King Arthur's Death

This book contains two texts: the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and the Alliterative Morte Arthure. Both romances tell the story of King Arthur's death and the events leading up to it. Since this is a TEAMS book, I shall borrow the handy online commentary, and since the book's introduction treats both works together, I shall do so as well.

Descriptions of the text:

We cannot be sure exactly where or when the two romances in this volume were composed. Probably both were written in the North Midlands area of England in the fourteenth century, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur around the middle of the century, the Alliterative Morte Arthure toward the end, probably around 1400 or so (see note to line 3773). These, however, can be only guesses. All we can say for sure is that the unknown authors produced works of exceptional merit that have a unique importance for English literary history.

The two romances in this volume represent two distinct stylistic traditions. The Alliterative Morte Arthure belongs to the "Alliterative Revival," the literary movement that begins in the middle years of the fourteenth century and that includes such important writers as William Langland and the author of Gawain and the Green Knight. The Stanzaic Morte Arthur is written in the more common eight-syllable, four-beat line of English romance, a line that derives ultimately from French models. Despite its foreign source, this is a simpler, more popular style than that of the alliterative romance, and the author of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur probably intended his work for a somewhat wider and less sophisticated audience than the alliterative poet aimed for.

Synopsis of plot:

The Alliterative Morte Arthure ranks just after the works of the Gawain-poet among the finest products of that late medieval literary movement that we call the "Alliterative Revival." It lacks the delicacy and balance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but the vigor of its narrative, the epic sweep of its action, and its coolly realistic presentation of fourteenth-century warfare lend the poem an interest of its own. The King Arthur of this poem is neither the "somewhat childish" romance king who appears in Sir Gawain nor the helpless cuckold he so often seems in French romance. He is a warrior king, shifting his troops about, sending out skirmishers, and ever ready to do battle himself.

This is primarily a poem of battles, and there are no better accounts of late medieval warfare than we find in this poem. Nor are there any more sobering reminders that all was not heroic and romantic in this age. The poet's account of the siege of Metz (lines 3032-43), with his description of the results of a medieval bombardment (from slings and catapults), reminds us all too sharply of more recent horrors. Yet our poet is finally more interested in the fates of men than of armies, and he has a keen eye for psychological facts. His description of Mordred's momentary repentance (lines 3886-96) is a marvelous touch, unprecedented in Arthurian tradition (in which Mordred is never treated with such sympathetic understanding) and worthy of a place alongside some of the best passages in Chaucer. Each reader will find his own favorite passages, for the Alliterative Morte Arthure well deserves the high reputation it has among specialists, who, because of the difficulties of the text, have thus far constituted almost its only modern audience.

The Stanzaic Morte Arthur is a very different narrative. It is a brilliant condensation of the French prose romance (La Mort Artu) which, along with the Stanzaic Morte Arthur itself, was the source of Malory's last two tales, "The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" and "The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur." Writing a century before Sir Thomas Malory completed his own Morte Darthur, the unknown English romancer achieved many of the virtues that we associate with Malory's later work and produced a relatively tight and fast-moving narrative. The French Mort Artu is a leisurely and complex narrative, characterized by an elaborate network of episodes and by a full treatment of the psychological and philosophical implications of the action. The author of the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, like most English romancers of his time, was less interested in psychological abstractions. He reduced the material he inherited from the French to about a fifth of its original length, producing a work that succeeds because of its lean and rapid narrative and that gains force because of its more obvious focus upon the actions themselves. Yet the author does not omit completely the psychologizing that characterized his French source. As any reader of Chaucer knows, the literature of the later fourteenth century, marked by a new interest in individual feelings, is often (as in The Second Nun's Tale or even parts of Troilus) what we might now call a sentimental literature ("Pitee runneth soon in gentle heart" is one of Chaucer's favorite sayings). Tears flow freely in this romance (as they do in the Alliterative Morte Arthure), but the compression of the narrative prevents the sentiment from becoming excessive. The poet's interest in the feelings of his characters humanizes them, just as his omission of the philosophical interest in Fortune, so important in the French, focuses the tragedy upon the real people caught in a real web of tragic circumstances.

