Introduction: Exemplarity and Fifteenth-Century Literary Production

Since Malory's translation served not only a linguistic but a cultural demand, the Morte must be read not only in the context of its French sources, but as continuous with the Winchester manuscript itself. This chapter will analyze the extent to which the manuscript's ‘exterior’ tokens of literary value can help us historicize the emergence of Malory's book. As we shall see, such an analysis must also expose aspects of Malory's text that are little suited to the uses urged by those exterior tokens.

That ‘unsuitability’ has a history of its own. For example, the struggle of a knight to be, or become, identical with himself is found in Chrétien's Percival; it is refined (highly) into comedy by the Gawain-poet; and it is also the struggle of Malory's knights, especially Lancelot, who are doomed to serve both truth and honor, virtues whose paths are rarely the same.