Fifteenth

Fifteenth-Century Middle English Terms of “belongingness”: “truste,” “trewe,” and “love” in Malory (Rev. 3/26/03)

When Sir Thomas Malory was faced with testimony in his French sources (Chretien and the Prose Lancelot) that Lancelot entered Gwenyvere’s bed and made love to her, he found himself in a crisis. Elsewhere he had portrayed Lancelot as a man who shunned “love” in his statement to Morgan le Fay (98v/257-8 and 104v-105r/270-71), though in the Grail Quest he confessed a spiritual failing in his attachment to the queen (363v/897 and 409v-410r/1045-46). The anxiety arising from this authorial crisis produced one of Malory’s most extended intrusions of first-person discourse in his narrative, the “moneth of May” passage, in which he alleges that “love” in Arthur’s time was not as it now is, in fifteenth-century England. He praises what he calls “the olde love,” “vertuouse love,” and “love in kynge Arthurs dayes,” because it does not demand quickly yielding to physical desires, and because it stimulates superior behavior, especially in combat (435 r-v / 1119-20). The passage opposes long-lived love based on terms of feudal allegiance, like “olde jantylnes and old servyse,” against an unreliable love he associates with “lycoures lustis,” calling it repeatedly “love nowadayes.” Most importantly, I believe, he implies that “worshypfull” people, who alone are likely to follow “the olde love” also would love more than one person, though “there was neer worshypfll man nor worshypfull woman but they loved one bettir than another.”

In this passage, Malory appears to be grappling simultaneously with a challenge to his role as a quasi-historian who reports faithfully what his sources say, and with a shift in English usage that may reflect an even more profound alteration in English thinking about love. The first problem I have been studying in Malory’s use of transitional formulae and first-person interruptions of the narrative, both of which are a surprisingly sensitive measure of his struggle for authority over his subject, or given its topic, what we might call “Arthurity,” the power to rule the English record of the Arthurian past. In this instance, the “month of May” transitions are almost always used to signal Malory’s anxiety about the eruption of erotic love in his French sources in ways that appear to violate his sense of decorum. They connect directly to his attempt to shape readers’ understanding of “love,” which was by no means a simple term in late fifteenth-century Middle English. With “truste,” “trewe,” and “trouðe,” “love” forms a constellation of terms which create positive social relationships of a sort a sociologist studying Japan has called “belongingness.” Love, in particular, appears to have been changing its normal significance under the pressure of usage, and its instability threatened the way Malory understood his own social role, as well as those in the text he was creating.

Love’s instability as a word, rather than as an emotion, is something we all have experienced. In this historical context, its liability to misunderstanding was extremely dangerous. What had been a term used to construct a variety of relationships, increasingly was being used solely for erotic relations, and its common political use simultaneously was becoming a dead formula, rather than language used to construct lord-vassal relations.[1] Unlike “trouðe,” the subject of Richard Firth Greene’s recent study, “love” appears not to have disambiguated itself by dividing into two similar words for its different senses (“troth” and “truth” in the case of “trouðe”), but rather the socio-political sense of “love” appears to have died away in the sixteenth century, leaving only the erotic, the fraternal/sororal, and the divine. Nevertheless, in Malory’s prose, “love” is used to construct “trouðe” and “trouðe” measures love. Both are necessary for “truste,” which a state possible only among the “trewe” who “love” one another.

To corroborate my interpretation of the “moneth of May” passage’s significance as an index of Malory’s anxiety about “love,” we need only look at the next instance in which he must represent Lancelot and Gwenyver in a situation his sources describe in explicitly sexual terms.[2] When Malory introduces the scene which will lead to Lancelot being trapped in Gwenyver’s bedroom by Aggravayne, Mordred, and twelve other knights, Malory falls into the “May” opening again, one of only five times he uses the formula, and its distortion on this occasion is intensely obvious. From an invocation of spring renewal in the first two clauses, he swerves toward winter’s “blastis” and their dampening effect upon “lusty men and women” before telling us:

“thys season hit befelle in the moneth of May a grete angur and unhapp<e> that stynted nat tylle the floure of chyvalry of [alle] the worlde was destroyed and slayne and all was longe uppon two unhappy knyghtis whych were named sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred that were brethirn unto sir Gawayne for thys sir Aggravayne and sir Mordred had ever a prvy hate unto the quene dame Gwenyver and to sir Launcelot and dayly and nyghtly they ever wacched uppon sir Launcelot” (449r-v/1161).

