King Arthur's Death: The Middle English Stanzaic Morte Arthur and Alliterative Morte Arthure (TEAMS Middle English Texts) |  | Authors: Larry Dean Benson, Edward E. Foster, Teams (consortium For The Teaching Of The Middle Ages)
Publisher: Western Michigan Univ Medieval
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  2 reviews
Sales Rank: 505825
Media: Paperback
Edition: Revised
Pages: 292
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 10 x 6.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 1879288389
Dewey Decimal Number: 821.108
EAN: 9781879288386
ASIN: 1879288389
Publication Date: November 1994
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Product Description
The Stanzaic Morte Arthur engages with the tragic implications of the chivalric love between Lancelot, Arthur and Guinevere; the Alliterative Morte Arthure with those of the aspirations of militant chivalry espoused by Arthur and his knights. The texts have been edited for readers who have little or no training in Middle English.
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 Not What I Want When I Choose to Read Middle English March 10, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
[Postscript: Since writing the review below, I was able to get hold of Mary Hamel's edition of the alliterative Morte Arthure, published by Garland in 1984. I found it satisfactory in every respect & would enthusiastically recommend it for its text, notes, glossary (line 35, helde of: "owed allegiance to"), and introductory discussion. However, I should note that Krishna's edition, in which I note a small oversight below, is generally very good. But when Hamel says she's thought about EVERY word, I must say, I believe she's the only editor since Bjorkman who actually has. For the stanzaic poem, I plan on using the old school edition "Le Morte Arthur: A Middle English Metrical Romance," edited by Samuel B. Hemingway, Houghton-Mifflin, 1912.]
Before I criticize this edition, I'd like to state that I know Larry Benson is a phenomenal scholar of Middle English, that when he chooses to make editions for serious purposes, he does an exemplary job, and that the defects in this book therefore arise entirely from a misconceived effort to cater to "readers who have had little or no training in Middle English." I do not believe that even such readers are well served by the awkward resultant compromises.
I got disgusted with this edition in line 1 of the alliterative Morte Arthure. Then I got worried about the adequacy of the fuller and more scholarly edition of the same poem by V. Krishna--in line 35. I write this review just in case your sense of what you want from such books agrees with mine.
The TEAMS edition under review has been aggressively modernized (more so than is the normal practice of this series: the preface explains that this is because Benson's edition was previously published by Bobbs-Merrill in another series, but defends the text printed as "authentic in all material respects"). Benson's preface confusingly follows up a high-minded insinuation that the MS text has been corrected because it is phonetically misleading ("even for the relatively advanced student, a faithful representation of the manuscript forms is frequently a misrepresentation of the language itself...long study and much practice are necesary before a student can easily distinguish betwen significant and insignificant spelling variations or can tell when a later scibe has foisted a 15th c. sound change off on a 14th c. poet") with an admission that he has, when push came to shove, simply replaced 14th c. English with Modern English spellings (chosen for "their faithfulness in representing the sound probably used by, OR AT LEAST UNDERSTANDABLE TO, the author...where I have had to make a choice...I have chosen ease in recognition, preferring a small error in sound or a slight deviation from the form the author may have used").
