A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 31: As the Frenche Boke Sayeth or Not

This is episode 31 of my exploration of the life, times and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.

There are but a handful of historical references to Malory in the last decade of his life and, as I’ve discussed previously, they only pose more, sometimes dramatic questions about his character and the events that led to them.  What do Malory’s sources, how he used them and Le Morte d’Arthur itself tell us about him and particularly the last decade of his life?

When I decided to turn to Malory’s works for answers I assumed, naively, that he had more or less concatenated and translated a series of French and English sources, erratically and occasionally adding small emendations, such as details in the siege of Guinevere in the Tower and that there might be some clues in those few emendations.  The view was encouraged by Malory himself and his occasional allusions to the “Frenche boke.”  Ralph Norris’ Malory’s Library quickly convinced me otherwise.  Malory, he writes, “expressed his originality most often in his selection and organization of older stories and elements rather than by invention.”  So the emendations could well be just a small part of the story and there could be much more to be learned from Malory’s selection of detail and story and construction.  Subsequently I’ve come to appreciate that Malory undertook a large and complex project requiring substantial management and reconciliation of detail as well as significant structural revision.  Indeed, the more I learn, the less I can rationalize it as the casual pastime of an incarcerated aristocrat:  that just doesn’t do justice to the passion, imagination and difficult detail work such a project would have entailed.

What were Malory’s sources?  The three major ones were the three great Old French prose Arthurian cycles:

1. The Vulgate or Lancelot-Graal Cycle of the 13^th century derives from the  romances of Chrétien de Troyes, the French prose Grail Romance Perlesvaus, Robert de Boron’s poem Merlin and elements of the Old Testament.  It consists of five sections: “The Estoire del Saint Grail” (predominantly concerned with the history of the Holy Grail and how Joseph of Arimathea brought it to England), “the Estoire de Merlin” (including the Hugh manuscript of “the Suite du Merlin”) concerned with Merlin’s history and Arthur’s early life, “the Lancelot Proper,” concerned with the adventures of Lancelot and other Round Table knights, “the Queste del Saint Graal” concerned with the quest for the Grail and Galahad’s completion of the quest, and “the Mort Artu” concerned with Arthur’s death at the hands of Mordred.
   
2. The cyclic version of the Prose Tristan, written after the Vulgate is the seminal version of the story of Tristan and Iseult but also introduces prominent Arthurian characters such as Lamorak, Dinadan and Palamedes.  It also reprises the Grail story.
   
3. The Post-Vulgate Cycle or Romance of the Grail derived from the Vulgate consists of four sections, three of which closely parallel the counterparts in the Vulgate and a fourth “the Quest del San Graal,” which has a very different tone from the story in the Vulgate.  In general the importance of Lancelot and Guenevere is deprecated and an almost Puritanical ethos is strongly affirmed.

Then there are the many minor sources, so far scholars have identified 24, here are some of the more important and notable ones:

1. Alliterative Morte Arthure.
2. John Hardyng’s rhyming Chronicle of England.
3. Chrétien de Troyes Le Chevalier au Lion.
4. The Perlesvaus, one of the sources for the Vulgate mentioned above.
5. Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
6. The poems of John Lydgate.

So, in some cases, Malory was reconciling and making use of both a source and its sources.

A particularly telling aspect of his work is the number of minor, previously anonymous characters whom Malory takes the trouble to name and whose reconciled roles stretch across the narratives of multiple sources.  Some derived from the sources whilst others were entirely original.  Malory occasionally makes errors with his vast cast but not often, which argues remarkable time spent cataloging and managing them.

For this reason I find it harder and harder to concur with the supposition by some of the most prominent Malory scholars that Le Morte d’Arthur was a work composed in the final few years of his life.  It is simply too big and the changes he made were too large and detailed.   I find I’m in good company with this opinion as it’s shared by Christina Hardyment, Malory’s most recent biographer who quotes T. H. White on Le Morte d’Arthur’s structure and literary immediacy:

He “…was thrilled and astonished to find that (a) the thing was a perfect tragedy; with a beginning, a middle and an end implicit in the beginning and (b) the characters were real people with recognizable reactions which could be forecast.  Mordred was hateful; Kay a decent chap with an inferiority complex; Gawaine that rarest of literary productions, a swine with a streak of solid decency. He was a sterling fellow to his own clan. Arthur, Lancelot, and even Galahad were really glorious people, not pre-Raphaelite prigs.”