The emphasis here is not erotic, but socio-political, and Malory once again uses the formula to launch a first-person discourse in which he attempts to steer our interpretation of events to implicate two of the attackers, and to allow us to infer his intent to exculpate Lancelot and Gwenyver. As in the previous instance, he vastly reduces the erotic behavior reported by his French and Middle English sources, suppressing their clear description of Lancelot’s entry into Gwenyver’s bed. Here he returns to his theme of love’s change, authorizing it with one of his characteristic references to the “Freynsshe booke”’s authority when he is most clearly original in his treatment of the event:

For as the Freynshhe booke seyth the quene and sir Launcelot were togydirs and whether they were abed other at other maner of disportis me lyste nat thereof make no mencioon for love that tyme was nat as love ys nowadayes” (451v/1165).

These passages suggest we should look at the socio-political usages of “love,” “trouðe,” and their related terms of social attachment for clues to the significance they may have had for a nostalgic Middle English speaker in the last half of the fifteenth century. The evidence challenges modern critics’ confident expressions of scorn for “bastard feudalism” even as it raises anew the problem of how to treat Malory, as a disloyal translator or as an author striving for authority over his material.

The socio-political sense of “love” occurs frequently in fifteenth-century royal correspondence with vassals, usually in the salutation and usually juxtaposed with a declaration of trust, as in Queen Margaret’s letter to the people of London (1461) which begins “Right trusty and welbeloved wee grete you hertily wele” (Vale 142). This is not a Lancastrian usage, but appears in letters from Edward IV as well as those from Henry VI, as in Edward’s letter regarding a benevolence (n.d.) which clearly connects love with the state of trustedness: “Right trusti and welbeloved we grete you well. Lating you wete how we at this styme addresse our comyssion unto you for the grete truste that we have in your trouthe and discrecion” (Vale 145). The addressee’s “trouthe, in this context, cannot be understood as “veracity,” but rather the state of being “trewe” or remembering one’s loyal duties. The loss of this state is illustrated equally clearly by the sequence of three letters addressed to a disobedient subject:

“Welbeloved. Recent letters commanded you to come to us but you have stayed at your own house in contempt. Come with the bearer.”

“You are to come in person to us in haste. We remember your excuses for not coming when we sent our esquire .N. yeoman of our chamber to you. At your peril.” (Vale 165).

The love between lord or lady and vassals appears in Malory when Arthur replies to Ban and Bors who have praised the warlike conduct of the kings who have opposed Arthur, saying “and if they were longyng to you there were no kynge undir hevyn that had suche eleven kyngis nother off suche worship” (14v/34-5). To this offer of “longyng” Arthur replies, “I may nat love hem . . . for they wolde destroy me” (14v/35). When Malory encounters unambiguously erotic references to “love” between men and women, however, he still attempts to preserve the primacy of the socio-political sense of the word, using every rhetorical trick he can fashion.

Perhaps the most perplexing interpretive crux in the ethical universe of Malory’s text occurs in the “Morte” Proper, as Gawayne and Arthur make their case against Launcelot. After Arthur’s charge that Lancelot “haste layne by my quene and holdyn her many wynters and sytthyn lyke a traytoure taken her away fro me by fors,” Lancelot somehow can say that no knight could prove him a traitor and that he could prove “that my lady quene Gwenyver ys as trew a lady unto youre person as ys ony lady lyvynge unto her lorde” (460v/1187-8). Following the two bedroom scenes, as it does, this claim strains credulity to the breaking point. Is Launcelot lying, with Malory’s approval, or has Malory given Launcelot a variant on the old fabliau type of “the wife’s ready answer”? Malory can be extricated from this fix, though not without charges of incoherence due to incomplete editing, if we allow a third possibility, namely that he means what he says when he tells readers “love” has changed its meaning. I believe Launcelot (and Malory) assume that all good feudal ladies would have attract the “love” of good vassals as part of their functions at court, helping to produce social cohesion rather than living in a state of isolated loyalty only to their lord and ignoring the “trust” they might help to build. In so doing, they would be “trew” to their lords in a way that a jealously isolated woman never could be.

