Interior Monologue in Malory

PAUL R. ROVANG, Malory's Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur. Madison and Teaneck: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2015. Pp. xxi, 201. isbn: 978-1-61147-778-8. $75In Malory's Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur, Paul R. Rovang offers the first book-length study of Malory's art of characterization to be published since Robert Henry Wilson's exemplary 1934 study Characterization in Malory: A Comparison with His Sources. Rovang offers fifteen chapters that discuss sixteen Malorian characters: Arthur, Mark, Gawain, Lancelot, Tristram, Galahad and Perceval, Gareth, Kay, Dinadan, Mordred, Palomides, Guenevere, Isolde, Morgan le Fay, and The Lady of the Lake. Rovang's book differs from both Dorsey Armstrong's 2003 Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Kenneth Hodges' 2005 Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory's Le Morte Darthur in that it focuses on individual characters rather than groups of characters. It also differs from Beverly Kennedy's 1985 Knighthood in the Morte Darthur in two ways: it examines monarchs and women as well as knights, and it focuses on the development rather than the classification of Malory's characters. Rovang does not engage in source study; instead, he 'examines Malory's thematic characterization of individual rulers, knights, and ladies in keeping with the twin trajectories of his history of the Round Table and contemporary English history' (xv).By presenting a series of separate yet related studies of Malory's characters as either positive or negative examples of or influences on chivalry, Rovang reflects what Le Morte Darthur is: a 'history of the Round Table [containing] a series of self-contained yet closely related tales' that provide readers with models of virtue and vice (xvii). Rovang uses these studies to demonstrate how kings, knights, and female figures contribute to the creation, undermining, and inevitable destruction of the chivalric ideal that Arthur's Round Table fellowship embodies. As he studies an impressively large number of Arthurian characters, the author engages in close-reading of Malory's book and frequent citation of literary criticism on Le Morte Darthur that make this work an insightful and useful introduction for students.Most Malory specialists will readily accept Rovang's conclusion that Malory's Morte Darthur engages readers today because it develops 'flawed, believable, flesh-and-blood characters . . . [that] exemplify different facets and varieties of . …

THE account of Merlin's disappearance from the world most often repeated is that he was imprisoned by the woman he loved after having taught her all the magic art that she desired to know. All the major versions in medieval literature, except the Vulgate Merlin Sequel, identify the woman in question as the Lady of the Lake,I and all but the Prophecies de Merlin provide another name as well, written with several spellings that seem to be scribal variations of each other.2 It has become convenient to call the Lady of the Lake Niniane as she appears in the Vulgate Lancelot and the Suite du Merlin, Viviane in the Vulgate Sequel, and in Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur.3 As the object of Merlin's fatal love the Lady of the Lake has achieved notoriety, but it is necessary to remind readers that she is by no means generally represented in medieval fiction as evil and that her place in Arthurian legend is not confined to being the cause of Merlin's disappearance. Malory's Nymue especially does not fit the label wiley temptress inevitably applied to Merlin's lover, and even more than her counterparts is worth being recognized in the fullness of the roles given her. Although scholars have not been blind to Nymue's presence in Le Morte Darthur, the attention has been incidental. After the last generation of sorting out issues, Malory criticism can now afford, among other things, to peer at Malory's echelon of minor characters as something besides clues to sources, chronology, biography, or unity. Those who appraise Le Morte Darthur for its storytelling should benefit from an ampler acquaintance with Nymue, for she is a sturdy, memorable adjunct in the supporting cast that enriches this work's narrative world. The focus of tte present essay, then, is Nymue, its object to define what she is like, viewed not merely in the

This paper concerns the narrative logic behind the disregard for the life of King Arthur’s opponent in the seventeenth-century ballad of King Arthur and King Cornwall. It approaches its subject through comparisons with the last book of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, Le pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Le petit Poucet, Jack and the Beanstalk and the History of Mother Twaddle, and the Marvellous Atchievements [sic] of her Son Jack. It argues that by associating Arthur’s rival, King Cornwall, with magic objects and a fire-breathing creature called Burlow Beanie, as well as placing Cornwall’s domain away from Arthur’s, the ballad marks Cornwall as ‘other’ and, in so doing, implies that ordinary moral considerations do not apply when it comes to actions such as the killing of Cornwall. The article additionally argues that a major difference between the ballad and the last book of Le Morte Darthur, where much of the action is driven by factors that also feature prominently in King Arthur and King Cornwall, lies in the fact that in Le Morte Darthur none of the major actors are marked as ‘other’ – highlighting the nature of the tragedy that unfolds as one of destructive internal conflict.

