Arthuriana

Caxton's Print vs. the Winchester Manuscript: An Introduction to the Debate on Editing Malory's Morte Darthur MICHAEL N. SALDA In December 1991 I applied to the president ofthe North American Branch ofthe InternationalArthurian Society for permission to organize a Kalamazoo session on issues surrounding the editing ofThomas Malory's L·MorteDarthur. It seemed the proper time for taking stock: there were now two major editions ofMalory on the market, the 1983 University ofCalifornia Press text by James Spisak and William Matthews, and the 1990 Oxford Clarendon Press text by Eugène Vinaver, newly revised in a third edition by PJ.C. Field. But beyond their common interest in establishing Malory's text, the Spisak-Matthews and Vinaver-Field editions shared little common ground. While the former insisted on the superiority of Caxton's version, the latter steadfasdy held to Vinaver's original 1947 thesis that the Winchester manuscript was nearer Malory's final intent than Caxton's print. Even more curiously, scholars reading the introductions and notes to these editions were likely to be struck by just how little the editors seemed to be addressing each others' concerns about the better Malory text; in short, each appeared so confident ofthe better version that the other was dismissed in as little compass as possible. It seemed to me high time to talk. Norris Lacy, then president ofthe ias/nab, agreed. I was granted a session for the 1993 Kalamazoo Congress. I drew up a list ofthose I most wanted to hear discuss the topic: James Spisak, P.J.C. Field, Shunichi Noguchi, Charles Moorman, and Kevin Grimm - the first four old hands in the debate, the last someone whose work on Malory has been developing in a series ofarticles in recent years. I sent out invitations and - to my great surprise, because Spisak is no longer in academe, Field and Noguchi are overseas, and Moorman retired some years ago — all five accepted. How was I going to fit five people into a one and one-halfhour session? As it turned out, that was a problem I did not have to face. As I corresponded with these scholars during the year preceding the session, I began to get the sense that there was something at the center ofthis textual ARTHURIANA 5.2 (1995) 2 ARTHURIANA dispute that I didn't fully understand: an essay byWilliam Matthews that had been read shortly after his death by Roy Leslie at the 1975 Exeter International Arthurian Congress. Although never published, everyone seemed to know something about the essay- andeveryone seemed to know somethingdifferent. All agreed that the essay was important, because in it Matthews claimed that Caxton's text of Le Morte Darthur (compositorial issues aside) was Malory's own revision ofthe text represented in theWinchester manuscript, that Caxton's text was what one scholar would call Malory's own 'second edition.' Like most people, I had read the published accounts ofMatthews's essay. Also like most, I had never actually seen the essay itself. As the Congress neared and I acquired more information, I came to learn that there were, beyond the synopses published by others after Matthews's death, at least^«rversions ofMatthews's essay: a 62-page typescript entitled ? Question of Texts'; a much shortenedversion based largelyon the final section ofthis typescript, evidently edited by Matthews himselfto fit the presentation time he had been allotted for Exeter, entitled 'Who Revised the Roman War Episode in Malory's Morte Darthur?; a tape of Roy Leslie reading at Exeter [described to me alternately as a 'forceful, convincing presentation' and by another as 'rapidly, in a thick Scottish accent']; and a transcription made from the tape. Tb make things more confusing, American scholars with access to copies ofMatthews's essay apparently knew the longer version and the Exeter reading text, while English and Japanese scholars knew only the Exeter text and its two descendants. I was certain that a textual scholar the likes ofMatthews would be delighted to learn that his own critical work on Malory was rapidly gaining a textual tradition more complicated than that ofthe very texts he was discussing. I looked forward to the clash at Kalamazoo. Unfortunately, a rapid...