The Social and Literary Contexts of Malory's Morte Darthur, and: The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur (review)

Reviews 195 Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr. and Jessica Gentry Brogdon, eds., The Social andLiterary Contexts ofMalory's Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies 42), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2000; cloth; pp. xii, 157; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$75.00,£35.00; ISBN 0859915948. Wheeler, Bonnie, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda, eds., The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies 47), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2000; cloth; pp. xxxii, 420; 1 colour plate; R.R.P. US$75.00, £45.00; ISBN 0859915832. Malory's 'noble and joyous book' is in my experience warmly received by undergraduates, but it is not always practicable to explore deeper issues of scholarship and reception in class. I therefore welcomed the opportunity to absorb these volumes, which provide timely illumination of the texts and contexts of the Morte Darthur. The Malory Debate assembles ten new essays and seven essays revised following publication in special issues of Arthuriana in 1995 and 1997. They deal with the central contentious issue in Malory scholarship: the editing of the text. Discussion is often generally relevant to Middle English literature, much of which is preserved infifteenth-centurymanuscripts or in prints by Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde. The collection reveals the abundance of evidence contained in the principal surviving textual witnesses to the Morte Darthur: the Winchester College M S copied between 1467 and 1483 (W), and the Caxton print of 1485 (C). The debate is packed with vivid personalities and dramatic events. The figure who remains mysteriously veiled—as the focus of attention and the most theatrical presence of all—is Malory himself. Paul Yeats-Edwards, late Fellows' Librarian of Winchester College, records the series of chance meetings and connections which in 1934 led to Walter Oakeshott's discovery of W in a safe in the Warden's bedroom. The distinguished scholar, Eugene Vinaver, who had been working for years on a new edition of Malory based on C, 'appeared a day or two later on Oakeshott's doorstep, demanding to see this unique manuscript' (p. 375). Vinaver's inspections convinced him that, although W and C represented separate lines of textual descent, W more faithfully reflected Malory's final intentions. Caxton, he maintained, had made changes to C which exceeded his editorial prerogative. This view was enshrined in Vinaver's Clarendon Press edition of 1947, which was reprinted three times and revised in detail in 1990 by P. J. C. Field. The edition underpinned subsequent scholarly discussion and initiated the great unity 196 Reviews debate of the 1960s, with its perceived implications for Middle English aesthetics. Subterranean rumbles, however, preceded the reading by Roy Leslie in 1975, at the Exeter Arthurian Congress, of William Mathews' posthumous paper on the 'Roman War', the episode of the Morte most heavily revised in C. Matthews argued powerfully that Malory, rather than Caxton or an unknown third party, was the most likely reviser of the exemplar of C, which should therefore be reinstated as 'the best text'. W , which Lotte Hellinga later (1981) demonstrated from ink stains to have stayed in Caxton's workshop probably from 1480 to 1489, may have been merely 'an early unrevised prototype' (p. xxiv). Field recalls that Vinaver 'who wasfrailand partially blind' listened to Leslie's reading from the place of honour which had been given to him at the Congress (p. 127). Matthews' paper hovered ephemerally in leaked and incomplete copies— a modern case of textual uncertainty—before finally being made available, together with two of Matthews' essays aimed at redeeming Caxton's reputation, by Richard Kindrick in 1997. Matthews' defence of Caxton against attacks on his integrity which had been made by N. F. Blake, helped transform 'the besieged printer' into an eloquent figure within the Malory debate. Meanwhile, in 1983, James W. Spisak had published through the University of California Press a new edition of the Morte Darthur, based on C, and developed from work begun by Matthews. Despite the refutations and modifications of Matthews' arguments attempted by Shunichi Noguchi, Masako Takagi, Toshiyuki Takamiya, Field, Blake, and Yuji Nakao, which are printed in the present volume, faith in the superior authority of W had been permanently...