In Launcelot’s defense, he admits his service to Gwenyvere caused “her good grace to have me in favoure and cherysh me more than ony other knyght,” but he does not seem to believe this constitutes a confession of the queen’s guilty relationship with him. In fact, his answer ignores Arthur’s charges of “laying” and “taking,” but acknowledges the charge “that I have holdyn my lady your quene yerys and wynters,” swearing “unto that I shall ever make large answere and prove hit uppon ony knyght that beryth the lyff excepte your person and sir Gawayne” (1188). This leaves the knight’s physical relations with the queen to a test by battle, an ambiguous oath like that which Launcelot took before his judicial duel with Mellyagaunce, which Richard Green points out as the best known fifteenth-century example of this common variety of equivocal legal speech (114). This more importantly draws our attention Malory’s emphasis on Gwenyver’s two political roles, as Arthur’s “quene” and Launcelot’s “lady,” and reshapes an answer to charges of treacherous possession into a claim of “trouðe.” If she can be both “your quene” and “my lady,” then the way she “loves” may depend more on her social construction of those roles than upon some reified internal emotional state. Launcelot’s reply indicates that what counts in judging Gwenyvere’s actions is her “trouðe,” and he believes this “trouðe”-state is constructed by his “service” to the queen, by implication in combat as in saving her from the fire, and by her reciprocal “having of him in favor,” and “cherishing,” presumably expressed by her invitation to intimate contact at court and public acknowledgement of his preferred status.

Malory gives Launcelot a further explication of this “trouðe-constructing” relationship that makes even more clear the political quid pro quo by which it operates: “and unto my power agayne I have deserved her love for oftyntymes my lorde ye have concented that she sholde have be brente and destroyed in youre hete and than hit fortuned me to do batayle for her and or I departed from her adversary they confessed there untrouthe and she full worsshypfully excused” (461v/1188). Thus, on the other side of Launcelot’s “trouðe” claim, the warrant for the queen’s “love,” he dramatizes his service by the exposure of others’ “untrouthe” in the queen’s service. The knight follows this positive claim with a critique of his lord’s performance in the relationship: “And at suche tymes my lorde Arthur . . . ye loved me and thanked me whan I saved your quene frome the fyre and than ye promysed me for ever to be my good lorde. And now methynkith ye rewarde me evyll for my good servyse. And my lorde mesemyth I had loste a grete parte of my worshyp in my knyghthod and I had suffird my lady youre quene to have ben brente and insomuche as she shulde have bene brente for my sake for sytthyn I have done batayles for youre quene in other quarels than in myne owne quarrel mesemyth now I had more ryght to do batayle for her in her ryght quarell. And therefore my good and gracious lorde . . . take your quene unto youre good grace for she ys both tru and good” (460v-461r/1188). Launcelot’s rhetoric moves from his service as both the king’s and the queen’s vassal, to his loss of personal advantage in that service, taking care to distinguish the origins of his obligation, the “quarrels” in which he did battle. This passage appears to recall the logic of Malory’s first “moneth of May” discourse on “vertuous love” in which he emphasized that “worshyp in armys” depends on two qualifications: “But firste reserve the honoure to God and secundley thy quarell muste com of thy lady and such love I calle vertuouse love” (435r/1119).

The relationship between Launcelot’s rhetoric when answering Arthur’s charges and the values expressed in the “moneth of May” passages appears to indicate that Malory believes what he calls “vertuouse love” to be a source of strength and socio-political cohesion. He opposes that usage of “love” to the destructive forces he calls “love peramours” and “pryvee hate” and “noyse,” all of which he dispraises numerous times in contexts where “vertuouse love” values are at stake. This set of oppositions, while nothing like the Structuralists’ pure “binaries,” seems to suggest some other qualities “vertuouse love” must possess: it is not erotic, it is publicly enacted, and (paradoxically) it is silent, shown in deeds more than in words.

Of the dangers to “vertuous love,” “noyse” clearly qualifies as the most terrible because it allows careless or malicious language, used by enemies, to put new constructions upon the social relationship upon which “truste” was founded. The dangers of “noyse” in Malory have been discussed at length, but to the best of my knowledge, no one has traced the particular pattern in which he has used “love peramours.” This is the form of “love” that Malory encountered and suppressed in the two bedroom scenes, and that stimulated the “moneth of May” essays on “vertuous love,” and in all twenty-seven instances in which forms of the word “paramour” or “paramours” are used, it fully bears out Launcelot’s description of its effects:

And as for to sey to take my pleasaunce with peramours that woll I refuse in prencipall for drede of God for knyghtes that bene adventures sholde nat be advoutrers nothir lecherous for than they be nat happy nother fortunate unto the werrys for other they shall be overcom with a sympler kyght than they be hemself other ellys they shall sle by unhappe and hir cursednesse bettir men than they be hemself and so who that usyth peramours shall be unhappy and all thynge unhappy that is aboute them” (105r/270-1).

