SOURCE: Morgan, Jeffrey L. “Malory's Double Ending: The Duplicitous Death and Departing.” In Sir Thomas Malory: Views and Re-views, edited by D. Thomas Hanks, Jr., pp. 91-105. New York: AMS Press, 1992.

[In the following essay, Morgan re-examines structural issues debated by various critics regarding the last two chapters of Le Morte Darthur.]

In the Morte Darthur's two final chapters, its tragic themes achieve their fullest development. In these chapters the universe itself seems to conspire in the annihilation of the Round Table. As “The Day of Destiny” opens, Arthur returns from the siege of Benwick to do battle with Mordred, the usurper, and with Mordred's army. In the battle, Gawain re-opens the wound he received from Lancelot and dies soon thereafter. As Arthur again prepares to battle his mutinous son, Gawain appears in a dream and warns him to arrange a truce with Mordred until Lancelot arrives with reinforcements. Although Arthur accepts Gawain's warning and arranges to negotiate a truce, the final battle erupts when a knight pulls his sword to kill a snake which appears by chance. All of Arthur's knights, save Lucan and Bedivere, are killed in the ensuing battle. At the battle's end, Arthur, spying Mordred standing alone, impales him on a spear. Before Mordred dies, however, he mortally wounds Arthur. Bedivere returns the king's sword to the Lady of the Lake and then watches as Arthur is taken away on a boat by the three queens and the Lady of the Lake.

The narrative of the final chapter, “The Dolorous Death and Departing,” begins before the action of “The Day of Destiny” when Guinevere, seeking protection from Mordred, removes herself to a nunnery. Lancelot arrives in England too late to assist Arthur in regaining his kingdom, but finds Guinevere at the nunnery and invites her to return to his land as his wife. Guinevere refuses. She sends him away after extracting a pledge that he will never visit her again. Lancelot joins a monastery, where he resides in prayer until he receives a vision instructing him to return to Guinevere, who is dying. Lancelot arrives at Guinevere's side to find her already dead. He takes her body to be interred in the tomb that supposedly contains the body of Arthur, and there Lancelot mourns so heavily that he will neither eat nor drink. When he dies a few weeks later, the bishop dreams of his entry into heaven escorted by a band of angels. Lancelot's body is taken to Joyous Guard. Ector arrives in the middle of the funeral service and delivers a moving eulogy. The chapter ends with details of the few remaining knights: they die on a Good Friday, on Crusade against the Turks.

In these chapters that end the Morte Darthur, the tragic action, though swift-moving, seems simple and straightforward: everyone dies and the Round Table is finally and totally destroyed. Several critics, however—Charles Moorman, Larry Benson, Mark Lambert, and Judson Allen—have noted problems with the Morte's ending.¹ Each of these critics recognizes that the Morte's conclusion is somehow dissatisfying. Even Lambert's and Allen's defenses amount to such a recognition: any defense implies a doubt. Moorman, Benson, Lambert, and Allen, to one degree or another, seek to answer similar questions: can the Morte's final tale be reconciled with a reading of the Morte as a unified tragedy? And, more important, what are the effects of the ending on the reader, regardless of the ending's role in a tragic reading?

None of these critics, however, focuses specifically on the very end of the Morte, its last two chapters: “The Day of Destiny” and “The Dolorous Death and Departing.” They focus, instead, on the last two books, Lancelot and Guinevere and The Death of Arthur. And it is the ending of the ending—the last two chapters of the last book—that causes the most problems with reading the Morte as a unified tragedy. Three basic problems trouble this section: the tone shifts from tragic to non-tragic, the deaths of Lancelot and Guinevere are anticlimactic, and the focus abruptly shifts from Arthur to Lancelot and Guinevere. To be sure, the four critics thoroughly explore the marked contrast between the last two books as a whole; none of their explanations, however, accounts for the startling contrasts between the last two chapters. I propose that a close examination of the ending of the book will reveal both the roots of these vague dissatisfactions and also the full implications of the Morte's tragedy.

