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

Malory’s sources, both major and minor, are systematically treated in this volume, with special emphasis on the latter. Here the Sir Thomas Malory who wrote the Morte Darthur is identified from among several candidates as the Malory from Newbold Revel in Warwickshire who died in 1471. Since the nineteenth century, researchers have attempted to trace Malory’s major sources, and from around 1943 (see p. 9) his minor sources as well. Ralph Norris laboriously traces all these results, also adding new materials of his own. Norris’s efforts are particularly focused on the minor sources, because they sometimes, though infrequently, supply useful information that is missing from the major sources.

Malory’s text is quoted here from The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. by Eugéne Vinaver, 3rd edn, revised by P. J. C. Field (Oxford, 1990; hereafter V-F). The Winchester manuscript (hereafter W) on which this edition is based is composed of eight tales. With due attention paid to the order of composition, Norris discusses the major and minor sources according to these eight divisions: a first section of ‘Preliminaries’ is followed by chapters devoted to the sources of ‘The Tale of King Arthur’, ‘The Tale of Arthur and Lucius’, ‘The Tale of Sir Launcelot’, ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’, ‘The Tale of Sir Tristram’, ‘The Tale of the Sankgreal’, ‘The Tale of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere’, and finally the sources of ‘The Morte Arthur’. In the ‘Tale of Arthur and Lucius’ the text of W and that of Caxton’s Malory (hereafter C) are radically different. The latter is abridged to about half the length of the former. In this chapter Norris sometimes refers to C as well. A final chapter of conclusions includes a convenient list of Malory’s major as well as minor sources for each tale. There is a category ‘Oral’ in the list. Malory may have stocked his mind with what he learned by talking with members of the gentry, or with what he previously read. Thus Malory’s mind, filled with ‘a fairly eclectic body of literature’ (p. 168), is believed to have contained the minor sources. Norris’s conclusive remark is that Malory ‘worked at least partly from memory’ (p. 168).

This is a brief outline of the book, and the reviewer can confidently say that the work is important and indispensable for all those who enjoy reading Malory with academic interest. Owing to lack of space, only a few further comments will be made on the book. First, on page 56, lines 1–5, a passage from V-F is quoted by omitting the half brackets ( ⌊. . .⌉), which are employed in V-F to show that the elements inside them are from C. Norris thus regards the passage as belonging to W, and treats it as such in a discussion that follows. The passage ⌊ Than somme of the yonge knyghtes, [. . .] to the kynge. And anone [. . .] ony harme.⌉, however, is Caxton’s, resembling lines in Caxton’s edition of the Chronicles of England (STC 9991, sig. e2^v, lines 9–15, ‘when this lettre [. . .] serued / And after [. . .] to the messagiers’). Here, C and Caxton’s Chronicles of England share the episode in which, when the letter from Lucius was read, some of the young knights intended to slay the messengers, but Arthur dissuaded them from doing so. On the other hand, W and its major source, the alliterative Morte Arthure, do not have this scene. The reviewer believes that Caxton rewrote the tale chiefly on the basis of his own edition of the Chronicles of England (see my article ‘Musings on the Reviser of Book v in Caxton’s Malory’, in The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur, ed. by B. Wheeler, R. L. Kindrick, and M. N. Salda, Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000, pp. 191–216).

In addition to the omission of the half-brackets shown above...