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Malory: Complete Works

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This is mainly a review of two related editions of the work commonly known as "Le Morte D'Arthur" (Anglo-Norman French for "The Death of [King] Arthur). One is Eugene Vinaver's "Malory: Complete Works," the title of which will be explained shortly. The other is the Norton Critical Edition, as "Le Morte D'Arthur" -- an admirable book, but not for all readers; as also explained below, the text has some striking visual differences from the usual modern book, which some may find too difficult. Both are original-spelling editions of the fifteenth-century text, in what can be called either very late Middle English, or very early Modern English; other, easier-to-read, editions will also be mentioned below.

Until a mis-catalogued fifteenth-century manuscript in a safe at Winchester College was finally recognized in 1934 as Sir Thomas Malory's account of King Arthur and his knights, the only authoritative text of this now-famous work was that found in the two surviving copies of William Caxton's 1485 printing. Unhappily, its first and last pages are missing, so Caxton remains the source for those passages. (The standard exact, or "diplomatic," text of Caxton's Malory was edited by H. Oskar Sommers, 1889-1891. There is a recent critical text, edited by James Spisak, 1983, and a facsimile edition, edited by Paul Needham, 1976.) There are thousands of minor differences, and a few very large ones.

Caxton had divided the text into twenty-one books, with numbered and (usually) titled chapters, and called the whole "Le Morte D'Arthur" -- "Notwithstanding that it treateth of the birth, life, and acts of the said King Arthur, of his noble knights of the Round Table, their marvelous enquests and adventures, the achieving of the Sangrail, and in the end the dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all" (Caxton's Colophon). He had also dramatically abridged one long section (his Book Five), and seems to have made some changes of his own in wording, sometimes softening Malory's aristocratic bluntness. When Eugene Vinaver edited the Winchester Manuscript for the Oxford English Texts series, he gave the three-volume set (with critical notes, glossary, etc.) the title of "The Works of Sir Thomas Malory" (1947; revised edition, 1967; third edition, re-edited by P.J.C. Field, 1990).

In Vinaver's eyes, the manuscript revealed that Malory had produced only a very loosely connected set of narratives, distinct "WORKS" to which he, as editor, gave his own titles (which are now in current use, despite the lack of any other authority for some). The idea of a single, continuous, narrative was, in this view, Caxton's; hence the many inconsistencies, such as dead villains showing up alive and still wicked after a few "books." This decision has given rise to a long critical controversy; Malory was, in Caxton's term, "reducing" some disparate French texts into English, and may have just missed some discrepancies, as he tried to produce a reasonably unified "whole book". It has also created a certain amount of bibliographic confusion.

Keith Baines' "Rendition in Modern English" of Vinaver's edition (1962; a rewriting, covering every incident, but mostly sacrificing the language) is carefully called "Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table," as if to emphasize that Caxton's "interference" is being removed, without sacrificing reader recognition (and sales). Vinaver's later Oxford Standard Authors one-volume original-spelling text edition (1971), however, is "Malory: Complete Works." Vinaver also edited for Oxford University Press a modernized-spelling "King Arthur and His Knights: Selected Tales by Sir Thomas Malory" (1956, 1968, 1975), which maintained the same premise. John Steinbeck, a great admirer of Malory, was delighted by Vinaver's edition, and referenced the Winchester Manuscript in the subtitle of his unfinished "Acts of King Arthur ...," avoiding the "Morte" designation. (This is in fact an Arthurian novel by Steinbeck, incorporating chunks of source material, *not* a modernization.) Thus far, there is a certain amount of consistency.

However, a more recent Oxford edition, Helen Cooper's modernized spelling edition of the Winchester text for The Oxford World's Classics (1998; abridged, unfortunately; otherwise excellent), is instead titled "Le Morte D'Arthur." So, too, is the medievalist R.M. Lumiansky's much more extensively modernized 1982 complete version of the Winchester text. (Almost a translation, and thus an implied commentary on the text; but not to be confused with Lumiansky's projected, and unpublished, critical edition, almost complete at the time of his death in 1987. But is quite impressive, and I can understand anyone who thinks I am too critical of it.) The title of the facsimile edition for the Early English Text Society (N.R. Ker, 1976) "The Winchester Malory," avoided the issue, but the volume also helped renew the debate over Vinaver's theory by eliminating his editorial hand.

