Rescuing Lancelot in the Medieval Forest of Interlace: A Study on the Narrative Structure of Sir Thoas Malory's "Grail Quest"

Studies on the narrative method focused on Malory's Grail story reveals that the interlace structure performs distinctive function in Malory's Grail story in particular and the interlace structure turns out to be more than general phenomena found in medieval Arthurian literary tradition as a whole. Malory's interlace structure shows not only that Malory works in the textual tradition of numerous Arthurian literatures following their value codes in terms of structural and thematic formation of his text but also that it performs distinctive function in terms of characterization of Lancelot reflecting Malory's primary interest in Morte: foregrounding chivalric identity represented through Lancelot, who is relatively a marginalized character both in Malory's source texts and seemingly in Malory's own version of the Grail story. In other words, the interlace structure reveals its contradictory characters that the interlace structure allows Malory to preserve the traditional values of precedent Grail stories, but ironically the traditional structure of interlace turns out to have been appropriated at the same time for the untraditional process of centering the traditionally marginalized knight, Lancelot as well as decentering the ideal type of Christian knight, Galahad and Percival. The interlace structure goes on to reflect several conflicting demands which coexist in the ideology of medieval chivalry. In Malory's grail story, Lancelot struggles to achieve these conflicting demands such as loyalty to his lord, King Arthur, courtly love towards the Queen Gunevere, devotion to Christian ethics, and expressing knightly prowess. It may not be impossible but is difficult and unprofitable to discuss which one, two, or three of them work(s) as Lancelot's desire and which as repressive force. Possibly all of them can be interpreted as desires, which, however, are in conflict with each other. Or all of them can be rightly understood as repressive forces and there might be unrecognizable or unidentifiable desires in Lancelot. Both interpretations can be possible, because since they are conflicting with each other, when all the four operate as desires, each of them inevitably comes to position itself toward each other as repression. Anyway, this repressive mechanism of conflicting demandsfdesires in the ideology of chivalry makes it impossible for one demandldesire to be expressed in a straightforward way, in other words, in a linear manner, which is easily recognized and obviously felt of its existence. The process of repression of certain desires inescapably brings about distortions of the desires and makes them complex, which necessitate more complicated form than a linear one, when they are expressed. In this case, the form is confusingly complicated, apparently disorderly and defying causality in Aristotelian sense, interlace structure