Re-Viewing Le Morte Darthur: Texts and Contexts, Characters and Themes

by K.S. Whetter (Editor)

The essays in this collection present a range of new ideas and approaches in Malory studies, looking again [as the title suggests] at several of the most debated critical points. A number of articles focus closely on the implications of the production of the text, ranging from the repercussions of the working habits of the Winchester scribes, as well as of Malory's printers and editors, to a reassessment of Caxton's Preface. There are also nuanced readingsof geography and politics in the Morte Darthur and its fifteenth-century contexts, and analyses of text and context in relation to the role of women, character and theme in the Morte , including the important questions of worshyp and mesure , as well as the issues of coherence and genre.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Peter J.C. Field
Corrected Mistakes in the Winchester Manuscript - Takako Kato
Textual Caxton, de Worde, and Malory's Morte Darthur - D Thomas Hanks Jr
`thynges forsayd aledged': Historia and argumentum in Caxton's Preface to the Morte Darthur - Thomas Howard Crofts
From `Saracens' to `Infydeles': The Recontextualization of the East in Caxton's Edition of Le Morte Darthur - Meg Roland
Malory's `Tale of King Arthur' and the Political Geography of Fifteenth-Century England - Robert L Kelly
Symbolic Uses of Space in Malory's Morte Darthur - Dhira B Mahoney
Women's Female Versions of Chivalric Honour - Lisa Robeson
`Oute of mesure': Violence and Knighthood in Malory's Morte Darthur - Raluca Radulescu
Why Every Knight Needs His Re-viewing Questions of Genre and `Cohesion' in Malory's Le Morte Darthur - Fiona Tolhurst
On Misunderstanding Malory's Balyn - Kevin S Whetter

182 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 2005