A glance at the instances in which “peramours” are mentioned reveals the utter devastation which Malory associates with this kind of “love” (see Appendix B). The list includes Balyn’s sword damsel, who “loved anothir knyght that hylde her as paramoure”(67), Launceor and Columbe who die in futile pursuit of Balyn, the feast at which the Dolorous Stroke was stuck, Morgan le Fay’s antagonism for Arthur and Launcelot, the envy of Trystram’s cousin, Palomydes’ incestuous relationship and his ill-fated attachment to Isode, a host of dangerous ladies, and the passionate intensity of the doomed Elayne le Blanke. There is no “trend” in the usages, but three instances are noteworthy. The first is Lancelot’s early denunciation of “peramours” which I just mentioned. The second is Isode’s extended discussion with Dinadan of relations “par amours” in the Prose Tristan, a passage Malory cut so radically that he reduced it to a joke while eliminating clear references to that kind of love in the French source (285v/693, EV 1511-13). Instead, Isode delivers a discourse on love that conforms with Malory’s doctrine: “Why seyde la beall Isode are ye a knyght and ar no lovear? For sothe ht is grete shame to you wherefore ye may nat be called a good knyht by reson but yf ye make a quarell or a lady” (693/285v). The third instances in which Malory alters the text to allow comment on “paramours” comes in Lancelot’s rebuttal to the queen regarding Elayne le Blanke’s death. Malory adds to the French knight’s lament for her death a passage that would not have been possible in the world of fin amour:

Madame seyde sir Launcelot he wolde none othr wayes by answerede but that she wolde be my wyff othir ellis my parmour and of thes two I wolde not graunte her. But I proffird her for her good love that se shewed me a thousand pound yerely to her and to her ayres nd to wedde ony maner of knyght that she coude fynde beste to love in her hearte. For madame seyde sir Launcelot I love nat to be constrayned to love for love muste only arise of the harte selff and at by none constraynte” (429v/1097).

The knight’s quid pro quo offer of a feudal grant in return for “her good love” seems callous and crude compared with Elayne’s heartfelt declaration of unbridled, deadly passion: “I loved thys noble knyght si Launcelot oute of measure and of myself good lorde had no myght to withstonde the fervent love wherefore I have my deth” (428v/1093-4). Both of those speeches Malory adds, I believe, make clear that “love paramours” will claim its victims and only those who resist may survive to pursue “vertuous love.”

Do we go forward to ask whether TM deconstructs this even though he claims G “was a good lovere” in the end? Or do we leave it alone? Add the king/queen stuff from Vale!!

To thoroughly confuse the modern reader seeking to plumb the depths of Lancelot’s, and Malory’s view of this relationship, in Lancelot’s last meeting with Gwenyver he tells her “in the queste of the Sankgreall I had that tyme forsakyn the vanytees of the worlde had nat youre love bene” (484v/1253). What are we to think, but that Malory could not make up his character’s mind whether (in the words of the old counting charm) “he loves her, he loves her not, he loves her, he loves her not”?

Eugene Vinaver famously used these inconsistencies as part of his argument for breaking up the text into eight separate romances that reflect completely differing conceptions of Lancelot and Gwenyver as characters, and it remains an irritating interpretive crux even after most readers have accepted Malory’s text as a loose narrative sequence which its author intended us to read in the order in which we find it, “from the begynnyng to the endynge” (1260). Richard Firth Green’s analysis of linguistic change in such terms of social relations may help us reduce our perplexity, even if it does not enable us to say definitively what Malory thought about the physical conduct of knight and the queen. Green’s thesis, which some legal scholars have attacked for over-generalization and inaccuracy in places, works best when he describes literary uses of the words “trouthe” and “treson” as they appear in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts. He convincingly argues that, in these works, “trouthe” undergoes a transformation from belief grounded in promises which are faithfully performed to something legally verifiable (i.e., veritas), and “treson” shifts from marking a status of disloyal thought and intention to being a specific set of crimes against the sovereign and the sovereign’s kin. During the transitional phase, which encompasses Malory’s writing career in the mid-fifteenth century, he is capable of using the words “trouthe” and “trewe” in both of their senses, as in this passage from Arthur’s wars of legitimation early in the manuscript:

“So hit befelle on a tyme whan kynge Arthure was at London ther com a knyght and tolde the kynge tydyngis how the kynge Royns of Northe Walis had rered a grete numbir of peple and were enterd in the londe and brente and slew the kyngis trew lyege people. Iff thys be trew seyde Arthure hit were grete shame unto myne astate but that he were myghtyly withstonde. Hit ys trouthe seyde the knyght for I saw the oste myselff.”

