The Plot in Miniature: Arthur's Battle on Mont St. Michel in the Alliterative Morte Arthure

That giants roam throughout Arthurian literature is no surprise-these brawny behemoths populate the regions of Logres, Cornwall, and Gaul-indeed, all parts of the Arthurian empire. With histories and reputations of their own, they faithfully accompany their heroic nemeses throughout folktales, chronicles, and romances alike, despoiling maidens, exacting tribute, terrorizing countrysides, and challenging valiant knights. In the words of critic Richard Cavendish, as supreme villains, giants often function in allegorical or archetypal capacities, generally representing "brute force and ignorance, mindless irresponsibility and the destructiveness of greed and lust."¹ As such they provide Arthurian heroes with ample opportunity to display their knightly prowess. According to Cavendish, "the hero slaying a dragon or a giant is carrying out his duty as the upholder of right and order. It was commonplace in the Middle Ages that the duty of knights was to defend society by keeping the peace and righting wrong"²-hence, Culwch's ultimate triumph over Ysbadadden, Tristan's valiant defeat of Morold, and Yvain's slaying of Harbin. Occasionally, giants appear en masse, as in the fourteenth-century alliterative poem Morte Arthure.

Given their penchant for violence and villainy, it is little wonder that Lucius stocks his army against Arthur with "geauntez . . . engenderide with fendez" (2111).³ The poet pauses the swift action of the bloody battle to relate one particular skirmish, Arthur's slaying of Golopas, "þat greuyde [hym] moste" (2124), one of the giants who

With clubbez of clene steel clenkkede in helmes,Craschede doun crestez and cruschede braynez,Kyllede cou[r]sers and couerde stedes,Choppede thurghe cheualers on chalke-whytte stedez.

(2113-16)

Undaunted by the violent actions of these bloodthirsty giants, Arthur forges ahead of his scattered men and quips as he cuts Golopas through the knees:

Come down . . . and karpe to thy ferys!Thowe arte to hye by þe halfe, I hete þe in trouthe;Thow sall be handsomere in hye, with þe helpe of my Lorde!

(2126-28)⁴

Arthur's feat inspires his men and as a result "the geauntez are dis-troyede / And at that journey forjustede with gentill lordez" (2133-34).

This destruction of the giants (and by extension, the defeat of Lucius's forces) brought about by Arthur's valiant example is dramatically pre-figured in an earlier encounter with a member of this deviant species. Golopas is but a paler shadow of the monster of Mont St. Michel whom Arthur kills early in the poem, while traveling to do battle against the Roman emperor. Like Golopas and his barbarous cohort, this fiendish lord of the mountain is an enemy of Christendom who threatens Arthur's domain. A more complex creation than the brutes in Lucius's service, this giant is carefully designed to establish Arthur as a worthy king, and the episode provides a type of literary blueprint for the tale to follow. A close comparison of Arthur's defeat of the giant of Mont St. Michel in the alliterative Morte Arthure with the earlier versions of this story in the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth, Wace, and Layamon⁵ suggests two intriguing and related trends: Arthur's heroism crescendos as the story takes on the characteristics of an epic, and, to heighten his heroism, the giant's maiden victim suffers more graphically as the story passes from writer to writer.

The giant of Mont St. Michel is essentially a conflation of two creatures mentioned in Geoffrey's Historia Regum Britanniae (ca. 1135), developed in Wace's Roman de Brut (1155), and mentioned in Layamon's Brut (ca. 1189-1216). In turning to these historical accounts, the anonymous poet of Morte Arthure presents Arthur as a hero in the epic tradition, dispels all traces of ineptness and weakness, and reclaims his former glory and majesty tarnished in the French romances. Yet in presenting its female victim and Arthur's efforts to save her, the Morte Arthure also benefits from the impulses and tendencies of the romance genre.⁶ In Morte Arthure, Arthur's heroic stature is emphasized by his taking...