Point out specific instances of Malory's comic treatment of King Mark, Dynadin, and others, and comment on how humor modifies Malory's overall tone.
Discuss Malory's narrative method, commenting on his apparent lack of interest in chronology of the sort usually found in the modern novel; his juxtaposition of plots and situations which serve to comment upon one another; his fondness for presenting crucial events offstage (such as the murders of Lot, Pellanor, Tristram, and Lamerok).
Malory's narrative tone is very strange to readers now because of the utter difference in style between today's writing and his. Today we are all about showing, and letting the reader see a specific scene and situation through full and rich description. Sometimes action can even become secondary and pages can be filled with descriptions of surroundings. In Malory it is the opposite, he writes only the facts, as if recording for a ledger or time line. In contrast, he can go pages with hardly any description, listing small details and minor characters that would certainly be omitted if this tale was written today.
ReplyDeleteMalory seems unconcerned with chronology. His stories seem to overlap in time period, or sometimes not indicate a time frame whatsoever. I think that this has less to do with the author's writing than our reading. La Morte D'Arthur is a collection of stories who happen to involve basically the same characters. However, I don;t think they are more connected than that. Chronology is not important because each story is it's own little capsule, operating under it's own time frame. Malory also likes to overlap plots and story lines. This is an element that any collector of oral myths has to face. Each character has so many side stories and other elements that shaped who he is and who he will be that it is impossible to remain on a purely linear story line. For the story to make sense to the reader as it did to the listener who already new the biographies of each character, these other plots must be included. So far, I have given explanations as to why Malory wrote the way he did, but the last aspect I cannot understand.
His fondness of presenting crucial element off stage confounds me. Surely medieval audiences would have liked to hear about these events? Especially in a tale all about doing and actions, these critical actions would have the most effect of all. I have no answer.
In modern novels, "show not tell" is the writer's mantra. A list of events wouldn't even qualify as adequate notes. However, Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur seems more like a timeline than anything else. Actually, it's like a jumbled time squiggle because none of the stories seem to match up chronologically. I think we've come to the conclusion that each chapter was written/told seperately, then put together to create this "novel". I think that the reason Malory doesn't care about chronology is because the tales are supposed to be about very famous people, people that were well known in their time. For the people listening to the stories first-hand, I think they would've known when the characters were around. It seems nonsensical, but the lack of detail adds a sense of richness to the plot. Without any detail, it allows us to really focus on the actions the knights and lords take, which is the point of every story. The small side stories are important because Malory has no other way of connecting each story; even though the characters are generally the same. The side stories were probably taken from each original oral tale, intertwined with other tales, and put into the book. This way, the stories connect with less holes in the "timeline".
ReplyDeleteIn response to Nick/more of my question:
ReplyDeleteI also have no idea why he puts important events offstage. It doesn't really make sense to me; because no matter what story you're listening to, you would want to know all of the details. Otherwise, the story won't really make sense. It almost lessens the importance of the characters when their deaths are put on the back burner. I don't really get it.
In response to the second question: I think that Malory throughout every tale that we have read has put next to no emotion into his writing. There are various instances where a night will die and a lady (who happens to be his lover) will run out of the woods and kill herself with his sord. Even if another night is watching all that has happened, Malory will most likely say something like, "Greatly moved, Sir Balin mounted his horse, and was headed for the forest when he saw his brother..." (p.47) I dont understand how someone could watch a women kill herself and then simply ride away back into the woods. Malory also does not seem to care much at all for the correct timing of events or the most important apsects of them. Long after Merlin had been locked away in a strange magical cave her somehow manages to release a king from captivity. (p. 171)
ReplyDeleteIn response to Sasha: I agree that all the small short stories about nights and Kings help to form a more connected story plot that is easier to understand. I think that if someone has to read this story without any of the small tales the book would be insanely difficult to read and would also be much less enjoyable. Every once in a while throughout the tales that we have read there are short tales that seem completely unconnected to the rest of the story. I think this is most likely beceuse Malory was not the only creater of these tales and probably used many other stories that he had heard to try to make his book more interesting.
