SOURCE: Mahoney, Dhira B. “Narrative Treatment of Name in Malory's Morte D'Arthur.” ELH 47, no. 4 (1980): 646-56.

[In the following essay, Mahoney studies Malory's treatment of names and their significance in Le Morte Darthur.]

The nature of any form of prose fiction is dictated by the author's attitude towards his readers or audience, and, as a corollary, towards his fictional material—his characters and the events which involve them. The medieval narrative tradition requires an author to treat his material in a way that is unfamiliar to readers of the novel, used as they are to either the omniscient, manipulative narrator of nineteenth-century fiction or the detached narrator of twentieth-century realism, “invisible, refined out of existence, paring his fingernails.”¹ Still strongly connected to his roots in the oral tradition, the medieval author can never be invisible. As Scholes and Kellogg put it, “The traditional oral narrative consists rhetorically of a teller, his story, and an implied audience. The non-traditional, written narrative consists rhetorically of the imitation, or representation, of a teller, his story, and an implied audience.”²

A sophisticated medieval writer such as Chaucer, a known reciter speaking to a known audience and yet clearly thinking of his poetry as something written down,³ could exploit both oral and written conventions. In most of his works he creates the persona of a first-person narrator of whom we are constantly aware, portly, garrulous, sometimes obtuse, sometimes slyly apologetic. An added dimension of irony is gained by the counterpoint between the personality of this fictional narrator and the very real Chaucer reading to his noble audience. Malory, writing three-quarters of a century later, had only the one convention, the written, to work in, yet the influence of the oral tradition is still very strong in his work, as witnessed by the frequent narrative formulae such as “now speke we of …,” “as ye shall hyre.” Like Chaucer, the author of the Morte Darthur is certainly not “invisible”; on the other hand, unlike Chaucer, he seldom intrudes into his narrative. On a few rare occasions we hear what seems to be Malory's own voice speaking (e.g., the May disquisitions [1119.1-1120.13], the famous appeal to his fellow Englishmen [1229.5-14], the explicits)⁴ but this is the voice of Malory the man, not the narrator, and they are the more powerful because of their rarity. As P. J. C. Field has shown in Romance and Chronicle,⁵ the persona that Malory creates as narrator is of a teller hardly distinguishable from the characters in his tale, and scarcely more knowledgeable than they. His function is to record faithfully the exploits of the knights of the Round Table, to chronicle the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom. Moreover, the record is to be as judicious as possible: “Somme men say it was Anwyk, and somme men say it was Bamborow” (1257.27-28), he says of the location of Joyous Garde, and is careful not to commit himself to the idea of Arthur's future return (1242.22-29).

He is a chronicler, though, not a historian, in either the medieval or the modern sense. The medieval historian saw history in the larger context of God's will, whereas Malory is concerned only to record. The modern historian sees facts in their own light, but his work demands emotional detachment from his material, and Malory is anything but detached from his. Though they lived “long ago,” his characters are real to him. As Field observes, “the narrator's admiration for Lancelot comes to seem … like that of a man for his friend” (p. 150). Tale and teller are on the same level. Field has demonstrated that there is no appreciable difference between the tone and idiom of the narrative voice and the voices of the Arthurian knights: they share the same vocabulary, and the narrator's judgments of his characters simply echo the judgments they make of each other (see pp. 147-49). Mark Lambert has also examined this device of “confirmation,” and draws a similar conclusion about its result: that the reader comes unconsciously to accept the narrative voice as Truth, to believe in the objective existence of the moral qualities and values which the narrator upholds as expressions of the Arthurian ideal.⁶

Nowhere is the ratification of Arthurian values so evident as in the continual classification, or ranking, of Arthurian knights. As Lambert observes: “Degrees of excellence are part of the objective reality of the Malorian world … : a number of the most memorable episodes in Le Morte Darthur turn on the discovery of who is the best in a particular category” (p. 28). To a large extent this preoccupation has been inherited by Malory from his French prose sources of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, particularly the prose Tristan (source of the Book of Sir Tristram). As Emmanuèle Baumgartner notes, one important aspect of the continual jousting in the prose Tristan is that “elle permet … d'établir une sorte de classement parmi les chevaliers, et, ainsi, d'honorer et d'estimer chacun à sa juste valeur.”⁷ Ranking is also, of course, intimately connected with rank, and with the lineage that gives context to that rank. A case in point is the much-criticized passage in the Morte Darthur about Queen Morgause, Lot's wife, that “passynge fayre lady” (41.17) who charms the young King Arthur into bedding her before he discovers she is his half-sister. A later lover, Sir Lamorak, is overheard airing his love-complaint about the lady: “O, thou fayre quene of Orkeney, kynge Lottys wyff and modir unto sir Gawayne and to sir Gaherys, and modir to many other, for thy love I am in grete paynys!” (579.23-25). The modern reader cannot help smiling at that bathetic “many other,” but that is because he does not share Malory's sense of decorum. As Lambert has noted of Queen Morgause, “it is proper to touch on her knightly and royal lineage when speaking of her; these connections are … the central fact about her” (p. 21).