Probably the most noticeable problem in the Morte's last two sections is the change in tone. The latter chapter, “The Dolorous Death and Departing,” even though punctuated by several scenes of great pathos, seems light indeed when compared to the immediately preceding “Day of Destiny.” The lighter tone of “The Dolorous Death” derives in part from its quicker pacing. This last chapter of the Morte is mostly narration. It uses extended dialogue only three times—the exchange between Lancelot and Guinevere at the convent, Lancelot's speech on Guinevere's tomb, and Ector's eulogy of Lancelot—and these develop short scenes that build and finish quickly.

The foregoing “Day of Destiny,” by contrast, comprises two major scenes—the first battle with Mordred and Gawain's subsequent death, and the second battle with Mordred and Arthur's death—developed over several pages and separated only by short transition scenes. In particular, the death scenes in “The Day of Destiny” give the chapter its tragic tone. Gawain's death scene takes almost two pages and contains an extended monologue (three paragraphs) in the form of the reconciliation letter to Lancelot. Similarly, Arthur's death scene uses more than two pages and is extended by the repeated attempt of Bedivere to return Arthur's sword to the Lady of the Lake. Whereas the narrator leads us quickly through the action of “The Dolorous Death,” allowing us only minimal tragic and dramatic experience, we see the full tragic and dramatic impact of Arthur and Gawain's deaths through the detailed development of “The Day of Destiny.”

In comparison to the deaths of Arthur and Gawain, the later deaths of Guinevere and Lancelot in “The Dolorous Death” are undeveloped—hardly dolorous at all. Both die quickly and off stage. Because we do not see them at the point of death, the dramatic impact of their deaths is lost. Their deaths are, in fact, anticlimactic. The intensely tragic tone created by the extended death scenes and slow pacing of “The Day of Destiny” vanishes in “The Dolorous Death.”

This anticlimax raises another problem with the Morte's ending: the final chapter does not focus on the “hoole booke's” climax—the battle of Mordred and Arthur—but instead it focuses exclusively on Lancelot and Guinevere. Beginning with Merlin's early prophecy of Mordred's rebellion (29.34-36), the Morte Darthur has moved slowly to the literal day of destiny: the final battle scene and Arthur's subsequent death (713.6-716.26).² After Arthur's death, however, Malory directs attention away from Arthur and the climax of his story, and toward Lancelot and Guinevere. In “The Dolorous Death,” Arthur is left, both figuratively and literally, in the dust.

Focus is the final problem of the Morte's ending. More than any other part of the work, “The Dolorous Death” causes the reader to question whom the “hoole booke” is about. Is it the story of Arthur, or is it the story of Lancelot and Guinevere? What role, exactly, does Arthur play in the story that bears his name? It is, after all, called the Morte Darthur, not the Morte de Lancelot or the Morte de Guinevere. Arthur, however, does not appear in the last tale.

Although Moorman and Benson overtly acknowledge their misgivings about the Morte's ending, both of their explanations only describe the problem, as I have above. Neither explains how or why the problem exists. In these last two chapters, however, we can find a simple, but not necessarily obvious, explanation for our dissatisfactions: the Morte tells two stories, not one. Malory simultaneously tells two stories from two points of view which imply two different sets of values. The first is the story of the characters—Arthur, Lancelot, and Guinevere—and of the fall of the Round Table. The second story is the one told by the narrator, the story of “the once and future king.” In the first story, the characters believe that Arthur is dead and gone forever; in the second, however, the narrator leaves open the possibility that Arthur is alive and will return as king. The values of the first are obviously tragic, while those of the second are not. The tension between these two stories is the root of most dissatisfaction with the book's ending. Both stories have recognizable structures, and, in these two closing chapters, the characters' story competes with the narrator's story for structural dominance.

