Arbitrariness and Knowing in Malory’s Morte Darthur , Book 4.18–21

Abstract

This study focuses on a chance meeting between Gawain, Ywain, Marhalt, and three damsels in book 4 of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur . The aim here is to consider the relationship between arbitrariness and literary knowledge in Malory’s romance. In this examination I trace the close connection between etiology and style in the passage under discussion, looking to Malory’s French source, the Suite du Merlin , to show how he produces arbitrariness through precise semantic and stylistic choices. Ultimately I attempt to demonstrate how arbitrary moments in the Morte Darthur show Malory at his most original and stylistically sophisticated. Arbitrariness, as an effect of particular narrative strategies, leads to the production of new knowledge, of the kind only accessible in the experience of reading literature.

Misunderstanding, Misperception and Mistakes: The Logic of the Grail in Old French Arthurian Romance and Thomas Malory’s Tale of the Sankgreal

“…The Grail romances complicate this understanding of aventure by relating it directly to knights' spiritual state. As Wade summarises, "in the Grail Quest the rules of the game are different, and the knights on that quest are faced with a logic slightly at an angle to that of the ordinary Malorian world" (Wade, 2013). Rather than following the logical pattern of earlier parts of the Morte Darthur, I want to suggest that the Sankgreal follows the logical system illustrated by the Thirteenth Century Old French Grail narratives.…”

“…More secular romance narratives operate according to a form of logic that relies upon fate and chance. James Wade suggests that, in certain sections of the Morte Darthur, the order of interlaced episodes seems to "give way to unmotivated or at least under-motivated sequences in which the characters appear to be at the mercy of chance and the action of the narrative tends to become arbitrary" (Wade, 2013). To illustrate this point, Wade discusses Malory's treatment of his source in the "Gawain, Ywain and Marhalt" section of the Morte Darthur, in which the three knights meet "thre damesels" (p. 127) sitting by a stream.…”

“…When the knights question why the women are sat by the fountain they receive the reply that "We be here […] for this cause: if we may se ony of arraunte knyghtes to teche hem unto straunge aventures" (p. 127). The sequences that follow, Wade argues, illustrate a distinct type of logic that is based on "knowing through analogy", rather than a causal relationship between episodes (Wade, 2013).…”