My own observations:

* The intro is correct: SMA is pretty exactly like Malory, but with tiresome formulaic rhymes. Didn't like it. The AMA, though, is energetic and different.

* King Arthur is a real bastard in the AMA: sending chests full of dead Roman nobles as tribute to the Roman senate, ordering the death of Mordred's children with his dying breath. Gawain is a berserker: he has a flyting with the Roman nobles before the battle, he dies in the throes of battle rage.

* The Wheel of Fortune/Nine Worthies dream is genuinely affecting and (more importantly) Boethian. (Obviously.)

* The giant of St. Michael's Mount is a dark parody of medieval battle.

Sir Perceval of Galles & Ywain and Gawain

Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, edited by Mary Flowers Braswell of UAB (PBUH), contains the two edited romances of those titles.

I. Sir Perceval of Galles (ca. early 1300s)

An etext of this Sir Perceval edition is available here. Here's the ms. information from Flowers herself:

The unique copy of Sir Perceval of Galles is contained in the Thornton Manuscript, preserved in Lincoln Cathedral as MS 91. The 322-page manuscript contains sixty-four pieces in all, ranging from saints' lives to medical treatises, and including seven additional romances: the Alliterative Morte Arthure, The Romance of Octovyane, The Romance of Sir Ysambrace, The Romance of Dyoclicyane, Sir Degrevante, Sir Eglamour, and The Awentyrs of Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne. The contents are all written in one hand, a variable mid-fifteenth-century Anglicana Formata, and the dialect - which may not be the original - is northern, reflecting the North Riding Yorkshire district of the scribe. Decorations are confined to initials outlined in black with tinted sprays and foliage, red initials flourished in black or violet, and various touches of red, marking headings and paragraphs. The manuscript is written on paper and is in generally good condition, although certain of its pages have been damaged with loss of text. Worm holes occasionally obscure the writing; ink blots and water stains appear throughout. The original binding, probably the "thick oaken boards, covered with white leather, and fastened with a clasp," referred to by Madden, has been replaced by later oak boards covered with a pig-skin leather.

The scribe was one Robert Thornton of East Newton, Yorkshire, whose own name (and that of various family members) appears several times throughout the work. The British Library Additional Manuscript 31042, containing the unique copy of Wynnere and Wastoure, was apparently also copied by Thornton who appears to have been an educated amateur. A manor lord who died between 1456 and 1465, Thornton likely copied his texts over the years as materials became available to him. At his death, his library passed on to his family where it remained for several generations. In the late seventeenth century, Thomas Comber, husband of Alice Thornton, either gave or sold the manuscript to Daniel Brevint, Dean of Lincoln, and the work has remained in the possession of the Cathedral Library since that time.

In lieu of my own summary, here's the one by Flowers:

Sir Perceval of Galles is the first (and besides Malory, the only) English rendering of the naive and bungling knight made popular in Chrétien de Troyes' twelfth-century Conte del Graal. The young Perceval, his father killed in battle, is raised in the forest by his mother, who abhors chivalry and the courtly world. He wears goatskins, hunts animals with his spear, and, after his first introduction to civilization, rides a pregnant mare that he thinks is a stallion. Encountering three knights in the woods one day, he determines to become like them, and, despite his mother's reluctance to let him go, he sets off for Arthur's court wearing his mother's ring. Coming upon a lady sleeping in a tent, he exchanges his ring for her (unknown to him) magic one, a ring which has the ability to protect its wearer from harm. He then follows adventures familiar to readers of romance where a "childe" triumphs over seemingly insurmountable odds. Young Perceval defeats successively the Red Knight, the Black Knight, the Sudan, and the giant Gollerothirame. He liberates Lady Lufamore, marries her, and becomes a king. He then decides to restore his mother. On his return to the woods of his origin he rescues the "tent lady" and restores to her her rightful ring; and he finds his mother in time to release her from the insanity she suffered at believing her son was dead. Finally, Perceval leaves for the Holy Land where he wins many cities before he is killed. And "thusgate," notes the poet, "endis hee."

