Malory's Morte D'Arthur : Remaking Arthurian Tradition

This study explores how Malory's "Morte D'Arthur" responds to available literary vernacular Arthurian traditions, which the French defined as theoretical in impulse, the English as performative and experimental.

Negotiating these influences, Malory transforms constructions of masculine heroism, especially in the presentation of Launcelot, and exposes the tensions and disillusions of the Arthurian project.

The "Morte D'Arthur" conveys a desire for integrity in narrative and subject-matter, but at the same time tests literary conceptualizations of history, nationalism, gender and self-hood, and considers the failures of social and legal institutionalizations of violence, in a critique of literary form and of social order.