I. THE CHARACTERS' STORY

The characters of the last tales believe that Arthur is dead. They are participants in the tragedy, not observers who possess the privileged information that Arthur may not be dead. Guinevere tells Lancelot that “thorow oure love … ys my moste noble lorde slayne” (720.16-17). Lancelot believes that the tomb at Glastonbury contains the “corps” of the “kyng” (723.25). These two characters (as well as other, lesser, characters like Bedivere) believe that Arthur is dead, and each perceives that death as tragic.

The characters' perception of tragedy having been established, the conclusion of the characters' story is then structured by the three major speeches of “The Dolorous Death.” This last chapter can be read as a unified conclusion to the characters' story because, in it, Malory reviews the three major threads of their tragedy through the speeches. The first, the scene between Lancelot and Guinevere, prepares for the second, Lancelot's tomb speech, which is the climax of this last chapter. The entire chapter builds toward his lamentation of Guinevere's and Arthur's deaths. Ector's eulogy, the third dialogue, is simply a parting remembrance—a “goodbye.”

Each of these speeches shows a different perspective upon the tragic action. Guinevere's speech concerns the tragedy's moral implications. Lancelot's speech deals with individual suffering. And Ector's speech recounts the destruction of the social order. Separately, they give only a partial picture of the Morte's tragedy. Taken together, however, they summarize the complex tragedy that Malory creates throughout his work.

The first of these accounts comes from Guinevere at the moment of Lancelot's visit to her in the convent. To her “ladyes” and to Lancelot she says:

“Thorow thys same man and me hath all thys warre be wrought, and the deth of the moste nobelest knyghtes of the worlde; for thorow oure love that we have loved togydir ys my moste noble lorde slayne. Therefore, sir Launcelot, wyte thou well I am sette in suche a plyght to gete my soule hele. And yet I truste, thorow Goddis grace and thorow Hys Passion of Hys woundis wyde, that aftir my deth I may have a syght of the blyssed face of Cryste Jesu, and on Doomesday to sytte on Hys ryght syde; for as synfull as ever I was, now ar seyntes in hevyn. … And I pray the hartely to pray for me to the Everlastynge Lorde that I may amende my mysselyvyng.”

(720.15-33)

In this speech, Guinevere reports the tragic action's moral implications. She believes that her immortal soul is in jeopardy because of her affair with Lancelot.³ She sees the fall of Arthur's kingdom always in these terms. By banishing Lancelot from her presence forever, she hopes to insure her future purity and to atone for her sin.

Lancelot's speech at Guinevere's tomb, by contrast, is much more a recapitulation of suffering. Where Guinevere's concern lay in the sinfulness of their acts and the resulting chaos, and in her own quest for redemption, Lancelot relates a tragedy of intense personal pain:

“Truly,” sayd syr Launcelot, “I trust I do not dysplese God, for He knoweth myn entente: for my sorow was not, nor is not, for ony rejoysyng of synne, but my sorow may never have ende. For whan I remembre of hir beaulté and of hir noblesse, that was bothe wyth hyr kyng and wyth hyr, so whan I sawe his corps and hir corps so lye togyders, truly myn herte wold not serve to susteyne my careful body. Also whan I remembre me how by my defaute and myn orgule and my pryde that they were bothe layed ful lowe, that were pereles that ever was lyvyng of Cristen people, wyt you wel,” sayd syr Launcelot, “this remembred, of their kyndenes and myn unkyndenes, sanke so to myn herte that I myght not susteyne myself.”

(723.21-31)

Guinevere retains a distance in her speech that is absent in Lancelot's. Her speech has cosmic overtones—concerns with her place in the universe in the past, present, and future. She tries to see herself, and her role in the tragic action, in the context of eternity. Although Lancelot shows knowledge both of his responsibility for the tragedy and of the tragedy's moral implications, he is more concerned with expressing his grief, and with the effects of the tragedy, than with explicating its moral content. His concern is for the suffering of individuals.

