SUMMERS, KAREN CRADY, Ph.D. Reading Incest - The University ...

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Mordred would have married his father’s wife who, had she not been barren, might have
produced another monster-child of incest. On the eve of the meeting of Arthur and
Mordred, Arthur had a visitation from Gawain’s ghost:
So upon Trynyte Sunday at nyght kynge Arthure dremed a wondirfull dreme, and
in hys dreme hym semed that he saw upon a chafflet a chayre, and the chayre was
fast to a whele, and thereuppin sate kynge Arthure in the richest clothe of golde
that might be made. And the knge thought there was undir hym, farre from hym,
an hydeous depe blak water, and therein was all maner of serpentis and wormes
and wylde bestis fowle and orryble. And suddeynly the kynge thought that the
whyle turned up-so-downe, and he felle among the serpents, and every beste toke
hym by a lymme. And than the kynge cryed as he lay in hys bed, ‘Helpe! Helpe!’
. . . So the kinge semed veryly that there cam sir Gawayne unto hym. . . [Gawain
said, “I come] for to warne you of youre dethe: for an ye fight as to-morne with
Sir Mordred, as ye bothe have assigned, boute ye nat ye shall be slayne. . . God
hate sente me to you of Hys speciall grace to gyff you warnyng that in no wyse ye
do batayle as to-morne, but that ye take a tretyse for a moneth-day (684).
The battlefield scene is tragic as scores of knights fall in the fighting, and especially
poignant as the ‘tretyse’ was broken by mistake when a soldier drew his sword to kill a
snake. Interpreting this as a hostile act, the soldiers set upon each other. Arthur and
Mordred slay each other and Arthur is borne away to Avalon to the sound of ladies and
queens shrieking and weeping.
Elizabeth Edwards notes that the tragic tone of Le Morte d’Arthur may be due to a
pagan, secular view of tragedy as the fall from greatness brought about by the hero’s
flaws, or by a Christian hero who is overcome by sin yet may still have hope of divine
grace, with proper confession and penitence. 24
Is Arthur to be a king upholding the old,
pagan values embodied in Merlin’s magic, or one who rules by divine right, as
24 See Archibald and Edwards, eds. A Companion to Malory. 155-6.