(I find it difficult to think of the pre-Raphaelites or their representation of Arthurian characters as prigs, but that’s a minor point.)

So, for the sequel I’ll be presuming that during the that final, presumably tempestuous decade, Malory was at work on Le Morte d’Arthur.  In the next few posts I’ll be following and commenting on Norris’s analysis of Malory sources for each of Malory’s eight tales, possibly with some additional biographical deductions.

What You Should Consider Reading Next

As I continue to research the complex issue of Sir Thomas Malory’s sources I’ve also been spelling myself with some contemporary fiction, in particular the new novel Youngblood by Matt Gallagher.  For once the manifold good reviews are accurate.  It’s an extraordinary book, even better than most of the critics are crediting.

The setting is Iraq, primarily Ashuriyah, just before the end of the American occupation.  The narrator is an army lieutenant and a platoon leader.  It is war fiction, and like the greatest works of that kind, from War and Peace to A Farewell to Arms to The Things They Carried, it is suis-generis in spite of the conventional linear structure of the narrative.  Initially, story is propelled  by a mystery, indeed that’s what it first appears to be, in spite of its surprising setting, and though Gallaher’s canvas is edged with multiple modernist and post-modernist conventions, they are properly seen  as much a part of the temporal setting as the desert and burning sun are part of the physical setting.  Gallagher has deeper, more interesting concerns:  the struggle to lead others in a context fraught with ambiguity and moral conflict, the interaction of disparate cultures and the nature of character itself.  They are some of the best and most important subjects for fiction and of course are timeless.

And he has a gift for creating memorable, engaging characters.  There are many and yet all are well differentiated and believable.  His narrator, in particular, is self-effacing, contemporary and interestingly self-conscious and perspicacious.  In that regard, he is reminiscent of Patrick Kenzie in Denis Lehane’s Kenzie/Gennaro mysteries.  Gallaher also has a fine sense of scene.  I never find myself asking why a scene exists or if it has gone on too long.  Writers with such skill are sometimes called a writer’s writer and the epithet is well deserved in this case.  Here’s a favorite paragraph which shows just how good Gallagher’s writing is:

                I wanted to agree with him.  I wanted us to absolve ourselves of blame, deflect the accountability elsewhere.  I wanted to chalk up the ruin we’d wrought to something unknowable, like providence, or chance, or bureaucracy.  But something inside implored me not to.  That’s too easy, it said.  Be stubborn.  Fight for understanding.

Boy, I wish I’d written that last sentence.  Anyone who has ever led others with good will has felt that way.

Of course, because of my immediate concerns I can’t help but find myself juxtaposing and contrasting it to Le Morte d’Arthur but also Lermentov.  Gallagher’s Jack Porter’s situation has much in common with Pechorin’s, and they face similar dramatic issues and tensions in spite of their significant differences in character, particularly their moral values.  Indeed, the two make for a fine comparison of the way alienation expresses itself in occupying forces living within an alien Islamic culture.  There’s a very interesting and enjoyable critical essay there.

However, Malory, and other concerns call.  Suffice it to say, it may well be one of the very best novels to come out of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and, given the recent competition, that is saying a lot. The final words of Patton’s  war horse of a poem come to mind,

      So as through a glass, and darkly

      The age long strife I see

      Where I fought in many guises,

      Many names, but always me.

      And I see not in my blindness

      What the objects were I wrought,

      But as God rules o'er our bickerings

      It was through His will I fought.

      So forever in the future,

      Shall I battle as of yore,

      Dying to be born a fighter,

      But to die again, once more.

I should mention that I came to Youngblood via “The Hawaii Project” (www.thehawaiiproject.com) which not only recommended the book to me one morning but pointed me to a diverse set of reviews that convinced me I needed to read it.  It really is an exceptional way to find exceptional books.  I also feel a deep sense of appreciation for Mr. Gallagher for writing such an extraordinarily good book.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery - Episode 30: a Maze of Twisty Little Passages, All Different

This is episode 30 of my exploration of the life, times and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.

