University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Fall 1978 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF "BLOOD": NOBLE DESCENT AND KINSHIP IN THOMAS MALORY'S "MORTE DARTHUR" PAUL VALMORE ROBERGE Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation ROBERGE, PAUL VALMORE, "THE SIGNIFICANCE OF "BLOOD": NOBLE DESCENT AND KINSHIP IN THOMAS MALORY'S "MORTE DARTHUR"" (1978). Doctoral Dissertations. 1205. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1205 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This was produced from a copy of a document sent to us for microfilming. 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ZEEB ROAD, ANN ARBOR, Ml 48106 18 BEDFORD ROW, LONDON WC1 R 4EJ, ENGLAND 7909309 IROBERGE, PAUL VALKORE THE SIGNIFICANCE OF -BLOOD-: NOBLE DESCENT AND KINSHIP IN THOMAS MALORY'S -MORTE DARTHUR.- UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE* PH.D.* 1978 University Microfilms International 300 n. zeeb road, ann arb o r, mi 48ioe ALL EIGHTS EESEEVED (c) 1978 Paul Valmore Roberge / THE SIGNIFICANCE OF "BLOOD": NOBLE DESCENT AND KINSHIP IN THOMAS MALORY'S MORTE DARTHUR by PAUL V. ROBERGE B.A., Assumption College, 1965 M.A., University of New Hampshire, 1975 A DISSERTATION Submitted to the University of New Hampshire In Partial Fulfillment of The Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English September, 1978 sertation has been examined and approved: /i ^ f 0 ' '-<^'1(6 \ CtJl il-i_____________ Thesis director, Thomas Carnicelli Professor of English AM.fi Susan Schibanoff Associate Professor of:f EnglishE n c ^ J) Terence P. Logan Associate Professor of English UJfL William R. Jones Professor of History Richard V. Desrosiers Assistant Professor of Classics August 9, 1978 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank my readers, Professors Susan Schihanoff, Terence Logan, William Jones, and Richard Desrosiers for their critical and editorial advice. I want to express special gratitude to Professor Thomas Camicelli, my director in this work, for his tireless— it seemed— assistance in helping me find my way from intuition to thesis. I thank also my wife, Sheila, for all those hours of patience and for her constant encouragement. TABLE OE CONTENTS ABSTRACT........................................ INTRODUCTION: THE SIGNIFICANCE OE "BLOOD"....... 1 The Terminology of Noble Descent............ 4 The Terminology of Kinship................. 10 PART ONE: NOBLE DESCENT........................ 16 I. THE IDEA OE NOBLE DESCENT....................... 16 Lineage and the Noble Class................ 26 Knighthood and Nobility.................... 32 Manuals of Chivalry........................ 39 II. NOBLE DESCENT AND CHIVALRY IN THE MORTE DARTHUR... 60 Descriptive Formulas of Noble Lineage....... 63 Pelleas and Gamyssh....................... 73 Balin...................................... 78 Tor............. 80 Gareth..................................... 86 PART TWO: KINSHIP.............................. 91 III. KINSHIP IN THE ROMANCE.......................... 91 The Adaptation of Motifs of Kinship to Early Romances of Love..................... 93 The Development of Kinship in the Comprehensive Arthurian Story............... 125 IV. KINSHIP IN THE MORTE DARTHUR.................... 147 Kinship and Kindreds....................... 147 Hostilities Between Kinsmen................ 161 Solidarity Between Kinsmen................. 169 The "Naturall Love" of Kinsmen.............. 179 iv The Revenge of Kinsmen..................... 187 The Lot-Pellinor Feud...................... 191 VI. "THE BLOODE OF SIR LAUNCELOTT"................. 200 Lancelot and His Kindred................... 202 Lancelot and Galahad....................... 207 The Final Tales............................ 217 BIBLIOGRAPHY.................................... 231 APPENDICES...................................... 240 v ABSTRACT THE SIGNIFICANCE OF "BLOOD": NOBLE DESCENT AND KINSHIP IN THOMAS MALORY'S MORTE DARTHUR by PAUL V. ROBERGE A study of the motifs of noble descent and kinship in Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur helps us to understand the romance's central chivalric theme. Noble descent, which Malory presents as the condition and source of all true knighthood, describes the existence of an inherent chivalric quality in mankind. Consanguinity, the origin of various affective moti­ vations, offers an occasion for a dramatic illustration of the ethical superiority of this chivalric quality. The introduction of the dissertation discusses the terminology of noble descent and kinship and distinguishes between the two concepts as they appear in the Morte Darthur. The work is subsequently divided into two parts respectively investigating noble descent and kinship; the first chapter of each part reviews the cultural background to these ideas. Chapter I demonstrates that Malory's literary restric­ tion of knighthood to men of noble birth does not accurately represent contemporary social fact or attitude. The connection between noble birth and chivalry is a convention of chivalric literature— the romance and the manual of knighthood— where it appears as a symbol of the antiquity, the excellence, and the inward nature of the chivalric ideal. This ideal was not vi the exclusive property of the fifteenth-century aristocratic class. Malory's use of noble descent is descriptive rather than prescriptive. His intention— examined in Chapter II— such as it appears in the stories of Pelleas, Garnyssh, Balin, Gareth, and Tor, is literary, not social. The fact that Malory's true knights are necessarily descended from noble blood signifies that chivalry exists as an inherent and cogent value in man. Care must be taken not to regard the chivalry of the Morte Darthur as an existential code. Chapter III, the first of the second part, argues that kinship motifs typically possess in romance a symbolic colora­ tion. In the romances of Thomas of Britain, Chretien, and Marie de Prance, kinship loses the specifically dynastic and familial themes associated with it in earlier heroic literature and is made to signify the novel theme of love. This symbolic tendency continues through the evolution of the comprehensive romances which Malory used as his sources. Chapters IV and V show how Malory uses kinship to symbolize the survival of chivalry. Kinship may generate hostility or solidarity between family groups or within them. Yet only when familial sentiment is subordinated to chivalric ideals does the clan prosper. The so-called Lot-Pellinor feud illustrates this paradox: the attempt of Gawain and his brothers to avenge the death of their father is the source of division within the kin group itself. The blood of Lancelot, on the other hand, preserves its identity as a kindred by being united by common chivalric attitudes. In the final tales of the Morte Darthur, the unity of Lancelot's kin becomes the symbol of the survival of chivalric nature and knightly community beyond the dissolution of the Round Table. The motifs of blood in Malory's Morte Darthur represent the endurance of an inward virtue of chivalry in spite of the mutability of particular knightly institutions. The dissertation offers, in appendix, a genealogical chart of the important kindreds in the Morte Darthur. INTRODUCTION THE SIGNIFICANCE OR "BLOOD" In "Malory and the Chivalric Order,Stephen Miko proposes that the chivalric code, as Malory conceived it, is "based on a set of ethical commitments which "grow out"