For this reason, when Malory has Launcelot answer the four queens’ accusations about Gwenyver’s love with assertions that she is “the treweste lady unto hir lorde lyvynge,” he may not actually be saying “she does not love me but rather loves Arthur.” Instead, he may be implying “it matters not whom she loves, and she may love many as well as Arthur,” and he actually is saying “she faithfully performs the promise she made to Arthur to be his queen,” with the added implication that such “trewe” behavior is far more important than where she bestows her love. Green argues that such an ambiguous mental accommodation of two different states which we might call “true” results from English medieval thinking he calls “multi-stranded” with respect to internal representations of veracity. Holding multiple contradictory versions of reality could be a survival trait in a culture composed of antagonistic but mutually interdependent affinity groups whose allegiances one had to maintain with some semblance of integrity despite their opposing demands.

To test Green’s thesis, and to investigate its possible utility to modern readers of Malory, I have studied Malory’s patterns of usage of a series of related terms expressing qualities of relationship, all of which affect what Takei Lebra has called “belongingness.” I specifically have noted usage of forms of the words “trewe,” “trust,” “love,” “peramour,” “treson,” trechery,” and “traytor.” Though Malory may have remained divided in his own mind about the state of Launcelot’s and Gwenyver’s relationship over the entire text, it appears clear that his vocabulary for describing it was remarkably consistent. When asked about love, Launcelot replies about being “trewe,” as he does when charged with “treson.” Moreover, if we examine the distribution of these words in the text according to its probable order of composition, we can see an strong shift in Malory’s concerns. Forms of “trust” almost never occur in the early “Roman War” and “Sankgreall” segments, and no form of the word “treson” occurs `there, either, though opportunities abound to use either word. “Traytour” occurs only once in each segment, indicating it was part of Malory’s vocabulary, but he did not view events in terms of “treson” or “trechory” (the latter word being almost exclusively confined to Balyn’s story). However, these words are used extremely frequently in portions of the text produced in Malory’s middle period of composition, namely the “prequels” to the “Sankgreal” and “Roman War’ narratives in the “Trystram” and “Merlin” material, as if he had discovered in his sources, and perhaps in his own situation, a powerful interest in their significance as a way of describing the kinds of events he was translating. By the time he got to his latest works, tracing the court’s descent into the disunion of the “Morte” Proper, forms of the words “treson” and “traytour” occur in numerous clusters as characters trade accusations about the state of their relationships to each other, and to Arthur.

In particular, we can find evidence of a kind of “usage circuit” connecting assertions of “truth” and “trust” which show them to be interdependent states. For instance, when Arthur responds to the Bishop of Rochester’s presentation of the Pope’s demand that he take Gwenyver back, “the Bysshop had of the kynge hys grete seale and hys assuraunce as he was a trew and anoynted kynge that sir Launcelot shulde go sauff and com sauff and that the quene shulde nat be seyde unto of the kynge nother of none other for nothynge done of tyme paste. And of all thes appoyntementes the Bysshop brought with hym sure wrytynge to shew unto sir Launcelot” (464v/1194-5). Launcelot, upon seeing Arthur’s letter, exclaims to the Bishop “Thys ys sure ynow . . . for full well I dare truste my lordys owne wrytyng and hys seale for he was never shamed of hys promyse” (464v/1195). In this instance, the written assertion that Arthur is “trew” confirms Launcelot’s “truste” and enables discourse between them. By contrast, Gawayne’s near madness to avenge Gareth causes him to charge Launcelot with “tratourly and Piteuously” slaying Gareth and Gaherys, a charge Launcelot must answer with words, and then with deeds when Gawayne raises the charge to having been “bothe false to the kynge and to me” (467r/1200). When one of Malory’s knights accuses another of betraying a promise or oath, no further discourse is possible because the two no longer belong to the same discourse community.

