Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-w95db Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-10T04:43:31.767Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - The Artistry of Malory’s Mercantile Metaphors: Goods, Generosity, and the Source of ‘The Tale of Sir Gareth’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2022

Megan G. Leitch
Affiliation:
Cardiff University
Kevin S. Whetter
Affiliation:
Acadia University, Canada
Get access

Summary

As critics, we are well versed in applying mercantile metaphors to medieval romances such as Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur. The Morte is sometimes approached in terms of the ‘economy’ of chivalry, and it can be analysed in relation to ideas of exchange. My purpose in this essay, however, is to consider a not-dissimilar deployment of mercantile metaphors within Malory's text itself: metaphors that are voiced by Malory's knights, with interrogative implications. For instance, when Malory's Gareth is shut out of Lyonesse's castle despite doing battle on her behalf, and he complains to her that ‘well I am sure I have bought your love with parte of the beste bloode within my body’, his blood signifies his sense of what he and his chivalric endeavour ought to be worth. His blood is a ‘good’, in both senses: a virtue, and also a commodity. His blood is a synecdochal substance, a part representing the whole that he offers for exchange in the market of courtly love; his blood is also a metonymic stand-in for the fighting prowess he has displayed in winning the series of chivalric duels that have led him to Lyonesse's castle gates – prowess that is itself, of course, a symbol of devotion to the lady.\ In a similar turn of phrase, after a tournament, Launcelot thinks he has ‘sore bought’ the thanks he receives for his chivalric endeavour (811.13), because he is badly wounded. And, when he is cornered in Guenevere's bedchamber by Aggravayne, Mordred and their knights, Launcelot tells the queen, ‘I shall selle my lyff as dere as I may’ (875.22–23). Spoken here at this climactic moment, when Arthur's nephews cause the irreparable rift in the kingdom, this is the only instance of the verb ‘to sell’ in the ‘hoole book’ (940.17), and it joins six metaphorical utterances about ‘buying’ in the Morte that (with only one exception) likewise all occur in dialogue, in tense exchanges.

As these examples show, to speak of buying and selling in the Morte Darthur is to register disappointment and/or daring determination.

Type
Chapter
Information
Arthurian Literature XXXVII
Malory at 550: Old and New
, pp. 23 - 48
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×