In my post of February 18^th of last year I compared studying Sir Thomas Malory’s life to a section of an ancient textual computer game, “Adventure,” in which the player was lost in a “maze of twisty little passages, all alike.”  Also in that game, adjacent to first maze, was a second one, a “maze of twisty little passages, all different.”

It’s an apt metaphor now.

In my last post I discussed the  lack of formal biographical information about Malory between 1461 and his death in 1470.  Nevertheless, during that time he was one of a very small number explicitly excluded twice from Edward IV’s general pardons, the language of which suggests it was for some grave, possibly treasonous offense.  Yet there is no formal record of Malory’s arrest, indictment, trial or imprisonment.  Then there is the matter of the inscription on his tombstone in which he is called a “valiant knight.”  And that is pretty much all we know for sure.  I decided to take Field’s sensible advice and look to “Le Morte d’Arthur” itself for further information. That’s when I fell into the maze:  the subject of how (and why) Malory emended his sources is not as simple as I presumed.  (At this point, I imagine an academic reader of this adventure who is more familiar than I with the literary scholarship of Le Morte d’Arthur enjoying an appropriate, well-deserved roaring laugh at my expense.)

Dorsey Armstrong’s 2003 book Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory's Morte d'Arthur (University Press of Florida, 2003) has proven remarkably helpful in elucidating the scope of the issue.  Indeed, the examination of the narrative of Arthur’s conflict with the Roman Emperor Lucius in Dorsey’s introduction provides a fine, concise example of the diversity and occasional subtlety of the issues involved.  Then there is Ralph Norris’ Malory’s Library (Arthurian Studies LXXI, 2008) which, based on subsequent citations, appears to be a seminal resource on the subject of Malory’s sources and how he used them.

I began by making a list of Malory’s additions and revisions but given the number and complexity immediately realized that some structure or might be necessary to manage the information.  A simple hierarchical taxonomy wouldn’t work as many of his changes satisfied multiple potential categories, i.e. detail changes, structural changes, appearance in the “Explicits” (added to summarize sections).    I’m still reading Norris and mulling over the proper way to approach the problem of determining what, if anything, can be learned of the last decade of Malory’s life.  Here are a few of the “twisty little passages, all different” to which that question leads:

 
- When did Malory write Le Morte d’Arthur?  Was it during a single period of imprisonment during the 1460’s or was it a lifelong project?

- In what order were the eight major sections of the book composed?

- Did Malory view his work as history or fiction or something else entirely and how did that stance affect his composition and selection?

- How personal was the book?  Was it a recreation undertaken and selected to relieve the dreariness of years in prison or was it a passion that had been with him all his life, and, if so, what was the source?

Here is one more, which takes me back to why I was first interested in the apparent discordance of Malory’s life and the subject and themes of his book.  In Caxton’s prefix to the original printed version, he states,  “after that I had accomplished, and finished divers histories, as well of contemplation as of other historial and worldly acts of great conquerors and princes, and also certain books of examples and doctrine, many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm of England camen and demanded me, many and ofttimes, wherefore that I have not do made and imprint the noble history of the Sangrail, and of the most renowned Christian king, first and chief of the three best Christian and worthy, King Arthur, which ought most to be remembered among us English men tofore all other Christian kings.” (modernized spelling from the Penguin edition edited by Janet Cowen.)

Malory had a vast set of sources, some in English, some nearly contemporary and yet, of all, his work alone became the paradigm for the story of Arthur, the code of Chivalry and his knights.  For  proof, consider how the work, often indirectly, still influences narrative art.  Why did his telling become the single nexus for much that has come subsequently?

To give you a sense of the challenge, appeal and difficulty of using Malory’s emendations to infer biographical information, I want to finish by looking at just one, the Pentecostal oath.  Here it is from Vinaver’s edition with the original spelling:

…than the kynge stablyssed 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 fortifiture [of their] worship and lordship of kynge Arthure for evirmore; and allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes [socour:] strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe. Also, that no man take no batayles in a wrongefull quarell for no love ne for no worldis goodis. So unto thys were all knyghtis sworne of the Table Rounde, both olde and younge, and every yere so were the[y] sworne at the hyghe feste of Pentecoste.

