The following abstract was submitted to the South Central Modern Language Association conference in 2007, and was accepted. The paper for which it is an abstract was presented on the Old and Middle English panel.
Malory’s iteration of Arthurian legend is perhaps the best-known to the general public and likely the most referenced work of Arthuriana. Accordingly, Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention on a variety of subjects ranging from gender studies to the manner in which the chivalric code functions as a semiotic system for the interpretation of late medieval society. Certainly, the text of Le Morte does a great many things; among others, it tells many delightful stories, provides insight into a nuanced and seemingly unstable warrior ethos, and, perhaps most importantly, forms the basis for a number of other, later publications.
While these things are true and have been studied in great detail, Malory’s text does do one thing that has received little if any recent critical attention; it provides, if perhaps only in a cursory and superficial way, a sort of instruction manual for knightly combat. Though the explicit combat scenes in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur are oftentimes repetitive, they are repetitive in certain particulars which, taken together, can be read as forming a method for the exercise of martiality.
While such an interpretation may not be the most fashionable, it would not fail to fit with the prevailing socio-political system in force during the middle and late 1400s, nor does it fail to fit with the author’s own aptitudes, if Vinaver’s introduction to Malory’s works is to be believed. War and the warrior ethos have already been demonstrated to have had a pivotal role in the historical events and literature of the time; examining the manner in which literature presents and prescribes the manner of executing it can only enrich current understanding.