Malory's Library: The Sources of the "Morte Darthur" (review)

Ralph Norris's Malory's Library is a careful, thorough, and clearly written study of the various works Malory must have known when writing Morte Darthur. Some of these are major sources that Malory would have had before him as he was writing; others are minor ones that he would have read sometime in the past and would have recalled from memory when he was writing. The book is logically arranged with an introduction, chapters on each of the eight tales, and a final chapter summarizing major conclusions.

Much of what Norris has done, of course, is evaluate what others have said about Malory's sources, but a tremendous amount of scholarship has been written on this, and he has not missed much. Although one might not agree with all of his assessments, he has done readers a service by evaluating strengths and weaknesses of various arguments. In most cases his judgment is sound. He has, moreover, made generally good arguments for Malory's having read authors such as Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer, and Lydgate that few others have mentioned as Malory's sources, and he also reminds us of the influence of the Vulgate continuation of the Merlin, a work often overlooked by scholars, who have emphasized just the Post-Vulgate Merlin and its continuation, the major source of Malory's first tale.

Much of the book focuses on minor characters Malory brings into his narrative to replace unnamed knights of his sources, reminiscent of the work Robert H. Wilson did on this subject between 1934 and 1950 and serving as an important supplement to Wilson's work. The book also reminds us of the extent to which Malory was indebted to English writers. (Norris might have mentioned that Malory makes only one reference to English sources, and it is a disparaging and false one at that: at the end Malory says that "some Englysshe bookes" say that Lancelot's followers never left England after Lancelot's death, "but that was but favour of makers"; on the other hand, "the Frensshe book maketh mencyon—and is auctorysed" that they went to the Holy Land and died fighting the Turks on Good Friday [The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, rev. P. J. C. Field (1990), 3.1260]. French works would have had a certain snob appeal, and Malory, even though he knew a number of English works, emphasized that he was making the "auctorysed" French material available in English.)

The book contains a few errors and some interpretations with which one might disagree. Malory, for example, refers to the Grail as a vessel containing the blood of Christ: "[T]he Sankegreall … called ys the holy vessel and the sygnyfycacion of the blyssed bloode off oure Lorde Jesu Cryste, whyche was brought into thys londe by Joseph off Aramathye" (Works, 2.845–46; also 1.85). This concept is different from that found in Malory's account of the Grail Quest where, as in its French source, it contains the body of Christ rather than his blood. Norris believes that Malory's references to its containing Christ's blood reflect "an English oral tradition" and use of "unwritten sources" (p. 40). While oral tradition surely would have been available to Malory, that conception of the Grail is also found in a work that Norris considers a major source for Morte Darthur, the Perlesvaus, where it is defined as "the holy vessel … in which the precious blood of the Saviour was gathered on the day when He was crucified," and Joseph of Arimathea is said to have had that vessel in his keeping (The High Book of the Grail, trans. Nigel Bryant [1978], p. 19). Moreover, another source, John Hardyng's chronicle, although not mentioning the Grail, tells of Joseph of Arimathea's bringing Christianity to Britain (The Chronicle of John Hardyng, ed. Henry Ellis [1812]), pp. 83–85).

Norris's interpretation of the explicit at...