27 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful book!, January 13, 2005
This review is from: Le Morte D'Arthur: Complete, Unabridged, Illustrated Edition (Paperback)
The core story of Arthur: how he defeated the Saxons and saved the Britons is completely absent in this late Medieval canonical version of the Arthur story. What we have is an English re-telling of the tales the French told about him, ultimately going back to Welsh sources. Arthur is clearly portrayed as English in this re-telling, and has all the apparatus of a 15th Century monarch, such as Parliament, tournaments etc. In a sense, this book summarizes the whole cultural experience of the Middle Ages! This particular edition of the book is absolutely beautiful! It has nice, large print and is decorated brilliantly throughout with paintings of the legends with a lovely Medieval-Celtic-mysterious theme.
The main storytelling strategy employed is that of the unexpected: there are always knights, ladies, giants, wizards, sorceresses and strange beasts popping up, requiring the knights to take some kind of action.
The stories can get quite crude at times, both sexually and otherwise (the parts involving giants and maidens is quite disturbing actually!), and we have to throw out our traditionally held ideas of what knighthood is all about in order to appreciate what is really at work here. 'Gentle maidens' are not 'gentle' in the modern sense, but rather 'powerful/upper-class' and seem to have a penchant for slaying their enemies and causing just as much damage as the knights do: HARDLY the sterotype we are accustomed to regarding ladies in the time of 'knights in shining armour'. The 'sword' fights tend to end up with a grappling match on the ground where one knight finally removes the other's helmet and beheads him with a knife. This is raw and ready stuff, and it will show you to what degree children's books in our culture have led to a popular gross misunderstanding of the original tales.
The author, Malory, whoever exactly he was (and he CERTAINLY was NOT a criminal) must have thought of Arthur as an English hero deserving an English edition recounting his deeds. Researchers say that he stuck to re-telling the plot of the French stories, as if he thought he were getting at the 'truth behind the legend' to tell the 'true' story of Arthur. He seems to have had first hand experience in battle, as the fighting in the book is very realistic and he seems particularly interested in telling us about the thousands of fights in detail. A major part of the story is how Arthur conquers Rome: something that none of us would ever believe was there unless we had seen it written in the book! Merlin, believe it or not, dies (well, not exactly dies, but is out of the story anyways) near the very beginning of the book! Arthur has sex with anyone's wife he wants to! There are so many things in this book that you won't believe could ever have been written in this, THE tome of Chivalry! The Middle Ages is always in style, and it is always incredibly popular. This is the kind of book you can enjoy many times, and it is moreover REAL Medieval fantasy stuff, not the pulp-fiction-fantasy stuff so common at every bookstore. Read this book written by a real knight about 'real' knights! The spirit of the Middle Ages is one we can all enjoy and benefit from in our much more complex modern lives.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beloved Legend That Is Now Collected Wonderfully, April 28, 2004
This review is from: Le Morte D'Arthur: Complete, Unabridged, Illustrated Edition (Paperback)
This is such a beautiful book to own. This really is the definitive King Arthur novel, honestly I wouldn't pick up any other version of the story, but this.
Hundreds of books have been written about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, but this is just a must have.
Beautiful illustrations and in original fourm.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The once and future king..., September 9, 2005
This review is from: Le Morte D'Arthur: Complete, Unabridged, Illustrated Edition (Paperback)
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.
This edition is illustrated beautifully by Anna-Marie Ferguson who studied art at Southampton College, and is known for similar graphic representations in collections of fairy tales, a literary form not dissimilar to the Aruthurian saga. John Matthews has provided a good edition of the text of Mallory, complete and unabridged here.
Arthur lives on into the modern world and beyond.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
