Morte D'Arthur

' (originally written as '; Anglo-Norman French for "The Death of Arthur") is a 15th-century Middle English prose reworking by Sir Thomas Malory of tales about the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table, along with their respective folklore. In order to tell a "complete" story of Arthur from his conception to his death, Malory compiled, rearranged, interpreted and modified material from various French and English sources. Today, this is one of the best-known works of Arthurian literature. Many authors since the 19th-century revival of the legend have used Malory as their principal source.

Apparently written in prison at the end of the medieval English era, ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' was completed by Malory around 1470 and was first published in a printed edition in 1485 by William Caxton. Until the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript in 1934, the 1485 edition was considered the earliest known text of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' and that closest to Malory's original version. Modern editions under myriad titles are inevitably variable, changing spelling, grammar and pronouns for the convenience of readers of modern English, as well as often abridging or revising the material.

History

Authorship

The exact identity of the author of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'' has long been the subject of speculation, as at least six historical figures bore the name of "Sir Thomas Malory" (in various spellings) during the late 15th century. In the work, the author describes himself as "Knyght presoner Thomas Malleorre" ("Sir Thomas Maleore" according to the publisher William Caxton). Historically, this has been taken as supporting evidence for the identification most widely accepted by scholars: that the author was Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire, son of Sir John Malory.

According to the timeline proposed by P.J.C. Field, Sir Thomas of Newbold Revel inherited the family estate in 1434, but by 1450 he was fully engaged in a life of crime. As early as 1433, he had been accused of theft, but the more serious allegations against him included that of the attempted murder of Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, an accusation of at least two rapes, and that he had attacked and robbed Coombe Abbey. Malory was first arrested and imprisoned in 1451 for the ambush of Buckingham, but was released early in 1452. By March, he was back in the Marshalsea prison and then in Colchester, escaping on multiple occasions. In 1461, he was granted a pardon by King Henry VI, returning to live at his estate. After 1461, however, few records survive which scholars agree refer to Malory of Newbold Revel. In 1468–1470, King Edward IV issued four more general pardons which specifically excluded a Thomas Malory. The first of these named Malory a knight and applied to participants in a campaign in Northumberland in the North of England by members of the Lancastrian faction. Field interprets these pardon-exclusions to refer to Malory of Newbold Revel, suggesting that Malory changed his allegiance from York to Lancaster, and that he was involved in a conspiracy with Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick to overthrow King Edward. William Matthews, having given evidence of this candidate's advanced age at the time of the Northumberland campaign and living much further to the South, interprets this record as referring to his own proposed candidate for authorship. Field proposed that it was during a final stint at Newgate Prison in London that he wrote ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', and that Malory was released in October 1470 when Henry VI returned to the throne, dying only five months later. This Warwickshire knight was widely accepted as the author of the ''Morte'' until the publication of Matthews' research in 1966.

This identification was widely accepted through most of the 20th century based on the assumption that this candidate was born around 1416. The 1416 date was proposed by Field, contradicting the original record of this knight's military service record by Dugdale. In 1966, Matthews published original research demonstrating that Malory of Newbold Revel had in fact been an officer under King Henry V in the famous Agincourt campaign by 1414 or 1415; confirming Dugdale's original record and placing this knight's birth around 1393. Some late 20th-century researchers cast a doubt that this would make the Newbold Revel knight far too old to have written ''Le Morte'': in prison in his mid-70s to early 80s, when, in Matthews' words, "the medieval view was that by sixty a man was bean fodder and forage, ready for nothing but death's pit." Because no other contemporary Thomas Malory had been shown to have been knighted, the question remained unresolved.

The second candidate to receive scholarly support as the possible author of ''Le Morte Darthur'' is Thomas Mallory of Papworth St Agnes in Huntingdonshire, whose will, written in Latin and dated 16 September 1469, was described in an article by T. A. Martin in the '' Athenaeum'' magazine in September 1897. This Mallory was born in Shropshire in 1425, the son of Sir William Mallory, although there is no indication in the will that he was himself a knight; he died within six weeks of the will being made. It has been suggested that the fact that he appears to have been brought up in Lincolnshire may account for the traces of Lincolnshire dialect in ''Le Morte Darthur''. To date, this candidate has not commanded the attention of scholars as the Newbold-Revel knight has.

The most recent contender for authorship emerged in the mid-20th century: Thomas Malory of Hutton Conyers and Studley Royal in Yorkshire. This claim was put forward in 1966 in ''The Ill-Framed Knight: A Skeptical Inquiry into the Identity of Sir Thomas Malory'' by William Matthews. Matthews' primary arguments in favor of the Yorkshire Malory were the northerly dialect of the ''Morte''; the likelihood that this is the Malory who was excluded from the pardon by Edward IV in 1468; and the fact that the Newbold Revel knight was far too old to be writing the ''Morte'' in the late 1460s. Matthews' interpretation was not widely accepted, primarily because he could not find evidence that the Yorkshireman was a knight. Cecelia Lampp Linton, however, has provided extensive detail about the Malorys of Yorkshire and offered evidence that Thomas of Yorkshire was a Knight Hospitaller, a militant of the Catholic Church. She has also examined the provenance of some of the known sources of the ''Morte'' and has demonstrated that this Malory would have had ready access to these documents. Accepting Linton's evidence would remove the primary objection to his authorship, making the contradictions presented by the Newbold Revel knight irrelevant. The ''Morte'' itself seems to be much more the work of a knight of the church than a secular repeat offender, as evidenced by Malory's own conclusion (rendered in Modern English): "... pray for me while I am in life that God send me good deliverance, and when I am dead I pray you all pray for my soul; for this book was ended the ninth year of the reign of King Edward the Fourth by Sir Thomas Maleore, knight, as Jesus help him by his great might, as he is the servant of Jesus both day and night."

Sources

As Elizabeth Bryan wrote of Malory's contribution to Arthurian legend in her introduction to a modern edition of ''Le Morte d'Arthur'', "Malory did not invent the stories in this collection; he translated and compiled them. Malory in fact translated Arthurian stories that already existed in 13th-century French prose (the so-called Old French

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