Skip to content
1882
Volume 68, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0078-2122
  • E-ISSN: 2507-0444

Abstract

Abstract

Loyalty is one of the conspicuous themes in the Alliterative . The narrator treats loyalty with ambiguity and incertitude, at times providing the reader with examples of loyal (and disloyal) behaviour which are nuanced. Some of the acts which are generated by loyalty are associated with positive characteristics, while others are connected to more negative traits. Ultimately, the loyalty that many of Arthur’s knights show in the poem contributes to the end of the Round Table, but death in battle was interpreted as an honourable and heroic end for knights in much of the chivalric literature. And acts of loyalty can have problematic consequences: ‘loyally’ relaying a message from one’s lord to another could elicit the anger of the recipient, potentially resulting in the death of the messenger. Readers would not be in unanimous agreement as to whether the protagonists’ actions are loyal or whether the loyalty they show is always righteous. It is argued here that this was the narrator’s intention. The work reminds us that one person’s act of loyalty can be another’s act of disloyalty.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1484/J.NMS.5.144834
2024-01-01
2025-12-04

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Manuscripts and Archival Sources
    Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91, fols 53–98v
  2. Primary Sources
    Of Arthour and of Merlin, ed. by O. D. Macrae-Gibson, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 268 (London: Oxford University Press, 1973)
  3. The Book of Fayttes of Armes and of Chyualrye, Translated and Printed by William Caxton, ed. by A. T. P. Byles, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 189 (London: Oxford University Press, 1932)
  4. The Book of the Order of Chivalry, trans. by Noel Fallows (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2013)
  5. The Book of the Ordre of Chyualry Translated and Printed by William Caxton, ed. by A. T. P. Byles, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 168 (London: Oxford University Press, 1926 for 1925)
  6. Historical Manuscripts Commission, The Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Rutland, K.G. preserved at Belvoir Castle, 4 vols (London: HMSO, 1888–1905)
  7. Layamon’s Arthur: The Arthurian Section of Layamon’s Brut, ed. and trans. by W. R. J. Barron and S. C. Weinberg (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001)
  8. Le Morte Arthur: A Middle English Metrical Romance, ed. by Samuel B. Hemingway (Boston: Riverside Press, 1912)
  9. Life of the Black Prince by the Herald of Sir John Chandos, ed. and trans. by Mildred K. Pope and Eleanor C. Lodge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910)
  10. Morte Arthure: A Critical Edition, ed. by Mary Hamel (New York: Garland, 1984)
  11. Oeuvres Poétique de Christine de Pisan, ed. by Maurice Roy, 3 vols (Paris: Librairie de firmin didot, 1886–1896)
  12. The Prose Works of Sir Gilbert Hay, Volume III: The Buke of the Ordre of Knychthede and The Buke of the Gouernaunce of Princis, ed. by Jonathan A. Glenn, Scottish Text Society, 4th series, 21 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1993)
  13. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, ed. by James M. Dean (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2000)
  14. The Romance of Guy of Warwick: The Second or Fifteenth-Century Version, ed. by J. Zupitza, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 25–26 (London: Oxford University Press, 1875–1876)
  15. Sir Thomas Malory: Le Morte Darthur, The Definitive Original Text, ed. by P. J. C. Field (Cambridge: Brewer, 2017)
  16. Three Prose Versions of the Secreta Secretorum, ed. by R. Steele and T. Henderson, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 74 (London: Oxford University Press, 1898)
  17. The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet, ed. and trans. by G. W. Coopland (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1949)
  18. Wace’s Roman de Brut, A History of the British, ed. by Judith Weiss, 2nd edn (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2002)
  19. William of Palerne, ed. by W. W. Skeat, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1867)
  20. Secondary Works
    Ambühl, Remy, and Gwilym Dodd, ‘The Politics of Surrender: Treason, Trials and Recrimination in the 1370s’, in Ruling Fourteenth-Century England: Essays in Honour of Christopher Given-Wilson, ed. by Rémy Ambühl, James Bothwell, and Laura Tompkins (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2019), pp. 252–61
  21. Armstrong, Dorsey, ‘Rewriting the Chronicle Tradition: The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Arthur’s Sword of Peace’, Parergon, 25 (2008), 81101
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Benson, Larry D., ‘The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Medieval Tragedy’, Tennessee Studies in Literature, 11 (1966), 7587
    [Google Scholar]
  23. ———, ‘The Date of the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, in Medieval Studies in Honour of Lillian Herlands Hornstein, ed. by Jess Bessinger and Robert K. Raymo (New York: New York University Press, 1976), pp. 19–40
  24. Boren, J. L., ‘Narrative Design in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Philological Quarterly, 56 (1977), 31019
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Chism, Christine, ‘Friendly Fire: The Disastrous Politics of Friendship in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Arthuriana, 20 (2010), 6688
    [Google Scholar]
  26. ———, ‘King Takes Knight: Signifying War in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, in her Alliterative Revivals (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 189–236
  27. Dean, Christopher, ‘Sir Gawain in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Papers on Language & Literature, 22 (1986), 11525
    [Google Scholar]
  28. DeMarco, Patricia, ‘An Arthur for the Ricardian Age: Crown, Nobility, and the Alliterative “Morte Arthure”’, Speculum, 80 (2005), 46493
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Eadie, J., ‘The Alliterative Morte Arthure: Structure and Meaning’, English Studies, 63 (1982), 112