ReplyDeleteAnd in response to Sasha: I agree that many of the short tales that are mixed into the larger ones are used to help make the story more connected and easier to understand and read. I also think that Malory did not write this entire tale by himself and that by mixing in these short subplots would help to make it seem as if all the stories actually work perfectly together. Every once in while there are some simple tales of a knight or a king that seem completely unconnected from the rest of the tales. I think this is just because even thought Malory tried to make these tales smooth and connected he wasnt comepletly successful.
ReplyDeleteIn response to the second question: Malory's narrative style is one of the weirdest and most hard to follow styles that i have ever read. Throughout the book there has been almost no connection from story to story. I think it is an interesting idea to not have a coherent story line, however it makes it incredibly hard to follow. I belive that Malory was fond of all these stories so he decided to compile them all in a book even if there is no tie between any of them. One thing that i have noticed about many of the tales is how nonchalont he is about killing off important charachters or even entire armies. He often refers in one or two lines about the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of men. In many other stories battles of that magnitude would take up a large chunk of the book, but in Le Morte d'Arthur wars of this size take up merely two lines. Another odd thing that Malory does is he often kills off very important charachters without ever really bringing attention to it. For instace he kills of Tristram and the reader barely even knows that it happens. The narrative style used by Malory makes Le Morte d'Arthur and interesting yet hard to follow story.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Teddy: I agree that Malory's style of showing emotion is very un-emotional. He often kills off important charachters without even really drawing attention to it. One example i can remember is when Balin and Balan who are brothers accidentaily fight eachother fiercely. As they are both lying on the ground dying the remove their helmets and realize that they had been tricked into killing eachother. Now if i had just hacked my beother almost to death, i would be pretty surprised and horrified, these two knights however seem un phased. They accept their fate and die together. I think it was a good call that you pointed out Malory's lack of emotion in his tale.
To respond to the first question, I think that it is fair to say that on pretty much every other page of this book there have been things that our class has found humorous. From mischievous dwarfs to pointless knightly battles, Sir Malory has entertained us with the actions of chivalrous knights for quite some time. However, this question is tricky to answer because it is unclear how much of this humor is intentional. Reading these stories in the 21st century are most likely very different from how people read them when the book came out. While we find the chivalrous battles to be hilarious, Sir Malory probably did not mean that to happen.
ReplyDeleteFor example, most of the battles in these stories follow a specific formula. One knight challenges another knight, they unhorse each other and then proceed to fight for a few hours. Next, one knight asks the other his name, he tells him, and they fight some more. Either one knight then kills the other, or they both get tired and kiss each other, becoming brothers for the rest of their lives. I bet that Sir Malory did not mean for this formula to be so ubiquitous and funny, but now that knightly chivalric behavior is not so common we find it hilarious.
However, there are certainly some explicit cases of humor that Malory uses intentionally, such as his exploitation of the relationship between King Mark and Sir Tristram. King Mark and Tristram originally get along very well, but once a woman gets in the mix they come to dislike each other. We come to see King Mark as a jealous old man who uses Tristram to get what he wants. An example is on page 193 when Sir Palomides comes and demands King Mark's wife (which I found again to be very funny) and King Mark has confidence that Tristram will get her back for him, even though he knows Tristram loves her. For me, this change in tone just makes the book seem less and less serious; but I think that Malory also wished to make the book entertaining by being humorous.
