I think, however, that it would require either an eidetic memory or a line-by-line collation to spot most of the emendations I have made this year. Except, perhaps, for certain spellings. I have omitted the final “e” from most of the masculine names—e.g., Gawaine to Gawain—reflecting my own strong pronunciation preference (in my head, I hear most of these names—Agravain being an exception—more nearly rhyming with “Britain” than with “Elaine”), and changed “Jesu” to “Ihesu,” both for pronunciation and to emphasize that it is not a simple misprint for “Jesus.”
During the last half century, the two forms “may” and “might” seem to have traded places in popular usage. While this interests me, it still often sounds “wrong” to my ears. I have, moreover, observed a tendency to run certain words together orthographically regardless of how they are used, so that, e.g., “may be” can automatically become “maybe” whether it is verb or adverb, “any more,” “anymore” whether modifier of time or of quantity, “in to,” “into” in every case, so that “She went into dinner” reminds me forcibly of the White Queen sinking beneath the edge of the soup tureen at the climax of Through the Looking-Glass. I have tended to modify my wording so as to avoid as much as possible the chance of such run-ons.
For the rest, I have sometimes rearranged clauses, here and there changed a word (“doll” to “poppet,” “corridor” to “passage,” etc.), dropped or added as much as a line’s worth, quietly corrected obvious misprints (and probably, inevitably, added a few new ones in spite of two proofreadings), now and then readjusted capitalization, and so on. When I myself found my original wording unclear, I tried to clear it up. In cases of doubt, I usually let the original stand.
A note might be in order on the name “Iblis.” The first version of my Arthurian Companion was already in print when I learned that this is the name of an Islamic demon. I had borrowed it from a scholarly reference to Ulrich von Zatzikhoven’s Lanzelet, a work which I must certainly read for myself if and when I return to intensive Arthurian studies. I have no idea how it got into the romance of Ulrich or whoever he translated from, nor whether he or they were aware of its associations. I seriously considered changing it for this edition; but “Iris” is perhaps the easiest close alternative (the names of classical deities apparently raising fewer eyebrows than those of Islamic demons), and I have already attached “Iris” to quite a different character in my story “Squire Kay in Love” (in Legends of the Pendragon, ed. by James Lowder: Oakland, Green Knight Publishing, c2002). I decided at last that too many copies of both Idylls of the Queen and The Arthurian Companion have been too long in print for such a major alteration as a complete name change (as opposed to a tiny spelling alteration), so left “Iblis” as it stands. Any readers particularly bothered will have to change it in their own copies.
Some of the names, as of Sir Kay’s kitchen staff and his charger Feuillemorte, are my own invention; but “Florence” is indeed the name of a son of Gawain in Malory. It did not apparently become a feminine name until the Nineteenth Century.
It is time to acknowledge that “Idylls of the Queen” is an editor’s title—and, I think, an inspired one.
Revisiting my own story after several decades—yes, it isn’t bad. I remember that it grew very organically out of my Arthurian studies, that I followed Malory and his immediate sources in who murdered whom, chiefly altering where and how other characters learn the truth. I even took the story of the charcoal burner from Malory’s probable “French book,” the Arthurian Vulgate. The great T. H. White, whose work is seminal for so much of the Arthurian literature of our own day, for his own purposes changed the identity of Queen Morgawse’s killer. White’s Once and Future King, along with Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, are largely what attracted me to Arthurian romance in the first place; but when it came to crafting my own fiction, I preferred going back to Malory.
Let me encourage anyone who enjoys Idylls of the Queen to look for a copy of Exiled from Camelot by Cherith Baldry, one of the finest Arthurian novels it has ever been my enthralled delight to read. (Oakland, CA: Green Knight Publishing, 2001) And, to “blow my own trumpet,” interested readers might also enjoy comparing my work in the Malorian vein with my much lighter and more whimsical Chretienesque romance, The Follies of Sir Harald (Green Knight, 2001; another editor’s title, but, like Idylls, auctorially approved).
—Barnes, Wisconsin
June 22, 2012
The Idylls of the Queen Page 30
