Heraldry and Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur Thesis for the degree Master of Arts Lani Visaisouk Utrecht University 2006 Supervised by Dr. Erik Kooper and Dr. Martine Meuwese 1 Introduction Overview In 1136, King Arthur makes his first appearance in the English literary tradition: Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain contains a lengthy section on Arthur. As in other early sources on Arthur,1 he is both a warrior and a king. As the centuries progress, the Arthur stories undergo a shift from the chronicle to the romance; the king himself transforms from warrior king to roi fainéant, a “benevolent and passive king of Fairyland.”2 Despite this change in Arthur’s own character, knights remain central to Arthurian legends and Arthurian traditions everywhere. As such, it should not come as a surprise that Arthurian legends contain all the trappings of knighthood: tournaments, jousts, horses, lances, spears, swords, and shields. Following the trail of shields can lead one to the topic of heraldry, namely the study of “pictured signs and emblems appertaining to shield, helmet, or banner.”3 If, then, one decides to follow up on heraldry in Arthurian literature and looks up the term in The Arthurian Encyclopedia, one is confronted with the following statement: “Surprisingly, Sir Thomas Malory’s monumental work [Le Morte d’Arthur] contains only a handful of heraldic descriptions.”4 Perhaps the author of this entry, in the interest of brevity and clarity, opted for an oversimplification, since an initial reading of Le Morte d’Arthur suggests that it certainly contains more than a handful of heraldic descriptions and that they occur frequently enough to warrant further investigation. This thesis is thus concerned with the heraldry of Le Morte d’Arthur. Research Question The primary question that this thesis seeks to answer is whether the author of Le Morte d’Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, was up to scratch with his heraldry. In other words: given the heraldry that can be found in Le Morte d’Arthur, what can be deduced concerning Malory’s (and, to a lesser extent, his audience’s) knowledge of heraldry? The answer to this question may also help to illuminate the truth of The Arthurian Encyclopedia’s entry regarding heraldry. W hy Le Morte d’Arthur? Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is the last major English Arthurian romance of the medieval period. W ritten during the W ars of the Roses in England in the fifteenth century (it was completed in 1469), it has since inspired countless retellings, among them T.H. W hite’s trilogy of The Once and Future King, the Broadway musical Camelot, and the film Excalibur. Hence Malory’s influence on the perpetuation of Arthurian legend should not be underestimated. One would also expect that since Malory’s work is one of the last of the medieval romances, he had a whole wealth of sources and traditions at his 1 See for example The Mabinogion and the tale of Culhwch and Olwen from the tenth century. 2 Vinaver, Eugene. Introduction. The W orks of Sir Thomas Malory. 2nd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967, pp. xxxiii. 3 A.C. Fox-Davies. A Complete Guide to Heraldry. New York: Bonanza Books, 1978. pp. 1 4 The Arthurian Encyclopedia. “Heraldry.” Ed. Norris J. Lacy. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1986, pp. 283. 2 disposal. Malory’s place on the timeline of Arthurian literature does not mean that his work should by default be considered the epitome of medieval Arthurian romance, but it is interesting because of his own admission that he drew on French sources. Scholarly research that has confirmed that he had a wide variety of sources to draw upon in the writing of his own book. It also remains to be seen what kind of heraldry Le Morte d’Arthur has to offer, since such a study has not been previously undertaken. Approach/Methodology There are many editions of Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Two were chosen for this thesis: the Penguin version that has been adapted into modern English spelling, edited by Janet Cowen, and Eugene Vinaver’s edition in Middle English. Using the Penguin modern English edition made it easier to gain a clear understanding of the plot, however it should be noted that this edition is based on W. Caxton’s edition. Caxton edited Malory’s original, and this version differs slightly from the only extant manuscript copy upon which Vinaver’s edition is based. Eugene Vinaver’s second edition of The W orks of Sir Thomas Malory was chosen because of its status as the definitive editorial edition. Although the third edition was available, only the paging of the second edition is compatible with Tomomi Kato’s Concordance to The W orks of Sir Thomas Malory. Given