This welcome volume is less a guide to readers first encountering Sir Thomas Malory'sLe Morte Darthur and more an invitation to place him in larger contexts, from textual studies of editions of Malory through the centuries to questions of Malory's reception in wartime Britain, post-Meiji Japan, and America. In their introduction explaining the need for their new volume, Megan G. Leitch and Cory James Rushton write:
Unlike the first Companion, it does not have articles working through the Morte Darthur section by section to guide first-time readers. Instead, it tries to situate the whole text in these historical and theoretical milieux. Accordingly, it divides into three sections, the first looks primarily at texts of Le Morte Darthur and the historical contexts (political and literary) of its composition. The middle section turns its attention to reading Malory through a variety of different lenses. The last traces Malory's reception in three different cultural contexts.
A brief introduction considers the ways in which ideas of Malory as an author have shaped for better or worse (often worse) Malory criticism and urging criticism to be bolder in taking more theoretical approaches to Malory's work. It announces the ambition of this volume to consider Malory in his time, as an artist, and as a cultural legacy. The first group of essays, "The Morte Darthur: Text(s) and Contexts," begins with Catherine Nall's "Malory in Historical Context," which summarizes fifteenth-century English history (especially of course the Wars of the Roses) and critics' attempts to find topical references in Malory to specific events, and then turns to more thematic historical concerns: loyalty and treason, kingship and counsel, unity and division/war and peace. Ralph Norris follows with "Malory and his Sources." The "and" is significant: this is not just a survey of Malory's sources but also an introduction to how Malory chose, translated, adapted, and revised them. This flows into "Writing the Morte Darthur: Author, Manuscript, and Modern Editions," by Thomas H. Crofts and K. S. Whetter. This ranges widely, from the possibilities for Malory's library, to the Winchester Manuscript and its relation to Malory's original composition and William Caxton's print edition, to modern editions of Malory and how they use Winchester and Caxton, both in terms of textual readings and in terms of textual presentation and division. Megan G. Leitch then focuses on a more synchronic literary history in "Malory in Literary Context": instead of looking at centuries-long Arthurian traditions, she looks at Malory beside other fifteenth-century prose romances and their concerns with families, inheritances, and negative traits passed down within lineages. The section concludes with Siân Echard's "Malory in Print," which traces print editions into the early twentieth century: the texts they chose, the illustrations they included, the textual decisions they made, with corresponding insight into Malory's literary reputation and reception, the shifts in perceived audience, and the work his text was enlisted to do.
The next section, "Approaches to Malory," suggests a variety of topics of interest, and it is neatly organized by title; the essays themselves do not respect boundaries quite as well, following where their subjects lead. Thus Rushton's "Malory and Form" concerns itself with questions of genre and what is at stake in insisting Le Morte Darthur is not a novel; his stylistic parataxis is taken up in Dorsey Armstrong's "Malory and Character," which considers how we infer character from sequences of action, but which also considers how knighthood helps define characters; and then ideals of knighthood return in Lisa Robeson's "Secular Malory." This is fun when one is reading straight through; it may be more of a challenge for someone diving in and out of the volume seeking specific information. The section begins with Rushton's "Malory and Form," which concludes that Malory began without formal commitments and ended up writing a novel. Dorsey Armstrong argues that character emerges in part from engagements with knighthood, gender, kinship, kingship, and religion, often supplemented by tweaks, additions, suppressions, or reorganizations of source material, and that characters evolve, are plausibly inconsistent, and are coherent across the text. In "Malory and Gender," Amy S. Kaufman resists easy assertions of Malory's misogyny, arguing that unrealistic expectations of pure, unfettered agency have blurred our view of Malory's women, and that using modern feminist explorations of agency as dependent on physical and social conditions but including the ability to make choices so the future does not flow inexorably from past causes reveals women's agency in the Morte Darthur. Andrew Lynch explores feeling in "Malory and Emotion," looking both at individual subjective emotion and the way communities structure and are structured by emotion, making shared emotional responses possible and shaping ongoing power relationships. Lisa Robeson explores "Secular Malory," tracing a critical history in which nineteenth-century religious and moralized readings gave way to increasing attention to Malory's secular values, and then looking at secular ideologies, whether articulated by ideals or defined by practice, surrounding chivalry, community, and kingship. This chapter is paired with "Spiritual Malory," by Raluca L. Radulescu, which focuses on the Grail quest. Meg Roland, in "Malory and the Wider World," situates Malory on the cusp of a change in geographic imagination between the ethnographic and the cartographic, and she charts how references to places beyond Britain show Malory's consciousness of the physical and political geography of the world.
The final section, "Malory's Afterlives," looks at literary and sometimes critical reception of Malory. Rob Gossedge in "Malory in Wartime Britain" begins with a brief survey of Malorian reception in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but concludes the complexity and tragedy made it hard to harness him for optimistic nationalist purposes; but in World War I and after, a number of authors, from Rupert Brookes and David Jones to T. H. White, found in Malory's accounts of war and violence something that could speak profoundly to modern experience. Masako Takagi's "Malory in Japan" was a fascinating account of Malory (and Tennyson) in post-Meiji Japan, including Lafcadio Hearn and Natsume Sōseki, who wrote several Arthurian stories. Finally, Daniel Helbert looks at "Malory in America," ranging from Thomas Jefferson to John Steinbeck, including Arthur's invocation on both sides of the Civil War.
This is a successful volume. The first section does a thorough job in introducing readers to a range of textual and historical issues. The material is clearly presented and conveniently gathered together. Leitch's piece on fifteenth-century literary fears was particularly thought-provoking. The middle section, "Approaches to Malory," has exciting moments, but there are some gaps. Postcolonial approaches were not highlighted, perhaps surprisingly given some of the recent work on Cornwall and other territories in Malory. The division between "Secular Malory" and "Spiritual Malory" initially made sense, but both Robeson and Radulescu point to ways the categories interpenetrate and depend upon each other, and more exploration of this, particularly after the Grail quest, could have been interesting. Furthermore, the contrast between spiritual and secular became in practice a contrast between orthodox Christian and secular; and between these two poles the roles of Islam, Crusade, and the roles of magic or heterodox Christianity got less attention than they might. Women's roles in Le Morte Darthur could have been considered more thoroughly outside of the gender chapter. Nonetheless, the range of material covered is impressive, and it does largely track critical concerns that have arisen since the publication of the original Companion, either focusing on new concerns such as emotion or religion or returning with new insight to old problems such as gender and form. However, it was the last section that I enjoyed most, whether because I was least expert and therefore learned most, or because the invitation to go beyond analysis of the text to consider the rich and varied histories of reception offers real opportunities for new work. The decision not to attempt a comprehensive history of reception was wise: the three articles already cover a large amount of ground, and they strike the right balance of breadth and detail, and all three raised interesting questions of translation across culture and time.
Overall, the New Companion supplements without supplanting the original Companion. The original is more thorough in political history of war and empire and in Malory's biographical details; and its section of articles guiding readers through the Morte Darthur chronologically is valuable for readers new to Malory. The New Companion is more thorough on history of the text, has a wider, more contemporary range of theoretical approaches, and is stronger on Malory's reception.