The idea that what happens to people, and what people do, are determined by forces external to themselves was current in the Middle Ages for a number of reasons. These included the vogue for judicial astrology, which suggested that the planets and the stars control both people's conduct and their experiences; people in the Middle Ages were also exposed to texts written in classical antiquity, which posited a world conditioned by the workings of Fate, or the Fates. People who wrote in the Middle Ages often combated the world view subscribed to in such systems of thought. They did so by affirming against it the lesson of Christian theology that the will possessed by human beings is free, and that it is this that determines what happens to people. Following the teachings of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae , they sometimes redefined the concept of Fate, and that of Fortune, assimilating them to Christians' understanding of what it is that determines what happens to individuals. But in some cases, what was asserted instead was God's ability to overpower anything that had been ordained by some predetermining force. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde , as this article discusses, participates in a wider late medieval engagement with the notion that events have been predetermined, associating this idea with the pagan world with which Christian theology of the patristic era identified it. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur , the article argues, contends with the same notion. Malory's text invokes the claim made by other late medieval writers that God can overrule something that has been predetermined, but it simultaneously suggests that what is to happen has been determined by the individuals to whom it is to happen, not predetermined at all. Malory's interest in the subjects of Destiny and Fortune, the essay proposes, is more complex than has been assumed.

The written word in Malory's Morte Darthur, in the form of tomb inscriptions and letter writing, has the power to affect redemption among the characters, author, and readers of the text. (JB) The written word carries particular potency in Malory's Morte Darthur. Writing communicates personal and public messages, memorializes, professes prophecy, spurs change, and even, as I argue here, assists in redemption. Malory incorporates throughout Le Morte Darthur examples of how-in the forms of tomb engravings, letter writing, and even in his own pseudo-epitaph at the end of the book-the written word has potential intercessory power for the character, the text itself, the readers, and even the author. I focus particularly on the redemptive potential of stone inscription in the Morte, most often on tombs, and the power of stone writing to spur reform and change as well as to memorialize, but I also consider the power of the written word to affect redemption in specific examples of letter writing in the Morte. Tombs are sites of interaction between the living and the dead-places meant to teach a secular lesson to the living who pass by about the development and propagation of a chivalric way of life.1 In this view, the function of these tombs is three-fold: first, they commemorate past deeds; second, they predict future ones; and third, they write history in a way that is almost prescriptive, and is certainly instructive, demonstrating the evolution of chivalry. In addition to this combination, there is one further function of these tombs previously ignored by scholars: the redemptive potential of the messages on the tombs, not just for the deceased, but as an active interchange between the reader of the tombs and their occupants. The idea that the written message of the tomb-even the very existence of the tomb itself-can aid redemption is one that is readily present in medieval theology. In fact, the moment of encounter with a Christian tomb is meant to elicit not only memory and consolation, but also pathos and prayer. Elizabeth Valdez del Alamo and Carol Stamatis Pendergast explain how this moment of encounter implies intercession through prayer on the part of and on behalf of both the living and the deceased: The affect of the tomb reliefs reminds visitors and the monastic community to recall the [deceased] in prayer. Through their prayers, the living recall the deceased and ensure their salvation. The dead in heaven intercede on behalf of the living. The salvational exchange between living and dead is fully illustrated here.2 The term 'salvational exchange,' as Valdez del Alamo and Pendergast use it, is perhaps a bit broadly stated. After all, the actual salvation of souls, according to medieval Christian theology, lies not in the hands of either the living or the dead, but in God's judgment alone. Presumably, the dead already have received their judgment and either are damned, serving penance in Purgatory, or blissfully already in Heaven. It is crucial, however, that a potential for exchange exists between the living and the dead. The exchange that occurs as a result of prayer prompted by tomb inscription, then, functions as a means of speeding those in Purgatory on their path toward redemption. Once redeemed, the saved, in exchange, may intercede on behalf of the living so that they may be guided through a righteous life to their own salvation. The ability of the souls of the living and the dead to interact is a crucial part of Christian practice, based in the complex concept of the communio sanctorum as it is found in the Apostles' Creed:3 I believe in the Holy Ghost, The Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, The forgiveness of sins, The resurrection of the body, and Life everlasting.4 Simply put, the communio sanctorum, or the communion of saints, represents the Body of the Church, or all of the faithful (read the living and the dead)5 who participate (or have participated) in the Eucharist and receive baptism. …