Stephen H. A. Shepherd's Norton Critical Edition is "Le Morte D'Arthur" on the cover, but on the title page has the Caxton-derived subtitle of "The Hoole Book of Kyng Arthur and of His Noble Knyghtes of The Rounde Table." This title may well go back to Malory, or least to the manuscripts; it would have appeared on the missing final pages. Shepherd, indeed, gives considerably more weight to Caxton's evidence than has been customary. It has become clear, from printer's marks, that the Winchester Manuscript was in fact available to Caxton, and was still on hand when his successor, Wynkyn de Worde, reset the "Morte" in 1498, introducing some of its readings. This suggests that Caxton was comparing at least two manuscripts, and that some of his "innovations" may reflect Malory's intentions as much as any other scribal copy.

The one-volume Oxford "Malory: Complete Works" is a rather bare-bones edition (especially compared to its three-volume prototype), consisting almost entirely of a very lightly "normalized" text (abbreviations are silently expanded, but variant spellings are usually preserved, etc.), with some good textual notes and a glossary (about a hundred pages of "apparatus"). In the Norton Critical Edition, Shepherd offers the reader an extended Introduction, Chronologies, a text with explanatory footnotes, a large section of "Sources" (earlier and / or alternative versions of Arthurian stories, many translated by Shepherd) and "Backgrounds" (contemporary medieval documents and modern histories illustrating Malory's times) and "Criticism" (essays and book excerpts), followed by a thirty-two-page double-column Glossary, a "Selected Guide to Proper Names," and a Selected Bibliography. (There is also a website, accessible through W.W. Norton's main page; it lists printing errors, and reports that the corrections of those identified have now been made in a second printing.)

Shepherd's text itself includes more of Caxton's readings, which seem to reflect another manuscript with different errors; and manuscript is the crucial word. Unlike Vinaver, who attempted to reproduce what he regarded as Malory's intended structure (or non-structure), Shepherd aims to create the impression of reading a medieval manuscript, without the most difficult obstacles. Not only are original spellings preserved, he carefully includes marginal notes and other indicators of scribal practices. The two scribes of the Winchester Manuscript carefully (but not completely consistently) wrote names, and some passages, in red ink ("rubrications"). Shepherd does not ask the printer for two colors, but follows the practice of "Scribe A" in using a more ornate script for the rubrics, substituting a black-letter font, so these words stand out; in some cases, following the scribes' use of larger lettering, they are printed in an extra-bold face.

Shepherd has some sensible solutions -- not identical to Vinaver's -- to such problems as character variation ('u' and 'v' and 'i' and 'j' had yet to settle into their modern restrictions, for example), erratic word divisions, and punctuating sentences whose beginning and / or end is not clearly marked. [A recent review by Jim Allan, posted on the "Le Morte Darthur" side, elegantly summarizes Shepherd's approach to these and other problems.]

This does not make for easy reading; it does reproduce, as nearly as possible in a printed book, and with modern typefaces, the experience of reading a medieval book -- which is the point of the exercise. As someone who once pored over the facsimile of the Winchester Manuscript without being able to make out much from the fifteenth-century handwriting, I love it. And it is not Shepherd's eccentric decision. It is part of a renewed appreciation for the medieval book as a physical artifact, not a sort of nuisance to be made transparent by modern typography.

However, with their 'olde spellynges' and other peculiarities, neither the Oxford Standard Authors version nor the Norton Critical Edition is suitable for all readers. Although Lumiansky's version comes close, there is still a need for a *complete* "normalized" edition based on the Winchester text, only very lightly modernized as to spelling, and faithfully preserving the original words and sentence structures.

This is a marvelous work. You must teach yourself to read the 15th-century English, but once you have gotten the knack, it's not hard at all. Malory lived in a simpler time, and spoke a simpler language, than we do today. There is a vigor and energy to the prose that leaps off the page - I remember one knight threatening that he would "fetch [his enemy] out of the biggest castle that he had." This volume, which gathers Malory's work over many many years, also tells the story of a man learning how to be a writer, and also, I think, growing in his emotional understanding and inteterest in his own characters. The characters are so much more real and interesting at the end than at the beginning!

