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SoSe 17: PS-Medieval English Literatures II: The Rise and Fall of Camelot: Sir Thomas Malory

Andrew James Johnston

Kommentar

The Arthurian legends are amongst the best-known cultural legacies bequeathed to us by the Middle Ages. Introduced into the mainstream of medieval culture through the work of the twelfth-century chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth, they quickly developed a literary life of their own, largely independent of their shadowy origins in migration period Celtic history. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s pseudo-historical Arthur soon became the stuff of romance and his court provided the literal point of departure for numerous chivalric adventures. Moreover, Arthur’s own role changed as the great warrior king became one of the corners of a tragic love triangle destined to destroy his kingdom, his life and his love.

But even as Arthur transformed into a figure from romance and fairy tale he retained a particular cultural urgency for English audiences which is why shortly before the last quarter of the fifteenth century, in a period marked by defeat abroad and civil war at home, the English writer Sir Thomas Malory attempted a synthesis of the Arthurian material, presenting to his readers an encyclopaedic and yet decidedly English version of the story of Camelot. In the eyes of English readers, his rendering has become something like the definitive version of Arthur, but a closer look reveals the huge extent to which Malory’s Morte Darthur – an English book bearing a French title – is the product of conflicting traditions and cultural agendas, how it reflects not only the tensions of highly contradictory sources but also those of the ideological problems of the period it was written in. These are the issues this seminar seeks to address.

Students are expected to have acquired a copy of the following book by the beginning of the semester: Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur. The Winchester Manuscript. Helen Cooper ed., Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

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