dorchester, 2008.

NEUMEIER, JOHN, an American living in Germany, first as a dancer at the Stuttgart Ballet, then as choreographer and director of the Hamburg Ballet since 1973, has conceived several important ballets. Parzival: Episoden und Echo, which had two opening nights, in Baden-Baden (November 2006) and Hamburg (December 2006), presents the legend of Parzival according to Chrétien de Troyes and Wolfram von Eschenbach. The end remains indecisive: is the quest for the Grail reality or utopia? [UM] NORMAN, BERIC [pseudonym of Brice Pitt], is a British academic psychiatrist who has written two lengthy Arthurian works. The Madness of King Arthur, an unpublished play with music by Mark Brown, which was given a ‘platform performance’ at the Tower Theatre, London (2001), was essentially a retelling of the main Malorian story. The material was then reshaped into a novel, in which the lyrics were cut and the erotic descriptions expanded. However, despite the novel’s title, Mordred’s Version: King Arthur’s Dishonour (2005), Mordred still plays a very subsidiary role. Eluding the attempted massacre of the May Day infants, he is rescued by fisher folk and educated by a local priest. Well received later at Camelot, he becomes a knightly paragon, but his reconciliation with Arthur is circumvented by the wiles of Morgan-le-Fay. After the calamitous Last Battle, Mordred’s soul is metamorphosed into a raven that watches over the sleeping Arthur in Avalon. [RS] 198

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Norman, Beric. Mordred’s Version: King Arthur’s Dishonour. Epping, Essex: Crawford Redfern, 2005.

NUSSBAUMER, GEORG, Austrian musician and artist. He created several pieces which combine music and ‘installations’ (often with video) based on the legends of Tristan and Parzival, with reference to the Middle Ages but above all to Richard Wagner. They have ‘very different aesthetic means and use the medium of video just like that of prepared animals, machines, musical instruments, latex casts or electronic devices that are joined into complex objects’: Tristan: Schwimmen und Schweigen (Tristan: Swimming and Silence), Linz 1999; Notenzucht ISOLDE (The Breeding of Notes: ISOLDE), Vienna 2000; parsivalstudien, Nürnberg 2001; The big kuss of Trustan with Usolde, Bielefeld 2002, parsifalsurvivaltrail, Linz 2002. [UM] Nussbaumer, Georg. Parsifalsurvival. Eine Operninstallation. Linz: Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, 2002 [German and English Text, illustrations].

NYE, JODY LYNN (NAE), in ‘Cuckoo’s Egg’ (2004), relates the story of Arthur’s early years as Sir Ector’s adopted son from the point of view of his envious foster brother Kay. [LMM] Nye, Jody Lynn. ‘Cuckoo’s Egg’. In Rotten Relations, ed. Denise Little. New York: DAW, 2004, pp. 199–219.

OSBORNE, MARY POPE, is the prolific author of the Magic Tree House series for young readers, in which the protagonists Jack and Annie, two youngsters from Frog Creek, Pennsylvania, discover a mysterious tree house filled with books that take them on magical journeys. The tree house belongs to Morgan le Fay, a ‘magical librarian from the time of King Arthur’, who travels through time and space gathering material for her library. Beginning with Book 29, the youngsters embark on ‘The Merlin Missions’, a new set of adventures under the direction of the magician Merlin. Each four-volume sequence in the series is devoted to a different mission. In the first four of the ‘Merlin Missions’ – Christmas in Camelot (2002), Haunted Castle on Hallows Eve (2003), Summer of the Sea Serpent (2004) and Winter of the Ice Wizard (2004) – the magician sends Jack and Annie to mythical places to find magical objects such as the Diamond of Destiny and the Sword of Light that are necessary to save Camelot. By contrast, their next four missions – Carnival at Candlelight (2005), Season of the Sandstorms (2005), Night of the New Magicians (2006) and Blizzard of the Blue Moon (2006) – are to ‘real times and real places’ from Venice and ancient Baghdad to the World’s Fair of 1889 in Paris 199

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and Depression-era New York City, where the youngsters must prove that they know how to use wisely the magic that they have learned. When they succeed, Merlin awards them the Wand of Dianthus, which allows them to make their own magic. In the most recent volumes – Dragon of the Red Dawn (2007), Monday with a Mad Genius (2007) and Dark Day in the Deep Sea (2008) – Merlin grows sad, and Jack and Annie must journey to seventeenth-century Florence, sixteenth-century Edo [Tokyo] and the middle of the ‘deep sea’ in search of the four secrets of happiness that will cheer him up. Osborne also collaborated with her husband, Will Osborne, on Magic Tree House: The Musical, a theatrical version of one of the ‘Merlin Missions’, in which Jack and Annie travel to the dreaded Otherworld in order to rescue both Camelot and their own magical tree house. The musical, whose soundtrack is available on CD, was premiered in Torrington, Connecticut, in September 2007 and began its national tour in 2008. [BTL] Osborne, Mary Pope. Magic Tree House Series, 29–39. New York: Random House/Stepping Stone, 2002–8.

PEARSON, KIT, best-selling Canadian author, sets her award-winning novel A Perfect Gentle Knight (2007) in late 1950s Canada. The six Bell children of Vancouver attempt to cope with their mother’s tragic death by imagining themselves as characters in the Camelot they have recreated. Eldest brother Sebastian, the Sir Lancelot figure, organizes quests and rituals to be undertaken by his fellow ‘knights’ and ‘pages’, including eldest sister Roz (‘Sir Gawain’) and Corrie (‘Sir Gareth’), the novel’s eleven-year-old protagonist. Although various tensions threaten to pull the family apart, Corrie’s reliance on the Arthurian chivalric code – ‘A knight is brave’, ‘A knight never lies’ – helps the youngsters meet the new challenges and rediscover their bonds. [BTL] Pearson, Kit. A Perfect Gentle Knight. Toronto: Puffin Canada, 2007.

PENDRAGON, ARTHUR, and CHRISTOPHER JAMES. The Trials of Arthur (2003) is the biography of a contemporary druid king, Arthur Pendragon, a politico-eco-activist who has challenged the British government in the courts on a number of issues. His story is presented with wit and humour, and it offers a personal message about self-determination for the individual. [LMM] Pendragon, Arthur, and Christopher James. The Trials of Arthur: The Life and Times of a Modern-Day King. London: Element 2003.