----------------start of email to Liz S. re: conflict in interpreter, throttle vs. brake----

Malory is far from consistent in his usage of these terms. Nevertheless, if we attend to the context in which they are used, some possible explanatory patterns may be discovered. In Malory’s vocabulary, you can be “true” to your spouse or your liege-lord/lady while “loving” another, or even others, and in fact, he seems to believe it natural and noble to do so, readiness-to-love being an attribute of the greatest characters, motivating them to strive for daring achievements. In his vocabulary, we love because our natures draw us more to one person than to another, and those we are most drawn to we must love, like a biological imperative. It’s not a matter of choice, just a manifestation of potential. But the best characters obey this rule, and the worst cannot. Gawayne, for instance, betrays his oath of alliance to Pelleas and tricks Ettarde into bed in a scene to which Malory adds one of his “monthe of May” transitions. Malory expunges from the French source Gavain’s enthusiastic confirmation of the lady’s suspicion that all knights at Arthur’s course love “par amours,” the more to focus our attention on this treacherous lust as an example of Gawayne’s own “conditions” (1361). By contrast, Gareth, Lancelot, Trystram and Lamorak become allies because they recognize in each other this capacity to love the women they love in spite of any obstacles and to do great things when motivated by that love. The gross exception to Malory’s rule against yielding to lust appears to be Lamorak, and Malory takes great pains to emphasize the terrible price he pays for the erotic aspect of his affair with Margawse. His lover is slain while in bed with him, and vengeance for the affair leads to his own murder at the tournament at Surluse, of which Malory reminds us no fewer than six more times.

Being “true,” rather than being a state of erotic purity, means (to Malory and people of his era/estate) refusing to abandon or to neglect to remember those one is “true” to. That is the glue that holds together his social universe. The concepts of “love” and the “trouthe” are the engine and armor, the spur and the rein of his characters. I think often of its implications for the differences between the ways young men and women form relationships—guys especially seem to believe still in a kind of Malory-esque code, or at least use it to excuse their bad behavior in love, or their refusal to give up their best friends in tight spots. In Mod.English, especially Mod.Am.Eng., we tend to fuse the two concepts, so one who does not love monogamously is said to be “untrue,” as if in all things. Malory was attempting to preserve the socio-political function of love to construct relations of “belongingness” against the corrosive forces of personal ambition, erotic attraction, and public outcry.

add Bors/Lancelot “military love” pact at end of Grail Quest and the final test re: L on G’s loyalty to Arthur vs. Aggravayne’s disloyalty (silence = loyalty, “noyse” = “treson”)

Florilegium: Papers on Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages 1988-1991; 10: 179-921

Knepper, Janet. “A Bad Woman Will Love You To Death: Excessive Love in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Malory.” In Wheeler, Bonnie (ed. and foreword); Tolhurst, Fiona (ed. and foreword); On Arthurian Women: Essays in Memory of Maureen Fries. Dallas, TX: Scriptorium; 2001. 229-43

Waldron, Peter . “'Vertuouse Love' and Adulterous Lovers: Coming to Terms with Malory.” In Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr. (ed.); Sir Thomas Malory: Views and Re-Views. New York: AMS; 1992. 54-62

Appendix A: Naturingang Transition Formulae in Middle English Arthurian Translations

Arthour and Merlin transition from Wawain’s conversation with his brothers after their decision to side with Arthur against their father and his allies to their departure from court under their mother’s protection:

Weird “hot March” transition from Wawain and Do in London after fighting the Sarrazins to Arthur’s travels with Merlin, Ban and Bohort:

“June” transition from Merlin’s revelation of Arthur’s birth story and plans for the coronation to Lot’s arrival among the wedding guests:

Prose Merlin similar transition at the same point shifting from Gawein’s brothers’ agreement to fight for Arthur to their departure:

“Now seith the boke that aboute the entré of May, in the tyme whan these briddes
syngith with clier voys and all thynge rejoyseth, and than these wodes and medowes
beth florished grene, and these medowes full of newe tendir erbys and entermedled
with dyverse colours that swote be of odoures, and these amerouse yonge lusty
peple rejoyse because of the lusty seson, it befill that Gawein and Agravayn and
Gaheret and Gaheries and Galashyn, and thei that become in here companye, ben
risen erly for the heete that dide hem grete anoye on the day, as they that wolde
ride in the cole of the mornynge that was feire and stille and a softe weder.” (“The Deeds of the Young Squires” ll. 1-8).

Brewer, Derek. “Paradoxes of Honor in Malory.” In New Directions in Arthurian Studies, ed. Alan Lupack. Woodbridge, N.J.: D.S. Brewer, 2002. 33-48.

