Arthurian Intertextualities

Readers encountering the Middle English Arthurian tradition are confronted by three texts with confusingly similar titles: an anonymous poem in alliterative verse called Morte Arthure, an anonymous poem in eight-line stanzas entitled Le Morte Arthur, and Sir Thomas Malorys influential prose Arthuriad, LeMorte Darthur [sic]. To add to the confusion, Malory made use of both English poems to augment his French sources in composing his Morte Darthur, so specialists often speak of two or more of these English Mortes in the same breath. Yet each Morte poem deserves to be studied on its own merits. Arthurian Intertextualities offers new readings of Malorys Morte as well as the two English poems that most influenced him. Tolhurst and Whetter situate Malorys Arthur story in the context of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England. Combining these contexts with intertextual analysis of scenes and characters from Le Morte Darthur and both sources, the authors illustrate the full extent of Malorys debt to these two English poems while making a stronger case for Malorys artistryand the stanzaic-poets artistrythan previous scholarship has acknowledged. These new readings demand a reassessment of Arthurian women, kingship, and warfare and heroism, including reconsidering the alliterative-poets attitude to war and to Arthur as conqueror. The authors also offer a spirited defense of Malorys Guenevere, who remains frequently maligned by scholars, and argue for Palomydess acceptance by his Round Table Fellowship. Arthurian Intertextualities will appeal to readers who are interested in the book that serves as the source for most of the Arthuriana (whether novels, plays, works of art, or films) in todays world: Le Morte Darthur.