Malory's Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (review)

Reviews I85 of the authors, as excerpted, discusses the issue directly and the scholar selected to assess Tacitus is unfortunately one of the weakest, asserting the remarkable fiction that Caesar's Gauls and Tacitus' Germans were the fruits of their fantasy (p. 23). Serious assessment is postponed until p. 263 and Riedmann's argument linking the concept 'Deutschland' to a common language and form of political organisation, even though his o w n brief is the southern border of the Carolingian empire, where he admits, such a confluence is hardest to discern. There remain problems: the unity of the Carolingian empire was superficial, the regions centrifugal, and provinces like Bavaria boasted a long tradition of independence which they returned to at the earliest opportunity. It is one thing to observe that the early Middle Ages house the foundations of Europe, quite another to retroject into the past the language of the modern nation state. The word 'deutsch' means a tribe, a people, which, in the Carolingian Age, meant those w h o spoke the people's language, w h o did not speak Latin (diutisc; theodisk), thence, in the High Middle Ages, it conveyed an idea of the geographical location of these peoples 'tiutschu lanf ('Deutschland'), thence, from the Reformation an idea of a country, and from the Second Reich an idea of a Nation. The analogous problem of the Germanic tribes laying the foundations of Europe is an intractable one because it lifts poorly-understood gentes out of their context in society and elevates them to the level of single-cause explanation in history. Indeed, when broached on this point, the organiser of the major exhibition in Europe conceded that a more appropriate name for the exhibition may have been Die Merovinger, Wegbereiter Europas, instead of Die Franken, Wegbereiter Europas. In other words, both the subtitle and introduction of the book are somewhat at odds with its content and probably reflect a pitch for the market as 'Deutsche Geschichte'. That aside, this small edition provides a window on early medieval life and is recommended as a useful introduction to major scholarship in a significant period of history. John Barlow Department of History University of Queensland Lynch, Andrew, Malory's Book of Arms: The Narrative of Combat in Le Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies 39), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1997; cloth; pp. xx, 169; R.R.P. £29.50. For a work so substantial, influential and recurrently admired, Malory's Arthuriad has attracted remarkably little criticism of note. Scholarship, certainly, with Eugene Vinaver and his followers on sources, and also the 'real Malory' excavation team n o w led by Peter Field. But after the solid and thoughtful books by Larry Benson and Mark Lambert, over twenty 186 Reviews years ago, instead of the rich development that seemed promised there has been at the highest level no more than a few suggestive essays by Jill Mann, some feminist commentary and the one major contribution, Felicity Riddy's intelligent re-reading of Malory's work in the context of fifteenth-century cultural ideas. Andrew Lynch has been working for some time to add some weight to Malory criticism: now he presents a full analysis which is in part a very careful reading of textual detail, at times seeing more than others have done, and also a generalised analysis focusing on the performative role of the knight in battle as constructor, and indeed recipient, of identity. Riddy's book was in part intended—and certainly can be used—as explication du texte, moving through the Arthuriad sequentially. Lynch's is less pedagogically accessible, addressing specialists in Malory, at whatever educational level they might be. Nothing strange in that: such books pour out on other major medieval writers like Chaucer, Langland and the Gawain-poet and indeed on lesser lights less evidently deserving such minute scrutiny. It is the curiously attenuated nature of Malory studies that makes Lynch's book, with its complex, hermeneutic argumentation, seem unusual. As a result, no-one w h o wants to write seriously on Malory— perhaps especially write a thesis on Malory—should overlook this book, though they might well find that, like much of the best of...