New and Noteworthy: The Discovery of a New Malory Record
Professor P.J.C. Field has recently informed me that English historian Anne F. Sutton claims to have found a new Malory record. The document is a will made in Newgate Prison about Easter 1468, and Sir Thomas Malory is just one of the many prisoners cited in the document. Specific details concerning the identity of the man who wrote this document, and his relationship to Malory, have not yet come to light and are still conjectural. Dr. Sutton's discovery merits our serious and careful attention, and we hope that she will publish her findings soon.

And therewith the castell brake rooffe and wallis, and felle downe to the erthe.And Balyn felle downe and myght nat styrre hande nor foote; and for the moste party of that castell was dede thorow the dolorouse stroke..

Ryght so lay Kynge Pellam and Balyne thre dayes.

Than Merlion com thydir, and toke up Balyn and gate hym a good horse, for hys was dede, and bade hym voyde oute of that contrey.¹

The earthquake-like collapse of the castle is unexpected, because the reader has had no warning that the episode will end in this way. That kind of surprise, however, is entirely in keeping with the rest of the tale, whose story has often been moved along by unexpected and apparently preternatural events. Events like that are clearly part of the world in which this tale is set, so, although this particular event is in one sense surprising and even disturbing-- it increases our sense that Balin is in danger-- in another sense it has quite the opposite effect: it confirms our sense of the nature of his imagined world. The next sentence is surprising too; but in an entirely different way, because it does not make sense. My purpose in this essay is to suggest that the sense that Malory intended can be recovered.

The standard editions are based on the Winchester manuscript, so the natural first place to look for help is the other early authoritative text, Caxton's edition of Malory. The relevant part of that says:

And so the moost party of the castel that was falle doune thorugh that dolorous stroke laye upon Pellam.

That looks like the least helpful kind of evidence for our present purposes: a conscious rewriting of a text that, as far as can be detected, may have been identical with Winchester. For instance, was falle doune is clearly a "correction" by someone who had misread the moste pony of the (or that) castel as meaning most of the building rather than most of its inhabitants. The presence of that before was falle doune and all the differences after stroke may well be part of a single attempt to rewrite Winchester into some sort of sense; and whereas it is often possible to deduce the original reading underlying the classics types of unconscious scribal error, conscious rewriting usually opens up too many permutations to permit correction. It certainly does so here.

Editors of Malory often have a second resource, in that Malory nearly always works from sources, and often remains very close to them. His major source for this passage is the French Suite de Merlin, but unfortunately for our present purposes, he is not translating it closely at this point.²

However, I would suggest that the sense Malory intended can still be recovered from the Winchester manuscript alone, if we attend not only to its wording, but to its punctuation, which the standard editions do not reproduce, even in their critical apparatus. The relevant part reads:

and, for the moste party of that castell was dede thorow the dolorouse stroke // Ryght so lay Kynge Pellam

The standard editions render the double slash and initial capital letter after stroke by a paragraph break. That is normally a true equivalent for those features in the Winchester manuscript, and particularly when the following words are Ryght so, which Malory often uses for particularly emphatic sentence openings.³ It is that paragraph break, however, that makes the preceding words (where and for must mean "and because") grammatically incomplete. Simply replacing the paragraph break with a comma restores perfect sense.

It seems that what Malory was trying to say was that, because most of the castle's inhabitants were dead, there was no-one to help Pellam and Balin, and therefore they lay unhelped for three days. The scribe who copied the archetype from which the Winchester manuscript and Caxton's edition descended, however, noticed Ryght so as he was approaching it, and introduced the usual punctuation before that phrase, not realising that doing so made nonsense of the previous clause. The Winchester scribe reproduced the nonsense faithfully, but the editor of the Caxton edition, who was in a mood for correction, having sorted out one phrase that he thought was in error, noticed this one too and had a go at making sense of that as well.