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PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART (1844–1911, NAE), has also written ‘Sir Franklin’ (1865), a children’s story in which a young boy, after reading about Malory’s Launcelot and Tristram, is inspired to ‘revive the old dead days of chivalry’ and sets out on a series of misguided adventures. [MAT] Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart. ‘Sir Franklin’. Our Young Folks 1:9 (Nov. 1865), 683–90.

PHILLIPS, MARTI (AL 22). King Arthur and the principal characters from Camelot reappear in fifteenth-century England to save a damsel in distress and her paramour, in the romantic short story ‘Merlin’s Secret’ (2003). [LMM] Phillips, Marti. ‘Merlin’s Secret’. In Marti Phillips et al., The Book of Angel and Ghost Mysteries. Ormond Beach, FL: Southern Star, 2003, pp. 130–88.

PINSKY, ROBERT, American writer and former Poet Laureate, made a curious contribution to the Tristan tradition with his short story ‘Jesus and Isolt’ (1990), in which Jesus takes the form, inexplicably, of the mythical beast the ciclogriff, returns to earth, and becomes Isolt’s companion. Tristram’s arrival introduces Jesus to the conventions of chivalry, and when the lovers die he appears to them in his human form at the Gates of Hell, offering them salvation, an invitation they decline. In the same collection, the poem ‘Voyage to the Moon’ includes a passage in which the death and passing of Arthur, as depicted by playing cards, constitute a portion of the childhood memories of a sculptress. [DN] Pinsky, Robert. ‘Jesus and Isolt’. In The Want Bone. New York: Ecco, 1990, pp. 32–40.

PITT, BRICE, see NORMAN, BERIC. RADFORD, IRENE (AL 22), in Guardian of the Freedom (2005), follows the fortunes of Merlin’s Descendants as conflict looms between George III and the American colonists. In her short story ‘The Curse of the Pendragon’ (2006), she moves back to 1289. Angered by the decision of his kinsman Wilfred (a descendant of both King Arthur and Merlin) to marry a Jewish woman, Edward Plantagenet declares that England’s Jews must convert or be exiled. With the spirit of his ancestors speaking through him, Wilfred warns Edward that never again will the likes of Arthur rule the land. [LMM/BTL] Radford, Irene. Guardian of the Freedom. Merlin’s Descendants, vol. V. New York: DAW, 2005. 201

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———. ‘The Curse of the Pendragon’. In Slipstreams, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers. New York: DAW, 2006, pp. 230–46.

REEVE, PHILIP. British children’s novelist whose Here Lies Arthur (2007) offers a highly original and demythologized reinterpretation of the traditional material. Although this Arthur is ‘just a little tyrant in an age of tyrants’, his shining reputation is constructed by the bard Merlin, who had been enslaved as a child by Saxons, and who aims to promote Arthur as a defence against further Saxon aggression. To effect this plan, Merlin stages hoaxes (such as the Lady of the Lake’s offering Caliburn to Arthur), operates realpolitik, and fabricates magical and heroic stories. Events are seen from the viewpoint of Gwyna, an orphan girl adopted by Merlin, and disguised as his boy servant before becoming Gwenhyfar’s maid. She finds her mirror image in Peredur, who had been raised as a girl, and the lovers finally depart from a ravaged Britain. Though Arthur had proved a social and military failure, his praises are sung by Gwyna, who had inherited Merlin’s storytelling ability, for she realizes that the legend provides humanity with hope. The novel was awarded the Carnegie Medal for 2007. [RS] Reeve, Philip. Here Lies Arthur. London: Scholastic, 2007.

REINER, CARL, American entertainer and writer, provides a humorous twist on love’s illusions in his short story ‘Lance and Gwendolyn: A Modern Fairy Tale’ (1999). The protagonist, Lance, meets a woman on an elevator who looks exactly like a picture of Guinevere in a book he has cherished since childhood. Believing he has found his true love, he learns that not only does Gwendolyn know the book, but that she has just married a man who looks like Lancelot in the same picture. [DN] Reiner, Carl. ‘Lance and Gwendolyn: A Modern Fairy Tale’. In How Paul Robeson Saved My Life and Other Mostly Happy Stories. New York: Cliff Street Books, 1999, pp. 7–11.

RESNICK, LAURA (NAE, AL 18, 22), in ‘Camelot’s Greatest Hits’ (2007), sets Merlin to retell Arthur’s story, revealing that Arthur is a musician whose songs defeated the Saxons, created his popularity, and caused his downfall. Although the setting is early Britain, Arthur and other characters (except Merlin) use twentieth-century slang and music-business terminology. Resnick incorporates references to the sword-in-the-stone, the Holy Grail, Lancelot’s love of Guinevere, and Mordred’s battle with Arthur. [AH] Resnick, Laura. ‘Camelot’s Greatest Hits’. In Fate Fantastic, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Daniel M. Hoyt. New York: DAW, 2007, pp. 263–81. 202

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ROBERSON, JENNIFER, American fantasy writer, has written novels about Robin Hood as well as Arthurian stories (AL 18, 22), and she combines the two legends in ‘Shadows in the Wood’ (2004). Fleeing from Norman soldiers, Robin Hood and Marian take refuge at the ancient oak in which Merlin is imprisoned. They release him from his enchantment and accompany him to the site of Avalon and Arthur’s grave; Robin retrieves Excalibur so it may be returned to the Lady of the Lake to ensure the protection of Britain from future invaders. [DN] Roberson, Jennifer. ‘Shadows in the Wood’. In Irresistible Forces, ed. Catherine Asaro. New York: New American Library, 2004, pp. 344–79.

ROGAN, JOSH, in Mike Miller, Son of Pendragon (2006), depicts the feud between Arthur and his enemies as a battle between good magic and bad. Bothered by the bloodshed involved in jousting, Arthur, Merlin, and the knights of the Round Table devise a fighting style in which nobody would be hurt: combatants in tournaments fly on broomsticks and use padded sticks to knock each other into mud pits below. However, Arthur’s reign of peace ends abruptly after Merlin betrays him and Mordred seizes power. The subsequent feud between good and evil culminates in contemporary Britain when the last of Arthur’s heirs, the adolescent Mike Miller, battles the last of Merlin’s line. Assisted by the spirit of his ancestor, Mike defeats his enemy and reinstates peace. [LH] Rogan, Josh. Mike Miller, Son of Pendragon. La Vergne, TN: Lightning Source, 2006.

