Merlin’s Prophecies, Malory’s Lacunae

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.

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Merlin’s Prophecies, Malory’s Lacunae

Cited by 3 publications

References 9 publications

Envisioning the End: History and Consciousness in Medieval English Arthurian Romance

Envisioning the End: History and Consciousness in Medieval English Arthurian Romance

The Once and Future Childslayer: Guy Gavriel Kay’s Inversion of Malory’s Morte Darthur

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

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