Le Morte d'Arthur

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Le Morte d'Arthur (spelt Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions, from the French la mort d'Arthur, "the death of Arthur") is Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their source, including T. H. White for his popular The Once and Future King.

About the text

Malory likely started work on it while he was in prison in the early 1450s and completed it by 1470. Originally Malory intended Le Morte Darthur to be the title of only the final book of his cycle; he calls the full work The hoole booke of kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table; Caxton may have misunderstood the author's intentions when naming the book. Many modern editions update the spelling and some of the pronouns from Malory's original Early Modern English, repunctuate and reparagraph, but otherwise leave the text as it was written.

The first printing of Malory's work was made by Caxton in 1485; it proved popular, and was reprinted, with some additions and changes, in 1498 and 1529 by Wynkyn de Worde who succeeded to Caxton's press. Three more editions followed at intervals down to the time of the English Civil War: William Copland's (1557), Thomas East's (1585), and William Stansby's (1634), each of which manifested additional changes and errors (including the omission of an entire leaf). Thereafter the book went out of fashion until the time of the Romantic revival of interest in all things medieval; the year 1816 saw a new edition by Walker and Edwards, and another one by Wilks, both based on the 1634 Stansby edition. From Davison's 1817 edition (promoted by Robert Southey) on, Caxton's 1485 edition (or a mixture of Caxton and Stansby) was used as the basis for future editions, down to the time of the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript.

Caxton was also responsible for separating it into 21 books comprised of 507 chapters for easier reading. Originally, Malory divided his work principally into eight tales:

1. The birth and rise of Arthur
2. King Arthur's war against the Romans
3. The book of Launcelot
4. The book of Gareth (brother of Gawain)
5. Tristram and Isolde
6. The Quest of the Holy Grail
7. The affair between Launcelot and Guinevere
8. The breaking of the Knights of the Round Table and the death of Arthur

Most of the events in the book take place in Britain and France in the latter half of the 5th century. In some parts it ventures farther afield, to Rome and to Sarras (near Babylon), and recalls Biblical tales from the ancient Middle East.

The Winchester Manuscript

All editions prior to 1934 were based on the edition printed by Caxton. In that year, when the library of Winchester College was being catalogued, W. F. Oakeshott discovered a previously unknown manuscript copy—one of the most important new medieval manuscripts discovered in the 20th century. The "Winchester Manuscript" is regarded as being mostly but not always closer to Malory's original than is Caxton's text, although both derive separately from an earlier copy. Curiously, microscopic examination of ink smudges on the Winchester manuscript showed the marks to be offsets of newly printed pages set in Caxton's own font indicating that same manuscript had been in Caxton's print shop. Unlike the Caxton edition, the Winchester MS is not divided into books and chapters and indeed, in his preface, Caxton takes credit for the division.

In his edition to the Winchester Manuscript, Eugène Vinaver urged strongly that Malory had in fact not written a single book, but had produced a series of independent Arthurian tales that were not necessarily intended to cohere with one another, whence Vinaver called his edition "The Works of Sir Thomas Malory." Vinaver's theory explained a number of discrepancies between the different sections which had bothered commentators. However, opposition critics pointed out that discrepancies still existed within what Vinaver claimed were independent and internally consistent works, and that Malory, particularly in his later tales, added links to his own versions of events in earlier sections. They argued that Malory felt that the tales should cohere, even if Malory did not get to the point of producing a revision that achieved that goal. This is especially apparent in the final two tales, which even Vinaver agreed were intended to be read together.

The question of the work's unity has never been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Most scholars, however, agree that whatever Malory's intentions for the individual books, he did mean for them to be considered an interrelated series, if not a unified whole. This is usually how Le Morte d'Arthur is read today.