ROSENBERG, SAMUEL N., see TERRY, PATRICIA. ROWLEY, GWEN, combines traditional Arthurian story elements with the conventions of contemporary romance fiction in three novels. While Geraint (2007) is Arthurian only in character names and a brief time spent in Camelot, Lancelot (2006) and Gawain (2007) are more sustained in their use of Arthurian plot elements: the figures of Elaine of Astolat and Elaine of Corbenic are fused in Lancelot, and the love triangle of Arthur, Guinevere and Lancelot is resolved satisfactorily in keeping with romance fiction conventions; the Ragnell story is the basis for Gawain, though the plot is extended and includes the greater involvement of Morgan and Morgause. Although Lancelot was published first, its setting is later than either of the others. [AH] Rowley, Gwen. Knights of the Round Table: Lancelot. New York: Jove/ Berkley, 2006. ———. Knights of the Round Table: Geraint. New York: Jove/Berkley, 2007. ———. Knights of the Round Table: Gawain. New York: Jove/Berkley, 2007. 203

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SANDELL, LISA ANN, in her young adult novel Song of the Sparrow (2007), creates a touching and lyrical, although highly improbable, version of the story of Elaine of Astolat. This is not the sheltered Elaine who dies of unrequited love, but rather a spirited girl who has grown up in Arthur’s camp along with her brothers and has become a sister to the companions. In order to come of age, Elaine must contend with her feelings towards Lancelot, the hostility of Gwynevere, and being captured by savage Saxons. [LMM] Sandell, Lisa Ann. Song of the Sparrow. New York: Scholastic Press, 2007.

SAWYER, SUSAN C., has written Merlin and the Mystic Child (2006), a story for younger readers. Accompanied by Merlin and Gawain, Ylaine, the half sister of Guinevere, sets out on a quest to rescue her twin brother Tamlin from the clutches of an evil Morgan Le Faey. On the way they encounter the Lady of the Fountain and the Lady of the Lake. [RHT] Sawyer, Susan C. Merlin and the Mystic Child. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2006.

SHWARTZ, SUSAN (NAE, AL 18, 22), contributed short stories to two anthologies. In ‘The Tenth Worthy’ (1995), which is set in New York’s Cloisters Museum, Michael Kaye (Sir Kaye, in an earlier life) assists Jennifer (Guenevere), the Cloisters’ ‘chatelaine’, as she struggles to keep at bay the Soulless ones who are laying siege and devastating the city. Freed from their famed tapestries in the Cloisters, first King Arthur and then the legendary selfless unicorn offer defence and ultimately help ‘reclaim the world’. ‘Father Figures’ (published in a tribute anthology to L. Sprague de Camp in 2005), features Sprague as a father figure and a ‘Philadelphia Yankee’ in King Arthur’s Court. Before returning with his wife Catherine to his own time, Sprague helps the boy Emrys (Merlinus) fulfil his boast to move the stones so that he can adorn Aurelius’s grave with the Giants’ Dance. [BTL] Shwartz, Susan. ‘The Tenth Worthy’. In Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, ed. Peter S. Beagle and Janet Berliner. New York: HarperPrism, 1995, pp. 355–77. ———. ‘Father Figures’. In The Enchanter Completed: A Tribute Anthology for L. Sprague de Camp, ed. Harry Turtledove. New York: Baen, 2005, pp. 133–65.

SILLITOE, ALAN, British author of plays and fiction, tells of a troubled northern boy in Ron Delph and His Fight with King Arthur (1996), a long story first issued in a limited edition. The boy’s aversion to anything 204

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having to do with King Arthur is so potent that even a book illustration of the sword in the stone makes him violently ill, with unpleasant consequences at the hands of the adults around him. He gets even with those authority figures (and King Arthur) when, as Mordred in a school play, he abandons the script and substitutes a satirical closing of his own. [DN] Sillitoe, Alan. Ron Delph and His Fight with King Arthur. Illustrated by Victor Ambrus. Alton: Clarion Publishing, 1996. Reprinted in the author’s collection Alligator Playground. London: Flamingo, 1997.

SLAHOR, STEPHENIE, tells of the kindness shown to lost children by Lancelot and King Arthur, in the short story ‘Lost, but Found’ (1996). [LMM] Slahor, Stephenie. ‘Lost, but Found’. In Tales from Merrie England, vol. I. New York: Royal Fireworks, 1996, pp. 41–54.

SPORTELLI, PAUL, see TURVEY, JAY. STABLEFORD, BRIAN (AL 18), incorporates Arthurian legend into his novel The Stones of Camelot (2006) as a means of presenting his ideas on the simultaneous existence of parallel worlds and the effects of chance and choice on our individual destinies. Amory is taken to the Land of Fairie by Morgana Le Fay as an infant, but then returned to our world to be raised in a convent by the sisters of St Syncletica. Later, he is brought by Merlin to Camelot to be his personal spy, but after inadvertently causing the fall of Camelot, he is taken back to the Land of Light by Morgana. Claiming possession of Excalibur, he journeys to the land of Dark and eventually returns to our world in the future. [LMM] Stableford, Brian. The Stones of Camelot. Encino, CA: Black Coat, 2006.

TAYLOR, HOLLY, re-imagines the story of Arthur in her series of fantasy novels, beginning with Night Birds’ Reign (2005). Primarily the story of Gwydion the Dreamer and the trials he suffers trying to protect the kingdom of Kymru and restore the throne to the next predicted High King, it contains numerous Celtic and Arthurian elements, including the sword Caladfwlch and the figures of a young Arthur and Gwenhwyvar. The tale continues in Crimson Fire (2007) and Cry of Sorrow (2008). [LMM] Taylor, Holly. Night Birds’ Reign. Palm Beach, FL: Medallion, 2005. ———. Crimson Fire. Palm Beach, FL: Medallion, 2007. ———. Cry of Sorrow. Palm Beach, FL: Medallion, 2008. 205

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TELEVISION. King Arthur’s Disasters, a thirteen-episode animated series for children, created by Paul Parkes and Will Ashurst, was first shown on British Independent Television (ITV1) in 2005. Each episode is discrete and formulaic. A spoilt and selfish Princess Guinevere (voice of Morwenna Banks) is wooed by a cocky but likeable King Arthur (Rik Mayall). When she routinely demands that to prove his love he fetch her some exotic object or animal (a leaf from the Singing Oak Tree, a yodelling dolphin, etc.), he tries to fulfil these arduous quests, assisted by Merlin (Matt Lucas), but invariably obstructed by the treacherous Sir Lancelot (Phil Cornwell) and a malign Sir Martin wearing Japanese costume. An ineffectual Robin Hood makes an occasional appearance. All Arthur’s quests prove abortive, however, and the princess remains unwilling to marry him. The series was released on DVD in 2005. A second thirteen-episode series was screened on ITV1 in 2006. (See also KAAMELOTT.) [RS] King Arthur’s Disasters. DVD. Coolabi Productions and Neptuno Films, 2005.

