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Literary Criticism Medieval

Before Malory

Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England

by (author) Richard J. Moll

Publisher
University of Toronto Press
Initial publish date
Dec 2003
Category
Medieval, Medieval
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780802037220
    Publish Date
    Dec 2003
    List Price
    $100.00
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781442671225
    Publish Date
    Nov 2003
    List Price
    $97.00

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Description

Although most modern scholars doubt the historicity of King Arthur, parts of the legend were accepted as fact throughout the Middle Ages. Medieval accounts of the historical Arthur, however, present a very different king from the romances that are widely studied today. Richard Moll examines a wide variety of historical texts including Thomas Gray's Scalacronica and John Hardyng's Chronicle to explore the relationship between the Arthurian chronicles and the romances. He demonstrates how competing and conflicting traditions interacted with one another, and how writers and readers of Arthurian texts negotiated a complex textual tradition.

Moll asserts that the enormous variety and number of existing chronicles demonstrates the immense popularity of the historical Arthur in medieval England. Since these chronicles were the dominant source of Arthurian information for the late medieval reader, they provide an invaluable, and neglected, interpretive context for modern readers of Malory and other later medieval romances. The first monograph to look at the impact of these historical texts on Arthurian literature, Before Malory is also the first to show how canonical vernacular romances interacted with chronicle texts that have since dropped out of the canon.

About the author

Richard J. Moll is an Assistant Professor of English at Villanova University.

Richard J. Moll's profile page