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The Questing Beast and the Noise of Adventure
- Arthuriana
- Scriptorium Press
- Volume 27, Number 2, Summer 2017
- pp. 73-86
- 10.1353/art.2017.0013
- Article
- Additional Information
Thomas Malory’s Questing Beast, a noisy monster whose significance goes unexplained, reveals how unstable language, or ‘noyse,’ both threatens and perpetuates chivalry. As scholars show, the hybrid Beast reflects fragmentation in Palomides, the kingdom, and Malory’s sources, but the creature also echoes language’s fragmentation, a challenge which knights must constantly negotiate.