Thus the lady's identity is defined through her rank and lineage. However, in those of Malory's French sources which mention the character, the prose Tristan and the two versions of the Suite du Merlin (see Works, pp. 1267-68), she is known only by her title: “La roïne d'Orcanie”⁸ or “la feme le roi Loth d'Orkanie.”⁹ Significantly, Malory requires that she also have a name. As Vinaver has mentioned from the first, one of the English writer's most obvious divergences from his French sources is his tendency to name characters left anonymous in the source, or to identify anonymous characters with known ones.¹⁰ Furthermore, he prefers to identify new characters almost immediately, whereas the French prose writer will frequently delay the identification of a new character for several folios while other, interlaced, stories intervene (see Works, p. 1326, n. to 100.34). Indeed, in one episode Malory sacrifices consistency of character to this compulsion to name, identifying as Lancelot the strange knight with a covered shield who strikes down Tristram and Palomides at a fountain, and thereafter many others, even killing one, whereas in the source this knight is never named (Works, p. 1484, n. to 571.9-18). Identity is all-important in the Malorian world.

Identity, however, is frequently withheld from his peers by an Arthurian knight engaged in proving his worth. In the Morte Darthur, as in much medieval romance, concealment and subsequent revelation or discovery of identity provide a pattern in which to structure events. Unlike most medieval romancers, however, Malory as narrator is co-conspirator in the concealment. In Book 7, the Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere, for instance, when the Queen is charged with treason for poisoning Sir Patryse, a strange knight arrives to joust as her champion, pre-empting the duty from Sir Bors. The stranger remains unnamed (the narrator calls him “that knyght” for two full pages, 1056.29-1058.14) until he has won the battle and the charge has been retracted. Then the King gratefully offers him wine:

And than he putte of hys helmette to drynke, and than every knyght knew hym that hit was sir Launcelot.

(1058.15-16)

The suppression of name here is caused not only by the demands of narrative suspense, but also by the narrator's respect for a character's incognito.

We may see a similar example in the Book of Sir Tristram, where the narrator honors Tristram's alias. Lambert has observed this device in a note (p. 6, n. 6), but has not brought out its full delicacy. As the story begins the narrator refers to Tristram as “Trystramys” (with variant spellings) until the hero arrives in Ireland and has, for safety, to adopt an assumed name, “Tramtryste” (384.27). At this stage the narrator also employs the assumed name in referring to the hero, until the arrival of a squire called Ebes le Renownys, who knows, but promises not to reveal, Tristram's true identity (386.29-387.2). From this point on both names are used, but not indiscriminately: examination shows that the tendency is to retain “Tramtryste” in those incidents which involve characters who still know the hero only as Tramtryste, while “Trystramys” is used when Tristram is alone or with characters who know his true identity (cp. 387.30-32 with 32-35, and 389.6-14). After the scene of recognition in the bath, Tristram is forced to divulge his true identity to the King and court of Ireland and thereafter remains, narratively, “sir Trystrames” (391.10 ff.).

The most striking example of the narrator's respect for an alias occurs in the Tale of Sir Gareth, the theme of which Larry D. Benson has brought out so well in an early essay on Malory. He points out that “at every major stage of the tale—at all those points where it seemed as if the story should end—Gareth's identity is revealed to someone. … The Tale of Gareth is built about the developing revelation and vindication of Gareth's identity, and the stages of that process mark the important stages of the narrative.”¹¹ What Benson has not observed, though, is that the narrator's use of Gareth's name is also scrupulously consistent with the development; reader and characters take part together in the process.