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Elias, Marcel, ‘Rewriting Chivalric Encounters: Cultural Anxieties and Social Critique in the Fourteenth Century’, in Romance Rewritten: The Evolution of Middle English Romance, ed. by E. Archibald, M. G. Leitch, and C. Saunders (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 57–64
  31. Fichte, J. O., ‘The Figure of Sir Gawain’, in The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem, ed. by Karl Heinz Göller (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1994), pp. 106–16
  32. Field, P. J. C., ‘Morte Arthure, the Montagues and Milan’, Medium Ævum, 78 (2009), 98117
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Finlayson, J., ‘The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Sir Ferumbras’, Anglia, 92 (1974), 38086
    [Google Scholar]
  34. ———, ‘The Concept of the Hero in Morte Arthure’, in Chaucer und seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer, ed. by Arno Esch (Tübingen: de Gruyter, 1968), pp. 249–74
  35. ———, ‘Morte Arthure: The Date and a Source for the Contemporary References’, Speculum, 42 (1967), 62438
    [Google Scholar]
  36. ———, ‘Rhetorical “Descriptio” of Place in the Alliterative “Morte Arthure”’, Modern Philology, 61 (1963), 810
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Gilchrist, Roberta, Medieval Life: Archaeology and the Life Course (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012)
  38. Green, Richard Firth, A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999)
  39. Griffith, R. H., ‘Malory, Morte Arthure, and Fierabras’, Anglia, 32 (1909), 38998
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Hamel, Mary, ‘Adventure as Structure in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Arthurian Interpretations, 31 (1988), 3748
    [Google Scholar]
  41. ———, ‘The “Christening” of Sir Priamus in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Viator, 13 (1982), 295307
    [Google Scholar]
  42. ———, ‘The Dream of a King: The Alliterative Morte Arthure and Dante’, Chaucer Review, 14 (1980), 298312
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Ingham, Patricia Clare, Sovereign Fantasies: Arthurian Romance and the Making of Britain (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001)
  44. Kaeuper, Richard W., Chivalry and Violence in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
  45. Keen, Maurice H., Chivalry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005)
  46. ———, The Laws of War in the Late Middle Ages (Abingdon: Routledge, 1965)
  47. Keiser, George R., ‘Edward III and the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Speculum, 48 (1973), 3751
    [Google Scholar]
  48. ———, ‘Narrative Structure in the Alliterative Morte Athure, 26–720’, The Chaucer Review, 9 (1974), 13044
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Kelly, H. A., ‘The Non-Tragedy of Arthur’, in Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature: Essays in Honour of G. H. Russell, ed. by Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1986), pp. 92–114
  50. Kennedy, Edward D., ‘Malory, the Stanzaic Morte Arthur, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Chaucer’, Arthuriana, 28 (2018), 5165
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Matthews, William, The Tragedy of Arthur: A Study of the Alliterative ‘Morte Arthure’ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1960)
  52. Miles, Brent, ‘“Lyouns Full Lothely”: Dream Interpretation and Boethian Denaturing in the Alliterative “Morte Arthure”’, Arthuriana, 18 (2008), 4162
    [Google Scholar]
  53. Moll, Richard J., ‘History curiously dytit’, in his Before Malory: Reading Arthur in Later Medieval England (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), pp. 111–21
  54. Nievergelt, Marco, ‘Introduction: The Alliterative Morte Arthure in Context’, Arthuriana, 20 (2010), 34
    [Google Scholar]
  55. Porter, Elizabeth, ‘Chaucer’s Knight, the Alliterative Morte Arthure, and Medieval Laws of War: A Reconsideration’, Nottingham Medieval Studies, 27 (1983), 56–78
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Radulescu, Raluca, ‘Literature’, in Gentry Culture in Late Medieval England, ed. by Raluca Radulescu and Alison Truelove (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), pp. 100–18
  57. Ritzke-Rutherford, Jean, ‘Formulaic Macrostructure: The Theme of Battle’, in The Alliterative Morte Arthure: A Reassessment of the Poem, ed. by Karl Heinz Goller (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1994), pp. 83–95
  58. Scattergood, V. J., Politics and Poetry in the Fifteenth Century (London: Barnes & Noble, 1971)
  59. Shaw, William A., The Knights of England: A Complete Record from the Earliest Time to the Present Day, 2 vols (London: Sherratt and Hughes, 1906)
  60. The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral MS. 91), introductions by D. S. Brewer and A. E. B. Owen (London: Scolar, 1975)
  61. Turville-Petre, Thorlac, ‘Morte Arthure: A Hero for Our Time’, in his Description and Narrative in Middle English Alliterative Poetry (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2018), pp. 56–78
  62. Twomey, Michael W., ‘Heroic Kingship and Unjust War in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, in Kings and Kingship; Acta: Proceedings of the SUNY Regional Conferences for Medieval Studies, 11, ed. by Joel Rosenthal (Binghamton: State University of New York, 1986), pp. 141–42
  63. Vale, Juliet, ‘Law and Diplomacy in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Nottingham Mediæval Studies, 23 (1979), 3146
    [Google Scholar]
  64. Whetter, Kevin Sean, ‘Genre as Context in the Alliterative Morte Arthure’, Arthuriana, 20 (2010), 4565
    [Google Scholar]
  65. ———, ‘The Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Medieval Tragedy’, Reading Medieval Studies, 28 (2002), 87111
    [Google Scholar]
  66. Weiss, Judith, ‘Mordred’, in Heroes and Anti-Heroes in Medieval Romance, ed. by N. Cartlidge (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 81–98
/content/journals/10.1484/J.NMS.5.144834
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): Alliterative Morte Arthure, duty; disloyalty; love; Loyalty
This is a required field.
Please enter a valid email address.
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An error occurred.
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error:
Please enter a valid_number test
aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnJlcG9sc29ubGluZS5uZXQv