The oath is absolutely Malory’s original addition.  (Norris and others speculate that Malory may have been inspired by the oath taken by the Knights of the Bath, an order with roots as early as the reign of Henry IV, however, its codification began during the reign of James I; could it be the other way around?)  One can’t read the section of the oath concerning the treatment of women and wonder if Malory might have been responding in some way to the accusations against him during his first lengthy period of imprisonment?  It could be an implicit assertion of innocence or misdirection.  My view from what I’ve learned of his life so far is that it is the former, not the latter, but one can’t be sure. 

As I’ve been reading and listing emendations, I came across a curious piece of information which could be connected to the question of Malory’s inspiration.  One of multiple candidates proposed as the historical source for Arthur himself is a King Anwn of South Wales, a son of the Roman Emperor Magnus Maximus and some have suggested he is in fact buried in the Old Bury cemetery near Atherstone, a mere 16 miles away from Newbold-Revel.  I wouldn’t presume to comment on the veracity of the supposition.  Nevertheless, whether or not it’s true, one can imagine the story being known to one of Malory’s uncles, (John?), who may have imparted it to a young, impressionable nephew on a summer walk.  So there’s another twisty little passage to consider:  to what extent did the rich and curious folklore of Warwickshire influence Malory?

(Final photograph of the Cloisters Museum, November 2015, courtesy of Mark Watkins and The Hawaii Project.)

You can find Episode 31 here.

A Fine and Terrible Mystery Episode 29 - A New Conundrum

This is episode 29 of my exploration of the life, times and works of Sir Thomas Malory.  Episode 1 can be found here.

I still find myself musing about the consequences of the battle of Towton.  1 in 114 of the total population of England and Wales died that day.  Further, the composition of the armies suggests there may have been soldiers from nearly every county in England.  A contemporary comparison gives me pause, 1 in 318 of Japan’s population died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  How did the battle of Towton change England as it must have done?

Nevertheless, according to  “Leicester Medieval Pedigrees” (edited by G. Farnham), Malory followed the king, Warwick and Lord Fauconberg north to sieges at Alnwick, Bamburgh and Dunstaborough along with his old companions Sir Robert Harcourt and Sir John Astley, a formidable jouster.  All brought squires, archers and men-at-arms.  Malory was clearly in good odor with the government of Edward IV.  On New Years 1462, King Edward IV offered a general pardon, Malory took it to the King’s Bench and had the slate wiped clean of the charges against him.

He then returned to Warwickshire.  In September 1464 Malory witnessed the marriage settlement of John, son of William Feilding of Newnham Paddox in Warwickshire, and Helen, daughter and co-heiress of Thomas Walsh, esquire.  One can infer from William Dugdale’s drawing of the armorial window at Newbold-Revel that Malory was Helen’s uncle.  There are only three other references to Malory in the historical record, the last being the record of his death.  The epitaph on his tombstone read, “Thomas Mallere valens miles qui obit 14 die mensis marcii anno domini 1470 de parochial de monkenkyrkby in comitatu warwick..”,  “Thomas Malory, valiant knight who died 14, March, 1470 of Monkskirby Parish in the county of Warwick.”

To my knowledge, there are only two other explicit references in the historical record to Malory between 1464 and his death and they pose a new mystery about his life that is even more inscrutable than the events of 1450.

In the Spring of 1464 the Earl of Warwick and John Wenlock, 1st Baron Wenlock, joined secret negotiations with the French Court of Louis XI to arrange wedding the tall and dashing 22 year-old Edward IV to Louis’ sister-in-law, Lady Bona of Savoy.  The following September, Warwick attended a council meeting at Reading at which the king announced that he had secretly married Elizabeth Woodville, the twenty-seven year-old widow of a minor Lancastrian, Sir John Grey.  King Louis was blind-sided:  he first learned of it when subsequently Warwick and Wenlock didn’t appear at St. Omer to complete the Lady Bona marriage negotiations.