For instance, neither we nor Arthur's court know who this fair young man is when he arrives, leaning on the shoulders of two men as if he cannot walk. Because all he asks for is food and drink for a year, he is put to work in the kitchen, and Kay names him “Beawmaynes” in mockery. This is the name that the narrator also uses, until the young man reveals his identity and lineage to Lancelot in order that the latter may knight him; now, for one occasion, he is called “sir Gareth” (299.33). But he and Lancelot part, and the narrator returns to the nickname, retaining it through the young man's subsequent adventures, now with the title frequently added, e.g., “sir Bewmaynes” (305.19). The hero endures the perilous passages with the vari-colored brothers on the way to rescue the Lady Lyonesse, during which an added trial is the abuse and taunting of the damsel guide, Lynet, Lyonesse's sister. Gareth's unfailing courtesy and obvious prowess finally disarm Lynet, and after his crucial victory over Sir Persaunt of Inde, he reveals his true name and lineage to the damsel and Sir Persaunt, swearing them both to secrecy (317.1-11).

Meanwhile Lyonesse herself, hearing that a knight is coming to do battle for her, tries to find out from the young man's dwarf what his master's name is. She is told no more than that he is “kynges son of Orkeney” (317.20) and therefore of sufficient rank to be worthy of the exploit. Gareth still wishes his name kept secret, and the narrator respects his wishes, continuing to call him “sir Bewmaynes” until the climactic battle with the Red Knight of the Red Lands. After this victory Lyonesse sends him away to labor in “worshyp” for a year, but she cannot resist the compulsion to know who he is. As her sister is still bound by her oath of secrecy, Lyonesse sends her brother to kidnap Gareth's dwarf. It is not until the captured dwarf has revealed his master's identity and the young knight has come riding in a fury to rescue him, that the narrator returns to his real name:

And as they sate thus talkynge there cam sir Gareth in at the gate with hys swerde drawyn in his honde and cryed alowde that all the castell myght hyre …

(330.10-12)¹²

But this is not yet the end of Gareth's adventures. As Benson shows, he must still win his lady and show King Arthur and his brother Gawain that he is worthy of membership in his own family and of a place in the Round Table fellowship.¹³ The “Bewmaynes” stage is over; reader and lady both know who he is, so the narrator can drop the nickname. Arthur and his court, however, do not yet know the truth (for Lancelot has also kept the secret), and in direct and reported speech the hero is still “sir Bewmaynes.” As he sends a stream of defeated prisoners in the name of Sir Bewmaynes to court, curiosity mounts about this brilliant young man who has brought them such worship, until the arrival of the Queen of Orkney, who reveals that it is Gareth, her youngest son. Meanwhile, Gareth is passing further tests. In the three-day tournament he keeps his identity hidden by means of Lyonesse's magic ring, but on the third day his dwarf tricks him out of wearing the ring and the heralds announce to the field that “This is sir Gareth, kynge Lottys son of Orkeney” (351.20). Angry, Gareth rides off; he is not yet ready to take his place in Arthurian society. Further adventures follow, and he sends his prisoners back now in the name of “sir Gareth,” till the final battle with his brother Gawain, which is stopped in the nick of time by the damsel Lynet. His brother weeps with joy to learn whom he has been fighting, the whole court rides to welcome him, his lady is sent for. A marriage is celebrated in great ritual and ceremony, with vanquished knights and rescued ladies swearing homage to him for ever. The tale concludes: “And thus sir Gareth of Orkeney was a noble knyght, that wedded dame Lyonesse of the Castell Parelus” (363.11-12). Gareth has come into his own, publicly recognized, name, rank and lineage complete.

Thus Malory's narrative treatment shows his closeness to his character and his sympathy with him. The choice of title or prefix is also a significant pointer to the author's attitude towards his character. Lambert has noted that during the single combat between Arthur and Accolon in Book 1 the narrator refers to the King as “sir Arthur” fourteen times (p. 66, n. 12). In fact, Arthur is called “sir” on other occasions also: in Book 1, before his coronation (13.33, 16.26); during his engagement with King Lot outside the tower (19.15, 16); during his battle with the Five Kings (127.28, 129.7); in Book 2, during his single combat with the giant of St. Michael's Mount (200.3, 201.7, 203.6, 10); and on four other occasions.¹⁴ It is noteworthy that all but two of such references are in the early Tales, when Arthur is still establishing and consolidating his kingdom, and also that they occur during formal single combats or during individual combats within larger engagements. It seems that Malory as narrator uses “sir Arthur” when he is thinking of Arthur as an individual warrior rather than a king. I must stress that this is instinctive rather than deliberate usage; during the Arthur-Accolon fight (pp. 141-48) the narrator mixes “kynge Arthur” or “the kynge” indiscriminately with “sir Arthur,” but use of the former term predominates towards the conclusion of the episode when Arthur reassumes the authority of his office and gives judgment on all the participants in the dispute. It is clear that Malory is an unconscious rather than conscious stylist.

