Sir Thomas Malory – författare

This monumental work made the Arthurian cycle available for the first time in English. Malory took a body of legends from Celtic folklore that had been adapted into French literature, gave them an English perspective, and produced a work which ever since has had tremendous influence upon literature.

The story begins with King Uther Pendragon’s use of enchantment to lay with Igraine, Duchess of Cornwall. Arthur is conceived and taken away in secret, returning as a young man to claim the throne by pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone. In retelling the story of Arthur’s rule of Britain, Malory intertwines the romances of Guinevere and Lancelot, Tristan and Isolde, and Lancelot and Elaine. Sir Galahad’s appearance at Camelot begins the quest for the Holy Grail. Finally, Camelot is brought down by the conflict between King Arthur and his natural son, Mordred.

This monumental work made the Arthurian cycle available for the first time in English. Malory took a body of legends from Celtic folklore that had been adapted into French literature, gave them an English perspective, and produced a work which ever since has had tremendous influence upon literature.

The story begins with King Uther Pendragon’s use of enchantment to lay with Igraine, Duchess of Cornwall. Arthur is conceived and taken away in secret, returning as a young man to claim the throne by pulling the sword Excalibur from the stone. In retelling the story of Arthur’s rule of Britain, Malory intertwines the romances of Guinevere and Launcelot, Tristram and Isolde, and Launcelot and Elaine. Sir Galahad’s appearance at Camelot begins the quest for the Holy Grail. Finally, Camelot is brought down by the conflict between King Arthur and his natural son, Mordred.

Arguably no medieval English literary work has had as far and wide a reach as Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur; among the many adaptations are Tennyson’s Idylls of the King, T.H. White’s The Once and Future King, and the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot. It might also be argued that the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century tradition of fantasy literature—from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings to George Lucas’s Star Wars and beyond—owes much to the Arthurian tradition, rooted in English most strongly in Malory’s Morte Darthur. Yet there has been no edition that draws on the results of the past generation’s scholarship while presenting Malory’s work in a form that is at once true to the original and accessible to the modern reader.

This new edition, which expands on the revised and expanded selection of Malory material that will be included in the third edition of The Broadview Anthology of British Literature, is all of those things. The extensive selections include most of the material concerning Launcelot, and all of the Morte’s two final tales; the language has been partially modernized to make the text accessible to the modern reader, while retaining the flavor of the original; the text has been carefully prepared from the Winchester manuscript; and the annotations are extensive.