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14 - The Ethics of a New Edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur – and More Evidence for the Superiority of the Winchester Manuscript
- Edited by Melissa Ridley Elmes, Lindenwood University, Missouri, Evelyn Meyer, St Louis University, Missouri
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- Book:
- Ethics in the Arthurian Legend
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 10 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 11 July 2023, pp 325-356
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Summary
One of the merits of this volume on Arthurian ethics is its acknowledgment of the variety of ethical issues present in the Arthurian corpus. Individual Arthurian texts can have fundamentally different underlying moral philosophies. To take a representative example, the French Queste del Saint Graal (c. 1215–30) reflects monastic Christian values. As a result, the Quest proper begins with a prohibition against excessive intermingling of men and women, and it turns out there is an equally strong prohibition throughout the Quest against excessive bloodshed. Lancelot gets into trouble on both counts: his custom of fighting and inflicting serious, blood-drawing physical damage upon others to enhance his own earthly reputation no longer brings him glory when measured against the strict Christian values of the Grail Quest, and his love affair with the queen disqualifies him from coming too near the holy object that is the goal of this new quest. In contrast to La Queste, the non-cyclic prose Lancelot (early thirteenth century) – even more than its cyclic counterpart – reflects courtly values in celebrating both knightly prowess and earthly love. This text valorizes Lancelot and Guenievre's adulterous affair, making it clear that Lancelot's love saves Arthur's kingdom and Guenievre's life and concluding with the queen's public declaration of her justified love for Lancelot. These two thirteenthcentury French texts illustrate how Lancelot, as a literary character, changes with each ethical standard by which he is measured, from the time of his twelfth-century creation by Chrétien de Troyes in Le Chevalier de la Charrette (Lancelot) through to his last medieval appearance in Sir Thomas Malory's fifteenth-century Le Morte Darthur. Indeed, during this period Lancelot becomes an ethical conundrum: “at once the loyal servant, the loyal lover, and the supreme traitor.” As the examples of the French Queste and the non-cyclic Lancelot reveal, each author takes a different approach to the issue of Lancelot's ethical standing in order to suit the hero to the text and contexts he inhabits. Sir Thomas Malory downplays the treachery of Launcelot's affair with Gwenyvere as much as he can, even going so far as to present both lovers – like their counterparts Trystram and Isode – as sympathetically as possible, even when they get caught together in the queen's bedroom.
10 - Eradicating Victorian Backreading: Re-reading Malory’s Gwenyvere through Gaynour and Isode
- Edited by Megan G. Leitch, Cardiff University, Kevin S. Whetter, Acadia University, Canada
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- Book:
- Arthurian Literature XXXVII
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 15 September 2022
- Print publication:
- 17 June 2022, pp 193-230
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Summary
Gwenyvere has received much more attention from literary critics than have other female characters in Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur. Nevertheless, she has often been misread. Critics’ consistent misreading of Arthur's queen is the result of three interrelated causes: a Victorian sensibility that leads critics to denigrate and trivialize Gwenyvere yet attempt to deny the sexual nature of the Gwenyvere–Launcelot relationship; a consistent underestimation of the stanzaic Morte Arthur's influence on both Malory's development of characters and his conception of the Arthurian world; and an insistence that Malory's Trystram section depicts the failings – rather than celebrates the glories – of Arthurian knighthood through the Isode–Trystram relationship. Because critics have so consistently underestimated how much Gwenyvere resembles her literary foremother Gaynour, they have undervalued Gwenyvere's gender-bending combination of positive traits: wifely loyalty to Arthur, knightly willingness to hazard her body, and kingly protection of both the knights who serve her and the Tower of London. Furthermore, because critics have so consistently disparaged the love of Isode and Trystram, Gwenyvere has suffered the same denigration as her literary sister Isode. However, if critics set aside the interpretive practice of what I term Victorian backreading, the queen's ongoing denigration, trivialization, and desexualization become untenable. In addition, if critics fully acknowledge Malory's reliance upon the stanzaic Morte, Gwenyvere's strength as a character modelled upon her stanzaic counterpart Gaynour becomes evident. Finally, if critics set aside their assumption that the Trystram section depicts the erosion of chivalric values and thus prepares for the political disaster that Gwenyvere's affair with Launcelot supposedly causes, they can recognize both Isode and Gwenyvere as positive female figures. Re-reading Malory's Gwenyvere enables Isode to emerge as both a model courtly lady and a common-law wife to the noble Trystram, for the treacherous King Mark does not deserve her loyalty. It also enables Gwenyvere herself to emerge as a loyal, politically savvy, knightly, and at times kingly queen who inspires both the loyalty of the knights who serve her and the sympathy of readers. By eradicating Victorian backreading from their current scholarly practice, literary critics can recognize Malory's Gwenyvere for what she truly is: Gaynour's wise and brave literary daughter and Isode's loyal and noble literary sister.