The third speech in the tale, Sir Ector's eulogy of Lancelot, also details the effects of the tragedy, but instead of describing its effects on an individual, Ector describes its effects on the society:

“A, Launcelot!” he sayd, “thou were hede of al Crysten knyghtes! And now I dare say,” sayd syr Ector, “thou sir Launcelot, there thou lyest, that thou were never matched of erthely knyghtes hande. And thou were the curtest knyght that ever bare shelde! And thou were the truest frende to thy lovar that ever bestrade hors, and thou were the trewest lover, of a synful man, that ever loved woman, and thou were the kyndest man that ever strake wyth swerde. And thou were the godelyest persone that ever cam emonge prees of knyghtes, and thou was the mekest man and jentyllest that ever ete in halle emonge ladyes, and thou were the sternest knyght to thy mortal foo that ever put spere in the reeste.”

(725.16-26)

Ector mourns the loss of the ideal knight, the very symbol of the Round Table society. He describes Lancelot in purely social terms as “frende,” “lover,” and “knyght.” Lancelot's value to Ector was as a symbol of the perfect society; the death of Lancelot represents the death of that society. Although Ector mentions the moral thread—that Lancelot was a “synful man”—and the individual thread—that Lancelot was “the truest frende”—these threads are left undeveloped.

In Ector's eulogy, the story of the Morte Darthur becomes the story of chivalry. It is the story of courteous knights, true lovers, and honorable battles. It is also, ultimately, the story of the loss of all this, the loss of the stable society where a knight is meek and gentle “in halle emonge ladyes,” but stern “to [his] mortal foo.” Ector's speech, in fact, describes a well-ordered society in which knights know how to act—a society in which roles are clear and actions are regulated by context. Although Lancelot was a sinful man, an adulterer, he was the perfect model for the knight's role. He was a symbol of order, of how a man should act, and the loss of that order is what Ector mourns.

These three speeches are the focal points, the chief structural elements, of this last chapter. Each gives one character's view of the tragedy. Guinevere says, in effect, “The Round Table fell because of our sin”; Lancelot says, “I cannot bear the pain of knowing that I caused the fall of Arthur and Guinevere”; and Ector says, “In losing Lancelot, we have lost all that was good in society.” And while each speech interprets the preceding events differently, they cannot easily be separated.

II. THE NARRATOR'S STORY

The characters' reviews of the tragedy, although different, are unified by one important element: they are each temporal. The characters, like their stories, are bound by the rules that govern ordinary time and space. The events of their story occur in their present. They have no real knowledge of the future. The narrator tells a different story, however. In his story, Arthur may or may not be dead. Whereas the characters' story is structured by the speeches of Guinevere, Lancelot, and Ector, the narrator's story is framed by his commentary and by his use of the first person “I.” His story lies neatly bracketed by passages of commentary. This begins in the final paragraphs of “The Day of Destiny” when the narrator says: “Thus of Arthur I fynde no more wrytten in bokis that bene auctorysed, nothir more of the verry sertaynté of hys dethe harde I never rede” (717.12-14). He is unsure that Arthur is dead and repeats this sentiment several times in the following lines:

Now more of the deth of kynge Arthur coude I never fynde, but that thes ladyes brought hym to hys grave, and such one was entyred there whych the ermyte bare wytnes. … But yet the ermyte knew nat in sertayne that he was veryly the body of kynge Arthur. …

(717.22-27)

and two lines later:

Yet som men say in many partys of Inglonde that kynge Arthure ys nat dede, but had by the wyll of oure Lorde Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall com agayne, and he shall wynne the Holy Crosse.

