Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur (Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures)

FORGING CHIVALRIC COMMUNITIES IN MALORY’S LE MORTE DARTHUR STUDIES IN ARTHURIAN AND COURTLY CULTURES The dynamic fiel...

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FORGING CHIVALRIC COMMUNITIES IN MALORY’S LE MORTE DARTHUR

STUDIES IN ARTHURIAN AND COURTLY CULTURES The dynamic field of Arthurian Studies is the subject for this book series, Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures, which explores the great variety of literary and cultural expression inspired by the lore of King Arthur, the Round Table, and the Grail. In forms that range form medieval chronicles to popular films, from chivalric romances to contemporary comics, from magic realism to feminist fantasy—and from the sixth through the twenty-first centuries—few literary subjects provide such fertile ground for cultural elaboration. Including works in literary criticism, cultural studies, and history, Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures highlights the most significant new Arthurian Studies. Bonnie Wheeler, Southern Methodist University Series Editor Editorial Board: James Carley, York University Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, American University Virginie Greene, Harvard University Siân Echard, University of British Columbia Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz Alan Lupack, University of Rochester Andrew Lynch, University of Western Australia

FORGING CHIVALRIC COMMUNITIES IN MALORY’S LE MORTE DARTHUR Kenneth Hodges

FORGING CHIVALRIC COMMUNITIES IN MALORY’S LE MORTE DARTHUR

© Kenneth Hodges, 2005. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–6760–1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hodges, Kenneth Forging chivalric communities in Malory’s Le morte Darthur / Kenneth Hodges. p. cm.––(Studies in Arthurian and courtly cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–6760–1 1. Malory, Thomas, Sir, 15th cent. Morte d’Arthur. 2. Arthurian romances—History and criticism. 3. Romances, English––History and criticism. 4. Knights and knighthood in literature. 5. Kings and rulers in literature. 6. Community in literature. 7. Chivalry in literature. I. Title. II. Series. PR2045.H58 2005 823⬘.2—dc22

2004061669

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: May 2005 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

For Daniel and Marcia Hodges

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction: Medieval by a Month

1

1. English Knights, French Books, and Literary Communities

11

2.

Swords and Sorceresses: Creating a Chivalric Community

35

3.

Of Knights and Nations

63

4.

Regional Politics

79

5.

Shifting Boundaries: Religious Communities and the Grail

109

6.

The Death of Guinevere

129

Afterword

155

Notes Bibliography Index

159 191 203


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

nevitably, there are more people to thank than room to thank them. It is a pleasure, however, to acknowledge some of the people who have shaped this book (and me) along the way. Professor Lisa Wright at Williams College first introduced me to Le Morte Darthur, not realizing that my naïve question of why Arthur got two Excaliburs would lead not just to a term paper but also an honors thesis, a dissertation, and now a book. At the University of Michigan, Karla Taylor directed that dissertation with a mix of firmness, good humor, and patience.Terri Tinkle provided valuable comments along the way, and, three years after the dissertation was done, crystallized for me what I had actually written about. Michael Schoenfeldt, willing to stretch into the fifteenth century, read intelligently and encouraged me throughout. Others have offered valuable advice, criticism, and commentary. To name only three, let me thank Bonnie Wheeler (the editor of this series); Karen Cherewatuk, who challenged me to explore Guinevere’s politics; and Felicia Ackerman, always ready to read and discuss new ideas about Malory. At Palgrave, Farideh Koohi Amali and Melissa Nosal have been clear, patient, and encouraging. Financial support came from the Mellon Foundation, a Rackham One-Term Dissertation Fellowship, Bates College, the University of Oklahoma, and Keene State College. Finally, there are friends and family who, by now, know more about Malory than they might have wished to: Joy and Fred Ochs,Victoria Green and Matt Toschlog, Paul Greiner, Mark Conger, and Carol Mohr, Anne Rubenstein, Ng Kim Nam, and Chan Lai Kuen, and particularly my wife Su Fang Ng. I also owe publishers gratitude. Part of chapter 2 is revised from “Swords and Sorceresses: The Chivalry of Malory’s Nyneve,” which appeared in Arthuriana 12.2 (2002): 148–72. Chapter 6 includes a lot of material from “Guinevere’s Politics in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104.1 ( January 2005), copyright 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, and is reprinted by permission of University of Illinois Press. A version of chapter 1 appeared as “English Knights, French Books, and Malory’s Narrator,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 28 (2003): 148–72, and is reproduced with permission.

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INTRODUCTION: MEDIEVAL BY A MONTH

ir Thomas Malory hammered together many sources to forge his Morte Darthur, from English alliterative poetry to French romance, but he did not seamlessly integrate his material. Instead, he leaves the welds visible, revealing the diversity in his sources. C.S. Lewis damns the resulting style with faint praise:

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Malory’s greatest original passages arise when he is most completely absorbed in the story and realizes the characters so fully that they begin to talk for him of their own accord; but they talk in a language he has largely learned from his sources.The very ease with which he wanders away from this style into that of some inferior source or into a language of his own . . . suggests that he hardly knows what he is doing . . . . He has no style of his own, no characteristic manner . . . . In a style or styles so varied, everywhere so indebted to others, and perhaps most original precisely where it is most indebted, one cannot hopefully seek l’homme même. Here also Malory vanishes into a mist.1

But what Lewis sees as confusion offers the possibility of structure. Mikhail Bakhtin, in terms surprisingly close to Lewis’s, praises the richness of novelistic style: The author participates in the novel (he is omnipresent in it) with almost no direct language of his own.The language of the novel is a system of languages that mutually and ideologically interanimate each other. It is impossible to describe and analyze it as a single unitary language. . . . But at the same time there does exist a center of language (a verbal–ideological center) for the novel. The author (as creator of the novelistic whole) cannot be found at any one of the novel’s language levels: he is to be found at the center of organization where all levels intersect.2

In Bakhtin’s formulation, the question of whether to praise or blame Malory’s wandering style is one of purpose; is there meaning in the juxtaposition of disparate styles, a “verbal–ideological center,” or not?

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C H I VA L RY I N M A L O RY ’ S L E M O RT E D A RT H U R

Since Malory is not writing a tightly unified nineteenth-century novel, the answer is in between.The contrasting styles do mark differing views of chivalry, making plain the social processes that create the differences.While the same general categories may be consistently valued as chivalric— prowess, loyalty, courage, generosity, courtesy—the ways in which these vague virtues are put into effect vary dramatically. The book presents chivalry as dynamic, changing (often rapidly) through time in response to local conditions as knights actively shape chivalry to their own purposes. Instead of coming together in a neat “verbal–ideological center,” however, his careful juxtapositions of style reveal a failure of the ideology. In the intersection of all the styles of chivalry there is no consistent, fundamental ideology. That is the point: despite all its allure, chivalry is too divided to provide a sustainable, practical ideology. Rather, at the intersection of all the levels of discourse are merely desperate characters such as Launcelot and Arthur, trapped among the competing, contradictory demands of the various chivalries. Read dialogically, Le Morte Darthur is not simply a tragedy of characters; it is a tragedy of ideas. Chivalry is not intrinsically evil, nor do the best characters fundamentally fail to live up to some true code; rather, chivalry is noble but fatally flawed, fatally unstable, and so too must be its practitioners. As political and religious communities develop their own styles of chivalry, the narrative strategies that celebrate their deeds change. Catherine Batt claims that Malory is dramatizing the differences among many kinds of chivalry through literary style.3 Malory uses alliteration to mark the English nationalist spirit of the war with Rome; he borrows a didactic style for the Grail quest; and he employs a decentered, interlacing style for the provincial adventures in the “Tale of Trystram.” But the tales do not remain separate. Links among these stories call attention to chivalric conflicts. Trystram, whose absence is noted at the start of the Roman war, begins his career by fighting in response to a demand for tribute—but it is Ireland demanding tribute of Cornwall, not Rome of England, and it is settled by a single combat, not full-scale war. The contrast shows the values of a provincial knight, concerned with his own advancement and using local politics to his own advantage, not the values of the royal court, which could use chivalry to unite the country for the joint efforts and sacrifices demanded in war. In a similar manner, the contrast between the denunciations of Launcelot on the Grail quest and the final claim that Launcelot died a holy man focuses attention on the authority of narrators to interpret events: the ascetic chivalry of the Grail is seen as the creed of certain religious men, not absolute, unmediated religious truth; and the religious men doing the preaching are susceptible to error. Thus, the primacy of their version of chivalry can be challenged by champions of other chivalric values.

M E D I E VA L B Y A M O N T H

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Calling the resulting interplay of chivalric styles dialogism revises Bakhtin’s literary history. His discussion of chivalric romance at first claims that chivalric romances did not use dialogism as a structuring tool, but then he backs away from this to claim that some of the better ones, such as Parzival, did.4 Most of his discussion of dialogism assumes that differences in language will represent differences in values among social classes. When he comes to chivalric romance, however, Bakhtin is confronted with a diversity of languages but what he perceives of as one unified, transnational chivalric class, so differences in language no longer signify a diversity of class values. As he puts it: “[The language of chivalric romance] offered no resistance to the translator–transposer. The result was a complete rupture between language and its material, the profound indifference of one to the other.”5 Therefore, he assigns most chivalric romances to his inferior “First Line” of novelistic development, novels that are monologic. Superior chivalric texts that incorporate dialogism in their structure do so by juxtaposing low and high matter, not by using differing high styles. Others argue that chivalric romances are more novelistic than Bakhtin asserts. Caroline Jewers, for instance, suggests that the parody in late romances moves in the direction of modern novels;6 and parody, Bakhtin argues, is one extreme of dialogism. Malory, however, is not writing parody; and the complexity of his work suggests that language was not nearly as dissociated from subject as Bakhtin suggests. Malory is not juxtaposing high and low styles as much as he is juxtaposing various chivalric styles; there are fissures in the knightly class Bakhtin did not expect. Instead of one absolute code of chivalry, there were many local codes of chivalry. France and England had different political structures, with weak and strong kings respectively, and the codes of behavior that grew up for nobles varied accordingly.7 Chivalric ideals varied by class; clergy, royalty, and knights all had their own ideas about what knights should be.8 They also varied through time.9 Tournaments initially flourished in England and then faded under the Lancastrians, until they blossomed again under the Tudors, but along the way they mutated from realistic war games to elaborate athletic spectacle.10 In late-fifteenth-century England, the dynastic wars encouraged swirls of different kinds of chivalry. Great lords led large affinities, and individual knights could belong to more than one, creating tangles of loyalties to the king and several of the great lords. The gap between the great lords and knights was widening, creating an ever-greater gulf that shared chivalric ideals had to bridge; at the same time, the rise of the gentry was creating a new class with chivalric aspirations of its own. Le Morte Darthur responds to this chivalric diversity by analyzing how different chivalries evolve and interact, and recognizing this sheds light on

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the vexed problem of the structure of the work. Although William Caxton presented Malory’s work as one whole book, the Winchester manuscript, discovered in 1934, has explicits marking the end of stories. These can be taken either as the end of sections within one work or as the ends of independent tales. Eugene Vinaver published an edition of the Winchester manuscript in 1947 suggesting the latter, and proposing that shifts in tone and chivalric values proved the tales were disconnected. His claim that Malory wrote not one book but eight met with a vigorous response. In the heyday of New Criticism, unity was the sine qua non of quality, and to suggest that Le Morte Darthur was not unified was tantamount to saying that it was a bad book. Defenders rushed to find evidence that Malory had written one whole book.11 The argument raged for years, but, broadly speaking, the problem with the unity debate was the tendency on both sides to assume that a unified book would have a unified ideal of chivalry.Vinaver thought the varying treatments of topics such as love suggested several romances; others tried to find one coherent chivalry, but, depending on what a critic chose to emphasize, very different pictures of what this one form of chivalry was emerged.Thus, for example, Larry Benson sees a celebration of earthly chivalry,12 while Charles Moorman sees its condemnation.13 Underlying most of these efforts seems to be the assumption that if the portrait of chivalry were not unified, the book too would not be unified. I wish to turn this assumption on its head. Since Malory is examining how chivalry changes, the disunities in chivalry are precisely what provide the book its unifying structure. Later critics have recognized that there are multiple ideals in Le Morte Darthur. For instance, Beverly Kennedy sees Malory as giving exemplars of three kinds of chivalry (courtly, religious, and military),14 and Donald Hoffman proposed that the young Launcelot, Gareth, Trystram, and Galahad exemplify different types of love.15 Even proposing multiple ideals is not enough, however, if what is left is still a static view of chivalry in which the ideals, however many there may be, are unchanging. Chivalry is being continually created and revised. Elizabeth Edwards writes: Despite the [Round Table] oath, which seems to approximate to written code, or positive law, chivalry in Malory is not the result of following the rules; it is more a matter of generating and regenerating the code. Many incidents in the Morte attest to a task of finding out the code empirically, by experience and “trial.”16

But even this formulation tends to assume one “code” that must be “discovered.” Instead, Malory seems aware that chivalry is constructed, not discovered, and that therefore multiple, legitimate codes can coexist and


5

coevolve. His focus is on these chivalric dynamics, the ways in which chivalric codes are shaped and changed.Thus the action in the book is not simply watching characters exemplify one ideal or waver among several, it is watching how the characters, the narrator, and his sources create and alter the ideals themselves. Late medieval writers and readers were certainly aware that chivalry varied and that local communities could redefine aspects of chivalry. Karen Cherewatuk, looking at chivalric miscellanies, suggests that audiences chose to assemble into books diverse works that looked at different aspects of chivalry, thus forming knightly anthologies with disagreements apparent.17 If she is right, then early audiences may well have appreciated Malory’s illustration of the increasingly dangerous clash among varying chivalric ideals. The awareness that contemporary discussions could shape standards of chivalry shows up in several chivalric manuals. In the latter half of her Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye, Christine de Pizan poses a series of questions to the dream-figure of Honoré Bonet to spark a debate about what chivalry should be;18 Geoffroi de Charny poses a series of questions without answers about chivalric sports, presumably to start similar discussions.19 Such conversations occur in Le Morte Darthur: after Launcelot and Bleoberis interrupt a fight between Melleagaunce and Lameroke over whether Morgause or Guinevere is more beautiful, the knights debate whether such a question is worth fighting over, and ultimately decide that it is not.20 Nor were innovations merely literary; the fifteenth century saw the spread of pas de armes, improvements in jousting armor, and the growing popularization of the tilt (a wooden barrier keeping jousters from colliding). Thus, while Malory’s audiences probably agreed on the broad outlines of what chivalry was, they almost certainly did not expect the details to be either stable or universal. Because chivalry is dynamic, it changes in response to local circumstance. As a result, chivalric codes and local communities are mutually defining. Chivalry has the power to shape communities, defining who are companions, who should be fought for, and who should be fought against. Communities also define styles of chivalry that encourage knights to work for common interests.There are many chivalric groups in Le Morte Darthur, each with varying priorities, not all of them centered on Arthur and England. Countries such as Rome and France, provinces such as Cornwall and Wales, all have their own politics. There are religious communities as well—not just Christians and Saracens, but clergy and laity, and the ascetic followers of the Grail versus more secular Christians. There are kinship groups and knightly affinities bound together not by strict feudal ties but by shared interests and systems of patronage. Often, these groups define themselves by their approaches to chivalry, adapting knightly values for their own

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purposes. Since chivalry helps forge communities, it powerfully shapes the politics represented in Le Morte Darthur. Characterizing the large English community is something of a challenge. There is general agreement that medieval countries differed from modern nations.21 Modern nationalism usually incorporates three or four assumptions: that there are peoples identifiable by some combination of ancestry, cultural and religious heritage, language, or shared civic values; that these peoples are the natural basis for countries, since they should govern themselves; that these countries should include the lands “traditionally” associated with the respective peoples (even if the traditions are conveniently tailored to suit modern purposes); and the claims that peoples should govern themselves and their own lands are sufficiently important to justify extreme sacrifice by members of the nations. Medieval people, the argument goes, did not glorify the nation in the same way, giving their loyalty either to individual kings or to the Christian church, not to an abstract idea of country. Coming up with a definition of “nation” sufficiently precise to be useful in testing this claim has proven to be a good deal harder. A recent, popular definition by Benedict Anderson says a nation is “an imagined political community—and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.”22 The claim has been that, while medieval Europeans had many ways of imagining communities, they either tended not to be limited (everyone, ideally, could convert to become a member of the religious community of Christendom, and politically, countries could expand indefinitely if sufficiently fortunate in acquiring territory) or they were not imagined to be sovereign (the English people could have a sense of themselves as distinct without therefore believing that England needed to be a separate country from France). As medievalists investigate how communities were imagined in the late Middle Ages, however, they find more and more elements that look modern.23 The British did consider themselves an intrinsically limited community, set off by their island boundaries or by their language and history.The desire to imagine Arthur as a king throwing off the dominance of foreign oppressors (be they Saxon, Norman, or Roman) testifies to a desire for sovereignty. Many of the elements of supposedly modern nations were present in late-medieval England. This is not to claim that medieval nations were modern nations (a dubious honor at best, given the bloody wars of the last 150 years), but to insist that the history of nationalism is longer and more complex than often acknowledged, and that current definitions may not accurately characterize the differences that do exist between medieval states and modern nations. Nationalism may be more a matter of shifting emphases among old ideas and institutions rather than a creation based on one or two demonstrably new features of societies.


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Le Morte Darthur offers valuable perspectives on the way in which late-fifteenth-century communities were imagined.As the number of readers of chivalric literature grew, chivalric ideals began to provide the common core of proto-nationalist sentiment.24 Malory discusses what it means to be English and celebrates the deeds of “our” knights. William Caxton too seems to see chivalry as a set of values that can help define Englishness and create community. In his prologue to Malory, he argues that Arthur is a national hero and ought to be more honored in his own country. But shared ideas also define communities that are not national. Chivalry varies by class, by religion, and even by province, and the differences can reveal or create shared senses of community. These ideas do not necessarily compete,25 although they sometimes do; Galahad’s association with the Grail and St. George insists on connections to the east that Arthur in the Roman war tends to deny. Other communities, such as knightly affinities, have no intrinsic limits or make no claims to sovereignty. Nonetheless, they can encourage ideals of chivalry with priorities other than those of nation.The dialogism of the text, therefore, represents different ways of imagining communities. Combining Bakhtin and Anderson thus offers a fruitful way to approach Malory: Bakhtin’s analysis of how varying styles can at once structure a work and reveal its ideological concerns helps make sense of how the parts of Le Morte Darthur function together; but the communities that generate the dialogism are not different classes or professional groups (Bakhtin’s primary foci) but aristocratic subgroups with different ways of imagining their communities, rival ideas that shape the emerging sense of nation. Malory’s concern with how chivalry can define political communities can be clearly seen in the links between two relatively unpopular sections of his work,Arthur’s war with Rome and the “Tale of Trystram.” Relatively early in Le Morte Darthur, Arthur goes to war with the Roman Emperor Lucius and ends up becoming Emperor of Rome. It is in many ways the crowning moment of Arthur’s reign. His victory over European rivals is a validation of English worthiness in general and Arthur’s leadership in particular; the young Launcelot proves himself in war, and Gawain shines in ferocious glory; and the country seems united in support of the grand chivalric endeavor. At the beginning of the story, though, there is an odd detail: Malory reports that Trystram, the second-greatest knight in Arthur’s realm, stays home (195; V.3). Why does Malory bother to report that Trystram did not go? Trystram was not in Malory’s source for the tale, the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Nor has Trystram played much of a role in Malory’s own work: although mentioned in a few prophecies, even his birth has not yet been narrated, so there is little need for Malory to explain his absence. Yet, Malory carefully reports that Trystram arrives at the

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Round Table before the Roman ambassadors and then that he stays at home.Trystram’s failure to participate marks a split in chivalry; while there is a style of chivalry that celebrates a collective war effort, there are other forms of chivalry that place other concerns foremost. Trystram’s absence thus marks an important contrast between the two great adulterers; Launcelot takes part in the great English war, while Trystram stays in Cornwall. Launcelot is the companion of Arthur and involved in national politics, while Trystram tends to stay away from Arthur’s court (to the point of being reluctant to become a member of the Round Table) and his concerns are more local. His friends and companions tend to be from the national fringes: Ireland, Cornwall, and Wales. Palomides is a Saracen, and Gareth, who is also associated with Trystram, is a younger son of Lot from the remote Orkneys (also nephew to the king, of course, but Gareth downplays this). Lameroke is Welsh and a younger son. At least politically, Trystram is a provincial knight, and while Arthur fights to establish Britain’s role in the world at large, Trystram fights to establish Cornwall’s role in Britain. As a result,Trystram does not make the sacrifices in favor of national unity that Launcelot does: when their adulteries are exposed,Trystram and Isode flee Cornwall to take refuge in Joyous Gard, while Launcelot and Guinevere stay in England and agree that Guinevere should return to Arthur. Yet the provincial and the national are not mutually exclusive categories. As Hyonjin Kim has argued, the politics in Le Morte Darthur are dominated by affinities.An affinity is a loose structure, made of both unofficial and official bonds, in which the head or heads of the affinity act as “good lords” by promoting the interests and defending the welfare of their followers, while the followers offer good service on whatever scale is appropriate.26 These affinities often had regional characters, centered on the leading figures of a locality.The affinities bridged the gap between local and national; followers in an affinity could, by asking for good lordship, bring local issues to the attention of national leaders; in turn, the followers through their service helped carry out national policy on the local level. As John Watts observes, in the fifteenth-century, “For the nobility, the practice of government was normally dominated by the task of mediating between centre and locality.”27 Thus, to focus on the Round Table as the exclusive knightly community, as many critics have done, is misleading. It is the knightly center, certainly, and the most prestigious community, but it is one community of many, and knights must bridge these communities. The local actions of the knights with each other and their affinities are critically important. To say that Launcelot is a national figure and Trystram is a provincial one is thus a matter of degree; both are heads of major affinities, and as such both are responsible for operating at both the local and national level. Launcelot’s


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priority, however, seems to be the national concerns, while Trystram attends first to his local interests. Malory’s use of affinities is not simple mimesis, an unconscious updating of chivalric practice; instead, it is marked as one variant among many, with its own values and communities. Malory explores how chivalry functions to create communities on a variety of scales. His “Tale of King Arthur” focuses on the building of a national government, and his “Arthur and Lucius” focuses on how a country defines itself within the larger international community. The “Tale of Launcelot” describes how a knight from a border region (France) rises to national prominence, first through war, then service to the queen, then recognition by the king. In these tales, chivalry is a matter of national interest: success in war, the upholding of justice. The tales of “Gareth” and “Trystram” shift the focus away from the royal center of government, as younger sons such as Gareth and Lameroke attempt to carve out political niches for themselves, and as the provincial affinities of the north and west jockey for access to the king and regional predominance. In these political settings, chivalry focuses more on social advancement and the creation of beneficial local alliances; individual deeds, not national service, become the high priority. The “Quest of the Sankgreal” redefines community; the old bonds of the affinities matter less as the private quests for religious purity generate alliances based on religion.The result is to focus on a chivalry of personal purity above both regional fame and national obligation.After the Grail quest, in “Launcelot and Guinevere” and the “Death of Arthur,” the delicate balance between these overlapping communities fail: people must choose one community over another, and the whole society breaks down into horrific civil war in which personal salvation is possible but community prosperity is not. This book thus argues that three areas of critical interest—chivalry, stylistics, and the ways in which communities are imagined—are essentially linked, and changes in any one leads to changes in the others. Malory uses hints of different literary styles to highlight differences in chivalric values; and the juxtapositions of the styles shows the conflicts and evolution of the chivalric systems. Because Malory understood chivalry to work as a political force, laying bare the conflicts and rivalries inside the putatively united “high order of knighthood” becomes a way to talk about rival conceptions of community and nation. I like to think it is Malory’s willingness to confront the complexities of chivalry that has made his book so enduring. Part of this is luck of a peculiar kind. Caxton printed Le Morte Darthur three weeks before Richard III fell at Bosworth Field to Henry VII, and that moment as Plantagenet gave way to Tudor is as convenient a marker as any to declare the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the early modern period.With both the Yorkists

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and the Tudors claiming descent from Arthur,28 and with Caxton’s political ties to the Yorkists, the result could have been disaster for Malory’s book, but it seems to have been untouched by the political upheaval. It endured to become both the grand summary of the medieval Arthurian tradition and the spring from which the postmedieval tradition flows. It is hard to find an Arthurian work in English written after Le Morte Darthur that it is not in some way indebted to it, and it is tempting to speculate that it is to some extent Malory’s art that kept Arthur from fading into dusty obscurity like Roland and Godfrey of Bouillon and so many other medieval heroes. If Arthur’s court had stood for one set of static chivalric values, Camelot would have faded as those values became obsolete, much as Roland’s fame faded as his stubborn prowess became dated. But Malory drew together the varying strands of the Arthurian legend without forcing all the various knightly values into one creed, and the result is a depiction of a king and his knights searching for and struggling over what chivalry should be. It is not surprising that Malory, writing in the midst of armed conflict as England was in the throes of the great transition from medieval to modern, chose to focus not on fixed principles but on the dynamics that generated changing ideals, and it is fortunate that he did so. Later authors seized on Malory’s depiction of the court’s struggle to create and define its own ideals to introduce their own concerns, from Twain’s critique of nineteenth-century America’s technological expansionism to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s neo-pagan feminism, into a court already facing many competing ideals of knighthood and nationhood.Thus Arthur was slowly modernized, and Malory is one of the few medieval authors still popularly read.

CHAPTER 1 ENGLISH KNIGHTS, FRENCH BOOKS, AND LITERARY COMMUNITIES

n the epilogue of his translation of Ramon Lull’s Ordre of Chyualry (printed 1484), William Caxton bemoans the contemporary decline of chivalry. His first prescription for solving the problem—even before such obvious solutions as holding more tournaments—was to have knights read, and his first choice of what knights should read was books about King Arthur:

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O ye knyghtes of Englond where is the custome and vsage of noble chyualry that was vsed in tho dayes / . . . rede the noble volumes of saynt graal of lancelot / of galaad / of Trystram / of perse forest / of percyual / of gawayn / & many mo.1

Since Caxton would print Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur the next year, his assessment may have been self-interested, but his hope that reading about chivalry could unite a community of knights divided by the Wars of the Roses is not unfounded. Chivalry is not simply a set of values. It is a set of methods for interpreting actions, for learning to see physical and social gestures as signs of internal virtues. As Caxton recognized when he urged knights to read romances, literature was central to this process, because it could describe actions and simultaneously give the appropriate interpretation to them. Stories of the past (fictional or otherwise) helped teach chivalric ideals, promoting and exploiting chivalry’s concern with lineage and tradition.Thus they could teach an ideology that might bring a community together. Malory, however, is not championing one style of chivalry. He is exploring the dynamics by which multiple chivalric ideals evolve and compete, and that means he is more pessimistic than Caxton about using reading to build collective identity. Malory’s version of the tales Caxton recommends, of

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Gawain, Galahad, Launcelot, and Trystram, agree on neither the actions of the Arthurian knights nor on the values that were (or should have been) the foundation of the court. Malory’s project is less to unify the Arthurian tradition than to explore the consequences of its divisions, for he recreates the diversity of his sources. Instead of providing examples of one (or several) types of chivalry,2 he examines the dynamics that determine how different chivalries come into being and evolve. In Bakhtin’s terms, he has harnessed the heteroglossia of his sources to create the dialogism that drives his work. At the close of Le Morte Darthur, the effort to create a community united through Arthurian history has failed; the historical accounts are as divided by as many conflicting values as the society they are supposed to correct. Instead of a soothing revelation of how the correct chivalry can unite the English aristocracy, readers are left with an astute analysis of how chivalry actually functions in a diverse world. What binds the text together is the narrator, who searches through the texts to try to find a reliable English history that will create the chivalric English community that Caxton seems to desire; but the narrator never succeeds. English Knights, French Books Malory creates a naïve narrator to draw attention to the diversity of chivalric values and the corresponding diversity of chivalric texts, making visible the variety of sources that Malory translated to write Le Morte Darthur. It is important not to mistake the naïve narrator for a naïve author. Catherine Batt argues convincingly that Malory’s narrator provides a focus for exploring the relations between texts, communities, and partial, subjective histories.3 Because the persistent desire for a more complete story and a more stable history drives the narrator into diverse sources, style becomes part of the drama of the text as Malory subtly switches from one genre to another. Besides direct references to the sources, the narrator uses a simple prose style that takes on stylistic (or even linguistic) features of the sources:4 the alliteration of the English alliterative Morte Arthure, the exegesis of the Queste del Saint Graal (in which a little bit of action is then immediately interpreted by a convenient hermit), the decentered interlacing of the French prose Tristan (in which a number of stories are told, not one after another, but in parallel, moving from an episode of one to an episode on another).The varying styles call attention to the varying values: the patriotic celebration of English victories on the continent; the ascetic condemnation of the ways of the earth, including love and combat; the courtly emphasis on courtesy and love. Thus the narrator preserves traces of the original rhetorical devices to highlight different ideas of knighthood and to show that the books do not preserve one unified chivalric tradition.

L I T E R A RY C O M M U N I T I E S

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Nonetheless, Malory’s narrator seems eager to posit a community of readers, writers, and Arthurian knights. His interjections commenting on what he has read often model readers’ reactions to the material, thus suggesting social responses to the texts. But the narrative continually frustrates the narrator’s desire to find (or create) a stable community.5 Malory the author strategically undercuts the authority of any one tale: the “Trystram” disrupts the united national effort of “Arthur and Lucius” by echoing many stories from a knightly, not a kingly, perspective; the efforts of the “Sankgreal” to create one absolute meaning from events are frustrated because the major characters play other roles in other tales. As each model of community is disrupted, the narrator tries to find a new one. He begins, unhappily, following French sources for English history; then he stages a breakaway to rely on an English text full of patriotic fervor; when this work proves incomplete, he returns to the French but with more suspicion. Finally, after the “Sankgreal” proves incomplete, the narrator seems to give up. By the end of the book, he is more willing to impose his own personal tastes on the story, even if doing so creates disagreements with his sources, and he ceases to invite the audience to imagine themselves as part of a continuous chivalric society.6 The first audience the narrator invokes is a united community of English readers; the problem is that French sources transmit the history, and French interests differ from English ones. Malory’s work is in a distinctively English style from the beginning, creating a contrast with the text’s roots in French sources. As Jeremy Smith notes, “his choice of the English prose tradition is an assertion of Englishness which should be recognized as something positive rather than as an absence of conscious decision.”7 The first visible gap between French and English interests is small. After saying that the barons gather in a London church, the narrator adds, “whether it were Powlis or not the Frensshe booke maketh no mencyon” (12; I.3–5). This comment points to information that an English audience might wish to know but which, whether from the loss of details through time or from the difference between French interests and English, the French book omits. The English tradition was more likely to use Arthur, a great king who unified the country and conquered all the lands the country wished it possessed, as a foundation myth; the French stories tended to treat Arthur as a backdrop for individual heroes, so the stories were often centrifugal, taking characters away from the court to go off on their own.8 It is not surprising that the “imagined community” of the English should depend on who was doing the imagining, and that the French sources were less concerned with presenting a strong king with a unified aristocracy than the English were. By mentioning the lack of English detail in the French source, Malory’s text alerts readers that the French authors were not part of the English community. Soon

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after, the story mentions the Roman demand for tribute (48; I.23), but the narrator follows the French source by not pursuing the story; instead, he recounts the deeds of individual knights, more appealing than English triumphs on the continent to French audiences. As the tale continues, there is little overt drama involving the sources. Covertly, though, the narrator takes increasing liberties with the French books, liberties that someone having only a moderate familiarity with older versions of the story can recognize: he transforms Nyneve into a thoroughly good character; he writes a new ending for the tale of Pelleas and Ettarde; he announces that Pelleas will be one of the Grail knights.9 The narrator “authorizes” these changes by references to spurious French sources.These changes are large enough that an audience even casually familiar with the stories might recognize them, and to these members of the audience, the appeal to the French texts is a warning. Written sources need not be true, and translations need not be accurate. The narrator finally rebels in the explicit ending the tale,10 when he calls an end to his project of translation: HERE ENDYTH THIS TALE, AS THE FREYNSHE BOOKE SEYTH . . . AND THIS BOOKE ENDYTH WHEREAS SIR LAUNCELOT AND SIR TRYSTRAMS COM TO COURTE. WHO THAT WOLL MAKE ONY MORE LETTE HYM SEKE OTHER BOOKIS OF KYNGE ARTHURE OR OF SIR LAUNCELOT OR SIR TRYSTRAMS; FOR THIS WAS DRAWYN BY A KNYGHT PRESONER, SIR THOMAS MALLEORRÉ, THAT GOD SENDE HYM GOOD RECOVER. (180; not in Caxton)

Malory reminds readers of the power of makers (including, potentially, his readers) to choose some stories and not others. Conversely, makers like Malory also decide which versions to omit or suppress. Since texts cannot reproduce themselves, even authoritative texts are at the mercy of translators and copiers; and, when they are transmitted, in part or in whole, it may be to advance a specific agenda. Since the French sources themselves are not original but retellings of English history, they have already been filtered through the biases of whoever chose to write them. Malory’s identification of the narrator as an imprisoned knight adds another layer of complexity.As a knight, he can be expected to sympathize with the chivalric ideals of his characters, but as a prisoner his judgment is questionable. If he is morally innocent, then his picture of a golden age of chivalry becomes an indictment of his own time. If he is guilty, then his chivalric sensibilities must be suspect, and having him as the filter through which the Arthurian history passes becomes alarming. Since the facts are missing, the narrator’s brief self-identification is a reminder of how little


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readers really know about him, and they know even less about the writers whom the narrator translates. Finally, the explicit reminds the audience that Launcelot and Trystram have been missing.The first sentence of “Arthur and Lucius” promises to fill in the gaps because it has Launcelot and Trystram arrive in court, but it is not their tale. The narrator has rebelled against the French and turned to the English tradition, in particular the Morte Arthure, marking the shift by alliteration, common to English but not French heroic poetry. Malory’s alliteration has not been popular; everyone from Caxton on seems to disapprove.11 Indeed,William Matthews argued that Malory himself had been dissatisfied with it and had revised the Roman War into the shorter, less alliterative version that Caxton printed to make a less dissonant, more Malorian story.12 While linguistic analysis has disproved that possibility, the fact that Caxton (and, apparently, the Winchester scribes as well)13 took steps to shorten the tale and standardize the language show that fifteenth-century readers recognized the change in style and were puzzled by it. However, Malory’s alliteration was deliberate,14 and its use demands explanation. Catherine Batt writes: Malory also marks his Tale stylistically, yet the import of the alliterative prose—with its echoes of the source text and of regional English literary register—is not clear. Is this a tactic calculated to make us reconsider historiographic form and to critique this retelling? Or is it simply that the narrator, in celebrating the actions of “our knights,” uses a recognizably English register to implicate us as surrogate knights to share in what amounts to little more than an exercise in wish-fulfillment?15

Her answer is that Malory offers a fantasy but relies on readers’ extratextual knowledge of Arthur’s coming fall and England’s failure to control the continent to recognize that the fantasy is not good history. But there is even more at stake:“Arthur and Lucius” has a slightly different chivalry from the other tales, and Malory links chivalric values to the literary styles in which they are expressed. The alliteration associates the celebration of English triumphs in “Arthur and Lucius” with a specifically English poetic tradition, distinct from the French sources of the surrounding tales (“the Freynshe Booke” is referred to just before and just after “Arthur and Lucius,” highlighting the distinction).The change in style signals a corresponding change in chivalric values; prowess in battle gets more honor than stylized love, and collective action is celebrated over individual quests.“Arthur and Lucius” is nationalistic in the sense that it celebrates a collective English enterprise, headed and personified by the king, backed by a united group of knights who win glory and land on the continent. It is not the triumph of individual knights (that will

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come later, in “French” tales), nor is it a celebration of mutual help between France and England, as when Ban and Bors helped the young Arthur win his throne; it is a paean to collective British valor. With this change in values and style, the relation of the audience to the text changes. The narrator slips in several first-person-plural pronouns, speaking of “our” knights (209, 216, 223; not in Caxton). The inclusive pronoun suggests a community of readers and writers, united in their interests and language, in contrast to the distance marked earlier between readers and the “French book.”These first-person plurals come in the midst of battles, where nationalistic divisions would be the sharpest.Writer, translator, author, and Arthurian knights are bound together by the pronoun to suggest an unbroken English community. But the narrator’s enthusiasm is not a genuine authorial effusion; Malory the author systematically undercuts it. He refers to “our” knights just after they have broken a truce, making the identification morally troubling. Furthermore, the text itself admits that Arthur’s claim to the throne is based only on “cronycles of this londe” (188; V.2). However seductive the English chronicles’ promises, they do not guarantee truth: other sources are needed to confirm or to supplement them. However much English audiences might wish that English kings conquered Rome, the reliable Latin records say that it was Rome that came and conquered.16 One cannot remove other nations from English history simply by imagining a counter-conquest. While the narrator seems eager to break away from the French to the English, Malory the author has made sure that Arthur’s victory over Rome actually leads back to the French books. The language itself marks one problem with simple nationalism. While Caxton regularized his text, rendering it in a language he hoped would be legible across the nation,17 the Winchester manuscript uses elements of a northern dialect that would emphasize the regional differences in England, an issue that will become more pressing in the “Trystram,” undercutting the illusion of a simple national unity. The plot, too, urges a return to the French. According to tradition, Mordred betrays Arthur while Arthur is in France. Sometimes it is when he is fighting Rome; other times he is fighting Launcelot. When Malory decides to let Arthur win against Rome, Mordred’s betrayal must be deferred to the war with Launcelot, and so Launcelot’s tale (from French sources) must be told.18 Of course, telling Launcelot’s story is something Malory has already positioned himself to do: he has been regularly increasing Launcelot’s role in the war against Lucius, whetting readers’ appetites. The tale of Launcelot immediately follows “Arthur and Lucius.” The introduction makes it clear that there is a return to the French sources, and with it a change in values, a shift to personal and romantic, not


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national, concerns: Sone aftir that kynge Arthure was com from Rome into Ingelonde, . . . some . . . that were but knyghtes encresed in armys and worshyp. . . . But in especiall hit was prevyd on Sir Launcelot de Lake. . . . therefore he is the fyrste knyghte that the Freynsh booke makyth mencion of aftir kynge Arthure come frome Rome. (253; VI.1)

The earlier foreshadowings have encouraged the reader’s desire to hear these stories. Launcelot provides courtliness and an interest in individual concerns—especially love—missing from the rougher values celebrated in alliterative accounts of English war. Knights, Hermits, and Kings The other knight whose absence was advertised at the start of the Roman war was Trystram. In “Arthur and Lucius,” Trystram comes to the court in the opening but before the war begins he returns to Mark’s court with Isode.This insertion seems pointless within “Arthur and Lucius” and it plays no direct role in the “Trystram,” but the narrator uses it to provoke comparison between the two tales. Attentive readers will note that the differing values of the “Trystram” are marked by changes in style and structure; and accordingly the narrator must invite the audience to respond in new ways. Trystram reenacts Arthur’s history from a knightly, not a kingly, perspective. He is born in Cornwall, like Arthur; he is also the only character other than Arthur (and arguably Mordred or Galahad) whose childhood is told.19 He and Isode find refuge in Tintagil, where Uther first lay with Igrayne, but now the story is of a knight seducing a king’s wife, not of a king stealing a subject’s wife, a sign that the focus of the story has shifted from the monarch as central, unifying figure to knights who may resist that centralization and unification. Trystram’s first adventure is to defeat a demand for tribute, an echo of the start of the war against Rome; but it is Ireland demanding tribute of Cornwall, though both lands are nominally British and subject to Arthur.Trystram’s conversion of Palomides at the end of the tale is reminiscent of Gawain’s conversion of Priamus toward the end of “Arthur and Lucius,” but where Priamus brings immediate help in battle, giving the conversion national significance, Palomides’ conversion has only personal implications. Palomides’ baptism settles his long-running romantic rivalry with Trystram, confirming their individual friendship. Thus Trystram breaks the facade of British unity that the Roman war had presented. His concerns are local, individual, and often opposed to

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those of the king who is meant to represent the nation. His initial tribute-fight is for the sake of Cornish, not English, pride, underscored by the fact that his opponent Marhault is a Round Table knight who fought in the war with Rome.20 The single combat to decide the issue of tribute, unlike the Roman war, is not a collective effort. Likewise, in the adventures that follow the battle, the repeated jokes about Cornish knights lead only to individual encounters. He is not even simply Cornish. Trystram serves many lords: Mark in Cornwall, Arthur in England, Angwysh in Ireland, and Howell in Brittainy, switching back and forth as convenient. Knights do not abandon national feeling, but in this section they exploit it for their own purposes, so it lacks the unifying force it had in “Arthur and Lucius.” The narrator’s intrusions also change as the basis of the community shared among the knights, the narrator, and the readers moves away from shared nationality toward shared social class and deliberate imitation of style. Instead of the collective “our” he used in “Arthur and Lucius,” he more often uses a first-person singular pronoun. Trystram’s hunting serves an occasion for one aside that, even though it uses a plural pronoun, does not assume a completely unified community: He laboured in huntynge and in hawkynge—never jantylman more that ever we herde rede of . . . .And therefore the booke of . . . huntynge is called the booke of sir Trystrams. Wherefore, as me semyth, all jantyllmen that beryth olde armys ought of ryght to honoure sir Trystrams for the goodly tearmys that jantylmen have and use and shall do unto the Day of Dome, that thereby in a maner all men of worshyp may discever a jantylman frome a yoman and a yoman frome a vylayne. For he that jantyll is woll drawe hym to jantyll tacchis and to folow the noble customyes of jantylmen. (375; VIII.3)

This passage attempts to unite gentlemen through time, from the glory of King Arthur’s court until the Day of Doom.21 The narrator and his audience are united as readers by the pronoun “we”; Trystram joins the narrator and the earlier authorities as a maker of books; all share the love of hunting, with the class connotations that the sport implies. Instead of a preexisting community of readers united by their Englishness, the community here is one to some extent created by their response to the reading, by their willingness and ability to “folow the noble customys” described. The effort to define the basis of identification between modern audiences and the old knights reveals the strains that threaten the sense of continuity.The need to restrict the community to those “that beryth olde armys” is a reminder that gentlemen are constantly being created,22 and so the community is not as stable through time as the narrator wants.The final line explains that gentlemen will imitate noble customs and language; but, as the varying styles of Le Morte Darthur make clear, there are numerous


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chivalric languages to imitate, each with a different implied community. Gentility, the presumed basis of identification between readers and Arthurian knights, becomes learned and mutable convention, not a natural part of people’s characters. Furthermore, the identification is a matter of degree. The three-fold distinction among gentleman, yeoman, and villein cannot be made simply by a binary distinction of whether someone knows the hunting etiquette or not; it has to be a question of how well they know the terminology, and thus the “maner” of class recognition is one that acknowledges partial participation in this community of gentlemen. The narrator’s relation to his sources has also changed. His attempt to escape from French books to the English alliterative tradition may have failed, but after he returns to the French to tell of Launcelot and Trystram, he is more obviously willing to use the other books for his own purposes: they complement his work but do not dictate it. He adopts a looser structure for the “Trystram,” marked by more interlacing of stories, that is closer to the structure of the French prose Arthurian cycles than the rest of Malory. The interlacing lets Arthur and the concerns of a united England fade into the background, overwhelmed by the immediate and local concerns of individual knights in specific encounters. The narrator omits the revenge killings that end “La Cote Mal Tayle,”“Alexander the Orphan,” and even the “Trystram” itself (476, 648, 845; IX.9. X.40, XII.14), referring readers instead to the French sources.The presence of other works that tell the “complete” history allows the narrator to reshape the stories to end with moments of individual accomplishment.23 The darker endings, more concerned with conflicting loyalties and family feuds, can be displaced— foreshadowing the end of Arthur’s court while reserving the full force of tragedy for Arthur’s fall. A new set of values and a correspondingly new style come in abruptly in the “Sankgreal.”The narrator introduces the tale deferentially: HERE FOLOWYTH THE NOBLE TALE OFF THE SANKEGREALL, WHYCHE CALLED YS THE HOLY VESSELL AND THE SYGNYFYCACION OF BLYSSED BLOODE OFF OURE LORDE JESU CRYSTE . . . THEREFORE ON ALL SYNFULL, BLYSSED LORDE, HAVE ON THY KNYGHT MERCY.AMEN. (845–46; XII.14)

The narrator demonstrates how to read this new style: first, interpreting symbols (the Grail represents the blood of Jesus), and then applying the principles to his own life (as he moves from the general “all synfull” to himself,“thy knyght”). Readers are a little more removed from the characters and actions than they were in the “Trystram,” where Trystram was an object of imitation; now, characters must be analyzed, not simply copied.

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The act of reading or translating the tale is presented as an act of Christianity, leading to the right to claim grace.Thus the community here is not one united by nationality, as in “Arthur and Lucius,” nor by shared class values, as in the “Trystram,” but one brought together by their individual quests for God.This demonstration of how one should read and respond is necessary because the “Sankgreal,” introduces exemplum and exegesis into Le Morte Darthur, and these styles in order to function demand more response from readers than simple narratives do. The narrator, while respectful of the tale of the Holy Grail, makes sure that readers recognize that its genre is one literary form among many, shaped by the varying interests of its writers and translators.The colophon highlights the tale’s textual dependence: THUS ENDITH THE TALE OF THE SANKGREAL THAT WAS BREFLY DRAWYN OUTE OF FREYNSHE—WHICH YS A TALE CRONYCLED FOR ONE OF THE TREWYST AND OF THE HOLYEST THAT YS IN THYS WORLDE—BY SIR THOMAS MALEORRÉ, KNYGHT. O BLESSED JESU HELPE HYM THOROW HYS MYGHT! AMEN. (1037; XVII.23)

Malory emphasizes his role as translator and abridger, and, while he does not challenge the truth of the tale, he incorporates details that invite readers to consider the story’s authority. Instead of saying the story is one of the truest, he says that the tale is cronycled for one of the truest, thus making the claim to holiness depend on unknown predecessors. Malory elsewhere uses chronicle as a verb that does not denote absolute reliability: when Launcelot breaks with Arthur, he says, “I feare aftir my dayes that men shall cronycle uppon me that I was fleamed oute of thys londe” (1203; XX.17). Since the source of the “Sankgreal” is identified as French, and the narrator has demonstrated problems with French sources before, readers have been taught to question the reliability of these chronicles. In fact, Malory was fortunate that his contemporaries did not believe the story of the Grail to be one of the truest and holiest.As part of the response to Lollardy, the Constitutions of Arundel had since 1409 forbidden the translation into English of theological works, and Nicholas Watson argues that the Constitutions shaped English intellectual life through the end of the fifteenth century.24 The Constitutions, based squarely on the principle that interpretation and translation were inextricably linked, were an attempt to protect the clerical right to interpret God’s words from encroachment by members of the laity. Even translating history was not immune from suspicion; John of Trevisa’s “Dialogue Between a Lord and a Clerk,” written as a prologue to his translation of the Polychronicon in the


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1380s (thus before the Constitutions), extends the arguments over theology to the writing of history, having a character declare: “A gret del of Qeuse bokes stondeQ moche by holy wryt, by holy doctors and by philosofy. Panne Qeuse bokes scholde not be translated ynto Englysch.”25 In 1464, possession of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales was offered as evidence of heresy; in other cases, generally orthodox texts such as The Prick of Conscience, Dives et Pauper, and the Shepherd’s Kalendar were cited as suspicious.26 Malory, of course, is translating a religious story, not scripture or an official theological text, and the “Sankgreal” with its veneration of the Eucharist is not Lollard. Still, it was a text heavily religious and not wholly orthodox with its fantasy that knights could achieve the mysteries of communion without the direct intercession of priests.27 For a man imprisoned by his enemies in an age when a charge of Lollardy was a convenient way to prosecute, translating a religious text (and an unsanctioned one at that) would be an invitation to disaster.28 The fact that he got away with it tells us that the Grail quest was not read primarily as a theological work (explaining the mysteries of the Eucharist), but as something less authoritative, somewhere between a saint’s life and outright fiction. Exactly what degree of truth people assumed Le Morte Darthur and other Arthurian literature told is an interesting question. Caxton famously professes doubt in his preface to Le Morte Darthur, and though he at least claims to be satisfied that Arthur existed historically, that is not the same thing as claiming every story about him is true; this Caxton leaves to the discretion of readers. Thomas Hoccleve seems to acknowledge doubts about the Arthurian tradition in his poem to the famous Lollard knight, Sir John Oldcastle: Bewar, Oldcastel, and for Crystes sake Clymbe no more in holy writ so hie. Rede the storie of Lancelot de Lake. . . . If thee list thyng rede of auctoritee, To thise stories sit thee to goon, To Iudicum, Regum, and Iosue, To Iudith, and to Paralipomenon, And to Machabe.As as sikir as stoon, If Qat thee list in hem bayte thyn ye, More autentik thing shalt thow fynde noon Ne more pertinent to chiualrie.29

Hoccleve’s listing of Old Testament works after his exhortation not to “climb” into Holy Writ seems strange, and the motivation is the concern about authority. Hoccleve can assert that the Bible books are “as sikir as stoon,” but he cannot say the same about the tales of Launcelot, and thus a

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wholly reliable list of biblical reading is offered after the more knightly but less reliable romances and military treatises. Even if the Grail quest was safe reading for heretics like Oldcastle, audiences would certainly have been aware of the possibility that translation can lead to contests of interpretation, and that the opportunities existed for people to shape imaginative “histories” to their own purposes.The ensuing century would only have deepened the knowledge that translators and their audiences could, complicitly or not, create meanings not authorized by the original text. Compounding the potential problems with his own translation, Malory removes some of the claims to authority that the French original had made.30 The Queste del Saint Graal claims fairly direct access to eyewitness accounts of the Grail quest: King Arthur’s scribes copied down Bors’s story; their books were preserved in Salisbury, where Walter Map copied extracts from them, which were then translated into French.31 In Le Morte Darthur, Sir Bors and Sir Launcelot make their accounts, which are then rendered into books, but there is no claim that subsequent writers have had access to those books (1036; XVII.23). Since the transmission of the story from the time of Arthur is obscured, the authority of the French book is unclear, and thus so is the authority of Malory’s text; it is neither the word of God nor eyewitness account. Readers are denied direct access to the deeds of Arthur’s knights.While the narrator never uses this lack of direct authority openly to challenges the tale’s accuracy, it is clear that it does not have the only or even the last word on morality. That the religious values of the Queste are challenged in Le Morte Darthur has been widely acknowledged, but the focus has been on what standards Malory’s book endorses in their place.32 As with chivalry, though, Malory is not demonstrating the superiority of one set of values over another; he is dramatizing the ongoing and seemingly irresolvable struggle between competing values, a struggle that is political as much as religious.33 The variety of critical responses to the “Sankgreal” suggests how well Malory has succeeded in turning the tale into a moral exploration instead of a moral lecture. He does this by placing religious discourses into the mouths of characters who can be mistaken or biased, and their biases become clear because the quest for the Grail is only part of a longer work.When objects (such as swords and the Grail itself ) that already had meaning before the quest are redefined to fit into the exemplary structure of the “Sankgreal,” the redefinition is visible and subject to question. Take, for instance, Galahad’s first sword. In the Queste, it has no known history. In Malory, the sword has a past. It was Balin’s, and it is very much a sword of social division.34 Created to help a woman kill her brother (67–68; II.4–5), it is cursed so that the wielder will kill his best friend (64; II.2). With it, Balin kills Balan; with it, Galahad wounds Gawain and


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Percivale (856–57, 893, 982; XIII.2–3, XIII.17, XVII.1);35 with it, Launcelot mortally wounds Gawain (91; II.19).This is a strange sword for the start of the Grail quest, since the Grail seems to create community. When the Grail comes to Arthur’s court at Pentecost, it provides each of those assembled with his favorite food or drink.To reinforce the image of community inherent in feasting, Malory adds a line not in the French: “Than began every knyght to beholde other, and eyther saw other, by their semynge, fayrer than ever they were before” (865; XIII.7). Balin’s sword, unredeemed by Galahad, undercuts this unity:36 it continues to set knight against knight within Arthur’s court.After Galahad gets the sword, he nearly kills Percivale with it (892–93; XIII.17) and then without provocation attacks Gawain, nearly killing him (981–82; XVII.1). He refuses to be companion to other knights, even Percivale (for instance, 893, 909–10; XIII.17, XIV.4). It is not until Galahad replaces Balin’s sword with David’s sword that he stops fighting Round Table knights and starts accepting the company of some of them.The sword’s continuing disruption and violence is thematically appropriate, because the Grail quest does violence to the symbols and values Arthurian society was built upon, wrenching them into new meanings. The rigid condemnation of adultery becomes a weapon to be used against Launcelot; and the emphasis on individual quests for God disrupts the knightly community, which had been built in part through the collective effort of the early wars.The quest’s appropriation of the royal imagery of swords—Balin’s sword comes to Galahad in a stone floating on water, reminiscent of Arthur’s swords from the stone and from the Lady of the Lake—diminishes the role of the king to almost nothing. The Grail itself changes meaning. It appeared without knightly effort to Arthur’s feast at Pentecost; before that, in the “Trystram,” it came to Percivale and Ector (816; XI.14); and Launcelot was easily brought before it to be healed of his madness, despite his adultery (824; XII.4).The only thing lacking was plain sight of the vessel: it was usually covered or seen unclearly.37 Gawain desires to see the Grail clearly and so makes it the object of a general quest. By promising to seek out—force—the sight of what before has come freely, he transforms the Grail from a sign of unearned blessing to one of earned reward.This shift in meaning from grace to good works allows the quest for the Grail to be treated as a test of worth and thus a competition for best knight. The four Grail knights match the four best knights of the world often referred to in the “Trystram.” The images also emphasize the sense of competition; when Launcelot meets a good man, the man warns him that “ye shall have no power to se [the Grail], no more than a blynde man that sholde se a bryght swerde” (927; XV.2). The Grail thus is made to take the place of one of the swords that magically reveal who is best knight. Where once the Grail came to knights in their

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weakness (Percivale and Ector lying wounded, Launcelot running mad under the burden of his adulteries), now it shows itself only to the best knights at their best; where once the Grail brought healing to those who had fallen, now a hermit claims it “woll nat appere where such synners bene but if hit be unto their grete hurte other unto their shame” (896–97; XIII.19). Whether or not the Grail’s fundamental nature has changed, the interpretations around it certainly have. Thus Malory does not give a monologic religious orthodoxy opposed to a monologic earthly chivalry, but he shows a complex dialogue among a variety of religious and secular ideals claiming various degrees of authority.38 Malory’s move to complicate the Queste in this way is not surprising. He had not only the example of the basic juxtaposition of the languages of “celestial” and “terrestrial” chivalry within the Queste itself but probably also the more complex interactions created when it was placed in the context of the larger prose cycles. In addition, there were many versions of the Grail quest. Mahoney points out that Malory probably knew several secularized accounts of the Grail quest (from the Tristan and elsewhere) and chose the most spiritual to translate.39 In other words, he knew from his texts that the “history” of the Grail quest admitted debate and did not celebrate only one model of piety, so the Grail quest’s “celestial chivalry” was not monologic and authoritative.40 His insertion of secular values is not distaste for the spiritual values of the version he chose but a deliberate response to them. The religious language becomes a privileged but not quite authoritative part of the dialogism. In the Grail quest, various hermits and good men provide religious instruction in the fashion of the Queste, but in Malory there is always a question of how much their interpretations are to be trusted.41 Hermits have biases of their own.The obvious example is the devil claiming to be a priest who interprets one of Bors’s dreams (963; XVI.11),42 but there are less extreme cases, such as the hermit who has to remind himself not to let his partisan support of Arthur compromise his clerical duties (1075; XVIII.12). Another hermit, after first misinterpreting the death of a fellow, gains correct information not by prayer but by summoning a demon (925; XV.1). And it is no trivial point the hermit needs to be enlightened on: he is instructing Launcelot on the death of a man who apparently has left holy living for secular concerns, as indicated by the fine shirt the corpse is wearing.The hermit’s initial sense that the man is damned parallels the text’s suspicion that Launcelot, by falling away from the purity of the Grail quest, will be damned; but in fact the man is saved because it was honorable for him to help those who needed him in a secular battle. To underscore the implications for Launcelot’s case, it is this man’s hairshirt that Launcelot takes and wears.


