Introduction: Assembling Arthur

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Introduction:Assembling Arthur Leah Haught (bio) and Leila K. Norako (bio) In his 2013 study of the relationships between form, content, and interpretation in fourteenth-century London's manuscript culture, Arthur Bahr draws on a diverse range of disciplinary approaches to define compilation 'not as an objective quality of either texts or objects, but rather as a mode of perceiving such forms so as to disclose an interpretably meaningful arrangement, thereby bringing into being a text/work that is more than the sum of its parts.'1 Here, Bahr evokes and complicates the codicological term compilatio in order to consider how the physical layout of manuscripts as historical objects might produce literary arguments. The decision to read 'compilationally,' then, accounts for the document-as-object's historical and textual specificity while also acknowledging that the ways we will interpret the historical and textual implications of that document are always inherently subjective. While the forms of medieval compilations can vary substantially, Bahr argues that they all reward compilational reading as assemblages and fragments, because they all exhibit evidence of being purposefully assembled to explore specific concerns, and they exist (intentionally or accidentally) as fragments that defy restrictive readings and open up avenues of engagement not necessarily intended by their medieval compilers. The notion of assemblage at the heart of Bahr's study, like that of compilation, extends beyond the physical artifact to include the 'intersecting temporalities created by the histories of a compilation's authors, scribes, patrons, and later handlers,' including modern audiences.2 Although none of the examples discussed by Bahr are Arthurian in nature, his suggestion that we 'read compilationally' nonetheless stands to illuminate Arthurian scholarship. Arthurianists frequently find themselves analyzing single texts from a variety of manuscripts in their research, and they also regularly struggle to find a cost-effective way to teach Arthurian materials given the disparate manuscript traditions from which they emerge. Many Arthurian romances, for example, survive in a single manuscript alongside non-Arthurian texts, and few of those manuscripts contain more than a handful of explicitly Arthurian materials, which makes labeling them [End Page 3] Arthurian compilations a matter of debate. Indeed, with the exception of the Winchester Manuscript (BL Additional MS 59678) of Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur—itself a compilation of Arthurian materials from a variety of manuscripts and traditions—some might argue that there is no such thing as an English Arthurian manuscript.3 And yet, as the number of Arthurian texts that survive the Middle Ages attest, the legend was exceedingly and undeniably popular with a reach spanning much of the Latin Christian world and thriving across several centuries. Moreover, many individual contributions to the legend are inherently intertextual in nature, allowing for and even encouraging a compilational reading of texts across different manuscripts in an attempt to 'assemble' as complete a picture of Arthur and his knights as possible. Consider, for example, the plethora of Gawain romances that circulate across late medieval England in a wide variety of manuscripts, each of which offers a portrait of the knight convergent in some ways and divergent in others.4 As a result, we found ourselves wondering: what happens if we extend Bahr's invitation to read compilationally to the Arthurian materials we both teach and write about with frequency? What insights might be gained about individual texts and the larger legend? What new avenues for studying Arthuriana emerge when we allow for exchanges between codicology and formalism? How might thinking of Arthuriana as a capacious assemblage enhance our studies of it? The conversations spurred by these types of questions, we quickly realized, had been influencing both of our thinking long before Bahr's book challenged us to think about them head on. Since graduate school, we have discussed the many ways our thematic and codicological interests have contributed to our own Arthurian 'assemblages.' Leah Haught's scholarship tends to focus on what she calls an 'aesthetics of failure' within Middle English Arthuriana in particular, which has led her to consider both the socio-historical contexts associated with specific texts and the intertextual nature of the legend as a whole in order to explore the larger implications of the successes and...