Friday, November 20, 2009
Question of the Week (11/20/09)
It has sometimes been argued that Le Morte d'Arthur was not originally intended as a unified legend, but was merely a sequence of unrelated tales. What arguments can be advanced for and against an interpretation of Malory's tales as coherent legend? Post and respond by Sunday.
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It is ambiguous if Le Morte D'Arthur is a collection of separate stories or not. On one hand the characters throughout the book seem rather well established and previous events are quite often referenced in the book. Also, characters maintain particular character traits throughout the stories we have read- like Arthur being young a fool hardy at the beginning. The style of the stories is also quite consistent, with lots of emphasis on the participants in battles and very little description. On the other hand there are small inconsistencies that suggest different authors. For example, after we are introduced to Arthur we learn about his battle with Lucius. In this story Launcelot plays a big role, while in Arthur's tale he was still a child. Maybe there is no description of him being knighted etc... because two different authors wrote the text. Our best guess might be something in between. Its possible that Mallory collected all the works from different sources and then made small modifications or wrote transitions to bring the whole thing together
ReplyDeleteI think that the most convincing evidence that the tales were not written together is the fact that The Legend of King Arthur and The Tale of King Arthur and Emperor Lucius tell the story of the Roman ambassadors separately and inconsistently. The Legend of King Arthur says that the ambassadors came while Merlin was still alive (or at least not entombed), and does not say Arthur goes to war with the Romans as a result of their visit (pg. 40). However The Tale of King Arthur and Emperor Lucius relates this story differently, and with different dialogue (pg. 95). Other examples of inconsistent redundancy of this nature include the number of times Lancelot establishes his fighting ability, and the two conflicting descriptions of Arthur's acquisition of Excalibur. Such inconsistencies generally do not exist in coherent story lines, and thus indicate that Le Morte d'Arthur was not written as a single story. Furthermore, the multiple authorships of the tales suggest that there was no coordination in their construction.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, the characters are consistent throughout the tales, with constant personality traits and constant weaknesses. There are global themes that are applied throughout Le Morte d'Arthur. There are no radical changes in the government, time period, or writing style of the tales. These would suggest that the tails were written or rewritten at some degree for consistency. Additionally, the fact that the tales were published together would indicate that the author thought that they belonged together. Although this doesn't change the conflicting nature of the tales, this would suggest that Mallory wanted the tales read together.
I think that the arthurian tales are certainly related to each other, but, like Greek myths, do not combine to produce a consistent narrative.
In response to Nick,
ReplyDeleteSorry that my comment sounds a lot like yours, I wrote it without seeing yours and then didn't post it for a while. I agree with what you said. It also turns out that two authors did write the two tales. In fact, Malory only wrote some of the content, plagiarized most of it, and adapted some more tales to fit in.
It seems to me that the tales were written separately and then pieced together by a single author, because each story is so complete. In an epic novel like the Lord of the Rings, each chapter of the book contains some important event, but on its own it means nothing. The chapters of this book are each related because they share similar characters, and ideas, but they aren't all part of an overarching storyline. I think that if a single author had written the whole book, he would have made the whole set of stories part of one greater story, instead of just a sequence of smaller tales to do with King Arthur and his Knights.
ReplyDeleteI also think that we can find evidence for this argument in the writing style used by SirThomas Mallory. At times he uses extremely scant description in a section of the story that you would think would merit extensive detail. It seems likely to me that this could be the result of Mallory retelling stories told by someone else without having known or remembered the whole story. If he was simply piecing together stories from other authors or even bards, it makes sense that the whole "Le Morte D'Arthur" would not be totally coherent.
There is both evidence for and against the tales being written together as one legend. The biggest piece of evidence that shows they were meant to be one is the consistency of the characters. Throughout the legend the characters remain the same as well as their characteristics. King Arthur is always portrayed as young. This gives the impression that they may have been written together. Also the tales or legends have the same writing style and vocabulary, which also suggests that they were written at least in the same time period. On the other hand, there are slight inconsistencies throughout the legend. For example, (as Aaron also pointed out) the two ways that Arthur may of obtained Excalibur. Also, there is a different between the amount of detail in the tales. Sometimes there is a lot of specific details but others are just lists of events. In my opinion, the tales could have been written together, but the similarities could also be due to changes made by the author.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Joe:
ReplyDeleteI agree that despite the similarities of the characters, it is not enough to prove that they were written together because the character's personalities are not extremely crucial to the plot. Also, I agree that if Malory was piecing together the stories they would not flow perfectly.
In response to Aaron
ReplyDeleteThats a really interesting discrepancy between tales you found about those roman messangers. I think that really refutes completely the idea that the stories could have been written by a single author.
Also in response to the response to Nick:
It makes sense that Mallory changed some stories to fit into his larger work, because there are plenty of examples of things tie the tales all together, but seem to be very forced and unrelated to the events occurring at the time. For example, in the Tale of King Arthur, when Merlin randomly makes a bunch of predictions about battles that will take place on some specific spot, or people who will be killed by other specific people. This could be evidence of Mallory attempting to thread his stories all into one, but not really giving any reason for it.