the need to verify each instance of heraldry, it was preferable to use Vinaver’s second edition. Using Microsoft Excel, a spreadsheet was drawn up in order to record the shields that appear in Le Morte d’Arthur. It provides details of every instance in which a shield is mentioned in conjunction with colour or as a means of identification. Other shields without heraldic uses in the text – such as in the phrase “they dressed their shields” – have been omitted. To make the index, I first read Le Morte d’Arthur and noted each situation in which I noticed a coat of arms. After going through the Vinaver edition, Kato’s concordance proved indispensable for double-checking each entry as well as providing leads to shields that might have been missed in the first reading. I used the concordance’s entries for sheld, shelde, sheldis, sheldys, shild, shildis, shyld, shylde, shyldes, and shyldis to look up every instance of these words. The resulting index (Appendix I) may therefore be said to contain a high degree of accuracy. Upon completion, the index could be organized according to various categories. These included disguises, covered shields, shields of a single colour, charged shields, etc. Secondary sources such as Michel Pastoureau’s Figures et Couleurs and Armorial des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, as well as P.J.C. Field’s books Malory’s Life and Times and Malory: Texts and Sources, came into play here as well. On the basis of both the index and secondary sources as well as my own analysis, conclusions were drawn concerning the detail and depth of heraldic knowledge that Malory and his audience may have possessed. Citations in the text and in Appendix I from Vinaver’s Le Morte d’Arthur have been listed by book, chapter, and page number. Secondary Literature There is very little secondary literature that deals with the heraldry in Le Morte d’Arthur. The mention in The Arthurian Encyclopedia may be the most extensive on the subject. Heraldry on a more general level, while not a particularly popular subject, has 3 nevertheless seen some books written by heralds and others on the topic. The ones used in this thesis are surveyed briefly below. Heralds and Heraldry by England’s then top herald A.R. W agner was published in 1960. It may be the first book that readers turn to, due to its title, which suggests a general overview. This impression is incorrect. Wagner appears to be writing for his fellow heralds or serious amateurs with prior knowledge of the subject. Many of the topics that he chooses to address can be best understood in a larger context, which he does not provide. However, scholars still turn today to his definition of heraldry and the book is obviously the product of someone well-versed in heraldry. The Heraldic Imagination by the herald Rodney Dennys is more suited to beginners and provides a much more logically-ordered overview of heraldic basics, literature written by heralds (much of it from the Middle Ages), as well as detailed discussions of heraldic figures and animals. Dennys covers the medieval period, to which the bulk of the book is devoted, but he also includes some references up to about 1800. His writing style is clear and easily understood by non-experts – despite the fact that he has dedicated his book to his “brother heralds.” The black and white pen drawings and colour plates are relevant and useful. A.C. Fox-Davies’s book A Complete Guide to Heraldry is probably the best of this group. Some may think he concerns himself too much with specificities, but this gives his book an encyclopedic quality. It contains a profusion of illustrations (alas, only in black and white) and detailed discussions of all manner of beasts and humans to be found on shields. The study of specifically Arthurian heraldry has produced two major names: Gerard Brault and Michel Pastoureau. Brault has focused on early Arthurian heraldry and his work is therefore less prominently used in this thesis than Pastoureau’s. Pastoureau is the author of Armorial des Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, a study of manuscripts that contained descriptions and illustrations of the shields of Arthur’s knights. Pastoureau gives the knight’s name and the shield that he is said to bear, along with the manuscripts in which this information can be found. Differences between manuscripts are duly noted, but they are few. Some of Pastoureau’s other books include Couleurs, Images, Symboles, Une histoire symbolique du Moyen-Age, and Figures et Couleurs, the latter of which was the most relevant and useful for this thesis. It is a collection of essays dealing with shapes, animals, and colours in a heraldic context. As in his other work, he tends to pay most attention to French manuscripts of the late Middle Ages.