Abstract
What do Arthur’s failures of kingship mean for the governance of his polity? The lack of effective executive authority from the king means that responsibility for the construction and preservation of the Arthurian polity falls on others with a stake in governance: Merlin, Guinevere, Morgan, Nenyve, and the Round Table knights. Since it is already clear that the alternative to Arthurian kingship is civil war, the political community in The Tale of King Arthur and Arthur and Lucius have little choice but to maintain Arthur’s position and stave off civil col- lapse. Counsel, always an intimate part of medieval governance, becomes crucial to the redefinition of Arthurian rule. In this chapter, I consider contemporary advice books as well as the practice of rule in fifteenth- century England to illuminate the quality and standard of advice-giving and advice-taking and the dynamics of rule in the Arthurian polity. Investigating “counsel” and “rule” as deeply connected common terms in the fifteenth-century political lexicon, I demonstrate that different possible models of rule emerge in these two tales. In Arthur and Lucius, Caxton’s Book V, I show that Malory offers the reader a successful model of counsel/council in which the Round Table knights, acting in accordance with the conventions of medieval advice books, rally around the king in support of a war of conquest producing a compelling picture of success- ful rule.
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Notes
Catherine Batt, Malory’s “Morte Darthur”: Remaking Arthurian Tradition (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 67; Dorsey Armstrong, Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s “Morte d’Arthur” (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003), 56–58; Kenneth Hodges, Forging Chivalric Communities in Malory’s “Le Morte Darthur” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 39–41.
For further discussion see: N. F. Blake, Caxton and His World (New York: London House and Maxwell, 1969), 183–85; Robert L. Kindrick, “Introduction: Caxton, Malory and an Authentic Arthurian Text,” in The Malory Debate: Essays on the Texts of “Le Morte Darthur” Arthurian Studies 47, ed. Bonnie Wheeler, Robert L. Kindrick, and Michael N. Salda (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), xv-xxxii; Edward D. Kennedy, “Caxton, Malory and the Noble Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius,” in Wheeler, Kindrick, and Salda, The Malory Debate, 217–32; P. J. C. Field, “Caxton’s Roman War,” in Wheeler, Kindrick, and Salda, Malory Debate, 127–67; P. J. C. Field, Malory: Texts and Sources, Arthurian Studies 40 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), 128–48; Spisak and Matthews, introduction to Caxton’s Malory, 2.606–18. On the effect of the alliterative poem on Malory’s prose style see William Matthews, “A Question of Texts,” in Wheeler, Kindrick, and Salda, The Malory Debate, 69–71.
Elizabeth T. Pochoda, Arthurian Propaganda: “Le Morte Darthur” as an Historical Ideal of Life (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1971), 91; Raluca L. Radulescu, The Gentry Context for Malory’s “Morte Darthur” Arthurian Studies 55 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), 122; Raluca L. Radulescu, “Malory and Fifteenth Century Political Ideas,” Rhetorical Approaches to Malory’s “Le Morte Darthur” ed. Ann Dobyns and Anne Laskaya, Special issue, Arthuriana 13, no. 3 (Fall 2003): 41–42; Hyonjin Kim, The Knight without the Sword: A Social Landscape of Malorian Chivalry, Arthurian Studies 45 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 61–62; Beverly Kennedy, Knighthood in the “Morte Darthur” Arthurian Studies 11 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985), 35–36.
John Watts, Henry VI and the Politics of Kingship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 27, 76–78.
John Watts, “The Counsels of Henry VI, c. 1435–1445,” EHR 106, no. 419 (April 1991): 293.
A. L. Brown, “The Commons and Council in the Reign of Henry IV,” EHR 79, no. 310 (1964): 4–5; Watts, “Counsels ofHenry VI,” 279–83; Watts, Henry VI, 84–85. J. R. Lander, “The Yorkist Council and Administration 1461 to 1485,” EHR 73, no. 286 (1958): 28–31, 42–44.
Fiona Somerset, Clerical Discourse and Lay Audience in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 72–73.
Carol M. Meale, “Patrons, Buyers and Owners: Book Production and Social Status,” in Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1371–1475, ed. Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 202–6; Meale, “Politics of Book Ownership,” 126–27; Karen Cherewatuk, “‘Gentyl’ Audiences and ‘Grete Bookes’: Chivalric Manuals and the Morte Darthur,” Arthurian Literature 15 (1997): 211–14; Daniel Wakelin, Humanism, Reading and English Literature 1430–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 23–31, 37–42.
Radulescu, “Talkyng of cronicles,” 137. On the Brut: Felicity Riddy, “Reading for England: Arthurian Literature and National Consciousness,” Bibliographical Bulletin of the International Arthurian Society 43 (1991): 326–27; Matheson, Prose “Brut” 6–16 counts 181 medieval manuscripts and 13 early printed editions of the English prose Brut. See also, John Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 110–11.
Mark Lambert, Malory: Style and Vision in “Le Morte Darthur” (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 115–16.
Christopher Cannon, “Malory’s Crime: Chivalric Identity and Evil Will,” in Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, ed. David Aers (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 179–80; Kelly, “Royal Policy,” 56.
Larry D. Benson, Malory’s “Morte Darthur” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 148–49; Barber, Knight and Chivalry, 345–46, 353; B. Kennedy, Knighthood, 34–35.
Paul Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 95–104.
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© 2014 Ruth Lexton
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Lexton, R. (2014). Counsel and Rule in The Tale of King Arthur and Arthur and Lucius . In: Contested Language in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Arthurian and Courtly Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137353627_3
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