Dockray, Keith. "Why Did Fifteenth-Century English Gentry Marry?" in Gentry and Lesser Nobility in Late Medieval Europe, 61-80.

Green, Richard Firth. A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England. Philadelphia: U Pennsylvania P, 1999.

Harris, E. Kay. “Evidence Against Lancelot and Guinevere in Malory’s Morte Darthur: Treason by Imagination.” Exemplaria. 7.1 (1995) 179-208.

Joynt, Irene. "Vengeance and Love in The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere" Arthurian Literature III (1984)

Kato, Tomomi. A Concordance to the Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Tokyo: U Tokyo P, 1974.

Malory, Sir Thomas. The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile. Ed. N. R. Ker. London: EETS, 1976.

--------. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Eugène Vinave. 2^nd Edition. 3 Vols. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1967.

McFarlane, K.B. "A Business Partnership in War and Administration, 1421-45." English Historical Review 78 (1963): 290-308.

Post, J.B. “Ravishment of Women and the Statutes of Westminster.” Legal Records and the Historian: Papers presented to the Cambridge Legal History Conference, 7-10 July, 1975 and in Lincoln’s Inn Old Hall on 3 July 1974. Ed. J.H. Baker. London: Royal Historical Society, 1978.

--------. “Sir Thomas West and the Statute of Rapes, 1382.” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, University of London 53 (1980) 24-30.

Richmond, Colin. The Paston Family in the Fifteenth Century: Endings. N.Y.: Manchester UP, 2000.

Vale, John. The Politics of Fifteenth-Century England: John Vale’s Book. Ed. Margaret Lucille Kelewich, et al.. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Alan Sutton, 1995.

but he also says of Arthur that “ye loved me and thanked me whan I saved your quene frome the fyre” and “promysed me for ever to be my good lorde” (460v/1188). Clearly “love” really did not mean the same thing in Malory’s day that it meant in Arthur’s, nor does it mean the same thing in our own day that it meant to Malory.

Pastons, Edward IV in Vale, Arthur-Lan-Guen, Gareth-Gawain and Gareth-Lynette, broken promises vs. persistent and malicious behavior in Isode-Trystram-IsodeBM

“The phrases ‘that is sooth’ or ‘that is truth’ are frequently used in Le Morte Darthur as neutral assertions of agreement, and there are many similar uses of ‘true’ and ‘truth.’ [ . . . ] To sum up, deliberate falsehood occurs very little and is not expected in Malory’s imaginative world of honour. This is in contrast with the impression one receives in later honour systems where to be accused of lying is a deadly insult. On the other hand for Malory the promise is of extreme importance. Promises like vows and oaths must be kept, and usually are, even to the disadvantage of him or her who has given the promise of made the vow or oath. The worst accusation, frequently made, with or without truth, is to be ‘false,’ and it is falsity that most damages ‘true knighthood.’ True knighthood consists in bravery, loyalty, keeping promises, and in general fulfilling the demands of the Pentecostal Oath (Works 120.17-25), which however does not explicitly require truth-telling or even promise-keeping. Lancelot’s equivocations over his relationship with Guenivere therefore, so clearly required by loyalty, do not stand out as gross faults.” (46)

[1] The political usage, “wellbeloved,” which is linked contextually with “trusty” in royal correspondence, may have some distant associations for the fifteenth-century speaker with the legal sense of “love” as a state of amicable relations between parties. The Oxford English Dictionary offers this description of legal “love”:

“ d. In OE. (contrasted with lau law): Amicable settlement, as opposed to litigation. Hence, in later use, occas. rendering L. fdus treaty, covenant. Also, under love and law; a phrase used to denote the position of being a member of a frankpledge. Obs.

a1000 Laws of Æthelred III. c. 13 §1 (Schmid) And ar een ae tween costas lufe oe lae and he onne lufe eceose. 1432-50 tr. Higden (Rolls) I. 99 Oreb..the mownte of fere and of luffe [L. mons terroris et fderis]. Ibid. II. 347, IV. 123. a1500 in Arnolde Chron. (1811) 90 Yf ther bee ony persone wythin the warde that is not vnder francpledge that is to saye under loue and lawe.”