TERRY, PATRICIA, and SAMUEL N. ROSENBERG offer an elegant retelling of the story of Galehaut, drawn from the French Vulgate Cycle. The text recounts the major events in which Galehaut is involved, most notably his extraordinary friendship with Lancelot, his role in furthering Lancelot’s relationship with the queen and his own love affair with the Lady of Malehaut. The work concludes with the deaths of Lancelot, Galehaut and Guenevere, as well as the disappearance of the wounded Arthur (whose return is not predicted in this retelling). The volume is illustrated with wood engravings by Judith Jaidinger. Terry, Patricia, and Samuel N. Rosenberg, Lancelot and the Lord of the Distant Isles, or The Book of Galehaut Retold, with Wood Engravings by Judith Jaidinger. Boston: David R. Godine, 2006.

THOMAS, EDWARD (NAE), wrote one book for children, a collection of stories in which he invented origins for familiar proverbs and associated them with various regions of Britain. For Carmarthenshire, Thomas wrote ‘The Nearer the Bone the Sweeter the Meat’ (1915), in which Prince Urien, after the death of his wife Olwen, takes his horse Arthur, his sword Merlin, and his lance Uther, and ends his days in a hermit’s cave, sharing the last bone of a meal with his dog Cavall. [DN] Thomas, Edward. ‘The Nearer the Bone the Sweeter the Meat’. In Fourand-Twenty Blackbirds. Illustrated by Margery Gill. London: Duckworth, 1915, pp. 45–8.

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THOMPSON, FRANK T., American filmmaker, film historian and novelist, has written King Arthur (2004), a novelization of David Franzoni’s screenplay for the feature film King Arthur (see FILMS). Thompson’s narrative is generally faithful to that of the film, but he also fleshes out many characters (including the film’s enigmatic Merlin), offers an alternative ending, and introduces some unintentionally amusing passages that result from his ignorance of medieval British history. [MAT] Haydock, Nickolas A. ‘Digital Divagations in a Hyperreal Camelot: Antoine Fuqua’s King Arthur’, in Movie Medievalism: The Imaginary Middle Ages, by Nickolas Haydock. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008, pp. 165–86; rpt. with rev. in The Blackwell Companion to Arthurian Literature, ed. Helen Fulton. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009, pp. 525–42. Thompson, Frank. King Arthur. New York: Hyperion, 2004.

TICKNOR, FRANCIS ORRAY (1822–74), American physician, poet, and horticulturalist, composed four poems (several extant in alternate forms) in the 1860s that link the Matter of Britain to events and personages related to the Confederate States during the American Civil War. ‘Little Giffen’ (1867), first published in the November issue of The Land We Love, equates the valour of Isaac Newton Giffen, a sixteen-year-old Confederate officer from Tennessee, to that of King Arthur’s knights; ‘The Gap’ likens the valiant, though ultimately defeated, Confederate forces to Arthur’s knights; while ‘The Sword in the Sea’ links the C.S.S. Alabama with Excalibur. ‘Arthur the Great King,’ a religious poem extant in two versions, is dedicated to Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, and connects King Arthur with Jesus Christ and ‘the undying Hope of final and eternal Justice’. [MAT] Ticknor, Francis Orray. The Poems of Francis Orray Ticknor, ed. Michelle Cutliff Ticknor. New York and Washington: Neale, 1911. ———. The Poems of Frank O. Ticknor, M.D., ed. K. M. R. [Kate Mason Rowland]. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1879. Torregrossa, Michael A. ‘The Blue, the Gray, and the Pendragon? The Motif of Arthur Redivivus During the American Civil War.’ In Medievalisms at War: Re-Creations of Medieval War, Warfare, and Warriors in Modern Popular Culture, ed. Michael A. Torregrossa. Forthcoming.

TOZER, JANE, is an award-winning poet who composed lively and insightful versions of the lais of Marie de France in Knights of Love (2007) by making the characters and situations speak to the present day. Rather than provide academic translations, Tozer adapts Marie’s words in a way that recreates for modern readers the immediacy and humour of live performance, and, above all, she reminds us that Marie designed her work to provide entertainment and enjoyment. [LG] 207

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Tozer, Jane. Knights of Love: After the Lais of Marie de France. Illustrated by Apsley. Truro: Fal, 2007.

TUCKER, KENNETH, offers another humorous variation on Twain’s Connecticut Yankee by sending his hero Hal Morgan to another dimension to defeat a plot against King Arthur, in A Kentucky Colonel in King Arthur’s Court and The Swamp Maiden of Venus (2006). [RHT] Tucker, Kenneth. A Kentucky Colonel in King Arthur’s Court and The Swamp Maiden of Venus. AuthorHouse, 2006.

TURVEY, JAY, and PAUL SPORTELLI have adapted Thomas Mann’s short story ‘Tristan’ as a musical. At the Shaw Festival in Niagara-onthe-Lake, Ontario, Tristan was performed as a reading/workshop on 21 August 2005, before running as a full production two years later. The story is set at a sanatorium where various characters receive fashionable treatments: Spinell, a young writer, is the Tristan-figure; he falls in love with a married woman who plays parts of Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde in the second act. Her final reported word, the name ‘Tristan’, reinforces the love triangle and the importance of art as represented by Wagner. [AH] Turvey, Jay, and Paul Sportelli. Tristan. Dir. Eda Holmes. Musical direction and orchestration by Paul Sportelli. Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON: Court House Theatre, Shaw Festival. 12 July to 6 October 2007.