I suggest that if the passage is emended in the way suggested here, we as readers will be able to read what Malory tried to write, rather than having to choose between alternative corruptions introduced by the passage of time. There is also a second point that should be noticed, because it may affect the correction of other corruptions elsewhere in the Morte Darthur. The error in the archetype that I have suggested underlies the readings of both the surviving primary texts of the Morte Darthur is an error that could not have been made by an author, who would have known too much about the sense he was trying to convey. It is in fact a typical product of the divided attention and incomplete grasp of sense induced by the copying process. This passage is therefore strong evidence that the archetype from which the two primary texts descend was a scribal copy, and not Malory's original holograph.

Notes

¹ Sir Thomas Malory, The Works, ed. Eugene Vinaver, rev. P.J.C. Field, 3rd edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), p.85.11-18.

² See La Suite de roman de Merlin, ed. Gilles Roussineau, 2 vols (Geneva: Droz, 1996), i 160-

³ See Tomomi Kato, A Concordance to the Works of Sir Thomas Malory (Tokyo:University of Tokyo Press, 1974).

One of the rich yet untapped areas of Malorian scholarship (and much more interesting, I think, than parataxis, which for the last decade has been de rigueur in Malorian stylistic studies) is the colloquial language found in the Morte Darthur. Of the major works examining Malory's prose style, only P.J.C. Field's Romance and Chronicle includes a significant, original study of the subject. A medieval romance is usually characterized by lofty, dignified language, and that is indeed what most of us ascribe to the tales of Camelot and King Arthur. And when we think of Malory in particular, we think of an even more reverential tone, because of the preeminence of the Tale of the Sankgreal. But the Morte, particularly the Book of Sir Tristram, contains numerous examples of colloquial diction. Malory's employment of these direct, informal, even crude remarks lends an air of realism to his romance. Could a knight not still be chivalrous and also use coarse language?

Scholars have also neglected, or deprecated, the Tristram book. Vinaver himself wrote in the introduction to his three-volume edition of Malory (1967) that "the fairest approach to it is to regard it not as an achievement, but as an experiment: as the first and necessarily timid attempt to reinterpret a traditional narrative"(1:lxxxix). Contemporary scholars have adopted Vinaver's attitude. In 1998, Terence McCarthy suggested that a beginning reader of Malory should "leave [this book] till later" in his experience of Malory (30). McCarthy adds that Tristram is a tale "long and full of inconsequence" (30). It is indeed long, comprising a third of the entire Morte, but the colloquial expressions which characterize Tristram make the book unique when compared to other romances, demonstrating an originality on Malory's part.

When seeking this "vernacular" usage, we must turn to dialogue, of course, of which there is no shortage in the Morte. Malory, as Benson affirms, "usually handles dialogue well, and even in his early tales the characters speak with a directness and vigor unusual in earlier English romance" (114). But, beginning in the Tale of Sir Gareth and much developed in Tristram, the speeches seem much more lively and colloquial than in the preceding and succeeding books. We see in these tales, for example, a number of oaths and curses. These exclamations and proverbial phrases impart an informal flavor to the speech of these works.

In Tristram, we see an example immediately, and it comes from the title character himself. Only a few pages into the tale, just after Tristram has embedded his sword into Marhalte's "brayne-panne," Marhalte throws down his sword and shield and runs to his ship. Upon seeing Marhalte fleeing, Tristram exclaims, "A, sir knyght of the Rounde Table! Why withdrawyst tho the? Thou doste thyself and thy kynne grete shame, for I am but a yonge knyght: or now I was never preved. And rather than I sholde withdraw me from the, I had rathir be hewyn in pyese-mealys" (237). This example is significant, for it demonstrates that it is not just the minor, secondary characters in the Morte who utter these unrefined statements, which is the prevailing opinion. It is also important because it undermines the notion that a knight of the Round Table, the flower of chivalry, always speaks in an ennobling manner. Tristram's deeds are heroic and romantic, but often his speech is not. As Field observes, a "close reading shows us that all [Malory's] characters can be strikingly colloquial, however heroic, good, aristocratic, or womanly they may be" (123).