In response to question 2, I would agree with many who have said that, unsurprisingly, the style and chronology of La Morte d'Artur is extremely odd. It appears that in that time period, actual events (including the act of recounting those events) were more important than hypotheses and inferences that readers may make. For example, instead of Malory tantalizing the reader into making their own opinions and inferences about the text, he simply tells the reader what happened. Unfortunately, it seems that chronology wasn't a very big deal to Malory either, as some of the tales seem to be out of order. For example, as Clark pointed out in class, at the beginning of one tale when chronologically Merlin should be imprisoned, Merlin actually comes and saves a knight. Little blunders in chronology like that seem to have almost no import to Malory - in my opinion, he must have known he included them yet didn't decide to omit them for whatever reason. Another thing that seems confusing to modern day readers is the omission of some important events from the story line. There are some cases in the book where, out of the blue, we find out that someone has been killed yet we never knew about it before. Tying back into the first part of my comment, I think that this also indicates a skewed chronology because something that happened earlier was simply not put in but then comes back later to confuse readers.
ReplyDeleteIn response to Clark, I would say that I agree in that it's tough to know from a modern standpoint whether or not Malory intended for some parts of his book to be humorous. Perhaps the inclusion of Dwarves and odd, random battles between knights were interspersed throughout the book to add some humor. However, my personal opinion is that people of the time probably believed more in far-fetched things like Dwarves, so I feel like Malory was simply writing with the style of that time period and not trying to be funny. After all, the overall tone of the book is certainly not one of comedy.
In response to the first question:
ReplyDeleteLike Clark I feel that although, Mallory's writing style is quite humorous, he did not intend for any of the things that I laughed at to be funny. His broken writing style and repeated use of story-lines indicate that he is not a great writer, and his obvious lack of subtlety in the area of plot development suggests to me that he would not be able to incorporate these subtle jokes about knights into his tales on purpose. More likely, many stories about knights were very similar in Mallory's time, including motiff's like random battles, maidens being kidnapped, and dwarfs aiding and hindering the protagonists. Then when Mallory combined all of the stories in Le Morte D'Arthur into one book, he simply applied his weak storytelling ability to each tale, and what resulted was a collection of works that are confused, and very rigid and uninspired.
In response to Clark, I'm not sure what you mean by saying that the development in the relationship between Tristram and King Mark is Mallory's idea of a joke. It seems to me that he is commenting on the power that women have over men when it comes to love. Or perhaps he is just showing that Mark is not Tristram's true friend because he betrays him by marrying his woman. Of course it's entirely possible that Mallory does intend this as a joke and i just don't get it. I don't seem to get most of what he says anyways.
ReplyDeleteTo respond to Joe, I'll rephrase what I meant by the relationship between Tristram and King Mark being humorous. I didn't mean to say that Sir Malory created their relationship as a joke, he created it so that it was so ironic that it almost makes you laugh. Sir Tristram grows up emulating his uncle King Mark, but all of this changes immediately once a woman comes into their lives that they both love. They come to hate each other, but King Mark still trusts Tristram to fulfill many tasks for him (like on page 193) and Tristram still wishes to respect his uncle. I just found this situation to be humorous, since their reasoning doesn't make much sense. (and I agree that it is hard to understand a lot of what Malory is saying)
ReplyDeleteThe method Malory uses in his collection of tales is quite different then the one we are used to today. Today we are used to added detail and more of and expanded plot; however, Malory's collection is more of a list of events. In Malory's story there is a lot more action then in a normal story. If these had been written out in the way that stories are written today I assume it would be insanely long. This allows us to focus on and hear about more action instead of the "extras". Another aspect is that he seems to ignore chronology (we know this because people keep popping up i.e. Merlin, and certain things happen out of order). However, this happens in stories written today as well, but often this time change is addressed with a little caption that says "two months ago". However, Malory's inconsistency with the timeline is for a different reason: it just doesn't seem to matter whether or not the tales are in order chronologically because as Sasha said the tales are about specific famous knights, not one person or one subject.
ReplyDeleteLike others, I'm having a hard time figuring out why Malory presents the crucial events off stage. Perhaps, it allows him to make the simple jousting matches seem important? I'm not really sure. Like others I would assume that the people hearing this story would want to hear about these important events.
