The analysis below of the particularly fifteenth-century English flavour of Le
Morte Darthur’s Christianity pays special attention to confession. Chapter one also shows
how the religious and spiritual themes of Le Morte Darthur pervade the text, and are especially evident when Le Morte Darthur is read as a single unified text. Le Morte
Darthur becomes more spiritually focused as proceeds, and this effect is cumulative. In
“King Uther and King Arthur” the religious aspects provide primarily a cultural setting, but by the end of Le Morte Darthur the religious values have become the text’s informing worldview.22
22 There is no universal consensus about whether Malory wrote the tales in the order in which they currently appear—Vinaver hypothesized that he did not, and that “The Tale of the Noble King Arthur
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Although the religious focus exists throughout the text and increases as the text proceeds, it is at its most evident in the Grail section which is the focus of chapter two. With particular attention on Lancelot and Galahad, this chapter demonstrates how the Grail knights are exemplars of piety: Galahad of purity, and Lancelot of redeemed piety. In the Grail section, Malory offers a model both for the characters within the text and for his readers. The Grail section demonstrates how to be holy, and is in dialogical relation with all other models of holiness throughout the text.
Towards its end, Le Morte Darthur increasingly focuses upon a holiness achieved through penance, and this is the focus of chapter three. Both Lancelot, who by the end of the text has become its de facto main character, and Queen Guinevere, end the text in formal penance. King Arthur’s end is less formally penitential but still clearly focuses on achieving God’s forgiveness. Many minor characters end the book in penance as well, including the only surviving Grail knight, Sir Bors. All of this penance constitutes a religious interpretation of the events of the rest of the book. The political chivalry, earthly warfare, and secular romance that make up the main action of Le Morte Darthur are exactly what the main characters must repent of as the story ends.
and Emperor Lucius” was written first (Vinaver [1990] lv). The order of the tales is the same, however, in both the Winchester manuscript and in Caxton’s printed edition. There is therefore no solid evidence for any alternative order, nor is there any solid evidence for a composition order that differs from the presentation order. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, then, I surmise that either a) the book was composed in the order in which it is presented or b) all aspects, including the colophons, were designed to be experienced in the order in which they now appear.
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The fourth chapter examines the sources that Malory rejects, showing that they demonstrate his themes just as much as the sources he uses do. In “The Sankgreal” in particular, there are three major sources with which we know Malory was familiar, but which he chose not to use: the French prose Perlesvaus, the French prose Tristan, and John Hardyng’s English Chronicle. Each of these texts contains a version of the Grail Quest, and each was familiar to Malory, yet he used none as his source for his retelling. The Perlesvaus is religiously focused, but depicts religious and political interests as contiguous. The French prose Tristan de-emphasises the spiritual themes of the Grail Quest, intertwining it with Sir Tristan’s chivalric endeavours so as to make it simply one more marvellous achievement of the Round Table. John Hardyng’s Chronicle is a literal account which downplays the mystical and symbolic aspects of the Grail Quest. All three represent worldviews that Malory rejects in favour of his spiritually-oriented, mystical, and symbolic text.
Malory’s choice of which sources to reject is revealing, but so, of course, are those sections of Le Morte Darthur which have no source, or no known source. These sourceless sections are the focus of chapter five. The longest section of Le Morte Darthur for which no source is known is “Sir Gareth of Orkney,” which is a foretaste of “The Sankgreal” and which features, in its central knight Sir Gareth, a prefiguration of Sir Galahad. The next major sourceless section is the healing of Sir Urry, a passage that closes “Sir Launcelot and Queen Guenivere.” The healing of Sir Urry is, with the
exception of “The Sankgreal,” the most evidently religious section of Le Morte Darthur, and it grounds its religious perspective in Lancelot’s character growth. Finally, the colophons or explicits that link the sections of Le Morte Darthur to one another and are
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clearly written in Malory’s own voice, show once again that the religious focus of Le
Morte Darthur increases as the text goes on. Each of these sourceless sections of Le Morte Darthur demonstrates that far from being a vestige or slavish reproduction of his
sources, Malory’s religious interest is his own. The religious perspective belongs to Le
Morte Darthur.
The discussion focuses squarely on Le Morte Darthur, and its scope excludes most other texts, even The Weddynge of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell, which Field has
theorized was also written by Malory.23 For a fuller account of Malory’s religious conception, Dame Ragnell would be a valuable addition. The discussion also considers only those Arthurian texts which are directly relevant to Le Morte Darthur as sources or as rejected sources, although a larger and less tightly-focused study would need to consider the religious assumptions and implications of Arthurian literature more widely: this is certainly a possible next step for research in this area. For a deeper historical context, a study of other fifteenth-century texts and their religious assumptions would also be invaluable, as would be a comparison of fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth- century popular texts. Any of these perspectives would be valuable, but are outside the self-imposed boundaries of this project.
23 See Field (1993), The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory, p. 2, Field (1999) “Malory and The
35 Chapter 1
The Search for the Holy: Malory and Fifteenth -Century Christianity
Le Morte Darthur is fundamentally grounded in fifteenth-century Christianity.
Malory’s text grapples with religious and spiritual themes throughout, and becomes more spiritually oriented as it goes on. Even in its first book, the religious underpinnings are evident. This chapter demonstrates how rooted Malory is in fifteenth-century Christian doctrine. It traces the spiritual trajectory of Le Morte Darthur, showing how seeds of an engagement with secular piety are sown from the beginning of “King Uther and King Arthur,”1
how they take root even in the apparently secular “King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius” and continue to grow throughout the whole book, flowering in “The Sankgreal” and yielding their harvest in the conclusion of “The Morte Arthur.” This
1 I am adopting the editorial section titles used by Field in his 2013 edition. The number and nature of the section divisions of Le Morte Darthur is up for debate and ultimately beyond the scope of this project. For present purposes I consider a “section” to be anything given its own title in Field’s edition. These do not correspond exactly to either Vinaver’s eight tales or to Caxton’s twenty-one books, but are much closer to Vinaver. Field has nine major sections, which correspond to Vinaver’s eight except that Field divides “Sir Tristram de Lyones” in two. Field has forty-two titled subsections, while Vinaver has forty-three. The choice to follow Field’s sections implicitly gives preference to the Winchester manuscript over Caxton’s edition, since Field follows Winchester’s organizational scheme. I have chosen to use Field, rather than an edition based on Caxton, as my primary text for three reasons: 1) because Field’s edition is the most recent and exhaustive academic edition of Le Morte Darthur, 2) because in later chapters I will be directly discussing the colophons, most of which only appear in the Winchester manuscript, and 3) because by Caxton’s own account the structure of his edition was his own addition, not something he found in the text.
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religious engagement is one particularly fitted to religion as practiced in England during the fifteenth-century and its concerns, and it is especially apparent if we read Le Morte
Darthur as a single text.