"A Grete sygnyfycasion": Malory’s Palomides

Description

Thomas Malory's saracen knight Palomides originated in the French prose Tristan cycle of the early thirteenth century, and the narratives which included his adventures could be found within a century in Belgium, Italy, and Greece. Not until Malory included him in the Tristram section of the Morte Darthur in the late fifteenth century, however, is Palomides' literary career translated into English. A study of Palomides in the French prose Tristan which Malory used as his evident source reveals the saracen knight to have characteristics and identifications some of which Malory emphasizes over others to shape this literary figure to represent the constantly aspiring but frequently unsuccessful knight. In the French prose Tristan, Palomides is specifically and primarily a rival to Tristan for the hand of Iseult. He is also a saracen seeking but postponing baptism until he has made himself worthy, and he is the knight in pursuit of the Questing Beast, but his most significant role in the narrative is as challenger to Tristan in an attempt to win worship from Iseult. Malory shapes his depiction of Palomides in the following ways: (1) Malory abbreviates, or in most cases omits, the complaints and laments of Palomides for Iseult or on the subject of love; instead, his desperate and sometimes rash acts to prove himself a worthy knight stand as the testimony of his love for her; (2) Malory's attention to the symbolic Questing Beast--for instance his allowing Palomides to continue to search for it even after his baptism at the conclusion--emphasizes the metaphorical nature of the "questing" of mankind for wholeness and solace in a hostile world; and (3) Malory's postponement of Palomides' baptism until the end of the Tristram section, where, with Galahad whose quest is the Grail, Palomides joins the fellowship of the Round Table at the feast of Pentecost, emphasizes Palomides' profound desire to earn his status as a Christian, as he has determined to earn his esteemed place among the greatest knights of the world, and the love of Isode. Thomas Malory positions the Tristram narrative, approximately one-third of the Morte Darthur, at the center of the work, and this position suggests the importance of the conflicts of the story of Tristram, Isode, and Palomides: the secular themes of love and the chivalric effort to prove prowess at arms. Malory has amended his source so that rather than ending with the deaths of these figures, this worldly Tristram narrative ends with the preparation for the religious quest for the Grail. This study of Malory's Palomides reveals the author's alteration of his source to emphasize Palomides' qualities of forbearance, faithfulness, and self-sacrifice, and his significance within the larger context of the Morte Darthur.