(717.29-32)

These paragraphs not only conclude “The Day of Destiny,” but they also form a transition between “The Day of Destiny” and “The Dolorous Death.” The transition does not simply tie one unit of action to another, however; in the concluding paragraphs of “The Day of Destiny” where the narrator raises the possibility that Arthur may still live, the tone begins to shift from the purely tragic to something wholly different. This transition, then, also ties the tragic to the anti-tragic.⁴

The anti-tragic tone of these paragraphs is augmented by the circumstances of Lancelot's death. As Lancelot dies, the bishop dreams of him “with mo angellis than ever I sawe men in one day” (724.25-6). Later, when Bors and his comrades find Lancelot dead, Lancelot is smiling and is surrounded by “the swettest savour … that ever they felte” (724.34-5). His death is not tragic, but almost comic. This happy death, and Ector's glorifying eulogy, are the last fully developed scenes in the book, and they significantly alter its otherwise-tragic tone.

Immediately following Ector's eulogy, moreover, appears the final passage of narratorial commentary detailing the final destinies of Bors, Ector, Blamour, and Bleoberis. According to the narrator, they went on a crusade against the Turks and died on a Good Friday. Their deaths, like Lancelot's, are almost comic; they also, surely, go to heaven.⁵ The narrator emphasizes this when he says, “they dyed upon a Good Fryday for Goddes sake” (726.8-9; emphasis mine).

III. MALORY'S TRAGIC BALANCE

The narrator's story places several of the knights in heaven and Arthur in another unspecified place (a place associated with “oure Lorde”—717.30). As a result, these deaths lose most of their tragic significance for the reader. They would lose all tragic significance were it not for the characters' summaries of the tragedy that occur in the final chapter. These characters operate within the context of the narrator's story, but they insist that the action is tragic.

This conflict between the characters' words and the narrator's words causes the problem in reading the Morte as a unified tragedy. If the major characters are in heaven, then what is the tragedy? They are, after all, in a better place. The tragedy would seem to be that they had to wait so long to go.

If Malory had emphasized the narrator's story at the expense of the characters' story, then these anti-tragic statements would determine our final view of the Morte. We would see it as comic. However, he does not. Balancing the comic implications of life after death is the suffering of the characters. Balancing Lancelot's assumption into heaven is Ector's mournful eulogy. Balancing the hope that Arthur will return is the reality that he is no longer on this Earth. The real tragedy, then, seems to be a basic fact of human existence: people suffer and then die, and then other people suffer because of their deaths.

Neither Guinevere, Lancelot, nor Ector ever mentions that the person they mourn for is probably in heaven. They are not comforted by that thought. In fact, even after the bishop's dream and the sweet savor of Lancelot's death, there was “wepynge and wryngyng of handes, and the grettest dole they made that ever made men” (724.35-36). Even within the Christian hope of heaven, tragedy resides.

IV. CONCLUSION: DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING?

The Morte Darthur cannot properly be called a tragedy; its double ending prevents such a judgment. The narrator does not allow his tale to end in utter desolation, but maintains the hope that Arthur will return to rule England at some unspecified time in the future. Qualifying that hope, however, is the reality that humanity continues to live in suffering and despair. Thus, while the Morte is not a tragedy per se, it is tragic: the realization of human suffering that finally overpowers the narrator's hope is the realization of the tragic condition of human existence.

Malory's vision of the tragic is essentially the same as the Greek dramatists' vision. Both portray the lives of people adrift in an irrational, and even hostile, universe. In the process, both finally deconstruct the prevailing cosmologies of their cultures, showing that the cosmos—literally translated as “order”—is nothing more than chaos.⁶ This opposition of and tension between cosmos and chaos is the origin of the tragic.

The Greek tragedies typically portray a human trapped in this tension between chaos and cosmos. The heroes either accept their doom or run from it, but they do not attempt to alter the shape of their universe—to change their roles from pawns to players. Malory, however, portrays the heroic effort of one man—Arthur Pendragon—to make cosmos from chaos, to pull order from disorder. Arthur molds and forms the chaos of his universe into a facsimile of cosmos; he brings what appears to be order out of disorder. Arthur ultimately fails because he creates a false cosmos. Below the apparently stable surface of the society, ingrained in its deepest structures, lurk human passions and irrational gods. Given these two forces, over which Arthur is powerless, the decay of his false cosmos into overt chaos is inevitable.

