Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory's Morte d'Arthur. By Dorsey Armstrong. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003. Pp. viii + 272. $59.95.

The history of Arthurian studies, as of medieval studies in general, began with an almost exclusive investment in the textual, the paleographical and philological, and the historical. Still-useful monographs on Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur include Roger Sherman Loomis's books (such as The Development of Arthurian Romance [1963]) and, of course, Eugène Vinaver's The Rise of Romance (1971). (Many Arthurianists also still dip into Jessie Weston's From Ritual to Romance [1920], which continues to be reprinted.) Relatively recent books that take up explicit
literary-critical concerns include Larry Benson's Malory's Morte Darthur (1976), Beverly Kennedy's Knighthood in the Morte Darthur (1985), and Felicity Riddy's Sir Thomas Malory (1987). However, when one compares the number of books on Malory to those on Chaucer, say, it is clear that few scholars have devoted time to writing full-length studies on the Morte Darthur.


Kathleen Kelly
Northeastern University