7 - Malory’s Morte Darthur

Summary

Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur offers a grand retrospective on Arthurian legend, and in so doing, brings together different strands of magic and the supernatural. Malory's distinctively English telling of the great Vulgate Cycle, a version of which formed his ‘Frensshe booke’ , draws on the Alliterative and Stanzaic Morte Arthur poems, and increases realism by employing the language and style of chronicles. The work is shadowed by the political strife and civil war of Malory's own time, and directs a practical chivalric code to its ‘gentle’ readers. Caxton's preface places the Morte as ‘ystorye’ rather than stories that are ‘fayned and fables’ (cxliv), and claims historical and physical evidence for Arthur, as well as placing him as one of the Nine Worthies. Yet Caxton also promises ‘many wonderful hystoryes and adventures’ (cxlvi), and Malory's matter-of-fact, pared-down use of sources and realist mode do not indicate the lack of interest in the supernatural that has sometimes been supposed: rather, different facets of the supernatural are interwoven to create a multi-layered fictional world. Across the book, the terms ‘marvel’ and ‘marvellous’ recur, and their repetition indicates the general ethos of the work. The narrative plays again and again on the wonder of Logres, which both is and is not Malory's England. Marvel functions on a continuum from strength in arms, to profound emotion, to quest and adventure, and often shades into magic and the supernatural. Adventure too moves from colourful game to sinister threat to deeply mystical experience. The individual is situated within a world of conflicting and sometimes confusing forces, human, natural and supernatural. The presentation of the extraordinary in prosaic, matter-of-fact and unquestioning terms, and the emphasis on causality, dialogue and action both achieve the effect of realism and heighten the sense of strangeness. Malory creates a legendary, half-familiar landscape where the marvellous is possible, where magic arts may be inherited or learned, and where the supernatural may intervene. In the course of the rise and fall of Arthur and his court, the magic of human and otherworld, divine and demonic interweave, and natural magic, enchantment and ‘nigromancy’ are treated credibly, as playing important roles in the shaping of destiny.