UPDIKE, JOHN, devoted his novel Brazil (1994, NAE) to his most extensive reworking of the Tristan legend, though his fascination with the story is evident in earlier works in verse and prose. As early as 1963, Updike imagined Tristan’s last thoughts of Iseult in a brief passage of the poem ‘Erotic Epigrams’, and in the 1990 story ‘Tristan and Iseult’, a man in a dental chair ponders the intimate yet forbidden emotions he feels for the technician who is cleaning his teeth. Beyond the title the only explicit association with the medieval story is a metaphor of the separating sword. [DN] Updike, John. ‘Erotic Epigrams’. In Telephone Poles and Other Poems. New York: Knopf, 1963. ———. ‘Tristan and Iseult’. The New Yorker (3 Dec. 1990), 42–3. Reprinted in The Afterlife and Other Stories. New York: Knopf, 1994, pp. 148–53.

UTTLEY, ALISON (1884–1976). British author of numerous children’s stories, two of which have Arthurian associations. Both involve wishes coming true. Though the two girls in ‘The Lucky Bag’ are bored by class208

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room reading about King Arthur, their finding of a lucky oxlip leads to the temporary appearance of Tom Thumb, the Fairy Knight from Arthur’s Court, who gives them a book about himself, which they read repeatedly thereafter. ‘King Arthur’s Tree’ is set on a Cornish seashore – though not specified, it strongly resembles Tintagel – where a boy and girl search for the tiny brown plants (sea-thorns) that are known locally as ‘King Arthur’s Trees’. Finding not only a sea-thorn but also a minute tree made of silver and jade, with a small gold crown on top, the children are duly granted a wish to see Merlin and castle life in the old days. Before the vision fades, a young Arthur appears and takes the gold crown, for he regards it as a sure sign that he will become king himself one day. [RS] Uttley, Alison. ‘King Arthur’s Tree’. In Uncle Mac’s Children’s Hour Book, ed. Derek McCulloch. London: Sampson Low, [1949], pp. 8–19. It is illustrated by an unnamed artist. The title page states that the story had previously been broadcast in Children’s Hour on BBC Radio. The story was later reprinted with minor revisions, and illustrations by Pauline Baynes, in The Little Knife Who Did All the Work. London: Faber, 1962, pp. 88–102; and again in The Little Knife Who Did All the Work. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1978, pp. 103–20. ———. ‘The Lucky Bag’. In The Little Knife Who Did All the Work. Faber, 1962, pp. 75–87; and in Penguin, 1978, pp. 87–102.

VANDE VELDE, VIVIAN, makes Mordred a sympathetic character in her novel The Book of Mordred. The tale focuses on Mordred’s relationships with three women, Nimue, Alayna, and her daughter Kiera, whose father is the wizard Toland from whom she inherits some magic powers: she talks to animals, and has visions and an out-of-body experience. The novel depicts a struggle between good and evil. Mordred is generally on the side of good and even tries to prevent the final battle with Arthur. When Arthur is taken to Avalon, Mordred, whose wound is not fatal, chooses to stay with Alayna; but Kiera goes to Avalon to be free of the suspicion and hostility that her magic abilities cause. [ACL] Vande Velde, Vivian. The Book of Mordred. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

VANSITTART, PETER (NAE), wrote a satirical novel with Arthurian touches and produced Arthurian verse and short stories for children before his better-known novels Lancelot (1978) and Parsifal (1988). Orders of Chivalry (1958) tells of a great festival in London promoted by a Lord Arthur Illius, with a planning committee known as the Knights of the Round Table and a grand prize named the Grail. Additional allusions occur throughout as the characters, symbolizing virtues and vices, interact in a commentary on the pervasive commercialism of contemporary society. 209

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Two juvenile collections rework material drawn from traditional sources. The Dark Tower (1965) includes: ‘Foolish Kings’ (Arthur rejects the giant Rhitta’s demand for his beard); ‘An Unhappy Lord’ (March and his mule’s ears); ‘Collen’ (the Abbot of Glastonbury’s encounter with Gwyn son of Nudd); ‘The Magic Head’ (mentions both Old Arthur and King Arthur in the tale of the Cauldron of Inspiration and Bran’s Head); ‘The Dark Tower’ (retells ‘Childe Roland’ with an appearance by Merlin); ‘Merlin’ (Vortigern and the dragons); ‘Saxons’ (Vortigern and Hengist); and ‘Gawayne and the Green Knight’ (brief retelling). A companion volume, The Shadow Land (1967), includes: ‘The Marriage of Gawayne’ (the loathly lady tale); ‘He plucked out of his potenter’ (verse retelling of Gwenever’s failure in the mantle test); ‘The Birth of Taliesin the Singer’ (Elphin and the bard); ‘Brothers’ (Balin and Balan in a Celtic setting); and ‘The Search’ (a sleeping beauty tale in which the lady sleeps under a curse by Merlin). [DN] Vansittart, Peter. Orders of Chivalry. London: Bodley Head, 1958. ———. The Dark Tower: Tales from the Past. Illustrated by Margery Gill. London: Macdonald, 1965. ———. The Shadow Land: More Stories from the Past. Illustrated by Richard Kennedy. London: Macdonald, 1967.

VARDEMAN, ROBERT E., an American writer best known for his science fiction, turned to fantasy for his entry in an anthology of stories set in modern Renaissance festivals. ‘A Time for Steel’ (2005) tells of a policeman’s encounter with Merlin during a murder investigation. Living backwards in time, the wizard has commissioned the creation of Excalibur, which he places in the keeping of the Lady of the Lake. [DN] Vardeman, Robert E. ‘A Time for Steel’. In Renaissance Faire, ed. Andre Norton and Jean Rabe. New York: DAW, 2005, pp. 73–91.

WALL, ANNIE T., divides her short story ‘The Dream of the Sangreal’ (1866) into three sections: it begins with a mother telling her young son a version of Malory’s account of the Grail quest; that night, the youth dreams of Galahad and a series of latter-day Grail knights and bearers, all ‘working patiently and earnestly for truth’s sake and the right’; years later as a Union soldier the young man is inducted into their number by Galahad, who visits him on the eve of his death in battle at Antietam during the American Civil War. [MAT] Wall, Annie T. ‘The Dream of the Sangreal’. Our Young Folks 2:11 (Nov. 1866), 695–702.