I loved this book. For fans of King Arthur,this is where you must start. It is derived from the original manuscript of the 16th century. Even the old english has not been translated! It retains all of the original text. Only dissapointment is that there is not much of an introduction. I only wished that the introduction from the hardcover version was reprinted. It gave a long story of the book itself with lots of notes on the novel. This book should be produced today and put into the major shops. It certainly beats Penguin's translated versions. As I said, for people who want the ORIGINAL, start here!

If you want the original Middle English version of Le Mort D' Arthur, this is it. It is the Winchester version. I bought this book while in England and it's the best version I have due to the original spellings. It's a challenge to read, but I enjoy it because it is more authentic. Since you don't have somebody "correcting" the text, you get to see what the original actually looks and reads like. I believe this is the only middle English version available. You won't be disappointed!

Long, repetitive, and formulaic to the point of being grossly unsophisticated, The Morte D'Arthur in its original late Middle English is surprisingly and remarkably engaging and readable. It really does attest to the sheer power of story-telling that eschews unnecessary details and keeps the story moving at all costs.

In this work, Sir Thomas Malory presents a condensed compilation of the Arthurian legend taken from various French and English sources. And he takes great pains to extract, rearrange, and splice together coherent and engaging stories from scattered and sometimes contradictory fragments. Although there were slow and maddeningly long parts (esp. 'The Book of Sir Tristram De Lyones,' which clocks in at 300 pages, almost 40% of the entire book), never did I feel sleepy or bored as constant actions kept me engaged at all times. The language - late Middle English - is not bad at all, at least much, much understandable than Chaucer's Middle English. The book provides the reader with necessary notes and glossary where you can look up unfamiliar words, making it - as a review on its back cover says - "eminently readable."

As for the individual divisions or 'books' in the work, I found the last three - "The Tale of the Sankgreal" (the quest of the holy grail), "The Book of Sir Launcelot and Queen Guinevere," and the title story, "The Death of Arthur" - to be the most fascinating as Malory in these last three books masters the splicing technique and the stories are just a blast to read even by modern standards.

"The Book of Sir Tristram" and "The Tale of Sir Gareth of Orkney" both suffer from head-bangingly monotonous and eye-rollingly naive plot. The book of Tristram is just too long with too many episodes and too many names. It also doesn't tell us how the affair between Tristram and Isolde ends (told 160 pages later in the book of Lancelot and Guinevere), or how Lamerok, one of the three greatest knights of all time along with Lancelot and Tristram (excluding Galahad since he is like a God-incarnate and belongs more or less to the celestial order than to the mere human species) gets murdered by Gawain and his brothers. Though there are characters and events that the book foreshadows, it may best be skipped or read in parts for the interest of time.

The book of Gareth, on the other hand reads like a medieval version of a corny Power Rangers episode except the Power Rangers are the evil ones being butchered (NB: there are knights who are called the Black, Blue, White, Green, and finally Red Knights, and of course the Red Knight is the leader of them all. I'm not kidding.)

All of the divisions in their own way (even the mega-long book of Tristram and giga-facetious book of Gareth) are good stories once you get into them. Finally, although late Middle English is readable, the Middle-English-phobic reader may benefit from reading Signet Classic's modern translation, which would save both time and money ($7.95 with 500+ pages vs.$37 with 700+ pages).

All in all, a good book with good stories.

For those of us who want to read the original tales of King Arthur and the Round Table, but can't speak French, this is the place to go. The 15th century English makes for slow going at first, but provides a more authentic tale than the Caxton version. Malory grows stylistically throughout the Works, and by the Morte D'Arthur he tells as engaging a tale as any in Arthurian literature. This is a must read!

I am undertaking a course in the Arthurian Legend and one of the course books we are studying is Malory's Morte D'Arthur. It is a complex series of short stories translated from Medieval French. Eugene Vinaver's Book, Works of Malory, throws a lot more light on a difficult subject in his parallel commentary.

Especially, it was exciting and motivating to be able to locate a good copy of this valuable out of print book at an affordable price. Thank you Amazon

Mike Hodgetts
SYDNEY AUSTRALIA

If I had only one book to read for the rest of my life and couldn't read anything else, it would be this one.

In the mass of Arthurian material it is easy to lose sight of the fact that this book is the core of the Arthurian legend as it represents the bringing together of all available material on the arthurian legend when print was first developed. Anyone interested in the legends of King Arthur should start here.