Le Morte d'Arthur (1485)

These tales have a certain Monthy-Python'esque quality to them! The Knights that are the heroes of the stories are not necessarily the 'good, honourable' kind of guy knights were supposed to be during these times! And that makes it all the more funny to read! ( )

I'm so glad I finally read Le Morte Darthur. I've loved the King Arthur stories ever since I was little and read what I think was a retelling by Enid Blyton. I actually read this for my Late Medieval Literature class, but I'd have read it someday anyway. The copy I read was an abridgement, which is probably a good thing as parts of it got quite tedious as it was. The introduction to this version is pretty interesting -- and, by the way, my lectures on it were wonderful.

I subscribe to the view that this is not necessarily intended to be a novel in the modern sense. The tales are too repetitive in parts and each can stand alone. I do agree that they're all related to each other, though. Throughout the course of the book, the tales get better and more lovingly written, I think. I do suspect Sir Thomas Malory would rather like to have married Lancelot on the astral plane. It's odd to notice how much of a stinking liar Lancelot is, and yet the text makes no judgement on him at all for that. I'm aware of the public honour system's part in that, but still...

I'm not sure one can say anything new on this text that hasn't been said, to be honest. I loved it, and if you're into King Arthur and you don't mind a bit of a challenge, I suggest you go for it.

Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.

(Because in some secret part of my heart, I believe that one day King Arthur will come again.) ( )

I've known about this book for a long time, but had always assumed that it only covered Arthur's death based on the title. I recently became interested in the Arthur story again after reading The Queen of Air and Darkness, so I downloaded Le Morte d'Arthur from project gutenberg.

This version uses modern English spellings, but the text can still be a bit difficult to follow because of the old usage of some of the words. A dictionary that includes middle english usage is helpful as there are quite a few false friends. I found the late middle english interesting, but I can imagine that it might not be to everyone's taste.

You can see where Monty Python got the ideas from some of their Holy Grail sketches from, because some of them like the Black Knight obviously come from this book. I found that quite a few of the knights escapades had a bit of a monty python quality to them, like the knight who accidentally chops off a woman's head and gets told something like "Arthur will be mad at you for that". The ultimate python moment comes when a hand comes down from heaven and takes the grail and spear back.

Some of the exploits of Arthur and his knights are chivalrous, but many are not. They certainly can't claim the moral high ground. The knights sometimes look like polite yobs with deadly weapons.

The events seem to be set in the medieval period rather than the dark ages. There's no mention of invading Saxons, which I'd have expected to have been their main problem, but plenty of references to the French nobility. The tower of London is mentioned, and there's even mention of cannon (although only used by Mordred, so they were probably seen as cowardly weapons).

The tales can get a bit repetitive, as they tend to follow a few patterns like "then he did this, and then he did this, and then..." or "they went on separate adventures. (a) did this, (b) did this, and (c) did this". There's not the same character development you'd expect in a modern (19th century or later) novel. But this does help to show how literature changed between the 15th and 19th centuries.

Because of the repetitive detail, it can sometimes be difficult to follow the underlying story. I sometimes found myself getting bogged down in tales of one joust after another, and realised that I'd forgotten what the various factions were fighting over, and what their goals were. Book 10 was especially hard going, with lots of repetitive tales but no general direction.

But the overall story is a classic, and I think it's important to read it to understand where all the later Arthur stories have come from. If it wasn't for Mallory, we wouldn't have The Once and Future King, or Excalibur or Merlin or any of the other spin-offs. So if you're interested in Arthurian legend, you pretty much have to read this in the end. ( )

A prosaic "translation" indeed. ( )

I listened to the Librivox audiobook version, but the age of the text makes it pretty hard to follow in places, so I went back and reread some chapters at sacred-texts.com. My favourite parts of this were the parts I didn't already know (basically the whole Lancelot and Guinevere business and the grail quest) -- I think the best section is the bit where King Arthur is bored doesn't feel like paying taxes so he fights the entire Roman Empire, and then when he's defeated everyone and is in charge of everything he just goes home. ( )