Abstract

The attitude of many Malory scholars of the 1970s is summed up in Mark Lambert's observation, “After twenty years of investigating unity it is time for us to take the fruit, leave the chaff, and rotate our crops. While fresh approaches are welcome, it would be a mistake to assume, as Lambert seems to do, that all the major structural problems brought to light by the debate over unity have been solved. That they have not can be illustrated through a reconsideration of Malory's “Tale of Balin.” The tale became a standard topic in the controversy over unity because Eugène Vinaver, in his commentary in the 1947 edition of Malory, used it to typify the author's narrative method generally: unravelling the “interlaced” plot threads of the French sources to produce relatively brief, independent, whole tales. Vinaver argued that Malory dissociates Balin's Dolorous Stroke from the Grail theme, suppresses secondary plots, and achieves a strong central plot in which the tragic ending follows by fatal necessity from the opening events of the tale. His critics responded by pointing out that the tale is not truly independent of the rest of the work, for the Dolorous Stroke still motivates Galahad's quest, as in the French sources, and the main plot of “Balin” is still interwoven with others — the war between Arthur and Roins, the Tristram story, and the Lot-Pellinore feud. Vinaver repeated his views unchanged in his 1967 edition , leaving the debate at a standoff, where it has remained. jQuery.click { event.preventDefault(); })