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Richard Kaueper argues that the Grail quest has so many hermits is precisely because they were “outsiders, not fully citizens of the world of clergie.”43 The Grail quest, he argues, is not a statement of orthodox Christianity but part of a struggle to shape a knightly form of Christianity that was less dependent on the established church. Hermits, unordained and not an official part of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, made ideal spokesmen for a version of Christianity that suggested knights such as Galahad could have direct access to sacraments and therefore to God without the mediation of the clergy. Instead of providing an absolute doctrinal statement of truth, therefore, Malory’s “Sankgreal” takes its place as one more competing form of chivalric (and religious) story. While Gawain is hardly an admirable character and therefore not a mouthpiece for persuasive resistance to the hermits, Malory does give Gawain’s dissent more authority than it had in the Queste.44 In one scene that Malory altered, Gawain borrows language from chivalric manuals to resist the teachings of the hermits.After confession, a hermit calls on him to do penance. In the Queste, Gawain’s refusal is unmotivated and clearly unjustified: Et il dist que de pentitance fere ne porroit il la peine soffrir. Et li preudome le let a tant, que plus ne li dit, car il coit bien que ses amonestemenz seroit peine perdue. Et au matin se parti messire Gauvains.45 [But he said that the hardships of penance would be more than he could brook. So with that the good man let him be and held his peace for he realized that all his admonishments would be so much wasted effort. Come morning, Sir Gawain took his leave.]

In Malory, Gawain at first asks what penance he will do (showing he considers the possibility seriously), and then he has a reason for his refusal: “Now, sir Gawayne,” seyde the good man,“thou muste do penaunce for thy sinne.” “Sir, what penaunce shall I do?” “Such as I woll gyff the,” seyde the good man. “Nay,” seyde sir Gawayne, “I may do no penaunce, for we knyghtes adventures many tymes suffir grete woo and payne.” “Well,” seyde the good man, and than he hylde his pece. And on the morne than sir Gawayne departed frome the ermyte and bytaught hym unto God. (892; XIII.16)

Gawain’s initial query about what penance he should serve and the fact that he commends himself to God at the end show far more holiness than

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displayed in the French. His refusal to do penance is thus not based purely on lack of piety (he “bytaught hym unto God”), but on a belief that knights have a religious status similar to clergy.46 His argument that knighthood is a form of penance echoes the fourteenth-century Livre de Chevalerie by Geoffroi de Charny: Si pourroit l’en aprés toutes ces ordres parler de la bonne ordre de chevalerie qui entre toutes autres ordres pourroit l’en et devroit tenir la plus dure ordre de toutes. . . . Et trop bien peut apparoir que es ordres de religion, combien qu’il leur soit dit a l’entrer, quant l’en cuidera mengier, l’en jeunera, . . . et moult de teles autres choses, n’est ce mie comparasons d’assez souffrir comme en l’ordre de chevalerie. Que qui voudroit considerer les paines, travaux, douleurs, mesaises, grans paours , perilz, froisseures et bleceures que li bon chevalier, qui l’ordre de chevlalerie maintiennent ainsi comme il doivent, ont a souffrir et sueffrent mainte foiz, il n’est nulle religion ou l’en sueffre tant comme font cil bon chevalier qui les faiz d’armes vont querant justement ainsi.47 [After speaking of all these orders, it is now time to return to the good order of knighthood, which should be considered the most rigorous order of all. . . . It will indeed be apparent that, however much it may be said to those entering the religious orders that when they want to eat, they will fast, . . . and many other such things, this is all nothing in comparison with the suffering to be endured in the order of knighthood. For, whoever might want to consider the hardships, pains, discomforts, fears, perils, broken bones, and wounds which the good knights who uphold the order of knighthood as they should endure and have to suffer frequently, there is no religious order in which as much is suffered as has to be endured by these good knights who go in search of deeds of arms in the right way.]

Like the author of the Queste, Geoffroi de Charny is trying to find a way to unite chivalry and Christianity, but he does so in a decidedly more secular way. Not only knights held this position that knighthood should be accounted a religious order. The fifteenth-century “parson of Calais” who wrote Knyghthode and Bataile asserts “Knyghthode an order is, the premynent.”48 Had a more respectable character than Gawain championed the idea of knighthood as penance, it could have seriously challenged the theology of the Grail hermits. Gawain may err in thinking that knightly virtues can completely replace religious ones, but some of the more extreme hermits may also err in trying to replace all the knightly virtues with monastic ones. Ramon Lull insists that the clergy respect the knights just as knights respect the clergy: [T]he most noble & the most honourable offyces that ben / ben thoffyces of clerkes & of knyghtes / And therfor the grettest amytye that shold be in this world / ou3t to be bitwene the knyghtes & clerkes. . . . Thenne thus as the


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relygyous that loueth not soo moche his owne ordre / that he is enemy of an other ordre / he foloweth not ne ensieweth the rule of thordre.49

While no hermit shows much love for Gawain, one, while condemning Launcelot’s adultery, is careful to acknowledge Launcelot’s many virtues and “joyned sir Launcelot suche penaunce as he myght do and to sew knyghthode” (899; XIII.20); in turn, Launcelot is respectful and obedient to the good man. The good man’s balanced assessment of Launcelot move toward a way of harmonizing knightly and clerical values, even if it blunts the edge of the moral condemnations more characteristic of the “Sankgreal.” Thus, subtly, Malory provides alternatives to the asceticism preached in the Grail quest, alternatives rooted in the multiple texts that form the knightly tradition. So far, the narrator has never openly suggested that the hermits are wrong: their analyses may be incomplete and unbalanced, but the characters, including the narrator, seem to accept their judgments. But the start of the next tale does directly challenge the authority of the “Sankgreal.”The “booke of the Sankgreal” says that Launcelot soon forgot what he learned on the quest, but Launcelot himself contradicts the book and claims that he has not forgotten: So aftir the quest of the Sankgreall was fulfylled and all knyghtes that were leffte on lyve were com home agayne unto the Table Rownde—as the BOOKE OF THE SANKGREALL makith mencion— . . . than, as the booke seyth, sir Launcelot began to resorte unto quene Gwenivere agayne and forgate the promyse and the perfeccion that he made in the queste; for, as the booke seyth, had nat sir Launcelot bene in his prevy thoughtes and in hys myndis so sette inwardly to the quene as he was in semynge outewarde to God, there had no knyght passed hym in the queste of the Sankgreall. . . . sir Launcelot [said], . . . “I was but late in the quest of the Sankgreall . . . and wyte you well, madam, hit may nat be yet lyghtly forgotyn.” (1045–46; XVIII.1)

Here the omniscience of the writer of the “Sankgreal” is challenged. Launcelot may be failing in his promise,50 but he claims that he has not forgotten it. Malory emphasizes that the book (mentioned three times in one paragraph) says otherwise. If the book does not correctly know Launcelot’s thoughts, then the theology of the Grail is called into question, for it is on the basis of his “unstable” thoughts, not his actions, that Launcelot fails in the Grail quest. This doubt leaves Launcelot’s behavior after he returns from the Grail quest almost impossible to interpret.The text reports: So hit befelle that sir Launcelot had many resortis of ladyes and damesels which dayly resorted unto hym, that besoughte hym to be their champion.

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In all such maters of ryght sir Launcelot applied hym dayly to do for the plesure of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryst, and ever as much as he myght he withdrew hym fro the company of quene Gwenyvere for to eschew the sclawndir and noyse. (1045; XVIII.1)

Le Morte Darthur has too many chivalries for Guinevere to be sure what Launcelot’s actions mean. Launcelot could be following Arthur’s commandment “allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes sucour” (120; III.15). But perhaps these adventures are signs of his renewed passion for Guinevere, since the “Launcelot” has taught readers to see his noble deeds as covert signs of love for Guinevere.The “Sankgreal,” on the other hand, taught readers to see even good deeds done with the queen in mind as evidence of sin and lust. And the “Trystram” has taught readers to interpret knightly service as a prelude to or disguise for romantic exploits, hence Guinevere’s fears.The chivalric diversity adds to the sense of tragedy, since the mixture of interpretive styles allows his actions to speak at once of glory and shame. It also allows certain moments to blaze in brilliance when all the systems of interpretation agree.When Launcelot rescues Guinevere from death in the affair of the poisoned apple, he is serving his God, his king, his lover, and his chivalry all at once. But the moment passes, and the chivalric values move again into conflict. Arthur’s Departure From the Text One reason readers are not sure which standards to apply to interpret Launcelot’s decision to avoid Guinevere and fight for damsels is that the narrator has increased the distance between himself and his sources, demanding more work from readers. In his famous passage on the quality of true love, the narrator demands that readers remember past deeds (hard in a book this long). May, the month of love, is also the month of remembrance; winter is forgetfulness. For false lovers, winter “erases” summer; for true lovers, May comes after winter to renew memory: For hit gyveth unto all lovers corrayge, that lusty monethe of May . . . for than all erbys and treys renewyth a man and a woman, and in lyke wyse lovers callyth to their mynde olde jantylnes and olde servyse, and many kynde dedes that was forgotyn by neglygence. For, lyke as wynter rasure dothe allway arace and deface grene summer, so faryth hit by unstable love in man and woman, for in many persones there ys no stabylité: for we may se all day, for a lytell blaste of wyntres rasure, anone we deface and lay aparte trew love. . . . Thys ys no wysedome nother no stabylté, but hit ys fyeblenes of nature and grete disworshyp, whosomever usyth thys. (1119–20; XVIII.25)


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This passage directly contradicts the “Sankgreal.” Nacien identifies Launcelot’s flaw as “unstablenesse” (948; XVI.5) for not completely forgetting Guinevere; the narrator here says Launcelot’s remembrance actually proves his stability.51 The emphasis on the role memory plays in true love suggests that readers judge Launcelot and Guinevere, not just on the events depicted in the “Sankgreal,” but on their works throughout Malory’s whole book, and in many of the early tales their love seems good.The simple binaries of the “Sankgreal”—if Launcelot remembers Guinevere then he has forgotten the quest, and if he remembers the quest then he must forget Guinevere— are wrong.This leads to a more complicated and nuanced moral judgment than in the French. In the Queste del Saint Graal, the argument the Launcelot should never have committed adultery with Guinevere is easy to accept since Guinevere barely appears in the work. Harder to accept is the argument that Launcelot, already loved and trusted by the queen, should betray his earlier promises and abandon her, even though this may be morally right. It is this harder argument that Malory’s “Sankgreal” must make, for—if the audience does not let the “Sankgreal” erase what came before—Guinevere’s grief will be painful. The narrator’s comments on true love also redefine his audience’s relation to the material. While the narrator has previously acknowledged that the Arthurian stories are removed in time, nonetheless in earlier passages he has encouraged a sense of community with the knights he writes of: Trystram’s hunting vocabulary is part of a living tradition that unites gentlemen, and English audiences can identify with English knights fighting Rome. Here, for the first time, the gap in time creates a corresponding gap in culture. Love has changed, and people (including the author of the “Sankgreal”?) who interpret the past by modern romantic practice misjudge: But nowadayes men can nat love sevennyght but they muste have all their desyres. . . . But the olde love was nat so. For men and women coude love togydirs seven yerys, and no lycoures lustis was betwyxte them, and than was love trouthe and faythefulnes. And so in lyke wyse was used such love in kynge Arthurs dayes. Wherefore I lykken love nowadayes unto sommer and wynter. . . . And therefore all ye that be lovers, calle unto youre remembraunce the monethe of May, lyke as ded quene Gwenyver, for whom I make her a lytyll mencion, that whyle she lyved she was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende. (1119–20; XVIII.25)

With the “nowadayes,” the narrator places himself and his readers in a position far removed from the past of Arthur and with fundamentally different values.This recogniton that “love” does not mean the same thing

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to all people at all times is fundamentally dialogic.As Bakhtin writes: Indeed, any concrete discourse [utterance] finds the object at which it was directed already as it were overlain with qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value, already enveloped in an obscuring mist—or, on the contrary, by the “light” of alien words that have already been spoken about it. It is entangled, shot through with shared thoughts, points of view, alien value judgments and accents.52

This dialogism demands a different way of reading than does purportedly simple history with direct access to the past. As it becomes clear how many alien words and judgments surround the history of King Arthur, readers must be aware of all the intervening voices and the traces they have left on the story and the language. Instead of direct identification with the characters, as imagined in “Arthur and Lucius,” readers must be conscious of the limits (or excesses) of the language, and they must learn to pay attention to who has told a story and for what purpose.The drama of reading is not just in the actions of the characters but in the interactions of the “alien words.”Furthermore,readers must be aware of the time that has passed between the original story and the present recounting to allow these alien words and sentiments to accumulate, and thus the historical gap can never be made to vanish. While distancing readers from the past, the narrator offers himself as an intermediary interpreting cultural differences.53 This narrative role separates him a little from the rest of the audience, and thus he uses “I” and “ye” instead of the plural pronouns “we” and “our” he used in “Arthur and Lucius” and “Trystram.”Although he encourages people to imitate Guinevere, it is imitation based on memory and against the practice of the present community. While earlier passages had tended to present the narrator as a fellow-reader of the older sources, knowing little more than the rest of the audience, here the narrator is more explicit about his own role in creating the stories. When he says, “I lykken love nowadayes unto sommer and wynter,” he identifies himself as source of the metaphor, and thus as source to this guide to interpretation. He also acknowledges that the reference to (and judgment of ) Guinevere is his own.The discrepancies in the sources open up space for the narrator to be more assertive, offering his own judgments and shaping the stories as he desires. The difference between old and modern love is recalled at the climax of the work, when Mordred and his companions trap Launcelot in Guinevere’s bedchamber: For,as the Freynshe booke seyth,the quene and sir Launcelot were togydirs.And whether they were abed other at other maner of disportis, me lyste nat thereof make no mencion,for love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadayes.(1165;XX.3)


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This passage emphasizes the distance of the history; the actual deed, presumably recorded in the French book, is deliberately withheld by the English author. Even if the facts were not withheld, they would have to be interpreted by a modern audience whose intuition about love at that time may not be trustworthy. The narrator’s refusal to translate his source here is a bold stroke of independence. Kevin Grimm argues it is a modeling of moral behavior: unlike Mordred and Aggravain, the narrator will not take part in “sclawndir and noyse,” and his silence leads readers to examine their own responses to the tale.54 While this tactic seems to invite readerly participation in the action, Robert Sturges points out that this passage also emphasizes the historical distance and unknowability of Arthur’s court.55 Modern writers and readers may be capable of moral action, but they act in their own time, removed from the company of the knights who kept silent as well as those who listened to the “sclawndir and noyse.” The audience’s distance from Arthur increases even more when Mordred rebels.The narrator says: Lo ye all Englysshemen, se ye nat what a myschyeff here was? For he . . . was the moste kynge and nobelyst knyght of the worlde . . . yet myght nat thes Englyshemen holde them content with hym. Lo thus was the olde custom and usayges of thys londe, and men say that we of thys londe have nat yet loste that custom. Alas! Thys ys a greate defaughte of us Englysshemen, for there may no thynge please no terme. (1229; XXI.1)

At first glance, the use of “we” and “us” seems a return to a sense of community; everyone is English, and, like the knights, modern Englishmen are subjects for foreign discussion. But now the readers are asked to identify with Arthur’s enemies (and anonymous ones at that), for the enduring characteristic that provides community through time is, with bitter irony, the love of change that motivates the rebels.56 Arthur’s defeat leads to the final and most complete failure of the sources. Ironically, Arthur’s death is missing from the Morte Darthur. As Arthur vanishes in the mysterious boat, so the true tale vanishes in a welter of conflicting traditions. Malory reports: Thus of Arthur I fynde no more wrytten in bokis that bene auctorysed . . . but that thes ladyes brought hym to hys grave, and such one was entyred there whych the ermyte bare wytnes that sometyme was Bysshop of Caunturbyry. But yet the ermyte knew nat in sertayne that he was veryly the body of kynge Arthur; for thys tale sir Bedwere, a knyght of the Table Rounde, made hit to be wrytten. Yet som men say in many partys of Inglonde that kynge Arthure ys nat dede, but had by the wyll of oure Lorde Jesu into another place; and men say

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that he shall com agayne, and he shall wynne the Holy Crosse.Yet I will nat say that hit shall be so, but rather I wolde sey: here in thys worlde he chaunged hys lyff.And many men say that there ys wrytten uppon the tumbe thys vers:“Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.” (1242; XXI.6–7)

The confusion and loss of certainty suit the mood of Arthur’s fall. Here, perhaps, the failure of the sources is most poignant: Arthur’s last moments are lost, and the text that fails was written by Bedivere, Arthur’s last companion. As Arthur is removed from his companions, so too is he removed from the readers.The narrator can find nothing in texts, so he must turn to oral traditions; even the written epitaph is known only by oral report. Unfortunately, the oral traditions are untrustworthy; even the testimony of the archbishop and of Bedivere is conjecture. The claims that Arthur will return are “unauthorized” and are regional tales, not a united English tradition, and in conflict with what written information there is. The narrator continues with the deaths of Guinevere and Launcelot and then, at the very end of the book, for the first time identifies written sources as English directly, not just by stylistic suggestion. Earlier this might have been a triumph, but now it is too late: And somme Englysshe bookes maken mencyon that they wente never oute of Englond after the deth of syr Launcelot—but that was but the favour of makers. For the Freynsshe book maketh mencyon—and is auctorysed—that syr Bors, syr Ector, syr Blamour and syr Bleoberis wente into the Holy Lande. (1260; XXI.13)

The English sources attempt to keep the Arthurian knights within the bounds of England, but the narrator no longer has hopes for confining Arthur to England and to a reliable English tradition. The narrator has come a long way from his first attempt to bolt from the French sources to the alliterative Morte Arthure, and along the way he has taught the attentive reader to see the biases (even the outright fictions) the various historians and makers have brought to their works. In doing so, the narrator disrupts his own early attempts for complete identification with the characters, forcing his audience to face the historical distance between them and Arthur. Finally, the narrator takes leave of his readers, carefully identifying his own place in history—“THYS BOOKE WAS ENDED THE NINTH YERE OF THE REYGNE OF KYNG EDWARD THE FOURTH, BY SYR THOMAS MALEORÉ, KNYGHT” (1260; not in Caxton), and asking for prayers after his death, his last acknowledgment that he is separate both from the knights he wrote of and from those who will read his work after he is gone. The narrator’s complex and evolving relation to his sources and audience dramatizes the way writers manipulate history to champion their own


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views of what chivalry should be. It is no wonder that Caxton, in his introduction to this complex book, worriedly acknowledges the problems in publishing a history of a king who might not exist, and he bases his attempt to prove Arthur’s existence on physical evidence—skulls, swords, the Round Table at Winchester—rather than on texts.57 Whatever he may have hoped about Lull’s book being the basis of a chivalric community, Caxton seems to have recognized that Malory’s work would not easily serve as such a base. Caxton smoothed away some of the more divisive details, reducing the alliteration of “Arthur and Lucius” and removing some of the narrator’s comments in the explicits, thereby diminishing the struggle between competing texts, but he still had to acknowledge in his introduction that histories of Arthur are unreliable propositions. Malory, even in Caxton’s edition, shows a keen interest in the dynamics of chivalry, the ways in which knightly ideals are created and shaped. Rather than defining a particular style of chivalry, he defines the processes that shape chivalry. This focus on process, on the creation and competition of ideals, informs his history of King Arthur. It is not only the writers who struggle over what chivalry should be. French writers champion individual knights (often French knights), while English audiences relish Arthur’s continental triumphs, even at the expense of historical plausibility and the importance of the romance Arthurian tradition. Other audiences that may identify more with provinces—Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland—than England as a whole may respond to Arthurian legends with a regional bias. Others still read through the lens of class (“jantyllmen that beryth olde armys”) instead of nation or define their group identity through religion, or, most painfully, through the loss of a glorious past. The possibility that chivalry can provide the framework to imagine a community, however, does not exist only in the literary communities of writers, translators, copyists, and readers. It also exists within the stories as Arthur and his knights try to build an ideal society. Even here, though, the interests of the knights never unite, and the different chivalries are revealed not to be simply the result of later, biased authors but an integral part of the process as groups of men and women with different interests struggle to define chivalry in ways that enhance their communities and subcommunities.


CHAPTER 2 SWORDS AND SORCERESSES: CREATING A CHIVALRIC COMMUNITY

he first part of Le Morte Darthur contains rapid, violent changes of chivalry. Uther seems to be primarily a warlord, and Arthur must prove himself first in battle. Then greater restraints on violence are established, helping Arthur to put an end to the civil wars and to build a civil society. Major transitions in chivalric ideals are marked by Arthur’s receipts of Excalibur. The first sword (from the stone) symbolizes might-makes-right chivalry; the second sword (from the Lady of the Lake) marks “blood-feud” chivalry, in which one advances one’s friends and revenges oneself on one’s enemies; and the restoration of Excalibur to Arthur in the fight with Accolon makes it a symbol of the ethical chivalry announced in the Round Table oath.These changes in chivalry affect not just the knights; they have profound effects on knightly communities. They define how former enemies are to be treated and whether they can join the court; they define who must be counted as an enemy. When King Arthur claims the throne, there is no well-developed sense of chivalry. Strength earns respect; little else does. After Arthur’s ascension, he and knights and ladies around him develop several codes of chivalry, which characters use and adapt through the course of the book.As styles of chivalry change, communities redefine themselves.When strength in battle is all that matters, the primary community is a band of fighting men. When standards of chivalry change to include reciprocal loyalties based on gift-giving and blood, women begin to be treated as members of the community, and the community expands by the recognition that knights who may act in some situations as enemies can nevertheless be worthy men who might be recruited into the community.When chivalry is redefined again in the famous Round Table oath, a community forms based on shared ethical principles.

T

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Magic swords—Excalibur, Balin’s cursed sword, David’s sword that comes to Galahad—mark many of the major shifts in chivalry.These swords frequently are declared to be signs of who is the true king or the best knight, and so the men who draw them often serve to define these nebulous ideas. Excalibur is particularly important in defining the values of Arthur’s kingship. As part of Henry VI’s coronation, the king received a sword that symbolized the source and purpose of his power: And thenne alle the byschoppys seseden with a swerde, they alle syttynge there hondys thereon, ande all they saynge thes wordys thys to hym, Accingere gladio tuo super femur tuum, potentissime.And at every tyme the kyng answeryd and sayde, Observabo.Thenne toke they the swerde a gayne fro hym, and layde the swerde on the hyghe auter.Thenne bought the kyng hys swerde a gayne of Holy Chyrche for an c s. in signe and in tokyn that the vertu and power sholde come fyrste fro Hooly Chyrche.1 [Then all the bishops took up a sword, all of them setting their hands upon it, and all saying these words to him, thus:“gird your sword on over your leg, most mighty one.” And every time the king answered, “I will be watchful.” Then they took the sword from him again and laid the sword on the high altar.Then the king bought his sword again from Holy Church for a hundred shillings in sign and token that the virtue and power should come first from Holy Church.]

Arthur’s receipt of Excalibur marks more varied sources of authority. The first Excalibur, the sword in the stone, appears after a consultation of Merlin and the Archbishop of Canterbury, but it appears outside of the church instead of on the high altar and Arthur draws it one his own, alone, without receiving it from the bishops. After it breaks, he receives a new one, not by purchasing it from the church, but by bartering for it with the Lady of the Lake. Finally, after Morgan steals the sword, he reclaims it in combat with the assistance of Nyneve.The multiple providers of the sword reflect the multiple sources of authority: personal prowess, supernatural worthiness, women’s good will. The chivalric transitions also mark major changes in the roles of women within the text because the codes of chivalry define what a good woman should be as much as they define what a good knight should be. As the standards of chivalry change from simple violence to systems with more social and political structure, women gain more liberty to be active and to exercise choice. Discussion of women’s roles in Malory tend to emphasize their vulnerability and exclusion from power.The most recent treatment of Malory’s use of gender is Dorsey Armstrong’s Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur.2 In it, she argues that the Round Table oath is central to the knightly endeavor and that vulnerable women

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are central to the Round Table oath’s definition of chivalric manhood.3 Armstrong’s analysis is important for revealing how chivalry constructs ideals of femininity even while it seems to dictate masculine behavior, and she is right that the two are interdependent. But an analysis of the imagined feminine is not the same thing as an analysis of women. Characters are seldom ideal; it would be considerably more surprising to find a perfectly feminine woman than to discover that many women do not fit neatly into either the positive or the negative stereotypes of the gender.Armstrong uses Morgan le Fay as an example of such a character, a woman who is not defined by the feminine, either in being a positive image of womanhood or the kind of simple villain defined only by violating certain feminine ideals. While Morgan is a troubling character, such “unfeminine” women are not always condemned, and there are numerous assertive women praised in Le Morte Darthur. Potential victim (and thus potential object of heroic rescue) is not the only role good women can play, and the other roles that develop allow fuller participation in knightly society. Because women participate, the chivalric community is not simple masculine, even though the men are privileged.As chivalry helps define regions and nations, women are therefore, included within the major political communities. Women in Chivalric Communities Women could serve as objects for knightly hostility or desire or, slightly more actively, sources of information or healing.These roles are most familiar to modern readers and the most passively “feminine,” even though critics have analyzed how women could use their roles to motivate knights to fulfill women’s desire.4 Evidence that women did get some satisfaction from identifying with the female roles of romance comes from tournaments. Women sometimes took part, imitating the damsels of romance who acted as guides to knights-errant, leading knights to various staged encounters.5 Changes in chivalry could affect women’s roles by dictating what kinds of motives knights should have for seeking and aiding ladies: chivalry could celebrate love or condemn it, encouraging female piety or not, treat women as lovers tied to individual knights or as symbols of the homeland needing collective defense. Women are not always objects, however.Women as judges shape chivalry in more obvious ways. Guinevere often presides over sessions in which knights recount their deeds and she provides appropriate judgment. At her wedding, she is the mouthpiece that provides the responses to Pellinore’s and Gawain’s quests, and her judgments are incorporated into the Round Table oath Arthur then institutes. Percivale’s sister is not a judge per se, but she is the one who announces the significance of the Ship of Faith, recounts

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its history, explains the objects on board, and makes the belt for Galahad’s sword, thereby weaving him into sacred history. Her words help explain (or establish) the moral meaning of the adventures and thus help to shape the new, religious version of chivalry. But women could take even more active roles, modeling themselves on knights instead of ladies. While women who fought were rare, they were not unheard of, and they were frequently treated positively.6 A few marched to battle; more had to fight defensively. Ladies, from Igrayne and Gareth’s Lyones to Margaret Paston, might have to defend castles in their lords’ absence.7 Thus Christine de Pizan writes: [A lady should have] the heart of a man, that is, she ought to know how to use weapons and be familiar with everything that pertains to them, so that she may be ready to command her men if the need arises. She should know how to launch an attack or how to defend against one.8

Henry VI’s Queen Margaret, who, though vilified by her opponents, was virtual ruler in lieu of her weak husband, a Lady of the Order of the Garter, leader of a band of knights named the Queen’s Gallants, and (in one pageant at least) not averse to being associated with the Nine Worthies.9 Froissart records the heroism of the Countess of Montford, who, armored, led troops into battle in her husband’s absence, earning a mention as a possible tenth worthy.10 Joan of Arc was also nominated.11 The legal imagination also acknowledged that women might fight. A few classes of people were exempt from trials by combat—clergymen and citizens of London—but women were not, and as a result, women sometimes fought.12 Thus, in Caxton, when Launcelot, defying Morgan le Fay about Guinevere, says “I wolde preue hit on you or on yours that she is the truest lady vnto her lord lyuyng,”13 he is seriously challenging Morgan herself, although fully expecting that she (like many male defendants) would try to find a champion. R. Coltman Clephan, following R.L. Pearsall, reports that, while judicial duels between men and women were rare in Germany after about 1200, a number of illustrations refer to them.14 Clearly the assumption that people could prove the worth of their internal character through combat applied, at least in principle, to women as well as men. While martial women may have been rare in life, they were regularly represented in art and literature.15 Men besieging a castle of women (often a romantic image) is a common motif from the thirteenth century on, whether acted out, drawn, carved, or painted.16 Such stylized combats provided women a chance to display their courage and honor through symbolically significant violence (even when the weapons were flowers).17 In books, too, female fighters made their appearance (the Roman du Silence


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being an obvious example). Since many of the knightly virtues (meekness, obedience, honesty, chastity) were also feminine virtues, it was not unusual to find women used as examples to instruct knights, or knights used as examples to instruct women.18 The Knight of the Tour-Landry, writing a conservative advice book for his daughters (in French in the late fourteenth century, translated by William Caxton in 1484), has an extended metaphor on how women’s quests for good behavior resemble knights’, and should be honored equally.19 The knight occasionally makes women’s metaphorical battles more literal. He tells the story of a Roman Senator’s wife who endures meekly his unjustified jealousy. One day, the Senator is going to forfeit a duel because his champion is sick and he is not brave enough to fight himself; to save him, his wife disguises herself as a man and wins the duel, earning praise from the empress and the other ladies of the court.20 Her victory in battle acquits her husband legally, but it also acquits her morally; the husband’s jealousy is recognized as unjust, and her meek patience under his abuse is celebrated. Thus combat still serves to reveal internal virtues, even in cases such as this in which the virtues revealed are feminine. Later writers continued the tradition. Malory’s Arthur says that he loves Guinevere because she is “the moste valyaunte and fayryst that I know lyvyng” (97; III.1); and while her valor as seen in the War with the Five Kings seems to consist of courage rather than deeds of arms (128; IV.3), Arthur gives it precedence over her beauty. Nyneve and Morgan act in many ways as knights and lords. Sir Thomas More in his Utopia had men and women participate equally in martial exercise, saying that, while women were not required to go to war, they were encouraged to do so and praised if they did.21 Baldesar Castiglione wrote that “The principall and true profession of a Courtyer ought to be in feates of armes,”22 and there was debate about whether it was fit for a lady. Lord Julian, the primary expounder of the virtues of the Lady, wishes her to refrain from martial exercise, but several others object that women can do feats of arms as well as men.23 Women were associated with orders of knighthood with ranks of militissa, equitessa, or chevalière.24 Some orders were exclusively feminine, and, in at least one case, membership was based on military prowess.Around 1150, Raymond Berengarius, Count of Barcelona, established the Orden de la Hacha for a group of women of Tortosa who had repulsed invading Moors: the women were granted precedence over the men, exemption from taxes, and increased rights of inheritance from their husbands, and “[t]hese Women . . . having thus acquired this Honor by their personal Valour, carried themselves after the manner of Military Knights of those days.”25 Other all-women groups, however, seem to have been more

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noble fellowships than military orders; Ashmole cites as an example the late-fifteenth-century Ladies of the Cordon, instituted by Anne, wife of Charles VIII of France.26 Religious orders of women adapted chivalric customs as well; Sieur Charles du Cange cites some canons of St. Gertrude in Brabantia who were formally dubbed by a (male) knight called in for the purpose.27 Many early orders of male knights admitted women,28 although not granting full rights and privileges. The Order of the Garter, perhaps modeled on the Round Table, admitted “ladies of the society of the Garter” or “ladies of the fraternity of St George.”29 Thus, women did have (and were expected to have) an interest in chivalry that could lead them in their reading to identify with knights rather than with ladies or to imagine the ladies as active in defense of their own interests. The tendency of romance to focus on battles between men and to present women as needing men’s help is a stylization of gender relations.While Armstrong is right that the Round Table oath does imagine women as vulnerable, that is not the only way available to medieval authors to represent women, and Malory has a number of female characters who have more complex and active chivalric roles.Active women were not automatically bad; assertive women were not automatically subversive. Malory does of course include bad women within his text, but he includes good ones as well; and not to include bad women would have been either to dismiss women as so powerless as to lack the ability to do significant harm or as so idealized that they cease to be human. Lyones, Nyneve, both Elaines, Percivale’s sister, and others all come across as sympathetic women acting on their own interests. To dismiss some of these women as patriarchal tools because their actions advance the interests of men is unfair,30 for a woman that desires to be altruistic or political in the Morte Darthur would almost of necessity have to work with men. Likewise, to attribute to “patriarchal gynophobia” any woman’s act that contributes to the final collapse of Arthur’s realm seems overly simplistic; while women (Guinevere, Morgause) contribute to the final fall of the Round Table, so do men (Mordred, Gawain, Launcelot,Arthur).While Malory is not a modern feminist, neither is he a stereotypical medieval misogynist. Recently, though, the assumption that Malory’s text is misogynist seems to be gaining strength.31 Nonetheless, even in the “Sankgreal,” the temptresses are balanced by good women, and there are points where he clearly rejects classical misogynist positions. Malory could have used the introduction of Solomon for either general attacks on women or more specific attacks on women who bring down royal men, but instead he uses the opportunity to defend women. Solomon was a staple of the antifeminist tradition. Jerome uses Solomon both as an authority and as an exemplar: the misogyny of some of the proverbs gave foundation to general attacks on women, and the


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story of Solomon being seduced away from God by a woman made him an example of a good man betrayed by sexual desire.32 Malory, however, uses the opportunity to defend women: [T]his Salamon had an evyll wyff, wherethrorow he wente there had be no good woman borne, and therefore he dispysed them in hys bookis. So there answerde a voice that seyde to hym thus: ‘Salamon, if hevynesse com to a man by a woman, ne rek thou never, for yet shall there com a woman whereof there shall com gretter joy to a man an hondred tymes than thys hevynesse gyvith sorow. And that woman shall be borne of thy lynayge.’ So whan Salamon harde thes wordis, he hylde hymself but a foole. (991; XVII.5)

Malory omits his source’s careful explanation of how evil Solomon’s wife was: that, for all his wisdom, she easily and frequently deceived him; that this is the nature of women since Eve; that Solomon could not persuade her to change her ways; and that his claim never to have one good woman is based on sad experience.33 The omission defangs the misogyny of the text, focusing on a good wife who creates many of the wonders of the Grail quest rather than on the woman who seduces Solomon away from wisdom. Malory thus explains away Solomon’s alleged antifeminist remarks in ways medieval audiences would have recognized as antimisogynist. The sense that women were participants in chivalry, affected by and affecting its developments, is pervasive.Women such as Nyneve who associate with the Round Table (which was widely understood to be a knightly order) must be recognized as participating in knightly culture. Precisely how women participate in any given system chivalry depends on what values are celebrated. If the chivalry is imagined primarily as disciplined religious zeal, women can participate as long as they do not assume a sacerdotal role; Percivale’s sister is an obvious example. If the chivalry celebrates love, generosity, and loyalty, then women such as Guinevere can participate not just as objects of men’s affection but as lovers in their own right, as Guinevere seems to at the end of Le Morte Darthur. If chivalry is defined primarily as using strength to settle quarrels, then fewer women can participate. Malory does not present any women skilled at combat, so the examples of women using their strength of fight for (or against) justice come from magicians, primarily Morgan le Fay and Nyneve. Excalibur, Part I: Might Makes Right Malory’s book plunges into action, starting with the war between Uther and Gorlois. Many English Arthurian works, from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae onward, begin with a history of England, however

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brief, tracing England back to heroic roots.Arthur is thus put in the context of being a custodian or reviver of a great, fading tradition. Malory, by cutting out the preceding history, places Arthur in the role of creator of tradition. In consequence, chivalry is not presented as a timeless ideal but as a human creation. Arthur begins faced with a savage world. There is no authority but power, and so his initial chivalry is little more than the capacity for effective violence. Might makes right, allies are those who help one fight, enemies are those who oppose one, and anything can be fought for. Communities are small, unstable, and defined by self-interest. Uther wants Igrayne, so he takes her, with no moral judgment offered from Merlin or the barons. Attempts to establish some kind of other authority fail dramatically. Uther’s deathbed charge to his barons that they give Arthur the throne has no effect.34 Likewise, the sword in the stone does not make Arthur king immediately; it is the threat of an uprising by the commons (who choose to interpret the sword and stone as a sign from God, although Malory never explicitly endorses this) that wins Arthur the crown (16; I.7).35 After he is crowned, he must battle rebellious lords. It is power that matters, and he is yet to prove his full power. Moreover, while the lords are rebels in name, there is some justice to their cause:Arthur’s success in war is virtually his only claim to the throne. Merlin provides only a very withered figleaf of legitimacy to justify the violence: [A]fter the deth of the duke more than thre houres was Arthur begoten, and thirtene dayes after kyng Uther wedded Igrayne, and therfor I preve hym he is no bastard. And, who saith nay, he shal be kyng and overcome alle his enemyes, and or he deye he shalle be long kynge of all Englond. (18; I.9)

Later, his blood will matter more, but in this beginning section, the capacity for force is far more important than questions of right. Not surprisingly, almost all the deeds in this beginning are military actions with large numbers of men. Ulphuns and Brastias do have individual encounters (21; I.10), but they are in the course of a military embassy. When Ban and Bors accept the embassy and come to England, the tournament in their honor is not a courtly fifteenth-century spectacle; it is a mêlée, which strongly resembles real war and which the kings have to interrupt before the fighting becomes serious (23–24; I.11). Knighthood is not yet expressed through controlled performances meant to display virtues symbolically; it is expressed in war.Those who are not with Arthur’s knights (even in a tournament) are against them. The first Excalibur symbolizes this violent chivalry.36 Arthur draws it “fiersly” from the stone (13; I.3–5). It is a solitary act, done by his own power. It does not gain him the support of the barons, but it earns the


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support of the commons (16; I.7). Merlin instructs him to reserve the sword for the moment of crisis in his war with the barons, and when Arthur does draw the sword, he slaughters his foe and wins the field. Interestingly, the sword again is associated with the commons: Thenne he drewe his swerd Excalibur, but it was so bryght in his enemyes eyen that it gaf light lyke thirty torchys, and therwith he put hem on bak and slewe moche peple. And thenne the comyns of Carlyon aroos with clubbis and stavys and slewe many knyghtes . . . and so [the enemy] fled and departed. (19; I.9)

The persistent association of Excalibur with the commons provides a popular base for Arthur’s kingship, and it provides a hint of order in this world of violence.There is an acceptable violence that is in the name of the people of the kingdom, and there is divisive violence that is morally troubling. Beyond this primitive distinction, however, the sword represents a time where strength was the fundamental virtue of kings and knights. Women serve as little more than battle prizes. Igrayne can warn Gorlois of treachery and then command the defense of Tintagil, but she is not strong enough to withstand the king and therefore becomes a prize to be won. She seldom speaks (only to warn Gorlois of Uther and, later to tell Uther what he already knows about the conception of Arthur). Her opinion of Uther and her marriage with him is unknown and unasked, as Malory reminds us: But whan the lady herd telle of the duke her husband, and by all record he was dede or ever kynge Uther came to her, thenne she merveilled who that myghte be that laye with her in lykenes of her lord. So she mourned pryvely and held hir pees. (9; I.2)

The lords do not ask who the father of her son was, or whether Arthur is indeed her son.The only one who asks about Arthur’s conception is Uther, and he is simply testing her honesty (10; I.3–5). Excalibur, Part II: Blood Feud An abrupt end to this ethic of uncontrolled violence comes in the middle of the war with the eleven kings. Merlin suddenly appears and tells Arthur to stop for “Of three score thousande thys day hast thou leffte on lyve but fyftene thousand! . . . God ys wroth with the for thou woll never have done” (36; I.17). Most readers are, by this point, fairly wroth themselves.The simple chivalry that celebrates nothing but prowess has shown itself to be

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unceasingly destructive and narratively tedious. New ideals are called for, and Merlin’s dramatic interruption provides the occasion. With the unexpected peace, there is a shift to a new chivalry based on reciprocal loyalties, usually family ties and exchanges of gifts with friends and family, and vengeance against enemies.37 These new ethics make it possible to distinguish between good but hostile knights (who are true to their loyalties but happen to oppose Arthur) and bad knights (who betray their loyalties). Ban and Bors are the first to do this, unexpectedly calling Arthur’s enemies good men. Arthur, still thinking that any enemy is evil, answers, “I may nat love hem . . . for they wolde destroy me” (34–35; I.16). By the time he fights Pellinore, however, his attitude has changed. When he believes Merlin has killed Pellinore, he protests,“There lyvith nat so worshipfull a knyght as he was. For I had levir than the stynte of my londe a yere that he were on lyve” (51; I.24).The result is a potential expansion of the royal community, since it becomes far easier to incorporate former enemies into the kingdom. This new chivalry affects more than knights. Since women participate equally in ties of blood and have favors they can exchange, they can now serve as more than battle prizes.They are critical in defining family, and they can become friends and allies as well.Their opinions thus begin to matter. Soon after the end of the war, Arthur sleeps with Lyonors and with Morgause, and, the text carefully notes that each woman consented (38, 41; I.17, 19).38 Igrayne herself reappears to retell her story, and its meaning has shifted.When she first told it to Uther, it was a private test of her faithfulness (10; I.2–5).There was no call for a public accounting since, in terms of violent power, the circumstances of Arthur’s birth did not matter. Uther and Merlin had already described them to no effect. But with the new emphasis on reciprocal loyalties and especially kinship, Arthur’s heritage must be established, and that depends upon his mother. Arthur calls for Igrayne to ask whether she is his mother, and when she arrives Ulphuns accuses her of treason for not speaking the truth earlier. Her faithfulness is still at issue, but now it is her faithfulness to her country, not her husband, and her story (at least in theory) has the power to decide who should be king.The challenge forces her to shift from prize to participant in royal politics. When she publicly protests that she does not know herself if Arthur is her son, Merlin finishes the story, and the accusation of treason silently disappears (45–46; I.21).The unexpected violence of the challenge is a sign of how much has changed, and only the vanishing of the treason charge suggests the unfairness of judging Igrayne and Merlin by standards that did not exist at the time. A new Excalibur marks this new code of chivalry.39 The first Excalibur, the symbol of the violent chivalry that won Arthur his crown, breaks the first time it is used in single combat and not in war (50; I.23). This is the same duel with King Pellinore in which Arthur for the first time recognizes


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an enemy as a good man. Arthur gets the second Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake not by his own force but by a promised exchange of gifts, symbolizing the new ideals of reciprocal loyalty.40 It also marks the new significance of women. Once again, Henry VI provides a useful comparison. Several years after buying his sword from the church during his English coronation, he returned from being crowned in France to be greeted by a series of pageants in London.While most of the pageants involved allegorical figures represent as women, the first figure he encountered was a giant holding up a sword with the motto “Inimicus ejus induam confusione” (I will cover his enemies with ruin).41 The focus is on manly force that the boy-king needs. Later during the same triumphal entry, Henry does receive a sword from a woman, but she is one of seven allegorical maidens presenting the seven “gyftys of worschyppe”: a crown of glory, a scepter of purity, a sword of righteousness and victory, a mantle of prudence, a shield of faith, a helm of health, and a girdle of love and peace.42 The giant’s sword represents a necessary (and very masculine) component of the king’s power; the gifts from the women, instead, mark the necessary virtues, not for ruling, but for ruling well, at least as the Londoners understood ruling well. Arthur’s second sword is less clearly symbolic than Henry’s—the Lady of the Lady does not represent a well-defined constituency, nor does this Excalibur have a neat allegorical name—but the general sense is similar, that it will stand for the virtues Arthur will need to rule well. This Excalibur, moreover, is found in water.The first, set in stone, marked the certainty that if Arthur was to be king, he would have to fight; the second represents a more fluid set of choices Arthur and his people may make about what will be valued, now that he has achieved (through the wars) the necessary recognition as leader. Arthur’s new sword, however, does not go unchallenged. Balin gets a sword that serves as Excalibur’s opposite.43 A damsel comes to court gird with a sword that she can get rid of until the best knight in the world draws it.This change in focus from the rightful king (marked by Excalibur) to the best knight (marked by Balin’s sword) has immediate consequences. The new chivalry depends on point of view; someone with a different set of friends and enemies will have a different set of loyalties and thus different duties.44 This is not an issue as long as the major characters are kings, who are unique within a country and so not challenged by other kingly points of view, but the switch to knightly virtue raises the question of how far knights may have their private loyalties and feuds when they serve a king. Malory changes his French source to make Balin a recent prisoner in Arthur’s dungeon for killing one of Arthur’s relatives (62; II.2), and so Balin’s winning the title of best knight immediately challenges the king’s perspective.

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This means there are potential fissures in the community; one man may have a different network of allies than another, and a man who is part of several networks risks having conflicting duties. As Elizabeth Pochoda notes, “Although he has a strong personal loyalty to Arthur, emphasized in two sourceless passages, Balin’s obligation clearly does not extend to the community of the court, or to the realm as a whole.”45 Even more troubling, Balin’s chivalric duties are frequently self-contradictory. His sword forces a series of moral contradictions that expose the flaws in the code of reciprocal loyalties that Excalibur represents; and in resolving the contradictions, he must alienate one friend or another. Balin and the Lady of the Lake are bitter enemies: when she comes to court to claim her reward from Arthur, she asks for Balin’s head; when Balin sees her, he decapitates her. Given the relation between Arthur and the Lady of the Lake, this would condemn Balin as a villain immediately, except for one thing: the sword Balin just won can only be drawn by the best knight in the world. Balin, in opposing the Lady of the Lake, has been faithful to his kin, as a good knight should. The damsel that brought Balin his sword, the obvious parallel to the Lady of the Lake, reveals how women can tangle social relations as thoroughly as they can clarify them. Women can define alliances through family ties or they can create new alliances through love. Balin’s damsel has turned against her family in favor of her voluntarily chosen, unsanctioned romantic ties— she is seeking to revenge herself on her own brother because he killed her lover (67; II.4). Malory uses the word “paramoure” to emphasize that the sexual bond is not one strengthened by a marriage to create a recognized family. Still, she is not capriciously evil; the need to revenge one’s own is admired in this blood-feud chivalry. She is caught in a conflict of duties. To pursue her revenge, the damsel went to the Lady Lyle of Avylion and got the sword that Balin drew, a sword that is cursed so its wielder will destroy his best friend and, ultimately, himself (64, 68; II.2, II.5). It is a sword that seems to create such mixed loyalties that the wielder ultimately has no stable place left in society. Balin is thrust into a series of situations with conflicting duties. Sir Launceor follows him from Arthur’s court to avenge the killing of the Lady of the Lake. Balin does not wish to antagonize Arthur further (69; II.5), but in self-defense he accidentally kills Launceor. Launceor’s lover Columbe is so distraught that she seizes his sword and seems ready to kill herself. Balin cannot disarm her without hurting her. (69; II.6) His duty to keep her safe leads to a dilemma: should he accept the certainty of injury or the risk of suicide? He lets her keep the sword, and she does kill herself. Balin’s heroism in Arthur’s war with Royns and Lot brings a temporary reconciliation with Arthur, but the war itself is a marker of divided loyalties. Merlin knows


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either Arthur or Lot must die, and he must decide which it is to be (76; II.10). Lot has a legitimate grievance—Arthur has slept with his wife—but Merlin favors Arthur. After the war, Balin again plunges into dilemmas. Arthur orders Balin to bring a wandering knight to the court.The knight is reluctant, and Balin is apologetic that his duty to Arthur is in conflict with his duty to respect the other knight’s fears (80; II.12). The knight is murdered by the invisible knight Garlon despite Balin’s pledge to be his self-conduct. Balin swears to seek out Garlon, but he finds him only at the castle of Garlon’s brother, Pellam. Balin chooses to honor the need for vengeance over the deference due to a host and kills Garlon. Pellam chases him through the castle, and Balin, after his sword breaks, unknowingly picks up the spear of Longinus to defend himself, thereby striking the Dolorous Stroke that lays waste the kingdom and will not be healed until the Grail quest. Riding on, Balin meets a knight pining for his lover. Investigating on his own, Balin finds evidence that she is unfaithful to the knight.Thinking to help the knight by telling the truth, he reports this.The knight kills his lady and his rival, then blames Balin for not concealing the affair before killing himself (87; II.17). Once again, conflicting duties—truth-telling and consoling—have come into fatal conflict. Finally, to honor the custom of a castle, Balin enters into combat with an unknown knight who is revealed to be his brother only after they mortally wound each other. The last tragedy is more of a case of mistaken identity than of conflicting duties, but this reflects another problem with a chivalry based on reciprocal obligations.To work, people must recognize each other and know each other’s relationships. Balin got into trouble for not recognizing the Lady of the Lake as a friend of Arthur’s, for not recognizing the strength of Columbe’s love for Launceor, for literally not seeing the enmity of the invisible knight Garlon. But he is not alone in his misrecognitions. After the end of the initial wars but before getting the new Excalibur, Arthur unknowingly slept with Morgause, his half-sister and wife of King Lot, to conceive Mordred. Merlin’s habit of disguising himself provides frequent reminders of how easy it is to misrecognize, and his announcements and prophecies very often reveal relationships that the knights do not see; Arthur’s kinship with Morgause, the unexplained linkage between the death of Columbe and the striking of the Dolorous Stroke (72; II.8). Balin’s and Balan’s mutual misrecognition show how tragically wrong best intentions can go in a chivalric and ethical system that judges people primarily in relation to others. The curse on Balin’s sword is intimately related to the sword’s function as the sign of the best knight: Balin shows his worth by his efforts to fulfill all his obligations, contradictory though they are; a lesser knight would be less likely to find himself in such dilemmas and more likely to abandon

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some of his loyalties if he did. Moreover, since Balin is the best knight, his failure is not just personal failure (although he has his flaws), but it is also a stark warning of flaws in the whole system of prevailing ethics.46 It is perhaps because the curse creates conflicts of loyalty that Balin is identified as the knight with two swords: two conflicting duties, a cursed sword that hinders him from following the law symbolized by Excalibur. The sword’s dual function of marking the best knight and in forcing dissension is preserved in Merlin’s prophecy at Balin’s death: There shall never man handyll thys swerde but the beste knyght of the worlde, and that shall be sir Launcelot other ellis Galahad, hys sonne. And Launcelot with thys swerde shall sle the man in the worlde that he lovith beste: that shall be sir Gawayne. (91; II.19)

This “unhappy” sword already suggests that Launcelot and Galahad will bring strife and internal conflict to the Round Table, and that they will do this because of, not despite, their merits.47 Galahad does so innocently: the conflict comes because Gawain proposes that all the knights, not just Galahad, seek the Grail; and the quest that is appropriate to him is disaster for those who follow his shining example when they should have stayed with the king. Galahad is finally able to replace Balin’s sword with David’s, and his fights with Round Table knights cease.The strife Launcelot causes, of course is less innocent; it comes because his nobility is worthy of love, both by Guinevere and the knights who hold with him, but loving Launcelot finally is incompatible with loving Arthur.These moral dilemmas, worldly service versus the grail quest, loyalty to Launcelot or Arthur, are precisely the kind of traps that Balin’s sword produces, and three very different “best knights” must face the consequences. Blood-feud chivalry does not die with Balin. It persists even as other, newer styles of chivalry come into being. It is during Balin’s adventures that Pellinore kills Lot in battle, and through the rest of Le Morte Darthur Lot’s sons, Gawain and his brothers, pursue their feud with Pellinore’s sons, Lameroke in particular.And Mordred, the living reminder of the dangers of not recognizing family, lurks to bring down Arthur in the end.These two enduring elements of the book are engendered at precisely the time chivalry has added the honoring of reciprocal obligations to its celebration of prowess, resulting in an ideal of blood feud that never goes away. Excalibur, Part III: Justice Because the sword Balin got from the Lady Lyle has revealed the disastrous possibilities of conflicting loyalties, a new kind of chivalry is needed.


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Symbolically, the way is made ready by Arthur’s loss of Excalibur. In the middle of Balin’s adventures, Morgan steals the Excalibur that symbolizes blood-feud chivalry (78–79; II.11). It will be restored later by Nyneve, its meaning shifted so it can symbolize the new chivalry. Nyneve and Morgan take over the roles of proponent and opponent of Arthur’s sword and the order it symbolizes that the Lady of the Lake and Balin’s damsel had played (Nyneve actually inherits the title of Lady of the Lake). Morgan’s betrayal of her brother is a reminder that the new chivalry, with its dependence on ethics instead of personal loyalties, means that family can no longer be relied upon completely. (The point is driven home later when Morgan destroys the magical scabbard that protects the wearer from harm; blood-feud chivalry, unlike the others, had held out the promise of mutual protection for its practitioners.) The creation of the new chivalry is more conscious than the previous ones. Three knights quest, each knight reports to the court, his deeds are written down, and his actions are discussed. Afterward, Arthur articulates probably the most famous formulation of chivalry, the Round Table code: [He] 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 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. (120; III.15)

The earlier ideal of reciprocal obligation stressed loyalty to people; this new formulation of chivalry emphasizes loyalty to ideals. It depends less on point of view and, therefore, potentially escapes some of the conflicts that hounded Balin. Of course, it also has contradictions: championing women may involve taking wrongful quarrels, as will become increasingly apparent. The first evidence of the reform in chivalry that culminates in the Round Table code comes during the knighting of Torre. The request of a cowherd’s son prompts a debate about what is essential to knighthood, family or virtue;Torre stands on the cusp between these two foundations of chivalry. It begins as a typical fair-unknown story. Arthur, to celebrate his wedding, has promised that all reasonable requests will be granted. Torre, who believes himself to be the son of a cowherd Aryes, asks to be knighted. Arthur agrees, noting that Torre is bigger than all of Aryes’s other children and the only one interested in arms. Merlin confirms Arthur’s suspicion that Torre is not Aryes’s son but Pellinore’s, giving the standard conclusion that “he ought to be a good man for he ys com of good kynrede as ony on lyve, and of kynges bloode” (100–101; III.3).