These subtle indications of Malory's attitude towards his characters may enable us to scotch once and for all the contention of Professor Lumiansky and his “school” that in the Book of Sir Tristram Malory's emphasis on the analogy between Tristram and Lancelot was designed to stress their adulterous relationships, and thus to point forward ominously to the cause of the final breakup of the Round Table. In an otherwise excellent article in Malory's Originality Thomas C. Rumble maintained that “we are somehow never allowed to forget that [the] relationship [between Tristram and Isolde] is, after all, an adulterous one.”¹⁵ Scholars have pounced on this assertion already, but clinching evidence can be provided by the text itself, and the narrator's mode of designating Isolde.

In the source, the French prose Tristan, the name of this beautiful young girl is Iseut la Bloie (= blonde),¹⁶ perhaps to distinguish her clearly from the second Iseut, aux Blanches Mains. After her marriage to King March she becomes, narratively, “la royne Iseut,” or “la royne de Cornouailles.”¹⁷ Malory's name for her is “La Beale Isode,”¹⁸ and an examination of the frequency with which, as narrator, he uses this form rather than her title of “quene” is most revealing. Until her marriage she is called “La Beale Isode,” and from the first incident after it, the kidnapping of Brangwayne, she becomes “Isode the quene” (419.36), or “the quene,” or “quene Isode,” as one might expect. However, when Tristram rescues her from Palomides she is “La Beale Isode” (422.32; 423.18, 25; 425.7, 18, 26)¹⁹ until he returns her to King Mark (426.1). In the subsequent Cornish episodes, when the narrator describes Tristram and Isolde together, as lovers, she is “La Beale Isode” (except for one occasion, 430.31, which is followed immediately by her proper name on 430.33); when he describes her in the company of King Mark, she is called “quene Isode,” or the title of “quene” is added. (“Quene” is also used, of course, in dialogue either with or concerning her.) A typical example occurs when Tristram returns to Cornwall with Kehaydin:

… and so sir Dynas and dame Brangwayne rode to the courte of kynge Marke and tolde the quene La Beall Isode that sir Trystramys was nyghe hir in the contrey. Than for verry pure joy La Beall Isode sowned …

(492.27-31)

She remains “La Beall Isode” (or, once, “Isode”) throughout the next ten references. It seems a fair inference that when Malory as narrator is thinking of her in the context of her rank, he calls her “quene” or includes the title, but when he is thinking of her in her role as lover he calls her “La Beale Isode.” Again, I do not wish to suggest that this is a mechanical formula, rather that it is a sensitive indication of the frame of mind of an author who is naturally punctilious about rank.

Let us examine, for instance, the recognition scene in the orchard at Tintagel. Here Isolde is called “quene” most frequently, five references as opposed to three of her proper name. But it is a scene of separation: Isolde had thought Tristram dead, now she urges him to leave her again to save himself (502.8-19). She was the queen and must return to being the queen. When she is Tristram's love and inspiration she is always “La Beale Isode,” even when he returns to Cornwall in Mark's company (610.19) or fights a Saxon invader on Cornwall's behalf (625.28). When the lovers flee Cornwall and arrive in Logres they are frequently referred to together, simply as “sir Trystram and Isode” (681.20), and she is called “quene” only in the direct speech of others talking about her, never by the narrator himself.

When we come to the Tournament of Lonezep we find the most striking references. Here Isolde and Tristram are present together, she to preside (and make all marvel at her beauty) and he to win his greatest honors. In this section the narrator does speak of Isolde as “quene” five times (737.11, 741.8, 743.37, 745.34, 754.12). These references would seem to weaken the pattern, but if we look at one of the occasions when the title is used in direct speech, we may find illumination. One evening during the course of the tournament, the couple is visited in their lodgings by two unidentified knights, who, we later discover, are Arthur and Lancelot. While still unnamed, one of them states the purpose of their visit:

… wyte you well, sir Trystram, we be com as youre frendys. And I am comyn hydir for to se you, and this knyght ys comyn for to se youre quene Isode.