Malory might connect different stories and have characters in multiple stories to make the tale flow more. There is so much to tell about each character that the side stories and the connections in plots allow to tell more then just in the characters specific story.
In response to Sasha/Nike:
ReplyDeleteI agree that it seems confusing that Malory doesn't put such crucial events on stage because people would want to hear about these details. I also agree that Malory's tales are much drier and much less exciting and detail filled as the stories today. Also, the lack of detail does force us to notice the action instead of the details of relationships or the surroundings.
In response to question 2, Malory's narrative method defies any sense of chronology, is obsessed with events as opposed to descriptions, and is very idealized and unrealistic.
ReplyDeleteFor starters, the chronology is seriously messed up, making the reader feel like these tales were compiled from different sources rather than written as one piece. Merlin pops up occasionally throughout the tales, even though he was supposed to be imprisoned in a cave. Also, knights are born well after King Arthur becomes king, but he somehow remains king their whole lives, even though he should be getting very old.
As Clark said, the battles between knights are very formulaic and unrealistic, as are most of the plot devices, such as the countless royal ladies in distress, and the many random quests and adventures that happen to each knight, which distract from the main story. There are so many random events that are explained with such brevity, the reader gets bogged down in the bad writing, and the plot changes so quickly that the reader must maintain painstaking attention to what they are reading. Also, truly important events, such as the deaths of knights such as Tristram, Pellinore, and Lamorak, don't happen in any of the tales, but are referenced, which makes the story all the more confusing.
Another part of Malory's bad writing is his idealization of every character. Every knight is called "the strongest in the land", every women is beautiful, and their are always dwarves running around serving knights. There is no physical description of any character, and their is little character development. Characters are either good or bad; the characterization is very black-and-white.
In response to Clark:
I completely agree with your description of the duels between knights, and the fact that it becomes humorous when every fight follows the same formula. I also found it ridiculous that knights would behead each other in these fights, even though they have never met before and have no real quarrel.
(Second question)
ReplyDeleteMalory's narrative method is interesting in it's extreme differences from an average modern day narrative. Also, in the prologue to Le Morte D'Artuhur it talks about a common style of the time being embroidery of a sentence with details until it no longer even made sense. I thought that was strange considering that Malory uses so little embroidery of details. It also seems strange to me that he would describe emotion in such an unemotional way, and that he would present crucial events offstage, such as the deaths of such major characters as Pellanor, Tristram, and Lamerok, as if they were unimportant. He metnions things in the text that are unimportant to the progression of the story, which would not be done in modern stories. He also seems to be unconcerned with the chronology of the stories, as merlin seems to continue to fix situations despite the fact that he was trapped in a cave/died earlier in the book, which is probably the product of the stories being pieced together.
We generally assume that the narrative order of a story is under the control of the author. This is certainly true now, when an author can easily insert text into previous chapters and write retrospectively. In the time of Thomas Malory, however, paper was expensive and writing more elaborate and time consuming. It may have been that Malory did not foresee the necessity of certain details, the deaths of key characters for instance, while he was writing the relevant part of the story, but only later. Malory may therefore considered it a wast of time to go back and rewrite his stories when he could simply make a note of an event after it happened.
ReplyDeleteAdditionally, Malory was writing fairly recently after the advent of the printing press. It may be that Malory hoped to preserve in print some of the details of Arthurian legends at the expense of consistency. In this case, wile Malory's stories were intended to be entertaining, Malory may also have considered himself some kind of historian, and Le Morte d'Arthur a historical anthology. This would explain the inconsistencies between some of the tales.
In response to Joe:
ReplyDeleteI agree that his choppy writing style is funny. I haven't actually read any other stories from the time, but it would make sense to me that many of the elements such as random battles are similar. I wonder if Malory's book was seen as really excellent at the the time it was published or what
In response to Teddy,
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you - that Malory's knights are quite unemotional. I think that the reason behind this may be that when the tales were translated form oral stories to written stories, the emotional expression conveyed by the story teller's tone is lost. Malory may not have known how to express these in print. Oh, and my other post was in response to the second question.
