Arthur in the Mountains: The Multivalency of Mont-Saint-Michel and the St Gotthard Pass in the Alliterative Morte Arthure

Very little has been written on the topic of mountains in medieval English literature. For the most part, there is a tendency to consider them as incidental background features of a work, serving as part of a broader metaphorical conceit, or as hostile and dangerous spaces, landscapes of trial or necessary obstacles to overcome in the course of travel. Scholarship on the medieval environment has developed significantly in recent decades alongside a broader interest in environmental and ecological humanities. However, it is only quite recently that work relating to the study of premodern and early modern mountains has begun to challenge the widely-held belief that the eighteenth century marks a clear dividing line in the way that authors, artists, and poets were defining and conceptualising mountain landscapes. Focusing on the Alliterative Morte Arthure, this article argues that our understanding of the value of mountain settings in works of Middle English literature has been simplistic. As growing scholarly interest in the medieval environment continues to broaden our awareness of the actual landscapes and ecologies of the Middle Ages, literary scholars should simultaneously pay further attention to mountains as part of the medieval imagination. Focusing in particular on two moments from the poem - Arthur’s encounter with the giant on Mont-Saint-Michel and his crossing of the Alps via the St Gotthard pass - this article argues that there is a richness to the mountains of the Alliterative Morte that goes far beyond the clichés and overused motifs that have so far been recognised as the medieval period’s foremost contribution to mountain literature. They are at once alien and familiar, dangerous and bucolic, literal and figurative. Far from being background features of the poem, they form a consistent and integral part of the poet’s cultivation of meaning throughout the text.