(756.28-31)

“Youre quene”: it is clear that Malory now sees the lovers as a couple, and the fact that they are not legally united is far from his mind. In the same scene Arthur comments:

Madame … hit is many a day ago sytthyn I desyred fyrst to se you, for ye have been praysed so fayre a lady. And now I dare say ye ar the fayryste that ever I sawe, and sir Trystram ys as fayre and as good a knyght as ony that I know. And therefore mesemyth ye ar well besett togydir.

(757.12-17)

From now to the end of the Tale the only references to Isolde's royal rank occur in the scenes of Palomides's love-complaints (e.g., 770.7-8, 10; 781.4, 13); and even he generally thinks of the lovers in the same breath—when being led away prisoner to his death he commends himself “unto my lorde sir Trystram and unto my lady quene Isode” (776.5-6). The concluding proof that Malory has come to think of his lovers as living in comfortable domesticity²⁰ occurs in the “Conclusion” of the Book, where Tristram, returned from his quest for Lancelot, is told by Isolde that Lancelot has been cured of his madness and has returned to court. Twice, she is called, narratively, “dame Isode” (839.15, 23), a term which has never been used for her before.

It might be contended that in drawing the above inferences from the Winchester manuscript I have not paid sufficient attention to the possibility of scribal corruption or interference. Indeed, Vinaver laid a red herring when he suggested that some proper names might have been added to the text after completion, by the rubricators (Works, p. 1667). It was a frequent practice of medieval scribes to leave spaces for personal names to be added later in red ink, but in my observation of the Winchester MS. I found no indication of such a practice. My doubts are confirmed by N. R. Ker, who notes in his Introduction to the facsimile edition of the manuscript that the Winchester scribes changed pens each time a name occurred and wrote it in non-current script as well as in red ink. “The distinguishing of personal names,” Ker observes, “was evidently a matter of great consequence to the scribes. Whatever their failings in other matters they are consistent and almost faultless in this one. …”²¹ In my own study of the manuscript I found that the scribal practice concerning titles and prefixes was almost as scrupulous: titles such as “sir,” “kynge,” “quene,” “dame” are always in black, while the proper names follow in red. Isolde's prefix does vary: sometimes the whole “La Beale Isode” is in red, sometimes only “Isode.” However, such minor variations do not support the suggestion that any names or prefixes have a scribal rather than authorial origin. Except for some minor occasions, mostly in dialogue rather than narrative, Caxton confirms the Winchester readings;²² so we may assume with some confidence that it was Malory's own sense of decorum that prompted him to omit the title “quene” from Isolde's name on significant occasions.

Thus, it is clear that Malory sees his characters in terms of the roles they are filling at the time, and as narrator uses the titles that are proper and appropriate. Title or prefix is, after all, an integral part of identity. Lambert and Benson have reminded us that the Morte Darthur is not a nineteenth- or twentieth-century novel, and the laws of naturalistic or realistic fiction have no relevance for it. Nevertheless, there is a subtle form of realism present. The characters are real to Malory, and as narrator he respects their requirements, honors their aliases, and scrupulously records their rank according to the necessity of the occasion.

Notes

1. James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. Chester D. Anderson (New York: Viking Press, 1968), p. 215.

2. Robert Scholes and Robert Kellogg, The Nature of Narrative (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1966), p. 53.

3. Derek S. Brewer, “The Relationship of Chaucer to the English and European Traditions,” in Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature, ed. D. S. Brewer (Alabama: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1966), p. 8; also Charles Muscatine, “The Canterbury Tales: Style of the Man and Style of the Work,” in the same volume, p. 89.

4. All quotations and references are taken from The Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Eugène Vinaver, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), hereafter cited as Works; all uses of name, title and prefix cited in this article have been checked against the extremely useful A Concordance to the Works of Sir Thomas Malory, ed. Tomomi Kato (Tokyo: Univ. of Tokyo Press, 1974).

5. Romance and Chronicle: A Study of Malory's Prose Style (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1971), Ch. VIII.

6. Malory: Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur (New Haven and London: Yale Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 8-16.

7. Le “Tristan en Prose”: Essai d'interprétation d'un Roman Médiéval (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1975), p. 174.