(2nd Question)
ReplyDeleteMalory has a very unique narrative method. Many important event occur off stage, his writing is all business and no embellishments, and the chronology is messed up.
In K.A, some critical events happen offstage, such as the death of King Pellinore. I can't really think of a reason for it. Perhaps the death scenes weren't included in the original tales, but were needed in Malory's retelling, and he simply didn't bother to write it up himself. I know that in Greek theater events like murders didn't happen onstage, sometimes to better showcase the effects of killing and not the actual act. However, I don't think that's the case for Malory, because he doesn't spend a lot of time talking about anything other than the events themselves.
Malory doesn't seem to be concerned with any details or extra fluff, he just states what happened and moves on. There also isn't a lot of character development, and some of the events are unrealistic. For example, Arthur's complete acceptance of the Questing Beast, no questions asked. How could anyone not ask some questions about that?
The chronology is also kind of messed up. Some characters pop up at random, and Merlin helps out even though he's supposed to be dying in a sealed cave. There doesn't seem to be a sense of time either, Arthur and his knights are eternally young and go on an impossible number of quests.
In response to Aaron:
ReplyDeleteThat's a really good reason for Malory's inconsistancy- he wanted to get all that he could on paper and printed up for others to read. That could explain his apparent lack of editing.
In response to the second question:
ReplyDeleteI agree, Malory's writing style is quite confusing, especially in comparison with modern day writing. We are used to reading things with a lot of details, with stories told in chronological order without overlap or skipping around. But Malory jumps all over the place without explaining if he's going forward or backward in time. I think it's just a bunch of stories he heard and put together at random. He also uses almost no detail. As several people have already said, it's like a timeline, with just the bare bones of the story without too much detail, but crazy timeline with the dates out of order. Whatever details he gives seem kind of unimportant, while he leaves out some very important details, which I thought was really weird to us, but may have been common during Malory's time. It probably made more sense if you knew all the stories already and just had the book to have all of them in one place.
In response to Aaron:
I agree, the emotion may have been lost when the stories were written instead of told. It's a lot easier to convey emotion when you're telling a story. It's possible that Malory may have written what he heard in the style that he heard it, which was emotional to listen to but not as a written story.
One instance where Malory mocks King Mark, is seen on page 182. He feels guilty about his action against Sir Tristram. However, it is funny that Tristram “was ignorant of his having been his principal assailant.” All of King Mark’s plans are undermined by Sir Tristram. He orders Tristram to fetch Iseult as his wife, however the plan back fires and instead Tristram is given the noblelady. King Mark is completely oblivious of the love between Tristram and Iseult. Malory’s humor can be seen as ironic, as Tristram had looked up to King Mark only to compete and ultimately outshine his uncle. In response to Clark, I also find this question difficult to answer. What may have been seen as noble and brave may seem out right silly to us, such as the numerous battles these knights engage in with each other.
ReplyDelete2nd Question:
ReplyDeleteTo us Malory's way of writing is very strange. We are used to description being a huge part of the literature we read, and we depend on it to further our understanding of the text and enable us to interpret the text in different ways. Nowadays a book would never be popular if it lacked description as does Malory's. In fact, while reading Le Morte D'Arthur, we find it funny how characters just randomly appear and there is no real sense of time. This might have not mattered so much in Malory's time though. Imagination might have been used more back then, or, maybe, these tales were more likely to be told aloud, so the teller might have put in more details. I don't think that the lack of detail necessarily means that Malory is a poor writer though. Our standards are probably just very different from those back then.
In response to Sasha:
I also think that it is very probable that the reason why Malory didn't put too much description was because the people hearing these stories probably already had an idea of the characters in the stories, as they were probably well known.