Selected bibliography and external links

The work itself

• The text of [Le Morte Darthur] on Project Gutenberg.
• Editions based on the Winchester manuscript:
• * Facsimile:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile. Introduced by Ker, N. R. (1976). London: Early English Text Society. ISBN 0197224040.
• * Archaic spelling:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur. (A Norton Critical Edition). Ed. Shepherd, Stephen H. A. (2004). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 039397464. (Official website with textual corrections and further commentary: [Stephen H. A. Shepherd: Le Morte Darthur: On-line companion].)
• ** _________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène. 3rd ed. Field, Rev. P. J. C. (1990). 3 vol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198123442, ISBN 0198123450, ISBN 0198123469.
• ** _________. Malory: Complete Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1977). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192812173. (Revision and retitling of Malory: Works of 1971).
• ** _________. Malory: Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1971). 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192541633.
• ** _________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1967). 2nd ed. 3 vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0198118384.
• ** _________. Malory: Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1954). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192541633. (Malory's text from Vinaver's The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (1947), in a single volume dropping most of Vinaver's notes and commentary.)
• ** _________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1947). 3 vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• * Modernized spelling:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Ed. Cooper, Helen (1998). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192824201. (Abridged text.)
• * Translation/paraphrase into contemporary English:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table. Trans. and abridged by Baines, Keith (1983). New York: Bramhall House. ISBN 0517020602. Reissued by Signet (2001). ISBN 0451528166.
• ** _________. Le Morte D'Arthur. (London Medieval & Renaissance Ser.) Trans. Lumiansky, Robert N. (1982). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0684176734.
• Editions based on Caxton's edition:
• * Facsimile:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur, printed by William Caxton, 1485. Ed. Needham, Paul (1976). London.
• * Archaic spelling:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Caxton's Malory. Ed. Spisak, James. W. (1983). 2 vol. boxed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0520038258.
• ** _________. Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Sommer, H. Oskar (1889–91). 3 vol. London: David Nutt. The text of Malory from this edition without Sommer's annotation and commentary and selected texts of Malory's sources is available on the web at:
• *** [University of Michigan: Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: Le Morte Darthur].
• *** [Celtic Twilight: Legends of Camelot: Malory's Le Morte Darthur]
• * Modernized spelling:
• ** Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Matthews, John (2000). Illustrated by Ferguson, Anna-Marie. London: Cassell. ISBN 0304353671. (The introduction by John Matthews praises the Winchester text but then states this edition is based on the Pollard version of the Caxton text, with eight additions from the Winchester manuscript.)
• ** _________. Le Morte Darthur. Introduction by Moore, Helen (1996). Herefordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. ISBN 1853264636. (Seemingly based on the Pollard text.)
• ** _________. Le morte d'Arthur. Introduction by Bryan, Elizabeth J. (1994). New York: Modern Library. ISBN 067960099X. (Pollard text.)
• ** _________. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Cowen, Janet (1970). Introduction by Lawlor, John. 2 vols. London: Penguin. ISBN 067960099X, ISBN 014043044X.
• ** _________. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Rhys, John (1906). (Everyman's Library 45 & 46.) London: Dent; London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton. Released in paperback format in 1976: ISBN 046001045X, ISBN 0460010468. (Text based on an earlier modernized Dent edition of 1897.)
• ** _________. Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table,. Ed. Pollard, A. W. (1903). 2 vol. New York: Macmillan. (Text corrected from the bowdlerized 1868 Macmillan edition edited by Sir Edward Strachey.) Available on the web at:
• *** Project Gutenberg: [Le Morte Darthur: Volume 1 (books 1-9)] and [Le Morte Darthur: Volume 2 (books 10-21)]. (Plain text.)
• *** Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library: [Le Morte Darthur: Volume 1 (books 1-9)] and [Le Morte Darthur: Volume 2 (books 10-21)] (HTML.)
• *** [Celtic Twilight: Legends of Camelot: Le Morte d'Arthur] (HTML with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley from the Dent edition of 1893–94.)
• ** _________. Le Morte Darthur. Ed. Simmon, F. J. (1893–94). Illustrated by Beardsley, Aubrey. 2 vol. London: Dent.

Commentary

• Glossary to Le Morte d'Arthur at [Glossary to Book 1] and [Glossary to Book 2] (PDF)
• [Lugodoc's Guide to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur]
• [Malory's Morte d'Arthur] and [Style of the Morte d'Arthur], selections by Alice D. Greenwood with bibliography from the Cambridge History of English Literature.
• About the Winchester manuscript:
• * [University of Georgia: English Dept: Jonathan Evans: Walter F. Oakeshott and the Winchester Manuscript.] (Contains links to the first public announcements concerning the Winchester manuscript from The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Times Literary Supplement.)
• * [UBC Dept. of English: Siân Echard: Caxton and Winchester]
• * [Department of English, Goucher College: Arnie Sanders: The Malory Manuscript]

 

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