We talked briefly about whether Malory intended Le Morte D'Arthur to be a historical text or not. I can blame my concern with this question on my mother. My mother is an author and one of her novels is about the Arthurian myth:
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The synopsis on the back cover includes the question "What if Malory got it wrong?" My principle complaint about this question is this: for Malory to have gotten something wrong we assume that he is writing a historically verifiable document and not a work of fiction. Malory cannot be "wrong" if he's not trying to write a history.
There is no question that history and mythology overlap. In the oral tradition, mythology was one way in which our shared history and traditions were passed down. For Malory this function of mythology would be similar. He is sharing the nostalgic cultural ideals of the courtly romance; loyalty, valor, good violence; with his readers, and showing the faults present in even heroes and paragons.
-Steve
First of all, it's cool that your mom is an author but onto the posting:
ReplyDeleteI know that, as a function of story-telling and retelling, getting the facts all lined up might not be necessary as long as what he's doing holds to the socio-culutral ideals but there is still something to be said for getting it right. Now Mallory's depiction of events mightbe unique to himself and the kind of storyteller he is but there is the burden that must be placed on him to maintain the shape of things even if he's not drawing inside the lines. Like any good fan, his interpretation and spin on the legend, what he heightened and what he cut, makes for an interesting link on the evolutionary chain of Arthurian storytelling but, as we talked about in class, how much can you change?
I think it's entirely possible for someone to get fiction wrong. It's just that, instead of facts, the metric of "factually accurate or factually inaccurate" becomes "logical or illogical". A lot of this will be based on previously established fiction, of course, but that doesn't change the idea behind the "right or wrong".
ReplyDeleteFor all I "defend" Twilight as a cultural moment, I will say without any scrap of doubt that they got vampires "wrong". I would have been totally fine with the whole thing if it wasn't about vampires, but about "fae" instead. But no. Because Vampires suddenly became a sexy and mainstream monster, we got sparkles instead of burning up in the sun. Based on prior fiction, this option is illogical, and therefore wrong.