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So far, it is a standard fair-unknown story. Fair-unknown plots can play out the threat of lower-class intrusion into aristocracy and then defuse it by that the unknown was actually of noble birth revealing.48 But Malory complicates the final defusing. Aryes challenges Merlin’s account, but Torre’s mother confirms it. Her account does not simply ennoble Torre, for it tarnishes Pellinore; the seduction is half rape, and the alleged love token, a greyhound, was stolen instead of given. Pellinore is not the kind of noble lover one would wish for a father. At this point, the son takes sides: “Sir Torre seyde unto Merlion,‘Dishonoure nat my modir,’ ” (101; III.4). By claiming that having Pellinore as a father brings shame, not honor, Torre reverses the fair-unknown formula. Moreover, this is the first time he is given the title Sir Torre, and it comes when he is trying to preserve his status as a cowherd’s son. Merlin’s answer switches ground:“Hyt is more for your worship than hurte, for your fadir ys a good knyght and a kynge, and he may ryght well avaunce you and youre modir both” (101; III.3). His claim is no longer that nobility is an essence that comes through blood: the importance of the relation with Pellinore is its economic and social advantage. Thus Merlin’s revelation of Torre’s parentage fails to put the class issues to rest. Later in the book, Torre is called “sir Torre le Fyze Aryes” or “sir Torre,the sonne of Aryes leVaysshere”(582,585;X.9,X.11),although he is also listed as one of Pellinore’s sons in a discussion of Lameroke and his brothers (610; X.23). It seems, then, that for the most part he continues his identity as a cowherd’s son. So, despite Torre’s obvious differences from his halfbrothers and Merlin’s unrenounced though unrepeated claim that noble blood does tell, fundamental questions remain. Malory has already shown that there are profound differences in ideas of what constitutes the chivalric, and that, instead of there being an eternal and unchanging chivalry, society decides which ideas are socially dominant. If chivalry, however, is a matter of social choice and not an essence, what is there (save athletic ability) to be passed down through the blood? The mutual love and respect in the cowherd’s family contrast well with Pellinore’s callousness, leaving Torre’s paternity a dubious blessing, particularly since Torre had succeeded in becoming a knight without knowledge of it. Torre is immediately assigned one part of a triple quest, and it is these three quests that are the immediate cause of Arthur’s articulation of the Round Table code. The quests seem more concerned with gender than with class. During Arthur’s wedding feast, a marvelous hunt bursts in: a hart runs through the hall, pursued by a brachet and a maiden. Knights kidnap the dog and the damsel, and Arthur assigns three knights to the quests of bringing back the deer, the hound, and the woman.These wedding quests send a powerful message that knights must acknowledge the importance of women. Time and again knights ignore women, only to suffer shame or


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worse. Only low-born Torre, who sided with his common mother against his royal father Pellinore who half-raped her (101; III.3), manages to balance the claims of women with the duties he owes other knights, skillfully persuading an evil knight to withdraw a plea for mercy so he can satisfy a damsel’s demands for vengeance (112–13; III.11). Pellinore and Gawain do less well. During the quest, Pellinore, in pursuit of the kidnapper, ignores a woman’s cries for help (114; III.12). After he rescues Nyneve, they discover the woman died for lack of aid, and women assess the consequences. Nyneve offers counsel on how to bury her body with honor, and Guinevere says Pellinore is to blame for not helping her. When he protests, Merlin confirms Guinevere’s judgment, revealing that the woman was Pellinore’s daughter and that he is doomed to suffer because he did not help her (119–20; III.15–16). More dramatically, in his quest Gawain kills a woman who gets in his way of a fight with another man (106; III.7). For this killing, he is rebuked by everyone from the king to his little brother Gaheris, but it is women who provide the most significant responses. It is a woman who rescues Gawain from the man’s enraged archers (108; III.8), and it is women, headed by Guinevere, who sit in judgment on him.They sentence him never to oppose women again and to champion them whenever possible (108–109; III.8).This sentence for the first time officially inscribes respect and support of women in Arthur’s chivalric code. That it is Guinevere’s court that decrees these values marks how much power women can have to define chivalry; they are not merely defined by it. It is immediately after the three wedding quests that Arthur institutes the Round Table oath, which charges knights “allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes socour: strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them, uppon payne of dethe” (120; III.15). These quests and pronouncements, coupled with the fact that the Round Table (and most of the knights with it) come as Guinevere’s dowry, mark a substantial intrusion of women into what had been a fairly masculine chivalric world. Nyneve is part of a change that places much more importance on women. While the oath emphasizes protecting women rather than on honoring them for their own deeds, Nyneve goes on to have an active career; never again is she merely an object of someone else’s quest. Chivalric Women: Morgan and Nyneve Nyneve redefines crucial elements of political and romantic chivalry, demonstrating that women can participate in chivalry as agents instead of objects. She provides Arthur with Excalibur in the midst of the duel with Accolon, and she marries Pelleas. These moments represent moments where she transforms chivalric values governing politics and romance.

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In the duel between Arthur and Accolon, Nyneve intervenes to foil Morgan le Fay’s treason. Morgan le Fay creates a false Excalibur for Arthur, giving the real one to her lover Accolon. She then maneuvers the two men into a duel. Arthur is losing until Nyneve intervenes to let Arthur seize Accolon’s sword, at which point Arthur quickly triumphs. Excalibur, the focus of the struggle between Arthur and Accolon, Nyneve and Morgan, is the symbol of Arthur’s kingship. The kingship is literally at stake in the battle, since the winner will be monarch, but the principles of that kingship are also being contested. The occasion for the duel between Arthur and Accolon is a trial by combat to decide the dispute of two brothers, the older of whom has dispossessed the younger. Accolon represents the innocent younger brother. Arthur, who has just instituted the pentecostal oath his knights must swear each year, including the provision “that no man take no batayles in a wrongefull quarell for no love ne for no worldis goodis” (120; III.15), represents the older in order to save himself and twenty knights from starving in prison (138–39; IV.7).The obvious question is which man is fighting in the wrongful quarrel:Accolon, whose cause is technically just but who undertakes it selfishly as part of treason, or Arthur, who undertakes a wrongful cause to save others and to defend his crown. Under such circumstances, it is no wonder the true and false Excalibur are so difficult to distinguish.When Nyneve intervenes to give Arthur the true Excalibur, she establishes that the rules of kingship will depend on a sense of justice based not merely on technicalities but on larger circumstances and on motive. The importance of her action is emphasized by her title. Arthur first received the sword from the “Lady of the Lake,” subsequently beheaded by Balin before Nyneve is introduced. Nyneve, however, is soon identified as a Lady of the Lake herself,49 thus emphasizing her association with Excalibur. Morgan le Fay too is linked to Arthur’s earlier receipt of Excalibur.The Lady of the Lake is enemy to the damsel of the Lady Lyle of Avalon, the damsel who brings Balin his sword as part of a plot to avenge herself on her brother for the killing of her lover. Morgan’s association with Avalon and her desire to kill Arthur for the sake of her lover Accolon position her as the successor of this damsel, just as Nyneve is the successor of the Lady of the Lake; and their confrontation over the sword is part of a continuing struggle. Nyneve’s actions clarify important points of the new code of chivalry. Her first adventure, in which she imprisons Merlin, proves that loyalty to justice has indeed become more important than the ties of friendship. By the old codes of loyalty between men, her treatment of Arthur’s friend and advisor is criminal; by the new code, it is justifiable self-defense since Merlin was at fault. Malory takes care to make Nyneve’s innocence clear. He says Merlin “felle in dotage on” and is “assoted” with Nyneve (125; IV.1). Unlike his sources, Malory never claims Merlin is genuinely in love,50 and he cuts


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the passages in the French that say Merlin would not seduce her against her will. He persistently tries to seduce her against her will, clearly violating the code of chivalry Arthur has just announced. Instead of a knight showing up to protect Nyneve, she protects herself by permanently entombing him beneath a stone. (If this seems severe, it must be remembered that Arthur declared the penalty for enforcing women to be death.) Nyneve is performing a knightly function. Surprisingly, critics have been slow to acknowledge her innocence unambiguously, perhaps because in so many other tales—although certainly not all—the entrapment is evil.51 Maureen Fries acknowledges that Nyneve does tend to help Arthur’s court, but she does not hesitate to call the intombment of Merlin the act of a “counter-hero.”52 Geraldine Heng recognizes that the text does “approve and confirm” Nyneve’s right to defend herself, but later she calls the imprisonment “surely an act as destructive as any of Morgan’s.”53 Even Sue Ellen Holbrook hedges in her landmark article on Nyneve, saying that, although her treatment of Merlin is “deceptive” and “regrettable,” she “has more to excuse than to blame her.”54 In Malory there are few hints of condemnation or destructive consequences. Nyneve seems quite capable of preserving Arthur and his court from obvious magical threats. Neither the narrator nor Arthur condemn her; indeed, the narrator says that she “was allwayes fryndely to kynge Arthure” (2:490; IX.16), a surprising assertion if her imprisonment of Merlin is to be judged evil. Moreover, Nyneve’s treatment of Merlin demonstrates two important points of the new code: that the loyalty to ideals is real, so that even friends of the king are not exempt from justice; and that women, if they are strong enough, can act according to the new standards of chivalry. Her métier is magic, not arms, and thus she is a worthy opponent for Merlin. Her entombment of him is obviously justified as simple self-defense, but it goes further. She acts as champion of a principle, that power (magical or physical) is not to be used to oppress the weak. As such, she is the first champion of the principles laid out in Arthur’s Round Table oath, and is fitting that she is the one who provides him with Excalibur for the third time. After imprisoning Merlin, Nyneve hurries to rescue Arthur from Accolon. Her intervention in the fight gives Arthur Excalibur, and it marks the third major style of chivalry in Le Morte Darthur. But Nyneve’s action is not simply a symbolic confirmation of the Round Table chivalry he announced at his wedding. It clarifies the code, making it clear the justice that the knights are meant to uphold is not the technical justice Morgan champions. Malory changes his source to emphasize that Nyneve intervenes only after judging the quarrel. In the Suite du Merlin, she acts as soon as she arrives at the fight.55 In Malory, however, she arrives early in the fight (142; IV.9), but

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she watches and evaluates. Only after hearing Arthur and Accolon speak does she act. Malory also inserts an explanation of why she acted: Whan the Damesell of the Lake behelde Arthure, how full of prouesse his body was, and the false treson that was wrought for hym to have had hym slayne, she had gret peté that so good a knyght and such a man of worship sholde so be destroyed. (144; IV.10)

Nyneve’s standards, an appreciation of prowess and worship and an abhorrence of treason, provide the lens through which the announced principles of the Round Table code will be judged. It is to some extent emotional, based on pity and an appreciation of general character; and its legal tenor is comprehensive, taking in the “false treson” of Morgan le Fay and Accolon and overlooking the details of the property dispute that is the nominal issue. Nyneve’s lack of regard for the technical legal issue of the duel marks a consistent narrative distrust of simplistic trial by combat, evident later when King Mark kills Amant (592; X.14) and when Arthur refuses to let Launcelot fight to prove Guinevere innocent (1175; XX.7). The minimal magic she uses in Malory lets Arthur preserve his worship and demonstrate his prowess, but it also undercuts the proposition that combat can reveal justice. It takes her magical power as a sorceress for the rightful king to prevail, and it takes his political power as king to overrule the results of the trial by combat so that his victory does not translate into an unjust legal victory for the elder brother. Morgan is Nyneve’s foil. Like Nyneve, Morgan is a powerful enchantress. Unlike her, Morgan turns against socially recognized bonds, plotting to kill her husband and her brother, associating herself instead with a succession of paramours. Morgan’s betrayal is a reminder that the new Round Table chivalry, with its dependence on ethics instead of personal loyalties, means that family can no longer be relied upon to provide aid in time of crisis. The point is driven home later when Morgan destroys the magical scabbard that protects the wearer from loss of blood.Arthur is now vulnerable to losing blood—the “blood” that defines kin as well as the literal blood of battle.56 Morgan’s opposition is not to Arthur per se but to the law that he imposes. Her rebellion begins when he gets the sword from the Lady of the Lake, and she stays an enemy until the sword is returned to the lake. Arthur, dying, rebukes Bedivere for not throwing the sword into the lake quickly, says, “[T]hy long taryynge puttith me in grete jouperté of my lyff, for I have takyn colde” (1239; XXI.5). Morgan echoes this language when Arthur arrives at the barge: “Why have ye taryed so longe frome me? Alas, thys wounde on youre hede hath caught overmuch coulde” (1240; XXI.5). The similarity in the language suggests that she


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cannot revert to a healing sister as long as the law, symbolized by the sword, remains between her and Arthur. The law determines not just right and wrong but also “worship,” or public honor:Arthur’s Pentecostal oath defines “forfiture of . . . worship” as a penalty for infraction. It is this aspect of the law that apparently earns Morgan’s enmity: her announced motive for rebellion is jealousy of Arthur because “he is moste of worship and of prouesse of ony of hir bloode” (145; IV.11). Arthur does not condemn her desire for worship; instead, he claims that she should have had enough:“God knowyth I have honoured hir and worshipped hir more than all my kyn, and more have I trusted hir than my wyff and all my kyn aftir” (146; IV.11). By implication he acknowledges her right to desire worship, though not her means of achieving it. Like Nyneve, Morgan has entered the political arena, but as a rebel monarch instead of a sorceress-errant. She provides an example of her version of royal justice when she orders the killing of a man who was going to drown his wife’s suspected lover (152; IV.15). Since she has the husband drowned in the way he would have killed his rival, she provides the appearance of justice, but without regard for underlying merits of the case ( just as Accolon is technically fighting in the right but is morally in the wrong). Later, when she repeatedly tries to warn Arthur that Launcelot is sleeping with Guinevere, Morgan will once again act maliciously under the appearance of justice. Excalibur in the hands of Morgan and Accolon stands for a legalistic chivalry without regard for human circumstance. Because Morgan opposes the Arthurian code represented by Excalibur, Nyneve, the Lady of the Lake who restores the sword to Arthur, is her natural enemy. Ironically, it is because the two women enter so deeply into the Arthurian political world that they can be dismissed as insufficiently feminist. Andrew Lynch minimizes Morgan’s power because she fails to kill Arthur (although if her goal is not to kill Arthur but to defeat the law Arthur and Excalibur represent, she is ultimately successful), and because she persistently allies herself with men (such as Accolon) in her struggles.57 The implicit standards for acknowledging feminine power—that women who ally with men cannot be judged truly empowered and that women must be strong enough to guarantee the success of their projects—seem unreasonably high. Failure and the need for allies are not necessarily signs of feminine weakness. Arthur draws a fellowship around himself, but that fails. Churls chase Merlin, who needs Arthur’s rescue (48–49; I.23). Morgan can escape from Arthur and maintain her castles without Accolon, and she is politically adept, even though she is not a combatant. While Morgan and Nyneve are also opposites in the French tradition Malory is drawing on, he transforms their relationship. Instead of letting the two women compete directly, he makes sure that Arthur always mediates

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their struggles. In the French, including Malory’s source the Suite du Merlin, Morgan and Nyneve are parallel characters, or different aspects of the same character.58 Reminiscent of Nyneve, Morgan learns her magic by seducing and then abandoning Merlin.59 This creates a link between the two women mediated only by the sorcerer Merlin, not by Arthur or his sword. Morgan and Nyneve then become direct rivals, with Arthur almost irrelevant.They are not part of the chivalric community but in a different, magical community of women. In the battle with Accolon, the two women dominate the fight. Morgan’s trick of giving Accolon the real Excalibur nearly wins the fight. Nyneve intervenes by holding Accolon motionless until Arthur can grab the sword and strip away the scabbard; when she removes her spell, Accolon is weaponless, and the fight is basically settled.60 Later, after Morgan throws Excalibur into the lake and hides to escape Arthur’s pursuit, she makes clear who her real opponent is, boasting that she could kill Arthur easily if it were not for Nyneve.61 Later, she sends a direct message to Arthur, repeating the same thing.62 Malory separates the women. Morgan does not seduce Merlin, removing that connection between Nyneve and Morgan. The fight between Arthur and Accolon is not settled by the sorceresses. Although Morgan’s treachery gives Accolon the initial advantage, Nyneve’s magic only causes Excalibur to slip from Accolon’s hand, leaving both men active and with an equal chance to recover the sword. It is Arthur’s prowess that is decisive.And when Morgan flees after Accolon’s death, it is not because of Nyneve but because “allwey she drad muche kyng Arthure” (152; IV.15). Thus, while the two sorceresses define themselves against each other in the French, in Malory they are defined in relation to Arthur.This keeps the focus on the Arthurian code of chivalry, and it also changes our understanding of the two women. Instead of fighting on their own, in a circle reserved for sorceresses and only tangent to the chivalric circle in which knights act, Nyneve and Morgan are part of the larger chivalric community and judged by its standards; their conflict is defined by Arthur and Excalibur. Nyneve’s next adventure redefines the romantic conventions of chivalry. There are a series of romantic models in Le Morte Darthur: the distant, idealized love in “Launcelot,” the married love in “Gareth,” the adultery in “Trystram,” and the celibacy in the “Sankgreal.”63 The conventions for sexual and romantic relations evolve from the very start, as Uther’s rape gives way to Arthur’s consensual affairs and then his marriage. In dealing with Pelleas and Ettarde, Nyneve shifts the conventions away from focusing just on men to emphasize women’s desires. Nyneve comes into the story late to save Pelleas from death by love. He loves Ettarde, despite the fact she tortures him. This style of love is based almost entirely on masculine performance; he admires her beauty, offers her a prize won at a tournament,


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volunteers to fight to prove she is the fairest woman in the land, and is obedient to her every wish except her desire never to see him again.There is little interaction between Pelleas and Ettarde, and it does not affect their love; she never responds to his worth, and he never considers that her systematic torture might be a flaw in her character. When Gawain hears this story, his sympathy is all with Pelleas, and he considers the root of the problem to be Ettarde’s refusal to yield. He offers to help Pelleas win her love. Their ill-conceived plan is that Gawain will announce that he has killed Pelleas, winning himself time with Ettarde to make her regret what she has lost, at which point Pelleas can reappear. Instead Gawain seduces Ettarde for himself, leaving Pelleas heartbroken and prepared to die of love. While Gawain obviously betrays Pelleas, both knights believe it is the role of a woman to give in to the desire of a knight who does great feats of arms. In Malory’s French source, this ultimately proves true. Pelleas discovers Gawain sleeping with Ettarde and, unwilling to kill them sleeping, leaves his sword across their throats. When Gawain wakes and finds it, he repents his villainy in admiration for Pelleas’s restraint. He gets Ettarde to swear to grant a request, and asks her to marry Pelleas; she, for love of Gawain, agrees.64 The united male desire is successful, and both men enjoy the fruits of their romantic victory. Malory changes the ending drastically. Gawain and Ettarde do not repent, and so Pelleas prepares to die. At this point, Nyneve enters to do what Gawain could not, provide a satisfactory ending. Hearing of Pelleas from a servant, her reaction is to blame not feminine refusal to yield but misplaced masculine desire. Although she punishes Ettarde for her cruelty by making her love Pelleas fruitlessly, changing Ettarde’s emotions is not Nyneve’s solution to the problem. Instead, Nyneve stops Pelleas from loving Ettarde. Her recognition that feminine refusal, however misguided, must be acknowledged is not completely unprecedented. Between the time Gawain first sees Pelleas and the time when he hears Pelleas’s story, he sees a knight and a dwarf meet to fight over a lady; and when Gawain is appealed to as judge, he asks the lady which she prefers, and she prefers the dwarf (164–65; IV.21). Despite these flickers of acknowledgment of women’s feelings, it is Nyneve who completes the transformation of values from an ethic that assumes male prowess automatically will merit women’s love to an ethic where the desires of the woman matter, even if it continues to be assumed that prowess should (but not necessarily will) spark their desires. Nyneve courts Pelleas herself, declaring that he shall love a lady that loves him (172; IV.24)—a love not based on any feat of arms she has seen him do.65 It is ironically appropriate that Pelleas should win her love and not Ettarde’s; his courtship has been public, played out in front of audiences ranging from the tournament crowd to Gawain, and his actions have always

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appealed more to the spectators than to his nominal beloved.The devotion and pursuit that are coercive for Ettarde are romantic for the spectators who are not threatened by it, and it is a spectator’s love he wins. It is also narratively appropriate for Nyneve; her career, defeating a lustful sorcerer, rescuing the king, and then winning a spouse, is suitable for a knight. Her courtship thus emphasizes her right and ability to act as a chivalric agent. Nyneve marries Pelleas, and the “Tale of King Arthur” ends with her triumphant return to court. The importance of Nyneve’s relation to Pelleas is underscored by Malory’s later uses of it.As Wilfred L. Guerin has argued, later references to Nyneve emphasize her happy marriage and her connection to Arthur while Launcelot and Guinevere are committing adultery and thereby (albeit unwillingly) damaging Arthur’s power.66 Near the end of the book, when Guinevere’s adultery is threatening to destroy the Round Table, Malory inserts Nyneve and Pelleas into several stories, reminding readers of her identity as the happily married wife of Pelleas.When she appears at the end of the “Poisoned Apple” to exonerate Guinevere, the narrator identifies her as “the Damesell of the Lake that hyght Nynyve, whych wedded the good knyght sir Pelleas” (1059; XVIII.8). Her presence is a subtle rebuke to Launcelot and Guinevere. The tensions of the adultery have driven the lovers apart, leaving Guinevere in danger. Launcelot’s return to acquit her in trial by combat seems to close the gap, not only bringing the lovers together, but also temporarily uniting Launcelot’s religious need to fight for justice and his love for Guinevere, and quieting her fears that his fighting for women in distress is disloyal. By not ending the story there, Malory reminds readers this resolution is incomplete; Launcelot’s fight cannot identify the poisoner who framed the queen, and Nyneve’s happy marriage is a reminder that Launcelot and Guinevere’s love is still inescapably adulterous. (In the Mort Artu Launcelot’s fight is the end of the matter, and in the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur Arthur has a servant tortured to find the truth.) Later still, Pelleas is singled out as the knight in Guinevere’s bodyguard who fought best against Melleagaunce’s treacherous attack—the attack that will lead to Guinevere’s only act of adultery indisputably narrated. Then, when Sir Urry comes to court looking for the best knight in the world so that he may be healed of his cursed wounds Malory inserts Pelleas into the long list of knights that try and fail, identifying him as Nyneve’s husband: [He] loved the lady Ettarde (and he had dyed for her sake, had nat bene one of the ladyes of the lake whos name was dame Nyneve; and she wedde sir Pelleas, and she saved hym ever aftir, that he was never slayne by her dayes; and he was a full noble knyght). (1150; XIX.11)


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Ultimately, Launcelot is called to attempt the healing. He, knowing his sin, does not wish even to try, and when he succeeds despite his expectation, he bursts out weeping, providing one of the most poignant recognitions of the mingled glory and shame of his love. Including a reminder of the existence of Nyneve’s happy, faithful love just before this intensifies the bittersweetness of the moment. Finally, after the wars prompted by Guinevere’s adultery and Arthur’s incest are over, Nyneve appears in the mysterious boat that takes Arthur away, and the narrator again mentions her happy marriage: Also there was the 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.) (1242; XXI.6)

The reminder, coming after a horrific battle that only Bedivere and perhaps Arthur survive, is a sharp momentary picture of happiness amidst the ruin, and it heightens the tragedy that the adultery has caused. Nyneve’s love prevents all sexual love from being rejected as evil, despite the cold celibacy of the Grail and the horrors of the final war. Just as Nyneve’s relation to Arthur and his sword helped shape chivalry’s political and ethical ideals, so her dealings with Merlin and Pelleas change and clarify chivalry’s romantic ideals. In each case, Nyneve provides an indirect rebuke of Launcelot. Her intervention in the duel between Arthur and Accolon condemns knights who fight in technically just but morally wrong causes, as Launcelot will do for Guinevere; and her chaste love provides an implicit contrast to his adultery.This subtle censure is a striking change from the Lady of the Lake’s traditional role as Launcelot’s protector. Eugene Vinaver blames this transformation on Malory’s carelessness, but his commentary is misleading: [Malory] associates the Merlin–Niviene theme with Pellinor’s adventures which in the French romance were interwoven with this theme and yet remained quite distinct from it. Malory joins them together by saying that it was Pellinor who had brought Niviene to court . . . Niviene (the French Viviane) ceases to be the Lady of the Lake who bore the infant Lancelot to her castle in the lake, where she brought him up . . . . Groping in the dark, he gets hold of the nearest thread to tie his story to. (1276)

However, not only does the Suite du Merlin identify Viviane as the damsel brought to court by Pellinore, but also this is in the same passage in which

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she is identified as Launcelot’s protector: Et sachent vraiement tout cil qui le conte monsigneur Robert de Borron escoutent que ceste damoisiele fu cele qui puis fu apielee la Damoisiele dou Lac, cele qui norrist grant tans en son ostel Lanscelot dou Lac, ense comme la grant ystoire de Lanscelot le devise.67 [And may all those who listen to my lord Robert de Boron’s story know that [Pellinore’s] maiden was the one who was later called the Lady of the Lake, she who raised Lancelot of the lake for a long time in her household, as the great history of Lancelot tells.]

Malory had two links in the same place; he kept the link between Pellinore’s damsel and Merlin’s imprisoner, and he cut the link between Nyneve and Launcelot. By cutting that link, he made Nyneve free to be Arthur’s protector instead of Launcelot’s. In fact, Nyneve becomes something of a protector from Launcelot.68 She keeps Pelleas safe by never letting him fight Launcelot (180; IV.29), and likewise she prevents Severause from fighting with Launcelot (1148; XIX.11); both details are Malory’s invention. Malory’s treatment of Nyneve is not a symptom of lapsed attention: she is systematically transformed into a chivalric character, supporting Arthur and the ideals he and Excalibur represent and thus wary of Launcelot’s seductive, disruptive role. Nyneve, of course, is not the only woman associated with magical swords.At the start of the Grail quest, Balin’s sword reappears, accompanied by a prophetic damsel. Later, Galahad gets a better-omened sword, Solomon’s, prepared by Solomon’s wife and girded on Galahad by Percivale’s sister. Her martyrdom helps develop the already explicit Christian symbolism of the new sword. The persistent association of women with swords is a reminder that chivalry is not just a personal code but a social one as well, governing relations between the sexes.Within any chivalric paradigm, women can enter as objects of quests, but also as agents, either villains or worshipful women. As chivalry changes—and it changes rapidly and profoundly in Malory—the roles of women change with it. As a result, there is a wide and changing range of feminine behavior in Malory. Of all the women associated with swords, Nyneve is perhaps the most developed, and the one who most clearly defines chivalry as well as being defined by it. Although Morgan le Fay is a powerful woman who rebels against Arthur’s law, choosing her own lovers, defying the bonds of kin, and trying to impose her own kind of justice, it is Nyneve, who supports Round Table chivalry, that changes it most dramatically. Morgan becomes an enemy easily held at bay; Nyneve as a powerful friend forces recognition of women’s choice in love and succeeds in establishing a sense of justice more expansive than the legalisms Morgan advocates. Malory alters and expands


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her role into a protector of Arthur and a participant in, not merely an external guardian of, his chivalry.While it is not clear she is formally part of the Round Table community the way some women were members of the Order of the Garter, she is clearly an active and significant part of Arthur’s court. Nyneve’s entry into the chivalric community shows how much communities and codes of chivalry create each other. Guinevere and Nyneve help shape chivalry because the code has changed enough that women have roles to play in the chivalric community; they mark kinship or give gifts or even exert their power on one side or another.This could not have happened in the early savagery of Uther’s reign, where all that seems to matter is prowess; and Nyneve might have been no more successful than her predecessor, the Lady of the Lake whom Balin beheaded, had the code stayed one of reciprocal personal obligations. With the institution of the Round Table oath, however, the community changes to the point that Nyneve’s deeds can be recognized as good, and on this basis she can help modify chivalry (and thus the Arthurian community) still further.


CHAPTER 3 OF KNIGHTS AND NATIONS

ow England fits into world history and how the individual emphasis of chivalry fits with the needs of a nation are questions that become more urgent the more nearly Arthur becomes an epic hero. If, as Bakhtin suggests, epic is concerned with “ancestors and founders,”1 Britain has a problem: its ancestors are not its founders. Not only are its citizens from many races, but its social foundations are foreign; its (alleged) ancestors were Celtic, but its religion was Semitic, much of its law Roman or AngloSaxon, its literature based on Greek and Roman authors, its very language a mixture of Anglo-Saxon and French. An epic hero, therefore, must either be an ancestor championing values that have become barbarian and pagan, or a hero tinged with the foreign, championing the Christian, civilized values that are not ancestral. Genres close to epic thus had to deal with foreign intrusions, and how to define an England (or a Britain) that was repeatedly invaded was vexing for writers.2 The prose Brut blames the troubles of Edward II’s reign on this ancient history of invasion and racial mixing:

H

Qe grete lordes of Engeland were nou3t alle of o nacioun, but were mellede wiQ oQere naciouns, Qat is forto seyn, somme Britons, somme Saxones, somme Danois, somme Peghtes, somme Frenchemen, somme Normans, somme Spaignardes, somme Romayns, some Henaudes, some Flemyngus, and of oQere diuerse naciouns, Qe whiche nacions acorded nou3t to Qe kynde bloode of Engeland. ¶ And if Qe grete Lordes of Engeland hade bene onelich wedded to Englisshe peple, Qan shulde pees haue bene.3

This ethnic definition of the English “nacion” seems provincial next to Malory. Most of Arthur’s great knights are not English; Launcelot is French, Palomides is Saracen, Gawain and Gareth are Norwegian (unless they are Scottish),4 Percivale and Lameroke are Welsh. Trystram is Cornish, and

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although Cornwall had been ruled by England far longer than Wales, it is spoken of as a separate kingdom, and Trystram’s first loyalty is to King Mark, not King Arthur. These national differences remain muted: the major issue with Palomides is religion, not nationality; the French and Welsh are accepted almost without comment; and the Cornish are teased but not ostracized. Still, the chronicle’s xenophobia points out an interesting question: how do lords of diverse backgrounds come together to act as “one nation”? Britain had to respond to at least three cultural invasions: the Romans, the Saxons, and the Normans. In some ways, Rome cast the longest shadow. Rome was the conduit by which Christianity came to England, the source of literature and the first written histories of England, and the home of the language of scholars.To get from under the shadow of Rome, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Brittaniae used its fanciful history to try to find a space to define a native heroic tradition. By making the British descendants of Brutus and thus of Aeneas, he gave Britain the same origin as Rome, thus forestalling Roman claims to be founders of Britain as a civilized nation. Furthermore, he explains away invasions by British complicity; Androgeus invites in Caesar and Vortigern brings in the Saxons, thus making two of the dominant social influences due to (admittedly foolish) British choice, not simply external coercion. By making the Saxon’s the “bad” invasion and having Arthur defend Romanized Britain, Geoffrey allowed Britain to claim something of the Roman heritage, and the Normans could portray themselves as the final conquerors of the invading Saxons and thus preservers of a classical heritage chosen by the British instead of imposed by colonizers. Malory, writing centuries later, is less concerned about the Saxons then about the Romans and the French. Critics, however, have been slow to turn the postcolonial lens on Rome. Michelle Warren focuses on the borders of Norman Britain.5 Geraldine Heng focuses on English relations with eastern lands of the Orthodox church or Islam.6 Patricia Ingham discusses Malory’s source, the alliterative Morte Arthure, as a colonial romance, but her focus is on English colonialism; Rome serves as the model or fantasy of a united Europe that Britain, perpetually divided, can never attain.7 Several put Malory’s Roman war in context of fifteenth-century English relations with France, arguing that Malory allows the war to fulfill fantasies of a continental empire while showing the importance of not antagonizing France.8 As accustomed as we are to see England as a colonizer and to see Rome as a bringer of civilization to Europe, Malory presents Arthur’s war with Rome as a colony’s response to a foreign colonizer. Rome is not the origin of European civilization; and the fact that it sometimes seems to be is a mark of how successful its colonizing was.

O F K N I G H T S A N D N AT I O N S

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Malory does not emphasize the link between England and Troy9 that allowed Geoffrey to downplay the cultural debt to the Romans, but as Arthur consolidates his factious people into one country and defines the values that will characterize his rule, a collision with Rome and its claims to be the founders of English civilization is inevitable. Malory’s decision to make the war with Rome occur early in Arthur’s career, rather than following the standard version in which it comes late and provides the occasion for Mordred to seize the throne, makes a significant difference to the relation between England and Rome. In Geoffrey of Monmouth’s tradition (which includes the alliterative Morte Arthure, Malory’s source), the emotional impact of the story of betrayal and fall during the war is that English ambition is defeated after contact with Rome (despite Arthur’s victories). Rome marks an end of British glory. By having Arthur flourish after the fall of Rome, however, Malory marks Britain as a postRoman nation built on a foundation that includes its successful contact with a fallen Rome. The idea of a westward translatio imperii from Palestine to Greece to Rome to Britain was a commonplace, but in “Arthur and Lucius,” there is also an eastward response, a religious war against the pagans that make up the bulk of the Roman army.10 Arthur thus gets to reject elements of the Roman subjugation of the British, while reaffirming a fundamental connection that explains the Roman influence on British culture.When he is crowned emperor and institutes good government, he anglicizes the empire, fusing medieval and classical forms, British and Roman traditions. His right to rule Rome is based on his reading of English chronicles, which assert that “sir Belyne and sir Bryne” were British rulers of Rome, as was Constantine, British through his mother (188;V.1). Uther becomes the sole recent ancestor not to rule Rome (192; not in Caxton). Constantine’s inclusion as a Briton allows Christianity to be assigned to a British rather than a Roman emperor; and so Rome can no longer claim to be Britain’s spiritual salvation. Two individual encounters, one toward the beginning and one toward the end of the campaign, underscore how the text reacts against Roman cultural dominance. Arthur’s battle with the giant of Mount St. Michel is not just a battle with the disruptive forces of bloodthirstiness and unbridled lust (the giant is a rapist and Arthur’s first significant blow castrates him); it is also a battle against barbarism.11 Giants are consistently savage, and they are consistently allied with Rome; there are a number of giants in the Roman army. Arthur’s defeat of the giants helps bring civilization to the lands he conquers.12 This, however, is a displacement of the giants. Originally, according to Geoffrey of Monmouth, the giants were in Britain, and it was the fugitive Trojan descendants who slew them to bring civilization to

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Britain.Thus in Malory the emphasis is on the British bringing a form of civilization to the savage and expansionist Roman empire instead of on Rome as the culture that civilized the British. (Indeed, to the extent that Arthur’s early struggles are his effort to civilize his people, then Britain is represented as civilizing itself.) The second significant encounter is Gawain’s battle with and conversion of Priamus.The two knights fight to a bloody draw, nearly killing each other. When they accord, Priamus announces his name; and, if that were not enough to suggest a link to Troy, he declares himself to be descended from Hector, not to mention Alexander, Judas Maccabeus, and Joshua (231; V.10), thus claiming four of the six non-Christian worthies as ancestors while making a point that he is not Roman and is, in fact, son of a rebel. His worthiness in no way justifies the Roman cause. Gawain’s strange response is to claim that he is no knight but just an orphan brought up in Arthur’s court.Thus the initial British response to the historical glories of the east is effacement, a self-admitted unworthiness. The thought that a page could fight so well dismays Priamus, however, so Gawain confesses to his noble heritage, which Priamus welcomes gratefully. Gawain’s initial claim to be orphaned may perhaps suggest the shortness of British lineages: although Gawain is the eldest son of Lot, that is a matter of one generation; he is disconnected from remote ancestors, in a way that Priamus, with his direct connection to the ancient worthies, is not. If England is an orphan of history, unable to cite an illustrious classical history, then in some ways its martial glories are even more remarkable; so, whether or not England convincingly claims the classical heritage as its own, its worthiness seems assured. Priamus then wishes to be christened, but first, to heal them both he has a vial with water from the four rivers that flow out of Eden (234; V.10). As an easterner, he has access to the physical sites and relics of the Christian tradition, but he does not have the spiritual access to it that Gawain’s baptismal water provides. This exchange of water from Eden for the water of baptism completes Priamus’ changing of sides.The other knight to convert, Palomides, also has a name taken from the Greek tradition (Palamedes revealed that Odysseus was feigning his madness), suggesting that the problem of Christianizing the classical tradition is displaced onto encounters with Saracens. Embodying classical traditions in Saracen knights allows them to be Christianized so they can pass from the threatening east into British fellowship.Arthur can thus lay claim to selective elements of the classical tradition without surrendering as a colonized tributary king. The Christian tradition that allows Priamus to unite with Arthur has its own divisions. Rome was not only the historical colonizer but also the contemporary seat of the papacy, and that could breed resentment.13 A duke of West Wales agrees to the war against Rome because he resents “the


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Potestate the Pope” (189; not in Caxton) and it is to the “proude Potestate” that Arthur sends the bodies of Lucius and his followers as mocking tribute (225; V.8). It is an anachronistic fellowship of senators and cardinals that surrenders to Arthur in the end (244; V.12), linked by their shared roles as foreign authorities crucial to British cultural history. Because the Roman army remains mostly pagan despite its alliance with the Pope, Arthur’s victories are clearly Christian victories, and Britain can become a Christian empire in contrast to pagan Rome. But because the pope is in Rome, Arthur’s victory shows him to be more powerful and just than the church bureaucracy is—a sense shared by a number of monarchs in their rivalries with the papacy. It is Gawain and England, not the pope in Rome, who converts Priamus. Thus, when Arthur is “crowned Emperoure by the Poopys hondis” (245; V.12) he has achieved a victory over the foreign elements of both the Roman church and Roman empire but without destroying their value to England. That Arthur is crowned on Christmas anticipates Charlemagne’s being crowned emperor, and it marks Arthur as his forerunner in becoming the defender of the church of Rome in the west and the concomitant transfer of power and prestige to England.Thus Arthur brings back from Rome the traditions necessary to Britain’s identity as a civilized, Christian nation but having shaken off the sense of inferiority and duty owed culturally and religiously to Rome. Arthur’s claim to the empire is buttressed by the idea of good lordship; that is, the principle that a lord owes a duty to his subjects.The Romans are bad lords.The pope does not help people ransom their knights (189; not in Caxton), and the Roman leaders do not pay their followers (239; not in Caxton). Arthur does pay his followers richly. King Angwysshaunce sums up the differences between the two: “Scotland had never scathe syne ye were kynge, and whan the Romaynes raynede uppon us they raunsomed oure elders and raffte us of oure lyves” (188; V.2). Arthur and Caesar may both get their lands by conquest, but it is their subsequent behavior, not merely the initial casus belli, that determines the justness of their rule. The mingling of justifications, conquest and kinship, and moral superiority, may explain why the text reports the arrival of the Roman ambassadors with their demand for tribute twice, once before Balin’s adventures when the Excalibur from the stone has broken but before the Lady of the Lake has given him the new Excalibur (48; I.23), and then again at the start of “Arthur and Lucius” after Nyneve has given Arthur the new Excalibur.The dominant chivalry has shifted between the two accounts of the Roman ambassadors’ demands, but by both standards Arthur’s war is justified. The justifications also approach Benedict Anderson’s definition of a nation as a community imagined to be both limited and sovereign. Although an enemy earl asserts that “Thy lorde wenys with his knyghtes to

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wynne all the worlde!” (213; not in Caxton), in fact, Arthur’s campaign is limited and not an indiscriminate eastern crusade or general conquest. Arthur takes great care to establish that he has a legitimate claim to be emperor of Rome (188; V.1), a claim that is repeated several times to the Emperor Lucius (192, 207; not in Caxton). Arthur does stop his campaign after being crowned emperor, prompted by his knights’ desire to return to their wives but under no military necessity to cease. Although expansive, Arthur’s conquests are limited by an understanding of what it is right for him to hold. The question of sovereignty is harder. Arthur does not explicitly reject the Roman claim in terms that demand English sovereignty, although the existence of his war with Rome testifies to a cultural fantasy undergirded by such a sense of sovereignty. His lordship over many lands does preclude the simple ethnic nationalism that claims each “people” should have its own independent nation.What Arthur offers instead is a model where lords, even if originally imposed externally, know and respond to their people (becoming, in effect, part of the nation) in contrast to the exploitative Roman empire whose governors remained foreign.Thus Scotland fares well under Arthur but badly under Roman occupation.When the husbandman asks Arthur to deal with giant, he says “Now, as thou arte our ryghtwos kynge, rewe on this lad and on thy lyege pople, and revenge us as a noble conquerroure sholde” (199; V.5), thus asserting that being a conqueror is not sufficient; he must also respond to the people he governs.Arthur makes the same general point explicit when he gives lands to Launcelot and Bors: Loke that ye take synge in all your brode londis, and cause youre lyege men to know you as for their kynde lorde, and suffir never your soveraynté to be alledged with your subjectes, nother the soveraygne of your persone and londys. (245; not in Caxton)

The use of the word kynde has a range of meaning that would include kinship (the French knights are being established as lords of French lands), but in the sense of Arthur’s advice it seems the kindness is not preexisting but something that must be created.The bond between king and subjects, then, seems not to be a bond based on preexisting national identity but not simply on conquest and power, either. Good lords create the bond, and so, even if Arthur is high king of many lands, each land should have a “kynde lorde” ruling under him. The existence of lands other than England under Arthur’s control means there are two communities that might be the basis for an Arthurian nation. Even during the Roman war, Malory distinguishes between England (anchored in the southeast) and Arthur’s British empire. The Roman


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ambassadors distinguish between England and Arthur’s overall holdings when they say “sende hym the trewage of this realme that thy fadir Uther Pendragon payde, other ellys he woll bereve the all thy realmys that thou weldyst” (186; not in Caxton). Arthur also preserves the distinction when he defies the Roman Emperor, saying, “I woll brynge with me the beste people of fyftene realmys” (190; not in Caxton).There are thus two potential nations: the country defined as all the lands under Arthur’s rule and England, the core of Arthur’s realm and his inheritance from his father. England has the place of privilege: when Gawain compliments a fellow knight, he makes a point of saying “In Ingelonde was thou borne” (210; not in Caxton). These conceptions coexist, and so the medieval nation is not defined simply as the lands held by the king. Furthermore, the distinction between England and greater Britain is evident in the personal interactions.The dominant pronoun between equals in the Morte Darthur is you, with thou being reserved primarily for inferiors or for insults,14 but the usage changes in “Arthur and Lucius.” In some cases the traditional patterns hold. The Romans tend to use you among themselves, except when Roman lords approach rebellion (e.g., 218; V.8; 239; not in Caxton). Initial Roman demands to the British tend to be made with an insulting thou, but subsequently they tend to use you as the upstarts earn honor. But when the English speak to each other, they tend to use thou, even when knights are addressing Arthur.This usage asserts a common bond in the face of a common danger, and thus it becomes a sign of community under stress (as happens in modern languages with tu/vous or du/Sie distinctions). Thus during the war the British use the thou/you distinction not to mark individual hierarchies but to confirm a collective purpose. The pronoun usage is complicated, not least because it can be hard to tell when a group is being addressed as opposed to an individual, and this in not the place to give a full account of it.Arthur himself usually uses thou, but he will occasionally use you at the end of a speech, perhaps as a signal of dismissal (a leaving of the community), but perhaps because he grants honors at the end of conversations. For instance, in his charge to Constantine, Arthur says “I make the . . . my trew ayre, for thou arte nexte of my kyn save sir Cador, thy fadir, and therefore, if that I dey, I woll that ye be crowned kynge” (195; not in Caxton); and likewise in granting mercy to a duchess, he says “thy deuke is in daunger . . . but ye shall have lyvelode to leve by as to thyne astate fallys” (242; altered in Caxton to you in V.12). In general, though, Arthur’s men seem to be using thou as a sign of fellowship in the face of external threat, not as insult or as a marker of rank. Thus, when Priamus proposes to Gawain that they aid Florence in battle, he uses thou as a sign of proposed community: “Now wolde thou suffir me for the love of thy God with a small parte of thy men to succoure hem betyme?” (237; not

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in Caxton). Gawain refuses, and he uses you, which signals both respect for his converted enemy and at least a temporary separation from the community of knights they observe fighting together: “Sir, grucch ye nat . . . the gre is there owne” (237; V.11). Usually, however, Priamus and Gawain exchange thous, emphasizing their companionship. Presumably, this use of thou to emphasize community occurs in “Arthur and Lucius” because the presence of the Romans makes it important to emphasize the common British bonds, while in tales that do not have such a significant external enemy, gradations within the community matter more. The gradations within the British community have not vanished, though, even during the war.Young knights tend to use you—Florence uses you to his father Gawain when deferring to his leadership (235; not in Caxton)—probably a mixture of politeness to their seniors and a recognition that as youths they are not fully part of the king’s community.Tributary kings and foreign allies also use you on occasion to mark that differences remain between their countries and England proper. In Arthur’s council, Arthur’s lords Ewayne and Ider address Arthur with thou while the king of Brittany and the lord of West Wales uses you (189; V.2). Angwysshaunce of Scotland is in between; he initially addresses Arthur with thou, emphasizing their common cause, but switches to you when reporting on the state of his own country, Scotland, under Arthur and the Romans (188; altered to you in Caxton V.2). The sense of England as a nation within the larger expanse of Arthur’s lands is not confined to the aristocracy (that is, the “nationalism” is not restricted to a single, aristocratic layer of society, a “lateral ethnie” in Anthony Smith’s terminology).15 In contrast to the kings, the husbandman who announces that the giant of Mount St. Michel has abducted Arthur’s cousin uses thou repeatedly to Arthur (198–99; V.5).16 Thus using thou within the English community crosses class lines, but class unity does not always cross national lines; even kings outside the strictly English community sometimes use the more formal you. The class identification is powerful, however, as seen in the speech of the philosopher who interprets Arthur’s dream. He addresses the king with thou in every instance except one: “your noble knights of the Round Table” (197; not in Caxton), which is probably both a sign of respect for the Round Table and an acknowledgement that the philosopher is not part of the community of fighting knights. Thus, within the larger framework of the contrast between east and west there are distinctions between England the other lands of Arthur’s realm. England and Rome serve as central cores that attract other countries into their cultural and military orbits. France, in this scheme, is in the middle, although it leans toward England.When the Marshal of France tells Arthur of the Roman’s depredations, he starts with a more distant tone, using not only


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you but also marking the difference between France and England by speaking of “oure marches” and “your noble people,” but at the end, acknowledging their dependence on Arthur, he switches to thou (205–06; V.5). Claudas, a French king, seems to align with Rome. However, when the Roman ambassadors return and recommend a defensive strategy, they speak of defending Germany (“the mountaynes of Almayne”), but Lucius chooses an aggressive strategy: “I caste me for to passe Almayne and so furth into Fraunce” (192; V.2). Thus Rome proper seems to encompass Italy and the Holy Roman Empire, while France is the buffer between Britain and Rome. The subtle effect of this careful pronoun usage is to demonstrate that Arthur’s forces are not automatically and eternally united; they choose to come together, and the community accepts new members—whether it is allies like the Scots and the French, who may make common cause with the English but are not of the same nation, or whether it is young knights like Florence who do not have the shared experiences and ties as their elders. The conversion of Priamus underlines that the English community is a created community: it is Arthur’s and his knights’ abilities to bring together noble warriors, often troublesome and rebellious, into a common effort that allows the victory over Rome and defines a nation. As Finke and Shichtman argue, Caxton’s edition has a different sense of nation.17 It homogenizes the English dialect used (arguably one step toward modern nationalism), thus losing the emphasis on common cause among men of different origins. Marc Ricciardi notes that Caxton omits or undercuts passages that celebrate the bond among Arthur and his knights.18 He dramatically reduces the role of the giants in the Roman army, and with it the opportunities for British fellowship in the face of Roman barbarism.19 And he alters the pronouns, tending to prefer you to thou, and thereby disturbs the careful balance of the Winchester manuscript between an avowed fellowship and the acknowledgement of boundaries. Launcelot While it has long been noted that Malory significantly augments Launcelot’s role in “Arthur and Lucius” as compared with other accounts of the Roman war,20 Launcelot too is not fully a member of Arthur’s court; he often uses you when he talks. His initial promise is mixed:“Thoughe my londis marche nyghe thyne enemyes, yet shall I make myne avow aftir my power that of good men of armys aftir my bloode thus many I shall brynge with me: twenty thousand helmys in haubirkes attyred that shall never fayle you” (189–90; not in Caxton).The initial thyne makes common cause against the joint enemy; the later you acknowledges that Launcelot is still to some extent an outsider, both young and French, in Arthur’s court. He is a border

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figure, a continental knight with his own relation to Rome through his own Gallic heritage. He must thus choose which side to support, and he decides that, though his lands may march near Arthur’s enemies’ territories, Launcelot’s knights will ride with Arthur. Even this choice does not bring him into the heart of the English cause. In later speech, Launcelot continues to use you when addressing Cador (215; not in Caxton).Thus Launcelot marks himself linguistically as not fully a member of the community of established knights “of Inglonde borne” (214; cf 210; neither in Caxton). Also separating from the community of established English knights is his youth. This concern becomes explicit when the convoy of prisoners is attacked.When the English lords debate whether to retreat, Launcelot says: To turne is no tyme, for here is all olde knyghtes of grete worship that were never shamed. And as for me and my cousins of my bloode, we ar but late made knyghtes, yet wolde we be loth to lese the worship that oure eldyrs have deservyd. (213; V.7)

Launcelot is clearly aware that the young knights have not yet won much worship of their own and the modest pronouns he uses acknowledge they have yet to prove they fully share the honor their elders have deserved. Launcelot’s success in war brings warm praise from Arthur, but it is not enough to establish Launcelot fully.The war ends when Arthur is crowned and his lords beg him to “reles us to sporte us with oure wyffis” (1:246; V.12).This may seem a “curtailment of crusade,”21 but the war with Rome, despite the battles against the heathen, is not a crusade. It is a defensive war, both literally, since it was provoked by the Roman challenge, and thematically, since it serves to distinguish English civilization from the threat of being absorbed into a merely colonial role in Roman history.The war is less about expanding Christendom than about defining England’s place within Europe. The barons’ return to their wives may underscore this, for Batt suggests that the women in this tale represent the lands and civilized ideals that need protecting.22 The victory over Rome completes the protective task; fighting for the holy land would be excessive.The return to the wives, however, also fragments the community that the war had forged. It is the lords with established lands and family connections that have wives; young knights such as Launcelot do not. Having won a role among Arthur’s men at war, Launcelot must still earn a place in the court at peace. It is this task that frames the “Tale of Sir Launcelot,” and, since marriage is one way of defining a knight’s place, it is unsurprising that so many question Launcelot about whom he loves and whom he might marry. The collective spirit of the Roman war is unstable: Balin’s career has already suggested that knights have interests that do not always align with


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their king’s. Moreover, the communal values of “Arthur and Lucius” depend on war with an external enemy. Arthur’s coronation as Emperor of Rome is the triumph of the nation’s endeavor, but it also raises the pressing question of what happens next, in times of peace. The opening of the “Launcelot” makes explicit the shift away from national war to solitary adventures: Sone aftir that kynge Arthure was com from Rome into Ingelonde, than all the knyghtys of the Rounde Table resorted unto the kynge and made many joustys and turnementes. And som there were that were but knyghtes encresed in armys and worshyp that passed all other of her felowys in prouesse and noble dedys, and that was well proved on many. But in especiall hit was prevyd on sir Launcelot de Lake. . . . Wherefore quene Gwenyvere had hym in grete favoure aboven all other knyghtis, and so he loved the quene agayne aboven all other ladyes dayes of his lyff, and for hir he dud many dedys of armys and saved her frome the fyre thorow his chevalry. (253; VI.1)

The emphasis on those who “were but knyghtes” marks a turn away from the armies and lords of “Arthur and Lucius” toward individual knights (even if the individual knights, as in Launcelot’s case, were leaders of men in the war). This is an announced shift in the way knights will be judged. The chivalry that judges men primarily by their effectiveness in war (which includes recruiting and leading large numbers to battle) will become less important, and the chivalry that emphasizes individual performance within one country comes to the fore. Launcelot finds his place in court by becoming the queen’s knight. Toward the end of Le Morte Darthur, it is reported that Launcelot was one of the “Queen’s Knights” who served her until they were elevated to the Round Table (1121; XIX.1) and that Guinevere provided Launcelot’s sword the day he was knighted (1059; XVIII.7). While these events are not narrated in the “Tale of Launcelot,” the narrator does assert that after his return from Rome, it is Guinevere, not Arthur, who cherishes him above all others for his deeds. Launcelot’s service to her changes not only his position in the court but also the role of women in chivalry. Arthur’s Round Table oath assumes the male knights will be in dominant positions and thus obligated to protect weaker women: they swear “allwayes to do ladyes, damsels, and jantilwomen and wydowes socour: strengthe hem in hir ryghtes, and never to enforce them” (120; III.15). Launcelot’s systematic service to women leaves the knight in less control, and many of Launcelot’s adventures seem to test what it means for a knight to be subordinate to woman. His first adventure involves his being kidnapped by four amorous sorcererqueens, Morgan le Fay among them: these women have all the marks of

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feminine authority in romance; they are would-be love objects, they are magical, and they are all identified as queens. Launcelot’s refusal to serve them (in any capacity) preserves the right of male choice; nonetheless, most of the rest of his adventures in this tale involve Launcelot’s service to women: he is rescued from the four queens on condition he fight for another woman’s father in a tournament; he rescues a lady’s hawk from a tree, despite being bad at climbing; he tries to save a woman from her murderous husband; he tries to heal a knight at the request of a lady; he battles a rapist-knight; and he rescues women enslaved by giants.Through it all, he is asked repeatedly about his relationship with Guinevere. The adventures (even comic ones, such as when Launcelot is mistaken in the dark for Belleus’s lady), seem to ask similar, more general questions: how much freedom does a knight lose by serving women? Is he feminized? Is he cut off from the society of fellow men? Launcelot, of course, proves himself to be a successful man, but along the way he alters the meaning of earlier places and symbols. In “Arthur and Lucius” the giant of Mount St. Michel is a symbol of barbarism, one of the many giants placed on the continent to mark the east instead of the west as uncivilized.The giant’s sexual appetites are monstrous, disruptive, and evil. Malory, moreover, inserts a speech that asserts the giant lusts especially for Guinevere (201;V.5). It is possible to read this as a distant allusion to the trouble Launcelot might cause: like the giant, Launcelot is French, almost invincible, and capable of causing disruption and war by his desire for Arthur’s wife; and his affair with Guinevere has already been prophesied (97; III.1).23 This imagery is turned on its head in the “Launcelot,” however. Launcelot fights with two giants who are oppressing a castle full of women, and these giants are located firmly in Britain: in fact, they hold Tintagil, the site of Arthur’s conception (272; VI.11). Malory changed his source to make the castle Tintagil (and he explicitly reminds readers that this is the castle as the one where Uther lay with Igrayne). It is also Malory that added the story that the damsels were forced to work during their imprisonment.24 The result is a revision of the original story of Arthur’s conception to emphasize the oppression of women, and gigantic barbarism is now internal, not foreign.25 Uther’s actions suddenly seem much more like rape. Arthur’s history is revised still further, since the next appearance of Tintagil is as a refuge for Trystram and Isode, which they use repeatedly. This obviously reverses the Uther story; now it is knight taking a willing woman away from a king, not a king taking an unwilling woman from a knight. Launcelot’s encounter provides the pivot point that allows this reversal; his duty to aid innocent women is his justification for defying the keepers of the castle, which sets the precedent for Trystram to defy his lord, even when the lord has more claim on the lady and she is not so innocent.


