Ruth Lexton: Contested Language in Malory’s Morte Darthur: The Politics of Romance in Fifteenth-Century England (Arthurian and Courtly Cultures).

Megan Leitch: Romancing Treason. The Literature of the Wars of the Roses.

• Emily Wingfield

Ruth Lexton’s Contested Language in Malory’s Morte Darthur and Megan Leitch’s Romancing Treason make timely, historicist and notably complementary contributions to the still often-neglected field of mid- to late fifteenth-century literary studies. Lexton focuses on the ‘contested political language’ (p. 1 and passim) used by Malory to create his Arthurian world; she articulates how that vocabulary is shared by writers of fiction and non-fiction negotiating ‘the collective crisis of rule in England in the years c. 1399-1485’ (p. 1) and demonstrates how the Morte functions as ‘an active participant in the tussle over political ideas during the Wars of the Roses’ (p. 1). Adopting a comparative and historicist approach, Lexton examines a set of key terms (commons, justice, counsel, rule, worship, courtesy, service, fellowship and treason) as they appear both in Malory and in contemporary chronicles, advice books, parliamentary records and gentry letters, and she suggests that Malory be seen as ‘mounting a tacit but persistent critique of Arthurian kingship that speaks directly to his late medieval audience’ (p. 2).