A Survey Of Malory Criticism And Related Arthurian Scholarship In The 19th Century.

Abstract

Ten complete editions of Malory's Morte d'Arthur, numerous abridgements, and most of Malory's sources in French and English romance were published in the nineteenth century. A detailed survey of the introductions to these texts, and of literary histories, anthologies, Celtic studies, and lectures shows the way in which Malory criticism and scholarship in related areas of Arthurian romance developed through the century. Early in the century the two surviving Caxton MSS. became accessible. In 1817 Southey brought out a Caxton edition with an introduction more wide-ranging than profound, although touching on many of the questions that would occupy Malory and Arthurian scholarship throughout the century. Like Scott, Southey viewed Malory as an unoriginal compiler while acknowledging his appeal. Book clubs and literary societies such as the Roxburghe and Bannatyne published English Arthurian texts with accompanying commentary, the most impressive being Madden's Syr Gawayne and Layamons Brut. Historians and Celticists developed or disputed the earlier theories of Turner, Davies, Ritson, and Owen-Pughe; Thomas Wright's introduction to his 1858 edition of Malory showed that confusions continued in the chronology of French romance. From the 1860's, commentaries on Malory and Arthurian matters proliferated; especially important was the work of Furnivall and the Early English Text Society. Malory's work, generally viewed as a compilation, now was seen to have thematic unity. The schools' new emphasis on English studies also produced anthologies and literary histories wherein Malory and others were evaluated. Strachey's 1868 edition of the Morte d'Arthur provided one of the first considerations of Malory as a maker and a defense of his epic unity and purposeful use of his sources. An astonishing range of authors dealt with Malory and other Arthurian subjects during the 1870's and 80's, while publication of the Huth Merlin revealed new facts about the composition of French romance and Malory's sources. Sommer's landmark edition of Malory (1889-1891) simultaneously presented and seemed to exhaust the possibilities of textual and source studies. Responses to Sommer's work and biographical studies identifying Malory as the now familiar Warwickshire knight concluded the decade. The publication of the relevant texts helped develop an understanding of Malory's purpose and method and of the complexities of French romance and its relation to Celtic sources. Many twentieth-century critical theories were proposed in the nineteenth by now obscure writers whose contributions to Malory studies and to Arthurian romance were considerable.