A few comments:

* There is no Grail in this Perceval story -- none whatsoever. Ditto no Fisher King, no Wasteland, no screaming maidens accusing Perceval of unknown crimes, no abused jester dwarves. The poet seems to have been interested only with a few episodes of his source material.

* Perceval is, if anything, more endearingly dimwitted: assuming all horses are called "mares", trying to burn knights out of their armor.

* Perceval illustrates the necessity of socialization. His mother instructs him in the rules of basic courtesy, but his general ignorance of human society leads him to observe the letter of his mother's law, while violating the spirit with unthinking enthusiasm. Example: Mother tells him to live moderately, so he only eats half the food on the table when he invades someone's home uninvited.

II. Ywain and Gawain (ca. 1300s)

An etext of this Ywain and Gawain edition is available here. Again, let's leave the heavy lifting to the inestimable Prof. Braswell:

Ywain and Gawain survives in a single copy preserved in the British Library as Cotton Galba E. ix. The parchment manuscript contains 114 folios, seventeen separate pieces. Most of these - The Gospel of Nicodemus, a treatise on the Seven Deadly Sins, The Pricke of Conscience, a "Book of Penance," a Rood poem, and a Pater Noster, for example - are didactic. But others, such as notes on the points of a horse, The Prophecies of Merlin, and the satirical poem, "Sir Penny," represent a diversity of secular tastes. The hands of six individual scribes can be discerned in the collection, four of these dating from the early fifteenth century. The first hand - that of Ywain and Gawain and The Seven Sages of Rome - is a clear Anglicana Formata and the text is in a Northern dialect. Because certain North-East Midland forms are often reflected in the rhyme, the language is assumed to be that of the original author, who probably composed the work some fifty to one hundred years before this particular version was written down. A lack of topical references in the text makes it impossible to date the composition of the poem precisely.

The manuscript is in generally good condition, although its upper edges show water damage, probably from the 1731 fire in the library of Robert Bruce Cotton, the book's only identifiable owner. The top portion is often marred by shrinkage, splitting, and staining; worm holes, tearing, and ink blots occur throughout. Few of these defects present difficulties for the reader, however. The text contains little decoration. It begins with a large, ornate blue capital, picked in red, and a long, downward flourish, extending through the title and four lines of the manuscript. A number of smaller initials, alternately red and blue, are scattered throughout the text, normally coinciding with our modern practice of paragraphing. Such initials contain non-representational foliage and sport tendrils both upward and downward into the margins. The text contains numerous paragraph markings, which are generally not consistent with modern usage. There is little punctuation, and capitalization is sporadically employed.

Ditto for the summary:

The poem itself, a translation and adaptation of Chrétien de Troyes' Le Chevalier au Lion, is the story of Ywain, son of Urien, and a knight of King Arthur's court, whom the English poet assumed to have been a king and who is historically believed to have fought against the Angles in the sixth century. Unlike most romances, this one is a tale of married love: Ywain weds his lady, only to lose her through the breaking of a vow, whereafter he must perform many feats of valor before winning her again. The story begins at Arthur's court when Sir Colgrevance tells of his adventure along a perilous path which led him to a monster herdsman, a magic storm-producing well, and an avenging knight who some time ago had defeated Colgrevance in battle. Immediately Ywain, fired by the prospect of such an encounter and hoping to be more successful than his kinsman, sets out on the path himself, followed at some distance by Arthur and his retinue. Ywain defeats the knight, who, mortally wounded, flees to his castle. Ywain pursues him, but upon reaching the castle, he is trapped by the portcullis which crashes down upon him, killing his horse. He is rescued by Lunette, the companion of the dead knight's wife, whom he has unknowingly befriended in the past, and she gives him a ring that makes him invisible. Thus he is able to escape capture within the castle walls. He falls in love with the grieving widow, Alundyne; subsequently, he marries her and becomes the protector of her property. When Arthur and his knights arrive, Ywain defeats Sir Kay and proudly entertains them all as host and lord.

