Arthuriana Congratulates Marsha L. Dutton

Marsha L. Dutton, Ohio University winner of the James Randall Leader Prize for Outstanding Essay in Arthuriana 2007 for

‘The Staff in the Stone: Finding Arthur’s Sword in the Vita Sancti Edwardi of Aelred of Rievaulx,’ in Arthuriana 17.3

(2007)

The Independent Selection Committee said:

In ‘The Staff in the Stone: Finding Arthur’s Sword in the Vita Sancti Edwardi of Aelred of Rievaulx,’ Marsha L. Dutton convincingly argues that the probable source for one of the most important episodes in Arthurian narrative—the future king’s drawing of the sword from the stone, which first appears in the late-twelfth or early-thirteenth century French prose romance Merlin—is to be found in the most important Latin life of Edward the Confessor (1042–66). The Vita Sancti Edwardi, composed by Aelred of Rievaulx between 1161 and 1163 to celebrate the translation of Edward’s relics to a new shrine at Westminster Abbey, includes a miracle story (usefully included as an appendix to the article) in which Wulfstan, bishop of Worcester, thrusts his episcopal staff into the lid of Edward’s tomb in response to the attempt of Lanfranc, archbishop of Canterbury, to remove him from the see to which Edward had appointed him. The staff remains fixed in place despite all attempts to remove it until Wulfstan reclaims it; the ease with which it returns to his hand demonstrates both his right to his bishopric and, more importantly, Edward’s authority over the English church even after his death.

While the first virtue of Dutton’s article is to bring this heretofore unnoticed episode in the Vita to our attention—a major intervention in Arthurian scholarship in and of itself—her essay is much more than a source study. In addition to unraveling the complicated chronology of the works she examines and the manuscripts in which they appear, Dutton provides a compelling analysis of the way the sword/staff-in-stone episodes function in separate but mutually illuminating ways within larger narratives. As she eloquently observes, both works ‘consistently integrate the political with the theological, shaping the world of king and crown with Christ’s will for that world.’ In its lucid exposition of the process of the formation of a key Arthurian scene and its provocative exploration of the relationship between Latin and vernacular textuality, fiction and history, and of course the secular and the sacred, ‘The Staff and the Stone’ makes a very valuable contribution to the field, one that should have a significant impact on future scholarship.