ABSTRACT
One of the most difficult aspects of genre criticism is balancing a non-restrictive approach and definition with one which is concrete enough to be of any use. Inevitably there will be exceptions to any definition, but equally inevitably there will be viable definitions whose parameters demand the exclusion of certain texts from the genre. This is the case in the current study, where one consequence of the romance definition established in the previous chapter is that some texts currently labelled romance must be reclassified and reconsidered. This is especially the case with the text which has been known for five hundred years as Le Morte Darthur (completed 1469-70) but which its author Sir Thomas Malory called The Hoole Book of Kyng Arthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of the Rounde Table, that whan they were holé togyders there was ever an Hondred and Forty.3 The Morte Darthur is generally
1 C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost: Being the Ballard Matthews Lectures delivered at University College, North Wales, 1941, rev. (1942, London, 1967), p. 1.
