Whether or not to conceive of Le Morte Darthur as a single unified text was the major issue of debate in Malory studies from the mid- to the late-twentieth century. The central symbolic figures in this debate are Caxton, the editor and publisher of the first printed edition of Malory, and Vinaver, editor of the first modern edition based on the Winchester manuscript of Malory, which predates Caxton’s print edition. Caxton
published his edition in 1485 and is usually credited with giving the text the title Le Morte
Darthur. Vinaver first published his edition in 1947, with the provocative title The Works
of Sir Thomas Malory, arguing that what Malory wrote was not a single book but a series
of eight tales. The effect of Vinaver’s structural interpretation on subsequent discussion of the perceived themes of the work(s) is profound; from its publication until the
publication of Field’s new edition in 2013 Vinaver’s has been the standard academic text of Malory.
Vinaver argues that Malory, or “whoever produced the work contained in [the Winchester] manuscript clearly never thought of it as a single work, but as a series of eight separate romances” (Vinaver xxxix). Although Vinaver’s title The Works of Sir
Thomas Malory is polemical, and he insisted upon the existence of eight discrete
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simple dichotomy: either eight romances or one book. Early in the life of the ongoing academic controversy surrounding the unity of Malory’s works, C. S. Lewis pointed out that the idea of a single artistic unit called “a book” is anachronistic:
Malory was a medieval author. If it were possible to question him directly, in what form should we put our question? It would be no use asking him how many books he thought he had written; he would think we meant the material volumes or ‘quairs’. If we asked him, ‘How many tales?’ he might enumerate more than eight. ... I do not for a moment believe that Malory had any intention either of writing a single ‘work’ or of writing many ‘works’ as we should understand the expressions. He was telling us about Arthur and the knights. Of course his matter was one—the same king, the same court. Of course his matter was many—they had had many adventures. (Lewis [1963] 21-22)
The clearest indication that Malory’s conception of what exactly a “book” is differs from a modern conception is the division between the two books focused on Sir Tristram. For Malory, “Book” clearly meant “codex”: the physical object. Vinaver’s point was an insistence on how the books should be interpreted by modern readers, as he readily acknowledged. Vinaver believed that presenting Le Morte Darthur as a single book gave modern readers an inaccurate idea of what Malory had written. By labelling his edition
The Works of Sir Thomas Malory and insisting on the division into eight tales, he thought
he was more accurately representing what Malory wrote. Vinaver interprets each tale as, in some important sense, distinct from all the others.
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The structure of eight distinct tales does not erase the possibility of thematic unity between the tales; it is still possible to read the tales and their interests in concert.
However, construing Malory’s text as a series of tales rather than one unified work also encourages a separate interpretation of each tale. This form of reading may be necessary but perilous, since it allows a reader to overlook subtle thematic strands in favour of those individual texts where a theme rises to clear prominence. For example, if the “The
Sankgreal” is read as a distinct and independent episode, then one might conclude that spiritual matters are otherwise unimportant to Malory, because they are so rarely
explicitly addressed outside of the Grail Quest. If the Grail Quest is self-contained, those concerns—no matter how relevant they may be to the Grail Quest—are largely irrelevant to the other tales. But in fact the Grail Quest is among other things a part of the arc of Lancelot’s character development. The Grail episode forms the heart of Lancelot’s story, coming as it does in the middle, not the end. Dorsey Armstrong has argued that
what appears at first to be instability (as demonstrated by Lancelot’s failures, misunderstanding, and ‘backsliding’ into sin and error) over the course of the Grail Quest, is in fact a delicate, deliberate, and necessary balancing act in which Lancelot’s superiority as a courteous man of arms is consistently offset by his lack of spiritual understanding. (Armstrong [2003] 150)
Lancelot grows in repentance and in maturity throughout the whole of Le Morte Darthur, and the Grail quest contributes to his final redemption but is not the only factor. Tolhurst argues, for example, that “the healing of Sir Urry [which takes place at the end of “Sir Launcelot and Guinevere”] indicated the author’s attitudes toward spirituality and
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salvation while moving Lancelot up the ladder of perfection” (Tolhurst 146). Lancelot’s character growth demonstrates the thematic unity of Le Morte Darthur, and its focus throughout on piety.