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The slippage shows how the word love has altered in meaning, from love as courtesy and protection which, as part of the chivalry mandated in Arthur’s oath, is counted a chivalric virtue, to love as romantic and sexual, which, although it leads to adultery, is still treated as a chivalric virtue because the same word is used. Geographically, too, Tintagil is changing its meaning. From a castle ceded to Uther and made subject to the king, it is transformed into a site free of royal authority.This provides a locus for knights seeking to augment their own status and pursue their own affairs. Besides establishing a place for himself in Arthur’s court, Launcelot, as Larry Benson points out, wants to prove two separate things: his worth as a knight and his worth as a lover.26 The two are linked (Guinevere loves his prowess) but, as the story of Pelleas, Ettarde, and Nyneve showed, the association between prowess and love is not automatic. His performance, therefore, balances his martial and his romantic roles.This is not, however, a distinction between public and private roles. Both love and prowess offer knights public ways of defining their characters.“Arthur and Lucius” begins and ends with romantic concerns—the arrival of Launcelot and Trystram at court (and Trystram’s refusal to fight in the common cause so that he can stay with Isode), and then at the end with the knights’ desire to sport themselves with their wives—precisely because love and prowess both matter in the public sphere. Women ask Launcelot frequently about his relation to Guinevere because it does affect his public role: whether he is on the marriage market, to whom his allegiances lie (particularly as the court grows more factionalized), and what his relation to the king may be are public questions; thus the strength of his bond to her is a matter of public importance, even if the private actions it is based on may not be.27 Since the conventions of love are as socially constructed as chivalric values are, they are equally subject to challenge and change. As discussed in the last chapter, Nyneve has already altered romantic conventions. Malory’s reminder that Guinevere will be threatened with the fire already introduces resistance to the love between Guinevere and Launcelot. Launcelot’s career, then, not only is a test of his worthiness as a lover; but it is also a test of the standards writers use to judge whether a lover is good.The standards in the “Launcelot” involve his ability to protect Guinevere and enhance her worship, which he does admirably. As R.M. Lumiansky noted, Launcelot is not seen with Guinevere in the “Launcelot,” and there is no evidence that Launcelot and Guinevere are sleeping together beyond rumors Launcelot consistently denies.28 In fact, if he is telling the truth, he has no use for consummated love at all: But for to be a weddyd man, I thynke hit nat, for than I muste couche with hir and leve armys and turnamentis, batellys and adventures.And as for to sey to take my pleasaunce with peramours, that woll I refuse: in prencipall for

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drede of God, for knyghtes that bene adventures sholde nat be advoutrers nothir lecherous, for than they be nat happy nother fortunate unto the werrys; for other they shall be overcom with a sympler knyght than they be hemself, other ellys they shall sle by unhappe and hir cursednesse bettir men than they be hemself. (270–71; VI.10)

Not only does this speech eschew all forms of sexual love,29 but it also strikes two blows at the courtly claim that love of a woman inspires a knight to greater prowess. Not only does Launcelot’s fear that adulterers will be overcome by simpler knights challenge the convention that love leads to prowess, but he also doubts that it would be good for lovers to have increased prowess, lest they use it for evil by overcoming better men. What then happens to the claim at the beginning of the “Launcelot” that “he loved the quene agayne aboven all other ladyes dayes of his lyff, and for hir he dud many dedys of armys”? Or, in other words, what is the purpose of love if it aims at neither sex nor marriage, nor even companionship, since Launcelot spends no time actually with Guinevere? The answer in the “Launcelot” seems to be status and protection.30 The queen’s regard is reward for his noble deeds and enhances his reputation, thus providing Launcelot a recognized place in Arthur’s court; in turn, he rescues her from the fire and his triumphs increase her worship.The four queens who kidnap him compete for him, but they lose him to one of their own ladies who recognizes that the appropriate response is to ask Launcelot for knightly (not sexual) service. Launcelot agrees to help her father Bagdemagus win a tournament, with an increase in status for everyone involved (258; VI.4). Hallewes, the necrophiliac sorceress who tries to embalm Launcelot, takes this principle to its logical extreme: she recognizes that Launcelot need not be living in order for her to gain fame as Launcelot’s lover. In a similar mode of exaggeration, when Launcelot goes to sleep in Belleus’s pavilion and Belleus, mistaking him for his lady, begins to make love to him, Launcelot wounds Belleus severely but then promotes him to the Round Table (259–60; VI.5). Their encounter in bed does result in a public bond and social advancement (even for Launcelot as he gains a client), although the private sexual expression of the bond is violently rejected. In short, love as it is treated in the “Launcelot” is not at all private; it is about public honor.This section of the Morte Darthur cements Launcelot’s reputation as the queen’s lover without the two of them spending time together at all: it is all based on Launcelot’s public performances. Launcelot elides the sexual component of love, although concern on the subject is evident. When Launcelot does confront adultery, he shifts the issue from whether the woman is guilty of unlawful sexual activity to the husband’s mistreatment of his wife. Thus Launcelot has no qualms about stepping


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between Pedyvere and his wife when Pedyvere suspects of her adultery (284; VI.17). He is doing his best to make the treatment of women a matter of public concern, and so he sees Pedyvere’s efforts as shameful in a way Pedyvere does not.Although Pedyvere succeeds in killing his wife by trickery, Launcelot succeeds in making Pedyvere’s violence the matter of public concern. Pedyvere is sent to Guinevere’s court and then to Rome—both places key to defining Launcelot’s public persona—and learns to repent of his own actions instead of judging his wife’s. The question remains, however, what Launcelot’s public performance implies about what Launcelot and Guinevere do privately; many people demand to know if Launcelot and the queen are sleeping together. For most people, their public relationship cannot be understood simply in terms of public actions; their private deeds and intentions inflect the public meaning. The “Tale of Gareth” that follows makes this clear, for Gareth and Lyones insist that love include both public performance and private gratification. They can marry and thus legitimate this added sexual component of love; Launcelot cannot. Solutions to this problem are addressed by the “Trystram,” in which the consequences of sex outside marriage are explored, and the “Sankgreal,” in which celibacy is examined. Thus, as Donald Hoffman has suggested, the “Launcelot” is the beginning of a long sequence of stories exploring different forms of love.31 The “Launcelot,” of course, also concerns male–male relations. His attempt to earn glory in the English court put his kinsmen Ector and Lionel at risk. Sir Launcelot also proves himself to (and sometimes against) knights of the Round Table. In a tournament, he defeats Mordred, Mador de la Porte, and Gahalantyne (262–63; VI.7). He rescues Gaheris and many others from Tarquin (265–68; VI.8–9). He rescues Kay and then, in Kay’s armor, defeats Gawain, Uwayne, Ector, and Kay (273–77,VI.11–13). A number of these knights are close to Arthur; Uwayne, Gaheris, and Gawain are kin, and Kay is Arthur’s foster-brother. Furthermore, Gawain and Kay were prominent in the war with Rome. Not only does Launcelot leave Gaheris and Kay in his debt, but also by offering them credit they don’t deserve (he lets Gaheris release Tarquin’s prisoners and sends his own prisoners to court in Kay’s name), he makes sure that they, to be honest, have to repeat his praises in the presence of Arthur and Guinevere.The result is that, at the end of the tale, the focus is not on the reunion with Guinevere. Her last named appearance is when she judges Pedyvere and concludes that the adventure is “a grete rebuke unto sir Launcelot, but natwythstondyng his worshyp is knowyn in many diverse contreis” (286;VI.17).After that, the focus is on his reunion with the other knights he met in the course of his adventures (so that “there was lawghyng and smylyng amonge them”) and their recounting of his deeds to King Arthur (286; VI.18). This seems to be Launcelot’s full

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welcome into the masculine center of Arthur’s court. Launcelot has taken the honour that Guinevere gave him at the start of the tale and increased it so that now all acknowledge him the greatest; “moste he was honoured of hyghe and lowe” (287; VI.18). He has gone from a knight famous in the “diverse contreis” that Arthur rules to a fixture within England itself. Conclusion Launcelot’s relation to Arthur and Guinevere thus carefully navigates through a maze of possible community identifications.There is more than one way of imagining national communities at play in Malory’s work. While there is a basic divide between the pagan Roman confederation and Arthur’s Christian lands, there are also divides within the alliances. England has an identity separate from Arthur’s kingdom, encouraging a sense of England as a nation within Arthur’s much larger empire. Launcelot’s career moves from being a knight of the outer empire to being a fixture within the smaller nation of England. This England comes much closer to Anderson’s definition of a modern nation than it does to Patrick Geary’s description of a premodern state: Nor did a common national identity unite the high and low, lord and peasant, into a deeply felt community of interest. Even less did intellectuals and social elites find their primary self-identification by projecting their national identities into the distant past of the migration period. Rather, to the extent that they looked to the ancient past for solidarity, they identified self-consciously with Roman society and culture.32

Quite obviously, Arthur’s war with Rome is a reaction against Roman colonization, a way of imagining England’s cultural debt to Rome in ways that preserved England’s national dignity. Within Arthur’s greater British empire, there is an English community feeling that does cross class lines, even if the “community of interest” between high and low was something that rulers had to establish, as Arthur instructs Bors and Launcelot. For those concerned primarily with nomenclature, then, the imagined England in Malory’s Roman war has a good claim to the label of modern nation. In a neat evolutionary model, it would be a transitional form, in which a modern sense of England as a nation coexists with the older sense of Arthur’s lands being determined by royal right and territorial acquisition, not by nation. These conclusions may be too easy, however. As Kathy Lavezzo argues, there are multiple visions of England and nation coexisting, both modern and medieval, using many similar elements to diverse ends.33 Analyzing how communities are imagined ends up being more fruitful than deciding on whether or not those communities are nations.

CHAPTER 4 REGIONAL POLITICS

hile the first part of Le Morte Darthur is focused on the king’s court, later sections switch to focus on how individual knights create local communities or adjust their places in already existing communities. The focus is not on England’s place in the world, but on individuals’ and regions’ places within England. While Launcelot must earn a place in the English community, Gareth, as nephew to the king, is guaranteed access to the king; however, as Gawain’s little brother, his place in the political structure of the realm is depressingly predetermined.To alter it, he must find not royal favor but royal respect.1 Trystram, on the other hand, is an eldest son, but he is born far away from the cultural center. He must simultaneously establish himself in the regional community of Cornwall and find a place in the national hierarchy that does not force him to abandon his local ties. For both knights, love is not just a personal endeavor but a form of public display that helps determine political alliances. Gareth is young, apparently too young to have participated in the Roman war. As a younger son of a powerful family, he does not have the inheritance that Launcelot has, but his high status, ironically, protects him from the adventures that might win him worship and wealth. Gareth must separate himself from his mother and his uncle Arthur in order to establish himself through a series of self-conscious performances as an independent lord, who can then integrate himself into the court on terms he chooses. The means of separation Gareth chooses highlights an issue not dwelt on in the Roman war: class. His disguise as a lower-class kitchen knave confronts the characters he meets with the problem of how to respond to a man who has some but not all the attributes of the knightly class.The number of knights in fifteenth-century England had declined to only a few hundred,2 and not all men who could be knighted chose to be: knighthood could be an honor dearly bought. The rise in non-knightly military classes— esquires and yeomen—is not simply a matter of upward mobility, therefore,

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but of a dwindling of the knightly class. Gareth’s decision to seem a promising newcomer to Arthur’s court who asks for room and board, not arms, reveals a fear of the upper classes turning away from knighthood as well as concern with lower classes potentially rising into it. Gareth is clearly promising; most lords (with the exception of Kay) are, despite their disappointment with his status, relatively willing to accept him, either as a client (Arthur, Launcelot, and Gawain) or as an opponent (the colored knights along his way).This is not surprising. English armies were not as class-segregated as the French, and Gareth’s obvious fitness makes him a good masculine companion for those who would not profit from his wealth but do benefit from his strength. For women, however, his apparent lack of status is more troubling. He is strong enough to be of good service, but he lacks the economic and social qualifications to be a good lover. Gareth’s career reveals a split between what men and women value as primary chivalric virtues and later reveals a gap between personal desires and the public performances that are meant to express them. Gareth reveals how artificial many of the knightly conventions are by using them to establish himself in the eyes of the court. He exploits Arthur’s custom of not feasting until a marvel appears by staging an artificial one. He willingly accepts a lower-class role instead of seeking “worship” directly, thus setting up an artificial rise in status to make his final glory greater.When Lyones comes to court, she too plays on romance convention, keeping her sister’s name secret (to Arthur’s annoyance) without obvious cause. And Gareth and Lyones explode beyond hope any claim to naturalness that the romantic conventions that governed Launcelot’s tale might have had. When Gareth seeks Lyones after rescuing her, she shuts the gates and raises the drawbridge.Their brief conversation destroys the idea that nonsexual devotion expressed through distant adventure—Launcelot’s initial romantic style—might be a natural expression of human love: [Dame Lyones said] “Go thy way, sir Bewmaynes, for as yet thou shalt nat have holy my love unto the tyme that thou be called one of the numbir of the worthy knyghtes. And therefore go and laboure in worshyp this twelvemonthe, and than ye shall hyre newe tydynges.” “Alas! fayre lady,” seyde sir Bewmaynes, “I have nat deserved that ye sholde shew me this straungnesse.And I hadde wente I sholde have had ryght good chere with you, and unto my power I have deserved thanke. And well am I sure I have nought your love with parte of the beste bloode within my body.” “Fayre curteyse knyght,” seyde dame Lyonesse, “be nat displeased, nother be nat overhasty, for wete you well youre grete travayle nother your good love shall nat be loste, for I consyder youre grete laboure and your hardynesse, your bounté and your goodnesse as me ought to do.And therefore go on your way

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and loke that ye be of good comforte, for all shall be for your worshyp and for the best; and, pardé, a twelve-monthe woll sone be done. And trust me, fayre knyght, I shall be trewe to you and never betray you, but to my deth I shall love you and none other.” (327; VII.19)

This passage, dialogic in the Bakhtinian sense of dramatizing the collision of two very different worldviews through their uses of the word “love,” fundamentally reshapes the relationship between worship and love. Lyones first dismisses Gareth with the insulting thou,3 and her claim is that Gareth must win worship in order to win her love. Gareth’s protest, which she largely accepts, shifts the standard of worth from his public worship to the private knowledge she has of him. She immediately switches to the warmer you and declares her love in no ambiguous terms. In doing so, she makes it plain that serving a woman through a prolonged period of knightly adventure is not to win her love; it is to win worship in the eyes of the other aristocrats to make their mutual love more attractive to society. The audience is the court, not the lady herself. Gareth’s conduct as a lover is a different kind of chivalric performance from Launcelot’s. Although Launcelot sends prisoners to the queen and fights in her name, his actions are not designed to reveal an intimacy with her; indeed, he persistently denies it, and the result is a barrage of questions from almost anyone he meets about exactly where he stands with respect to her. His chivalric performances demonstrate other virtues: loyalty to her (for whatever cause), protection of women in general, mercy, and prowess. Many of Gareth’s later adventures, however, are deliberately designed as vehicles to demonstrate the love between Gareth and Lyones. Even when Lyones gives up her demand for a year-long adventure, her sister Lyonet persists, and “for savyng of [Lyones’s] worshyp” she prevents Gareth and Lyones from consummating their love until they are married (333;VII.22). She does this, not by any gentle means such as sleeping in her sister’s room, but by summoning an armed knight who repeatedly fights with Gareth, wounding him seriously. The result is to make the interruption of their consummation public, part of the performance, at least for a privileged group of close relatives and friends.4 The combat is to Gareth’s credit as a knight; the delayed desire is to Gareth’s and Lyones’s credit as lovers. Lyonet recognizes that sex is not simply something shared between two lovers: it is part of a set of signs that others know what relations are between two people so that they can treat the couple appropriately. The public performance of love becomes a tool for winning the appropriate place within the national community, even though it may interfere with their private desires. Their public actions—imitations of what Launcelot has done—thus become theater, not the natural expression of love. Later, Malory himself

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uses theatrical images. Arthur comments that “sir Palomydes begynneth to play his play” (759; X.79), and soon after Launcelot answers “Yondyr rydyth a knyght that playyth his pageauntes” (759; X.79). The play has serious purpose in constructing the political communities of Arthur’s court. Gareth undertakes his initial deception to “preve my frendys” (313; VII.11), his implication being that the public actions of the other knights, which hitherto have been taken at face value, are also masks which may hide unsavory characters. And, indeed, Gareth does discover a difference between Gawain and Launcelot. His deception also changes the meaning of “aventure.” Gareth and Lyones exploit romance conventions for their own purposes. Gareth comes to court as a “marvel” to satisfy Arthur’s tradition and thereby gain his requests. Lyones deliberately kidnaps Gareth’s dwarf to bring him to her, but this is not “aventure” as a chance encounter with genuine enemies; this is deliberate acting. It relies on knowledge of intention; her kidnapping the dwarf is not a crime, not because the action is innocent but because the motive behind it is. Some knights benefit dramatically from a focus on character and motive rather than victory. In the next fair-unknown tale,“La Cote Mal Tayle,” the young knight cannot complete his quest without help; he is unhorsed by Bleoberis and Palomides (though they won’t fight on foot) and captured twice, much to the scorn of the damsel with whom he travels. By most others, however, he is judged worthy, and Mordred explains why: Ye ar gretly to blame so to rebuke hym, for I warne you playnly he is a good knyght, and I doute nat but he shall preve a noble man. But as yette he may nat sytte sure on horsbacke, for he that muste be a good horseman hit muste com of usage and excercise. But whan he commyth to the strokis of his swerde he is than noble and myghty. And that saw sir Bleoberys and sir Palomydes; for wete you well they were wyly men of warre, for they wolde know anone, whan they sye a yonge knyght, by his rydynge, how they were sure to gyffe hym a falle frome his horse othir a grete buffett. But for the moste party they wyll nat lyght on foote with yonge knyghtes, for they ar myghtyly and strongely armed. For in lyke wyse syr Launcelot du Lake, whan he was fyrste made knyght, he was oftyn put to the worse on horsebacke, but ever uppon foote he recoverde his renowne and slew and defowled many knyghtes of the Rounde Table. And therefore the rebukes that sir Launcelot ded unto many knyghts causyth them that be men of prouesse to beware, for oftyn tyme I have seyne the olde preved knyghtes rebuked and slayne by them that were but yonge begynners. (466; IX.4)

This speech almost gives up on interpreting worth from performance in battle (later, the narrator will admit that worse knights sometimes defeat

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better ones, so individual fights prove nothing; 484; IX.12). Mordred shifts into the future tense to say that La Cote Mal Tayle “shall preve” a good knight, avoiding the question of what his present performance proves.The victories of the experienced knights are reinterpreted to be signs of cleverness, not overall worth; and it is the absence of the fight on foot that testifies to La Cote Mal Tayle’s prowess. Finally, Mordred illustrates La Cote Mal Tayle’s worth by pointing out his resemblance to Launcelot, but however glorious the comparison sounds, it is grounded in losing jousts. Direct interpretation of worth from victory does not work any more. People must know the worth of the characters and adjust the interpretation of the action accordingly. La Cote Mal Tayle is a client looking for patronage, not fighting to establish his independent influence, as Gareth does. Gareth acquires his own lands through marriage; La Cote Mal Tayle holds his lands from Sir Launcelot, so the young knight ends up in the middle level of Launcelot’s affinity (476; IX.9).5 Gareth, although loving Launcelot, does not become officially his tenant, because his superior performance has earned him a greater independence. La Cote Mal Tayle performs well as a new client, and he is praised accordingly. He can lose to tricky, older knights and not lose face. More ambitious young knights must do better: thus, when Gareth faces a wily man of war, the Red Knight, he beats him by learning the tricks from him (323; VII.17); Alexander the Orphan also fights “wyldely and nat wyttyly” (641; X.36) but wins. Thus, many of the combats of the “Gareth” and “Trystram” are interpreted differently than the battles of earlier tales. When fighting real enemies— rebels, foreign armies, genuine villains—knights must win or the community is in danger. Encounters in which nothing more is at stake than (at worst) temporary imprisonment and a disappointing performance, on the other hand, help clarify relative hierarchies and to create or reinforce political alliances. This is a new development in the book; as Mordred recognizes, knights began exploiting chivalric encounters to enhance or protect artificially their own prestige after learning from Launcelot. This reveals the fluid chivalry of Le Morte Darthur. Knights change in response to what they see, and not always by simple imitation or rejection. Instead, chivalry becomes a tool that can craft local or individual performances, which knowing audiences will interpret by considering motive, identity and history as well as victory. This applies equally to women as to knights. Judged on deeds, Lyonet looks like a villainness; she follows her abuse of Gareth by repeatedly sending a knight to attack him while he tries to sleep with Lyones.They believe her, however, when she explains that her intentions are for heir worship, and thus they accept her deeds as performance rather than as a real threat. Likewise, La Cote Mal Tayle’s “Damesell Maledysaunt,” who berates him in

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an effort to spare his life, is also called the “Damesell Byeau-Pansaunte” and the “lady Byeaue-Vyvante.” Speech, like deeds, can no longer be interpreted straightforwardly; someone may speak badly while thinking and living well. Gareth’s decision to earn his own way comes at the expense of Gawain, despite Gawain’s good will. In the tournament to win Lyones, this becomes obvious: And ever the herrowdys cryed and seyde: “This is sir Gareth, kynge Lottys son of Orkeney!” And whan sir Gareth aspyed that he was discoverde, than he dowbled his strokys and smote downe there sir Sagramoure and his brother sir Gawayne. “A, brother,” seyde sir Gawayne,“I wente ye wolde have smyttyn me.”6 So whan he herde hym sey so, he thrange here and there, and so with grete payne he gate oute of the pres. (351; VII.31)

Gawain’s complaint and Gareth’s apparent shame seem justified. Part of Gareth’s violence may be a reaction to Gawain’s vengefulness, but, as Larry Benson suggests, part of it is a rivalry over who will be the dominant brother in the Orkney family.7 The Red Knight was besieging Lyones to provoke an encounter with Gawain or Launcelot, but Gareth takes his brother’s place.This indirect rivalry becomes direct in the encounter at the tournament. After Gareth flees, Gawain and Gareth meet and fight in earnest, interrupted only by Lyonet’s timely arrival.At this point, they make peace, but the words of reconciliation are all Gawain’s (357; VII.34).When Arthur learns that Gawain has found Gareth, despite his gladness he makes “many a peteous complaynte . . . to sir Gareth” (358;VII.34). Unlike most fair unknowns, Gareth does not struggle to win the place that is his by right of blood; he fights to get away from his family, to the distress of Morgause, Gawain, and Arthur. Their preestablished political community, however, would keep Gareth subordinate. However, to define Gareth’s political choice solely in terms of which faction he joins, Launcelot’s or Gawain’s, oversimplifies the tale. Although the political world of Le Morte Darthur is dominated by the great houses (Lot’s sons, Pellinore’s sons, Launcelot and his kin, and the divided house of Trystram and Mark) assessing the world in these terms is to assess it in the terms favored by eldest sons. When Gareth fights in the tournament, the knights on his side cross factional lines: Gareth’s conquered knights, the beginning of his own affinity, fight for him; so do Trystram, Dynas, Palomides, and his brothers, members of Trystram’s affinity. Grummor Grummorson may be a member of Gawain’s affinity;8 others, such as Sir Tarquin, fall outside the major affinities (343–44; VII.27). What unites this tournament team is their status as outsiders: Gareth is a younger son, Trystram “was nat at that tyme knyght of the Rounde Table” (344;VII.27),

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Palomides and his brethren are of a Saracen family (though Palomides is the only one who has not yet converted), and Tarquin has been well beyond the king’s favor. When Gareth refuses to caparison himself “but as othir meane knyghtis” (344;VII.27), this goes beyond disguise to making a political statement: instead of seeing the political landscape as divided by boundaries between affinities, one can see it as divided by differences in wealth and power. From the eyes of the outsiders, which faction a knight belongs to matters much less than his relative wealth and status, and Gareth the younger son sees himself as an outsider, not simply as a junior member of someone else’s affinity. Trystram The “Trystram,” deals not just with the central Arthurian court but the diverse provinces of petty kings. Thus, there is not one center defining a single set of social norms. The emphasis instead is on multiple regional concerns. The “Trystram” abounds in locations outside Arthur’s direct control: Cornwall, Ireland, Joyous Gard. The questions of how local loyalties intersect with national ones become more pressing.Trystram actively seeks to avoid joining the Round Table (489, 572; IX.15, X.6). When Arthur commands Trystram to stay at Arthur’s court,Trystram’s answer is “Thereto me is lothe, for I have to do in many contreys” (572; X.6). To deal with many “contreys” requires a different kind of chivalry than dealing with one royal court, and Trystram’s career shows more concern with individual advancement and personal alliances than with national service. In a search for structure, it is tempting to speak of a straightforward evolution: to claim that Le Morte Darthur is the story of a kingdom’s rise, flowering, and fall; or that there is a progression of experiments in love, from the distant love of “Launcelot” to the married love of “Gareth” to the adultery of “Trystram” to the celibacy of the “Sankgreal.”9 Unfortunately, chivalric developments are not neat stages that replace one another.While new forms of chivalry are added, the old forms remain valued. By the time the narrative reaches “Trystram,” there is a sometimes contradictory plethora of chivalries.The focus on regional communities does not imply a chronological weakening of the nation but a shift in the narrator’s attention. Many of the events in the “Trystram” are narrated after events they must have preceded—the “Tale of King Arthur” ends when Trystram comes to court, yet it is not until the beginning of the “Trystram” that Trystram’s birth is narrated; in the opening of the “Gareth,” characters compare Gareth with La Cote Mal Tayle, although his tale is not told until the “Trystram.”10 The parallel chronologies suggest parallel worlds.The political logic of the provinces is not the political logic of the national center, and it needs a

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separate history.The emphasis on local bonds is not a historical stage in the development or collapse of the Arthurian political system. As the standards of chivalry become more numerous and less compatible, so do the narrative conventions. Romance and history mix ever more finely, but their concerns remain separate.11 Narrative styles set off different components of chivalry: the romantic, the courtly, the valorous, the political. In the “Trystram,” the shifting values lead to shifting generic conventions. Thus, in “La Cote Mal Tayle,” what starts out as a revenge tragedy ends up as the story of a young man earning his place in the world.Then, in the very similar “Alexander the Orphan,” the story starts out as a revenge tragedy, shifts to a story of establishment as Alexander heads for Arthur’s court; but when he gets lost it turns into a love story as he ends up never joining Arthur or killing Mark; instead, he settles happily in France with two damsels. It is necessary, perhaps, that the characters become confused: if one is to pass from the relative happiness of the “Gareth” to the unhappiness and divisions of the “Grail,” then this is where the fatal flaws must surface.12 But it is possible to write about confusion without being confusing, and this Malory does not do, as the diversity of scholarly opinion about what the fatal flaws might be proves.13 The confusion has been called a failure of Malory’s or a failure of modern audiences.14 However, as more recent work points out, the chaos is used to valuable narrative effect.15 The text does not allow readers to make themselves superior to the characters; instead, it subjects readers to the same bewildering array of values as the knights must face, forcing the recognition that chivalry is an inconsistent system of values, even while each of its contradictory components is good and worth preserving. The multiple communities that allow for the confusing diversity of chivalric ideals also create many almost parallel situations, and so the “Trystram” proceeds by analogy and allusion.16 Trystram and Launcelot are great lovers who betray their kings and run mad, La Cote Mal Tayle and Alexander the Orphan are fair unknowns who parallel Gareth, and in their quest for revenge against Mark they parallel each other and perhaps Trystram. In addition to the parallels, prophecies and allusions connect the “Trystram” to other significant moments in Arthurian history. Merlin’s prophecies begin to come to fulfillment; and later, as Launcelot, Guinevere, and Arthur move to their tragic fall, at key moments there are allusions back to Trystram’s career.17 Arthur’s early adventures also shadow the “Trystram.” Somewhat arbitrarily, I use these moments to structure my argument. Trystram’s initial fight over tribute prompts a discussion of the regional politics in the tale.The encounter between Launcelot and Trystram focuses attention on love and feud. Finally, Palomides’ conversion provides a focus for an exploration of religious and moral values in the tale.

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Rome and Ireland In the “Trystram,” Le Morte Darthur shifts to the provinces. As the narrator explains in the beginning of the tale: And at that tyme kynge Arthure regned, and he was hole kynge of Ingelonde, Walys, Scotlonde, and of many othir realmys. Howbehit there were many kynges that were lordys of many contreyes, but all they helde their londys of kynge Arthure; for in Walys were two kynges, and in Cornuayle and in Weste were two kynges; also in Irelonde were two or three kynges, and all were undir the obeysaunce of kynge Arthure; so was the kynge of Fraunce and the kynge of Bretayne, and all the lordshyppis unto Roome. (371; VIII.1)

These provinces are ruled by knightly affinities,18 and among the affinities lies much of the action of the tale.These tales, therefore, can include knights relatively distant from the center of national power. Gareth and Lameroke are younger sons.19 Trystram is Cornish, Lameroke Welsh, Gareth is from the Orkneys, and Palomides is a Saracen, whatever combination of race, religion, and nationality that may imply. Their interests are a mix of the personal, provincial, and national. They need to prove themselves not just against their enemies but also to their regional neighbors and the nationally powerful figures of Arthur’s court. A number of critics have noted the similarities between the world portrayed in the “Trystram” and the “bastard feudalism” of the fifteenth century, but too often readers have focused on the national structure of bastard feudalism, not the regional ones. Elizabeth Pochoda, for instance, argues that “the ‘Tristram’ gains a disturbingly high degree of verisimilitude” but that the “best knights increase their worship as they act in accordance with the highest ideals of the community . . . because they attempt to increase the fame and worship . . . of the Round Table as a whole.”20 Speaking as if there were only one national community obscures the many regional communities with their own concerns. Because regional interests matter as much as national ones, the Round Table and Arthur’s court are often not knights’ ultimate goals: Trystram resists his induction into the order of the Round Table fellowship; Gareth delays his entrance into Arthur’s knightly fellowship until he can enter on his own terms; Lameroke will not stay at Arthur’s court; Palomides, although a Christian at heart, postpones his christening and thus his full acceptance into the Christian community.The middle section of the Morte Darthur focuses on regional politics, not the national center. The language of a political “center” is particularly apt in Malory, where Arthur seems to rule most of England directly and the affinities have most power on the edges of his empire: Launcelot and his kin are dominant in France; Gawain and his brothers are lords of the north; Lameroke is

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preeminent in Wales; and Trystram starts as the one great knight of Cornwall, but increasingly develops ties to Ireland as well. None of the major knights, except Kay,21 seems to have major land holdings in southeast England near the capital. The tournament at Lonezep separates southeast England from the rest of Arthur’s lands: [K]ynge Arthure devysed that all the knyghtes of this londe, of Cornwayle, and of North Walys, shulde juste ayenste all thes contreyis: Irelonde and Scotlonde and the remenaunte of Walys, and the contrey of Goore and Surluse, and Lystenoyse, and they of Northumbirlonde, and all those that hylde londis of kynge Arthurs a this halff the se. (682; X.52)

In Arthur’s division, the narrator shows his English bias by his use of “this londe,” but it is an England sharply limited, with the western and northern regions truncated. This contrasts sharply with “Arthur and Lucius,” in which “oure knyghtes” referred to any of the men supporting Arthur, although even during the war it was clear England was a privileged subset of Arthur’s lands. The regions are associated with the knightly affinities, and of the major affinities, two are dominant: Gawain is nephew to the king; and Launcelot is the royal favorite. This adds a political dimension to the mixture of admiration, jealousy, and suspicion with which the western affinities of Lameroke and Trystram view the insiders, particularly Gawain and his brothers. There are also rivalries among the provincial affinities. When Trystram defeats Marhault, for instance, Ireland is deprived of a knight who sat at Arthur’s Round Table. Trystram’s growing bonds to the Irish court afterward are not just a matter of personal reconciliation but of Ireland adjusting to a political situation in which it is the Cornish knight who increasingly has the attention of King Arthur. Trystram’s career is in some sense shaped like Arthur’s; born in Cornwall, Trystram has a disrupted childhood followed by a spectacular victory in response to a demand for tribute.22 It is the differences, though, that mark how chivalry changes when placed in a regional context. Trystram stays aloof from most of the events of national importance, and throughout the Morte Darthur, Trystram’s absence is commented upon. Not only does he leave the court before the war with Rome, but also at the end of the “Gareth” Trystram again leaves Arthur’s court despite objections (363; VII.36). Finally,Trystram is present at the feast that begins the quest for the Grail (845; XII.14), but he is conspicuously missing in that quest, even though the prose Tristan included a Grail component.23 Trystram misses, therefore, the major adventures of Arthur’s court and episodes that help define the national values associated with the Round Table.24

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Trystram’s distance from Arthur allows him to develop chivalric principles away from the royal court, and he rewrites Arthur’s early career from a knightly and individual perspective.25 His first fight (at Tintagil, no less) is ostensibly to free Cornwall from tribute to Ireland, a reminder of Arthur’s fight to free England from Rome that Trystram shirked, but it is an individual encounter, not a national endeavor. Nowhere is there the concern for justice or the questions of good governance that are debated at the start of “Arthur and Lucius.” The war between England and Rome was a war over origins and cultural values.This national significance is lacking in the fight between Cornwall and Ireland. Trystram was educated in France, and Marhault, while Irish, is strongly associated with Arthur’s English court. Later, when Trystram fights for the honor of Cornish knights against several Round Table knights (e.g., 399; VIII.16), the cultural distinctions are real (a century later Queen Elizabeth would mock Sir “Warter” Raleigh’s Devonshire accent)26 but small. “Cornish” is a convenient taunt that apparently had sting. In his “Ordinances of War,” Henry V decreed: that nomaner man gyve no reproche to none other, bicause of the cuntrey that he is of, that is to say be he Frenshe, Englissh,Walsh, or Irissh, or of any other cuntrey, whens that ever he be, that noman say no vilony to none other, thorough the whiche vilony saying may fall sodeyn manslaughter or resyng of people.27

The fights over regional difference that Henry V wanted to prevent within his army provide knights in peacetime an excuse to show their mettle. Trystram, as a young knight, uses a style of chivalry that exploits regional rivalries for personal advancement. To emphasize Cornwall’s regional status is not to deny that in some ways Cornwall is a microcosm of the nation. When Morgan le Fay maliciously sends a magic drinking horn to Arthur, Lameroke diverts the messenger to King Mark, partly to spite Trystram and partly because, as he explains,“I had lever stryff and debate felle in kyng Markys courte rether than in kynge Arthurs courte, for the honour of bothe courtes be nat lyke” (443; XIII.38). Critics have long recognized that Malory pursues a similar strategy: issues of adultery, rivalry, and treason are displaced from Arthur’s court until the end; Mark’s court, inferior but roughly parallel, provides the arena to explore the ramifications of these issues without forcing a crisis in Camelot. Mark’s court is only roughly parallel to Arthur’s, however, because it is a provincial court; it is not simply a “bad” court to Arthur’s “good” one.28 Since Mark is a tributary king, he is limited in what he can do; and Trystram can leave Cornwall and prosper. After being caught in bed with Isode the Fair, for instance,Trystram flees to King Howell of Brittany, where Howell’s

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daughter Isode le Blaunche Maynes heals him.The new local tie is so strong that Trystram marries the new Isode “by the grete meanes of the kynge and his sonne” (434; VIII.36). Later, when Mark exiles Trystram,Trystram hardly suffers (save for his separation from Isode): he quickly forms ties to Launcelot’s affinity and soon after joins the Round Table. King Mark is so grieved at the good reports he hears of Trystram that he resolves legal banishment is insufficient and plots murder (577; X7).Trystram’s ability to operate outside of Cornwall gives him greater freedom than Launcelot has with respect to Arthur.29 Launcelot does rule much of France, but to retreat to his French lands is to leave the fellowship of Arthur’s knights.Trystram, on the other hand, can rebel against Mark while growing ever close to the major affinities. In doing so, he breaks away from Mark’s Cornish affinity to build his own, and thus there is often a tension between Trystram’s Cornish loyalties and his personal ties. His first fight for Cornwall makes him the enemy of the Irish court. Later, though, he makes his peace with the Irish king, partly by promising to champion Irish interests in England if Angwysh will be his “good lord” (391; VIII.12). This arrangement bears fruit when Trystram defends Angwysh from a charge of treason (407; VIII.21).Trystram in return asks that Isode be given to King Mark as a wife, and Angwysh protests that “I had lever than all the londe that I have that ye wolde have wedded hir yourself ” (411; VIII.24). Although subordinate in Cornwall, Trystram is superior to Mark in national influence and thus (love aside) a better match for Isode.Trystram insists that he will not be false of his promise to Mark, and so his Cornish loyalty hinders a formal alliance to Ireland.The personal alliance remains, however, and it is fitting that the Round Table seat Trystram finally receives was Marhault’s (572; X.6). After Trystram establishes ties with Ireland, a similar pattern occurs in Trystram’s relations with the Welsh knight Lameroke. Mark, envious of Lameroke’s success in a tournament, orders Trystram to challenge the weary knight, which Trystram does to Lameroke’s great anger (428; VIII.33). Lameroke responds by sending to Cornwall a horn from Morgan le Fay that reveals adulterers, an insult to Cornwall in general and Trystram in particular (430; VIII.34).Trystram and Lameroke overcome their differences to form a temporary alliance when they are both shipwrecked on the Isle of Servayge ruled by the savage giant Nabon le Noyre.The island is apparently between their areas of influence: it is described as being off the coast of Wales (441; VIII.38), but the woman who lodges Trystram and then Lameroke is from Cornwall (442; VIII.38). After Trystram defeats Nabon le Noyre, there is then a debate about who will take control of the land, Lameroke and Trystram each deferring to each other. This battle of courtesy is also an exercise in regional politics; as local magnates,Trystram and Lameroke need

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to agree on the governments of the borderlands. Finally they jointly appoint Segwarides to be lord of Nabon’s lands (446; VIII.39). In their next encounter, after fighting anonymously, they identify themselves, make peace, and swear never again to fight each other (483; IX.11).This is an oath between individuals; it involves Lameroke forgiving the insult Trystram had done him at the command of the King of Cornwall, and it involves Trystram forgiving Lameroke’s insult to the court of Cornwall. Thus Trystram accepts a friendship not defined by his regional ties; and selfchosen fellowships provide a community separate from the provincial and national political systems. His relationship with Launcelot’s affinity proceeds similarly. Bleoberis, cousin to Launcelot, provides the initial affront when he abducts Segwarides’ wife, which is a grievance to the entire court (397; VIII.15). He also mocks Cornish knights (400; VIII.17), but he and Trystram soon accord. Then, after Mark exiles Trystram, Trystram meets Bors and Ector, and Bors refuses to joust with him, expressing contempt for Cornish knights (504; IX.23). Thus, although in exile, his regional ties still define Trystram. But then Bleoberis rides up and graciously agrees to joust again with Trystram.Trystram wins, earning praise from Bors and thus extending his ties with Launcelot’s affinity. Trystram and Dinadan then proceed to defeat thirty knights who were planning to ambush Launcelot while Bors and his kinsmen watch admiringly (506; IX.23). As a sign of their respect, Launcelot and twenty-two of his kinsmen arrange to bear “shields of Cornwall” at the tournament at the Castle of Maidens (513; IX.27)—an ironic gesture because Trystram, exiled from Cornwall, uses a black shield with no device (524; IX.30). Furthermore,Trystram is on the opposite side. While Trystram and Launcelot’s kin treat each other respectfully, Launcelot ultimately meets, defeats, and seriously injures Trystram (531; IX.34). Launcelot regrets the injury and praises Trystram as strongly as he can, but Trystram rides away and vanishes. Launcelot goes in search of him until they meet and fight disguised at Launceor’s tomb. When they reveal their identity, Launcelot and Trystram declare their friendship for each other, sealing Trystram’s alliance with Launcelot’s affinity. As with Lameroke of Wales and Angwysh of Ireland,Trystram grows beyond his Cornish roots to establish relations with Launcelot and his kin. Thus, although Trystram’s career resembles Arthur’s, the differences show how chivalry changes when it is used by a king establishing a kingdom or by a knight building his reputation. Arthur must establish himself through battle, not simply to prove himself but to assert appropriate control over his dominions.To do this, he must encourage knights to enter his service; he must develop some kind of national loyalty among them; and he must conquer his enemies. Trystram, on the other hand, does not need to overcome those

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outside Cornwall. Rather, he needs to build a network of alliances so that he can find his place in the network of affinities. Combat can play more than one role in this process: it can be used to defeat enemies or force them to enter into service, but it can also be used to win the respect and friendship of other knights.30 This fellowship does not bring together the nation, as does the war with Rome. Instead, it creates local communities within the larger nation. Elizabeth Archibald notes that Malory uses “fellowship” to mean both a formal knightly organization (the Round Table) and the individual associations knights make among themselves;31 the political hope is that these two senses of the word are connected so that individual alliances can build into politically effective affinities.While Donald Schueler argues that Trystram’s lack of engagement with the Round Table makes him politically insignificant,32 this is true only when looking at the nation as a whole.Trystram is a fairly effective local advocate, as he himself points out when he feels ill-used by Mark: he frees Cornwall from paying tribute to Ireland, and then helps Mark to wed Isode and defends the Irish king Angwysh to promote peace with Ireland; he wards off the expansionist desires of the King with the Hundred Knights and the King of North Wales, and he has persuaded Round Table knights to spare the barons of Cornwall (503–04; IX.22). Shades of Balin Launcelot battles Trystram at the tomb marking the spot Launceor battled Balin.After Columbe kills herself in grief over Launceor’s death, King Mark appears to lament the deaths of the lovers, and then Merlin appears to prophesy that “here shall be . . . in this same place the grettist bateyle betwyxte two knyghtes that ever was or ever shall be, and the trewyst lovers; and yette none of hem shall slee other” (72; II.8). When Trystram goes to the tomb to fight, he is intending to fight Palomides, who has agreed to meet him there but who has been detained. Instead, Launcelot appears disguised; the two knights fight; and, when they reveal their names, they accord and Trystram joins the Round Table. What do the two fights have to do with each other? The question has received surprisingly little attention,33 despite the emphasis Malory gives the connection. It may be impossible to establish connections more precisely. Elizabeth Edwards argues that the “Balin” acquires its sense of urgency and mystery by omission; Malory links items without explaining how they are connected, demanding that readers supply the missing links but not giving them enough to do so with any confidence.34 Still, there are many possible connections between the battles.The battles are over who is best knight: Launceor begrudges Balin the sword that proclaimed him the

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best knight (67; II.4), while Launcelot faces the man who is his closest rival. They are battles that hinge on proper forms of punishment: Launceor seeks to avenge the insult done to the king by Balin’s slaying of the Lady of the Lake, while Trystram has been seeking to revenge the injuries an anonymous knight—Launcelot—has done in a series of violent encounters (562–66; X.2–3). They are battles that determine relations to Arthur: Launceor seeks to reinforce Balin’s banishment, and Launcelot brings Trystram to the Round Table. Launceor and Launcelot have similar names and are Arthur’s knights. Their opponents are knights who, by their individual biases, threaten the larger order. Balin defines his career not in terms of service to Arthur but in terms of his own allegiances and feuds. Likewise, Trystram’s concerns lead him to individual fights, even against Round Table knights such as Marhault, and away from collective endeavors. Launcelot succeeds not in subjugating Trystram but in finding common ground with him that allows him to join the Round Table without forsaking his individual concerns. Launceor fails, and his failure leaves Balin even more marginal and now doomed to strike the Dolorous Stroke. More consistently, however, Launcelot is linked to Balin instead of Launceor. He gains Balin’s sword to, undoes the enchantment of the bed at Balin’s tomb (91; II.19), and participates in the Grail quest that Balin has started. Launcelot, like Balin, enters a forbidden room in the Grail castle and is struck down (85; II.15; 1016; XVII.15).This possibility opens up darker overtones of the fight between Launcelot and Trystram. The prophetic linking of Columbe’s death to the Dolorous Stroke shifts the moral implications of Balin’s actions away from simple sacrilege to a persistent and tragic misperception: he fails to see he has killed Launceor, fails to see Columbe’s suicidal intentions, fails to see how strongly Pellam will react to Garlon’s death, fails to see that the spear he snatches up to defend himself is sacred, and then fails to see his adversary is his brother. It is fitting that Balin’s enemy Garlon is a knight Balin cannot see. Launcelot, too, has his blind spots. He injured Trystram earlier in the tournament at the Castle of Maidens. He will be told that “ye shall have no power to se [the Grail], no more than a blynde man that sholde se a bryght swerde” (927; XV.2). Later, Launcelot will fail to see Gareth and Gaheris as he kills them in his rescue of Guinevere. The moral uncertainties of the “Trystram” and the dark foreboding of the “Balin” persist precisely because Malory does not plainly spell out the correspondences between events.The fight with Trystram and Launcelot is so richly suggestive because the fight is at once a success, in that Launcelot and Trystram have kept Trystram from turning into another divisive Balin, and a warning, in that Launcelot may be slipping into Balin’s chaos. Beyond

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this, by linking fights in two very different tales, Malory invites comparisons of two very different chivalric values. The first is the linked notions of fellowship and revenge. The second is love. However brief Columbe and Launceor’s roles may be, they create the first tragic love story in the Morte Darthur, and they help set the standards by which the various affairs in the “Trystram” may be judged. Balin’s Legacy of Blood Feud After the fight,Trystram joins the Round Table.This brings Arthur into the middle of Trystram’s feud with Mark at the same time that the longsimmering feud between Pellinore’s sons and Lot’s heats up. Both feuds have links to the “Balin.” After Balin has killed Launceor and Columbe has committed suicide, King Mark grieves over this Irish love–tragedy. Merlin is aware of the irony and prophesies Trystram’s affair with Isode (72; II.8). Lameroke’s feud with the Orkney clan began when Pellinore killed Lot in a battle in the middle of Balin’s adventures. Connecting these two feuds to the “Balin” makes thematic sense, because the “Balin” is a hotbed of revenge plots. Lot seeks revenge on Arthur for engendering Mordred with Morgause. Balin’s pursuing his feud against the Lady of the Lake leads Launceor to seek vengeance on him. Balin’s vengeance on the invisible knight Garlon leads Pellam to seek revenge for his brother, causing Balin to strike the Dolorous Stroke. While Arthur’s Round Table oath seemed to get out of the endless loops of blood feuds, revenge makes a comeback in the “Trystram.” Charles Moorman argues that the feud between the houses of Lot and Pellinore, which breaks out afresh in the “Trystram,” is one of the major causes of the fall of the Round Table.35 While the factionalism certainly plays a major role it may not deserve to be censured so severely.36 The fifteenth-century political structure recognized and to some extent depended upon rival affinities. Like any political structure, this could, if badly governed, lead to disasters (such as the Wars of the Roses). It is less than clear that these disasters are inherent to affinities; and even if they were inherent, a fifteenth-century writer might not recognize that.37 However, the system could also work, and if it was to work, people had to protect those in their affinities. It was the king who was supposed to balance the interests of the competing affinities. Elizabeth Pochoda emphasizes the importance of a strong king to govern the affinities in late medieval political theory and therefore concludes that, in the “Trystram,”Arthur’s inability to combat the growing divisions is a royal failure.38 While the importance of a strong king is undeniable (as Henry VI’s failures make clear), the situation is not quite so simple.A good king was not a despot. He was meant to take counsel and to

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serve as a representative of all his people, whose various viewpoints his noble counselors (often heads of powerful affinities) are responsible for bringing to his attention.39 The king could then find or create common policy responding to the different sectional concerns of his counselors.Thus the existence of regional affinities in Le Morte Darthur headed by his greatest knights is not an automatic sign of Arthur’s weakness or the fragmentation of the nation; it is, instead, a normal late-medieval English political scene.40 If it is the role of the king to synthesize a common will out of the various sectional desires, he cannot cut across the wills of all concerned. Charles Ross argues that the familiar motif of a knight coming to an unknown castle and dealing with the bizarre or bloody customs within provided a way for romance to talk about the problems of customary law— the urge to rationalize and centralize law balanced the idea that local custom was valuable and should be maintained.41 He illustrates the deference due even to barbaric custom by the episode in Malory when Trystram and Isode come to Castle Plewre (412–19; VIII.24–28), at which the custom is that if a knight should come with a lady, there will be a beauty contest between her and the lady of the castle, with the loser being killed; the knight will also battle the lord of the castle, again with the loser being killed.42 Trystram, despite deploring the custom, abides by it, not only enduring the battle but also killing the lady. With deference to local customs, even foul ones, so strong, it is not surprising that Arthur is limited in the ways to which he can justly respond to the regional feuds that develop.When Trystram and Mark both desire that Arthur not meddle too deeply in Cornish concerns or when Lameroke and Gawain both refuse Arthur’s mediation, Arthur has few choices.Trystram repeatedly and voluntarily associates with King Mark in Cornwall in order to have access to Isode (610; X.22).When Launcelot argues that Arthur has not done enough to protect Trystram,Arthur answers that his power is hindered by Trystram’s own desire (609; X.22). He is at the limits of his royal power. This system moves toward crisis when the various affinities become not just competitors but enemies, as with Trystram and Mark, Lameroke and Gawain, particularly when both sides do not desire royal intervention. Moreover, seemingly personal feuds disguise underlying political struggles. Watts, discussing politics during the Wars of the Roses, writes: It seems then that, in the shires, notions of the common interest were closely bound up with a recognition of the interests of controlling lords; provided that it is recognized that by “lord”is meant a combination of will,counsel,and power that operated in one man’s name.The lordly persona was all but as complex as the king’s, a point which we must bear in mind when assessing the superficially “personal” jealousies and conflicts of the fifteenth-century nobility.43

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The famous feud between the Nevilles and Percies in northern England is a case in point.While there were personal jealousies, certainly, these families were the cores of two great affinities that structured much of northern society, and the Percies were reacting to the increase in Neville power.The feud expanded, contributing to (and maybe leading to) the first battles of the Wars of the Roses, in much the way the feud between the sons of Lot and Pellinore expand into the civil war between Launcelot and Arthur. Looked at another way, however, the Neville–Percy feud expanded into civil war only because Henry VI and Richard, Duke of York, and other great lords accepted the feud and exploited it for their own purposes.44 Instead of treating feuding as a throwback to a more primitive, Germanic code of kinship interrupting civil society, feuds need to be recognized as simply politics by other means. This seems to be true in Malory. Gawain’s affinity has a privileged position that it jealously defends. Lameroke’s feud with Gawain and his brothers is certainly provoked by the death of King Lot, but perhaps also by Lameroke’s rapid rise to prominence and the threat he poses to Gawain’s political dominance. Lameroke’s reciprocal dislike may be grounded precisely on his fear of the faction that enjoys closer access to Arthur than he does as a young Welsh knight. Launcelot’s affinity is also dominant, and therefore also hated (675; X.50). Moreover, his affinity is jealous of its status, and Launcelot’s kin plot to kill Trystram because of his growing fame (785; X.88). Lameroke’s feud with the Orkney brothers illustrates the complex balancing act between legitimate rivalry among the affinities and excessive feuding. Lameroke’s love for Morgause leads to death; Gaheris kills her when he traps the two lovers in bed, and later Lameroke is killed by Gawain, Gaheris,Aggravayne, and Mordred. In some sense, Lameroke is the beginner of the feud. It is not only his father who slew King Lot, but also it is only after Lameroke, riding disguised, enters a tournament against Round Table knights and purposely attacks Gawain and his brothers (607–08; X.21) that Gawain initiates his revenge. His courtship of Morgause is undeniably provocative.Although later Lameroke will protest (falsely) that it was Balin who killed Lot, he seems to be well aware of the enmity of Gawain and his brothers and thus he should have some understanding of he consequences of his romance. To Gawain’s dismay, the revenge begins when Gaheris kills his mother Morgause while she is sleeping with Lameroke. Lameroke (understandably) is upset, and there is a conversation about what forms of revenge are appropriate (612; X.24). The first question the knights address is what role women play within the politics of vengeance. Lameroke’s argument begins with the appeal to Gaheris’s Round Table oath to succor women and depends on the assumption that men should fight men and leave women

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alone. Gaheris, though, argues that Lameroke is so focused on this ideal that he is neglecting others. Morgause must be held accountable; she has shamed her children by sleeping with their father’s killer, violating her own duty to her family. He obviously believes that women, not mere objects of desire, are responsible for their own moral conduct and can be punished for their failings, a view that appears elsewhere.45 Morgause should have continued the family feud, and she did not. Lameroke, in Gaheris’s opinion, has offended less in the affair, both because he owes no loyalty to the brothers and because it is men’s nature to “serve” women; therefore, Gaheris will deal with him in accustomed knightly fashion. His view is not widely accepted; even Gawain is angry with Gaheris (613; X.24). But Lameroke’s claims need examining too. His statement that Balin slew Lot is false and completely unexpected; the feud between the houses of Lot and Pellinore has been talked about ever since Pellinore killed Lot (77; II.10).This unnecessary falsehood immediately warns the reader that, despite Gaheris’s shocking crime, Lameroke need not be innocent. Certainly, he understands the desire for revenge. His comment that Pellinore is still unrevenged suggests he accepts the feud with Gawain and his brothers.And, perhaps, his unwillingness to marry Morgause is part of a desire to feud. As Arthur points out, there was no obstacle (other than the feud) to the marriage: “Hit had bene muche fayrer and bettir that ye hadde wedded her, for ye are a kynges sonne as well as they” (664; X.46).At stake is far more than sexual propriety; a public wedding of a queen dowager and a king’s son would be a political event and could have served to reconcile the ill-feeling left over from Lot’s death. At the tournament of Surluse, there is an attempted reconciliation. Guinevere and Arthur pointedly honors Lameroke (662, 663; X.45, 46), and Arthur and Launcelot guarantee to protect Lameroke if he stays in court (663, 670; X.45, 49). Lameroke does make one gesture at peace: seeing Arthur getting ready to joust with Palomides to avenge the unhorsing of Gawain and his brothers, Lameroke intervenes and defeats Palomides himself. He refuses, however, to stay at court or to let Arthur or Launcelot mediate the feud, and in both refusals he says that he would revenge himself upon the brothers if they were not Arthur’s kin (664; X.46). It is possible his refusal to seek revenge on them is real—once before he has suffered Gawain to escape because of his royal blood (449; XIII.41)—but a suspicious reader wonders if he hopes to let the feud continue far away from court in order to have a chance to strike back. After all, he boasts that “and hit were nat for my lorde kynge Arthurs sake, I shuld macche sir Gawayne and his bretherne well inowghe” (670; X.49). Trystram’s response to this feud shows the politics extend beyond the two families.When Launcelot hears of Morgause’s death, he predicts “and

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Sir Trystram wyste hit, he wolde never com within your courte” (613; X.24). Discussing the death later, Trystram does say, “And for suche thynges . . . I feare to drawe unto the courte of kynge Arthure” (698; X.58). Trystram has no obvious reason to fear Gawain and his brothers, for there is no feud between them, and, while he was Lameroke’s friend, there is no suggestion that the feud will thereby extend to him.The fear instead seems to be favoritism. The provincial knights are jealous and suspicious of the advantages of those affinities close to the king, despite Arthur’s and Launcelot’s repeated assurances that they will protect them and despite Arthur’s banishment of Gaheris. That Lameroke’s death is of particular interest to the relative outsiders is shown in the way readers learn of the death. Lameroke’s death is never directly narrated until the narrator makes a passing reference to it much later (in the “Poisoned Apple” episode [1048; XVIII.3]).The second-hand reports, moreover, come almost exclusively from Trystram’s affinity. Palomides makes the first announcement of Lameroke’s death in a situation where another blood feud is being threatened; but it is Launcelot’s kin, not Gawain’s, doing the threatening. When Palomides is about to fight Bleoberis, Ector warns him that anyone who kills anyone of Launcelot’s kin will certainly die for it (687; X.54). In the ensuing conversation, Palomides tells the story of Lameroke’s death (688; X.54). This makes an immediate parallel between Gawain’s kin and Launcelot’s, who have just threatened Palomides with blood-feud, the only possible distinction being that Launcelot might not need to kill Palomides “felounsly.” The next reference to the killing is a brief one, and the only one in the “Trystram” that Palomides does not narrate. Gaheris and Aggravayne kill a knight for saying Launcelot is better than Gawain, and Trystram tracks them down (691; X.55).Although initially sparing them out of respect for Arthur, he accuses them of killing Lameroke, which provokes them into attacking, and he unhorses them both, injuring Aggravayne seriously. The third reference is in a discussion among Trystam, Gareth, Palomides, and Dinadan.Trystram’s anger at Gawain’s brother puts Gareth in a difficult position. Even after the murder, Gareth chooses to identify himself to Trystram as the “yongyst brothir unto sir Gawayne,” (696; X.57) suggesting he takes some pride in the connection—although it is a pride not in evidence when Trystram discusses Lameroke’s death. Gareth takes the opportunity to announce his opposition to his brothers, which garners impassioned praise from Trystram. Palomides joins in, telling the details of the murder again, but this time, distinguishing somewhat between the brothers; Arthur gave Lameroke a prize, but the four brothers ambushed him, and Mordred did the actual killing from behind (699; X.58). That Arthur had just given Lameroke a prize tends to suggest that Arthur may be