[2] Malory may well have encountered the naturingang in other Middle English Arthurian translations as a conventional way to cover narrative juxtapositions which appear unmotivated, as in much of interlaced French romance. The Prose Merlin doesn’t use many naturingang transitions, but the Arthour and Merlin uses them routinely for episode dividers at interlace sites, suggesting its author felt uncomfortable making the leap between narrative strands without a lyrical “patch” to cover the disunity. See Appendix A.

E.V. Page	Context
67	Merlin twice describes the damsel of the sword with the strange belt as having "loved anothir knyght that hylde her as paramoure."
72	Arthur inscribes the tomb of Launceor and "this lady Columbe and peramour to hym slew hirself with hys swerd for dole and sorow."
83	Kynge Pellam, brother of Garlon, announces a feast to which each knight who attends must bring 'hys wyff with hym othir hys paramoure."
145	Accolon tells Arthur Morgan le Fay "lovyth me oute of mesure as paramour and I hir agayne."
256	The sleeping Launcelot is observed by three queens, and Morgan le Fay plans to enchant him until he will "chose whych of us he woll have unto peramour."
257	Morgan commands Launcelot "Now chose one of us whyche that thou wolte ave to thy peramou othir ellys to dye in this preson."
258	Launcelot tells Morgan he would rather die in prison "with worshyp than to have one of you to my peramoure."
270	Laucelot, replying to a maiden's report that "hit is noysed that ye love quene Gwenyvere," says he never will wed because he would have to 'leve armys and turnamentis batells and adventures," and 'to take my pleasaunce with peramours that woll I refuse.".
359	Arthur asks Gareth, of Lyonsse, "hether he wolde have this lady as peramour other ellys to have hir to his wyff" and Gareth replies, "My lorde wete you well that I love hir abovyn all ladyes lyvynge."
498	When Trystram runs naked through the woods in his folie, the malicious "sir Andred that was cousyn unto sir Trystram made a lady that was hys paramour to sey and to noyse hit that she was with sir Trystramys or ever he dyed."
512	Gawayne and Trystram encounter "sir Breuse Saunz Pite chasyng a lady for to have slayne her for he had slayn her paramour afore."
550	Sir Dynas, having failed to defeat Uwayne in a joust after Mark's request "for my love," "had within the castell a paramour and she loved anothir knyght bettir than hym." The lady escapes to join her knight, taking Dynas' two "brachettis."
554	Trystram, captured by Queen Morgan le Fay, is tested: "And ever the quene wolde sette sir Trystram on her one syde and her paramour on hir other syde and evermore the quene wolde beholde sir Trystram."
555	Using the authority of what "the freynshe booke seyde," Malory describes Morgan's desire for Launcelot, and her anger "bycause she demed that sir Launcelot loved quene Gwenyver paramour and she hym agayne," which is the reason for the shield.
656	Palomydes, in a string of victories at Surluse, defeats a knight and wins the hand of a damsel, "And this damesell loved sir Palomydes as her paramour but as the booke seyth she was of his kynne."
684	Palomydes, talking to Brewnys Saunze Pite and Trystram, pledges "And as for to say that I love La Beall Isode peramoures I dare make good that I do and that she hath my servyse abovyn all other ladyes and shall have all the terme of my lyff."
704	The King with the Hundred Knights sees Dydadan wearing a helmet he "had seyne tofore with the quene of North Galys and that quene the kynge loved as peramour." He demands the helmet, defeats Dynadan, and is himself defeated by Trystram.
813	Sir Percyvale encounters Sir Persydes, who was bound to a pillar because "an uncurteyse lady. . . proffyrd me to be her paramoure and I refused her she sette her menuppon me suddeynly or ever I myght com to my wepyn."
814	Percyvale reproaches the lady, "what use and custom ys that in a lady to destroy good knyghtes but yf they woll be youre paramour?"
963	Bors, on the Grail Quest, has a dream of a white bird which a priest interprets to signify "a jantillwoman fayre and ryche whych loved the paramours and hath loved the longe." He should have nothing to do with worldly vanity.
1089	Elayne le Blanke, having heard Launcelot's refusal to wed her, asks "woll ye be my paramour?" Laucelot refuses saying "than I rewraded youre fadir and youre brothir full evyll for their grete goodnesse."
1090	Elayne says "I wol lnone for but yff ye woll wedde me other to be my paramour at the leste wyte you well sir Launcelot my good dayes ar done."
1097	Launcelot answers Gwenyvere's reproof for Elayne's death by saying "she wolde none other wayes be answerde but that she wolde be my wyff othir ellis my paramour and of thes two I wolde not graunte her."