Le Morte d'Arthur
Le Morte d'Arthur (originally written as le morte Darthur; Anglo-Norman French for "The Death of Arthur")[1] is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, along with their respective folklore. In order to tell a "complete" story of Arthur from his conception to his death, Malory compiled, rearranged, interpreted and modified material from various French and English sources. Today, this is one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature. Many authors since the 19th-century revival of the legend have used Malory as their principal source.
Not to be confused with La mort de l'auteur.Author
Le morte Darthur
1485
823.2
PR2043 .B16
Apparently written in prison at the end of the medieval English era, Le Morte d'Arthur was completed by Malory around 1470 and was first published in a printed edition in 1485 by William Caxton. Until the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript in 1934, the 1485 edition was considered the earliest known text of Le Morte d'Arthur and that closest to Malory's original version.[2] Modern editions under myriad titles are inevitably variable, changing spelling, grammar and pronouns for the convenience of readers of modern English, as well as often abridging or revising the material.
Overview[edit]
Style[edit]
Like other English prose in the 15th century, Le Morte d'Arthur was highly influenced by French writings, but Malory blends these with other English verse and prose forms. The Middle English of Le Morte d'Arthur is much closer to Early Modern English than the Middle English of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (the publication of Chaucer's work by Caxton was a precursor to Caxton's publication of Malory); if the spelling is modernized, it reads almost like Elizabethan English. Where the Canterbury Tales are in Middle English, Malory extends "one hand to Chaucer, and one to Spenser,"[36] by constructing a manuscript which is hard to place in one category.
Malory's writing can be divisive today: sometimes seen as simplistic from an artistic viewpoint, "rambling" and full of repetitions,[37] however there are also opposite opinions, such as of those regarding it a "supreme aesthetic accomplishment".[38] Other aspects of Malory's writing style include his abruptly abridging of much of the source material, especially in the early parts concerning Arthur's backstory and his rise to power (preferring the later adventures of the knights), apparently acting on an authorial assumption that the reader knows the story already and resulting in the problem of omitting important things "thereby often rendering his text obscure", and how he would sometimes turn descriptions of characters into proper names.[39][40] Because there is so much lengthy ground to cover, Malory uses "so—and—then", often to transition his retelling of the stories that become episodes instead of instances that can stand on their own.[41]
Following the lapse of 182 years since the last printing, the year 1816 saw a new edition by Alexander Chalmers, illustrated by Thomas Uwins (The History of the Renowned Prince Arthur, King of Britain; with His Life and Death, and All His Glorious Battles. Likewise, the Noble Acts and Heroic Deeds of His Valiant Knights of the Round Table), as well as another one by Joseph Haslewood (La Mort D'Arthur: The Most Ancient and Famous History of the Renowned Prince Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table); both of these were based on the 1634 Stansby's version. Several other modern editions, including these by Thomas Wright (La Morte D'Arthure: The History of King Arthur and of the Knights of the Round Table, 1858) and Ernest Rhys (Malory's History of King Arthur and the Quest of The Holy Grail: From The Morte D'Arthur, 1886), were also based on that by Stansby.[63][64]
William Upcott's edition directly based on then-newly rediscovered Morgan copy of the first print Caxton version was published as Malory's Morte d'Arthur with Robert Southey's introduction and notes including summaries of the original French material from the Vulgate tradition in 1817. Afterwards, Caxton became the basis for many subsequent editions until the 1934 discovery of the Winchester Manuscript.
The first mass-printed modern edition of Caxton was published in 1868 by Edward Strachey as a book for boys titled Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and His Noble Knights of the Round Table, highly censored in accordance to Victorian morals. Many other 19th-century editors, abridgers and retellers such as Henry Frith (King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table, 1884) would also censor their versions for the same reason.[65] The first "standard" popular edition, based on Caxton was Heinrich Oskar Sommer's Le Morte Darthur by Syr Thomas Malory published in 1890 with an introduction and glossary as well as an essay on Malory's prose style, followed by these by John Rhys in 1893 (Everyman's Library) and Israel Gollancz in 1897 (Temple Classics).[63][64]
Modernized editions update the late Middle English spelling, update some pronouns, and re-punctuate and re-paragraph the text. Others furthermore update the phrasing and vocabulary to contemporary Modern English. The following sentence (from Caxton's preface, addressed to the reader) is an example written in Middle English and then in Modern English:
Since the 19th-century Arthurian revival, there have been numerous modern republications, retellings and adaptations of Le Morte d'Arthur. A few of them are listed below (see also the following Bibliography section):