When I read the preface, I naturally applied the benefit of the doubt & put my faith in "small" and "slight." But I quickly got the sense that what we really have here is a tin-eared pastiche of MidE and ModE, and a disservice to the poet, to whom rhythms, syllables, and sounds are things far too important artistically to be so casually tampered with. Now, I find this particularly frustrating because I am NOT an expert. I'd love for Benson to give me a reliable reconstruction of the poet's sounds. But I'm left concluding that the scribal inconsistencies were just a flimsy justification for the "authenticity" of a text that so often prefers words in their modern forms. Line 1 already made me suspicious. The word "through" just didn't seem to fit. A check confirmed that the MS has "thurgh." The MS also has "grett" for Benson's "grete" (glossed "great," so presumably not a recognition-aid). In line 5, "through virtuous" represents MS "thorowe vertous." Moreover, Benson's way of modernizing is capable of removing ambiguities or even muddling passages that are clear. For example, by turning "schamesdede" (3) into "shamesdeede," Benson precludes the possibility that we have here the common expression for "a shameful death" (OED "shame" 3d). In line 49, Benson changes "dyvysed" into "devised" and, for "devised ducheries," offers the gloss "created dukedoms." It is possible to defend the translation "created," but only if it means "created by division, dividing up, allotment" -- "divised" would have been a more pertinent modernization, unless perhaps we are supposed to know and think of the legalese meaning of "devise" ("to transmit or give [real property] by will"). Some of the interpretation-forcing changes are more dubious: line 513 "certes" for "sertes" precludes the more likely meaning. In line 486, the poetic rhythm has been ruined by an (accidental? certainly pointless) insertion of "the": Benson's half-line reads "whiles them THE light failed." This kind of thing does more damage than the misprints (which are also too many). All these things are little, but they add up, and at the end of the day, it's worth asking--why are we reading it in this version instead of the Penguin translation, which at least has its own consistent poetic texture?
I kept reading to line 35. In a list of Arthur's conquests, we are told, "Holland and Hainault they held of him bothen." Benson's only note on this line is to tell you that "bothen" means "both" (kind of obvious, but fine). But the line contains a very obviously greater difficulty: what does it mean for geographical regions to "hold of" a person? I'm the sort who actually wants such questions answered (even if I can figure it out from context). After all, it's curiosity about the English language of earlier periods that has, in part, motivated me to read this poem in the original. Where, if anywhere, can we get such an apparently simple question answered? In Valerie Krishna's more complete and critical edition of 1976? No, she has no note, and in her glossary under "holde," she has no indication of anything special here (though in line 1512 she glosses haldez, 3rd sg., as (the court) "is held" -- good, cf. OED s.v. I.8.a). [Krishna has a general note complaining of "tangled syntax" in this passage--perhaps, though I agree with Hamel that any obstacle to the rhetorical and linguistic clarity here is "more apparent than real."] In the OED? No, the only really close definition (II.19.b) isn't cited until 1648. OK, in the Middle English Dictionary? Nope, nothing useful anywhere in the vast entry for "holden."
I just did not believe that I, an occasional, casual reader of Middle English classics in my leisure time, had outstripped the OED and MED's lexicographers in my need for information about the verb "hold." Surely I was just being obtuse in my weird notion that some learned philologist somewhere should have noted for me that the 14th c. poet uses "hold of" in the sense "belong to" (even "be held by")? Well, I did finally find such a confirmation (good for my confirming how English was being used in line 35, bad for what it implies about the quality of these other student editions). O English reader, prepare to be disheartened -- I found my answer in a 1915 edition of the poem, by a Swedish professor (Erik Bjorkman), IN GERMAN, published IN HEIDELBERG. His glossary, s.v. "halde," duly notes "-- of, 'zu Lehen gehen,' 35." That is, "to belong to someone, as a fief." (The note ad loc. gives what I understand, from the cryptic abbreviation Mtzn. Wb., which at the time apparently required no explanation, to be a reference to be Maetzner's "Altenglische Sprachproben nebst einem Woerterbuch," vol. 2, p. 405, with the apparent misprint, however, "zu Lehen geben" [to enfeoff].) As they say on Jerry Springer, "Thank YOU!" This is more or less the OED definition first cited in the 17th c.
What does this long story mean? In my opinion, it suggests that this edition of Middle English poems isn't designed for readers who want to hear the sounds that danced in the poet's ear, or even to understand the literal sense of the poet's language, but for those who will be happy with muddling through (maybe students who HAVE to muddle through, or other folks who just want to get to the end with the gist). I wouldn't mind the extra convenience of Benson's copious glossing, which no other complete edition features. There is definitely room for a new student edition that does not force the reader to forgo an accurate representation of the poems in order to get such helps!
 Great goodness! September 10, 2005
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love this book! I read it for a class and i still loved it, that's just how good it is. The sidebars are truly helpful in the reading of the text, and cause the ability to understand the words in most cases. It is a beautiful and noble work.
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