Le Morte D'Arthur (York Medieval Texts) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Sir Thomas Mallory was a great one to write the adventures of King Arthur and his knights - a knight himself, he led a life of intrigue and adventure, albeit not one that always lived up to the ideas of chivalry he penned at the heart of the Arthurian legends. Mallory did not invent Arthur; he is one of the principle medieval chroniclers, having time (he was in prison with nothing else to do, after all) to set down in prose stories he'd heard throughout his life. These were popular tales, not always told in the same way with the same details, as is true of most oral legends and transmitted stories, much to the later frustration of scholars and readers. The earliest printing of Mallory's stories had his authorship suppressed by Caxton, one of the better-known publishers of the time.

The earliest Arthurian legends date back as far as the late Roman times in Britain. Controversies abound, but many have settled on a late Roman or Romano-British general named Arturius - however, given the linguistic nature of the name (it is derivative of ruler or leader), it is impossible to know if this was in fact a name or a title, and the legends may be compilations of the acts of many leaders bearing the name. There was also a Welsh leader with the name/title Arddu, `Dark One', who is sometimes conflated into Arthurian legend. Arthur was celebrated in the pre-Norman times for the order and stability he represented; Arthur was celebrated in post-Norman times for his campaigns against Saxons. Arthur continues to be an intriguing character, today reminiscent of ancient mysteries as well as pagan and new age ideas as well.

In any event, Mallory doesn't attach specific dates to his tales. The book actually consists of many tales. The first is entitled `The Tale of King Arthur', which introduces the figures of Merlin, Gawain, Uwayne, Pellinore, Morgan le Fay (the Celtic war goddess Morgana, dressed up as Arthur's sister) and others, and includes the sword-in-the-stone event. While this text has been modernised by Keith Baines, there are certain crucial lines left in Mallory's English, including this most famous one:

Whoso pulleth oute this swerd of this stone and anvyld is rightwys kynge borne of all Brytaygne

Following this tale, Mallory includes many of the famous tales in Arthurian legend as stories more or less complete in themselves, but still linking to the other tales. `The Tale of Sir Lancelot du Lake' is a knight's tale indeed, with no fewer than twenty horseback duels back-to-back. `The Tale of Sir Gareth' is a similar spirited tale, less well known. `The Book of Sir Tristram of Lyoness' makes Tristram and Iseult, famous by other writers as well, into lovers, this time with a more happy ending than usual. The lesser known `Tale of Arthur and Lucius' describes battles and skirmishes with the emperor, but never really captured popular imagination.

Mallory saves the best for last, with three major tales - `The Tale of the Sangreal', the Holy Grail; `The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Gwynevere'; and finally, `Le Morte D'Arthur'. The tale of the Holy Grail continues into the present day in various fashions; here is contains strange glosses of the Old and New Testaments, as well as a good number of miracles, as one would expect from the Grail. The last tale, the death of Arthur, is probably the most famous, and the best written.

Even though an English knight, the courtly fashion was after a French design for many centuries after the Norman conquest, and this French influence in notable in the stories, from their titles to their plots and characterisations, including the places Mallory uses.

Keith Baines eliminates a lot of needless dialogue from his rendering here, but keeps the plot lines and sequence of action with integrity from earlier manuscripts and recited tales. His translation compares favourably with others, becoming a fairly standard text for good reason. Robert Graves (of `I Claudius' fame) provides an appreciative introduction to the text. Baines himself was a poet; however, this text, accepted somewhat reluctantly, is probably his best known work.

Arthur lives on into the modern world and beyond. Baines' edition gives it life to carry on, and Signet makes it available.

What you should expect with this book is a very good beginning and ending, and a "will it ever end ?" middle. Arthur himself cannot be called the central character, for he is virtually absent, except in the first tale of the book, which deals with his coming to power, and the last one, about his death. The rest of this book is concerned with jousting and tournaments, so much that in the end one gets bored with this never-ending succession of fights with knights whose names you'll only read once and which have no consequence on what is supposed to be the larger plot (such as the quest for the Holy Grail, or the famous Tristram and Iseult tale). Of course, the better-known knights of the Round Table, such as Launcelot, Tristram, and Percivale, are present, but only from time to time, and narration often shifts from one to the other for no reason.

What this book lacks most is continuity. Apart from the first and last tales, everything in between is not in chronological order, which gets confusing. In one tale one character is dead and another is well-known; in the next tale the first character is living and the second one is unknown (just take the example of King Pellinore and Sir Percivale). All tales were obviously separate ones, and the reader, at some point, will simply stop trying to understand how Malory ever came up with such an order for his tales. If Malory (or his original publishers) had any idea in mind when they chose this setup of the tales, it will appear unclear to most readers.

One of the few good points of this book is that, since it was written in the late Middle Ages, it avoids to a certain extent the over-romanticization of the Middle Ages, which is what later authors, such as Sir Walter Scott, did to such an extent that even today we cannot think of the Middle Ages without having in mind the picture-perfect version of it (which I will not delve into -- I'm sure you know what I have in mind). Even though chivalry as described in the book has some romantic elements attached to it, it is never fully exploited, and "Le Morte d'Arthur" certainly does not fit the requirements to be classified into the romantic genre (which was not fully described until the nineteenth century). This book therefore does not use romanticism as we now know it. But this good point may also be one of the book's weaknesses, because the topic is a legend, and not fact. Because this subject is not historically accurate (and some parts of the book are hilariously improbable), Malory could not use realism to replace romanticism, and I believe that if he had used more romanticism in his book it would only have made it better. In the end, Malory used neither style, and this makes his writing style very dry. His characters are mere fighting machines with no emotional depth, his narration is action, action, and action: no description, either of his own characters or of the scenery (a castle is a castle, nothing more). The scenes he depicts cannot be located, for the setting is never described. Malory, above all, was an awful storyteller. He could only describe his characters jousting and fighting, and since this had nothing to do with the larger plot, this only lengthens the book for no reason. (If you want a modern comparison, just think of a public orator who just tells personal anecdotes that are not related to his topic.)

Furthermore, anyone interested in the Middle Ages has nothing to gain from reading this book. It holds no historical interest (apart from a study of the English language, but then I would not go for this modern rendition) for the reason that its subject is not based on fact and its description of society in the early Middle Ages is simplistic. This book is certainly no "Canterbury Tales", in which a lot can be learned about what was life during the Middle Ages. So if you are mainly interested in history I'd skip "Le Morte d'Arthur" and I'd go for "The Canterbury Tales" instead.

In conclusion, "Le Morte d'Arthur" is worth reading only if you have the patience to go through it, for this book is overlong and repetitive. Keith Baines's rendition makes this task easier, and his appendix on the main characters is very helpful if you intend to skip parts (which you should not do because the whole is chronologically inaccurate).