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fairer than Trystram acknowledges. Gawain seems to concur: he claims “whom that we hate kynge Arthure lovyth, and whom that we love he hatyth” (608; X.22), so Gawain, at least, does not feel he has royal support in his endeavors.When he does get his vengeance, the “murder” turns out to be part of a three-hour long battle, not a poisoning or a knife in the back. The Orkney brothers are unquestionably guilty of unknightly conduct and premeditated slaughter; they strike from ambush, deliberately kill Lameroke’s horse, and then all four of the guilty brothers fight Lameroke at once.These tactics, however, have all been used frequently elsewhere in the Morte Darthur by lesser knights, so they are part of a familiar continuum of behavior, not a new level of atrocity. The fourth and last recounting of the murder within the “Trystram,” however, is set against an explicit and vehement warning that kings must rely on kin.46 Sir Ebell, asking Palomides to revenge the death of the lord of the Red City, says, And all kyngis and astatys may beware by oure lorde: for he was destroyed in his owne defaute; for had he cheryshed his owne bloode, he had bene a lyvis kynge and lyved with grete ryches and reste. . . . Therefore all the astatys and lordys, of what astate ye be, loke ye beware whom ye take aboute you. And therefore, sir, and ye be a knyght of kynge Arthurs courte remembir this tale. (711–12; X.61)

Specifically directing Palomides, the teller of Lameroke’s murder, to bring this tale of the necessity of cherishing kin to Arthur is highly charged; yet Palomides, when he meets with the dead lord’s brother, has no hesitation in telling the story of Lameroke’s murder again (716; X.63). Nonetheless, Sir Ebell’s point is well taken.When the crisis comes, the remains of Trystram’s and Lameroke’s affinities hold with Launcelot (1170; XX.5), and all that support Arthur are his kin or his own affinity. That what is at stake is the ability of affinities with no direct ties to the monarch to flourish at court is suggested by the fact that the first reports of Lameroke’s death come from the Saracen Palomides, the quintessential outsider. Palomides’ own family connections are fairly weak; his brothers, Safir and Segwarides, are Christian (343; VII.27). Safir is named as a renowned knight, but his deeds are scarcely mentioned (316; VII.13). Trystram alienates Segwarides by sleeping with his wife, but later, when Segwarides (with a new damsel) meets Trystram, they make their peace (442; XIII.38), and Trystram and Lameroke agree to make him lord of the island Nabon held (446; VIII.39), forging a political link between Palomides and Trystram. Palomides’ own friendship with Trystram and love for Isode keep his relation with the affinity unsteady. Palomides is thus in one sense a perfect spokesman for the struggles of those distant to the king to get

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respect and justice. In another sense,Trystram and Palomides, who are friends of Lameroke and suspicious of entrenched powers, are heavily biased. In this light, then, the struggle between Gawain’s brothers and Lameroke is not just a blood-feud; it is a political struggle. The tension between provincial knights with few ties to Arthur’s court and the entrenched aristocracy is old: it lies behind the shock that Balin, a poor knight, is declared to be the best; it lies behind the fight between Launceor, representative of the court, and Balin the exile; it lurks in the fight between Launcelot, the king’s favorite, and Trystram; it colors the feud between Lameroke and the Orkney brothers; it is what causes Launcelot’s kin the plot Trystram’s death. The Many Forms of Love Balin’s battle with Launceor was a miniature romantic tragedy with Irish protagonists and King Mark as a spectator. Mark offers the naïve response of unquestioning pity for the lovers. Merlin, however, warns King Mark that he will not be as pleased when he discovers the identity of Trystram’s sovereign lady (72; II.8). Merlin’s remarks challenge the naïve response to the sweetness of love, broadening the implications to include the political and social consequences of love, an important point since the word love has a wide range of meaning in Malory. The most extreme example is, perhaps, when the Red Knight of the Red Lands, who has been murdering knights to try to bait Gawain or Launcelot into a fight so that he can kill them, declares “for all tho that I put to deth was all only for the love of sir Launcelot and of sir Gawayne” (337;VII.23), in which love seems simply to be an object of obsession. Love is crucial, however, because it is the key to forming communities. Love could be a political term, referring to the element of good will that kept a lord from tyranny and kept subjects obedient;47 it could through marriage unite or create communities (the Round Table was Guinevere’s dowry made whole by Arthur and his knights); it could also tear apart communities, as Isode’s adultery blasts the political unity of Cornwall. On a smaller scale, love helped define individual networks of friends and confidantes. Concepts of romantic love have been put under scrutiny by the succeeding adventures of the various prominent knights. Gareth and Lyones revealed that the distant love of Guinevere and Launcelot is lacking, and the result for Launcelot and Trystram is a pressure toward adultery, resisted by notions of loyalty and of sexual purity.The book presents no easy solutions, offering instead permutation after permutation of the ideals until the multiple perspectives become kaleidoscopic.Trystram sleeps with Isode, in a triangle of good knight, bad king, and queen.Trystram and Mark vie for

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Segwarides’ wife, in a slightly different triangle where neither king nor knight can claim the woman as wife. Palomides and Trystram are rivals for Isode, where two good knights seek a queen. Melleagaunce is interested in Guinevere (even though his abduction of her does not occur until after the Grail quest), setting up a triangle of bad knight, good king, and queen.The most famous permutation is queen, good knight, and good king: Guinevere, Launcelot, and Arthur. The two Isodes are rivals for Trystram. Elaine and Guinevere are rivals for Launcelot. Alys la Beale Pellaron and the niece of the Earl of Pace are potentially rivals for Alexander the Orphan, but all three settle happily together in France, so that bigamy apparently becomes one solution to romantic triangles (647–48; X.39).All these almost-parallel cases provide readers opportunities to try to assess the balance between the satisfaction and the political disruption of love. There is also the question of how to make these various loves part of chivalric display; love, properly performed, gains public worship as well as private pleasure. As Dhira Mahoney observes, love in the “Trystram” is not primarily a motive for a knight’s prowess, but his prowess should prompt love, and thus love can serve as a marker of how good a knight is— something Gareth and Launcelot have made use of in earlier tales.48 Likewise, as has been true since the “Launcelot,” the service of a worthy knight honors a lady.This creates the desire for love to be public. Adultery, however, should be kept private. A number of solutions are tried. When Bleoberis abducts Segwarides’ wife, he has no malicious intent (396–403;VIII.15–18). He needs a woman for his performance, and it really does not matter whom; her symbolic value is independent of real emotional involvement.The response to the abduction, however, is complicated, since her husband Segwarides and her lover Trystram are both present.Trystram lets Segwarides attempt the rescue first, but he, no match for Launcelot’s kinsman, is soundly beaten. Meanwhile, a woman who knows of the affair abuses Trystram, saying he should have defended her openly. He protests that he did not want to shame Segwarides by advertising his adultery. Trystram seems to have found a way to turn discretion itself into a performance, but it is at the cost of not following Arthur’s command to protect women; Segwarides is obviously no match for Bleoberis. After Segwarides fails, Trystram rides after Bleoberis and they fight to a draw, at which the two knights and the lady discuss what should be done with her. She, too, thinks Trystram should have acted publicly, but since he does not agree, she angrily goes back to her husband. Bleoberis is not the only knight who, for a performance, uses a woman he is not emotionally involved with. Trystram reveals the degree of the split with his two Isodes: one whom he loves secretly, with private consummation but public deception; the other his acknowledged wife, but privately a

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virgin.The results can become comic.There is a half-page story of a knight Dynas, whose lady deserts him for another knight, taking two brachets with her. He rides after her and defeats her new knight but refuses her offer to return with him; he had come for his dogs (550; IX.40). The lady has a symbolic significance, but not necessarily an emotional one; the emotional love is for his real companions, the brachets.This provides an ironic twist to the story of the French princess who sends Trystram a brachet as a love token (378; VIII.5): the dog is supposed to serve as a symbol of her love for him, but actually it is the bond between Trystram and the dog that is real, for it is the only creature to recognize him in his madness (501; IX.21). The separation between the conventions of serving women and real emotional attachment is best revealed, perhaps, by two episodes of cross-dressing. The first occurs when Alexander the Orphan falls into a love reverie on Alys la Beale Pellaron—an old tradition when the woman is absent, but she happens to be right in front of him, along with his other damsel, the niece of the Earl of Pace.This love-trance is clearly inappropriate; it is a following of convention that detracts from his relation to the real women. Mordred tries to take advantage of Alexander’s distraction by leading him away to shame him.The niece of the earl puts on armor, takes a shield and sword, mounts, and hits Alexander as hard as she can in the helmet, rousing him so that Mordred flees (647; X.39). At first, there seems little need for such a violent solution, and even less for her to don armor and shield when her intention is to use only the sword. What the damsel does, however, is drive home to Alexander the physical reality of women, both with the blow and by her altering her appearance away from romance damsel.The result is a complete upheaval of convention: Mordred is trying to abduct a knight instead of a damsel; the rescuer is a woman who strikes the victim instead of a kidnapper. This breaks Alexander free from his dangerous conventional preoccupation, and frees him to deal with the real women instead of his fantasies.The scene ends with Alexander and Alice having “good game at the damsell” (647; X.39) over the strength of her blow: the laughter an acknowledgment of how little the reality matches the conventional expectations. Launcelot and Dinadan provoke similar laughter in the tournament at Surluse, in a burlesque that suggests the symbolic ways women can function in knightly encounters. Launcelot disguises himself as a damsel to joust with Dinadan. Dinadan flees, recognizing Launcelot’s horse (and doubtless realizing it is a very bulky maiden, since Launcelot is wearing the dress over armor), but Launcelot strikes him down, at which point men drag Dinadan into the woods and dress him as a woman and bring him that way to the feast, to great laughter, particularly by Guinevere (669–70; X.49).49 What Launcelot has acted out reinforces what Dinadan has claimed repeatedly:“love” is often an arbitrary convention that has little to do with

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real women. It is a device of men who, fearing weakness and labeling it feminine, wish to distance themselves from femininity.50 What this marker of unfemininity is does not matter much; it can be a damsel passed from loser to winner or a dress passed from winner to loser. Malory has shown that public displays of love rely on socially constructed conventions. The construction is sometimes quite conscious, a result of discussion and consensus among knights. One notable instance happens when Melleagaunce and Lameroke fight over whether Guinevere or Morgause is the more beautiful woman. Launcelot interrupts, and when he finds the grounds of the quarrel he is ready to take Guinevere’s part against Lameroke. Lameroke then says that it is natural for each knight to think that his lady is fairest and that the issue is not worth fighting over (quite a switch, since he had been minutes earlier fighting Melleagaunce on the subject). Bleoberis tells Launcelot that Lameroke is right, and they all agree not to fight. Then, just as the episode seems to be over, King Arthur comes in and (quite surprisingly, given that Lameroke is one of the best knights in the world), unhorses and wounds Lameroke (486–88; IX.13–14).This scene shows the range of values in play.51 Melleagaunce and Lameroke fight because they see the combat over beauty as an acceptable public declaration of love.When Launcelot intervenes, his public declaration shifts the terms of the debate. His first concern, even before he knows the grounds of the fight, is of allegiance: both knights are members of the Round Table. Ostensibly, the same issue prompts his wrath at Lameroke since Guinevere, he claims, deserves loyalty as a political leader (rather than as a lover).This is clearly a cloak: his displacing of Melleagaunce, the confessed lover of the queen, is suggestive; so is his anger—he is the only one in the scene to use the insulting thou. Launcelot, clearly, thinks that love for another man’s wife should be kept relatively private, but he is not averse to fighting in Guinevere’s name, and knowing observers can interpret appropriately. Lameroke’s answer to Launcelot explodes the conventions he was so ready to use against Melleagaunce. His claim that beauty is relative and not worth fighting over is unexpected common sense. He answers Launcelot’s urging of political loyalty with the claims of friendship, which, he thinks, should prevent a battle over love. Bleoberis takes Lameroke’s argument even further. He takes the issue of the worth of women from the realm of fact (even subjective fact, as Lameroke has pointed out), making it a matter of “langage” instead of truth. Arthur’s appearance, although unexplained, is rich with suggestion. As the husband of Guinevere, he may be the last and most successful of the series of the queen’s lovers to fight Lameroke. He is also king, so he could be enforcing the political order that was briefly violated. Or he could be acting as brother and former lover of Morgause, punishing a presumptuous love.The lack of a clear explanation marks how tangled the concept of love has become in the “Trystram.”

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It is against this backdrop that Launcelot and Trystram fight at Columbe’s monument. Trystram has had a tumultuous career as a lover, gaining experience with Segwarides’ wife, la beale Isode, and Isode le Blaunche Maynes. He has fallen out with Mark, been imprisoned, survived assassination attempts, and run mad. At the point at which they meet, Launcelot’s experience has been less traumatic. He is still allied with Arthur; his love, although generally discussed, has not been openly acknowledged; and the other women he will have ado with lie in his future.As they fight, therefore, Launcelot and Trystram are not yet as similar as they will become. Unlike Trystram, it is not absolutely certain that Launcelot is even sleeping with his lady at this point in the story,52 although it seems likely that, at some point, they physically have become lovers.Thematically, most of the “Trystram” is about adultery, in response to the unresolved tensions brought on by the tales of “Launcelot” and “Gareth.” Launcelot and Guinevere accept parallels to Isode and Trystram when the Cornish lovers write to them, and their adultery is widely assumed. Morgan le Fay is confident enough of their adultery that she sends the magical drinking horn to court. When Elaine disguised as Guinevere tricks Launcelot into bed, he does not act as if he is going to a first encounter. Some confirmation also comes from chronology. Galahad, the product of Launcelot’s union with Elaine, is fifteen or sixteen when he is made knight (832; XII.9). In the Grail quest shortly thereafter, Launcelot acknowledges himself to have been a sinner for twenty-four years (1017; XVII.16). This is not conclusive— although Launcelot’s adultery with Guinevere is the major sin he is accused of throughout the Grail-quest, Launcelot’s sins of twenty-four years could be general pride or instability—but it is suggestive. In a separate passage, he says that for fourteen years he has not confessed his doings with the queen (897; XIII.20), which could be taken as evidence that his adultery started a little after the time he slept with Elaine. But since he is talking only about the date of his last confession, the adultery could be of longer standing, since confessing after visiting Corbenic and engendering Galahad would be plausible. In all events, the probability is that Launcelot and Guinevere have consummated their love. That Guinevere’s adultery is not known for certain marks one important difference between the lovers: for Launcelot and Guinevere, the details of what they do are private. “In my Harte I am Crystynde”: Dinadan, Palomides, and the Problem of Intention Palomides is part of an exploration of the importance of intention within chivalry.Although famously tied to Trystram by love and jealousy, Palomides has Dinadan for a patron. He tries to make peace between Palomides and

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Trystram (551; X.40) and between Palomides and Lameroke (600–01; X.18). Later, it is Dinadan who promises to promote Palomides at King Arthur’s court (597; X.16), and Palomides has become a Round Table knight by the time he fights to save the Red City (715; X.62). Just as Palomides’ baptism leads up to the Grail quest, so does Dinadan’s comic common sense. Able to fight well when necessary but aware that many of the encounters are not ethically necessary, able to appreciate true lovers without treating love as sacred, Dinadan is a moral knight. Dinadan is part of the tendency to have characters talk about chivalric and moral problems in the “Trystram.” Often it is Dinadan who points out the arbitrariness of the conventions, as when, confronted with a castle where guests must fight for their lodging, he desires to spare the trouble and spend the night at a priory only two miles away (507–08; IX.24), or when, in a conversation with Epynogrys, he must explain the convention that knights-errant can demand jousts; the need for explanation, of course, reveals the artificiality of the custom (690; X.55). Dinadan is the first male character after Merlin to be known more for his words than his deeds, and he can be taken as a figure of rationality crying out in a wilderness of violence.53 This, however, oversimplifies his role. He may expose artificial conventions, but that does not mean he opposes them. Indeed, when Trystram imitates Dinadan and refuses to joust, Dinadan does all he can to goad him into action (690, 694–96; X.55–57). Likewise, although he bitterly protests the foolishness of two knights attacking many, when Launcelot is threatened by an ambush of thirty knights, Dinadan accompanies Trystram and kills eight of them—a deed that a group of four knights, including Launcelot’s redoubtable kinsmen Bors, Ector, and Bleoberis, did not attempt (506; IX.23).54 He may tease Isode about love (693–94; X.56), but when there is genuine need, he proves that he will help women in distress for “the honoure of all women” (553; IX.41). Dinadan’s humor, then, consists of pairing things that do not match: common sense and love, prudence with knight errantry, his own words with his own actions. The repetition of the declarations that Dinadan is a good knight (e.g., 605, 614, 660, 692; X.20, 25, 44, 56) marks the narrative anxiety caused by Dinadan’s refusal consistently to use the chivalric conventions to prove his worth, conventions that the narrator has relied on, although they have broken down before (notably in the case of Dinadan’s brother, La Cote Mal Tayle, who is declared a good knight although he loses several jousts and occasionally needs Launcelot’s assistance). What makes Dinadan’s status as a good knight clear is the trust of the other knights that his intentions are good.The repeated refrain is that he loves good knights, which means that he will, whatever his actions or words seem to suggest, do what he can for them. It makes even his baiting acceptable, when

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he uses it to rouse a knight to more heroic action, as he does with Trystram at the tournament of Lonezep (741–42; X.71–72). Dinadan is one of many who force the relation between action and intention to be scrutinized. The lady Maldysaunte also pleads her intention to excuse her abuse of La Cote Male Tayle, saying she feared the quest was too dangerous for him and therefore tried her best to dissuade him from it (471; IX.7). Launcelot uses his allegedly good intentions to excuse the rampage in which he slandered Arthur and Guinevere and killed a young lover (571; X.6). Theoretically, this move toward using a knight’s intentions as a basis for judging his chivalric worth makes sense; since chivalry is becoming a theater of gesture and gesture has more than one meaning, what matters is determining the motives of the performer. But there are notorious problems with this, for it is almost impossible to judge intention accurately for outsiders—and even for the character in question, since people may have divided intentions. Palomides’ motives are notoriously tangled.55 Kevin Grimm points out that one of the strongest motives knights have in the “Trystram” is to “fellowship” with each other.56 For Palomides, this motive is about as strong as his love for Isode, but the two forces do not reach equilibrium. Instead, he oscillates from being Trystram’s good friend to his bitter rival. The strength of the bond between Palomides and Isode and between him and Trystram is made clear several times; when Palomides leaves the tournament at Lonezep,“he was nat all only so dolorous for the departynge frome La Beall Isode, but he was as sorowful a parte to go frome the felyshyp of sir Trystram. For he was so kynde and so jantyll that whan sir Palomydes remembyrd hym thereof he myght never be myrry” (763; X.80).The ambiguity (whether the grief comes from the memory that Trystram was “so kynde and so jantyll” or because Palomides is kind and gentle and therefore loves Trystram) is entirely appropriate. Even in hatred, the bond remains strong, so Isode and Palomides seem as focused on Trystram as he is on them; when Sir Trystram temporarily leaves the tournament at Lonezep, “no man aspyed hym but La Beall Isode and sir Palomydes, for they two wolde nat leve off there yghesyght of hym” (749; X.75). The bond among these three is so complex that Palomides cannot explain his own intentions: I pray you, sir Trystram, forgyff me all my evyll wyll! And yf I lyve I shall do you servyse afore all the knyghtes that bene lyvynge.And thereas I have owed you evyll wyll me sore repentes. I wote nat what eylyth me, for mesemyth that ye ar a good knyght; and that ony other knyght that namyth hymselff a good knyght sholde hate you, me sore mervaylyth. (697; X.57)

Palomides has put his finger on the problem of judging knights by intention. It becomes a matter of self-reporting motive—a knight “namyth hymselff ”

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a good knight—and that is not always possible to do, even if honesty is assumed. And intentions change; this reconciliation with Trystram is by no means the last.They come together before Lonezep, then Palomides turns against Trystram, then they reconcile again, then Trystram turns against Palomides. His plan for christening reveals the same gap between external action and internal intention. When he is introduced at the beginning of the “Trystram,” Isode tells Trystram that Palomides says he is thinking of being christened for her sake (385; VIII.9); at the end of the “Trystram,” however, it is Trystram himself and not his lady that causes Palomides to be christened (845; XII.14). In the intervening time, Palomides says: I woll that ye all knowe that into this londe I cam to be crystyned, and in my harte I am crystynde, and crystynde woll I be. But I have made suche a vowe that I may nat be crystynde tyll I have done seven trewe bataylis for Jesus sake, and than woll I be crystynde.And I truste that God woll take myne entente, for I mean truly. (666; X.47)

This speech fits with the pattern of chivalry in the “Trystram”; the outward gesture is used for theatrical purpose, and it does not necessarily reflect internal character. Palomides may be christened at heart, but he wants to make the public baptism part of his knightly display. The question of what happens if Palomides dies while he believes in God and Jesus but has not yet been baptized is raised explicitly in the Red City. The narrator repeats the information that Palomides is unchristened but “belyved in the beste maner” (717; X.63). His enemies taunt him with the lack of official christening: “we shall so handyll the or that thou departe that thou shalt wysshe that thou haddyst be crystynde” (717–18; X.63). Palomides answers “I shall dye a bettir Crystyn man than ony of you both” (718; X.63)—a statement that expresses his confidence in victory, but also raises the question of whether men formally christened but acting evilly are better Christians than those who lack the rites but believe and act faithfully.This gap between faith and rite, belief and performance, makes Palomides a good emblem for the “Trystram.” He is a man torn by religious, romantic, and chivalric ideals that contradict, a man who acknowledges a large gap between external signs and internal action, a knight difficult to judge by either deeds or intentions because both are so variable. At the end of the “Trystram,” however, things (briefly) come together. Trystram converts Palomides through combat, thus allowing a simultaneous expression of their love and rivalry. Palomides’ conversion allows these two to come to Arthur’s court, which Trystram has often avoided. Coming to court at the same time is Launcelot, whose sanity has been restored by the

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Grail. In his case, religious penance on his part and forgiveness by Guinevere allow him to resume his place at court, to the joy of Arthur, Guinevere, and the Round Table knights. The shift to local and personal concerns in the “Gareth” and the “Trystram” thus has reverberations that affect many areas of chivalry. The focus on personal bonds and affinities shifts attention away from service to the nation. Knights who are not close to the national center often use chivalry as a means of performance: combat is not to kill national enemies but to impress neighbors, rivals, or the great national lords. Service to women also becomes a matter of performance increasingly dissociated from personal desires. Given the range of calculated performances, questions of motive become more important, but judging by intention rather than action has far-reaching moral and religious consequences.

CHAPTER 5 SHIFTING BOUNDARIES: RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND THE GRAIL

he “Sankgreal” counterbalances “Arthur and Lucius” structurally and thematically.1 They are in roughly symmetric positions in Le Morte Darthur (in Vinaver’s three-volume edition,“Arthur and Lucius” starts about 180 pages from the beginning; the “Sankgreal” finishes about 220 pages from the ending), and they separate the beginning and the end of the book from the sprawling middle, thus marking off the sections that deal most directly with the rise and fall of Arthur’s empire from those tales focusing on the deeds of individual knights. Stylistically, they are the most distinctive tales, and, critically, the most apt to be considered as separate units within the narrative.The two tales each turn their attention to events well outside Britain’s borders, but with very different consequences. “Arthur and Lucius” develops a sense of England as a nation by insulating England from the threat of excessive foreign influence. The “Sankgreal,” on the other hand, downplays the national bond to insist on the bonds that link English Christians to the east. Thus, although the Roman war and the Grail quest offer the two great adventures in which most of Arthur’s knights participate, the nature of the participation is glaringly different.The Roman war was a united effort bringing together the knights into one glorious, conquering army.The Grail quest, although commenting in its own way about England’s ties to the larger world, offers knights essentially private experiences.2 They do form partnerships while they adventure, but the temptations, dreams, and revelations are personal. Over the years, a number of critics have argued that Malory, particularly toward the end of his work, is concerned with the tension between public action and private feelings and deeds.3 Usually, the private is assumed to be negative, and the discussions focus on adultery as the private concerns and serving Arthur as the public action;Andrew Lynch also argues that envy

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is the corrupt, private feeling that substitutes for the rivalries that should be expressed publicly and admirably in jousts. Adultery and envy are clearly damaging to society as a whole, but they are not the only private concerns that can disrupt communities. Fifteenth-century England was keenly aware of the potential threats of private religious fervor. A few years after Malory finished Le Morte Darthur and before Caxton had printed it, John Blacman wrote a brief, hagiographic biography of Henry VI.4 He reports that the king was so concerned with chastity that he spied on his servants and abhorred nudity (male or female, even in the bath), that he wore a hair shirt whenever he had to wear the crown, and that he saw the body of Jesus appear between the hands of the celebrant during mass.5 He was so merciful that he pardoned men convicted of treason. He was so pious that he tried to cure lords of their habit of wearing swords into church. Henry VI is not usually mentioned in the same breath as Galahad, nor is royal biography what Alfred Robert Kraemer had in mind when argued that the Grail quest has strong hagiographic elements,6 but Blacman’s biography is not so far removed from the stuff of the Grail quest. Launcelot wears a hair shirt; the Grail knights see Eucharistic visions, including the body of Christ in the celebrant’s hands; and chastity is one of the primary virtues. Of course, since Blacman wrote after Malory there is no question of direct influence, yet Blacman’s brief text offers a new perspective on the role the Grail quest may play in Malory’s work. It has become customary to discuss the Grail quest in theological rather than political terms, to ask whether Malory really believed that the ascetic “celestial” chivalry was superior to (or hostile toward) the “terrestrial” chivalry that has occupied so much of the book, or whether he saw chivalry as already sufficiently religious and the Grail the ultimate proof of the worthiness of knighthood. Blacman’s hagiographic text, however, is as much political as religious. Henry VI was a disaster as king, weak, partial, and foolish even before he went mad. Since it was impossible to celebrate him as a ruler, friendly biographers celebrated him instead as an individual man; Henry VII went so far as to urge his canonization. Blacman’s technique in memorializing Henry is to take political faults and make them into private virtues.Thus Henry VI was so opposed to violence that he pardoned even rebels and abhorred the traditional punishments for treason. He preferred prayer and contemplation to government, complaining when state business interrupted his study.This does not constitute blindness to Henry’s political faults; a reader easily recognizes that the man described would not be a good monarch.7 Instead, as Roger Lovatt has argued, the praise of Henry raises an important question about how politics and morals mix: Blacman simply does not accept traditional notions of good kingship, and chooses to justify Henry on quite different grounds. He is concerned, one

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might say, with the tension between private and public moralities. Not only does he interpret public vices as private virtues, but he transposes the dictum about a successful king having much ado to be saved by implying that political failure (or, at least, its causes) might be prerequisite for personal salvation. . . . Moreover, this is not some eccentric whimsy on Blacman’s part. The Collectarium is characteristic of the individualistic, private, self-regarding and often world-weary piety of the later middle ages.8

The Grail quest can be read in similar terms, a political disaster linked to personal salvation (for some). Malory’s purpose, however, may not be simply to explore (or answer) the moral question of whether earthly concerns can be justly neglected in favor of the mysticism championed by the Grailhermits but to look at more political questions: who decides what is moral, and what are the consequences to society when a severe form of piety becomes popular. The consequences are unquestionably destructive, at least politically. King Pelles says as much to Launcelot before Galahad is conceived:“This is the rychyst thynge that ony man hath lyvynge, and whan this thynge gothe abrode the Rounde Table shall be broken for a season” (793; XI.2). King Arthur, although glad that Galahad will accomplish the Grail quest (859; VIII.4), is most upset when Gawain and most of the knights of his court vow to go questing as well, knowing that this will permanently disrupt his Round Table (866–67; XIII.7–8). He goes so far as to accuse Gawain of treachery:“A Gawayne, Gawayne! Ye have betrayed me, for never shall my courte be amended by you” (XIII.8). Arthur’s glad welcome of Galahad proves that Arthur is not opposed to the Grail quest per se, so his overall reaction suggests that he is trying to find a way to keep the virtues of religion from betraying the needs of the nation. By the time of the Grail quest, however, the tolerance that allowed multiple standards of chivalry to flourish is fading; the danger of the Grail quest is not that it introduces ascetic religious values but that the hermits appear to condemn all who do not follow exactly those values. After the quest, the moralistic judgments will force Guinevere’s adultery into a crisis. The Grail, moreover, is personal; it offers an ascetic and visionary religious experience that is private and lay, separated from (although obviously influenced by) church orthodoxy. To the extent that the Grail quest raises the question of how to accommodate individual desires within the needs of the community, the Grail quest is not as opposed to earlier tales about love as it might seem. While morally the Grail-hermits oppose sexual love, the Grail quest and the knights’ loves are private concerns that may impede communal efforts. The dividing line between public and private, however, is not always clear and not always constant.The Grail quest redefines a number of social

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relations. Galahad, although adventuring primarily alone, becomes a representative of the English nation. By becoming part of the Grail history that stretched back to Joseph of Arimathea and Christ, he revisits the questions of how England fits into the larger history of the world that the Roman war dealt with.The performance of the various kin groups, coupled with a new emphasis on virginity, restructures ideas of families; and, since affinities often had families at their cores, reimagining families brings dramatic political change.And the Grail quest’s exclusion of women brings up the question of how women were meant to fit into devout the Christian community. Galahad as National Symbol In Galahad’s first adventure after leaving Arthur’s court, he claims a mysterious shield that only the worthiest knight of the world can claim safely.The shield is “as wyght as ony snowe, but in the myddys was a rede crosse” (877; XIII.9). Bagdemagus attempts to bear it, but he is struck down and badly injured by a mysterious white knight, who says that the shield is properly Galahad’s. Galahad takes it, and he also meets the white knight. Instead of attacking, the white knight explains the history of the shield. Joseph of Arimathea’s son Josephé made the shield in Sarras for King Evelake, promising the sign would bring victory in battle. It did so, but the cross vanished until years later Josephé, dying, repainted the cross with his own blood so that the shield could be a memorial until the last of his lineage (Galahad) should bear it. The shield links Galahad to two important figures in the emerging British nationalism. One, obviously, is Joseph of Arimathea. The other was Saint George, whose heraldic device was the plain red cross on a white background. When Malory took the story of the shield from his source, the Queste del Saint Graal, the significance of the red cross and of Joseph had changed. In the thirteenth century, the red cross was the standard badge of holy warriors (worn by Templars, among others).9 Since many stories have Saint George appearing miraculously as a white knight to assist crusaders,10 it is unsurprising that the cross should become associated with him; but George was not yet particularly associated with England. George was born in Cappadocia and martyred in the early fourth century in Persia, and so his cult began in the east. It had spread to England before the crusades, but as crusades returned with stories of George’s miraculous help, his cult grew in popularity.11 But it was Edward III’s choice of Saint George to be the patron of the Order of the Garter that began to elevate George from being one saint among many to England’s particular patron.Thus it was the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that saw the increasing connection between George and


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England. Several English ordinances of war mandate that every English soldier bear the sign of Saint George and that no enemy, save prisoners in the safekeeping of their captors, wear the badge, on pain of death12 (similar to Bagdemagus’s fate in being struck down for bearing the shield when he is unworthy). Henry V was an enthusiastic supporter of George, and at least one poem credits George with helping the English win at Agincourt. In 1416, Archbishop Henry Chichele proclaimed that Saint George’s feast should be a magis duplex [greater double]—that is, one of the greatest holidays—because he was “the special patron and protector of the English nation.”13 But George, of course, was not English, and his cult was spread not only across western Europe but also beyond, into Orthodox, Coptic, and Syrian churches and even into Islam (not surprisingly, given George’s origins).14 Interestingly, in Caxton’s translation of the Golden Legend, one of the miracles attributed to George’s tomb is its ability to heal Muslims without necessarily converting them:“And whan a sarrasyn beyne madde is brought thyder . . . he shall anone be made parfytely hole / and haue his wytte agayne.”15 This could provoke uneasiness. Baptista Spagnuoli the Mantuan’s Georgius, translated by Alexander Barclay and printed in 1515, takes care to assure readers that George was “whyte of coloure.”16 By the time Malory wrote his “Sankgreal,” therefore, the white knight and the shield of the red cross had luckily been transformed from general signs of holy warriors into tokens of the martial saint most strongly tied to England, but who was uneasily bound to the east as well. Joseph of Arimathea was another eastern saint transformed into an English ally. The myth that Joseph brought Christianity (and the Grail) to England had assumed international political importance after the papal schism of 1378 (which lasted until 1417). A series of councils both provided leadership of the church and attempted to resolve the schism.Voting was often by “nation,” meaning regions that shared languages and customs, and to prove that England was a sufficiently old and traditional nation, English representatives used the story of Joseph of Arimathea converting the English to claim a degree of precedence in the international church.17 Thus Joseph of Arimathea’s status as a founder of the English church became much more prominent in the fifteenth century than it ever had been. The emergence of the two saints linked by the red cross on Galahad’s shield offered a powerful chance to reinterpret the Grail legend as a nationalist celebration of England.18 John Hardyng’s Chronicle, one of Malory’s minor sources, does precisely this to establish England’s superiority to Scotland.19 Hardyng’s first step is to establish that because Josephé gave “Saint George’s cross” to a British king in the first century, the heraldic red cross is specifically English, and that the association with George was a

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later development: Ioseph conuerted this kyng Auiragus, & gaue hym a shelde of ye armes that wee call sainct George his armes, whiche armes he bare euer after; & thus became that armes to bee ye kynges armes of this lande, long afore sainct George was gotten or borne. And as Maryan, the profounde chronicler, saieth, he bare of siluer, in token of clennes, a crosse of goules, significacion of the bloodde that Christe bleedde on ye crosse.20

The cross, however, quickly becomes not just the device of the kings of the country but the arms of the country as a whole: “These armes were vsed through all Brytain / For a common signe, eche manne to knowe his nacion.”21 The arms are then ascribed to Constantine, the Emperor (born of a British mother) who made Christianity the official Roman religion, and this is further evidence of Britain’s greatness.22 Arthur is also assigned George’s red cross, although on a background of gold.23 Finally, the shield with its red cross comes to Galahad, with a reminder of its descent from Josephé, Arviragus, and Constantine.24 Thus, in Hardyng, the red cross stands for key moments at which what might be foreign glory becomes British.25 Joseph brings Christianity from the near east to Britain and through the Grail gives the British direct access to the blood of Christ. George, never a character, is still marked as British through his cross. Constantine puts a British stamp on Roman Christianity, and Constantine and Arthur, taken together, mark Britain as the successor to the Roman empire. Galahad, by achieving the Grail, puts the seal on this history of British glory. While Hardyng never misses an opportunity to assert that Saint George’s cross is properly British, thus strengthening the connection between England and George that was being forged at the end of the Middle Ages, Malory never explicitly makes the connection. He would hardly need to identify the red cross on white as George’s for a fifteenth-century English audience, but he does not use it simply to celebrate English glory in a new, religious arena. Rather, he locates the Grail castle of Corbenic in a “forayne contrey” (793; XI.1) and sets up Galahad to counterbalance Arthur, thereby providing a sense of the English nation tied to and partially produced by the east, in contrast to the triumphant, independent England imagined in the war with Rome. Galahad’s role as a representative of his nation is marked by signs of royal dignity. His conception strongly resembles Arthur’s except with reversed gender roles. Launcelot plays the role of Igrayne and Elaine the role of Uther as a woman disguises herself with the assistance of her magical female counselor to achieve a union that, although motivated at least in part by


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personal desires, is socially justifiable by the child it produces. As Galahad comes into public view, he draws a sword from a stone that marks his identity, and despite questions about his parentage he claims the highest seat at the Round Table, the Siege Perilous. The red-cross shield confirms him as a prominent champion of England. Later, he gets King David’s sword, which might have gone to Arthur since David and Arthur are both kings, both members of the Nine Worthies, both rulers whose realms suffer from the consequences of adultery and incest. Despite these royal symbols, Galahad does not reconstitute the English court. When he does becomes king, it is in the city of Sarras “in the partis of Babilonye” (1036; XVII.23). His status as Christian is more important than his ties to Britain. Even so, Galahad remains a representative of England. When Galahad, Bors, and Percivale finally arrive at the Grail castle, nine other knights join them: three apiece from Gaul, Denmark, and Ireland (1028; XVII.19).This recasts the grail quest.The focus had been on individual struggle and individual accomplishment—with Percivale as the fool who achieves glory by providence, Bors as the rational Christian, and Galahad as the rare man who succeeds by grace and intellect—with the expectation that any worthy knight might attain the Grail. The neat regional delegations, however, suggest that the knights are there not just as a result of personal purity but as national representatives. In the fifteenth century, national, regional, and local churches were gaining more authority and more of a sense of their own identities.26 The Grail encourages this. It is an object of veneration in northwestern Europe: there are no German, Italian, or Spanish knights. Within northwestern Europe, the individual realms send their own champions, and, while the British may be foremost (they arrive first and they get to leave with the Grail), the decision to focus on their story is clearly the result of the narrator’s English interests. Their shared communion after having achieved the Grail does not completely erase their national identities, either; that the relationship between the French and the English is especially close is suggested when Galahad begs the French knights to give his regards to his father, Launcelot (1031; XVII.21).When they depart the Grail castle, the delegations are given different task.When Galahad asks “why shall nat thys other felowis go with us?” the answer is simply “For thys cause: for ryght as I departe my postels one here and anothir there, so I woll that ye departe” (1031; XVII.20). The role of English Christians may differ from that of other European Christians, but they are part of a larger collective pattern that they cannot claim entirely for themselves. Galahad’s journey to Sarras puts England in a context larger even than western Christendom. These are the lands where Saint George was born and died; and Sarras is the city where Josephé son of Joseph of Arimathea

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first gave Evelake the shield with the cross. Galahad’s voyage confirms the inescapable eastern connections of the religion and its saints. England cannot make everything English.The Grail’s presence was a reflection that King Arthur achieves “the grettyst worship that ever befelle kynge in Bretayne” (863; XIII.5), but this is not enough, and the Grail is removed from Britain because “he [the Grail] ys nat served nother worshipped to hys ryght by hem of thys londe, for they be turned to evyll lyvyng, and therefore I shall disherite them the honoure whych I have done them” (1030; XVII.20).Thus the Grail quest brings both glory and shame to England, but in neither case is Arthur’s realm allowed to escape its connections to the larger world, because the Grail’s presence in England is temporary.The east from which it came and to which it returns cannot be denied. Arthur’s Roman war established a sense of an English nation independent of Rome, in which Christianity and rule by just law became British and the Romans were reduced to violent, pagan invaders to be repulsed. Arthur’s realm, in short, seemed to contain all that was good in the world. As Percivale’s aunt says when the Grail quest is just getting under way: Merlyon made the Rounde Table in tokenyng of rowndnes of the worlde, for men sholde by the Rounde Table undirstone the rowndenes signifyed by ryght. For all the worlde, crystenyd and hethyn, repayryth unto the Rounde Table, and whan they ar chosyn to be of the felyship of the Rounde Table they thynke hemselff more blessed and more in worship than they had gottyn halff the worlde. (906; XIV.2)

By the Grail quest’s end, this is no longer the vision of the nation.27 The Round Table fellowship is one part of the world, providing no more than a quarter of the knights at the western Grail-feast, and the west itself being only part of the large, round world. After all, at the climactic Eucharistic feast, the Grail knights are welcomed as sons of God but “nat my chyeff sunnes” (1031; XVII.21). The balance between celebrating the English church and acknowledging that is only part of a larger whole is seen in the structure of the “Sankgreal.” In the first four tales (“Arthur,” “Arthur and Lucius,” “Launcelot,” and “Gareth”), stories tend to begin an end at the royal court. In the “Trystram,” they often began and ended at regional courts. In the “Sankgreal,” the story of Launcelot and Bors begins and ends at Arthur’s court; the story of the Grail and Galahad’s red-cross shield begin and end in the east, and Galahad and Percivale begin with Arthur and end in the east.The English national community is no longer self-contained, and the Grail knights have a range of responses to that.


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Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton sketch out an argument about Saint George’s role underlying the Redcrosse Knight in Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene: St George’s destiny is to be patron both of East and West. . . . He is a pivotal, Janus-faced saint, whose cult is shared by Eastern and Western churches (and indeed by Islam). . . . The claim upon St George/Redcrosse as the standardbearer for “mery England” is too weak, too contested elsewhere, to hold.The failed literary attempt at that claim . . . can unpack the strong element of wishful thinking in English epic and imperial aspiration.28

What is true in the Faerie Queene is true in Le Morte Darthur, for Malory’s Galahad is a model for Spenser’s young red-cross knight. The “Sankgreal” corrects the imperialistic celebration of Britain offered in “Arthur and Lucius,” reducing England to one national community among many. Launcelot, Percivale, and Private Families Just as national boundaries shift, revealing connections and legacies not dwelt on in the Roman war, so too does the sense of family change. The emphasis on cousins and brothers, groups of kinsmen of fighting age that form the backbones of the major affinities, shifts to a focus on fathers, sons, and female relatives.29 The first sign of this comes early.When the sword in the stone comes floating down the river to being the Grail quest, the penalty for trying to draw it and failing is to receive a serious wound from the sword (856; XIII.2). Launcelot refuses to try; Gawain is forced by King Arthur to make the attempt; and then Percivale makes the attempt “for to beare sir Gawayne felyship” (858; XIII.3).30 It is a remarkable gesture. Percivale is a son of King Pellinore, who killed Gawain’s father Lot; Gawain and his brothers, in turn, have killed Percivale’s father Pellinore and his brother Lameroke.When Percivale first heard of Lameroke’s death, his reaction was an impassioned lament that “hit is to muche to suffir the deth of oure fadir kynge Pellynor, and now the deth of oure good brother sir Lamorak!” (688; X.54). His use of the plural pronoun “oure” suggests he fully identifies with his family in this feud.Yet his willingness to be sorely wounded by a sword for the sake of showing fellowship with Gawain is an important gesture of unity at the start of the Grail quest. Later, it is reciprocated. On the Grail quest, Gawain rides with Lameroke’s brother Agglovale (892; XIII.16). The feud is not forgotten—after the Grail quest one of Lameroke’s kinsmen poisons an apple meant for Gawain—but during the Grail quest it ceases to matter.

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Although Percivale may seem suddenly disconnected from the affairs of his male kin, he rediscovers the women of his family.When Percivale seeks after Galahad, he finds instead a recluse who recognizes him although he does not recognize her. She is his aunt, and she tells him that the Round Table disrupts family relations: “And ye have sene that [knights] have loste hir fadirs and hir modirs and all hir kynne, and hir wyves and hir chyldren, for to be of youre felyship. Hit ys well seyne be you, for synes ye departed from your modir ye wolde never se her, ye founde such felyship at the Table Rounde” (906; XIV.2). In Percivale’s case, she seems to be suggesting that he has been guilty of valuing male fellowship over female family members. With the new religious perspective, the brothers with whom he maintained the feud with Lot’s sons may be less important than the women (his aunt and especially his sister) who can offer moral and spiritual guidance, even if at first Percivale seems more interested in getting information about Galahad than about his mother’s death.The fact that, unusually in Malory, Percivale’s wife and sister are unnamed marks their political insignificance—his aunt has renounced her queenship to be become a recluse—but does not undercut the religious efficacy of a lay piety in which women could offer domestic religious counsel. For Launcelot, the shift in focus from the political family to the religious family involves not female relatives but recognition that, for the Grail quest, his most important kinsman is Galahad, not Bors, even though Bors makes a better foil for Launcelot as sinner than Galahad does. Bors successfully repents and moves beyond a sexual sin, as Launcelot does not; he is a longterm member of Arthur’s court and manages to live purely in the political, chivalric world, as Launcelot and Galahad do not. But Galahad is not meant to be just a foil for Launcelot. Galahad is a product of Launcelot’s sexual misconduct, and so he forces Launcelot to come to terms emotionally and practically with the consequences of his actions, which goes well beyond the abstract contemplation of adultery and fornication as moral categories. The tension of Launcelot as biological father striving in hopes that he will be one of the grail knights whom God “wolt wyghtsauff to calle us [His] sunnes” (1031; XVII.21) reflects the uneasy fit between religious and social hierarchies.31 Launcelot as a father owes something to Galahad. He can knight his son and bring him to the Round Table, and his lineage gives Galahad credit. However, he also must acknowledge Galahad to be his spiritual superior and learn from him on the quest.As Martin Shichtman notes, after salvation, the Grail focuses primarily on “genealogy and virginity.”32 Both are markers of standing, but in slightly different value systems. From one perspective, Galahad gains status by being Launcelot’s son, as Guinevere repeatedly observes (862, 865, 869; XIII.4, 6, 8), but Launcelot loses status for engendering a bastard on a woman he does not love. From another


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perspective, as Karen Cherewatuk argues, Launcelot gets credit for being Galahad’s father.33 The spiritual perspective of Galahad as superior to Launcelot should not obliterate the social worth of Launcelot’s fatherhood: at the Grail castle, within ten lines of rejoicing at being called a son of God, Galahad begs the three French knights “to salew my lorde sir Launcelot, my fadir” (1031; XVII.21).Thus, even at the moment when Galahad has proven himself superior by gaining at Corbenic what Launcelot failed to win, Galahad still acknowledges Launcelot’s paternity and, with it, lordship. But the old secular relationships have been altered. One of the French knights is the son of King Claudas, old enemy of Launcelot’s father (Galahad’s grandfather) King Ban.That feud silently vanishes; the family ties now are based on common spiritual interests, not common enemies. Because two hierarchies are operating at once, the implications of Launcelot’s fatherhood oscillate. This begins before Galahad is even conceived. Launcelot, on his way to fight a dragon, encounters a prophecy: “HERE SHALL COM A LYBARDE OF KYNGES BLOOD AND HE SHALL SLE THIS SERPENTE. AND THIS LYBARDE SHALL ENGENDIR A LYON IN THIS FORAYNE CONTREY WHYCHE LYON SHALL PASSE ALL OTHER KNYGHTES” (793; XI.2). At first glance it is a straightforward prophecy of Galahad’s superiority, but there is an oddity. In medieval bestiaries, leopards were the product of adultery between a lion and a pard (panther), so it should be lions engendering leopards, not leopards engendering lions. As one late-fifteenth-century treatise on heraldry says: The leopart is a rycht cruell best, . . . and as / sais Ysodore in his xii buk, he is generyt be adultery of / lyoppart [sic] and Qe lynesse . . . and sum sais Qat Merlyne, Qe propheta, wes Qe first man Qat bur it becaus/ he wes born of faarie in adultrie . . . and [the leopard] is a best Qat Qe princis and/ lordis has ay born and 3it beris in armorie, bot he Qat beris him/ in his propir coulour suld be a bastard, and Qarfor na princis/ beris him in his verray coulour bot Qai beir him in oQir colour/ in significacioun of his propirte and nocht of his natur.34 [The leopard is a right cruel beast . . . and as Isidore says in his twelfth book, he is engendered by adultery of a leopard and a lioness . . . and some say that Merlin the prophet was the first man that bore it because he was born of fairy in adultery. . . . And the leopard is a beast that princes and lords have always born and bear yet in armory, but he who bears him in his proper colors should be a bastard, and therefore no princes bear him in his true colors but they bear him in other colors, in signification of his property and not of his nature.]

The prophecy has just reversed the natural order in which the father should be the lion. Furthermore, the bastardy makes Launcelot, not Galahad,

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illegitimate and bars him from the legacy of his ancestor, Joseph of Arimathea. (There is no evidence that Malory associated Merlin with leopards, but the connection would fit the sense that Launcelot and Merlin prepare the way for the Grail quest but then must step aside.) During the Grail quest, Launcelot’s kinship to Galahad works in two directions. As Dorsey Armstrong argues, Launcelot connects Galahad to court in a way Galahad’s brief membership to the Round Table does not: at first as a superior, Launcelot knights him and invites him to the court; later, in a subordinate role, Launcelot becomes the one who recounts Galahad’s adventures to others.35 Launcelot mediates between the purely spiritual and purely secular. In doing so, he humanizes Galahad, who goes from being uncomfortable speaking of his parentage (869–70; XIII.8) to someone who unhorses Launcelot and rides away for fear of being known (892–93; XIII.17), to one who welcomes his father with great joy (1012; XVII.13).36 Instead of simply rejecting sin, Galahad shows an appreciation for what Launcelot is, not just for what he could have been.The affection between them bridges the separation between “celestial” and “terrestrial” chivalry. That points to the strength of Malory’s “Sankgreal”: it is far harder to make moral judgments about people than it is about issues, and Malory, by using more fully developed characters than the Queste del Saint Graal, demands the more difficult moral analysis. The Grail quest’s preference for the son over the father is not simply a consequence of Launcelot’s sin. It is part of a pattern in which the younger is preferred to the elder. Galahad heals many who had come before him. Galahad outstrips Launcelot. And, in Percivale’s adventures, he meets an allegorical vision of an old woman and a young, representing the old law and the new (913–15; XIV.6–7). Likewise, Bors must fight for the rights of a younger sister dispossessed by her cruel older sister (957; XVI.7). The Grail quest, despite its reverence for antiquity, favors renewal and the reversal of strict law. Galahad’s displacement of Launcelot is part of this process. Launcelot and Ethics of Intention Galahad and Launcelot play very different roles in the “Sankgreal.” Galahad, despite the fact that most of his revelations are private and most of his adventures away from the court, takes on the public signs of Saint George and Saint Joseph of Arimathea and serves as a representative of what the English can accomplish in such a quest. Launcelot, despite his position of great public influence in King Arthur’s realm, faces private issues in the quest, particularly his relationships with Guinevere and Galahad.The result of these differing roles is a double standard for evaluating them: while Launcelot faces careful scrutiny of his internal thoughts and motives,


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Galahad is judged mainly by external signs. The split between public and private religion opened by Palomides claiming to be christened in his heart continues. Like all chivalric systems, the celestial chivalry is based on a system of interpretation that takes visible actions (usually performances in battle) as signs of internal virtues. The long speeches of the hermits teach not just doctrine but a new style of interpretation to be applied to knightly action; as Dhira Mahoney says, a Grail knight “must learn to think in a new way.”37 Launcelot’s external worldly successes, which include near miracles, provide a challenge to this system. If external performance reveals internal virtue, Launcelot and Galahad are nearly equal. In the limited context of the Queste,38 Launcelot is made to fail visibly. In Malory’s larger work, Launcelot’s successes cannot be made to vanish. Instead, there are multiple techniques of interpretation used throughout the “Sankgreal.” Galahad (whose internal life we know very little about) and most knights are judged by external signs. Launcelot is judged by his motivations and thoughts more than his actions. Gesture and visible symbol define Galahad’s career: the claiming of the swords of Balin and David and the shield of Evelake, stilling the boiling well, and on and on. His actions provide the stuff of allegory; his (unnarrated) internal state can be read from his outward actions. But Launcelot’s external actions nearly match Galahad’s. He dispels the curse on Balin’s bed and will lay later claim to Balin’s sword; he miraculously heals Sir Melyot and Sir Urry, he stills the boiling water to free the lady near Corbenic (792; XI.1). To explain why Launcelot is different from Galahad, the religious instructors in the quest develop a second system of interpretation depending on internal intention rather than external symbols. A great number of speeches about Launcelot acknowledge that by the standard of external actions, Launcelot is worthy to be known as the best knight of the world. Launcelot himself willingly adopts an ethic of intention, as in this confession: And all my grete dedis of armys that I have done for the moste party was for the quenys sake, and for his sake wolde I do batayle were hit ryght other wronge. And never dud I batayle all only for Goddis sake, but for to wynne worship and to cause me the bettir to be beloved, and litill or nought I thanked never God of hit. (897; XIII.20)

Even though Launcelot is trying to simplify the ethic of intention here, erasing mixed motives (thus he makes his standard that he should fight “only for Goddis sake” and he revises “litill” thanks into “nought”), a standard of intention still brings trouble. Intentions change over time, which is why

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Launcelot’s spiritual state varies so rapidly in Nacien’s explication: For I dare sey, as synful as ever sir Launcelot hath byn, sith that he wente into the queste of the Sankgreal he slew never man nother nought shall, tylle that he come to Camelot agayne; for he hath takyn upon hym to forsake synne. And nere were that he ys nat stable, but by hys thoughte he ys lyckly to turne agayne, he sholde be nexte to encheve hit sauff Sir Galahad, hys sonne; but God knowith hys thought and hys unstablenesse.And yett shall he dye ryght an holy man, and no doute he hath no felow of none erthly synfull man lyvyng. (948; XVI.5)

Nacien acknowledges not only the greatness of Launcelot’s actions but also the purity of his present intentions to forsake sin, but this is not enough. Launcelot is blocked by the intentions that he will have in the future after the Grail quest is done but before the holy intentions that cause him to die well. This insistence on the importance of knowing Launcelot’s heart and judging his deeds by his motives makes Galahad’s opacity troubling. One episode in his career lays bare the gap between deeds and intentions. After getting David’s sword, Galahad comes to shore with Bors and Percivale and is immediately embroiled in a fight in which they kill many men. Galahad fears he has displeased God. His companions try to reassure him that they could not have won if God had not wished it, but Galahad answers that God can take his own vengeance (as indeed He will, in the very next episode, when Percivale’s sister dies giving blood).Then a priest appears and says that the men they killed were unbaptized and guilty of an astonishing variety of crimes, from raping their sister to desecrating churches (997–98; XVII.8). This scene stands out because Galahad and Launcelot have been praised explicitly for not killing since they are in a state of grace (892, 948; XIII.16, XVI.5). When Gawain, Gareth, and Uwayne slay seven brothers who are guilty of similar crimes (the seven have killed their host and his son to rape his daughter and oppress the people) they are accused by a hermit of murder (889, 892; XIII.15, 16). Why isn’t Galahad guilty? The comfort that Galahad at first rejects but finally accepts is that the outcome of battles reflects the will of God. But elsewhere, particularly in the “Trystram,” this has been proven false, and Launcelot’s career is enough to show that one can win without Christian intention. Furthermore, even if the dead men were as guilty as the priest claims them to be, Galahad and his friends did not know this when they fought. By the standards used to judge Launcelot, Galahad is guilty.The sheer abundance of crimes that the priest accuses the brothers of calls attention to the narrative’s effort to vindicate Galahad, Bors, and Percivale and marks the uneasiness of judging even these three simply by external action.


