The Hobbit

I do hope that is facetious. My use of the expression was wryly ironic, intended to create a visual image, and not a statement of fact. Germans did certainly exist in the 13th century. They were first mentioned by the Romans more than two thousand years ago.

Sir,

I perceive that you no longer wish to discuss Malory.

Very well. Let us put him to one side for the moment. Let us return to the Nibelungenlied, which we have not discussed.

You have made an assertion as follows:



It is not clear to me, when you speak of putative racial superiority, whether you are speaking of modern Germans. Perhaps also you are thinking of the works of Richard Wagner.

Please be good enough to clarify. Then we may proceed to our discussion of the Nibelungenlied.

Kind regards,

Goldmund

I'm not going to discuss anything with you. I no longer have any respect for you, or your contribution to these fora. You will need to play these games with your wife, or whomever else is the habitual target of your petty argumentation.

Dear Setanta,

That is a very great pity. You are an entertaining interlocutor.

Go in peace, my friend. I shall not detain you longer than you wish to be detained.

With my warmest regards,

Goldmund

I would be a pains to point out to you that you and i are not friends, and do not, in fact know one another.

Ok Setanta, I think you've made your point and you might as well stop stressing yourself out by reading where this thread continues to slide!

Goldmund, Setanta: interesting discussion.

I'm looking at Malory in the light of the French originals at the moment. And vice versa.

My take:

I'm not sure we can learn that much about 15th century England from Malory. He pretty much takes his tone from the 13th century originals. You could even say he's nostalgic. He knows he's not talking about England 1400-1470. He's looking back towards some golden age. It's more Roland than Richard Neville.

As for the vocab, sure, we see a lot of postern gates and palfreys. We never get any details, though. Malory isn't big on detail. He uses a word, and expects you to know it. If we only had the word "brachet" from Malory, we'd know it was some kind of dog, maybe; but that's about it.

JdP

One of the reasons that i consider the Thomas Malory of Yorkshire to have been the author is that in his imprisonment he had access to the largest library of French texts about the cycle. This view is certainly a minority view, but not a fringe view, and as i have pointed out, many of the sources which routinely refer to Thomas Malory of Warwickshire are merely paroting other sources--a great many use identical texts.

If this is so, then it is important to understand that Thomas Malory of Yorkshire had been out of his native land for more than twenty years at the time of his death in captivity. I was not so much insisting upon a description of the 15th century as pointing out that he certainly was not attepting to describe the 5th century. I see the merit in your contention, although i'm not certain that he would necessarily been nostalgic for an earlier age. He had been in France since the last years of the Hundred Years War, and had been captured before the Wars of the Roses began in England. He may well have known about them by rumor, but could not likely have judged their impact. When people live in revolutionary times, in the case of revolutions of circumstance rather than of intent, they are often unable to see the process which will irrevocably change their world. I don't deny that he may have been indulging in nostalgia; i would point out that from his point of view, there likely would have been no difference in the social customs and individual ethics of the 13th century and that which he had learned growing up in the first half of the 15th century. The catastrophe of the Hundred Years War in the 14th century, coupled with the pandemics which killed fully a third of the European population were events not well understood even centuries later. Labor became a sellers market, and hence the abortive uprisings of the Jacquerie and of Wat Tyler (Tyler doesn't deserve the credit, John Ball, does, but that's one of the ways popular history works). The 15th century was a time of the acceleration of change, with printing presses, the Reconquista, the latest round of the Papal and hegemonic wars in Italy, the end of feudal-style warfare and static castle defenses due to gunpowder, the fall of Constantinople and the rise of the Osmali Turks as a power in international politics--so certainly anyone who could see the change taking place might well have waxed nostalgic. I am uncertain, though, of the extent to which it would be reasonable to suggest that Malory was aware that the world of his youth, and the certainties of his youth, were passing away.

His text certainly does not contain description which will help the modern reader understand how his world looked. This is a common failing of both literature and history throughout the ages. Even those with a fairly good background in Roman history require a text with good annotation to fully understand Titus Livius' ad Urbe Condite, precisely because he did not feel any compulsion to explain things which he intuitively knew his audience would understand. Polybius' Histories are an invaluable resource because he was explaining the Roman world and Roman history to the Greeks who lived in what formerly was the Amphictyonic League, and so gives far more detailed explanations of Roman society and the Roman polity than would a Roman author. It very likely never occured to Malory to explain his world through detailed description, as he probably unconsciously assumed his readers knew of what he wrote. I think the same can be said of Chretien des Troyes and Marie de France. So yes, he uses terms which he expects his readers will know. Rather a commonplace for authors, don't you think?