The most patent and best-known example of colloquial language in Tristram is found in the Alexander the Orphan section, in which a cousin of Morgan le Fay's informs Alexander that the fairy queen is keeping him prisoner in her castle in order to have him as her lover. Upon hearing this, Alexander exclaims, "A, Jesu defende me, frome suche pleasure! For I had levir kut away my hangers than I wolde do her ony such pleasure!" (395). This response is much more direct and indelicate than that of Lancelot, who, when tempted by the four queens in the Tale of Sir Lancelot, replies, "'Yet had I lever dye in this preson with worshyp than to have one of you to my peramoure, magre myne hede"' (152).

Tristram offers a unique look at Malory the stylist. This book represents a departure from the other books of the Morte with their noble speeches and serious characters. In Tristram Malory infuses his dialogue with common, everyday speech that probably more nearly than most prose romances reflects the way people actually talked, and perhaps thought, in late medieval England. Indeed, Benson states that "there are few passages in Malory's earlier works that seem so clearly to catch the tone of living speech, and almost nothing like this in previous English romance" (114). Tristram is no doubt the liveliest and most entertaining work in the Morte, and the novice reader of Malory might be remiss in leaving it "till later."

Works Cited

Benson, Larry D. Malory’s Morte D 'Arthur. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1976.

Field, P.J.C. Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Malory’s Prose Style.
London: Barry and Jenkins, 1971.

What began as merely a select bibliography of the most essential books on Malory has now expanded to include a more extensive variety of works. Compared to other authors, Malory does not elicit the greatest volume of book-length studies. One can acquire a complete library on Malory with very little trouble (except for the usual difficulties in trying to obtain out of print books), whereas Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton prove to be more problematic. For that reason, any new book on Malory deserves serious consideration. In future issues of the newsletter, P.J.C. Field's Malory: Text and Sources, Thomas Hank's Sir Thomas Malory: Views and Reviews, Beverly Kennedy's Knighthood in the Morte D' Arthur, Andrew Lynch's Malory’s Book of Arms, and Felicity Riddy's Sir Thomas Malory will be reviewed. Those interested in reviewing any one of these titles, please contact the editor.

Archibald, Elizabeth and A.S.G Edwards, eds. A Companion to Malory. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1996.

Given the plethora of Companion books on the market, the absence of one for so long on Malory is a puzzlement. Since The Cambridge Companion to Literature Series has not yet included Malory in their pantheon of authors, it is reassuring to know that D.S. Brewer has picked up the gauntlet.

A Companion to Malory provides the reader with a thorough exploration of the Winchester Malory. Each essay is a microcosm of important themes and issues long neglected in Malory's Arthurian world. The Companion is divided into three sections. Part I, "Malory in Context," explores Malory's art in relationship to the chivalric tradition, to the role of women in the narrative, and to the issue of language and style. There are also essays on the Caxton/Winchester editorial debate, on Malory’s use of sources, and on his life records. Each essay sheds some peculiar insight into Malory's thought, but more importantly, each essay also complements the other, providing a rich, multifaceted portrait of the artist, which sustains and informs the whole work.

Part II, "The Art of the Morte Darthur," analyzes the tales in detail from Arthur's innocuous birth to his mysterious death. By keeping in mind that the Malorian universe has a definite beginning, middle, and an end, the essays in this section affirm the fundamental interconnectedness of each tale, and how specific events lead up to the final tragedy.

Part III, "Posterity," concludes with Malory's legacy to the future generations, from Caxton's first printing of the Morte to modern reconceptualizations of the myth. A select bibliography at the end provides a fitting closure to the book.

Companions are difficult to undertake because most essays contained in them are inconsistent in quality. Usually, essays may range from the very strong to the very weak. But A Companion to Malory is one of those rare literary phenomena-- a consistently excellent study which not only reminds the reader of the Morte’s greatness but also actually assists him in rediscovering that greatness for himself. Old and familiar worlds are seen anew in the Malorian firmament, and The Companion to Malory serves as a sturdy and trustworthy guide.

Malorian Words of Wisdom: On True Worth
"'A, fayre damesell,' seyde Balyn, 'worthynes and good tacchis and also good dedis is nat only in araymente, but manhode and worship [ys hyd] within a mannes person; and many a worshipfull knyght ys nat knowyn unto all peple. And therefore worship and hardynesse ys nat in araymente."' Book II The Knyght with the two Swords, 39.