Malory wrote during a time when deeply rooted social, political, and religious structures were experiencing rapid change. He sits balanced precariously between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.⁷ Although we often think of that transitional time as exciting and full of promise, it is not difficult to visualize these rapid changes as dizzying and frightening. So when Malory laments the end of the world as he knew it—even if that end is simply the death of the social ideal of chivalry—we should listen closely, for therein lies the root of his vision of the tragic.

On an allegorical level, the Morte Darthur is the story of the rise of Christian European culture from the dark, pagan past. Under Arthur's leadership, England leaves behind both the magic and the chaos that characterized Uther Pendragon's reign to build a culture of sophistication, grace, and virtue. Merlin's magic, tinged always with hints of allegiance to demons, gives way to the Christian magic of the Grail and to the quest for Christian perfection. As history tells us, however, the feudal system based on allegiance to God and liege became ungainly and impractical and, thus, inevitably decayed. The fall of the Round Table vividly dramatizes this internal disintegration that led to the rapid change Malory so intensely condemns (see, e.g., 708.34-41 for Malory's narrative comment on the English willingness lightly to shift allegiance).

We see these historical changes with the benefit of hindsight, and generally believe they were for the best. Malory, however, like his characters, did not have the benefit of such privileged information. Malory lived and wrote in the interim between the old medieval order and the new Renaissance order. He saw the Renaissance struggling to be born; he experienced the chaos of old structures dying before new replacement structures were fully formed. From his perspective, cosmos had disintegrated into chaos. The narrator's hope for Arthur's return amounts, I believe, to Malory's hope that the good people of England would return to their senses and rebuild the order they were abandoning.

Although we perceive the Renaissance as a time of religious, social and political enlightenment, Malory saw it as the end of his world. He, like the characters in the Morte's final chapters, is trapped in the present. Just as Lancelot and Guinevere—lacking the narrator's privileged perspective—do not hope for Arthur's return, neither does Malory—lacking the perspective of history—have much hope for the future of England. Like his characters, Malory is forced to live unaided in the world of the present, the world of despair.

And, yet, at the end of the Morte are the small inklings of hope: the “happy deaths” of Lancelot, Guinevere, and the crusader knights; the vague half-promise of Arthur's return. As I pointed out earlier, this change in narrative tone, as well as the change in narrative direction from Arthur toward Lancelot and Guinevere, causes problems for many readers. In essence, Malory ends his tale ambiguously. We do not know whether to be happy for the dead or feel sorry for the living; we do not know why Lancelot, who remains a morally ambiguous character until his death, receives such a saint's death; and we do not know whether Arthur will return or whether he is truly dead.

The effect of these “problems” taken together is startling. As the narrative direction shifts to Lancelot and Guinevere, we leave Arthur behind and enter the post-Arthurian world. By so completely ignoring Arthur in the closing chapter, Malory in effect brings the narrative out of the Arthurian past and into his late medieval present. The narrative ambiguities—those questions that remain unanswered—imply an ambiguous universe that defies rational analysis. And, finally, the ambiguous tone—passages of intense mourning following marginally comic scenes—presents the continuing tragedy that is human life.

As I began this Conclusion I claimed that the Morte is not a tragedy. I hold firmly to that claim and to the distinction between the genre of tragedy and the tragic mode. The Morte, however, contains both a tragedy and the tragic. The tragedy of the Morte is Arthur's death and the events leading to it. The “continuing tragedy” of human existence we can only call tragic, for it does not have the resolution to be called a tragedy. As the “hoole booke” ends, the tragedy modulates into the tragic.

