Novel
Le Morte d'Arthur
Thomas Malory · 1485
Opening lines
It befell in the days of Uther Pendragon, when he was king of all England, and so reigned, that there was a mighty duke in Cornwall that held war against him long time.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A king is born of a ruse of Merlin, draws a sword fixed in a stone and gathers around a Round Table knights who renew their oath every year at Pentecost. Then come the adventures: a young stranger put to work in the kitchens and nicknamed Beaumains, a knight whose strength triples until noon, a cup that passes through the hall one Pentecost evening and that all swear to seek. The best knight in the world loves the queen, and the king suspects it without wanting to hear of it.
Context
The text was completed between March 1469 and March 1470 in prison, where its author had spent many years since 1450, and was printed at Westminster on 31 July 1485 by the first English printer, who divided it into twenty-one parts, rewrote passages, and gave the whole the title that the author reserved for his last tale only. It was read in this form for four and a half centuries. In 1934, the librarian of a Hampshire college opened a locked chest and found in it a manuscript copy without these divisions; scholars still debate whether it gives eight independent tales or a single book. Traces of ink on it show that it had passed through the printer's workshop. The sources are mostly French, and the author says so himself.
Who it is for
More than a thousand pages in fifteenth-century English, translated into French from Caxton's text. The tales are self-contained and one can enter by any of them.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the source of the modern continuations of the Arthurian legend, it was read until 1934 only in the text printed at Westminster.
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