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While those who prefer Launcelot to Galahad may feel this to be an unfair double standard, it is a useful device for displaying the different ways religion can shape communities. Galahad is important for defining the religious state of a nation: he reveals its history, exposes its weaknesses, and represents its strengths to the world. Launcelot, on the other hand, must face the consequences religious obligation can impose on his life as a father, subject, and lover, and the rearrangement of these personal relationships will ripple through the society. Women and the Grail If the Grail quest establishes new patterns of community, in which nations and families are defined and linked to each other by religion, the question becomes what roles women play in these new communities. The answer might seem to be none. Nacien’s messenger famously declares: Fayre lordis whych have sworne in the queste of the Sankgreall, thus sendith you Nacien the eremyte worde that none in thys queste lede lady nother jantillwoman with hym, for hit ys nat to do in so hyghe a servyse as they laboure in. For I warne you playne, he that ys nat clene of hys synnes he shall nat se the mysteryes of Oure Lorde Jesu Cryste. (868–69; XIII.8)

Yet how religious men deal with women and how women are supposed to respond to the religious imperatives of the quest is a pressing question that Nacien does not answer. Clearly, the achievement of the Grail is only for men. All twelve who succeed are men, and Percivale’s sister, an eminently worthy woman, is not rewarded with sight of the Grail. In evaluating the consequence of this exclusion, however, it is important to recognize what achieving the Grail means. If Galahad were a Christ figure, then the prohibition on women doing what he does could shut women out of the Christian community. Fortunately, Galahad is not a Christ figure; he is a modern apostle, and the similarities to Jesus stem from the apostles’ resemblance to their lord. He is not a redeemer; his death does not absolve others of guilt. Instead, his quest is for communion with Jesus and a reenactment of the last supper with twelve Grail knights present; and after that dinner the knights are addressed as “postels” and sent abroad to do their apostolic work (1031; XVII.20). His role, therefore, is sacerdotal, and the exclusion of women from the Grail quest is parallel to the exclusion of women from the priesthood. This restriction, while significant, leaves room for women to enter into the Christian community in other ways. From the beginning of Le Morte Darthur, women are linked to the Grail. It is because Balin fails to save

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Columbe that he is fated to strike the dolorous stroke (72; II.8). It is a damsel that leads Balin on the quest for vengeance against Garlon that takes him to the Grail castle, after they visit the castle of the lady who demands blood from passing virgins, who will be encountered again in the Grail quest. A knight must be accompanied by a damsel to enter the Grail castle for the feast that Balin attends. Later prophecies and events continue the pattern. The issue of Guinevere’s adultery is also tied to the Grail quest; before King Arthur’s wedding, “Merlyon warned the kyng covertly that Gwenyver was nat holsom for hym to take to wyff. For he warned hym that Launcelot scholde love hir, and sche hym agayne, and so he turned his tale to the aventures of the Sankegreal” (97; III.1). Launcelot arrives at the Grail castle after rescuing a naked woman, and his time there is spent in dealing with Elaine. In the “Trystram,” when the Grail appears, a damsel carries it. Why, then, does Nacien banish women from the Grail quest? Nacien could have issued his prohibition because the Grail knights, seeking access to and understanding of the Eucharist normally reserved for priests, should be celibate. Moreover, if knights were serving women, their motives might be mixed.Arthur has his knights swear “allwayes to do ladyes, damesels, and jantilwomen and wydowes socour” (120; III.15), a clause, which although ostensibly based on women’s weakness, actually gives women a fair amount of power to manipulate knights.39 This, in turn, allows knights to escape (at least to some degree) moral responsibility for their actions, as when Gareth holds that the Red Knight of the Red Lands is less culpable because his murders were for the love of a lady (325;VII.18).The values of the Grail quest do not allow for this. Launcelot realizes that the proper standard is to do battle for God’s sake, not for a woman’s (897; XIII.20). God’s work can involve rescuing women, as Galahad does at the Castle of Maidens and Bors does when faced with the choice of rescuing a maiden about to be raped or his captured brother Lionel, but it does not involve being obedient to damsels’ requests.Women who conjure men by their knighthood are usually evil, such as the old woman who asks Percivale to be her man (914; XIV.7), or the fiend in the shape of a young woman who asks Percivale to reclaim her inheritance (917; XIV.8), or the fiend that begs Bors for his love (965; XVI.11–12). The apparent exception to Nacien’s ban is Percivale’s sister, who asks Galahad to follow her to the boat and then counsels and directs the knights until she dies. Ginger Thornton and Krista May propose her as a female Grail questor.40 Donald Hoffman and Martin Shichtman object, arguing that Percivale’s nameless sister keeps the focus on masculine action, either as a rebuke to their failing to live up to her imitatio Christi or as an object to be “trafficked” to create and maintain male social relationships.41 The truth is somewhere in between. Her sacrifice is Christ-like, healing others


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through her blood as she dies. It is clearly a Christian act, but that does not automatically qualify her for the strictly apostolic Grail fellowship.After all, at the dinner in Corbenic where the twelve Grail knights see Christ, even King Pelles, his son Elyazar (“which were holy men”) and Pelles’s niece must depart (1028; XVII.19). She is thus outside the Grail quest. She has found a way to be a part of the religious community, however, even after death. Her insistence on her right to participate in the Grail quest, however, is not a desire for personal recognition. She remains nameless, unusual in the Morte Darthur, and she does not ask knights to fight for her; indeed, she asks them not to when the Grail knights wish to fight to keep her from giving her blood to heal the sick lady (1002; XVI.10–11).Although Shichtman takes this as a sign of her subordination to men,42 it is a sign of the individual emphasis of this adventure. Instead of trying to make the knights serve her needs, she allows the knights to focus on their own quests, while she focuses on her own spiritual duties. No one “traffics” her; instead, she directs the knights and herself where to go, and her knowledge is a freely offered and indispensable gift.43 Just as there is a masculine lineage descending from David and Solomon to Launcelot and Galahad, so too is there a female tradition, including Solomon’s clever wife who prepares the Ship of Faith and its marvels; Mary, whose role in salvation is foretold to Solomon; and Percivale’s sister, who interprets the history. The male and female lineages play different roles through the sacred history, but the men and women are frequent allies who depend on each other’s assistance. Like the other damsels who have brought magical swords that define new styles of chivalry, Percivale’s sister helps exemplify the values David’s sword represents, and they are values of individual spiritual discipline, in which one helps others not for political duty but for charity. It is fitting, perhaps, that Percivale’s sister’s death is brought down by a woman who, to save herself, insists on seeking her health by the blood of others.This woman becomes a monstrous image of the women who manipulate the chivalric codes to their own purposes, shedding others’ blood for their own gain; Percivale’s sister’s self-discipline and self-sacrifice are the necessary antidote. Thus the women in the “Sankgreal” are excluded from one community, the apostolic fellowship of the Grail knights, but they are present and important in the larger religious community in which the Grail knights move.The family roles of wife, sister, aunt, and mother matter in a context of lay piety, for religious activity was no longer confined to the church but had spread into the home. Indeed, one of the important shifts in the story of Percivale is the change in focus from his male relatives, caught up in the feud with the sons of Lot, to his female relatives, who offer religious guidance and encouragement. Women can make their own religious choices and be sources of information; that will not, however, increase their earthly name and fame.

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Conclusion In Elizabeth Pochoda’s political reading of Le Morte Darthur, she sees the Grail quest as “a metaphor of social dissolution” as the political center proves incapable of holding the knightly fellowship together by either force or through provision of sufficient spiritual nurture.44 As much as this oversimplifies, there is an element of truth to it. Each style of chivalry creates a slightly different form of community.The royalist chivalry of the early tales focus on knights’ bonds with the king and the collective effort that results. The focus on individual knights such as Gareth and Launcelot emphasize both relations to the monarch and the needs of individual knights to establish themselves with lands and lovers and (perhaps) wives, replacing the emphasis on collective effort. Regional chivalry emphasizes performances to impress distant kings and celebrates the bonds that create local fellowships among knights, replacing the emphasis on a strong, central king. The chivalry of the Grail quest likewise emphasizes some issues and de-emphasizes others, with consequences for the community.The religious values do not offer a strong national bond. Knights seek God, and their earthly ties are to fellow Christians around the world, regardless of nationality. Furthermore, the Grail quest’s emphasis on personal sexual morality creates a wedge that other knights can drive between Arthur and Launcelot. The Grail quest’s religious focus ameliorates some of the secular forces threatening dissolution in the “Trystram.”The feud between the houses of Lot and Pellinore seems to be suspended, and, by the grace of the Grail, the knights see each other as fairer than ever before (865; XIII.7). Galahad becomes a champion of an English religious nation. But the sense of a religious nation is not located in its king but in its shared Christian history, and that history creates ties, not simply of one Englishman to another, but to foreign lands and past saints. Like Saint George and Joseph of Arimathea, Galahad has ties to east and west, and so the religious chivalry, instead of strengthening his bond to Arthur’s court, actually takes him away from it. The other knights also scatter, pursuing their own paths of religious exploration, perhaps better men but becoming more a set of individuals than one knightly community. Not only are the political bonds weakened, but also the denunciations of sexual immorality weaken the bond between Guinevere and Launcelot and offer other knights a pretext for attacking Launcelot. Like Blacman’s biography of Henry VI, this leaves the final judgment of the Grail quest unclear.When ascetic religious behavior disrupts a nation, it is possible either to blame the religious zealot for breaking apart the community or to blame the society for being unable to adapt so far as to permit (let alone encourage) what is necessary for salvation. Malory seems to


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occupy a middle ground.That the Grail quest is necessary and glorious for knights such as Galahad is clear. That it is instructive for Launcelot is also clear. But the sense that the community has in its excessive zeal damaged itself is also suggested. Arthur’s lament for his broken fellowship, his condemnation of Gawain for not understanding his proper place, and Launcelot’s final salvation by means other than the Grail, suggest a concern that the Grail ultimately does not do enough to build a new community to replace the one it disrupts. Within the “Sankgreal” itself, these political concerns are clearly secondary.The religious insistence on the values of the Eucharist, on the need for sexual restraint and the limits on violence, are paramount. Within the context of Le Morte Darthur as a whole, however, the political consequences of the Grail quest are clear.The religious values of the Grail quest threaten some of the personal bonds that have held the English nation together.


CHAPTER 6 THE DEATH OF GUINEVERE

alory provocatively follows the Grail quest with a story connected to another spiritual tale of Christian knighthood, but one that focuses on a woman.While Malory’s version of the “Poisoned Apple” comes from the French La Mort le Roi Artu and the stanzaic Le Morte Arthur, which are fairly secular, there is an allegorical version in the Book of the Knight of the Tour Landry. A rejected suitor gives a woman a poisoned apple, which she then gives to her lord’s son. She is accused of murdering him, but a champion named Patrides arrives to defend her. He wins the trial by combat, but dies of five mortal wounds in his hands, feet, and sides.1 While there is no evidence that Malory knew this version of the story, Caxton printed it in 1484, a year before he printed Le Morte Darthur. It is clearly a simple allegory of the fall and the redemption, but with Eve rendered remarkably innocent, and with Christ the model for championing ladies.This reminder that the Grail quest is not the only version of religious knighthood suggests a possible way the religious values of the Grail quest can be reconciled with the political values necessary to keep the country functioning. In the aftermath of the Grail quest, the political structure must be reestablished. Arthur holds the largest tournament since the beginning of the Grail quest (1065; XVIII.8); the rivalries among the affinities recommence, with Aggravayne jealous of Launcelot’s access to the queen (1045; XVIII.1) and Pyonell trying to revenge Lameroke’s death by poisoning Gawain (1049; XVIII.3).The most significant political problem, however, is Launcelot’s relationship to Guinevere. Regardless of when the adultery started, Launcelot’s primary political connection was to Guinevere from the time of the Roman war until she banished him for sleeping with Elaine. After the banishment, he ran mad for two years, and then lived with Elaine for an unspecified period of time. His return to Arthur’s court was just at the start of the Grail quest, so he departed almost immediately for a long effort that included a strong if unstable effort to renounce Guinevere.

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As part of that effort, he promised to abide by a hermit’s counsel that “ye shall no more com in that quenys felyship as much as ye may forbere” (897; XIII.20), greatly complicating his political relationship with her. When Launcelot returns from the Grail quest, his relation with the queen (and thus the balance of power among the affinities) is highly unsettled and must be resolved through the next episodes. It is neglect of this political aspect to their relationship that has led many critics, despite Malory’s declaration that Queen Guinevere “was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende” (1120; XVIII.25) to find Guinevere “jealous, unreasonable, possessive, and headstrong.”2 Sarah Hill and Lindsay Holichek retort that, the adultery excepted, Guinevere functions as an admirable woman who inspires others to right moral conduct,3 but her personal character, whether as guilty lover or Christian penitent, should not obscure her political role. She is a queen as well as a lover.4 A number of her actions that readers often attribute to jealousy may instead be prompted by politics as she struggles to hold together the Round Table fellowship. For some, seeing Guinevere act as a politician serving her country as well as a lover longing for Launcelot may be unromantic,5 but Malory might disagree. In his famous passage likening love to May,6 he defines virtuous love as being based on restraint and balanced priorities: Therefore, lyke as May moneth flowryth and floryshyth in every mannes gardyne, so in lyke wyse lat every man of worshyp florysh hys herte in thys worlde: firste unto God, and nexte unto the joy of them that he promysed hys feythe unto. . . . But firste reserve the honoure to God, and secundely thy quarell muste com of thy lady. And such love I calle vertuouse love. (1119; XVIII.25)

While speaking of one’s lady seems to imply a masculine perspective, he ends not with Launcelot but with Guinevere: “while she lyved she was a trew lover, and therefor she had a good ende” (1120; XVIII.25). Guinevere does seem to meet his standards of virtuous love: she loves Launcelot intensely but not blindly. She remains aware of her duties as queen and, when she enters a nunnery, her duties to God. In short, Malory has given us a flawed heroine—a much rarer breed than flawed heroes. Her sexual sin is real, but it is not her only characteristic, nor, perhaps, even her overwhelming characteristic. It is worth remembering that, in the lists of the Nine Worthy Women popular in England and France, Semiramis is one of the worthies.7 If Semiramis can be a member of such a distinguished company despite her sexual excess, Guinevere can be recognized as a worthy queen. As Edward Donald Kennedy points out, it is not the Grail but Guinevere

T H E D E AT H O F G U I N E V E R E

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that makes Launcelot die a holy man8—but, more important, perhaps, is that Guinevere dies a holy woman. Medieval Queenship Queens had no official role in national government but worked instead by influence. One way they could exercise power was to work through their husbands by counsel and intercession.9 A well-known literary example of Guinevere interceding with Arthur is The Wife of Bath’s Tale, in which Arthur sentences a rapist-knight to death but Guinevere intervenes. One strategy of intercession was to play on the queen’s putative helplessness to flatter masculine strength into granting a favor.10 In Le Morte Darthur, however, Guinevere is not an intercessor. More often than Arthur, she is the judge of difficult cases: it is she, as the head of an inquest of ladies, who sits in judgment on Gawain at the end of his first quest (108; III.8); it is she who decides what should be done with the wife-killer Pedyvere (286;VI.17).While her judgment is often merciful, it is not a result of intercession;Arthur grants her authority without her begging. Since Guinevere does not often intercede with Arthur, she does not often take on a visibly inferior role. Guinevere does kneel to Arthur after Launcelot had rescued her from the fire and is returning her at the Pope’s command, but this is in her own behalf—and when Arthur does not welcome her, Launcelot urges her to stand, abandoning the humility (1196–97; XX.14). At other times she kneels to Bors after fights with Launcelot (808, 1052; IX.10, XVIII.5).These moments of submission, while illustrating her dependence on Launcelot at times of crisis, are uncharacteristic, and rather than establish her as subordinate because she is Arthur’s wife, they establish her as vulnerable because she is Launcelot’s lover. While not an intercessor, Guinevere is a “good lady” involved in the politics of the knightly affinities.11 Guinevere, particularly in “Launcelot and Guinevere,” balances her personal concerns with political responsibilities. She is heavily involved with not just her affinity but with most of the major affinities of the kingdom, as a queen should. Margaret of Anjou and Elizabeth Woodville were both “good ladies”: they tried to advance their followers’ careers, settle disputes, and represent their followers’ interests to their kings and others.12 This goes beyond the role Elizabeth Edwards assigns the queen: “Guinevere’s role is not to uphold the court, but to uphold the ‘homosocial’ bonds between men who uphold the court.”13 Setting aside the point that there were multiple courts, the queen’s being one, still male–female bonds played a recognized and important role in fifteenth-century politics, and eliding the women disrupts the structure of affinities, in which knights such as Pelleas become Arthur’s knights through their bonds with women such as Nyneve.

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Queens were recognized as leading their own affinities instead of just being members of their husbands’ affinities. Margaret of Anjou clearly had her own affinity.14 So did Elizabeth Woodville: a letter from a certain Simon Stallworth speaks of “the Quiene, hir blode adherents and affinitie.”15 But to lead an affinity did not mean to rule it.The exchange of good lordship or good ladyship for faithful service was often not predicated on formal office or strict duties of obedience.This allowed supporters of an affinity to have other loyalties as well. Gareth is a classic case of a man with loyalty to two affinities, Gawain’s and Launcelot’s.These political facts color the relationship between Guinevere and Launcelot; while in the French prose Lancelot Guinevere acts as Lancelot’s “lord,” in the sense of someone to whom he owes obedience,16 in Malory Guinevere regularly acts instead as a “good lady,” whose power is in the more tenuous reciprocal relations of the affinity. The distinction between ruling and leading is in some sense the boundary between a bad queen and a good queen. Women heavily involved in politics did not violate social expectations if they deferred to those who were expected to have authority over them (in the queen’s case, the king). In a political poem that declares “Morovyr it ys right a gret abusion, / a woman of a land to be a regent, / Qwene Margrete I mene,” the problem with Margaret’s “wykked affynité” is not that Margaret is its head but rather that she uses it destructively to gain power over the entire country.17 As long her support was for the king, her leading an affinity could be positive, because she could use her affinity in the king’s interests. Rosemary Horrox argues that Edward IV helped build affinities for Richard, Duke of Gloucester and Queen Elizabeth Woodville precisely because he was confident that their affinities would support him.18 Indeed, it could often be unclear who led an affinity, since king, queen, and kin could have overlapping affinities. There is considerable overlap among Arthur’s, Guinevere’s, and Launcelot’s affinities. It is not surprising, therefore, that through most of Le Morte Darthur the focus is on the affinities that are clearly rivals (Gawain’s, Launcelot’s,Trystram’s, Mark’s, and Lameroke’s) and not on the queen’s; but after the Grail quest as the adultery becomes more of an issue, it becomes more important to distinguish those who are in the queen’s affinity from those who are in the king’s. Her increasing dependence on Launcelot’s party (especially Bors in Launcelot’s absence) shows that her affinity is becoming distinct from Arthur’s. Within affinities, queens could offer good ladyship in several ways.The first was through her influence on her husband. Another possible form of good ladyship was by maintaining a female network that might help counteract male rivalries.19 Margery Paston reports that “I spacke wyth my cosyn Gornay, and seyd if I wold goo to my lady of Norffolk and besech hyr good


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grace to be youre good and gracyous lady, she wold be so; for he seyd that on word of a woman shuld do more than the wordys of xx men.”20 It is several times mentioned that Guinevere keeps Morgause company at Arthur’s court (346, 359; VII.28, 35), and Guinevere and Isode exchange frank letters (425, 435–36; VIII.31, 37) before Trystram joins the Round Table.21 Queens could also be good ladies by deploying their own economic resources. Unlike most wives, a queen was a femme sole;22 that is, she had legal authority over her own property and money. Late medieval kings and queens maintained separate households with separate accounts (when the king and queen stayed together, sometimes a per diem was paid from the queen’s household to the king’s to cover the cost of food for her and her followers).23 This gave the queen the resources to employ officers in her household (whom, as good lady, she could later recommend to higher positions), to manage estates, and to reward good service.Thus, when Launcelot has run mad and Ector reports “Hyt hath coste my lady the queen twenty thousand pounds the sekynge of you” (831; XII.9), it probably is Guinevere’s own money that she is spending. She spends this money for love of Launcelot, certainly, but also to calm an affinity in turmoil. Bors’s rebuke of her is a political complaint:“ye have loste the beste knight of oure blood, and he that was all oure leder and oure succoure . . . . [W]hat shall do that ben of hys bloode?” (808; XI.9). It is immediately following this rebuke that Guinevere charges Lionel, Ector, and Bors (all kin to Launcelot) to seek him regardless of the cost. This helps ensure that Guinevere can maintain relations with other important knights in the affinity despite Launcelot’s madness. It is only after their initial failure that knights from other affinities become involved in the search at the joint request of King Arthur and Queen Guinevere (809; XI.10). Guinevere, therefore, has a recognized role in the affairs of the kingdom and the Round Table, a role her adultery affects but does not destroy. It is after the Grail quest that her adultery becomes a pressing political problem. Launcelot’s engendering of Galahad puts strain on the love between Launcelot and Guinevere, leading to tensions between the lovers that the Grail quest exacerbates.The Grail causes the Round Table to be “brokyn for a season,” (793; XI.2): the knights not only scatter, but also Launcelot’s lack of success makes his relation with the queen the subject of increasing concern.After the Grail quest, therefore, there are a number of issues for the queen to resolve. The Poisoned Apple The start of the “Poisoned Apple” deals with the political consequences of Launcelot’s attempt to pull away from the queen.When Guinevere banishes

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Launcelot because of his service to other women, Launcelot laments to Bors that “the quene hath defended me so hyghly that mesemyth she woll never be my good lady as she hath bene” (1047; XVIII.2). “Good lady,” of course, is not an endearment but a political term. It comes as an apparent correction to Bors, who has attempted to console Launcelot by emphasizing Launcelot’s political importance and minimizing the queen’s, treating her as just another woman:“Ye muste remembir you what ye ar, and renomed the moste nobelyst knyght of the worlde, and many grete maters ye have in honde. And women in their hastynesse woll do oftyntymes that aftir hem sore repentith” (1047; XVIII.2). Launcelot’s answer emphasizes the role the queen plays in supporting him and the whole affinity.A falling out between Guinevere and Launcelot could dramatically affect the balance of the kingdom. When Bors promises to help Launcelot regain Guinevere’s good graces, he is more than a Grail knight conniving at adultery; he is trying to solve a political problem that threatens his whole affinity. The adultery is almost as dangerous to Launcelot’s affinity as it will later be to the entire Round Table community. While Launcelot is worried that Guinevere will no longer be his good lady, he warns her that in case she gets into trouble, “than ys there none other helpe but by me and my bloode” (612; XVIII.1). In other words, he claims that Guinevere has become so strongly associated with his affinity that she has lost the loyalty of the others. How strongly they are associated is made clear at the very beginning of the story, when it is reported that they “had many such prevy draughtis togydir that many in the courte spake of hit” (1045; XVIII.1). As Beverly Kennedy has noted,“having a draught” means “to take a walk”; The Oxford English Dictionary actually cites this passage from Malory as an example of this meaning.24 Thus, the passage is not a euphemism for private sexual activity but a description of public favoritism.This does not make their behavior innocent.When Christine de Pizan gives a sample daily schedule for a princess or queen, she writes: [I]f it is summer, she will go off to amuse herself in a garden until supper-time, walking up and down for her health. She will wish that if any persons need to see her for any reason they be allowed to enter and she will hear them.25

Christine says that the queen should give alms and hear petitions after morning mass, but this does not seem the ideal time for political consultations with courtiers. For those queens granted responsibility in government, there are also council meetings, but if it were clear that Guinevere did attend council meetings, these would not be private audiences. Debate is particularly prohibited at meals, so there are not many times free for individual political discussions.26 Their frequent “prevy draughtis” thus


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could suggest that Launcelot is monopolizing the time others seeking the queen’s attention might want, suggesting Launcelot’s undue influence. Guinevere and Launcelot’s love poses two threats: private adultery, treasonous because of the threat of a bastard heir and the emotional injury to the king; and public favoritism, politically dangerous for those not allied with the lucky lover. Historically, this fear of political favoritism was a major concern in cases of royal adultery. When Queen Isabella was having her affair with Roger Mortimer, the primary concern was the undue influence Mortimer had on the government, not the danger of a bastard heir or the affront to Edward II’s masculine sexual pride. Edward II’s male lovers, of course, had also gained undue power. Even female lovers could be accused of excessive influence: Edward III’s mistress Alice Perrers was resented for her indirect power.27 Thus, while Launcelot and Guinevere’s private walks only suggest adultery, they focus attention on adultery as a public political problem rather than simply as private sexual sin.28 Recognizing the public dimension of adultery complicates the analysis of the end of Le Morte Darthur. Derek Brewer, Mark Lambert, Terence McCarthy, and others have argued that Malory tends to emphasize public honor and shame, rather than personal guilt and private feeling.29 Obviously, public and private are not complete opposites; Angela Gibson argues that it is the crossing of boundaries to make the private public that is represented as dangerous, not the existence of private desires.30 All of this work assumes that adultery is initially a private concern. But the political threat of Guinevere’s love for Launcelot is visible long before the adultery is proven and does not depend on actual sexual encounters. Indeed, rendering the issue sex rather than influence may be part of a political strategy. Gawain has been grousing without result since the “Trystram” that “whom that we hate kynge Arthure lovyth, and whom that we love he hatyth” (608; X.21), but by transforming the complaint into an accusation of adultery, the affinity does (temporarily) benefit, and Gawain replaces Launcelot as chief advisor to King Arthur. (It is worth remembering here that many of the early conflicts in the Wars of the Roses were not over the throne but over who the king’s advisors would be). Launcelot’s claim that Guinevere can depend on only his family is a warning that their political intimacy has jeopardized her standing with the other affinities. In response, Guinevere holds the dinner at which Patryse dies of the poisoned apple. She acts “to shew outwarde that she had as grete joy in all other knyghtes of the Rounde Table as she had in sir Launcelot” (1048; XVIII.3). This is not just camouflage for a love affair or a ploy to make Launcelot jealous. The guest-list makes it clear that this is a dinner party with serious political purpose. She invites many members of Gawain’s affinity (he is the guest of honor), as well as knights from Trystram’s,

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Launcelot’s, and Lameroke’s factions.31 Even without poison, the result could hardly have been pleasant conversation; but Guinevere is asserting her role as a queen not tied to any one affinity in particular.32 In singling out Gawain and his affinity for special attention, she is behaving exactly as Christine de Pizan’s ideal queen should behave: She will love and honour the relatives of her husband and show it in the following ways. She will honour them and make them all very welcome when they come to visit, and when other people are present she will honour her husband’s family more than her own. . . . She will not allow herself to be drawn into arguments, and in every way she will avoid as far as possible any contention or rancour arising between her and them. If one of her in-laws is stand-offish and uncivil, she will do her best to break down this reserve according to her position and the preservation of her honour. . . . But suppose now that she finds out that some of them have bad characters; she will still be friendly towards them because she cannot make them good. . . . There would be nothing but dispute and quarrelling if she showed them ill will, and she would acquire many more enemies.33

The dinner is a strong sign of favor to Gawain’s affinity, and Guinevere is almost certainly working for political amity. Thus, read romantically, her dinner is a petty and malicious stab at Launcelot; read politically, it is an admirable and necessary attempt to reassert control over and bring peace to increasingly divided affinities. But the attempt backfires spectacularly because the court is full of suspicions and jealousies that make Guinevere’s doubts about Launcelot seem tame. Lameroke’s cousin Sir Pyonell seeks revenge on Gawain by poison.The result is disaster. Instead of bringing the affinities together, the episode drives them further apart.The attack, obviously aimed at Gawain, casts obvious suspicion on Launcelot’s affinity in general and the queen in particular. Her ties to Launcelot give her motive: not only have Gawain’s and Launcelot’s affinities been rivals, with Launcelot angry that Gawain’s brothers apparently get away with murder (613; X.24) and with Gawain’s brothers angry that Launcelot is considered a better knight than Gawain (690, 700; X.55, 58), but also it is Gawain’s brother Aggravayne who is most active in spreading malicious gossip about the queen (1045; XVIII.1). Because Bors is a member of Launcelot’s affinity, he fears to fight on her behalf lest knights suspect him of the poisoning (1052;XVIII.5)— after all, his confidence in the queen’s innocence could come from knowing himself to be the poisoner, just as in the “Knight of the Cart” episode, Launcelot can defend Guinevere from the accusation of adultery with one of the wounded knights because he knows she was committing adultery with him. Most of the knights believe Guinevere guilty, and she begins to hear the dreaded title “destroyer of good knyghtes” (1054; XVIII.5).


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Ironically, Guinevere finds herself in danger of being cut off from the one affinity everyone assumes supports her: she has angered Bors by exiling Launcelot. Malory reports that “for favoure, love, nother affinité there sholde be none other but ryghtuous jugemente, as well uppon a kynge as uppon a knyght, and as well uppon a quene as uppon another poure lady” (1055; XVIII.6); nonetheless, this means only that her affinity cannot subvert the legal process, not that they should not help her through it.This they are reluctant to do. Publicly, Bors defends her: [A]t all tymes, as far as ever I coude know, she was a maynteyner of good knyghtes, and the moste bownteuous lady of hir gyfftis and her good grace that ever I saw other harde speke off. . . . I dare sey so much, for the quene is nat gylty of sir Patryseys dethe: for she ought hym never none evyll wyll nother none of the foure and twenty knyghtes that were at that dyner, for I dare sey for good love she bade us to dyner and nat for no male engyne. (1054; XVIII.5)

In private, however, Bors makes it clear he is undertaking battle for Launcelot and Arthur, not for Guinevere (1053; XVIII.5), just as other knights protest they trust Arthur but not her (1054; XVIII.5). Because Guinevere is no longer able to command respect as a queen well disposed to all the affinities, she becomes politically dependent on the favor of only one affinity.Arthur makes this clear to her: “What aylith you,” seyde the kynge,“that ye can nat kepe sir Launcelot uppon youre syde? For wyte you well,” seyde the kynge,“who that hath sir Launcelot uppon his party hath the moste man of worship in thys worlde uppon hys syde. Now go youre way,” seyde the kynge unto the quene, “and requyre sir Bors to do batayle for you for sir Launcelottis sake.” (1051; XVIII.4)

Bors makes a similar but even more telling point. After Guinevere had banished Launcelot for sleeping with Elaine of Corbenic, Bors had scolded her, pointing out the political damage she had done to Launcelot’s affinity, but he did not include her in the list of victims, focusing instead on “we . . . that ben of hys bloode” (808; XI.9). After Patryse dies of the poisoned apple, Bors confronts the queen again, but this time he says “ye have drevyn hym oute of thys contrey by whom ye and all we were dayly worshipped by” (1052; XVIII.5).34 He includes her in the group of those “worshipped by” Launcelot to drive home that she has become de facto part of Launcelot’s affinity. Instead of reigning with the support of all the factions, her position now depends on the support of the strongest. When Launcelot returns to prove her innocent of poisoning Sir Patryse, Launcelot for a moment brilliantly reestablishes his own position as

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champion of the queen, justice, and righteous causes. Guinevere’s position is likewise reestablished, especially when Nyneve comes in to name the true poisoner.35 Launcelot criticizes Arthur and the court openly for doubting Guinevere’s role as good queen, saying,“[T]hys ys dishonoure to you and to all knyghtes of the Rounde Table to se and know so noble a lady and so curteyse as quene Gwenyvere ys, thus to be rebuked and shamed amongyst you” (1056–57; XVIII.7). Politically, however, not everything is restored. Guinevere has been forced to acknowledge her political dependence on Launcelot and his affinity, and her association with Launcelot leaves other knights suspicious of her actions. The “Fair Maid of Ascolat” parallels the “Poisoned Apple,” but with the roles of Guinevere and Launcelot reversed.The initial quarrel between the lovers is provoked by absences from court (Launcelot’s fights for distressed damsels, Guinevere’s illness) and desires to prevent slander (Launcelot’s in the “Poisoned Apple,” Guinevere’s in “Ascolat”). The angry one tries to prove that there is no special love between them (Guinevere with her dinner, Launcelot by wearing Elaine’s sleeve and fighting against Arthur). The results leave innocents dead (Patryse and Elaine) and the lovers vulnerable (Guinevere to execution, Launcelot to the injuries gained during his disguise and subsequent absence from the court). They end, also, with Launcelot and Guinevere tied together tighter than ever. The “Poisoned Apple” drives home Guinevere’s political dependence on Launcelot and his affinity.“Ascolat” emphasizes how dependent Launcelot has become on his affinity. He is vulnerable alone, and so, after Elaine’s death, Guinevere commands that Launcelot fight on the same side as his kin and that he wear her token on his helm at the next tournament (1103; XVIII.21).This keeps him safe, but it identifies him firmly as the queen’s knight. Ascolat and Fantasies of Escape “Ascolat” begins with Arthur holding a tournament so grand that “thys seven yere ye saw nat such a noble felyship togydirs excepte the Whytsontyde whan sir Galahad departed frome the courte” (1065; XVIII.8). The tournament, in other words, is a chance to rebuild the fellowship broken by the Grail, but the love between Guinevere and Launcelot threatens the process. Guinevere is ill and cannot go. Her absence provokes Launcelot to stay home, under the pretext that the injuries from the fight with Mador de la Porte are still bothering him. Arthur is unhappy and angry with them both.When Guinevere fears the scandal Launcelot may provoke by staying with her, Launcelot resolves to enter the tournament against the king’s side; there is thus a three-way split, with Arthur, Guinevere, and Launcelot angry with each other.


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The tournament, however, offers Launcelot an opportunity to renew himself, just as Arthur hoped it would renew the fellowship. In disguise and away from court, his actions reveal a subconscious fantasy of escaping all his conflicting loyalties. Launcelot takes lodging with Sir Bernard of Ascolat, and for disguise borrows the arms of Bernard’s elder son Sir Tirry. He also agrees to wear a token that Elaine, Tirry’s sister, gives him. Although Launcelot says he accepts the token only for disguise, this tournament offers a moment of freedom from his impossible position and the factionalism of the court. Because Tirry was hurt the day he was made knight (1067; XVIII.9), Launcelot gets to wear the arms of a knight just starting his career,36 and he rides with Tirry’s younger brother Lavayne as if Launcelot, too, were starting his career afresh. Reenacting the role of a new-made knight, he is free for the first time to serve a woman it is permissible to love publicly (his service to Guinevere dates from the day he was made knight [1058; XVIII.7]).This temporary release begins to solve the political problems. Arthur, who sees Launcelot going into Elaine’s house, is pleased that he is not with Guinevere. Because he knows Launcelot will be jousting, he does not let Gawain ride in the tournament (1069; XVIII.10), thus avoiding a clash between the two whose feud will bring down his kingdom. But Launcelot does get to smite Aggravayne and Mordred, the ones who are actively malicious toward him, thus playing out the hostility in a safe, appropriate theater.The fantasy of being free from his various conflicting loyalties ends when Bors almost kills him. Bors is the ideal figure to represent the tangle of love, religion, affinities, and kin that Launcelot is trying to escape. He has often mediated between Launcelot and Guinevere; he is fighting for the Round Table and King Arthur in the tournament; he is the sole surviving Grail knight; and he is Launcelot’s cousin. In freeing himself temporarily from all the old bonds, Launcelot risks injury to those who depend upon those bonds, and it is understandable that he should be wounded in return, as he himself acknowledges (1084; XVIII.16). Beyond the physical injuries are the broken loyalties. While Guinevere sees Launcelot’s wearing of Elaine’s sleeve as a personal betrayal, Bors sees it as a betrayal of all his kin: “Alas, madame, . . . he hath betrayed himselff and us all. . . . [T]hat slyeve-bearing repentes me, but I dare say he dud bear hit to none evyll entent, but for thys cause he bare the red slyve that none of hys blood shold know hym” (1080–81; XVIII.15).37 Because of that disguise, Bors struck the head of his affinity and came close to being a kin-slayer. The affinity, instead of earning worship, instead shows its vulnerabilities.As Bors laments to Launcelot: [F]ull hevy am I of my mysfortune and of myne unhappynesse. For now I may calle myselff unhappy, and I drede me that God ys gretely displeasyd

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with me, that he wolde suffir me to have such a shame for to hurte you that ar all oure ledar and all oure worship; therefore I calle myselff unhappy. (1083; XVIII.16)

While modern readers focus on the romantic troubles of the Ascolat episode, Bors’s speeches suggest that the political consequences may be more serious.The injury to the affinity is overcome, of course, and Elaine’s brother Lavayne is recruited into the affinity, but the reminder is clear that Launcelot depends upon his affinity.When he is separated from them he is vulnerable, and not just in the tournament. Because Launcelot’s identity is unknown, it is Gawain instead of one of Launcelot’s kin who finds Elaine, and his recounting of her love for Launcelot makes the rupture between Launcelot and Guinevere even worse. Guinevere’s response reveals a complex mixture of motives and emotions. That she is jealous her waspish remarks to Bors make plain (1080–81, 1087; XVIII.15, 18); Launcelot has cause when he ungraciously responds to her apology by saying, “Thys ys nat the firste tyme . . . that ye have ben displese with me causeless. But . . . what sorrow that I endure, ye take no forse” (1098; XVIII.20). But while her apology is warranted, her offense is not irrational.As Felicia Ackerman insists, her jealousy has reason in it: she knows that in the past, Launcelot fathered an illegitimate child with the first Elaine and then lived with her for an unspecified period of time; she knows that he did his best to renounce her in the Grail quest; and she saw him wear Elaine of Ascolat’s sleeve and heard Gawain testify that they were in love.38 Even so, jealousy is not necessarily her dominant emotion. When Guinevere sees Elaine’s corpse and hears her complaint, she rebukes Launcelot: “Ye myght have shewed hir som bownté and jantilnes whych myght have preserved hir lyff ” (1097; XVIII.20). Often this remark is dismissed out of hand; Terence McCarthy says “It is not difficult to imagine the scene Guenevere would have made if Lancelot had so much as thought of anticipating this advice.”39 However, for much of the story Guinevere fully believes that Launcelot has shown Elaine considerable “bownté and jantilnes,” and she makes no scene at all. She makes some bitter remarks to Bors, and she does her best to avoid Launcelot after his return (1092; XVIII.19), but she does not scold him and she does not banish him from court, although she had done so at the start of “The Poisoned Apple” with less reason. Perhaps her jealousy has become more moderate, or perhaps it is held in check by political concerns, for her sake and for the sake of Bors and the rest of the affinity. It is also possible that Guinevere is changing more deeply. She began the episode, after all, by telling Launcelot not to stay with her; and it is not too much later that, after Arthur’s death, she will refuse Launcelot’s proposal of marriage in favor of a nunnery.


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It may be that, like Bors, she recognizes that Elaine might have been a good match for Launcelot, and that while she is not yet ready to give up their love voluntarily, her wisdom and worthiness have grown to the point she can (however irritably) resign herself to an unchosen separation.The text does not compel readers to ascribe these motives to her; but neither are readers compelled to treat her as a jealous shrew. At the next tournament, Guinevere gives Launcelot specific instructions: I warne you that ye ryde no more in no justis nor turnementis but that youre kynnesmen may know you, and at thys justis that shall be ye shall have of me a slyeve of golde. And I pray you for my sake to force yourselff there, that men may speke you worshyp. But I charge you, as ye woll have my love, that ye warne your kynnesmen that ye woll beare that day the slyve of golde uppon your helmet. (1103; XVIII.21)

It is a telling reconciliation. The previous two stories have begun with Launcelot and Guinevere fearing slander and disworship; the story of the “Great Tournament” begins with Guinevere trying to make sure that men speak worship of Launcelot. Instead of confusion and separation, Launcelot wears a sleeve that identifies him as Guinevere’s knight and he rides known to his kinsmen. But he still opposes Arthur in the tournament, and he and his kin end up opposing Gawain’s affinity. The Knight of the Cart “The Knight of the Cart,” which immediately follows this tournament, reveals at once the extent and the limits of Guinevere’s influence. The episode is normally read as part of a downward spiral, in which Launcelot fights three battles for Guinevere, the first (The Poisoned Apple) in which she is completely innocent; the second (“The Knight of the Cart”) in which she is only technically innocent; and the third (after Launcelot was discovered in her chamber) in which she is guilty.40 This may be true ethically, but it is not true politically. Guinevere actually enjoys more and broader political support in “The Knight of the Cart” than she did in “The Poisoned Apple.” Furthermore, her motives do not seem primarily to conceal her adultery with Launcelot but to minimize strife at court. What leaves her vulnerable is not the conflicting loyalties of the great lords, including Gawain and his kin, but the malice and false promises of Melleagaunce. His unwillingness to carry through on his obligations undermines the system of service and good will on which rests the whole structure of political authority exercised through affinities. At the start of the episode, Malory reveals that Guinevere leads a group of young knights being groomed for the Round Table (1121; XIX.1),

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a reassertion of her role as a “good lady.”41 This mention is probably a general reminder of how she gained the trust and loyalty of knights, for the ten knights with her seem not to be the Queen’s Knights; they are not young knights, and many do not owe their advancement to the Round Table directly to her. Several seem to be in Arthur’s affinity. Pelleas was brought to court by Nyneve, who in Malory is a supporter of Arthur rather than Launcelot.42 Kay was Arthur’s foster brother, and Braundiles is probably also in the king’s affinity; he follows Arthur when the king is in danger from the sorceress Anouwre (490; IX.16) and is frequently in fellowship with Kay (344, 475, 489, 1048, 1096; VII.28, IX.9, 15, XVIII.3, 20). He also has ties to Gawain’s party: his sister is mother to two of Gawain’s sons (1147; XIX.11); it is not surprising that Gawain’s and Arthur’s affinities would overlap. Ozana appears several times with Braundiles (345, 585; VII.28, X.11), and probably has similar political ties. Sagramoure and Dodynas make their first appearance (accompanied by Ozana) as knights of Arthur’s court shortly after Arthur’s wedding and before most of the major affinities have formed (176; IV.3), and the two are regularly associated after that (344, 348, 386, 398–400, 566–68, 728; VII.28, 29, VIII.9, 16–17, X.4, 66), often appearing with Kay or Aggravayne. Persaunt of Inde and Ironsyde were defeated by Gareth, sent to court, and then made knights of the Round Table. Since Gareth is Arthur’s nephew and Launcelot’s friend, it is not clear precisely which affinity they would belong to, but they would be generally sympathetic to Guinevere. Ladynas of the Forest Savayge is introduced only in this episode, so his affinity cannot be determined; he may be one of the queen’s young protégés.43 Aggravayne is the most interesting companion: Arthur’s nephew appears to be opposed to Launcelot, having killed at least one knight for alleging that Launcelot was better than Gawain (690–91; X.55), and he has been mentioned twice as a particular danger to Launcelot and Guinevere (1045,1046; XVIII.1). At least six of these ten knights (Kay, Sagramoure, Aggravayne, Dodynas, Ozana, and Braundiles) fought on Arthur’s side in the tournament when Launcelot, wearing Elaine of Ascolat’s sleeve, opposed them. In short, most of the group with her when she is Maying are tied to Arthur or Arthur’s kin and have no special ties to Launcelot or Guinevere.That these are her guard is a reminder that she and Arthur are, in most instances, still working together. Just as she uses her good will to help members of the Queen’s Knights advance to the Round Table,Arthur encourages knights to serve the queen. It is the absence of the Queen’s Knights that encourages Melleagaunce to attack (1121; XIX.1). If, however, he expects these knights will be less dedicated to Guinevere than the Queen’s Knights would be, he is mistaken. They are willing to die defending her. In turn, Guinevere is loyal to them: she is willing to surrender herself rather than to have them killed, and she


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insists that the wounded knights sleep in her own room so that she herself can attend them (XIX.6). Still, when the bloody sheets are discovered and Melleagaunce makes his accusation of treason, he might expect some support from the knights: fully half of these knights were at Guinevere’s dinner when the poisoned apple was eaten (Kay, Aggravayne, Braundiles, Persaunte, and Ironsyde) and they refused to defend her then. This time, although they are initially “sore ashamed whan they saw that bloode” (1133; XIX.7), they all—including Aggravayne—decide the queen is innocent and are willing to risk trial by combat to prove it (1137; XIX.9). In a marked contrast to “The Poisoned Apple,” most of the court supports her.44 That so many support Guinevere, including Aggravayne, who has been suspicious of Launcelot and Guinevere, argues that what is at stake is more than the legal technicality Launcelot exploits when he fights to prove that Guinevere did not commit adultery with any of the ten wounded knights. Melleagaunce is such a villain that fighting against him is generally accepted as supporting a just cause. Justice in Malory depends on character and motive as well as situation. In the first judicial duel after the Round Table oath is instituted forbidding battles in a wrongful cause, Arthur fights Accolon even though on the technical legal issue that prompts the duel Accolon is championing the right. But Accolon intends treason and Arthur wishes to free himself from prison so he can right a series of wrongs, and this broader sense of justice seems to be what is valued. Morally and politically, Melleagaunce is the traitor, not Launcelot. Until the moment of adultery, Guinevere has behaved as a good queen, and in doing so she has wrenched the story from one of male adventure to one of politics.As Catherine Batt and Dorsey Armstrong have noted, opposition to the threat of rape is used by the knightly community to define its ideals and motivate its adventures.45 Malory’s ultimate source, Chrétien de Troyes, makes Guinevere’s abduction the occasion for Launcelot to display his heroism. Malory’s Guinevere, however, resists rape on her own (and will again when she holds off Mordred). She consents to the abduction for the sake of protecting her wounded knights, but she makes it plain she will kill herself before allowing violation (1122–23, XIX.2). In handling the rape-threat herself, she transforms the story from a martial, masculine struggle to a political struggle in which her interventions matter. By keeping her knights alive, she also ensures there are witnesses that no rape has occurred. When Melleagaunce begs for peace, therefore, Guinevere is in a position in which she can grant the request, and she is in control of the action rather than Launcelot. Her motive to make peace has attracted critical speculation. John Walsh suggests that Guinevere does this for her pleasure in exerting power over Launcelot, a petty motive to assign to a queen in a crisis.46 C. David Benson

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and Dorsey Armstrong emphasize the need to conceal her guilty relationship with Launcelot, because Melleagaunce’s treason is of a similar kind (especially since Malory has changed the text to make Melleagaunce a Round Table knight instead of an outsider).47 This does not explain how such a public, bloody event with so many witnesses is supposed to be hushed up. Sarah Hill has the most compelling suggestion: that Guinevere is “upholding the same values as the Round Table knights.”48 The Round Table oath charges knights to give mercy to defeated opponents, and Melleagaunce yields himself completely to Guinevere. Furthermore, Round Table knights are not supposed to fight each other (377; VIII.4), a stricture Melleagaunce has violated but that Guinevere preserves by her peacemaking. Her terse explanation suggests a political dimension as well:“better ys pees than ever-more warre, and the lesse noyse the more ys my worship” (1128; XIX.5). That she fears “ever-more warre” implies she is looking beyond an immediate combat to a long-running feud; and the “noyse” could be the debate accompanying such a feud, not simply Guinevere’s adultery.All the knights, Launcelot and her ten wounded guards, want revenge, but Guinevere insists on peace. She has precedent: other knights have abducted women before, and those incidents have been resolved without murder. At this point, though, Malory gives the one unambiguous instance of Guinevere’s adultery.Although Elizabeth Edwards argues that the cohesion of public communities is based on private bonds, up to and including covert adultery (in other words, that adultery is an intensification of the normal ties of affinities), this adultery is marked as clearly outside the normal relations of an affinity.49 While the ten knights Guinevere is tending are inside the queen’s room, Launcelot is outside and has to bloody his hands while breaking the bars to get into the queen’s presence. The ten knights are within the bounds of normal relationships, and they impede Launcelot’s activities, which will be outside of the political structure. Moreover, Launcelot has to instruct Lavayne, the newest member of the affinity, to let Launcelot go alone to the tryst.The adultery is presented, therefore, not as an exaggeration of the bonds of the affinity but as something that threatens them, putting the wounded knights at risk and separating Launcelot from his supporters. Consistently, the adultery has disrupted the affinity: Launcelot has run mad, been exiled, and then disguised himself to fight against his affinity; Bors has had to keep the peace, even though he is uneasy about the affair and counsels Launcelot to marry Elaine.This disruption of the affinity precedes the disruption of the Round Table, and it makes clear that the adultery is not just an exaggeration or strengthening of the bonds between a knight and his good lady. After the bloody sheets are revealed, Guinevere abandons her clemency and famously decides in the judicial duel that Melleagaunce should die.This


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cannot be a rational attempt to avoid scandal; too many people too close to Arthur saw the sheets. Admittedly, it could be a visceral lashing-out after hearing for the first time the long-feared accusation of adultery.There are, however, sober political reasons for her actions. Melleagaunce’s rudeness in pulling back the curtains is a shameful, unpromising gesture50 from someone who the day before had pledged to put everything in Guinevere’s hands, and his eagerness to press the charge of treason shows Guinevere’s forbearance for the sake of peace will not be reciprocated. His trapping of Launcelot to keep him from the judicial duel is not just dishonorable but illegal.51 The pledges Melleagaunce made to win Guinevere’s clemency are thereby proven to be worthless; and the abduction, which could have been a forgivable excess of knightly passion, is revealed to be a product of unknightly cowardice and cunning. Because he refuses to take the necessary steps to be reintegrated into the Round Table, he must be removed from it. Launcelot and Guinevere’s conduct through the trial has received a far more hostile treatment than is merited.52 Guinevere’s direction to Launcelot that Melleagaunce should not live after he begs Launcelot to save his life can seem to modern readers at once a usurpation of Arthur’s role as judge and a deliberate act of murder, but this is to misread the structure of the judicial duel.The judicial duel was to determine facts (such as guilt) that could not be determined by other means. The king could not arbitrarily specify the findings of fact the duel was supposed to decide; his power, once he approved the combat as a legitimate means of trial, was merely to supervise.The judgment came only after the fight when the factual question was settled and the punishment (usually preordained) was to be carried out.The beginning of negotiations between the combatants did not end the fight because, until the combatants reached agreement, the factual question the duel was to settle was not resolved.When the combatants began discussing terms, the king’s role was simply to be witness, not judge. In a letter to Richard II, Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, explains the rules for judicial duels, including the constable’s role as king’s representative: “he [should] have good harkeninge and syghte un to them yf outher speke to other be it of yeldinge or other wise for un to him longeth the witnesse and the recorde of the wordes from that time forthe and to non other.”53 This is precisely what happens when Launcelot offers to fight partially disarmed and with his left hand bound: Melleagaunce calls on Arthur to be the witness of the agreement, Arthur verifies that Launcelot also agrees to the terms, and then the agreement is carried out. Because Arthur has no authority to declare a victor or to decide that Melleagaunce’s terms must be accepted, Launcelot is under no obligation to look to Arthur for direction on whether to accept Melleagaunce’s offer of surrender. Instead of

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Guinevere usurping the role of judge when she directs him to see that Melleagaunce dies, the exchange between Launcelot and Guinevere is like a consultation between a defendant and her attorney on whether to accept a plea agreement. Launcelot is within his legal rights to refuse Melleagaunce’s request for mercy. Whether Launcelot and Guinevere were ethically required to offer mercy is in one sense rendered moot by Melleagaunce’s acceptance of Launcelot’s offer to fight handicapped. Had he not accepted, the issue is unclear.The Round Table oath says that knights should grant mercy, but, in a judicial duel, the loser would be subject to a death sentence if he did not die in battle. If Melleagaunce were truly admitting defeat in the trial by combat, then Launcelot could accept Melleagaunce’s surrender and see him immediately executed, a strange kind of mercy. Mador de la Porte escapes this because it was clear his suspicions were reasonable, he plainly yields, and he is willing permanently to drop his accusation against Guinevere (1058; XVIII.7). Melleagaunce yields, but he does not explicitly renounce the charge of treason (1138; XIX.9). Negotiating a settlement, therefore, might not settle the factual question of adultery the fight was meant to resolve. Melleagaunce is the man who previously had promised to let Guinevere “take all in youre owne hondys” (1128; XIX.5) and then turned on her the next morning. His readiness to take up the quarrel again when he thinks he can defeat the handicapped Launcelot shows his unwillingness to give up his accusation of treason against the queen. Guinevere’s political power comes through an affinity structure based on good will and reciprocal favor; Melleagaunce will not participate in this system, leaving her few options other than death. The fact that Arthur makes much of Launcelot after Launcelot evades the request for mercy and kills Melleagaunce shows that the king, at least, does not think Launcelot’s decisions culpable. Throughout “Launcelot and Guinevere,” readers can ascribe to Guinevere political as well as romantic concerns, and reading her actions politically makes her a good deal more attractive. Her feast at which the apple is poisoned is not an attempt to make Launcelot jealous or an effort to hide her grief but an attempt to bridge growing political fissures. Her desire for Launcelot is tempered by discretion at the start of “Ascolat,” and when Launcelot is seemingly unfaithful, her response is more moderate than many give her credit for. In “The Knight of the Cart,” she handles a difficult situation with aplomb, and it is only Melleagaunce’s intransigence that prevents her from finding a peaceful political solution to a tangled problem. Immediately after the moral fervor of the Grail quest, Guinevere is isolated politically, but she recovers some ground by the time Melleagaunce kidnaps her. It is not enough, of course; despite Guinevere’s


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efforts for unity, Aggravayne decides to turn on the queen, and when he does, the court splits along factional lines. The Fall of the Round Table Aggravayne, despite being willing to defend the queen from Melleagaunce’s malicious accusation of adultery, is the one who tells Arthur that Guinevere is committing adultery with Launcelot, provoking the crisis. The motive ascribed is hatred of the queen and Launcelot (1161; XX.1). There also seems to be political jealousy as well. Aggravayne’s speech emphasizes hierarchy and kinship: [W]e know all that sir Launcelot holdith youre quene, and hath done longe; and we be your syster sunnes, we may suffir hit no lenger. And all we wote that ye shulde be above sir Launcelot, and ye ar the kynge that made hym knyght, and therefore we woll preve hit that he is a traytoure to youre person. (1163; XX.2)

The complaint is clearly that Launcelot has forgotten his place, and in overshadowing Arthur he is also overshadowing Arthur’s nephews. For Arthur, the political issues seem more important than the emotional ones. Malory reports that the French book claims that “the kynge had a demyng of ” the adultery (1163; XX.2). Aggravayne’s public accusation moves the question from personal doubt to legal judgment, with consequences that will rip apart the kingdom. To avoid this, Arthur tries to frighten Aggravayne into silence, reminding him of what Launcelot will do to any accusers unless someone catches him in the deed (1163; XX.2).After Mordred and Aggravayne succeed at precisely this, he says, “And much more I am soryar for my good knyghtes losse than for the losse of my fayre quene; for quenys I myght have inow, but such a felyship of good knyghtes shall never be togydirs in no company” (1184; XX.9).This does not mean that Arthur does not love Guinevere (even in his distress, he calls her his “fayre quene”), any more than his attempt to murder the baby Mordred to preserve his realm means he dislikes children; rather, it is a sign that Arthur takes his duty to preserve the national community as a priority higher than almost any other.54 This declaration, however, comes too late, after he has calmed himself some. An earlier decision made in anger, however, permanently disrupts his fellowship. Just after Launcelot is trapped in Guinevere’s chambers, Arthur says,“me sore repentith that ever sir Launcelot sholde be ayenste me, for now I am sure the noble felyshyp of the Rounde Table is brokyn for ever, for wyth hym woll many a noble knyght holde. And now

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hit ys fallen so . . . that I may nat with my worshyp but my quene muste suffir dethe” (1174; XX.7). His fury over the queen’s adultery leads him to condemn her to death despite knowing the political consequences. Gawain offers Arthur a way out of the mess by imagining Launcelot and Guinevere’s relationship in political rather than romantic terms: My lorde Arthure, I wolde counceyle you nat to be over hasty, but that ye wolde put hit in respite, thys jougemente of my lady the quene, for many causis. One ys thys, thoughe hyt were so that sir Launcelot were founde in the quenys chambir, yet hit myght be so that he cam thydir for none evyll. For ye know, my lorde . . . that my lady the quene hath oftyntymes ben gretely beholdyn unto sir Launcelot, more than to ony othir knyght; for oftyntymes he hath saved her lyff and done batayle for her whan all the courte refused the quene. And peradventure she sente for hym for goodnes and for none evyll, to rewarde hym for his good dedys that he had done to her in tymes past.And peraventure my lady the quene sente for hym to that enetente, that sir Launcelot sholde a com prevayly to her, wenyng that hyt had be beste in eschewyng and dredyng of slaundir; for oftyntymys we do many thynges that we went for the beste be, and yet peradventure hit turnyth to the warste. For I dare sey . . . my lady, your quene, ys to you both good and trew. (1174–75; XX.7)