These distinctions are important because they explain why the Morte resists strict readings, from whatever school of thought, as tragedy. To understand the Morte's tragedy, we must look at it, not as a tragedy, but as permeated with the tragic. If the Morte were to end with Arthur's death, then we could call the “hoole booke” a unified tragedy. But it does not end there. Malory deliberately extends his narrative into the present and, by so doing, presents not simply a tragic tale, but also, and more importantly, a tragic view of life. By raising the ambiguous hope of life after death, the Morte modulates from tragedy to the tragic.

The world with which Malory leaves us remains suspended between chaos and cosmos. In the moment of Arthur's death, chaos prevails, and the tragedy finds resolution. Malory, however, does not allow Arthur to die; the very hope that he may return robs chaos of its power and death of its sting. But even as chaos is defeated, so is cosmos. The hope that Malory raises is never sure; the sting becomes a dull, throbbing ache. The closing chapter of the Morte does not restore our faith in the order of the universe. The hope that Malory clings to is not unalloyed hope; it prevents the resolution of the tragedy, but allows the tragic to continue unmitigated.

Notes

1. Charles Moorman suggests that, in the end, none of the Morte's characters achieves a tragic stature equal to those of Shakespeare's greatest heroes (104-05). Although he finds the Morte unified through its development of the “single great theme” of the rise and fall of the ideal society, Moorman points out that the characters' development as tragic heroes is incomplete (101). None achieves the level of self-knowledge necessary for tragic greatness.

   Larry Benson also states his dissatisfaction with the ending. He calls it a “tragic emulsion” because he believes that a truly “tragic effect” remains unachieved (248). The Morte's final chapters contain all the elements of tragedy, but these elements never quite coalesce; they remain suspended (248). Both the ambiguity of the causality at the Morte's conclusion—the inability to fault any one person or supernatural agency for the tragic falls—and the “comic uplift” of the final chapter diffuse the final tragic effect. Moorman and Benson both point out the lack of resolution at the end of the Morte. While Moorman focuses on the characters and on their unresolved development, Benson analyzes the unresolved plot. Both argue that the ending is somehow flawed.

   Mark Lambert writes much like Moorman and Benson, but, unlike them, he does not believe the ending is flawed. Although he also suggests a lack of resolution, Lambert finds its result is to create a “nostalgia,” a “sense of loss,” without a clear understanding of that loss's philosophical meaning (176). He contrasts the last two books of the Morte, Lancelot and Guinevere and The Death of Arthur. While the first book develops the charmed nature of Arthur's kingdom, the second develops the kingdom in chaos (144). The happiness of Lancelot and Guinevere makes The Death of Arthur seem all the more tragic (145). Lambert finds that the lack of resolution—the impression that the story is somehow unfinished—actually augments the Morte's tragedy.

   Like Lambert, Judson Allen believes the Morte ends satisfactorily; unlike the other critics, however, he does not measure the Morte against typical standards. He proposes that the last two books are not meant to be a conclusion at all, but rather are distinctios that explicate the nature of the truly virtuous knight (251). Discomfort with the Morte's lack of a modern, plotted conclusion, he suggests, results not from a faulty structure, but, rather, results from judging a medieval work by modern standards (238). As readers of modern novels, we expect the Morte to adhere to what are essentially modern criteria for narrative. (Vinaver, perhaps unintentionally, encourages reading the Morte as a novel [or, more precisely, as several novels] in the editing practices he introduced in his 1947 edition of Malory's Works and continued through his later editions. He has practiced, as he notes in the 1971 edition, “the liberal use of paragraphing, the setting of dialogue in keeping with modern practice, and the endeavour to avoid a punctuation that strings sentences together by innumerable ands” in an effort “to give the work the appearance of a modern novel” [x].) Allen suggests that our problems with the Morte's ending stem from our novel-based expectations.

2. All references to Malory's text are to Vinaver's one-volume edition of 1971 and are cited parenthetically by page and line numbers within the text.