While I have been reading Le Morte d'Arthur, I would tend to lean towards believing that Malory wrote these as seperate stories, because many of the stories don't relate to previous ones, and give facts that aren't carried on throughout the stories. In the introduction of this book, Graves says that Malory wrote this book because many of the nobles believed that "King Arthur should be remembered among Englishmen before all other Christian kings"(xi). I don't know if this is necessarily true information, but if this was true, then Malory didn't write this book for people to read as a story necessarily, but more as a historical account of King Arthur's greatness. Also in the introductions Graves says that Malory's sources were "several Norman-French romances and an English alliterative epic, Morte Arthur" (xi). This means that Malory didn't get his tales from the same source, so maybe there was some contradiction between the sources. But since it is really hard to know whether much of the information we have today from Malory's time period is true, we have no way of truly being sure of what Malory's intentions were with this book.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Megan:
I agree that there are also many signs that point to this tale being one whole tale. I agree that the fact that King Arthur is portrayed as young and the style of the writing are two very big and important clues.But could this just have been coincidence?
I agree with many people who have tended to lean towards the inclination that La Morte d'Arthur was a collection of separate tales that were pieced together by one common author. There are a couple of strong points of evidence for this view: the fact that many tales don't relate to each other at all, the inconsistency in different accounts, and the lack of detail in certain sections. The first thing that I noticed when reading these tales is that although many of them have the same characters, most of their content and conclusions don't tie into or have any effect on the other tales in the book. This would indicate that they were simply pieced together by the author into a substantial novel. We also note, as was said earlier by Nick and Aaron, that some tales such as the Tale of Arthur and Lucius have different accounts depending on who has told them. This would indicate that they weren't all written together, but that it was a single tale that was subject to change over time. Finally, I noted the apparent lack of detail in some sections of the book where I expected there to be more detail, and an extensive amount of detail in sections where I felt the detail was inconsistent with the rest of the tales. This, again, tells me that the tales were pieced together and that some tales told had more detail throughout than others. This accounts for the varying amounts of detail in the different tales.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Gaia when she said that we really have no way of saying which one it is, because of the lack of historic events written down at that time. It could be that we are reading the signs wrong, and that they were all written by one author, but all we can do now is to speculate and give opinions on the matter.
Responding to Megan's thoughts, I think that it is a good point that there is a possibility that they were written as a whole tale, but I feel like the style of writing was probably fairly consistent throughout that time period. Also I think that King Arthur was probably a prominent figure during that time period, so many people who told tales about him would know that he was young so we wouldn't see any inconsistencies there.
As with most of the people in our class I believe that the story of King Arthur and his knights (who sit at a round table), was most likely made up from a nuber of tales that were written by multiple people or were put together by Malory from tales that he had heard. I also think that since each story works so well on its own and doesnt need the support of the others they might have been written by different people and them later pieced together. Because King Arthur and the stories about him are so debatable I think that any long written work about him is not going to be perfect and will have apects to it that just dont work well. Many stories that were written hundreds of years ago do not work perfectly together because the have often been changed throughout the years. The bible is a perfect example because there are multiple examples in the book where sections of the first testament cause conflicts with the second testament.
ReplyDeleteNow in response to Joe:
ReplyDeleteI like how Joe compared these tales to the Lord of the Rings becuase it clearly illistrates how much these tales are sepperate from the entire story. I think that if Malory had written/created these tales himself, they would work better together and not cause so many weird conflicts between them and inconsistancies with the details of the story.
Reading the tales in Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, I definitely felt that the stories seemed to be written by different authors. As many people have said already, the tales often don't relate to each other all. It seems that the compiler of the story placed each tale where it made the most sense chronologically. However, reading the preface to the story, Keith Baines clears up a lot of these questions. He says that he wished to retell each tale in his own words, "clarifying those episodes which for the purpose in hand, seemed obscure, and condensing those which seemed prolix. He also says he doesn't deliberately omit any facts in the story, distort the characters, or add any material of his own invention. What I got from this is that Keith Baines took the classic rendition that Sir Malory wrote, and just tried to make it as concise as he could without changing the story.
ReplyDeleteI would argue for many reasons that people have already mentioned that different authors wrote the stories. There are also great arguments saying that the same author wrote them Aaron, I really liked what you said about the Roman ambassadors, I hadn't thought about that before you mentioned it. That is an excellent argument saying that different authors wrote them. The fact the characters stay the same throughout and that the vocab is similiar is an argument for one author.
Joe, I liked what you said about Sir Malory retelling the stories he had heard from other people without knowing the story. This makes a lot of sense after reading the paragraph on the first page about Sir Malory, it says that he wrote Le Morte D'Arthur while imprisoned in Newgate. This means that he would have had to tell the whole story himself, because he was in jail!!