Gawain’s speech emphasizes Guinevere’s political duties. The repeated phrase “my lady the queen” or “my lady your queen” marks the different roles she must simultaneously play, Arthur’s wife and the good lady of an affinity. Given that she has (and should have) a close political relationship with Launcelot, there is no need to jump to a conclusion of adultery.55 In a calmer mood, Arthur probably would have accepted Gawain’s advice. He certainly is prepared to reconcile with Launcelot when Launcelot makes a similar speech, arguing that he and Guinevere (called repeatedly “my lady, youre quene”) have been politically responsible in ways Arthur has not (1197; XX.15). Just after the discovery, however, Arthur is too angry to heed Gawain’s advice. When Arthur insists on his course of vengeance, Gawain (despite the deaths of his conspiring kinsmen) refuses a direct order to assist in burning the queen (1176; XX.8).Thus Gawain for the sake of the larger community is willing to look past the interests of his family and affinity. Launcelot repays Gawain’s advocacy by murdering Gareth and Gaheris, who were unarmed noncombatants. As C. David Benson has argued, critics have been far too willing to blacken Gawain and excuse Launcelot for what follows.56 While Launcelot may not have consciously intended to kill Gareth and Gaheris, it is hard to dismiss their deaths as accidents. In hand-to-hand combat, trained fighters see what they kill.The only instance in all of Le Morte Darthur that comes


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close to what Launcelot does in killing Gareth and Gaheris is near the very beginning of the book, when the newly knighted Gawain accidentally kills Sir Blamour’s lady, and that was only when she deliberately threw herself in the way of his blow (106; III.7). Nor is Launcelot’s armor an excuse: helmets (especially those meant for war instead of for tournaments) were designed to allow good visibility. When Malory reports that “in very trouth sir Launcelot saw them nat” (1178; XX.8), this is not a description of the realities of fifteenth-century war but of a moral and emotional blindness, a frenzy.The equation of blindness with sin has been well established through the adventures of the Grail (e.g., 802, 817, 927; XI.6, XI.14, XV.2), and it fits here. Launcelot has become only a lover. He is taking battle in a wrongful cause, betraying his duties to God, to Arthur, and to his own followers. By the time Launcelot and Arthur are repenting their earlier outbursts and are seeking peace, Gawain is insisting on justice. Despite Vinaver’s accusatory title,“The Vengeance of Sir Gawain,” Gawain has a lot to justify him. Gareth and Gaheris had been attempting to display their loyalty to Launcelot; they were not actively opposing him; and, because they were unarmed, they should have stood out in a press of armored men, and their faces would have been clearly visible, had Launcelot cared enough to notice whom he was killing. It is these murders that drive the violence at the end of the tale.When Launcelot returns Guinevere to Arthur, the issue is no longer the adultery. Gawain says,“As for my lady the quene, wyte thou well, I woll never say her shame. But thou, false and recrayde knyght, . . . what cause haddist hou to sle my good brother sir Gareth that loved the more than me and all my kynne?” (1189; XX. 11).Arthur assists Gawain in his war against Launcelot because he can do little else. He cannot, as a just king, let Launcelot get away with murder unless Gawain consents to release him of guilt. Perhaps Gawain should do this for the good of the realm, or for the debatable rationale that intentions matter more than deeds, even when the deeds lead to death; nonetheless, I cannot help but sympathize him in his quest for justice even against the highest and strongest. Although Gawain thinks Launcelot has set himself outside and against the Round Table fellowship, Launcelot himself fights hard to remain a member of the community. He does not retreat to France but makes his first stand with Guinevere at Joyous Gard. Staying in Britain and having the queen with him gives this the character of a domestic struggle; and Launcelot is not backed only by his own affinity57 but also by the queen’s; “with hym helde many knyghtes, som for hys owne sake and som for the quenys sake” (1186; XX.10). Also, keeping to the Round Table oath not knowingly to fight other Round Table knights, he does not directly fight with Arthur or Gawain. It is his followers who insist the breach is irreparable

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and that Launcelot must fight: But whan sir Bors de Ganys, sir Ector de Marys and sir Lyonell harde thys outecry they called unto them sir Palomydes, sir Safyr ys brothir, and sir Lavayne an sir Urré wyth many mo knyghtes of their bloode, and all they wente unto sir Launcelot and seyde thus: “My lorde . . . sir Gawayne woll never suffir you to accorde wyth kynge Arthur.And therefore fyght for youre lyff and ryght, and ye dare.” (1190–91; XX.12)

The inclusion of Palomides, Safyr, and Urry is interesting, because they are the knights whose origins are most distant from England: Urry is Hungarian, Safyr and Palomides are converted Saracens. Lavayne and Urry are also very new to Arthur’s court, and thus they have had the least time to become fully integrated into the community. It is these, together with Launcelot’s French kin, who urge Launcelot to give up his bonds to Arthur so that he will fight fully. Launcelot does fight, but even in the midst of battle he helps Arthur and calls him “my lorde the kynge” (1192; XX.13), not acknowledging that he is now outside Arthur’s lordship. The Pope’s intervention restores Guinevere to Arthur, but Gawain insists that Launcelot leave England. This Launcelot consents to do, lamenting both for himself and for the community at large: Moste nobelyst Crysten realme, whom I have loved aboven all othir realmys! And in the I have gotyn a grete parte of my worship, and now that I shall departe in thys wyse, truly me repentis that ever I cam in thys realme, that I shulde be thus shamefully banysshyd, undeserved and causeles! . . . for in thys realme I had worshyp, and be me and myne all the hole Rounde Table hath bene encreced more in worshyp, by me and myne, than ever hit was by ony of you all. (1201; XX.17)

In Launcelot’s view, everyone is poorer for his departure from the Round Table, and so he laments for himself and for the Round Table both. His followers go with him. Once again, it is Palomides, Safyr, Urry, and Lavayne, this time joined by Sir Bellinger le Bewse (the son of Alexander the Orphan, who settled in France and never joined the Round Table) who serve as spokesmen for the willingness to leave England. One of their reasons is that “all we that be nat of your bloode shall never be wellcom unto the courte” (1203).That Launcelot’s family would not be welcome at court is not surprising; but those who are not kin to him also feel they will be rejected.As suggested in chapter four, Palomides was especially interested in Lameroke’s death because he was most anxious about how willing the court would be to welcome outsiders. Now, apparently, he has decided that Gawain and his faction will not brook rivals. Launcelot is forced onto his


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own French lands in Benwick, and what had been a domestic dispute now takes on the characteristics of a foreign war. The Arthurian realm covering most of western Europe has been reduced to only England and Scotland: even the knights “of Northe Walys and of Cornwayle, for sir Lamorakes sake and for sir Trystrames sake” break away from England to hold with Launcelot (1170; XX.5). Thus the sectional alliances forged in the “Trystram” come to the fore as the national bonds created in the first two tales fail. England is made worse by casting out these now-foreign knights.58 Launcelot’s men correctly predict “in this realme woll be no quyett, but ever debate and stryff, now the felyship of the Rounde Table ys brokyn” (1203; XX.17). When Mordred does rebel, Malory identifies the rebels faithlessness and changeability as characteristically English (1229; XXI.1). England itself divides, with the southeasterners supporting Mordred (partly for Launcelot’s sake) and others supporting Arthur (1233; XXI.3).Arthur’s kingdom is broken indeed, into ever-smaller regions warring with each other until the final battle, where everyone is annihilated. Guinevere’s Convent Guinevere’s decision not to marry Launcelot comes as a surprise.Their love has lasted, and they have risked much for it; now that the obstacles are removed, it would seem natural for them to marry. It is ironic (at the least) that, when the lovers are at last free, they turn away from physical consummation, although not the emotional attachment. In this irony is the heart of the book.While it proved to be impossible to love God and king and queen and all the worthy knights, it is to the glory of Launcelot and Guinevere that they tried.To love only God or only each other or only the kingdom would have been more stable, but it would have made them smaller, less glorious. While Guinevere, like Igrayne, could have married the survivor and become the wife of the King of France, this would have finally chosen one of her competing loyalties and made it paramount. Instead, she stays in England to mourn and to take responsibility for the disaster she has partially created.59 Malory says true love is a love that remembers and does not let winter erase what has gone before (1119; XVII.25). Guinevere’s decision allows Launcelot to remember all his desires for her, for England, for Arthur, and for God.Thus, when a priest rebukes Launcelot for mourning Guinevere’s death, Launcelot answers back that he is moved for memory and love and therefore God will not be displeased with him: I trust I do not dysplese God, for He knoweth myn entente: for my sorow was not, nor is not, for ony rejoysing of synne, but my sorow may never have

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ende. For whan I remembre of hir beaulté and of he noblesse, that was bothe wyth hyr kyng and wyth hyr, so whan I sawe his corps and hir corps so lye togyders, truly myn herte would not serve to susteyne my careful body. (1256; XXI.11)

It is Launcelot’s glory that he fights to balance so many memories and obligations, so many aspects of chivalry; like a jewel, his chivalry shines because it has so many different facets. Launcelot was the best of all knights not just because he was the exemplar of one aspect of chivalry (like Balin and Galahad) but because he came so close to success in combining them all. Launcelot and Guinevere choose to preserve, even after the fall of the Round Table, all of their loyalties, to both the living and the dead. The importance of memory is intensified by the lack of a satisfactory succession. Constantine of Cornwall is “chosen” king of England (1259; XXI.13). Although Malory reports that he ruled “this royame” worshipfully, it is not clear whether the realm has the broader meaning it had in “Arthur and Lucius” or the narrow meaning it had in the “Trystram.” He certainly loses much of the fellowship that had been Arthur’s: Than syr Bors de Ganys, syr Ector de Maris, syr Gahalantyne, syr Galyhud, sir Galyhodyn, syr Blamour, syr Bleoberys, syr Wyllyars le Valyaunt, syr Clarrus of Cleremont, al these knyghtes drewe them to theyr contreyes. Howbeit kyng Constantyn wold have had them wyth hym, but they wold not abyde in this royame. (1259–60; XXI.13)

The multiple, intersecting, shifting communities that have shaped Le Morte Darthur have been broken up. Christendom, east and west, Britain, England, Cornwall, Wales, France, affinities, religious fellowships, knightly brotherhoods, all are dispersed: Launcelot’s men do not go together, but they each go to his own lands. Even the community of readers that Malory’s narrator tried to establish in the first part of the book is disrupted, as he reports that English authors, like King Constantine, try and fail to keep the French knights within England: And somme Englysshe bookes maken mencyon that they went never oute of Englond after the deth of syr Launcelot—but that was but favour of makers. For the Frensshe book maketh mencyon—and is auctorysed—that syr Bors, syr Ector, syr Blamour and syr Bleoberis wente into the Holy Lande, thereas Jesu Cryst was quycke and deed. (1260; XXI.13)

The dispersal is complete. Given that communities and styles of chivalry have throughout the book mutually defined each other, it is not surprising that the book does not


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dwell on whatever these four knights accomplish in the east. It is the various societies knights have been in that have given meaning to their actions. From the collective efforts on behalf of a broadly defined nation that Arthur arranged, to the efforts of great knights to win places near the king and queen, to the performances of younger sons attempting to earn places for themselves as something other than merely little brothers, to the regional alliances and fellowships of knights operating in their home provinces, to the religious partnerships of the devout, knights have used chivalry to create communities. The death in the east of Launcelot’s four kinsmen defines them as Christian, but they are divorced from any communities that give their acts broader meaning. Instead, even their deaths seem to be acts of remembrance, for they are doing as Launcelot bid them. In the end, then, there is only memory, and, as at the beginning, a king from Cornwall trying to rebuild a nation shattered by a civil war over love.


AFTERWORD

y the end of the fifteenth century, knights had lost their preeminence on the battlefield. Although heavy cavalry would remain useful militarily through the nineteenth century, knightly service was no longer necessary for national armies, and chivalry considered as strictly a military code was no longer necessary. From this perspective, Le Morte Darthur is an exercise in nostalgia. But chivalry was never an exclusively military phenomenon. It was also a way of imaging social relationships, and the longbow, pike, and gunpowder did not take this away. Chivalry’s ability to shape communities explains why interest in chivalry continued strongly into the seventeenth century. Since chivalry supported a range of medieval and early modern communities and institutions, it was more flexible than old-fashioned accounts of it acknowledged. Chivalric manuals quite explicitly endorse multiple loyalties for knights, to kings as well as the church, to kinsmen and to region and to country.1 The details defining chivalric ideals also varied through time and across regions, creating opportunities to adapt chivalry to new community settings. This could range from the urban tournaments of Germany to the royal spectacles of England. It is not surprising, therefore, that Sir Thomas Malory, imprisoned in the midst of the Wars of the Roses, should be painfully aware of the diversity of chivalric ideals and the resulting difficulties for knights attempting to figure out where their duties and advantages lay. His Le Morte Darthur goes well beyond an exercise in knightly nostalgia to lay bare the dynamics that drive the development of competing chivalries. To recognize this, one must recognize how the book depends on creating contrasts among literary styles of romance and history, thereby revealing the differing ideals of various literary communities.This is clearly a form of dialogism, but perhaps not a form Bakhtin himself would have expected to find; instead of the various literary languages coming from groups defined by class or profession, they come from varying subgroups of the aristocratic and educated elite, and instead of the juxtaposed languages intersecting in a “verbal–ideological” core that provides the center for

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tightly unified novels, Malory uses dialogism to show the impossibility of there being one great chivalry that can unite entire nations and contain within it all the variety of existent chivalric ideals. Nonetheless, it is fundamentally dialogic to structure the whole book by linking formal style and the ideologies of the various social groups the narrator and the characters participate in. The implications of the dialogism, however, go beyond explaining how the varying styles work together to provide an analysis of chivalry. Because communities imagined themselves through the lens of chivalry, the multiple interacting forms of chivalry reflect different conceptions of country or nation competing for dominance.While discussions of nationalism tend to prefer simple definitions that can be applied through time and across cultures, Malory shows in Le Morte Darthur a complex swirl of ideas about the nation. Arthur rules an empire that stretches from Ireland to Rome, embracing people of many different languages and histories. Within this empire, however, England clings to an image of itself as a limited, sovereign community, whose king expresses its ideals instead of simply defining its boundaries. Is England therefore a nation? Could all of Arthur’s lands gradually come to join in this English nation, and is the tragedy at the end the tragedy of a failed nation as the various regions separate once more? Perhaps. But whatever labels are applied should not obscure the complexity of chivalric communities. Along with loyalties to England and to Arthur’s larger British empire are loyalties to regions, such as Cornwall; loyalty to kin and to affinities; loyalty to God and lovers and memories.These, of course, are not completely distinct: even religious commitments may be tinged with nationalism, as the Grail quest shows with its treatment of saints George and Joseph of Arimathea and the triumph of twelve north-western knights. In the long run, though, personal ties break through national borders.The religious bonds extend beyond Arthur’s realms to include the east and to include a history longer than England’s. Launcelot is of France as well as of England.The people of Wales balance the anger over the death of Lameroke with their need to serve King Arthur, uncle of Lameroke’s killers. It is possible that the complex relationship among the many imagined communities could mark Le Morte Darthur as part of a transition from older medieval territorial states to modern nation-states, but I suspect any country studied with care will reveal the complex, overlapping loyalties of Malory’s version of Arthur’s Britain. Certainly, appreciation of the varying forms of chivalry and the differing communities of Arthur’s England should extend beyond the question of nationalism. Le Morte Darthur is a better book if it is read with an appreciation of the differences among the knights and the changing consequences of their adventures. Instead of a monumental work endlessly piling up

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examples of the same nostalgic chivalry until the details blur and readers come to believe an excerpt would have been sufficient, Malory instead offers a vision of a nation united by a love of chivalry and divided in their beliefs over what true chivalry is. His knights do not just follow Arthur’s chivalric code; they help develop chivalric ideals to fit the times and places in which they find themselves, creating a chivalric diversity that is at once their glory and their downfall. It is only in reading the whole work with its subtle contrasts that the dynamic nature of chivalry, the interplay of competing community loyalties, and the nuances of differing literary styles are experienced, thus helping one recognize the extent of Malory’s accomplishment.


NOTES

Introduction: Medieval by a Month 1. “The English Prose Morte,” Essays on Malory, ed. J.A.W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963), pp. 23–24. 2. Mikhail Bakhtin,“From the Prehistory of Novelistic Discourse,” The Dialogic Imagination, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 47–49. Emphasis in the original. 3. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 4. Mikhail Bakhtin,“Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), pp. 376–86. 5. Bakhtin,“Discourse in the Novel,” p. 378. 6. Caroline A. Jewers, Chivalric Fiction and the History of the Novel (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000). 7. Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 8. See Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Constance Brittain Bouchard, Strong of Body, Brave and Noble: Chivalry and Society in Medieval France (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998). 9. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1984). 10. Juliet Barker, The Tournament in England, 1100–1400 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1986); Richard Barber and Juliet Barker, Tournaments: Jousts, Chivalry, and Pageants in the Middle Ages (New York:Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989). 11. Notably R.M. Lumiansky, ed., Malory’s Originality: A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964); Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur:The Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965). 12. Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). 13. The Book of Kyng Arthur. 14. Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1992). 15. Donald Hoffman, “Perceval’s Sister: Malory’s ‘Rejected’ Masculinities,” Arthuriana 6.4 (1996): 73–83.

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NOTES

16. Elizabeth Edwards, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2001), p. 72. Dorsey Armstrong modifies this formulation, giving greater precedence to the Round Table oath, which, she argues, establishes standards for chivalry and gender that are then tested and refined throughout the text. See Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), pp. 29–30. 17. Karen Cherewatuk, “Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Grete Booke,’ ” The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 42–67. 18. The Book of Fayttes of Armes and Chyualrye, trans. William Caxton, ed. A.T.P. Byles, EETS o.s. 189 (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932). 19. Jousts and Tournaments: Charny and the Rules for Chivalric Sport in FourteenthCentury France, trans. Stephen Muhlberger (Union City, Calif.: The Chivalry Bookshelf, 2003). 20. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., ed. Eugene Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990) 486–88; IX.13–14.After the page number, I cite the book and chapter number according to Caxton. Hereafter, Malory will be cited parenthetically in the text. 21. See, for instance, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991); Patrick Geary, The Myth of Nations:The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2002); John Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1982); Ernst Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983). 22. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London:Verso, 1991), p. 6. 23. See, for instance, Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Kathy Lavezzo (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2004); Geraldine Heng, Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), pp. 98–113; Patricia Ingham, Sovereign Fantasies:Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001); Michelle Warren, History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000); Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity, 1290–1340 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). For a dissent, see Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, King Arthur and the Myth of History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 107–15, although they concede there was a “nascent” nationalism in the fifteenth century that Caxton’s printing of Le Morte Darthur helped foster (pp. 136, 159–71). 24. L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, “Pro Patria Mori,” Imagining a Medieval English Nation, ed. Kathy Lavezzo (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), pp. 3–38.

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25. Turville-Petre, England the Nation, 7. 26. For more background on affinities, see Rosemary Horrox,“Service,” FifteenthCentury Attitudes,ed.Rosemary Horrox (Cambridge,U.K.:Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 61–78; and Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989). For an analysis of the role of affinities in Le Morte Darthur, see Hyonjin Kim, The Knight Without the Sword: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 55–99. For their significance in the life of one of the possible authors of Le Morte Darthur, see P.J.C. Field, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 48–51 and elsewhere. 27. Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 63. 28. Although Edward IV and Henry VII both claimed to be descendants of Arthur, such claims were not central to their royal images: see Sydney Anglo, Images of Tudor Kingship (London: Seaby, 1992), pp. 40–60.

Chapter 1

English Knights, French Books, and Literary Communities

A version of this chapter appeared as “English Knights, French Books, and Malory’s Narrator,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 28 (2003): 148–72. 1. William Caxton, The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, ed. Alfred Byles, EETS o.s. 168 (London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926), pp. 121–22. 2. Beverly Kennedy recognizes that chivalry in Malory is diverse and suggests that there are three basic, relatively stable and well-defined types of chivalry (heroic, worshipful, and true) of which Malory makes his knights exemplars: thus, while she acknowledges that chivalry was diverse and changing, she assumes most of the flux occurs outside the book; inside it, the types are stable, and the knights serve as representative figures. As later chapters will show, chivalry is constantly in flux within the book and cannot be broken down simply into three types; the characters also adapt their behavior as standards change. Malory is interested in the process of chivalry, not just in momentary manifestations of it. From a different perspective, Karen Cherewatuk argues that Malory followed the pattern of other fifteenthcentury chivalric miscellanies in creating sections that deal with various chivalric questions from how to conduct a war to how to love. Readers would thus be primed to recognize different styles of chivalry. See Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1992); Karen Cherewatuk,“Sir Thomas Malory’s ‘Grete Booke,’ ” The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 42–67. 3. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 29–35. 4. Angus McIntosh suggests that Malory might have deliberately used northerly language, especially vocabulary, to suggest the sources he was

162

NOTES

5.

6. 7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

drawing on (Angus McIntosh, review of William Matthews’s The Ill-Framed Knight, Medium Aevum 37.3 (1968): 346–48. Batt discusses formal authorizing strategies extensively in her book, so I concentrate on the link between varying styles and varying chivalric values. Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 11–35. The only invited identification is with Mordred’s rebels, not with the great Arthurian knights (1229; XXI.1). “Language and Style in Malory,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), p. 105; see also Helen Cooper,“Counter-Romance: Civil Strife and Father-Killing in the Prose Romances,” The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray, ed. Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 141–62; John Fisher, “A Language Policy for Lancastrian England,” PMLA 107 (1992): 1168–80; Thorlac Turville-Petre, England the Nation: Language, Literature, and National Identity (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), pp. 11–22. For an account of how English romances differed from continental ones, see Susan Crane, Insular Romance: Politics, Faith and Culture in Ango-Norman and Middle English Literature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). In Malory’s “Sankgreal,” the four Grail knights are Launcelot, Galahad, Percivale, and Bors, so this passage becomes a challenge to the authority of Malory’s text as well as the French. This does not necessarily constitute a challenge to the integrity of Malory’s text; the question of which texts are “auctorysed” is pervasive in Le Morte Darthur, including in the “Sankgreal,” so a gesture to a story which could be told but isn’t could be consistent with the overall strategy of exploring the reliability of texts, at least for generous readers. Less generous readers may simple conclude that occasionally great Homer nods. Helen Cooper notes that the colophons or explicits often mark a change of source, which may cover a “narrative faultline.” Editions such as Caxton’s that remove the explicits conceal some of the textual drama. See Helen Cooper,“Opening Up the Malory Manuscript,” The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), p. 260 [255–84]. For instance, C.S. Lewis writes, “[T]he alliterative metre . . . becomes in prose a noisy rumble. Caxton wisely abridged the whole dreary business and removed (he might well have used the knife more boldly) some of the traces of the metre.”Terence McCarthy says of “Arthur and Lucius,” “[I]t is not a book with occasional stylistic blemishes; it is, as it were, all blemish.” C.S. Lewis, “The English Prose Morte,” Essays on Malory, ed. J.A.W. Bennet (Oxford: Clarendon, 1963), p. 26 [7–28]; Terence McCarthy, “Malory and the Alliterative Tradition,” Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), p. 65 [5–23]. William Matthews, “A Question of Texts,” The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 65–107.

NOTES

163

13. For the linguistic evidence that Malory was not the reviser, see Yuji Nakao, “Musings on the Reviser of Book V in Caxton’s Malory,” The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 191–216. For the possibility that the Winchester scribes began reducing “Arthur and Lucius,” see P.J.C. Field, “Caxton’s Roman War,” The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Michael N. Salda, and Robert L. Kindrick (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 127–67. 14. Malory did not merely copy it from his source: in his additions and alterations Malory took care to create alliteration.The explanation that Malory was “learning his trade” and therefore helpless to resist the alliteration of his source is patronizing at best. It rests on the (unverifiable) assumption that Malory had no previous experience as a writer, often bolstered by the slenderly supported speculation that “Arthur and Lucius” was the first section of Le Morte Darthur to be written. 15. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition, p. 75. 16. Felicity Riddy argues that Malory’s sense of history partakes of the growing fifteenth-century desire for facts and suspicion of grand chronicles that could not be verified. See Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden, N.Y.: E.J. Brill, 1987), pp. 40–41. 17. Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, King Arthur and the Myth of History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 169–70. 18. Felicity Riddy, “Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur: Empire and Civil War,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), p. 65 [55–95]. 19. Richard W. Kaeuper analyzes different conceptions of knighthood linked to clergie, royauté, and chevalerie (the church, the kings, and the knights), and it is possible that Galahad, Arthur, and Trystram (the only ones whose births or conceptions are told) correspond to some such division. Note this triple division does not exactly match Beverly Kennedy’s triad of heroic/worshipful/ true knighthood since she places Arthur and Trystram together as worshipful knights. I argue that any threefold scheme will be too simplistic to explain all the tensions in Malory, but the major divisions of chivalry (however one chooses to label them) will be present as part of the picture of chivalric division. See Richard Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, esp. pp.150–77. 20. The Cornish counselors assume that Round Table knights would not fight each other (377; VIII.4). Since Trystram is willing to fight, he clearly does not feel part of the community the Round Table represents, even though he is from the same country as Arthur. 21. A later hunting reference is similar, but it implies a little more separation. After describing Trystam’s hunting skills, the narrator concludes “all maner jantylmen hath cause to the worldes ende to prayse sir Trystram and to pray for his soule. AMEN SAYDE SIR THOMAS MALORY (683; X.52). Again this

164

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

NOTES

imagines a community of gentlemen lasting through time, and it is similar to requests for prayers that Malory makes, such as the plea at the ending of the “Gareth” “AND I PRAY YOU ALL THAT REDYTH THIS TALE TO PRAY FOR HIM THAT THIS WROTE, THAT GOD SENDE HYM GOOD DELYVERAUNCE SONE AND HASTELY. AMEN” (363; not in Caxton).The difference in the prayers is one of time. The narrator’s request for timely prayer implies the narrator and the audience are contemporaries; the prayer for Trystram’s soul marks him as being in the past, more removed from the community. For further discussion, see Raluca Radulescu, The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 87–88. Elizabeth Sklar discusses how Malory mixes genres, blending the simplicity and optimism of pure romances like the “Gareth” with potential tragic “epic” elements in the “Trystram.” See Elizabeth Sklar, “The Undoing of Romance in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 20 (1993): 309–26. Nicholas Watson, “Censorship and Cultural Change in Late-Medieval England:Vernacular Theology, The Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409,” Speculum 70 (1995): 822–64. From J.A. Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre, A Book of Middle English (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992), p. 219. Margaret Aston, Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London:The Hambledon Press, 1984), pp. 208–11. Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, pp. 55–62. Richard Barber, following a suggestion by Felicity Riddy, speculates that Malory may have omitted some details of Galahad’s visions in deference to the dangers still swirling around discussion of the Eucharist in England. See The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 220. Thomas Hoccleve, “The Remonstrance Against Oldcastle,” Selections From Hoccleve, ed. M.C. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), ll. 193–95, 201–08. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition, pp. 11–15. La Queste Del Saint Graal: Roman Du XIIIe Siècle ed. Albert Pauphilet (Paris: E. Champion, 1923), pp. 179–80. For the relevant passage in English translation, see The Quest of the Holy Grail trans. Pauline Matarasso (New York: Penguin, 1969), p. 284. Charles Moorman argues that Malory “always preserves the core of the French book’s doctrinal statements, no matter how great his deletions” [Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur: The Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), p. 33]. Mary Hynes-Berry has argued that Malory’s alterations change the quest’s genre from allegory into exemplum (in Sandra Ness Ihle’s terms, he changes the focus from moral understanding to moral action) [Mary Hynes-Berry, “Malory’s Translation of Meaning: The Tale of the Sankgreal,” Studies in Philology 74 (1977): 243–257; Sandra Ness Ihle, Malory’s Grail Quest Invention

NOTES

33.

34. 35.

36.

37.

38.

39. 40.

165

and Adaptation in Medieval Prose Romance (Madison,Wis.:University of Wisconsin Press, 1983), esp. pp. 123, 127]. Larry Benson argues that gradualistic fifteenthcentury readers could appreciate both Launcelot’s love and the religious message of the Grail quest without being “worried about trying to reconcile the two,” [Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 207] but ultimately he decides that “thematically” Launcelot’s love is celebrated over the religious strictures of the Grail quest. Dhira Mahoney tries to resolve the problem by suggesting that all the conflicting morals can be acted out through time, with the religious phase being the last part of a knight’s career [Dhira Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste Del Saint Graal,” The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira Mahoney (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), pp. 376–96]. Martin Shichtman, “Politicizing the Ineffable: The Queste Del Saint Graal and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal’,” Culture and the King:The Social Implications of the Arthurian Legends, Martin Shichtman and James Carley (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp. 163–79; Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition, pp. 131–37. Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur: The Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 47. The wounding of Percivale and Gawain is also part of the Queste del Saint Graal, but the author uses it to emphasize the consequences to knights who attempt spiritual tasks they are not ready for (Percivale and Gawain are wounded because they attempt to draw the sword that is meant for Galahad). Malory preserves this meaning, but he also emphasizes the social divisiveness that causes Galahad to wound the other two. Murray J. Evans argues that the sword changes its meaning when it comes into the Grail quest: “the figure of Galahad who bears his sword is a redemption and transformation of the chivalry Balin represented.” While Galahad’s motives may be more Christian than Balin’s, and this Christianity may justify the breaking of the community, the sword’s divisiveness is unchanged. See Murray J. Evans, “Ordinatio and Narrative Links: The Impact of Malory’s Tales As a ‘Hoole Booke’,” Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), p. 38 [29–52]. Percivale “had a glemerynge of the vessell . . . for he was a parfyte mayden” (816; XI.14). A priest uncovered the Grail in the presence of Launcelot to heal him (824; XII.4), but since Launcelot was both mad and asleep, this does not count. Martin Shichtman makes a similar argument, but he emphasizes the impossibility of interpretation in Malory’s “Sankgreal.” I prefer to read Malory as accepting the possibility of partial (possibly biased) comprehension that can lead to greater virtue. See Martin Shichtman,“Politicizing the Ineffable:The Queste Del Saint Graal and Malory’s ‘Tale of the Sankgreal.’ ” Mahoney,“The Truest and Holiest Tale,” p. 382. Indeed, there may have been a reminder of this even in the text of the Queste itself: Vinaver notes that there were two textual traditions of the Queste, but

166

41.

42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

48. 49. 50.

51.

52. 53.

NOTES

Malory’s version has elements of both. Instead of Vinaver’s patronizing assumption that Malory must have had a lost source superior to anything extant, it is quite possible that Malory was comparing differing versions of the same text and choosing the readings he thought best, as many other medieval writers did. See P.J.C. Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p. 1534. John F. Plummer believes that the appearance of the Grail is an “inverted” Pentecost in which language becomes unstable. He focuses mainly on the deception and miscommunication of knights after their return, but his argument could be applied to what is said during the quest itself. John F. Plummer, “Tunc Se Coeperunt Non Intelligere:The Image of Language in Malory’s Last Books,” Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 153–71. Shichtman points out that in the Queste there were blatant signs that this devil was not a true priest, making sure readers would not trust him. Malory makes the false priest more convincing, thus provoking scrutiny of all the would-be interpreters. (Martin Shichtman,“Politicizing the Ineffable,” pp. 169–70). Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, p. 59. Martin Shichtman argues that Malory transforms Gawain from a villain into an average secular man. See “Politicizing the Ineffable,” p. 177. French text from La Queste Del Saint Graal, p. 55; English translation from The Quest of the Holy Grail, p. 80. Richard W. Kaeuper, Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe, p. 50. Both text and translation come from Geoffroi de Charny, The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De Charny:Text, Context, and Translation, trans. Richard Kaeuper and Elspeth Kennedy (Philadephia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 174–77. Knyghthode and Bataile, ed. R. Dyboski and Z.M.Arend (London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University Press, 1935), p. 138. Raymond Lull, The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, pp. 26–27. Larry Benson argues that, since his actual promise was to forbear the queen’s company as much as he could, technically he may be keeping his promise. (Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 220). I interpret “company,” however, not to be a sexual euphemism but a political acknowledgment that Launcelot must come into contact with the queen in public, but that he should minimize even those instances. Felicia Ackerman,“Flourish Your Heart in this World: Emotion, Reason, and Action in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, XXII (1198), p. 207 [182–226]; “Late in the Quest: The Study of Malory’s Morte Darthur as a New Direction in Philosophy,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXIII (1999), pp. 317–18 [312–42]; Terence McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1988) p. 66. “Discourse in the Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination, trans. Michael Holquist and Caryl Emerson (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 276. For a fuller discussion of this passage, see Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. xiii–xvii.

NOTES

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54. Kevin T. Grimm, “The Reception of Malory’s Morte Darthur Medieval and Modern,” Quondam et Futurus 2.3 (1992): 1–14. 55. Robert Sturges, “Epistemology of the Bedchamber:Textuality, Knowledge, and the Representation of Adultery in Malory and the Prose Lancelot,” Arthuriana 7.4 (1997): 47–62. 56. The reason Malory gives for the people holding with Mordred against Arthur is “that with kynge Arthur was never other lyff but warre and stryff ” (1229; XXI.1), which does indeed resemble contemporary English discontent with Edward IV as reported by John Warkworth: when the chronicler muses on the fact that the people who were originally glad to change Henry VI for Edward IV were also glad to see Henry replace Edward once again, he says it is because “whenne Kynge Edward iiijth regnede, the peple looked after alle the foreside prosperytes and peece, but it came not; but one batayle aftere another.” This is not to suggest Malory the narrator is revealing a political bias, but rather that an audience could indeed be expected to see a similarity with Mordred’s rebellion, and since both Yorkists and Lancastrians had suffered uprisings, one could craft the moral as one liked. See Warkworth, A Chronicle of the First Thirteen Years of the Reign of King Edward the Fourth, ed. James Halliwell (London: Camden Society, 1839; rpt. Llanerch Enterprises, 1990), p. 12. 57. Elizabeth Kirk, “ ‘Clerkes, Poetes and Historiographs’: The Morte Darthur and Caxton’s ‘Poetics’ of Fiction,” Studies in Malory, ed. James W. Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 1985), pp. 275–95.

Chapter 2

Swords and Sorceresses: Creating a Chivalric Community

1. From “Gregory’s Chronicle,” The Historical Collections of a Citizen of London in the Fifteenth Century, ed. James Gairdner (London: The Camden Society, 1876; rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1965), p. 166. 2. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. 3. Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community, p. 36. Marion Wynne Davies argues that a number of good women in the Morte Darthur are less passive than this oath suggests. Armstrong argues that the fiction of weak women needing rescue is necessary to define chivalric masculinity but that the practice noticeably diverges from this fiction. See Women and Arthurian Literature: Seizing the Sword (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), pp. 70–71. 4. Geraldine Heng,“The Feminine Subtext in Malory,” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Philadelphia: John Benjamin’s Publishing Company, 1990), pp. 283–300; Dorsey Armstrong, “Gender and the Chivalric Community:The Pentecostal Oath in Malory’s ‘Tale of King Arthur,’ ” Bibliographic Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society 51 (1999): 293–312. 5. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1984), p. 204; Juliet Barker, The Tournament in England, 1100–1400 (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 1986), pp. 109–10.

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6. Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids:Women Who Dressed as Men in Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora Press, 1989), p. 18. 7. Rowena Archer, “ ‘How Ladies . . . Who Live on Their Manors Ought to Manage Their Households and Estates’: Women as Landholders and Administrators in the Later Middle Ages,” Woman is a Worthy Wight:Women in English Society, c.1200–1500, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1992), pp. 160–61 [149–81]. 8. The Treasury of the City of Ladies, trans. S. Lawson (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 129. 9. See P.J.C. Field, “Fifteenth-Century History in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Malory:Texts and Sources (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1998), p. 64 [41–71]. 10. For further examples of fighting women, see Peter Coss, The Lady in Medieval England, 1000–1500 (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Company, 1998) pp. 32–33. 11. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1984), p. 171. 12. Julie Wheelwright, Amazons and Military Maids:Women Who Dressed As Men in Pursuit of Life, Liberty and Happiness (London: Pandora, 1989), p. 148. 13. Sir Thomas Malory, Caxton’s Malory: Le Morte Darthur, 2 vols., ed. James W. Spisak and William Matthews (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), p. 140. The passage in Winchester is simply “I wolde prove hit on youres,” (258; VI.3); until the textual history is clearer, it is impossible to know whether Caxton added words or whether the Winchester scribes omitted them. 14. Wheelwright, pp. 157–59. For an example, see Talhoffer, Fechtbuch aus der Jahre 1467, ed. Gustav Hergsell (Prag: J.G. Calve, 1884), pp. 242–50, translated in Medieval Combat:A Fifteenth-Century Illustrated Manual of Swordfighting and CloseQuarter Combat, trans. Mark Rector (London: Greenhill Books, 2000). 15. For discussion of a scholastic debate prompted by Aristotle’s remark in the Politics that Plato favored allowing women to serve in wars, see James M. Blythe,“Women in the Military: Scholastic Arguments and Medieval Images of Female Warriors,” History of Political Thought 22.2 (2001): 242–69. The reference in Aristotle comes from Book II, chapter vi; his summary of Plato prompted the debate because the Republic was not available in the thirteenth century. 16. Thomas Greene, Besieging the Castle of Ladies (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1995). 17. Which they often were; see Greene, p. 7. 18. For example, Ramon Lull says a knight should be as fearful of shame as a maiden [Sir Gilbert Hay, The Prose Works of Sir Gilbert Hay, ed. Johnathan Glenn (Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1993), p. 34]. 19. The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, trans.William Caxton, ed.Thomas Wright EETS o.s. 33 (London: N.Trübner & Co., 1868), pp. 157–58. 20. Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, p. 121. 21. Sir Thomas More, Utopia:A Reading Text and an English Translation ed. George Logan, Robert Adams, and Clarence Miller (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 200, 210.

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22. The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby, ed.Virginia Cox (London: Everyman’s Library, 1994), p. 42. 23. Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, p. 218. 24. Hyginus Eugene Cardinale, The Orders of Knighthood, Awards, and the Holy See (Gerrards Cross, Buckinghamshire: Van Duren, 1983), pp. 173–74; François.Velde, “Women Knights,” ⬍http://www.heraldica.org/topics/ orders/wom-kn.htm⬎ December 2000. 25. Elias Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (London: J. Macock for Nathaniel Brooke, 1672), pp. 125–26. Ashmole places women last in his discussion of orders of knighthood, behind the warrior associations of the Aztecs, the Incas, and the Japanese, suggesting he may see the female orders primarily as curiosities. 26. Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, p. 126; Cardinale, The Orders of Knighthood, Awards, and the Holy See, p. 174. 27. “In Nivellensi Monasterio Canonicarum S. Gertrudis in Brabantia, etiamnum domicellae istae Canonicae, post exactium Stagium, quod trienni esse aiunt, fiunt seu creantur Militissae, ad altare, a quodam nobile milite, ad hoc evocato, stricto ense in dorsum impacto, consuetisque verbis pronuntiatis.” [Still in Nivelles at the monastery of Canons of St. Gertrude in Brabant, the female canons, after finishing a probationary stage, which they define to be three years, they are made or created knights at the altar by a noble knight called in for this, with a light blow of a sword on the back and the saying of the customary words.] See Sieur Charles du Fresne du Cange, s.v.“Militissa,” Glossarium Mediae Et Infimae Latinatis, ed. and rev. Léopold Favre (Niort: L. Favre, 1883–1887), p. 386. 28. Maurice Keen, Chivalry (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1984), p. 193. 29. Records of the Garter can be spotty. In 1448, Ladies of the Garter included Queen Margaret; Lady Anne Moleyns; Emeline Willingham, Lady de Say; Margaret Ferrers, Lady de Beauchamp; and Alice Norreys. In 1477, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth, and Elizabeth, Duchess of Suffolk (Edward IV’s eldest sister) were Garter members. See George Frederick Beltz, Memorials of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, from Its Foundation to the Present Time (London:William Pickering, 1841), pp. ccxxi–xccxxiv; also D’Arcy Jonathan Dacre Boulton, The Knights of the Crown:The Monarchical Orders of Knighthood in Later Medieval Europe 1325–1520, 2nd ed. (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2000), p. 142; Hugh E.L. Collins, The Order of the Garter, 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 28, 79–83; Cardinale, The Orders of Knighthood,Awards, and the Holy See, pp. 214–15;Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, pp. 217–18. 30. Pace Martin B. Shichtman,“Percival’s Sister: Genealogy,Virginity, and Blood,” Arthuriana 9.2 (1999): 11–20; Dorsey Armstrong, “Malory’s Morgause,” On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001): 149–60.

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NOTES

31. For example, James Noble can begin an abstract, “Misogynist that he was, Malory . . .” and Elizabeth Sklar writes of Elaine of Corbenic is guilty of “unleashing the gynophobia that underpins the romance genre in general and Malory’s rendering in particular; in a damning representation of the consequences of female autonomy, Guinevere, Elaine, and Dame Brusen . . . short-circuit the patriarchal structure and subvert the stability of the realm.” Interestingly, many of the works that begin by assuming Malory’s misogyny then proceed to demonstrate that certain female characters are more complex than might be expected from that assumption; enough exceptions have been found that the rule of Malory’s misogyny must be reconsidered. See James Noble,“Gilding the Lily (Maid): Elaine of Astolat,” On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001), p. 45 [45–57]; Elizabeth S. Sklar,“Malory’s Other(Ed) Elaine,” On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001), p. 62 [59–70]; for a claim that Malory is not misogynist, see Ginger Thornton and Krista May, “Malory As Feminist? The Role of Percival’s Sister in the Grail Quest,” Sir Thomas Malory:Views and Re-Views, ed. D.Thomas Hanks (New York:AMS Press, 1992), pp. 43–53. 32. Browsing through an anthology such as Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, ed. Alcuin Blamires (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992) will provide numerous examples, beginning with Jerome (e.g., Adversus Jovinianum and Letter 22,To Eustochium, pp. 67, 75). 33. See P.J.C Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990) p. 1573, n. 991. 34. Uther’s charge may not have been legally binding: Parliament did not accept Henry V’s wish that Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, be sole protector during Henry VI’s minority on the grounds that a king’s will could dispose of his property but not his right to rule. See R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI, 2nd ed. (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1998), p. 20. 35. The commons, of course, could provide the nucleus for a community not defined by chivalry but by shared economic interests, somewhat in the way London supported Edward IV, but Malory does not develop this. He rarely depicts nonaristocrats, and when he does, rather than forming a community of their own, they are outsiders to the knightly community. 36. The sword is not named immediately, but it is called Excalibur the first time it is used in battle (19; I.9). 37. Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms:The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1997), p. 20. 38. Dorsey Armstrong argues that Morgause’s consent is actually damning: that, for the patriarchy to function, women must be silent, obedient gifts between men, and that Morgause’s decision to give herself destroys the Round Table, making her more culpable than any of the men. The problem with this analysis is that too many women give themselves willingly without ill consequence: Nyneve to Pelleas, Lyones to Gareth, Lyonors to Arthur, Alys la Beale Pellaron to Alexander the Orphan.Women sometimes act as objects

NOTES

39. 40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46.

171

of exchange between men in Le Morte Darthur, but it is not their prime role and they can step outside the role without destroying the social structure. See Armstrong,“Malory’s Morgause.” Once again, the sword is not named immediately, but the Lady of the Lake names it when she comes to court (65; II.3). Beverly Kennedy suggests that the second Excalibur represents blood feud specifically, and that the Lady of the Lake is implicitly buying Arthur’s help in killing Balin with the sword. Despite the Lady of the Lake’s subsequent request for Balin’s head, however, I think the circumstances of her giving him the sword suggest a more general symbolism of mutual obligation which can be a positive exchange of favors as well as vengeance. See Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1992), p. 223. Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 173; cf. The Great Chronicle of London, ed.A.H.Thomas and I.D.Thornley (Gloucester:Alan Sutton Publishing, 1983), pp. 158–59. Gregory’s Chronicle, p. 174. A similar list appears in The Great Chronicle of London, 161. Gregory’s “helme of helme” is clearly a mistake for the Great Chronicle’s “helme of helthe,” and in the allegorical context Gregory’s “swyrde of ryght and vyctorye” makes more sense than the Great Chronicle’s “swerde of myght and victorie.” Geraldine Heng suggests that Excalibur and Balin’s sword are essentially alike, and that the curse on Balin’s comes from his failure to recognize the sword and scabbard as symbols of feminine power (284–85). Her article, however, is looking at the relations between knights and a fairly undifferentiated “feminine” which tends to collapse differences between female characters.The result is that the Lady of the Lake, who supports Arthur’s laws, is made equivalent to Balin’s damsel, who opposes them. But chivalry does not simply treat women as a class, since its standards can distinguish good women from bad women. Arthur, in dealing with the Lady of the Lake, is responding to a good woman, while Balin is dealing with a bad one. To ascribe all that results to the differences in the two men is to miss the challenge that Balin’s damsel poses to the system of reciprocal loyalties. See Geraldine Heng, “The Feminine Subtext in Malory,” Courtly Literature: Culture and Context, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing company, 1990), pp. 283–300. Patricia Clare Ingham, Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 205–06. Arthurian Propaganda: Le Morte Darthur as an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill:The University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 63–64. Emphasis in the original. It is not the first warning of possible conflicts of loyalty. The incest with Morgause has already shown the danger of transgressing unknown ties, and Morgause’s behavior is hard to judge in terms of loyalties: she consents to sleep with Arthur, but that is betraying her husband Lot; she is spying for Lot, however, so she is also betraying Arthur. The consequences of her behavior, however, are delayed; the war in which Lot seeks revenge on

172

47.

48.

49.

50. 51.

52. 53. 54.

55.

56.

57. 58.

NOTES

Arthur is not immediate, and it will be long years before Mordred brings down the Round Table. Likewise, King Pellinore kills King Lot in battle during the course of Balin’s career, which sets the stage for the sons of Lot, particularly Gawain and Aggravain, to seek their murderous revenge on the sons of Pellinore, particularly Lamorak, but the actual revenge does not occur until the “Trystram.”With Balin, however, the disasters springing from contradictory loyalties are immediate and thus force a crisis. Beverly Kennedy has a long discussion of “happy” and “unhappy” in Malory, in which she argues that happy knights are blessed for their virtues, and unhappiness is a sign of sin.While her discussion is good, I do not completely agree: Balin’s sword is simultaneously “unhappy” and a marker of the best knight— not someone who used to be best knight. A contradiction in values does not mean one of the values is bad (consider Bors’s choice between rescuing his brother or a damsel) but it can bring about considerable unhappiness, in all senses of the word. See Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, pp. 215–75. See, for instance, Stephen Knight, “The Social Function of Medieval Romances,” Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, History, ed. David Aers (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986): 88–122; Dhira Mahoney, “Malory’s Tale of Gareth and the Comedy of Class,” Arthurian Yearbook I, ed. Keith Busby (New York: Garland, 1991) p. 169. Nyneve’s epithets range from “one of the damesels of the Lady of the Laake” (125; IV.1) to “chyff lady of the laake” (1242; XXI.6), with the majority being the “Damsel of the Lake” or the “Lady of the Lake,” apparently used interchangeably. See Sue Ellen Holbrook, “Nimue, The Chief Lady of the Lake,” Speculum 53.4 (1978): 761–67. Holbrook,“Nimue,The Chief Lady of the Lake,” pp. 769–70. Anne Berthelot, while not discussing Malory, identifies in the medieval French tradition a pattern of the Lady of the Lake being justified in her treatment of Merlin. See “Merlin and the Ladies of the Lake,” Arthuriana 10.1 (2000): 55–81. “From the Lady to the Tramp:The Decline of Morgan Le Fay in Medieval Romance,” Arthuriana 4.1 (1994), p. 9 [1–18]. Heng,“The Feminine Subtext in Malory,” p. 293. Holbrook interprets “Than she made hym to swere that he sholde never do none inchauntemente uppon hir if he wolde have his wil” (125; IV.1) as an implicit promise to sleep with Merlin if he did not enchant her. Holbrook, “Nimue,The Chief Lady of the Lake,” pp. 769–70. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 2 vol., ed. Gilles Roussineau (Geneva: Libraire Droz, 1996) 2: 344; English translation by Martha Asher in Lancelot-Grail:The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 5 vol., ed. Norris Lacy (New York: Garland, 1995) 4: 263. For a further discussion of “blood,” see Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms and the Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 60–74. Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, pp. 148–50. Berthelot,“Merlin and the Ladies of the Lake,” p. 59.

NOTES

173

59. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 1: 119–20; Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 4: 200. 60. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 2: 344. 61. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 2: 360; Lancelot-Grail:The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 4: 268. 62. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 2: 364–65, Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 4: 269. 63. Donald Hoffman, “Perceval’s Sister: Malory’s ‘Rejected’ Masculinities,” Arthuriana 6.4 (Winter 1996): 72–83. 64. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 2: 419–420; Lancelot-Grail: The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 5: 10–11. 65. She does call him a “valyaunte knight” (171; IV.23), showing appreciation for his knightly character, but his valor is now merely attractive, not compelling. She condemns Ettarde for showing no mercy, not for not loving, thus lowering the emotional response that a “valyaunte knight” can demand. 66. Wilfred L. Guerin, “ ‘The Tale of the Death of Arthur’: Catastrophe and Resolution,” Malory’s Orginality, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), p. 255 [233–74]. 67. La Suite Du Roman De Merlin 1: 274; translation from Lancelot-Grail:The Old French Arthurian Vulgate and Post-Vulgate in Translation 4: 244. 68. Beverly Kennedy, who assumes that Malory wished readers to identify the Lady of the Lake as Launcelot’s guardian even though he systematically cut out that story, claims that Pelleas and Nyneve act as “foster-parents” for Launcelot and that Nyneve’s refusal to let Pelleas fight Launcelot protects Launcelot. See Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, p. 101.

Chapter 3

Of Knights and Nations

1. “Epic and Novel,” The Dialogic Imagination, ed. and trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), p. 15 [3–40]. 2. Felicity Riddy, “Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur: Empire and Civil War,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), 55–95. 3. The Brut, or,The Chronicles of England, ed. Friedrich W.D. Brie, EETS o.s. 131 (London: Kegan Paul,Trench,Trübner & Co., 1906), p. 220. 4. The Orkneys were a Norwegian possession until 1468, when they were passed to James III of Scotland as part of marriage arrangements.Technically, therefore, the islands would have been Scottish by the time Malory finished the Morte Darthur.The language remained Scandinavian into the eighteenth century. Geoffrey of Monmouth made Gawain’s father Lot king of Norway. The proximity to Scotland, however, might define the politics in Le Morte Darthur.Aggravain and Mordred’s comrades are all “of Scotlonde, other ellis of sir Gawaynes kynne, other well-wyllers to hys brothir” (1164; XX.2), which suggests a geographical though not necessarily national affinity. See Hyonjin Kim, The Knight Without the Sword:A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 85–90.

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NOTES

5. History on the Edge: Excalibur and the Borders of Britain, 1100–1300 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000). 6. Empire of Magic: Medieval Romance and the Politics of Cultural Fantasy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 7. Sovereign Fantasies:Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 87–88, 101. 8. For diverse examples, see Robert L. Kelly,“Malory’s Argument Against War With France: The Political Geography of France and the Anglo-French Alliance in the Morte Darthur,” The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 111–33; Riddy, “Contextualizing Le Morte Darthur: Empire and Civil War”; Eugène Vinaver and P.J.C Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 1367–68. 9. He does make one indirect reference: Sir Clegis boasts that his ancestors came from Troy to Britain with Brutus (213; not in Caxton). 10. Fabienne L. Michelet, “East and West in Malory’s Roman War: The Implications of Arthur’s Travels on the Continent,” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 18.2–3 (1999): 209–25. 11. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (Palgrave, 2002), pp. 74–78. 12. Michelet, “East and West in Malory’s Roman War: The Implications of Arthur’s Travels on the Continent,” p. 212. 13. A similar bias is seen in the Grail quest.The twelve knights that achieve the Grail come by threes from Arthur’s England, Gaul, Ireland, and Denmark (1028; XVII.19); southern Europe, including Rome, is conspicuously missing. 14. Bert Dillon, “Formal and Informal Pronouns of Address in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” Annuale Mediaevale 10 (1969): 94–103. 15. “The Origin of Nations,” Becoming National, ed. Geoff Eley and Grigor Suny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) p. 111 [106–30]. Reprinted from Ethnic and Racial Studies 12.3 ( July 1989): 340–67. 16. Mary E. Dichmann, “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” Malory’s Originality:A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), p. 84. 17. Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, King Arthur and the Myth of History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 159–85. 18. Marc Ricciardi,“ ‘Se What I Shall Do as for my Trew Parte’: Fellowship and Fortitude in Malory’s Noble Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” Arthuriana 11.2 (Summer 2001): 10–31. 19. Ricciardi,“Se What I Shall Do as for my Trew Parte,” pp. 25–28. 20. Dichmann,“The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” pp. 67–90. 21. Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 82. 22. Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 75–78. 23. Batt suggests the fears of Guinevere’s rape link to Melleagaunce’s later abduction and the troubles over Guinevere’s adultery, but she does not specifically link Launcelot to the the giant. See Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 75–78.

NOTES

175

24. This may simply be a comment on the various economic forms of bad lordship, with the women forced to stand in for most of the civil society that is unrepresented in Malory. It could also mark a criticism of marriage as primarily a matter of economic concern—Igrayne marries Uther is a political match that could be seen as reducing her to simply an economic commodity, a bearer of property, much as the ladies in the castle are reduced to economic commodities, producers of cloth.While the economic aspects of marriage are important in romance in general and Malory in particular, Launcelot is a reminder that it should not be the only concern. See P.J.C. Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford England, N.Y.: Clarendon Press. Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 1422–23. For further discussion on economics and marriage, see Kim, The Knight Without the Sword:A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry, pp. 19–54; Stephen Knight, “The Social Function of Medieval Romances,” Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, History, ed. David Aers (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1986), pp. 88–122; Marylynn Saul, “Courtly Love and Patriarchal Marriage Practice in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998): 50–62. 25. Cf. Heng, Empire of Magic, 19–46. 26. Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 81–82. 27. Cf. Angela Gibson, “Malory’s Reformulation of Shame,” Arthuriana 11.4 (2001): 64–76; Danielle Morgan MacBain,“Love Versus Politics: Competing Paradigms of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Quondam et Futurus 2.3 (1992): 21–29. 28. R.M. Lumiansky,“Prelude to Adultery,” Malory’s Originality:A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), pp. 91–98. For a contrary view, see David R. Miller, “A Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake Reconsidered,” Quondam et Futurus 2.3 (1992): 25–43. 29. Benson resists this, arguing that the word “paramours” is not applied to lovers such as Isode and Guinevere. (Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 85–86). However, Columbe is described as Balin’s paramour (72; II.7) even though they had a “trew love,” (69; II.6). Launcelot’s speech, moreover, comes in response to yet another accusation that he loves the queen, and his explicit mention of adultery makes it almost certain that he is denying a sexual passion for her. 30. The need for status and protection is not just feminine, of course. Launcelot rescues men as well as women, and a damsel points out the parallelism:“for lyke as Terquyn wacched to dystresse good knyghtes, so dud this knyghte attende to destroy and dystresse ladyes” (270; VI.10). 31. “Perceval’s Sister: Malory’s ‘Rejected’ Masculinities,” Arthuriana 6.4 (1996): 72–83. 32. The Myth of Nations: the Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), p. 19. 33. “Introduction,” Imagining a Medieval English Nation, p. xix.