3. One point, however, is unclear: does the sin's import lie in the fact of the adultery, or does it lie in societal chaos, the product of that adultery? Is the sin unfaithfulness to a spouse or treason to a king? Guinevere seems to indicate the latter. She speaks only of the results of the adultery, the fall of the Round Table, but never of the adultery itself. The first two sentences of her speech make her point clearly. After she says that she and Lancelot bear ultimate responsibility for “all thys warre,” she says, “Therefore … I am sette in suche a plyght to gete my soule [hele].” Her rhetoric, the use of the word “therefore,” indicates a cause and effect relationship—that her soul is in jeopardy because she is responsible for the chaos of The Most Piteous Tale of the Morte Arthur Saunz Guerdon. Guinevere confesses not to sexual immorality, but to social immorality. In either case, her primary concern is morality.

4. I have deliberately refrained from using the word “comic” when discussing this change in tone because that word does not seem wholly appropriate. Although the tone shifts from the purely tragic, it never loses its tragic overtones. Although the circumstances of Guinevere's and Lancelot's deaths create what Benson describes as a “comic uplift,” each death is followed by scenes of intense mourning and lamentation. The comic elements cannot be extricated from the tragedy which surrounds them.

5. In the Middle Ages, dying on crusade was a guarantee of entrance into heaven. An illustration—In The Medieval World View: An Introduction, William Cook and Ronald Herzman cite Pope Urban II's promise of eternal life for those who died on crusade. Of the crusade called in 1095, Urban said the following:

   “I address those present; I proclaim it to those absent; moreover Christ commands it. For all those going thither there will be remission of sins if they come to the end of this fettered life while either marching by land or crossing by sea, or in fighting the pagans. This I grant to all who go, through the power vested in me by God.”

   (232-33)

6. I first encountered the cosmos-chaos opposition in Carl Sagan's Cosmos.

7. Beverly Kennedy proposes that all tragedy rests on a “foundation of hope.” She differentiates between the hope of a better life after death (spiritual transcendence) and the hope for a better life on earth (horizontal transcendence). She believes that tragedy's foundation is the hope for horizontal transcendence, because spiritual transcendence renders life's suffering meaningless. She proposes that the Morte expresses the hope for horizontal transcendence implicit in the social progress and philosophical thought of the late Middle Ages.

   Kennedy's argument implies a rationally ordered universe which humans can effectively change. The tragic universe that Malory creates, however, is no such cosmos. It is, rather, a chaotic universe governed by prophecy, chance, and human emotion. Merlin's early prophecies of Arthur's downfall, and of Lancelot and Guinevere's destructive love affair; Arthur's prophetic dreams; and the adder that triggers the final battle between Arthur and Mordred; all combine to question human culpability in tragedy—and to question the human ability to alter destiny. These questions, taken with the irrational emotions of Lancelot and Guinevere (in conducting a dangerous love affair) and of Gawain (in insisting on blood revenge for the deaths of his brothers), imply an irrational universe in which the force of human will has little or no effect.

Works Cited

Allen, Judson B. “Malory's Diptych Distinctio. The Closing Books of His Work.” Studies in Malory. Ed. James W. Spisak. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan U, 1985. 237–55.

Benson, Larry D. Malory's Morte Darthur. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard UP, 1976.

Cook, William, and Ronald Herzman. The Medieval World View: An Introduction. New York: Oxford UP, 1983.

Kennedy, Beverly. “The Re-Emergence of Tragedy in Late Medieval England: Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur.” The Existential Coordinates of the Human Condition: Poetic—Epic—Tragic: The Literary Genre. Ed. Anna-Teresa Tymeniecka. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1984. 363–78.

Lambert, Mark. Style and Vision in Le Morte Darthur. Yale Studies in English 186. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1975.

Malory, Sir Thomas. Works. Ed. Eugène Vinaver. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1971.

Moorman, Charles. A Knyght There Was: The Evolution of the Knight in Literature. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1967.

Sagan, Carl. Cosmos. New York: Ballantine, 1980.