This book seeks to place the production of Malory's Morte Darthur – in both its manuscript and printed form – in the context of political and literary culture in the second half of the fifteenth century. That historical context will be defined here by especial consideration of the social practice which underwrites all particulars connected to literary production, that is, reading. ‘Texts come before us’, Fredric Jameson writes, ‘as the always-already-read; we apprehend them through sedimented layers of previous interpretations, or – if the text is brand-new – through the sedimented reading habits and categories developed by those inherited interpretive traditions.’ Thus, all reading is ‘social reading’: one is never quite alone when one is doing it. This is true not only of our reading, of course, but also that of Sir Thomas Malory and his contemporaries. The objects of my inquiry, then, include the things both written and read by Malory and his contemporaries: books (not only texts but codices), political events (whether witnessed in the fifteenth century or chronicled from earlier times), literature (both fifteenth-century English and that of earlier periods and other languages). By way of introduction I would like, first, to offer a historical anecdote which demonstrates the immediacy of the relationship between literary culture and social practice in Malory's time; after this, I will indicate something of the critical methods which inform the chapters that follow.

The Battle of Nibley Green

At the very time Malory was finishing his book, two prominent families, the Talbots and the Berkeleys, were entering the final and bloodiest stage of their fifteen-year dispute over the ownership of some manor houses in Gloucestershire.