Eminent Arthurian: P.J.C. Field K.S. Whetter All Malory scholars, and a good many Arthurian scholars in general, are familiar with the work of Professor P.J.C. Field. Peter is a former President of the International Arthurian Society, former host of a successful Society congress, winner of the North American Branch’s Lacy Award and, most significantly, author of an impressive array of publications exploring various aspects of many different Arthurian (and non-Arthurian) texts and topics. He is certainly an eminent Arthurian. The photograph that accompanies my tribute to Peter was taken at the formal launch of his edition of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, a launch that took place at the September 2013 meeting of the British Branch of the International Arthurian Society, by happy coincidence held at Bangor University, where Peter has made his home for the past fifty years.1 The appearance of this much-anticipated edition is an appropriate occasion to reflect upon Peter’s many accomplishments and his deserved eminence, not just in terms of his scholarly achievements, but also in the regard and affection of those who know him, worldwide. Peter has published interesting and convincing studies of (inter alia) Nennius, Arthur’s battles, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the alliterative Morte Arthure, Chaucer, and The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell. Obviously, however, it is Peter’s work on Malory and the text of the Morte which has won him the most renown. Many of Peter’s textual studies were revised and published together in his Malory: Texts and Sources, but other Malorian highlights include his Romance and Chronicle, a well-regarded monograph on Malory’s prose style, an edition of Tales VII and VIII of the Morte published initially in 1977, the revision of Vinaver’s three-volume critical edition, and the authoritative biography, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory.2 It is a testament to Peter’s integrity that he revised Vinaver’s text in accordance with Vinaver’s principles; that is, he confined himself to correcting manifest errors and updating the notes but refrained from modifying the text or apparatus in any of the substantial ways Peter’s own scholarship had revealed should be done. Thus for many years Malory scholars could glean Peter’s textual-critical conclusions from his own publications, but it is only now, with [End Page 5] the much-anticipated complete edition of the Morte before us, that the scholarly community can at last see the text as Peter reconstructs it. In my opinion, that reconstruction is marvelous. For one thing, the edition itself is very attractive, including the endpapers with the arms of King Arthur juxtaposed against those of Thomas Malory. For another, we have the entire text in one very clean volume, with none of Vinaver’s various brackets detracting from Malory’s words. Finally and most substantially, there is the text itself. Peter has not been shy of modifying readings in either Winchester or Caxton; this is especially so in the contentious Roman War section. Not all textual scholars will agree with such emendation, just as not all scholars agree that the Newbold Revel Malory penned the Morte Darthur; but anyone who disputes the authorship question must rebut the considerable and convincing evidence marshalled by Peter. Likewise, there are also those who still feel that the Caxton Morte Darthur is at least as valid as the text contained in the Winchester manuscript—but anyone who upholds this view must deal with the collective weight of Works, Texts and Sources, and Peter’s introduction to the new edition. The apparatus and commentary are equally authoritative, detailing significant variant readings or scribal corrections, and—to take but one example—managing to offer a clear path through, and some new insights about, the critical debate regarding possible sources for the ‘Healing of Sir Urry.’ Peter’s text of the Click for larger view View full resolution P.J.C. Field with his New Edition of Malory. Photograph Courtesy of Samantha Rayner. [End Page 6] Morte is convincing, even Malorian, and I believe it will rightfully become the standard edition for scholars now and long into the...