His happiness is short-lived, however, for soon Gawain, who had accompanied Arthur to the castle, persuades Ywain to "follow arms" with him to prove his manliness alongside his friend in tournaments. Alundyne agrees to the venture - but only for the space of a year. When Ywain forgets to return on the appointed day, she publicly renounces him and subsequently withdraws her magic ring which had served to protect him from harm. Having lost his love, Ywain also loses his mind, roaming the forest like a wild "beste" until the kindness of a hermit and the magic of still another lady restore him. Brought, in effect, to his senses, he now fights for justice and truth. Seeing a dragon battling a lion, he saves the lion and the beast becomes his companion. He rescues hapless maidens, defeats an oppressing giant, and overcomes an evil steward. When at last he returns to Alundyne's castle, Lunette aids him in a reconciliation with his wife. Then all live happily, the poet assures us, "Until that death haves dreven tham down" (line 4026).

Some comments:

* Lunette, the clever maidservant, is not at all shy about manipulating her lady, Alundyne, if she thinks it will do no harm and benefit those she loves. She is, if anything, even more brazen in the English version than in Chretien.

* I love the lion: he reminds me of Perceval, diving into fights with simpleminded zeal, heedless even of Ywain's wishes.

Pursuing History (Ralph Hanna)

Ralph Hanna's Pursuing History is a complex work, both in thought and form. The major ideas themselves, though not difficult conceptually, are problematic in application (which Hanna acknowledges). Moreover, their presentation within the book is not systematic: instead of a sustained and developed argument, what Hanna presents is a series of thematically related book chapters and articles. Some of the disjointedness of the presentation is mitigated by Hanna's introduction and initial chapters, which orient the reader conceptually; however, the later chapters, which apply the notions put worth earlier, were generally written without reference to the preceding chapters -- the reader is left the connect the dots on his own. Nonetheless, Hanna is a lucid writer and, in spite of the difficulties involved, the book's lessons are well worth internalizing.

Hanna's overall project is to anchor our understanding of Middle English literature more firmly in the actual material artifacts -- the manuscripts -- and in the actual historical situations of those artifacts and their production. His concerns are largely not "theoretical" but practical; even his more abstractly phrased arguments about the dominance of edited versions over the actual extant ms. are based in desire for the accurate representation of the concrete, not a (strictly) ideological point. (I like him!)

Some of Hanna's observations about medieval book manufacture:

* The content of medieval books was open-ended and flexible. Individual books were produced by special order, and contained whatever suited the customers' tastes, though the availability of exemplar texts was often a limitation.

* Medieval books were often produced asynchronously, with new quires and leaves added as formerly unavailable exemplars are acquired.

* Medieval books were often written piecemeal, in the form of semi-independent booklets: whole works occupying full quires. These booklets could be inserted into a book anywhere the arranger desired. Booklets permitted booksellers to stock popular items, while giving the customer freedom to use the booklet as he chose. Booklets also allowed a work to be broken into discreet parts, to facilitate copying of one large work by different scribes simultaneously.

Some conclusions Hanna draws based on these observations (and similar materialist considerations):

* Stemmatics are not a reliable method for determining the primacy of one ms. version vs. another. A single work in ms. may in fact be composed of multiple quires copied by separate scribes from different exemplars of the same work; no single ms. is necessarily the single immediate ancestor of any other ms.

* Modern print editions do not adequately represent the complicated material evidence underlying the presented text, nor the multiple levels of editorial intervention that mediate that material evidence.

* Editorial judgment will always be necessary, since they will never be a real "best text" (contra the Hengwrt fetishists among the Chaucerians, i.e. Manly & Rickert). The best options are (1) the attempt to recover the ancestral copy of the existing ms. traditions (using judgment to choose between attested readings), (2) the attempt to recover the author's own holograph (using judgment to sometimes recreate readings not even attested), and (3) "responsible best-textism," which chooses an existing ms. as the most reliable version in aggregate (trusting the "best text" in general, but still using judgments for particular readings).

* Why try to present just one version of a text? Why not publish the major ms. versions and let the differences stand? After all, the existing ms. are the ones that were actually read. Also, mimic as closely as possible the page layout of the source ms. And why not bind it along with the random miscellany of works it was found with? Then we can read the miscellany!