Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 44

in his day. He was the most valiant at arms, the most generous with
gifts, the gentlest in words, wisest in his designs, the kindest in
mercy, the most well-bred in good manners, the noblest in all royal
rulings, godfearing in works, gentie to the good, severe to the
wicked, merciful to the needy, hospitable to guests, so perfect in his
entire authority that neither illwill nor malice was to be found in
him, and no one could proclaim with laudatory tongue the splendid
magnificence and honor of his kingdom.)
The prologue to Mottuls saga, that is, the eulogy of Arthur, has been
submitted as evidence to support the thesis that the riddarasogur “depict-
ed an ideal and absolute king in Arthur, and a model court in his compa-
ny of knights.”35 To make such an assertion in regard to Mottuls saga is to
regard the prologue out of context, to ignore the plot of the work, to
mistake the spirit that pervades the narrative. The tale of the mantie is a
travesty; in prefacing the narrative with a laudatory description of Ar-
thur, the author resorted to irony to enhance the comic spirit pervading
the plot. By means of the hyperbolic encomium of the king, the humor
inherent in ironic contrast is exploited; the author thus followed an estab-
lished tradition of the fabliaux36 - whether intentionally or not, cannot be
determined. The prologue is hardly a reflection of the true State of affairs
at Arthur’s court but rather a case of wishful thinking, as the ensuing plot
- in which one knight after the other, the king included, learns of the
infidelity of his beloved - reveals. The general excellence of the Norwe-
gian version of Le mantel mautaillié suggests that the author was skilied in
his craft, a thoughtful artist. To attribute to him an arbitrary addition of a
prologue intended to represent an ideal king, when in faet the plot ne-
gates the hyperbolic depiction of Arthur and his court, is to do him an
injustice. Far from ascribing to the author a calculated tendentiousness,
one should, rather, seek an explanation for the preface in a good-natured
but ironic exposé of what was recognized to be an idealistic stereotype.
One other similar but shorter portrait of Arthur exists in the quasi-
historical Breta sogur, but only in the fourteenth-century Hauksbok ver-
sion. This manuscript takes its cue from Geoffrey’s Historia, but expands
35 Barnes, “The riddarasogur ...,” p. 145.
36 See Benjamin L. Honeycutt, “The Knight and his World as Instruments of Humor in
the Fabliaux,” in The Humor of the Fabliaux. A Collection of Critical Essays (Columbia:
University of Missouri Press, 1974), pp. 75-92.
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