Truth games in the 'Mort Artu' (Medieval epic narrative)

In the so-called Lancelot propre the conclusion of the various episodes is constantly delayed by a narrative procedure which entails a high degree of repetition and does without clean-cut resolutions. In the Mort Artu by inel uctable chain of cause and effect brings about the end of the narrated worl d. And just as the narration is governed by the laws of fatality, so the ch aracters in the epic possess a new ethical impulse. All those involved now appear literally obsessed with the will to bring the truth to light. And wh erever ambiguities are forcibly resolved, be it through confession, visual evidence or deductive proof, establishing the truth turns out to be the ene my of life. Yet in these truth games the narrative once again conjures the principle it has abandoned: "ex negativo" as it were behind the back of its ineluctable progress, it adumbrates rules which might preserve the social fabric.