8. E.g., Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, ed. Renée L. Curtis, II (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), p. 124. This is the second volume of an edition of MS. Carpentras 404, not one of the Tristan MSS which Vinaver uses as his “source” MSS (Works, pp. 1448-49), but the most complete edition of the romance to date.

9. E.g., Huth MS, f. 75r, col. 1 (Works, pp. 1297, n. to 41.12-13). As Vinaver points out, the Huth Merlin mentions the second sister, Morgans, as marrying King Nentres of Sorhaut, while the third sister, Morgue, learns the magic arts and becomes known as Morgue la fee (Works, p. 1285, nn. to 10.5-7, 8-10). Malory's choice of name for King Lot's wife may have been suggested by the second sister, or by his knowledge of another French tradition in which Lot's wife does have a name, “Morgadés,” e.g., in Meriadeuc, ou li Chevaliers as deus espees (see Louis-Fernand Flutre, Tables de noms propres avec toutes leurs variantes figurant dans les romans du Moyen Age écrits en français ou en provençal … [Poitiers, 1962]).

10. Malory (1929; rpt. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), pp. 35-38.

11. “Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur,” in Critical Approaches to Six Major English Works: Beowulf through Paradise Lost, ed. R. M. Lumiansky and H. Baker (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), p. 115.

12. There is a deliberate comic contrast of tone here: Lynet has just praised his “goodly and meke” answers to her taunts, and Gareth arrives shouting, “Thou traytour knyght. …” The “Tale of Sir Gareth” is full of such subtle contrasts of decorum in speech.

13. Malory's Morte Darthur (Camb., Mass., and London: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976), p. 102.

14. 218.3, 223.18, 1137.9, 1162.21. These may well be scribal errors through contamination by many surrounding “sir”s (see, e.g., Works, p. cxii), and Caxton has left them out or changed them to “kynge” in his edition; “sir Arthur” also occurs twice in dialogue (34.32, 52.31)—it is worth noting that the address “sir kynge” is found occasionally, e.g., 74.33, 241.4, 246.6, as is “sir knyght,” e.g., 271.20.

15. “‘The Tale of Tristram’: Development by Analogy,” in Malory's Originality: A Critical Study of Le Morte Darthur, ed. R. M. Lumiansky (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1964), p. 181.

16. S.v. F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne langue française; Iseut is also known as “La Blonde,” see Flutre, Tables de noms propres.

17. I have checked the following MSS and partial editions of the prose Tristan: Bibliothèque Nationale f. fr. 103, 334 and 99; “Galahad and Perceval,” ed. O. Sommer, MP, 5 (1907-8), 55-84, 181-200, 291-341, a partial edition of B.M. Add. 5474; Le Roman de Tristan en Prose: les deux captivités de Tristan, ed. Joël Blanchard (Paris: Editions Klincksieck, 1976), selections based on B.N. f. fr. 757; and the monumental but still unfinished Le Roman de Tristan en Prose, ed. Renée L. Curtis, I (Munich, 1963), II (Leiden, 1976), an edition of MS. Carpentras 404.

18. “Beale” is a ME form of “bele” (= beautiful), s.v. OED and MED. Though the prose Tristan tradition characterizes Yseult by her blonde hair (see n. 16 above), the poetic tradition seems to favor the designation “la bele Ysolt”: see Le Roman de Tristan par Thomas, p.p. Joseph Bédier, 2 vols. (Paris, 1902, 1905, rpt. 1968 [SATF]), I, 3124; The Romance of Tristan by Béroul, ed. A. Ewert, 2 vols. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1967, 1970). Béroul uses “la bele Yseut” or variants 14 times, but also “Yseut a la crine bloie” or variants 4 times. Malory may have known of the poetic tradition, or the coupling may have become proverbial by his time, for Chaucer uses “bele Isawde” as a type of female beauty in The House of Fame, l. 1796.

19. On one occasion, 423.10, “the quene” is added to the name.

20. Derek S. Brewer's phrase is “cheerful domesticity”: “‘the hoole book,’” in Essays on Malory, ed. J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963), p. 46.

21. The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile (London: Oxford Univ. Press for the Early English Text Society, 1976), p. xiv.

22. He adds or prefers “Isoud” or “la beale Isoud” to “the quene” on two occasions in narrative (420.15, 430.12), and more frequently in dialogue, notably in Lancelot's speech at Lonezep (756.30-31); he also omits the second “dame” (839.23), but not the first.