Abstract:
This thesis addresses the narrative world, value systems, and narrative structures of Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur. I read these more literally than criticism has generally been inclined to do, and I arrive at the conclusion that the work, while complex, is remarkably consistent internally. Further, I argue the work is consistent while accurately representing in its narrative world issues for two most divergent strains of contemporary theoretical discourse on human conduct: René Girard’s work on mimesis and sacrificial logic, complemented by Michel Serres’s works on the same; and Gilles Deleuze’s reading of Friedrich Nietzsche’s oeuvre for systems of evaluating worth. The introduction begins with a brief summary of Malory’s scholarly criticism and positions itself within that critical context before providing an outline of the thesis proper and the theoretical works employed there. The remainder of the thesis is split into two parts. The first, in three chapters, unpacks the text for a cosmology, an axiology, and then a narratology. The second explores how the problems inherent in the fictional world thus composed are treated, by addressing in turn how Malory’s episodic narrative configures its beginnings, endings, and middles. I argue that in this fictional realm’s foundations, Malory’s use of Fate as a numinous agent functions as the sacred does for Girard in myth: by attempting to hide the scapegoat victim of collective murder. However, contingent and localized details intrude in Malory’s narrative to reveal that murder, and yet they do not, indeed cannot, prevent it. Further, the repetitive episodic narrative is structured in sequences that resonate with themes of desire, rivalry, and envy. These ideas are central to Girard’s mimetic hypotheses regarding the violent rituals, culture, and institutions that result from a founding sacrifice. Repetition highlights both the interminable nature of this violence, and the intrusive nature of the contingent, wherever someone is blamed. Counter to the tensions of the mythic narrative and the historical (contingent) narrative is the third term of a noble will. In accord with Deleuze’s criteria, this will is active and affirmative in Malory. It plays an increasingly prominent role in this thesis’s second part, where the focus shifts from examining narrative systems to modes; that is, to the way the narrative is told. In the time of reading, whether beginning, ending, or in a repetitive loop, the quality of a character’s will is manifest in the moment. In the best of Malory’s knights, as in Nietzsche’s hero, this will is more than affirmative: it is declarative about what is good, noble, and worthy. The hero wills chance and Fate and calls it good, and I examine how in every respect this is opposed to envy and rivalry, to the conditions that make mimesis and sacrificial logic possible. The character of this will does not prevent the destruction of the realm, no more than Balin survived its foundation, but the noble will does reach beyond and is, I argue, all the more worthy for the poignancy of its loss and faith.