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Introduction As Janet Jesmok and I note in the introduction to this volume, one of the earliest critics of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur, Roger Ascham, condemned it on the grounds of immorality. He found in it only “open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye” as opposed to “honestie and godliness.” As the latter phrase suggests, Ascham found religious grounds for his argument, writing that he had seen the bible banished from the royal court when the Morte was welcomed there.Arguing against what he saw as the pernicious influence of “Papistes,” Ascham maintains that books like the Morte ought not be read by (Protestant) Christians.1 He saw the Morte as virulently anti-Christian. I shall argue here that less sectarian eyes will find in it not only battle, adultery, and other human failing but also regular reminders of a Godly grace to be accorded even imperfect humans. A more modern critic of the Morte Darthur than Ascham, eugène vinaver, has heavily influenced readers’ approach to the Morte. From its appearance in 1947, vinaver’s oxford edition has been considered the definitive Morte. And rightly so: vinaver laid the scholarly groundwork of comparing Malory’s Morte with its French sources, and he provided a highly readable text much nearer to Malory’s original than earlier editions. All Malorians, then, must be grateful to vinaver. At the same time, he set directions that still restrict us. For example—and it is the only restriction discussed in this essay—vinaver followed in Ascham’s footsteps when he wrote at length in various places in his edition, and thus influenced generations of scholars, that Malory was either uninterested in or incapable of understanding the Christian element in the Grail story (and by extension throughout the Morte). In fact, vinaver wrote in the introductions to his 1947, 1967, and posthumous 1990 editions that whereas Malory is perfectly serious about nobility and chivalry,he is not at all “concerned with the yet higher law which cuts across the courtly world in the Grail books” (1:xc).2 He adds that Malory has instead replaced the “sens” (the sense) of the French Queste with “a mere pageant of picturesque visions” (1:xc). “AllmanerofgoodlovecomythofGod”: Malory,God’sGrace,andNobleLove D. Thomas Hanks, Jr. 9 He writes of Malory’s close to the Grail book, which features Lancelot though the French source does not, that “[t]his, like most of Malory’s additions, contradicts both the letter and the spirit of the French [source]” (1:xcii). He argues that Malory’s “one desire seems to be to secularize the Grail theme as much as the story will allow” (3:1535). In his earlier Malory he is as clear as he is censorious: “Malory’s Quest is . . . a confused and almost pointless story . . . deprived of its spiritual foundation, of its doctrine, and of its direct object.”3 Scholars have responded to vinaver over the years, some challenging him and many simply accepting his view. C. S. Lewis was an early challenger. In 1963, well prior to vinaver’s 1967 second edition,he argued that “[the Morte’s] handling of the Grail story sounds deeply religious,and we have the sense that it is somehow profoundly connected with the final tragedy.”4 Lewis’s carefully reasoned argument led vinaver to qualified agreement. He responds—in the same 1963 volume in which Lewis’s essay appeared—that though Malory “tries to cut down the religious exposition and even substitute the worldly for the divine, he produces a work which nonetheless makes a more deeply religious impression on one’s mind than the strictly orthodox original upon which it is based.”5 Though he conceded Lewis’s point, vinaver did not alter his comments in his second edition of Works, comments that persist in P. J. C. Field’s revised third edition of 1990. Judging by his editions alone, then, the great editor of Malory maintained his view that Malory was uninterested in the Christian doctrine of the Grail Quest. vinaver’s view of Malory’s approach to the Grail material has influenced virtually every discussion of Christianity not only in the Grail Quest but throughout the Morte. This essay extends Lewis’s challenge. I follow Lewis in this debate not to detract from vinaver’s work but because the issue, as Lewis suggested before me, affects the way one reads the entire Morte. owing to his view of Malory ’s approach to the Grail story’s Christianity, vinaver reads the...

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