Personally, I think that there is a stronger argument for the tales having been written separately than having been written as one tale. Every chapter of the book has a completely new theme or topic. Although the characters are consistent, there is no connective thread among the chapters other than King Arthur or the Knights of the Round Table. Even within each tale the events jump around quite a bit. Details are infrequent and even the nature of each character seems to change from tale to tale. It's almost as if reading an entirely new book once you change chapters. However, the fact that the characters show up repeatedly throughout the book is an argument for the tale being written as a whole. Each character, although they change rather frequently, does seem fairly consistent throughout the book. It makes the most sense to me that the tales were written separately because each tale seems to take on a different point of view from the writer's perspective. I think that there is really no way of knowing because there have been so many years of changes and translations of the text. The original stories could be completely different than what we read today. I think that the only thing we can do is try and support our guesses.
ReplyDeleteIn response to joe:
ReplyDeleteI agree that it seems logical that Malory was just piecing together stories. If he had written them all down himself, each story would flow into the next. In the actual book, the stories aren't cohesive and seem almost random. It makes sense that there would be holes in the stories where the original versions had been lost.
I think that Le Morte d'Arthur is a series of unrelated tales, pieced together by a single author. I think this because each chapter has it's own beginning and it's own end, which i think is the most important clue to the answer of this question. There are also, as aaron said, some small inconsistancies.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I can also see some ways in which it seems to be a single legend. The writing style of each tale, particularly in the lack of description, is very consistent through out the chapters. The chapters also include characters that were introduced in previous chapters. Some of these reoccuring characters include Merlin, Morgan La Fay, Sir Gawain, and Sir Lancelot, all of whom have consistent personality traits.
In response to Gaia:
ReplyDeleteI liked the evidence you used to prove that it was several tales pieced together. Especially the part about the,"several Norman-French romances and an English alliterative epic, Morte Arthur" (xi). I think that is very solid evidence.
I'm not exactly sure, but it seems like it's just a collection of tales that he heard and just put together. He may have heard them from different people or just remembered them in different amounts of detail because while some are very detailed, some just give the main ideas of the stories. Some are written as stories while some just seem to be listing off facts. All the characters always seem to be act the same way and have done the same things, without too many discrepancies except for the two different stories about how Arthur got Excalibur, as Aaron and Megan said.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Sasha:
I agree with you, even the writing style seems to change from story to story. I think the author has just taken whatever he's heard or even ones that he has written and put them together. There really isn't much of a connection between any of the tales.
Malory's Le Mort d'Arthur can be interpreted as both a cohesive story, or as a series of stories written in an episodic fashion. Those who say it is one epic story can point out that usually at the beginning of each tale, there is a little transitional phrase saying something like "after the events of the previous story, this happened". Although these stories most likely came from different sources, Malory has pulled them all together in his work. Also, the fact that Merlin's prophecies foretell events that will occur later in the story suggests that all the tales are meant to be regarded as one story.
ReplyDeleteHowever, those who argue that Le Mort d'Arthur is meant to be a collection of unrelated tales which all concern King Arthur and his court would most likely point out that the incredible attention to minute details in the plot of each tale suggests that they were written as individual short stories. Also, there is no character development at all, no physical descriptions, just a listing of events that happened, showing how the tales are based around the individual stories, not overarching characters.
In response to Nick:
I agree with you in saying that there are discrepancies between different parts of the text. I agree with you in that Malory probably collected these tales from a variety of sources and wrote them all as one story, having to make small modifications to correct the timeline errors between the different accounts.
Personally, I think that Le Morte d'Arthur is a group of unrelated tales. I don't see enough cohesion between the tales for them to be a part of a larger picture. One story will hardly ever reference another and there isn't a ton of character (or relationship) development. Also, the style that the tales are written in can vary slightly, but none of them have a lot of description of events. Each story is simply about getting from point A to point B and so on.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I guess that one could view the stories as showing different aspects of Arthur's life, and and when read together they give a full picture. Sort of like a bunch of highlights. But then again, Arthur doesn't undergo any sort of change from one tale to another, so maybe not.
In response to Aaron, Nick, and Joe
ReplyDeleteThat was a nice call there, pointing out the discrepancies between the tales, and the half-hearted attempt Mallory made to piece them all together. However, I wonder why Mallory didn't pay more attention to detail when he was editing them all together. You'd think that he would spend a little more time making the major plot twists the same throughout the tales, if he meant them to be read together.
Throughout what we have read so far, i belive that Le Morte De Arthur is just a stringing together of a bunch of un realted stories. The stories may sem related but that is only because many of them menion the same or similar characters. For instance Arthur is in many of them obviously, Lancelot shows up in many of the tales, and i have noticed that Morgan la Faye shows up quite a bit. I think that Malory may have been trying in his mind to connect them, although the original stories were not connected at all.
ReplyDeleteIn response to:
I Like your comparasin to the lord of the rings. I really liked how you made the point that each character has their own story, yet they all fit together coherently.