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WEBER, DAVID, adopts a similar premise in these otherwise unrelated novels: a technologically advanced alien society decides to exterminate humans, whose inventiveness is seen as threatening. All use Arthurian allusions, though the Arthurian content remains at the level of names. In the stand-alone novel The Excalibur Alternative (2002), a group of fourteenth-century English knights and soldiers are abducted by aliens to serve as battle troops against other primitives; when the English rebel they set up their own society, deliberately invoking the Arthurian model through names of planets (Camelot), spaceships (Excalibur), and artificial intelligences (Merlin). Off Armageddon Reef (2007) and By Schism Rent Asunder (2008) are the first two novels of a series that chronicles the attempts of a Personality-Integrated Cybernetic Avatar to coach humanity’s last colony in the use of technology; while its personality is derived from a woman named Nimue, it takes the name Merlin to fit in with this patriarchal society and becomes mentor for a young prince, to whom it gives a sword called Excalibur. [AH] Weber, David. The Excalibur Alternative. Riverdale, NY: Baen Publishing, 2002. ———. Off Armageddon Reef. New York: TOR, 2007. ———. By Schism Rent Asunder. New York: TOR, 2008.

WEIN, ELIZABETH E. (NAE, AL 22), stretches the limits of the Arthurian legend as she continues her story of the offspring of Arthur with three more juvenile novels set in the African kingdom of Aksum (Ethiopia). Wein’s most substantial contribution to modern Arthurian literature is a unique and well-developed biography of Medraut, from his tortured boyhood in The Winter Prince (1993) to a secondary but crucial role in the fourth, fifth and sixth books, The Sunbird (2004), The Lion Hunter (2007), and The Empty Kingdom. Here he is an honoured member of the royal court, a famous warrior who has become a healer, but it is Telemakos, his son by an African princess, who has become the central figure in the ongoing narrative. Telemakos is put through terrible trials of his own, but constantly exhibits the qualities of his two noble bloodlines – that of the royal family of Aksum and that of Artos, High King of Britain, though that land becomes increasingly remote as the series progresses. In an earlier story, ‘The Ethiopian Knight’ (1998), Wein draws upon the Alliterative Morte Arthure for the tale of Gawaine and Priamus. As both knights lie dying from their mutually inflicted wounds, only a miracle of faith can prevent their deaths. [DN/LMM] Wein, Elizabeth E. ‘The Ethiopian Knight’. Odyssey: A Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy 7 (1998), 42–6. ———. The Sunbird. New York: Viking, 2004.

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———. The Lion Hunter: The Mark of Solomon, Book 1. New York: Viking, 2007. ———. The Empty Kingdom: The Mark of Solomon, Book 2. New York: Viking, 2008.

WEINBERG, ROBERT, sends his occult detective, Taine, into the seedy world of mobsters in order to return the Holy Grail to its ‘rightful owner’ in the short story ‘Seven Drops of Blood’ (2005). Taine is offered one million dollars to locate Excalibur in ‘The Children of May’ (2005), and in so doing learns the truth of Arthur’s terrible sin. [LMM] Weinberg, Robert. ‘Seven Drops of Blood’. In The Occult Detective. Chicago: Twilight Tales, 2005, pp. 31–5. ———. ‘The Children of May’. In The Occult Detective. Chicago: Twilight Tales, 2005, pp. 124–41.

WHYTE, JACK (NAE, AL 18, 22), brings his Dream of Eagles cycle to a conclusion in The Eagle (2005), the sequel to Clothar the Frank. Clothar (Lancelot) narrates the story of his long and complicated service with Arthur, including his own affair with Elaine and the subsequent birth of Galahad. Mordred is born of the unwitting incest between Arthur and his half-sister Morag. Although there is no affair between the queen and Clothar, Arthur, anticipating the imminent collapse of his realm from external pressures, sends her off with him to ensure her safety, and they marry three years after learning of Arthur’s death. [RHT] Whyte, Jack. The Eagle. Toronto: Viking, 2005.

WILKINSON, DEAN. British author of a children’s novel, The Legend of Arthur King (2003), which blends an ecological message with anti-EU sentiment and a sexual prurience unusual in the genre. In a sweltering drought, the Brussels-based developer, Mordred Holdings, is cutting down Albion Wood on Teesside and exterminating the rare rainbirds therein. This antisocial project is thwarted by the efforts of local teenagers led by Arthur King, Gwen (the girl he loves) and her brother Lawrence Lott. Although quasi-Arthurian names abound among the personae, only Arthur and Lawrence are conscious of their traditional Arthurian roles. [RS] Wilkinson, Dean. The Legend of Arthur King. London: Scholastic, 2003.

WOLFE, GENE (NAE, AL 22), in ‘The Magic Animal’ (2007), describes how Viviane and Merlin live their lives forward and backward in time in order to secure their love and ensure the coming of King Arthur. The 212

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Knight and its sequel The Wizard (2004) are fantasy novels in which a boy is drawn into strange worlds in order to become a great knight whose honour is tested throughout his adventures. An Arthurian connection with Sir Gawain is established when the boy takes on the persona of the Green Knight. [LMM] Wolfe, Gene. The Knight. New York: TOR, 2004. ———. The Wizard. New York: TOR, 2004. ———. ‘The Magic Animal’. In Wizards: Magical Tales from the Masters of Modern Fantasy, ed. Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. New York: Berkley, 2007, pp. 299–325.

WOLKSTEIN, DIANE, includes ‘Tristan and Iseult, One Man, One Woman’ (1991) among seven classic stories, each representing an aspect of love. This story, told by a fool and based on Béroul, Thomas, Gottfried and Bédier, represents love of community versus love of self. [JTG] Wolkstein, Diane. ‘Tristan and Iseult, One Man, One Woman’. In The First Love Stories. From Isis and Osiris to Tristan and Iseult. New York: Harper Collins, 1991, pp. 181–233.

WORK, JAMES C. (AL 22), continues his Keystone Ranch series. In the fourth book, The Dead Ride Alone (2004), Link, one of the top foremen on Art Pendragon’s ranch, meets a young woman who lives in a tower, and he enters a rodeo (tournament) in disguise. In the fifth book, Riders of Deathwater Valley (2005), he rescues Gwen, Art’s wife, who is being held captive by outlaws. Link must cross a bridge of swords and ride in a common cart. The author manages to transform traditional Arthurian material into stories of the Old West with skill and imagination. Outcast of Spirit Ridge (2006) takes place in a similar setting to the others, but there are no Arthurian connections. [LMM] Work, James C. The Dead Ride Alone. Unity, ME: Five Star, 2004. ———. Riders of Deathwater Valley. Unity, ME: Five Star, 2005.