96ARTHURIANA acquires the aura of domestic violence, with the unnerving scenes of the father's ultimate violence leading to total destruction of insubordinate family members. The volume is generally thought-provoking, well worth readers' time, and contains some nice surprises in the readings of where family-based violence can be located and by what means the medieval textual tradition reifies and justifies such acts. CH RISIINE M. ROSE Portland State University Stephen h.a. shepherd, ed., Le Morte Darthur or The Hoole Book ofKyngArthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of The Rounde Table: Authoritative Text, Sources and Backgrounds, Criticism. By Sir Thomas Malory. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004. Pp. Iii, 954. isbn: 0-393-97464-2. $17.75. This is quite an unusual volume, for the Norton Critical Editions series to which it belongs. Other medieval volumes in the series have included Beowulf: A Verse Translation (2002, trans. Seamus Heaney, ed. Daniel Donohue), The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue (1989, ed. V. A. Kolve and Glending Olson), and the current editor's own Middle English Romances (1995). The series is particularly useful for undergraduate classes. A volume will typically include cultural documents that help situate the main text in the light ofcontemporary discourses; source materials, ifthere are any; and the editor's choice ofthe most notable critical essays on the text. They can be used, therefore, for an almost complete investigation of a text, given the limitations of a sixteen-week semester. Students can rapidly come to terms with some of the major issues of a text or scries of texts. What makes Shepherd's edition of Le Morte Darthur different from the others is his radical approach to editing the text. Vinaver, in his three-volume edition ofthe text as revised by PJ.C. Field (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990), had presented the text with modern paragraphing, quotation marks, and punctuation, and had divided it into discrete works, as subsequent debate has made so familiar. The shortcomings of Vinaver's text have been amply demonstrated by Helen Cooper who, in her slightly abridged, modern-spelling edition of the Winchester Manuscript (Oxford: Oxford UP 1998) used the manuscript's own method of division (large capitals, blank spaces) as a guide for her own. Shepherd has found a way of reproducing all the features ofthe manuscript in his edition. The double virgules, ignored except in footnotes by every other editor of Malory, are restored in this edition, as paragraph marks. Apart from where there is a double virgule in the manuscript, Shepherd seldom provides a paragraph break in his edition. Even dialogue, sometimes between several characters, is run together in the same paragraph, although Shepherd does use quotation marks to indicate the beginnings and ends of speeches. All the large capitals ofthe manuscript are represented by large capitals in the text. The marginalia, which Vinaver printed in his notes, are here in the margin, in approximately the correct locations. And, what is most remarkable, the red ink used by the scribes to write out personal names is, in Shepherd's text, represented by a black letter typeface. The result is a remarkable reading experience. The lack ofparagraph breaks can be somewhat forbidding—it seems, sometimes, that there is more ink on the page REVIEWS97 than white space—but this is surely the closest we have come yet to an edition of Malory that reproduces for a modern reader what it must have been like to read the Winchester Manuscript in the fifteenth century. It is not an easy read. It is a difficult book to relax with. But, oddly enough, it is a perfect edition ofMalory for reading aloud. That this was most likely the way Malory intended his book to be received has been argued persuasively by Janet Coleman in her book Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval Enghnd and France (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996) and her article 'Reading Malory Aloud in the Fifteenth Century: Aural Reception and Performance Dynamics' (Arthuriana 13.4 [2003]: 48-70). The paragraph-marks that represent the double virgules of the Winchester manuscript break the text up into units that closely resemble what actors call beats, i.e...

Malory represents the idea of Providence to his readers in four ways.

This paper explores the contexts in which the academic books of the future in the arts and humanities (A&H) are being shaped, with the aim of demonstrating how crucial it is that the communities of practice that produce those books continue to work together to build better bridges of understanding and collaboration. There is particular reference to the Arts and Humanities Research Council/ British Library Academic Book of the Future Project (2014–2017) and to a case study of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur.

In the Romantic period, Arthurian material was bowdlerised, repackaged, and reframed for female readers on a new scale and across a variety of print media. This chapter introduces a new portrait of Guinevere in The Lady's Magazine to illustrate how the myth was reshaped for moralising purposes and to fit eighteenth-century models of sensibility. Clara Reeve and Susannah Dobson's early attempts to promote Arthurian romance to female readers demonstrate how Arthurian material was considered to be outside the boundaries of acceptable female knowledge. Particular attention is given to a selection of Thomas Percy's Arthurian ballads produced for young women, while the closing discussion examines how contemporary gender debates influenced the marketing of Romantic editions of Malory's Le Morte Darthur.

