The Arthurian Wing · Reading Path
The Matter of Britain · A reading path in Arthurian mythology
The Book and the Scribe
Blaise's desk · the almery at Salisbury
The matter is obsessed with its own recording. Geoffrey founds it on a book no one else can read; Merlin dictates the whole history to the hermit Blaise so that hearers yet to come "will be the gladder for it"; Arthur's clerks take the knights' adventures as sworn depositions; Bors's testimony of the Grail is written "in grete bookes" and shelved in the almery at Salisbury; Malory compiles in prison and prays for deliverance in the colophon; White's dying Arthur hands the story to a page named Thomas Malory. The tradition transmits, and knows it transmits, and makes the transmission part of the story.
This is the motif this site is built on. The scriptorium — reading, writing, and ordered attention as one practice — is not a metaphor applied to the matter from outside; it is the matter's own image of how vision survives: the wild seer speaks, and the scribe keeps.
Where it surfaces
- 1 What Is the Matter of Britain? — The method: recensions, transmission, the commonplace book.
- 7 Geoffrey of Monmouth and the Historia — Walter's "very ancient book": the tradition founded on a phantom source.
- 19 Robert de Boron: The Christening of the Grail — Blaise: the seer and the scribe.
- 20 The Vulgate Cycle: Architecture of the Lancelot-Grail — The Round Table keeps minutes: adventure as deposition.
- 21 The Queste del Saint Graal — Bors's testimony; the almery at Salisbury.
- 27 Malory I: The Knight-Prisoner and the Hoole Book — The knight-prisoner's book; Winchester found, 1934.
- 34 The Novelists' Arthur: White to Bradley — White's page: the tradition hands itself forward.
A door from this motif
The Scriptorium — This site's working library: Blaise's desk, made a practice.