Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Malory’s Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur by Paul R. Rovang

2015; Scriptoriun Press; Volume: 25; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/art.2015.0054

1934-1539

Fiona Tolhurst,

Medieval Literature and History

Reviewed by: Malory’s Anatomy of Chivalry: Characterization in the Morte Darthur by Paul R. Rovang Fiona Tolhurst 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. $75 In 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 [End Page 119] 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 . . . “humanhood” in all its vicissitudes’ (183). Nevertheless, there are aspects of this book’s content that Arthurian specialists will find problematic. Its bibliography not only fails to credit P.J.C. Field with revising the third edition of The Works of Sir Thomas Malory but also reflects some questionable choices of translations and editions. Chrétien de Troyes and Geoffrey of Monmouth are cited only in Penguin translations, albeit good ones, and Layamon’s Brut and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in Thomas J. Garbáty’s anthology of Middle English literature—not in scholarly editions. In addition, the author’s choice of focusing on characterization rather than source study produces gaps in research that limit the accuracy and depth of the analysis. Rovang’s discussion of both positive and negative characterization of Kay (94–95) ignores the work of scholars including Linda Gowans, Peter Noble, and K.S. Whetter that would have enabled him to clarify the fact that Chrétien de Troyes—not Malory—created the unheroic slanderer familiar to readers today. Rovang’s argument that Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Guenevere demonstrates ‘feckless acquiescence’ to Mordred lacks depth because it relies on a book published by Peter Korrel in 1984 (137). Consideration of Geoffrey of Monmouth scholarship published since 1984 by scholars such as Siân Echard, Michael A. Faletra, and Fiona Tolhurst would have facilitated richer analysis. Two aspects of the book’s structure likewise detract somewhat from the effectiveness of its arguments. One is that the opening paragraph of each chapter [End Page 120] fails to provide an overview of Rovang’s argument regarding that character or pair of characters. Consequently, readers must construct such overviews for themselves. The other...