YANCEY, RICK, effectively merges the medieval with the modern in The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (2005), the first instalment of his popular Alfred Kropp series. Fifteen-year-old Alfred, an oversized, self-deprecating, and self-doubting hero, tries to help his Uncle Farrell in a suspicious get-rich-quick scheme. But after Alfred ‘screws up’, his uncle is killed and the object they were tricked into stealing – the legendary sword Excalibur – is lost. In the ensuing dangerous and often violent quest to recover it, Alfred encounters an ancient order of knights in fast foreign cars, thugs on supercharged motorcycles and in helicopters, and a mysterious international order that seems intent on tracking his every 213

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move. Ultimately, Alfred discovers his prowess with a sword, learns the secret of his own identity as the last direct descendant of Sir Lancelot, and saves the world from total annihilation. [BTL] Yancey, Rick. The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp. New York: Bloomsbury, 2005.

YOUNKINS, SUSAN WILSON, reinterprets the story of Arthur in her novel Heirs of Fate (2004). New characters are introduced; established characters behave uncharacteristically, leading to unexpected changes in their destinies; and the accepted descriptions of important places and objects are redefined. Despite the changes, the established plot and themes of the Matter of Britain are maintained. [LMM] Younkins, Susan Wilson. Heirs of Fate. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2005.

ZETTEL, SARAH, has begun a series referred to in some advertising as the Two Ravens Saga, but as Paths to Camelot on the author’s website. Writing in the romance/fantasy genre, Zettel tells stories of Lot’s sons: Gawain, the oldest and Arthur’s heir in In Camelot’s Shadow (2004); Geraint, the third son, in For Camelot’s Honor (2005); Gareth, the youngest, in Under Camelot’s Banner (2006; published in UK as Camelot’s Sword); and Agravain, the second son and Lot’s heir, in Camelot’s Blood (2008). Zettel combines many original elements with traditional stories such as those of Gawain and the Green Knight, Gawain and Dame Ragnell, the sparrow-hawk tournament that Geraint wins, and Gareth as kitchen-knight and companion of Lynet. The villain in all the books is Morgaine, who seeks Arthur’s destruction through various plots against his kingdom, his queen (Guinevere is here Morgaine’s foster-sister and queen of Cornwall), and his knights. The relationships between the female protagonists (Risa, Elen, Lynet and Laurel, respectively) and these four knights have some prominence in each tale as befits the romance genre, but Zettel is equally interested in magic and the historical details of military strategy, particularly in Camelot’s Blood. Prologues to each novel establish an elderly Kai as the narrator. [AH] Zettel, Sarah. In Camelot’s Shadow. New York: LUNA/Harlequin, 2004; also published as Camelot’s Shadow. London: HarperCollins, 2005. ———. For Camelot’s Honor. New York: LUNA / Harlequin, 2005; also published as Camelot’s Honour. London: HarperCollins, 2005. ———. Under Camelot’s Banner. New York: Luna / Harlequin, 2006; also published as Camelot’s Sword. London: HarperCollins, 2006. ———. Camelot’s Blood. London: HarperCollins, 2008.

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CONTENTS OF PREVIOUS VOLUMES

Details of earlier titles are available from the publishers XVII   (1999) Bart Besamusca and Erik Kooper Walter Haug Douglas Kelly Norris J. Lacy Matthias Meyer Ad Putter Felicity Riddy Thea Summerfield Jane H. M. Taylor Bart Veldhoen Norbert Voorwinden Lori J. Walters

The Study of the Roman van Walewein The Roman van Walewein as a Postclassical Literary Experiment The Pledge Motif in the Roman van Walewein: Original Variant and Rewritten Quest Convention and Innovation in the Middle Dutch Roman van Walewein It’s Hard to Be Me, or Walewein/Gawan as Hero Walewein in the Otherworld and the Land of Prester John Giving and Receiving: Exchange in the Roman van Walewein and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Reading a Motion Picture: Why Steven Spielberg Should Read the Roman van Walewein The Roman van Walewein: Man into Fox, Fox into Man The Roman van Walewein Laced with Castles Fight Description in the Roman van Walewein and in Two Middle High German Romances. A Comparison Making Bread from Stone: The Roman van Walewein and the Transformation of Old French Romance

XVIII   (2001) † Richard N. Illingworth Jane H. M. Taylor Carleton W. Carroll and Maria Colombo Timelli Raluca Radulescu Julia Marvin Norris J. Lacy and Raymond H. Thompson

The Composition of the Tristran of Beroul The Lure of the Hybrid: Tristan de Nanteuil, chanson de Geste Arthurien? L’Extrait du Roman d’Erec et Enide de La Curne de SaintePalaye ‘Talkyng of cronycles of kinges and of other polycyez’: Fifteenth-Century Miscellanies, the Brut and the Readership of Le Morte Darthur Albine and Isabelle: Regicidal Queens and the Historical Imagination of the Anglo-Norman Prose Brut Chronicles Arthurian Literature, Art, and Film, 1995–1999

XIX   (2002) Elizabeth Archibald Christine Ferlampin-Acher Angelica Rieger Norris J. Lacy Peter S. Noble Karen Pratt Bénédicte Milland-Bove Frank Brandsma Marilyn Lawrence

Comedy and Tragedy in Some Arthurian Recognition Scenes Merveilleux et comique dans les romans arthuriens français (XIIe–Xve siècles) La bande dessinée virtuelle du lion d’Yvain: sur le sens de l’humour de Chrétien de Troyes Convention, Comedy and the Form of La Vengeance Raguideli Le comique dans Les Merveilles de Rigomer et Hunbaut Humour in the Roman de Silence La pratique de la ‘disconvenance’ comique dans le Lancelot en prose: les mésaventures amoureuses de Guerrehet Lancelot Part 3 Comic Functions of the Parrot as Minstrel in Le Chevalier du Papegau

Francesco Zambon Marjolein Hogenbirk Donald L. Hoffman Elizabeth S. Sklar Linda Gowans

Dinadan en Italie A Comical Villain: Arthur’s Seneschal in a Section of the Middle Dutch Lancelot Compilation Malory and the English Comic Tradition ‘Laughyng and Smylyng’: Comic Modalities in Malory’s Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake The Eachtra an Amadáin Mhóir as a Response to the Perceval of Chrétien de Troyes