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NOTES

Chapter 4

Regional Politics

1. And, as Hyonjin Kim argues, money. See The Knight without the Sword: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 40–44. 2. Peter Coss,The Knight in Medieval England,1000–1400 (Stroud,Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton Publishing, 1993), p. 134. 3. Thou is almost always insulting instead of intimate in Malory; see Dillon, “Formal and Informal Pronouns of Address in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.” 4. Kathleen Coyne Kelly argues that, in Malory, virginity is a matter of performance, not simply an absence of sexual experience. See “Malory’s Multiple Virgins,” Arthuriana 9.2 (1999): 21–29. 5. For further discussion of Launcelot’s techniques for recruiting for his affinity, see Hyonjin Kim, The Knight without the Sword, p. 79. 6. Caxton reverses Gawain’s expectation by adding a negative:“O broder, saide Sir Gawayne, I wende ye wolde not haue stryken me.” Either reading is possible, depending on how well Gawain knows his brother, but his hurt is evident either way. Caxton’s Malory, p. 191. 7. Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 103–05. 8. Hyonjin Kim, The Knight Without the Sword, p. 85. 9. This last argument comes from Donald L. Hoffman, “Guenevere the Enchantress,” Arthuriana 9.2 (1999): 30–36. 10. For a thorough discussion of chronology in Malory (shaped by a desire to force everything into coherence), see Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur: The Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965), pp. 1–12. 11. Elizabeth Sklar, “The Undoing of Romance in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 20 (1993): 309–32; Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 104. 12. D.Thomas Hanks,“Malory’s Book of Sir Trystram: Focusing Le Morte Darthur,” Quondam et Futurus 3.1 (1993): 14–31; Helen Cooper, “The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), p. 184 [183–201]. 13. Ginger Thornton and Elizabeth Pochoda see flaws emerging in Arthur. Charles Moorman locates a double failure in the feuding of Gawain and his kin and the adultery of Trystram and Launcelot. Danielle MacBain sees the “Trystram” as the primary site for a dangerous private love that goes against the moral and political bonds of the Round Table. Several critics, including Pochoda, have argued that a lack of external enemies turns the aggression in upon itself. Beverly Kennedy sees Launcelot slipping from the highest standards of “true knighthood” into mere “worshipful knighthood.” On the other hand, Larry Benson and Eugene Vinaver argue vehemently that there is nothing wrong in the “Trystram” and that it represents the high point of Arthurian chivalry. See Ginger Thornton, “The Weakening of the King: Arthur’s Disintegration in The Book of Sir Tristram De Lyones,” Sir Thomas Malory: Views and Re-Views, ed. D. Thomas Hanks (New York: AMS Press, 1992),

NOTES

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

177

pp. 3–16; Elizabeth T. Pochoda, Arthurian Propaganda: Le Morte Darthur As an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), pp. 109–14; Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur the Unity of Malory’s Morte Darthur (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1965); Danielle Morgan MacBain, “Love Versus Politics: Competing Paradigms of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Quondam et Futurus 2.3 (1992): 21–29; Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, pp. 179–94; Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 109–34; P.J.C. Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 1445–47. Larry Benson argues that medieval audiences would have read differently, so that the repeating, slightly varied stories would have served as a satisfying structure. Thomas Rumble, on the other hand, sees the flaws lying in the text, not with modern readers. See Larry D. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 115; Thomas Rumble,“ ‘The Tale of Trystram’: Development by Analogy,” Malory’s Originality, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), pp. 118–83. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York, Palgrave, 2002), pp. 103–05; Danielle Morgan MacBain, “Love Versus Politics: Competing Paradigms of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur”; Elizabeth Sklar,“The Undoing of Romance in Malory’s Morte Darthur.” See Thomas Rumble,“ ‘The Tale of Trystram: Development by Analogy.’ ” Danielle Morgan MacBain, “The Tristramization of Malory’s Lancelot,” English Studies:A Journal of English Language and Literature 74.1 (1993): 57–65. Hyonjin Kim gives a powerfully persuasive account of the role of regional affinities in the Trystram in his The Knight without the Sword:A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 64–84. Lameroke, who elsewhere identifies himself simply as the son of Pellinore, at one point surprisingly claims that he is “sonne and ayre unto the good knyght and kynge, kynge Pellynore” (602; X.19), even though Malory gives the genealogy this way: “syr Tor . . . was kynge Pellenors fyrst sone and bygoten of Aryes wyf, the couherd, for he was a bastard; and sire Aglovale was his fyrste sone begoten in wedlok; syre Lameroke, Dornar, Percyvale, these were his sones to in wedlok” (610; X.23). Later, in the “Healing of Sir Urry,” he lists them this way:“kynge Pellynore begate them all: firste sir Tor, sir Agglovale, sir Durnor, sir Lamorak, . . . and sir Percivale” (1149; XIX.11). While Dornar and Lameroke switch places in the latter list, it seems likely that Agglovale was the eldest legitimate son and Percivale the youngest. Arthurian Propaganda: Le Morte Darthur As an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), p. 97; cf. Larry Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 143–45. Before Arthur is crowned king, it is reported that Kay’s father Ector “had grete lyvelode aboute London” (13; I.5); if one assumes that Kay inherits, then he would be one knight with major holdings in England. It could be

178

22. 23.

24.

25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

NOTES

that others of the early knights, such as Lucan and Bedivere, also have English holdings, since it is reported several times that Arthur confirmed or granted lands to his men (16, 120; I.6, III.15), but these holdings are not specified. See Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, pp. 150–65. Dhira Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste Del Saint Graal,” The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira Mahoney (New York: Garland Publishing, 2000), p. 382. Donald Schueler notes that Launcelot serves as a key figure in Arthurian national politics while Trystram is absent, and he concludes that “Tristram has no significance larger than himself,” thus highlighting Launcelot’s political superiority.As will become clear, while I agree with the main thrust of the argument, I disagree with the claim that Trystram becomes politically unimportant:Trystram’s concerns are local concerns; and, while they do not rise to national levels, nonetheless they are not purely personal nor are local concerns safely ignored by the national polity. See Donald G. Schueler,“The Tristram Section of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Studies in Philology 65.1 (1968), p. 65 [51–66]. Kevin Grimm sees “Trystram” focusing on the relations among knights, not on relations with the king. Felicity Riddy, too, argues that this section is decentered and personal. See Grimm,“Fellowship and Envy: Structuring the Narrative of Malory’s Tale of Sir Tristram,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 20 (1993): 77–98; and Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden, New York: E.J. Brill, 1987), p. 85 and elsewhere. Neville Williams, The Life and Times of Elizabeth I (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972; reprinted New York:Welcome Rain, 1998), p. 165. “Ordinances of War Made by King Henry V at Mawnt,” The Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. Sir Travers Twiss, Rerum Brittanicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 55 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1871; reprinted Kraus Reprint, 1965), pp. 469–70. Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 105. Benson, Malory’s Morte Darthur, p. 144; Kim, The Knight without the Sword, p. 70. Kim, The Knight without the Sword, p. 77; Kevin Grimm, “Fellowship and Envy: Structuring the Narrative of Malory’s Tale of Sir Tristram”; also, Elizabeth Archibald,“Malory’s Ideal of Fellowship,” Review of English Studies n.s. 43.171 (1992): 311–28; Raluca Radelescu, The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 34–37, 95. Elizabeth Archibald,“Malory’s Ideal of Fellowship.” Schueler,“The Tristram Section of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” p. 65. Andrew Lynch argues that the purpose is to keep the poor knight Balin properly subordinate to great knights by constantly overshadowing his deeds with reference to later, greater ones. See Malory’s Book of Arms:The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 23–25; Elizabeth Edwards, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2001), p. 28.

NOTES

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34. Elizabeth Edwards, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 24–53 ; cf. Jill Mann,“ ‘Taking the Adventure’: Malory and the Suite Du Merlin,” Aspects of Malory, ed. Toshiyuki Takamiya and Derek Brewer (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1981), pp. 71–91. 35. Charles Moorman, The Book of Kyng Arthur, pp. 49–63. 36. Kim, The Knight without the Sword, pp. 64–65. 37. Kim, The Knight without the Sword, pp. 65–68. 38. Elizabeth T Pochoda, Arthurian Propaganda, pp. 102–14; see also Ginger Thornton, “The Weakening of the King: Arthur’s Disintegration in the The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones.” 39. John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 27. 40. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship, p. 34. 41. Charles Ross, The Custom of the Castle: From Malory to Macbeth (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997. 42. Ross, The Custom of the Castle, pp. 18–36. 43. Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship, p. 73. 44. A.J. Pollard, North-Eastern England during the Wars of the Roses: Lay Society,War, and Politics, 1450–1500 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 245–315. 45. Trystram beheads the lady of Castle Plewre (415; VIII.25). Arthur also beheads a lady, the sorceress Aunowre (491; IX.16). Gawain threatens a damsel of the arch-villainess, Morgan le Fay (510; IX.25). Earlier, Nyneve punishes Ettarde for her abuse of Pelleas (172; IV.25), and Marhault is considered justified in opposing evil women (161; IV.18–19). 46. Lamerok’s mother laments Lameroke’s death to her sons Percivale and Agglovale and blames Gawain and Gaheris for Pellinore’s death, but there is no explicit account of the killing or linkage of the Orkney brothers to Lameroke’s loss (809–10; XI.10). Interestingly enough, immediately thereafter, Agglovale and Percivale become involved in a feud of their own, with a Sir Goodwyne, because Agglovale slew Goodwyne’s brother (810–12; XI.11). 47. Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship, p. 29. 48. Dhira Mahoney,“ ‘Ar Ye a Knyght and Ar No Lovear?’:The Chivalry Topos in Malory’s Book of Sir Trystram,” Conjunctures: Medieval Studies in Honor of Douglas Kelly,ed.Keith Busby and Norris Lacy (Amsterdam:Rodopi,1994),pp.311–24. 49. For further discussion of this episode, see Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003) pp. 135–140; Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, p. 68. 50. Ad Putter, “Transvestite Knights in Medieval Life and Literature,” Becoming Male in the Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Garland, 2000), p. 286 [279–302]. 51. Beverly Kennedy rightly rejects Vinaver’s claim that Malory must have been unaware of the implications of this scene for romantic chivalry. See Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, p. 181; Eugène Vinaver, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, p. 1470. 52. R.M. Lumiansky suggested that in the “Launcelot,” the love has not yet been consummated. Beverly Kennedy takes this farther, arguing vigorously that

180

NOTES

53. 54.

55. 56.

Launcelot sleeps with Guinevere only once, in the Knight of the Cart episode. Part of her claim rests on the argument that “true love” means chaste love, but this does not seem to be true in Malory. Launceor and Columbe had “muche trew love” (69; II.6), but she is also described as his “paramour” (72; II.8). The stronger part of her argument rests on the fact that Malory does not directly confirm any sexual encounter between Launcelot and Guinevere except in the “Knight of the Cart,” but the adultery is so widely discussed it seems that the natural assumption, despite the narrative absence, is that they are sleeping together rather than not. See R.M. Lumiansky,“Prelude to Adultery,” Malory’s Originality:A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), pp. 91–98; Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, pp. 245–50 and Beverly Kennedy,“Malory’s Guenevere:A ‘Trew Lover’,” On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001): 11–30. Donald L. Hoffman, “Dinadan: the Excluded Middle,” Tristania 10.1–2 (1984–1985): 3–16; cf. Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, pp. 98–103. The narrator does not directly say this, but of thirty knights, ten fled and Trystram killed two with his spear and ten with his sword.This leaves eight for Dinadan. For an extended discussion of Palomides, see Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms, pp. 108–33. Kevin T. Grimm, “Fellowship and Envy: Structuring the Narrative of Malory’s Tale of Sir Tristram.”

Chapter 5 Shifting Boundaries: Religious Communities and the Grail 1. Fabienne L. Michelet links “Arthur and Lucius” and the “Sankgreal” by suggesting that the war with Rome establishes a crusading ideal that Arthur fails to bring to fruition in the quest for the Grail.The argument depends on the Grail quest being a kind of crusade, but this is doubtful; it features personal understanding and control, not a fight against outsiders. See Fabienne L. Michelet, “East and West in Malory’s Roman War: The Implications of Arthur’s Travels on the Continent,” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 18.2–3 (1999): 209–25. 2. Mary Hynes-Berry argues, for instance, that Malory makes the focus of his “Quest of the Sankgreal” Launcelot’s internal struggle. Felicity Riddy argues that the Grail quest turns away from social concerns to the private ones of lay piety. Dhira Mahoney suggests that, for Malory, the asceticism of the Grail is not meant to replace the secular chivalry of early books but to provide an example of how mature knights can retire from the public, political forms of chivalry. See Hynes-Berry, “Malory’s Translation of Meaning: The Tale of the Sankgreal,” Studies in Philology 74 (1977): 243–57; Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1987), pp. 113–15; Dhira Mahoney, “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste del

NOTES

3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

181

Saint Graal,” Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 379–96. For instance, Terrence McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1988), pp. 93–98;Angela Gibson,“Malory’s Reformulation of Shame,” Arthuriana 11.4 (2001): 64–76; Derek Brewer, The Morte Darthur: Parts Seven and Eight (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968), pp. 23–25; Mark Lambert, Malory: Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 176–94; Andrew Lynch, Malory’s Book of Arms:The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 95–96, 127, and elsewhere; Danielle Morgan MacBain, “Love versus Politics: Competing Paradigms of Chivalry in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Quondam et Futurus 2.3 (1992): 21–29; Stephen Atkinson,“Malory’s Lancelot and the Quest of the Grail,” Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 129–52. While some have argued that the work ascribed to Blacman was actually produced after 1485 as part of the Tudor attempt to canonize Henry VI, Roger Lovatt argues convincingly that Blacman did write the work and that it was completed before 1485, with earlier dates (in the 1470s) more probable. See Lovatt, “A Collector of Apocryphal Anecdotes: John Blacman Revisited,” Property and Politics: Essays in Later Medieval English Politics, ed.Tony Pollard (Stroud, Gloucester:Alan Sutton, 1984), pp. 172–97. John Blacman, Henry the Sixth, ed. M.R. James (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1919). Malory’s Grail Seekers and Fifteenth-Century English Hagiography (New York: Peter Lang, 1999). John McKenna, “Piety and Propaganda: The Cult of King Henry VI,” Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Beryl Rowland (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), p. 78 [72–88]. Lovatt,“A Collector of Popular Anecdotes,” p. 183. Helen Nicholson, Love, War, and the Grail: Templars, Hospitallers, and Teutonic Knights in Medieval Epic and Romance, 1150–1500 (Boston, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2004), pp. 155–63. Sir E.A.Wallis Budge, George of Lydda, the Patron Saint of England:A Study of the Cultus of St. George in Ethiopia (London: Luzac & Co, 1930), pp. 27–31; Cornelia Steketee Hulst, St. George of Cappadocia in Legend and History (London, David Nutt, 1909), pp. 56–58; David Scott Fox, Saint George: The Saint with Three Faces (Shooter’s Lodge, Berks.: Kensal Press, 1983), pp. 60–62. For discussion of how George became England’s patron saint, see Samantha Riches, St George: Hero, Martyr and Myth (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000), pp. 101–39; David Scott Fox, Saint George:The Saint with Three Faces (Shooter’s Lodge, Berks.: Kensal Press, 1983), pp. 59–96; Cornelia Steketee Hulst, St. George of Cappadocia in Legend and History (London, David Nutt, 1909), pp. 40–58, 71–83; and Jonathan Bengtson, “Saint George and the Formation of English Nationalism,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27.2 (1997): 317–40.

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12. See “The Statutes and Ordinaunces to be Keped in Time of Werre,” The Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. Sir Travers Twiss, Rerum Brittanicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 55 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1871; reprinted Kraus Reprint, 1965), p. 1: 289; also “Ordinances of War Made by King Richard II at Durham,Anno 1385,” p. 1: 456; and “Ordinance of War Made by King Henry V at Mawnt,” p. 1: 464. 13. Quoted by Bengtson, “Saint George and the Formation of English Nationalism,” p. 326. 14. See Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), pp. 15–22; Fox, Saint George, pp. 98–122. 15. From Wynkyn de Worde’s 1512 edition, quoted in The Life of St. George by Alexander Barclay, EETS o.s. 230, ed. William Nelson (London: Geoffrey Cumberlege, Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 118. 16. Barclay, The Life of Saint George, l. 167. See also Peter Erickson, “ ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George’: British National Identity and the Emergence of White Self-Fashioning,” Early Modern Visual Culture: Representation, Race, and Empire in Renaissance England, ed. Peter Erickson and Clark Hulse (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), pp. 330–31 [315–45]. 17. See Valerie M. Lagorio,“The Evolving Legend of St Joseph of Glastonbury,” Speculum 46 (1971): 209–31, reprinted Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 55–81. 18. Patricia Clare Ingham also links the Grail quest to national identity, but from a completely different perspective, a mixture of psychoanalytic and postcolonial analysis. See Sovereign Fantasies:Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 216–21. 19. See E.D. Kennedy,“John Hardyng and the Holy Grail,” in Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 249–68; Felicity Riddy, “Glastonbury, Joseph of Arimathea and the Grail in John Hardyng’s Chronicle,” Glastonbury Abbey and the Arthurian Tradition, ed. James Carley (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2001), pp. 269–84, and “Chivalric Nationalism and the Holy Grail in John Hardyng’s Chronicle,” The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Dhira Mahoney (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 397–414. 20. The Chronicle of Iohn Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis (London: G.Woodfall, 1812), p. 84.Abbreviations silently expanded. 21. Hardyng, Chronicle, p. 85. 22. Hardyng, Chronicle, p. 99. 23. Hardyng, Chronicle, p. 122. 24. Hardyng, Chronicle, p. 133. 25. See also Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman, King Arthur and the Myth of History (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004), pp. 154–55; Felicity Riddy, “Chivalric Nationalism and the Holy Grail in John Hardyng’s Chronicle,” The Grail: A Casebook, ed. Felicity Riddy (New York: Garland, 2000), pp. 397–414.

NOTES

183

26. John Van Engen, “The Church in the Fifteenth Century,” Handbook of European History, 1400–1600, 1 v., ed. Thomas Brady, Jr., Heiko Oberman, and James Tracy (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994), pp. 312–19 [305–30]. 27. Fabienne Michelet argues that the Grail quest is linked to the Roman war in a desire for crusades to the east, and that Arthur fails in not participating in the Grail quest and in not crusading; that is, that England’s limited role in the larger Christian world is a failure of Arthur’s. Acknowledging the importance of the east, however, is not automatically a call for English crusading. See “East and West in Malory’s Roman War: The Implications of Arthur’s Travels on the Continent,” Multilingua: Journal of Cross-Cultural and Interlanguage Communication 18.2–3 (1999): 209–25. 28. Jardine and Brotton, Global Interests, pp. 21–22. 29. Sandra Ness Ihle emphasizes the importance of brotherhood in the Grail quest, but some of her examples are figurative and others rest, not on positive images of brotherhood, but on the negative reaction when brother fights brother, which suggest that the bond of literal brotherhood is not overwhelmingly strong. See Malory’s Grail Quest: Invention and Adaptation in Medieval Prose Romance (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983) pp. 132–41. For the importance of fatherhood, see Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Reshaping Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 146–53; Karen Cherewatuk, “Born-Again Virgins and Holy Bastards: Bors and Elyne and Lancelot and Galahad,” Arthuriana 11.2 (2001): 52–63. 30. Dorsey Armstrong also highlights this passage as important to the Grail quest, but she suggests the kinship bond between Arthur and Gawain that compels Gawain to attempt to draw the sword foreshadows the violence among the affinities later when Arthur at Gawain’s urging wars with Launcelot. See Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), pp. 147–49. 31. Catherine Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), p. 53. 32. “Percival’s Sister: Genealogy, Virginity, and Blood,” Arthuriana 9.2 (1999), p. 12 [11–29]. 33. “Born-Again Virgins and Holy Bastards: Bors and Elyne and Lancelot and Galahad,” Arthuriana 11.2 (2001): 52–64. 34. The Deidis of Armorie: A Heraldic Treatise and Bestiary, 2 vol., ed. L.A.J.R. Houwen (Edinburgh:The Scottish Text Society, 1994), p. 1:20. 35. Gender and the Chivalric Community, pp. 151–61. 36. Stephen Atkinson,“Malory’s Lancelot and the Quest of the Grail,” Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 142–44 [129–52]; Jill Mann, “Malory and the Grail Legend,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 217–18 [203–20]. 37. “The Truest and Holiest Tale: Malory’s Transformation of La Queste del Saint Graal,” Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), p. 113 [109–28].

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38. Of course, the Queste was often incorporated into larger cycles including the French prose Lancelot or La Morte le Roi Artu, therefore I oversimplify. 39. Dorsey Armstrong,“Gender and the Chivalric Community:The Pentecostal Oath in Malory’s ‘Tale of King Arthur’,” Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 51 (1999): 293–312; Felicia Ackerman, “ ‘Never to Do Outrageousity Nor Murder’:The World of Malory’s Morte Darthur,” The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values in Past and Present, ed. Shannon French (New York: Rowan & Littlefield, 2003) p. 129 [115–37] and “ ‘Always to Do Ladies, damosels, and Gentlewomen Cuccour’:Women and the Chivalric Code in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Midwest Studies in Philosophy XXVI (2002): 1–12. 40. Ginger Thornton and Krista May,“Malory As Feminist?” 41. Donald Hoffman, “Perceval’s Sister: Malory’s ‘Rejected’ Masculinities,” Arthuriana 6.4 (1996), p. 73 [72–83]; Shichtman,“Percival’s Sister.” 42. Pace Martin Shichtman, who argues that she is “trafficked” to confirm masculine bonds. The flaw in his argument is that it is not men who are trafficking her: she makes her own decisions, sometimes against the advice of the Grail knights. Her actions do benefit men, but it is a mark of altruism rather than subordination. See Shichtman, “Percival’s Sister: Genealogy, Virginity, and Blood.” 43. For a discussion of how Percivale’s sister fits into the slippery epistemology of the “Sankgreal,” see Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 138–46. 44. Arthurian Propaganda: Le Morte Darthur As an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), p. 115.

Chapter 6

The Death of Guinevere

A version of the first part of this chapter appeared as “Guinevere’s Politics in Malory’s Morte Darthur” in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104.1 ( January 2005): 54–79. 1. William Caxton, The Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, ed. Thomas Wright, EETS 33 (London: N.Trübner & Co., 1868), pp. 142–43. 2. Terence McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1988), p. 122. 3. Hill,“Recovering Malory’s Guinevere,” Proceedings of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 1 (1991): 131–48, reprinted in Lancelot and Guinevere,A Casebook, ed. Lori Walters (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 267–77; Holichek,“Malory’s Gwenevere:After Long Silence,” Annuale Mediaevale 22 (1982): 112–26. 4. McCarthy points out that Malory emphasizes her queenship, but the bulk of his discussion focuses on Guinevere as a lover.Terence McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur, p. 121. 5. Terence McCarthy, for instance, cannot imagine Guinevere cooperating in her return to Arthur despite the fact that “for the good of the political situation it was imperative that the queen return to the throne” (Reading the Morte Darthur, p. 123).

NOTES

185

6. In the Winchester manuscript, the passage on the true love concludes the “Ascolat” episode, even though Vinaver placed it at the beginning of the “Knight of the Cart” episode, and the very different contexts color the meaning of the speech. At the end of Ascolat, it seems a confirmation of Guinevere and Launcelot’s love; at the start of the “Knight of the Cart,” it may suggest that the two, by having a sexual encounter, fall short of the ideals of virtuous love. See Helen Cooper, “Opening Up the Malory Manuscript,” The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 262–63. 7. While later German lists of the Nine Worthy Women divide them into triads based on religion and emphasize traditionally feminine virtues such as chastity, the earlier lists that continued to circulate in England and France focused on military and political worthiness and did not divide the women based on religion. See Horst Schroeder, Der Topos der Nine Worthies in Literatur und bildender Kunst (Göttingen:Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1971), pp. 168–203. 8. “Malory’s Guinevere:‘A Woman Who Had Grown a Soul,’ ” Arthuriana 9.2 (199): 37–45. 9. For discussion of how medieval queens were expected to act as mediators, see Paul Strohm,“Queens As Intercessors,” Hochon’s Arrow:The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95–119; Lois Huneycutt, “Intercession and the High-Medieval Queen: The Esther Topos,” Power of The Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 126–46; John Parsons, “The Queen’s Intercession in ThirteenthCentury England,” Power of The Weak: Studies on Medieval Women, ed. Jennifer Carpenter and Sally-Beth MacLean (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 147–77; Helen Maurer, Margaret of Anjou: Queenship and Power in Late Medieval England (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2003), esp. pp. 10–13, 52–66; Gordon Kipling, Enter the King: Theatre, Liturgy, and Ritual in the Medieval CivicTtriumph (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 289–356. 10. Strohm,“Queens As Intercessors,” pp. 101–02. 11. Women besides queens were involved in the affinities. Because women were often left to manage their husbands’ estates, they often were in charge of the day-to-day business of administering significant holdings, and this included managing the network of regional contacts that made up much of the lower-level structure of affinities. See Rowena Archer,“ ‘How ladies . . . who live on their manors ought to manage their households and estates’:Women as Landholders and Administrators in the Later Middle Ages,” Woman is a Worthy Wight: Women in English Society c. 1200–1500, ed. P.J.P. Goldberg (Stroud, Gloucestershire;Alan Sutton Publishing, 1992), pp. 149–81. 12. For a recent study of fifteenth-century queenship, see J.L. Laynesmith, The Last Medieval Queens: English Queenship, 1445–1503 (Oxford: Oxford

186

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22. 23. 24.

NOTES

University Press, 2004). For Elizabeth as good lady, see David Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville: Mother of the Princes in the Tower (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2002), pp. 76–79; for Margaret, see Maurer, pp. 51–74; John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), esp. pp. 294, 335–42; R.A. Griffiths, The Reign of King Henry VI 2nd ed. (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 1988), esp. pp. 254–62; Diana Dunn,“Margaret of Anjou, Queen Consort of Henry VI: A Reassessment of her Role, 1445–53,” Crown, Government, and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Rowena Archer (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), pp. 107–43; and Patricia-Ann Lee, “Reflections of Power: Margaret of Anjou and the Dark Side of Queenship,” Renaissance Quarterly 39 (1986), p. 186 [183–217].The comparison to Queen Margaret may be particularly apt because P.J.C. Field detects in the description of Guinevere’s “Queen’s Knights” a possible reference to Queen Margaret’s “Queen’s Gallants” who fought for her at Blore Heath. See P.J.C. Field,“Fifteenth-Century History in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Malory: Texts and Sources (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 62–65. “The Place of Women in Le Morte Darthur,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), p. 45 [37–54]. For instance, the English Chronicle claims that “The quene with suche as were of her affynyte rewled the reame as her lyked.” See An English Chronicle, 1377–1461, ed. william Marx (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2003), p. 78. Quoted by Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville, p. 104. Anne P. Longley,“Guinevere as Lord,” Arthuriana 12.3 (Fall 2002): 49–62. “A Political Retrospect,” Political Poems and Songs Relating to English History Composed during the Period from the Accession of Edw. III to that of Ric. III, 2 v., ed. Thomas Wright (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1861), 2: 268–69. Horrox, Richard III: A Study of Service (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 80–81. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, p. 60. Letter 418, to John Paston III (Nov. 4, 1481?). Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, 2 v., ed. Norman Davies (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 1: 665. It can be hard to distinguish personal letters from political ones in the structure of an affinity. For a discussion of the networks created by letters, see Francoise La Saux,“Pryvayly and Secretely: Personal Letters in Malory’s ‘Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones,’ Études de lettres,” 3 ( July–September 1993), pp. 21–33. See Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, pp.108–09. Baldwin, Elizabeth Woodville, p. 73. Kennedy’s argument that this passage does not directly assert adultery is convincing; her further claim that adultery is not implied is not. See Beverly Kennedy,“Malory’s Guenevere:A ‘Trew Lover’,” On Arthurian Women: Essays

NOTES

25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30. 31.

32.

33. 34.

35.

187

in Memory of Maureen Fries, ed. Bonnie Wheeler and Fiona Tolhurst (Dallas: Scriptorium Press, 2001), p. 22 [11–34]; The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v.“draught,” (London: Oxford University Press, 1971). The Treasury of the City of Ladies, or,The Book of the Three Virtues, trans. Sarah Lawson (New York: Penguin, 1985), p. 61. Christine, Treasury of the City of Ladies, pp. 59–62. Maurer, Margaret of Anjou, p. 24. Robert Sturges argues that the question of what Launcelot and Guinevere actually did physically is crucial to understanding their moral status, and that Malory’s gentlemanly refusal to provide details tantalizes readers with a question that cannot be answered. While for some readers the titillation of unknowable details may focus even more attention on the sexuality, for others the absence of details about the affair invited attention for the political aspects that are visible to readers and to other members of the court. See Sturges, “Epistemology of the Bedchamber:Textuality, Knowledge, and the Representation of Adultery in Malory and the Prose Lancelot,” Arthuriana 7.4 (1997): 41–62. Brewer, The Morte Darthur: Parts Seven and Eight (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1968), p. 29; McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1988); Mark Lambert, Malory: Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur (New Haven:Yale University Press, 1975), pp. 176–78. “Malory’s Reformulation of Shame,” Arthuriana 11.4 (Winter 2001), pp. 64–76. For Gawain: Aggravayne, Gaheris, Gareth (?) and Mordred. For Launcelot: Bors, Blamour, Bleoberis, Galihud, Eliodin, Ector, Lionel, Gareth (?). For Trystram: Palomides, Safir. For Lameroke: Pyonell. For Arthur: Kay, Braundiles. Other knights also have ties, especially to Launcelot and Gareth. For further analysis of which knights belong to which affinities, see Hyonjin Kim, The Knight Without the Sword: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 84–93. This emphasis on Guinevere’s good ladyship is Malory’s: he created the dialogue between Launcelot and Bors, and it is he who gives the purpose and names the guests at the feast. See P.J.C. Field, The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, 3rd ed., 3 v. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 1596–97 nn. 1045, 1048. Christine, Treasury of the City of Ladies, pp. 65–66. MaryLynn Saul interprets Bors’s rebuke as criticizing Guinevere for not being a good courtly lover, but Bors does not focus on the romantic issues but on the larger political consequences for Launcelot’s kin, who make up a large part of Launcelot’s affinity. Guinevere is being judged as one of the leaders of an affinity, not simply as a courtly lover. See Saul,“Courtly Love and Patriarchal Marriage in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 24 (1998), p. 53 [50–62]. See also Holichek,“After Long Silence,” p. 116. This is Malory’s addition. In La Morte le Roi Artu the outcome of the judicial duel is all that matters, and the poisoner is never caught. In the stanzaic Morte Arthur, the truth is established by torturing the servants. Nyneve’s intervention

188

36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43.

44.

45.

46. 47.

48. 49.

NOTES

confirms the justice of Launcelot’s victory (and the fact it needs confirmation is troubling), and it also underscores the limits of his defense: Launcelot cannot identify who is guilty and thus he cannot solve the political problems that led to the poisoning in the first place. For a full discussion of Launcelot’s wearing borrowed arms, see Elizabeth Scala,“Disarming Lancelot,” Studies in Philology 99 (2002): 380–403. Andrew Lynch has analyzed blood in Le Morte Darthur as proof of worthiness, both the metaphorical blood of kinship and the literal blood of combat. Here, Launcelot’s blood is divided against itself (his blood-kin spill his courageous blood). See Malory’s Book of Arms: the Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 60–78. Felicia Ackerman,“ ‘Every Man of Worshyp’: Emotion and Characterization in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur,” Arthuriana 11.2 (2001): 33–35. McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur, p. 75. R.M. Lumiansky, following Vida Scudder, champions this idea in “ ‘The Tale of Launcelot and Guenevere’: Suspense,” Malory’s Originality, ed. R.M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1964), p. 226 [205–32]. Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, p. 183. Kenneth Hodges, “Swords and Sorceresses: The Chivalry of Malory’s Nyneve,” Arthuriana 12.2 (2002): 78–96. There is a Ladinas de la Rouse, who is a French knight who comes with Ban and Bors to help the young Arthur defend his throne, but Vinaver is probably right in treating them as separate knights in his Index of Proper Names. John Michael Walsh argues otherwise, suggesting that “general jubilation” marks the queen’s first acquittal and a “subdued tone” the second, but I see little textual support for this. If anything, the need for Nyneve finally to resolve the issue and Mador’s very light punishment (in judicial duels, a defeated accuser could suffer the same death as the defendant faced) mark not general jubilation but a strong degree of support for Mador and uncertainty about the queen. See Walsh,“Malory’s ‘Very mater of La Cheualer du Charyot’: Characterization and Structure,” Studies in Malory, ed. James Spisak (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1985), pp. 213–14 [199–226]. Batt,“Malory and Rape,” Arthuriana 7.3 (1997): 78–99;Armstrong,“Gender and the Chivalric Community: The Pentecostal Oath in Malory’s ‘Tale of King Arthur,’ ” Bulletin Bibliographique de la Société Internationale Arthurienne 51 (1999): 293–312. Walsh,“Veray mater of La Cheualer du Charyot,” pp. 207–08. Benson, “The Ending of the Morte Darthur,” A Companion to Malory, ed. Elizabeth Archibald and A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1996), p. 226 [221–38]; Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, pp. 183–84. Hill,“Recovering Malory’s Guinevere,” p. 275. Edwards,“The Place of Women in Le Morte Darthur,” pp. 48–49.

NOTES

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50. Gibson,“Malory’s Reformulation of Shame,” p. 71. 51. Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, says that before judicial duels “noon of hem schall do hevinesse, ille, harme, awaite, assaute, nor non other grevaunce, nor ennye bi them, nor bi non of ther frendes welwillinge, nor bi non other who soo ever it be” [my punctuation]. Reproduced by R. Coltman Clephan, The Medieval Tournament (New York: Dover, 1995, originally printed as The Tournament: Its Periods and Phases (London: Methuen, 1919), p. 184. His treatise is also printed in The Black Book of the Admiralty, ed. Sir Travers Twiss, Rerum Brittanicarum Medii Aevi Scriptores 55 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1871; Reprinted Kraus Reprint, 1965), pp. 300–29. 52. For example,Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, p. 186;Walsh,“Veray mater of La Cheualer du Charyot,” p. 213. 53. Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, p. 187. See also Beverly Kennedy’s discussion of the fight in Knighthood in the Morte Darthur, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 1992), p. 299. 54. For discussion of what this speech reveals about his attitude toward Guinevere, see for instance Kim, The Knight without the Sword, p. 62; Armstrong, Gender and Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, p. 75; Sheila Fisher, “Women and Men in Late Medieval Romance,” The Cambridge Companion of Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta Krueger (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 159 [150–64]; C. David Benson,“The Ending of the Morte Darthur,” p. 230. 55. E. Kay Harris,“Evidence against Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory’s Morte Darthur,” Exemplaria 7.1 (1995): 180–205; see also Edwards, The Genesis of Narrative in Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 160–62; McCarthy, Reading the Morte Darthur, pp. 100–03. 56. “The Ending of the Morte Darthur,” p. 232. 57. Kim, The Knight without the Sword, pp. 90–93. 58. Robert Kelly argues that Malory portrays an England dependent on a French alliance, making the French wars disastrous. See “Malory’s Argument against War with France:The Political Geography of France and the AngloFrench Alliance in the Morte Darthur,” The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory’s Morte Darthur, ed. D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. and Jessica Brogdon (Cambridge, U.K.: D.S. Brewer, 2000), pp. 111–33. 59. For a discussion of the importance of mourning in creating or preserving a community, see Batt, Malory’s Morte Darthur, pp. 174–81.

Afterword 1. Louise Fradenburg, “Pro Patria Mori,” Imagining A Medieval English Nation, ed. Kathy Lavezzo (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), pp. 5–8 [3–38].


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INDEX

Accolon, 35, 51, 52, 53–4, 55, 56, 143 Ackerman, Felicia, 140 adultery, 23, 24, 27, 55, 56, 58–9, 74–7, 85, 89, 100–1, 104, 109–10, 111, 115, 118–20, 124, 132, 133, 134–5, 136, 144, 147 affinities, 3, 7, 8–9, 83, 84–5, 87–8, 90–2, 94–6, 98–100, 117–18, 131–2, 134, 135–6, 139–40, 144 Agglovale, 117 Aggravain, 31, 98, 129, 136, 139, 142–3, 147 Alexander the Orphan, 19, 83, 86, 101, 102, 150 alliteration, see style alliterative Morte Arthure, see Morte Arthure Alys la Beale Pellaron, 101, 102 Amant, King Mark kills, 54 Anderson, Benedict, 6, 7, 67–8 Angwyssh, King of Ireland, 18, 90, 92 Angwyshhaunce, King of Scotland, 67, 70 Anouwre, 142 apostles, 115, 123 Archibald, Elizabeth, 92 Armstrong, Dorsey, 36, 40, 120, 143, 144, 160n16 Arthur, King of England, 2, 7, 9–10, 13, 16, 17, 18, 19, 23, 31–2, 35, 36, 39, 40, 42–7, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53–6, 59, 60, 61, 65–7, 69, 72, 73, 74, 77–8, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 90, 91, 93, 94–5, 96, 97, 98–9, 100–1, 106, 114, 116, 117, 124, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132, 133, 135, 137,

138–9, 141, 142, 143, 145–6, 147–51, 156 “Arthur and Lucius,” see “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” Aryes, 49–50 Ashmole, Elias, 39–40 Averagus, 114 Babilonye, see Sarras Bagdemagus, King of Gorre, 76, 112, 113 Bakhtin, Mikhail, 1, 3, 7, 11, 30, 63, 81, 155–6; see also dialogism Balin, 22, 45–8, 49, 52, 61, 72, 92–4, 96, 97, 100, 123–4, 152 Balin’s damsel (who brings the sword), 45, 46, 49 Balin’s sword, see swords Ban, King of Benwick, 16, 32, 42, 44, 119 Barclay,Alexander, see Spagnuoli, Baptista, the Mantuan Batt, Catherine, 2, 12, 15, 72, 143 Bedivere, 31–2, 54, 59 Bellinger le Bewse, 150 Belyne, 65 Benson, C. David, 143–4, 148 Benson, Larry, 4, 75, 84 Bernard of Ascolat, 139 Blacman, John, 110–11, 126 Blamour, 32, 51, 149 Bleoberis, 5, 42, 82, 91, 101, 103, 105 “The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere,” 9, 27–30, 131–47

204

INDEX

“The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones,” 2, 7–8, 9, 13, 14, 16, 17–19, 20, 23, 28, 30, 56, 77, 85–107, 116, 122, 126, 135, 152 Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry, 39, 129 Book of the Ordre of Chyualry, see Lull, Ramon Bors, King of Gaul, 16, 42, 44 Bors de Ganys, 22, 24, 68, 78, 91, 105, 115, 116, 118, 120, 122, 124, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136–7, 139–40, 144, 150 Brastias, 42 Braundiles, 142–3 Brewer, Derek, 135 Brittany, 89–90 Brotton, Jerry, 117 Brunor, see La Cote Mal Tayle Brut, 63 Brutus, 64 Bryne, 65 Cador, 69, 72 du Cange, Sieur Charles, 40 Castiglione, Baldesar, 39 Castle Plewre, 95 Caxton,William, 4, 7, 9–10, 11, 15, 16, 21, 33, 38, 39, 71, 110, 113, 129 Charlemagne, 67 de Charny, Geoffroi, 5, 26 Chaucer, Geoffrey, see Wife of Bath’s Tale Cherewatuk, Karen, 5, 119, 161n2 Chichele, Henry,Archbishop, 113 chivalry, 2, 3, 4–6, 7, 9–10, 11–12, 14, 15–16, 18–19, 24, 28, 35–61, 73–4, 79–80, 82–3, 85–6, 126, 155–7, 161n2 religious, 26–7, 121–3 Chrétien de Troyes, 143 Christine de Pizan, 5, 38, 134, 136 Claudas, 71, 119 Columbe, 46, 47, 92–4, 124 Constantine, Emperor of Rome, 65, 114, 152–3 Constantine, heir to Arthur, 69, 152–3

Constitutions of Arundel, 20 Corbenic, 47, 104, 114, 119, 121, 124 Cordon, Ladies of, see Ladies of the Cordon Cornwall, 2, 8, 17, 18, 64, 79, 85, 87, 88, 89–92, 95, 100, 151, 152–3, 156 La Cote Mal Tayle, 19, 82–4, 85, 86, 105, 106 The Courtier, see Castiglione, Baldesar Damsell Maledysaunt (or BienPensaunt), see Maledysaunt David, King of Judea, 115, 125 “Death of Arthur,” see “The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon” Denmark, 115 dialogism, 1–3, 7, 11, 24, 30, 81, 155–7; see also Bakhtin, Mikhail Dinadan, 91, 98, 102, 104–6 Dodynas, 142 Dynas, 84, 102 Ebell, 99 Ector de Marys, 23, 24, 32, 77, 91, 105, 133, 150 Edward II, King of England, 135 Edward III, King of England, 112 Edwards, Elizabeth, 4, 92, 131, 144 Elaine of Ascolat, 40, 138–41, 142, 144 Elaine of Corbenic, 40, 101, 104, 114, 124, 129, 137 Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 89 Elizabeth Woodville, Queen of England, 131–2 Elyazar, 125 England, 2, 3, 6, 7–8, 12–13, 15–16, 17–18, 31, 32, 41–2, 63–7, 68–9, 70–1, 72, 78, 79, 87–8, 89, 109, 112–17, 126–7, 151–3, 156 English language, 13, 16, 20–2 dialects of, 16, 71, 161–2n4 Epynogrys, 105 Ettarde, 14, 56–8, 75 Eucharist, 21, 110, 116, 124, 126

INDEX

Evelake, 112, 116 Ewayne, see Uwayne Excalibur, see swords Faerie Queene, see Spenser, Edmund fatherhood, 118–20 Finke, Laurie, 71 Florence, son of Gawain, 69, 70, 71 France, 3, 16, 64, 68, 70–2, 86, 87, 89, 90, 101, 115, 150–2, 156 French book, 13–16, 19, 20, 23, 27, 30, 32, 147; see also La Mort le Roi Artu; Queste del Saint Graal; Suite du Merlin;Tristan Fries, Maureen, 53 Froissart, 38 Gahalantyne, 77 Gaheris, 57, 77, 93, 96–8, 148–9 Galahad, 4, 7, 17, 22–3, 48, 60, 104, 110, 112–26, 152 Gareth, 4, 8, 63, 77, 79–82, 83–5, 86, 87, 93, 98, 122, 124, 132, 142, 148–9 “Gareth,” see “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney” Garlon, 47, 93, 94, 124 Garter, see Order of the Garter Gawain, 7, 17, 22, 23, 25–7, 40, 48, 51, 57, 63, 66–7, 69–70, 77, 80, 84, 95, 96–100, 111, 117, 122, 127, 132, 135, 136, 140, 141, 142, 148–50 Geary, Patrick, 78 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 41, 64, 65 Georgius, see Spagnuoli, Baptista, the Mantuan giants, 65–6, 71, 74 of Mount St. Michel, 65, 74 in pageant for Henry VI, 45 Gibson,Angela, 135 Gorlois, 41, 43 Grail, 7, 19, 22, 23–4, 93, 108, 111, 114, 115–16, 123–4, 126, 133; see also “The Tale of the Sankgreal” Grail knights, 14, 23, 110, 115–16, 123, 124, 125, 162n9; see also Bors de Ganys; Galahad; Percivale

205

Grimm, Kevin, 31 Grummor Grummorson, 84 Guerin,Wilfred, 58 Guinevere, 5, 8, 28–9, 30, 32, 37, 39, 40, 41, 48, 51, 54, 55, 58–9, 61, 73–4, 75–8, 81, 86, 100–1, 102–4, 106, 111, 120, 124, 126, 129–52 Hallewes, 76 Hardyng, John, 113–14 Heng, Geraldine, 53, 64 Henry V, King of England, 89, 113 Henry VI, King of England, 36, 45, 94, 96, 110–11, 126 Henry VII, King of England, 110 Hermits, 24–7, 111 Hill, Sarah, 130, 144 Hoccleve,Thomas, 21–2 Hoffman, Donald, 4, 77, 124 Holbrook, Sue Ellen, 53 Holichek, Lindsay, 130 Horrox, Rosemary, 132 Howell, King of Brittany, 18, 89–90 Ider, 70 Igrayne, 17, 38, 42, 43, 44, 74, 114, 151 Ingham, Patricia, 64 Ireland, 2, 8, 17, 85, 88, 89, 90, 92, 115, 156 Ironsyde, the Red Knight of the Red Lands, 84, 100, 124, 142–3 Isabella, Queen of England, 135 Isode of Brittany, 90, 101, 104 Isode of Ireland, 17, 74, 89–90, 94, 95, 99, 100–1, 104, 105, 106–7, 133 Jardine, Lisa, 117 Jerome, 40–1 Joan of Arc, 38 Josephé, 112, 114, 115–16 Joseph of Arimathea, see Saint Joseph of Arimathea Joyous Gard, 8, 85, 149 judicial duels, 38, 52, 54, 58, 143, 145; see also Accolon; Melleagaunce

206

INDEX

Kaueper, Richard, 25 Kay, 77, 80, 142–3 Kennedy, Beverly, 4, 134, 161n2 Kennedy, Edward Donald, 130 Kim, Hyonjin, 8 kingship, 36, 45, 94–5, 110–11 knighthood, see chivalry “Knight of the Cart,” 136, 141–7 Knight of the Tour-Landry, see Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry Knyghthode and Bataile, 26 Kraemer,Alfred, 110 Ladies of the Cordon, 40 Lady Lyle of Avylion, see Lyle Ladynas, 142 Lady of the Lake (Nyneve’s predecessor), 23, 35, 36, 45, 46, 47, 49, 52, 61, 93, 94, 171n40; see also Nyneve Lambert, Mark, 135 Lameroke, 5, 8, 48, 63, 87–8, 90–1, 94, 95, 96–100, 103, 105, 117, 129, 132, 136, 150, 156, 177n19 Launcelot, 2, 4, 5, 7–8, 9, 14, 15, 16–17, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27–9, 30, 32, 38, 40, 48, 54, 55, 58–60, 63, 68, 71–8, 79, 80, 81–2, 83, 84, 86, 87, 90, 91, 92–3, 96, 97, 100–1, 102–4, 105, 106, 107–8, 110, 111, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118–24, 125, 126, 127, 129–31, 132, 134–41, 142, 143–53, 156 “Launcelot,” see “The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot de Lake” “Launcelot and Guinevere,” see “The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere” Launceor, 46, 47, 92–4, 100 Lavayne, 139–40, 144, 150 Lavezzo, Kathy, 78 leopards (in heraldry and bestiaries), 119 Lewis, Clive Staples, 1 Lionel, 77, 124, 133, 150 Lollardy, 20–2 Lot, King of Lothian and Orkney, 8, 46–7, 94, 96, 117

Lovatt, Roger, 110–11 love, 28–30, 41, 46, 56–9, 75–7, 80–1, 85, 100–4, 130, 175n29 Lucius, Emperor of Rome, 68, 69 Lull, Ramon, 11, 26–7, 33 Lumiansky, Robert Mayer, 75 Lyle of Avylion, 46, 48, 52 Lynch,Andrew, 55, 109–10 Lyones, 38, 40, 77, 80–1, 84 Lyonet, 81, 84 Lyonors, 44 Mador de la Porte, 77, 146 Mahoney, Dhira, 24, 101, 121 Maledysaunt, 83–4, 106 Margaret of Anjou, Queen of England, 38, 131–2 Marhault, 18, 88, 90, 93 Mark, King of Cornwall, 17, 18, 54, 64, 84, 86, 89–90, 94, 95, 100, 104, 132 Matthew,William, 15 May, Krista, 124 McCarthy,Terence, 135, 140 Melleagaunce, 5, 58, 101, 103, 141–6 Melyot, 121 Merlin, 36, 42, 43, 44, 46–7, 48, 49–50, 52–3, 55, 56, 59–60, 86, 94, 100, 105, 119–20, 124 Montford, Countess of, 38 Moorman, Charles, 4, 94 Mordred, 16, 17, 30–1, 40, 47, 48, 65, 77, 82–3, 94, 98, 102, 139, 147, 151 More, Sir Thomas, 39 Morgan le Fay, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 49, 52, 54–6, 60, 73–4, 89, 90, 104 Morgause, 5, 40, 44, 47, 84, 94, 96–7, 103, 133, 170–1n38 Morte Arthure (alliterative), 7, 12, 15, 32, 58, 64, 65 La Mort le Roi Artu, 58, 129 Mortimer, Sir Roger, 125 “The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon,” 9, 31–2, 147–56 Mount St. Michel, giant of, see giants

INDEX

Nabon le Noyre, 90–1 Nacien, 122, 123–4 narrator, 12–20, 22, 27–33, 43, 52–3, 58, 107, 115, 130, 152 nationalism, 6–7, 15–16, 17, 63–71, 78, 91–2, 156 Neville-Percy feud, 96 Nimue, see Nyneve Nine Worthies, 38, 115 Nine Worthy Women, 130, 185n7 “The Noble Tale of Sir Launcelot de Lake,” 9, 16–17, 28, 56, 72–8, 85, 104, 116 North Wales, see Wales Nyneve, 14, 36, 39, 40, 41, 49, 50–4, 75, 131, 138, 142 Oldcastle, Sir John, see “Remonstrance Against Oldcastle” Orden de la Hacha, 39 Order of the Garter, 40, 61, 112 Orkneys, 8, 87, 173n4 Ozana, 142 Palomides, 8, 17, 63, 66, 82, 84, 85, 86, 87, 92, 97, 98–100, 104–7, 121, 150 Paston, Margaret, 38, 132 Patrides, 129 Patryse, 135, 137 Pedyvere, 77, 131 Pellam, 47, 93, 94 Pelleas, 14, 51, 56–9, 60, 75, 131, 142 Pelles, 111, 125 Pellinore, King of the Out Isles, 44, 49–51, 59–60, 94, 97, 117 Pentecostal oath, see Round Table oath Percivale, 23, 24, 63, 115, 116, 117–18, 120, 122, 124, 125 Percivale’s aunt, 116, 118 Percivale’s sister, 37–8, 40, 41, 60, 118, 122, 123, 124–5 Percy family, see Neville-Percy feud Perrers,Alice, 135 Persaunte of Inde, 142–3 Pochoda, Elizabeth, 46, 87, 94, 126

207

“Poisoned Apple,” 28, 58, 98, 117, 129, 133–8, 140, 141, 143 Pope, 66–7, 131, 150 Priamus, 17, 66–7, 69–70, 71 Pyonell, 136 Queen’s Knights, 73, 141–2 queenship, 131–3, 134–5 Queste del Saint Graal, 22, 24, 25–6, 29, 112, 120 “Quest of the Sankgreal,” see “The Tale of the Sankgreal” Raleigh, Sir Walter, 89 Redcrosse Knight, 117 Red Knight of the Red Lands, see Ironsyde “Remonstrance Against Oldcastle,” 21–2 Ricciardi, Marc, 71 Richard, Duke of Gloucester, 132 Rome, 2, 6, 7–8, 14, 16, 29, 64–7, 68–9, 71, 72, 93, 77, 88, 89, 92, 114, 116, 156; see also “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” Ross, Charles, 95 Round Table oath, 35, 36–7, 40, 49, 50–1, 53, 54, 55, 61, 73, 94, 96, 124, 144, 146, 149, 160n16 Royns, King of North Wales, 46 Safir, 99, 150 Sagramoure, 142 Saint George, 7, 112–14, 115, 117, 120, 126, 156 Saint Joseph of Arimathea, 112, 113–14, 115–16, 120, 126, 156 “Sankgreal,” see “The Tale of the Sankgreal” Saracen, see Palomides; Priamus; Safir; Segwarides Sarras, 112, 115–16 Schueler, Donald, 92 Scotland, 67, 68, 70, 71, 151 Segwarides, 91, 99, 101 Segwarides’ wife, 91, 99, 101, 104

208

INDEX

Semiramis, 130 Severause, 60 Shichtman, Martin, 71, 118, 124–5 Smith,Anthony, 70 Smith, Jeremy, 13 Solomon, King of Israel, 40–1, 60, 125 Solomon’s wife, 41, 60, 125 Spagnuoli, Baptista, the Mantuan (author of Georgius), 113 Spenser, Edmund, 117 Sturges, Robert, 31 style, 1–3, 7, 11, 86, 155–7 alliterative, 15, 33, 163n14 English, 13 see also dialogism Suite du Merlin, 53, 56, 60 swords (magical and symbolic), 23, 35–6, 45, 49, 52, 54–5, 60, 67, 125 Balin’s sword (which passes to Galahad), 22–3, 45–6, 47, 48, 60, 115, 117, 121, 165n36, 171n43 David’s sword (which comes to Galahad via Solomon and the Ship of Faith), 23, 38, 48, 60, 115, 121, 122, 125 Excalibur from the lake, 35, 36, 44–5, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53, 54–5, 56, 57, 67, 171n40, 171n43 Excalibur from the stone, 35, 36, 42–3, 44, 67 “The Tale of King Arthur,” 9, 13–14, 41–61, 116 “The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” 7, 9, 13, 15–16, 17, 18, 20, 30, 33, 63–72, 74, 75, 88, 109, 116, 117, 152 “The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney,” 9, 56, 77, 79–85, 86, 88, 104, 116 “The Tale of the Sankgreal,” 2, 9, 12, 13, 20–8, 29, 40–1, 56, 77, 85, 86, 88, 109–27, 129–30, 149

Tarquin, 77, 84, 85 Thomas, Duke of Gloucester, 145 Thornton, Ginger, 124 thou / you usage, 69–70, 71, 72, 81, 103 Tintagil, 17, 43, 74–5, 89 Tirry, 139 Torre le Fyze Aryes, 49–51 Tour-Landry, see Book of the Knight of the Tour-Landry translation, 13, 20–2, 24 Trevisa, John, 20–1 trial by combat, see judicial duels Tristan, 12, 24, 88 Troy, 64, 65, 66 Trystram, 2, 4, 7–9, 14, 15, 17–18, 19, 29, 63–4, 74, 79, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89–95, 96, 97–101, 102, 104, 105–7, 124, 132, 133, 135 “Trystram,” see “The Book of Sir Tristram de Lyones” Ulphuns, 42, 44 Urry, 58–9, 121, 150 Uther, 17, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 56, 61, 65, 69, 74, 114 Utopia, see More, Sir Thomas Uwayne, 70, 77, 122 Vinaver, Eugene, 4, 59–60, 149 Wales, 8, 64, 87–8, 90–1, 151, 152, 156 Walsh, John, 143 Warren, Michelle, 64 Watson, Nicholas, 20 Watts, John, 8, 95 Wife of Bath’s Tale, 131 Winchester manuscript, 4, 15, 16, 71 women, 35, 36–41, 43, 44, 50–61, 72, 73–4, 80, 83–4, 96–7, 123–5, 131–3, 167n3, 171n43 Worthies, see Nine Worthies or Nine Worthy Women You / thou usage, see thou / you usage

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