A Companion to Chivalry

Journal Article A Different View of the Winchester Manuscript of Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur Get access R. M. Lumiansky R. M. Lumiansky New York University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume ns-34, Issue 2, June 1987, Pages 153–154, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/ns-34.2.153 Published: 01 June 1987

REVIEWS83 sir thomas malory, Le Morte Darthur, Ed., john Matthews. III., anna-marie Ferguson. London: Cassell & Co., 2000. Pp. lxxix, 950. isbn: 0-304-35367-1. $35. A new unabridged illustrated edition ofSir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur is the millennial highlight ofthe British publisher Cassell & Co. Edited byJohn Matthews, it reproduces A.W. Pollard's reader-friendly Le Morte D'arthur (1900) which retained Malory's language in the Caxton text while modernizing spelling and punctuation. Matthews's introduction discusses Arthurian tradition, sources, the two versions of the text, the author's identity and style. The Bibliography lists editions of Malory since 1858 (though omittingJames W. Spisak and William Matthews's Caxton's Malory: Le Morte Darthur [1983]) and cites nine critical works. The apparatus also includes Michael Moorcock's Foreword, A Glossary and Index. The glory ofthis edition lies in the thirty-two soft-toned watercolors and thirtyone black-and-white drawings by Canadian artist Anna-Marie Ferguson, the first woman in five hundred years to illustrate completely Malory's Morte. While much of the text is devoted to battle, joust, and tournament, Ferguson prefers the castle-forest dichotomy of romance which provides, as she tells us in an introductory essay, 'the extraordinary beauty of both image and emotion' and the stratum of ancient myth which has particularly stirred her imagination. No previous Malory illustrator has so dramatically conveyed the immensity ofthe castles and their wilderness setting. From high within Camelots pillared hall we look down on the Round Table as a white hart intertupts Arthur's feast. From a seaside perch our eyes travel past Launcelot's little ship and the rocky shore up the staircase towards the open postern to Corbenic's towers—so lofty that the picture frame cannot contain them. The depth of Launcelot's dungeon is suggested by a long staircase carved from foundation rock down which the four attitude-striking fays descend. This kind of witty definition also affects other characters like the plump, smiling King Pellinore who lolls on a cushioned chair, feet resting on his shield, to await a challenger. The women, a required element ofthe castle milieu, are treated with considerable variety. Aubrey Bcardsley in the Dent Morte (1893) and William Russell Flint in the Medici Society Morte (1910-11) both focused on female characters, the former to satirize chivalry by depicting powerless knights in thrall to fatal women, the latter because beautiful semi-naked women were his favorite subject. Now not only the queens and fays but also secondary characters such as the tortured Bragwaine and even the nameless damsels are given local habitations and distinct personalities without being exploited. Costume is not a period indicator but a key topersonae. Filmy dresses of faerie blue and gold characterize Nimue and the three women whom Gawain meets at the fountain; crimson and gold with cabbalistic ornamentation designate Morgan. Percivale's saintly sister is gowned in the Virgin Mary's blue, the symbol of faith. Isoud's mother displays ancient Celtic dress while Elaine ofAstolat, laid in her barge, wears the kind of flowing Pre-Raphaelite gown of amethyst (mourning) silk with hand-made belt and jewelry that William Morris recommended. 84ARTHURIANA 'Deep' is the adjective that Malory habitually applies to forests, suggesting limitless, uncultivated space, hidden menaces and the kind of density that permits agents of adventure to appear suddenly. Ferguson creates physical density by allowing vegetation to fill the picture plane as in 'Launcelot and the Falcon' or by extending the view beyond the arch of a bridge or a frame of trees. More subtle is her ability to add psychic depth, as in 'The Sword in the Stone.' In the foreground mounted on a circular stone, partly overgrown with vegetation, is the anvil from which pony-tailed Arthur draws Excalibur. In the middle ground, face-shields like ancient Green Men are embedded in oaks beside a guarding knight, hands resting on his cross-like sword. In the distance through arching branches is a cross and the suggestion ofa church— pagan and Christian mysteries cleverly integrated. These are real English forests with magnificent oaks and sycamores, birches and beeches, bracken and brambles that change with the seasons to provide...

