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There are but a handful of historical references to Malory in the last decade of his life and, as I’ve discussed previously, they only pose more, sometimes dramatic questions about his character and the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.

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.