Edward’s decision is often portrayed as thoughtless and ill-considered.  Shakespeare, for example, cleverly telescopes events and places Warwick at the French court negotiating the Bona marriage with Louis when both are informed of Edward’s marriage.  But it could have been the opposite.  Edward could have been attempting to heal a fractured and decimated country and marriage to minor Lancastrian gentry may have played very well politically.  The records of the politics surrounding the various marriage negotiations for Elizabeth I one hundred years later show how well a native marriage could play.  It’s even possible Warwick was supportive as the relatively minor Woodville gentry hardly looked like a threat.

Nevertheless, Edward having planted them, labored to make them full of growing to use Duncan’s metaphor from “Macbeth.”  From 1464 to 1466 Edward continually increased their status, honours and most importantly, revenues.  From a certain point of view it was shrewd politics:  the Woodvilles were totally dependent upon and indebted to Edward for their rise and so were much more likely to be subordinate and loyal than the powerful existing magnates such as Warwick to whom Edward was indebted for his crown.  Indeed,  the governor of Abbeville had once written to Louis  XI of England, "They have but two rulers, M. de Warwick and another whose name I have forgotten."

In July 1465 Edward’s court received superlative news:  Henry VI was captured in Lancashire whilst attempting to cross the Ribble River at a place called Bungerly Hippinstones.  The aging son of Henry V was returned to “gentle,” or not so gentle, captivity in the Tower.  Unlike previous kings, Richard II and Edward II, he wasn’t killed which bespeaks an attempt at civility early in Edward’s reign.

In the Spring of 1466 Warwick was commissioned to seek a treaty with Burgundy.  Then in February of the next year he led an embassy to Louis XI for which he was well rewarded with custody of all royal forests north of the Trent.  Trusting Warwick with necessarily sensitive diplomatic missions to the two then adversaries dominating northern Europe can be interpreted as continuing proof of great trust.  But it is also just possible that Edward was testing his most powerful peer by having Warwick negotiate with both.  Indeed Edward then undermined Warwick’s attempt to ally with the French by entertaining Antoine, the Grand Batard of Burgundy at a great tournament in June of 1467.  During the tournament Antoine fought a two day duel with one of Edward’s champions, Anthony Woodville during which Woodville infamously and unchivalrously lanced the Batard’s horse.   It’s possible Malory echoed the incident in Le Mort d’Arthur.

Also, early that year, Edward declined to allow his 17 year-old brother George, Duke of Clarence to marry Warwick’s daughter Isabel.    In October, Edward concluded new treaties with Denmark, Castille and most importantly arranged for his sister Margaret to marry the new Duke of Burgundy, Charles and Warwick played an important role in the ceremonies leading up to the marriage.  In the procession to Margate, Warwick and Margaret rode the same horse, he before, she behind.  It’s an image worthy of Edward Burne-Jones and calls to mind N. C. Wyeth’s illustration of Guinevere and Lancelot escaping though the context was clearly different.

The Warkworth Chronicler believed Margaret’s marriage created the decisive breach between Warwick and the king.  And late in 1467, rumors emerged that Warwick was communicating with  Queen Margaret, her son Edward and her small court in exile who were living with her father’s small court at Kouer, 150 miles east of Paris.
Then, on July 14, 1468, Edward IV offered a second general pardon.  There were 15 exceptions. After Henry, Margaret, their son and followers and the Lancastrian rebels holding Harlech Castle, the second name of the remaining eleven was Sir Thomas Malory.

What had happened?  How had Malory so alienated the new king, whose party had freed him after ten years of prison and persecution, for whom he’d fought?  Given the terrible price he’d paid for opposing a royal magnate in the 1550s, what possibly could have induced him to do so again?  And how did that affect and inform his work on Le Mort d’Arthur?

As I said at the beginning, the direct historic record is scant, to  say the least.  Both Hardyment and Field provide possible explanations which merit a careful look; their work on such barren ground alludes to their excellent scholarship.  And then there is Field’s good advice, which is to look at Le Mort d’Arthur itself as an historical artifact.  So in future posts I will be looking carefully as what Malory’s emmendations and explicits tell us and suggest.

Episode 30 can be found here.