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Malory's treatment of Saracens depends upon his crusading-era literary sources and his personal awareness of Ottoman Turk incursions into Europe. Except for Palomides, his Saracens develop typical orientalist functions. (PHG)
WHAT MALORY KNEW (OR NOT)
Until recently, Muslim or Islamic figures commonly referred to as Saracens have often been overlooked or marginalized in discussions of Sir Thomas Malory's anachronistic pseudo-historical romance(s) of King Arthur's reign.1 This lack of critical attention is not hard to understand. Nevertheless, it is important to mention that Malory's portrayal of Saracens is conditioned by several very different elements. One of these arises from the very difficulty of defining the term 'Saracen' and comprehending its usage. Its vagueness and generality has been recognized since at least 1940, when W. W. Comfort described the Saracen as being perceived by Western Christendom simply as its monolithic, civilized enemy.1 The inadequacy of this definition raises significant problems for discussion; for instance, how can we tell the difference between Saracens who are Muslim and those who are some other variety of pagan, let alone the nuances of groups within islam itself? And how can we usefully perpetuate any discussion of'Saracens' which does not perceive and account for such differencse?
Determining who is or is not a Saracen in the Islamic sense is not a trivial problem in Malory. For the purposes of this essay, therefore, I have adopted a strict approach: limiting the scope to Saracen figures in Malory who are clearly labeled as (not merely associated with) such, by extension assuming their participation in the Islamic faith, and acknowledging the indeterminacy of reference for the term where necessary. The tendency of some Malory critics to expand the definition of Saracen to encompass all pagans may be justifiable in the context of general ignorance about Islam in medieval Europe, but it is hardly useful for informed analysis of Malory's achievement, even though it is debatable how much Malory himself actually understood about Muslims. It is clear, for example, that not all of the Roman Emperor Lucius's army are Saracens, even though many of them are from the Middle East and North Africa, and although Malory has ample opportunity to describe the cannibalistic giant of Mont St-Michel as one during Arthur's solo encounter with him...