XX   (2003) Gerald Seaman Monica L. Wright Jane Dewhurst Richard Barber and Cyril Edwards Krista Sue-Lo Twu Dinah Hazell Edward Donald Kennedy Tamar Drukker Janina P. Traxler

Reassessing Chrétien’s Elusive Vanz Their Clothing Becomes Them: the Narrative Function of Clothing in Chrétien de Troyes Generic Hybridity in Hartmann von Aue’s Der arme Heinrich The Grail Temple in Der jüngere Titurel The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne: Reliquary for Romance The Blinding of Gwennere: Thomas Chestre as Social Critic Malory’s Morte Darthur: A Politically Neutral English Adaptation of the Arthurian Story King, Crusader, Knight: the Composite Arthur of the Middle English Prose Brut Pendragon, Merlin and Logos: the Undoing of Babel in That Hideous Strength

XXI   (2004) Ann Dooley Sioned Davies Helen A. Roberts Erich Poppe Mary-Ann Constantine Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan

Arthur of the Irish: A Viable Concept? Performing Culwch ac Olwen Court and Cyuoeth: Chrétien de Troyes’ Erec et Enide and the Middle Welsh Gereint Owein, Ystorya Bown, and the Problem of ‘Relative Distance’. Some Methodological Considerations and Speculations Neith Flesh nor Fowl: Merlin as Bird-man in Breton Folk Tradition Narratices and Non-narratives: Aspects of Welsh Arthurian Tradition

XXII   (2005) Benn Ramm

Annette Völfing Helen Fulton Julia Marvin Norris J. Lacy and Raymond H. Thompson

Locating Narrative Authority in Perlesvaus : Le Haut Livre du Graal Micheau Gonnot’s Arthuriad Preserved in Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fr. 112 and its Place in the Evolution of Arthurian Romance Albricht’s Jüngerer Titurel: Translating the Grail Arthurian Prophecy and the Deposition of Richard II Arthur Authorized: The Prophecies of the Prose Brut Chronicle The Arthurian Legend in Literature, Popular Culture and the Performing Arts, 1999–2004

Andrew Lynch P. J. C. Field

Beyond Shame: Chivalric Cowardice and Arthurian Narrative Malory’s Forty Knights

Fanni Bogdanow

XXIII   (2006)

Joyce Coleman D. Thomas Hanks Jr Raluca L. Radulescu Margaret Robson Martin Connolly Norris J. Lacy Fanni Bogdanow Tony Grand Robert Gossedge

Fooling with Language: Sir Dinadan in Malory’s Morte Darthur William Caxton, Wynkyn de Worde and the Editing of Malory’s Morte Darthur Ballad and Popular Romance in the Percy Folio Local Hero: Gawain and the Politics of Arthurianism Promise-postponement Device in The Awntyrs off Arthure: a Possible Narrative Model L’Atre perilleux and the Erasure of Identity The Theme of the Handsome Coward in the Post-Vulgate Queste del Saint Graal A Time of Gifts? Jean de Nesle, William A. Nitze and the Perlesvaus Thomas Love Peacock’s The Misfortunes of Elphin and the Romantic Arthur

XXIV   (2007) Norris J. Lacy Lori J. Walters Cora Dietl Stefano Mula Marjolein Hogenbirk Sarah Gordon Linda Gowans Joseph M. Sullivan Frank Brandsma Susanne Kramarz-Bein Martine Meuwese

Perceval on the Margins: a Pan-European Perspective More Bread from Stone: Gauvain as a Figure of Plenitude in the French, Dutch and English Traditions Artus – ein Fremdkörper in der Tristantradition? Dinadan Abroad: Tradition and Innovation for a Counter-Hero Gringalet as an Epic Character Consumption and the Construction of Identity in Medieval European Arthurian Romance Lamenting or just Grumbling? Arthur’s Nephew Expresses his Discontent Youth and Older Age in the Dire Adventure of Chrétien’s Yvain, the Old Swedish Hærra Ivan, Hartmann’s Iwein and the Middle English Ywain and Gawain Degrees of Perceptibility: the Narrator in the French Prose Lancelot, and in its German and Dutch Translations Die altnorwegische Parcevals saga im Spannungsfeld ihrer Quelle und der mittelhochdeutschen und mittelenglischen Parzival-überlieferung Crossing Borders: Text and Image in Arthurian Manuscripts

XXV   (2009) Nikolai Tolstoy Carolyne Larrington Michael twomey Ralica L. Radulescu Martine Meuwese Stewart Mottram

Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Merlin Legend The Enchantress, the Knight and the Cleric: Authorial Surrogate in Arthurian Romance ‘Morgan le Fay, Empress of the Wilderness’: A Newly Recovered Arthurian Text in London, BL Royal 12.C.ix Malory’s Lancelot and the Key to Salvation Chrétien in Ivory ‘An Empire of Itself’: Arthur as Icon of an English Empire, 1509–1547

spine 23mm A 5 Oct Sep 09

Archibald and Johnson (eds)

Amanda Hopkins, Ronald Hutton, Norris Lacy, Jonathan Passaro, Raymond Thompson.

Cover: King Arthur’s vision of Fortune’s wheel, from La Mort le Roi Artus, c.1316, BL MS Add. 10294, f. 89 (© British Library Board).

ARTHURIAN LITERATURE 26

The Arthurian material collected in this volume ranges widely in time and space, from a Latin romance based on Welsh sources to the postChristian Arthur of modern fiction and film. A reprint of Derek Brewer’s classic introduction to his edition of the last two tales of Malory’s Morte Darthur is followed by studies including a possible source manuscript for Malory’s first tale; the ‘Arthuricity’ of the little-known Latin romance Arthur and Gorlagon; images of sterility and fertility in the continuations of Chrétien’s Conte du Graal; and early modern responses to Geoffrey of Monmouth’s account of Arthur’s dealings with Rome. Norris Lacy ranges widely over the evolution of the Arthurian legend, and Ronald Hutton considers representations of both Christian and pagan religion in modern novels and cinema. The volume ends with a bibliographical supplement on recent additions to Arthurian fiction. Contributors: Derek Brewer  †, SiÂn Echard, Thomas Hinton,

Arthurian literature 26

BOYDELL & BREWER Ltd

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Edited by Elizabeth Archibald and David F. Johnson