The love between Sir Lancelot and Queen Guenevere was the true, virtuous love of the old days, Sir Thomas Malory tells us in Le Morte Darthur. It’s a love that recognizes God above all, from whom comes all honor. “But nowadayes men can nat love sevennyght but they muste have all their desyres,” Malory writes. But the olde love was nat so. For men and women coude love togydirs seven yerys, and no lycoures [lecherous] lustis was betwyxte them, and than was love, trouthe, and faythefulnes. And so in lyke wyse was used such love in kynge Arthurs dayes.1

Reviews 195 Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr. and Jessica Gentry Brogdon, eds., The Social andLiterary Contexts ofMalory's Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies 42), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2000; cloth; pp. xii, 157; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$75.00,£35.00; ISBN 0859915948. Wheeler, Bonnie, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda, eds., The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of Le Morte Darthur (Arthurian Studies 47), Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2000; cloth; pp. xxxii, 420; 1 colour plate; R.R.P. US$75.00, £45.00; ISBN 0859915832. Malory's 'noble and joyous book' is in my experience warmly received by undergraduates, but it is not always practicable to explore deeper issues of scholarship and reception in class. I therefore welcomed the opportunity to absorb these volumes, which provide timely illumination of the texts and contexts of the Morte Darthur. The Malory Debate assembles ten new essays and seven essays revised following publication in special issues of Arthuriana in 1995 and 1997. They deal with the central contentious issue in Malory scholarship: the editing of the text. Discussion is often generally relevant to Middle English literature, much of which is preserved infifteenth-centurymanuscripts or in prints by Caxton or Wynkyn de Worde. The collection reveals the abundance of evidence contained in the principal surviving textual witnesses to the Morte Darthur: the Winchester College M S copied between 1467 and 1483 (W), and the Caxton print of 1485 (C). The debate is packed with vivid personalities and dramatic events. The figure who remains mysteriously veiled—as the focus of attention and the most theatrical presence of all—is Malory himself. Paul Yeats-Edwards, late Fellows' Librarian of Winchester College, records the series of chance meetings and connections which in 1934 led to Walter Oakeshott's discovery of W in a safe in the Warden's bedroom. The distinguished scholar, Eugene Vinaver, who had been working for years on a new edition of Malory based on C, 'appeared a day or two later on Oakeshott's doorstep, demanding to see this unique manuscript' (p. 375). Vinaver's inspections convinced him that, although W and C represented separate lines of textual descent, W more faithfully reflected Malory's final intentions. Caxton, he maintained, had made changes to C which exceeded his editorial prerogative. This view was enshrined in Vinaver's Clarendon Press edition of 1947, which was reprinted three times and revised in detail in 1990 by P. J. C. Field. The edition underpinned subsequent scholarly discussion and initiated the great unity 196 Reviews debate of the 1960s, with its perceived implications for Middle English aesthetics. Subterranean rumbles, however, preceded the reading by Roy Leslie in 1975, at the Exeter Arthurian Congress, of William Mathews' posthumous paper on the 'Roman War', the episode of the Morte most heavily revised in C. Matthews argued powerfully that Malory, rather than Caxton or an unknown third party, was the most likely reviser of the exemplar of C, which should therefore be reinstated as 'the best text'. W , which Lotte Hellinga later (1981) demonstrated from ink stains to have stayed in Caxton's workshop probably from 1480 to 1489, may have been merely 'an early unrevised prototype' (p. xxiv). Field recalls that Vinaver 'who wasfrailand partially blind' listened to Leslie's reading from the place of honour which had been given to him at the Congress (p. 127). Matthews' paper hovered ephemerally in leaked and incomplete copies— a modern case of textual uncertainty—before finally being made available, together with two of Matthews' essays aimed at redeeming Caxton's reputation, by Richard Kindrick in 1997. Matthews' defence of Caxton against attacks on his integrity which had been made by N. F. Blake, helped transform 'the besieged printer' into an eloquent figure within the Malory debate. Meanwhile, in 1983, James W. Spisak had published through the University of California Press a new edition of the Morte Darthur, based on C, and developed from work begun by Matthews. Despite the refutations and modifications of Matthews' arguments attempted by Shunichi Noguchi, Masako Takagi, Toshiyuki Takamiya, Field, Blake, and Yuji Nakao, which are printed in the present volume, faith in the superior authority of W had been permanently...