Renaissance and Medieval Studies
Series Editor: Charles Ross, Purdue University
The Renaissance and Medieval Studies series focuses on editions, comparative studies, translations, and reprints of primary texts of the Renaissance and earlier in Italy, England, and France. The series also offers an outlet for electronic distribution of supplementary material for each printed volume from art history, film, and the history of the book. For more information, please visit the series Web page at http://www.parlorpress.com/renaissance.html or contact Parlor Press at [email protected].
Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur
A New Modern English Translation Based on the Winchester Manuscript
Edited and Translated by
Dorsey Armstrong
Parlor Press
Anderson, South Carolina
www.parlorpress.com
Parlor Press LLC, Anderson, South Carolina, 29621
© 2009 by Parlor Press
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
S A N: 2 5 4 - 8 8 7 9
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Malory, Thomas, Sir, 15th cent.
[Morte d’Arthur]
Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur : a new modern English translation based on the Winchester manuscript / edited and translated by Dorsey Armstrong.
p. cm. -- (Renaissance and medieval studies)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60235-103-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-1-60235-105-9 (adobe ebook)
1. Arthurian romances. I. Armstrong, Dorsey, 1970- II. Title.
PR2043.A74 2009
823’.2--dc22
2009025011
Cover design by Christopher Charles.
Printed on acid-free paper.
Second printing.
Parlor Press, LLC is an independent publisher of scholarly and trade titles in print and multimedia formats. This book is available in paperback and Adobe eBook formats from Parlor Press on the World Wide Web at http://www.parlorpress.com or through online and brick-and-mortar bookstores. For submission information or to find out about Parlor Press publications, write to Parlor Press, 3015 Brackenberry Drive, Anderson, SC, 29621, or e-mail [email protected].
Acknowledgments
It was approximately three years ago that my colleague Charles Ross approached me about doing a translation/redaction of Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur into Modern English as part of Parlor Press’s stellar series of modern editions of important medieval and renaissance texts. Flattered, I delightedly set to work, naively thinking that I could accomplish this prodigiously demanding task within a year. I had not counted on my work being slowed by a high-risk twin pregnancy (reaching the keyboard became difficult, to say the least), hospitalization, and then the birth of said twins—healthy and beautiful but all-consuming in terms of time and attention for most of the first year after their arrival. Although I estimate that it has taken me longer to translate Malory’s work than it took the imprisoned knight to compose it in the first place, it has, from the very beginning, been a true labor of love. I mention these additional challenges I faced in completing this work as the thanks I wish to offer here necessarily include at the top of the list certain people who went above and beyond the call of duty in areas outside the realm of the academic.
First and foremost, Charles Ross and David Blakesley at Parlor Press deserve my deep gratitude for their patience, good will, and support. Charlie has proven to be the kind of editor every writer should be so lucky to have, offering the perfect blend of insightful critique and praise that helped me to stay positive and excited about this project from beginning to end. David has met all my requests concerning unique formatting issues with good cheer and a sense of humor; I believe there is no publishing challenge that he could not handle with ease.
My husband, Ryan Schneider, proved to be an even more remarkable and fantastic human being than I had long known him to be, able to handle two screaming infants as well as the demands of teaching and his own research with easy competence, aplomb, good cheer, and a sense of humor, even in the darkest depths of sleep-deprivation. Marrying him is the smartest thing I have ever done; I could never adequately express my thanks, admiration, and love for him.
Our families, particularly our parents Charles and Susan Armstrong and Paul and Jan Schneider, are owed economy-sized thanks for all their help and support which has been and continues to be above and beyond the call of duty. Katherine Armstrong and Mark Hochstetler, Chuck Armstrong, and Lora and Scott Davis have also been unflagging sources of support and encouragement when it was most needed.
Friends and colleagues made the process of finishing this work a pleasure and offered much needed support. This list is quite long, but I would like to single out for thanks in particular Jeremy Adams, Ann Astell, Karen Cherewatuk, Laurie Finke, Amy and John Flaa, Jo Goyne, Tom Hanks, Kevin Harty, Shaun Hughes, Janet Jesmok, Lezlie Knox, Seth Lerer, Katie Little, Tom Ohlgren, Marty Shichtman, Chris Snyder, Fiona Tolhurst, Bud Weiser, Bonnie Wheeler, Kevin Whetter, and Paul White.
And finally, I dedicate this book to my daughters, Mallory Vivian and Emerson Stella Armstrong-Schneider. They are the best thing I have ever done.
Introduction: Many Malorys
The work you are about to read is most commonly referred to as Le Morte Darthur, “The Death of Arthur,” but it is much more than that. Here you will read an account of Arthur’s death, certainly—in fact, it is one of the most moving and dramatic renderings of the final moments of the king of legend—but more significantly, you will read the story of King Arthur’s conception, birth, rise to power, and the deeds of his knights; you will, as William Caxton, the first printer of Malory’s text put it in his preface, find “chivalry, courtesy, humanity, fellowship, endurance, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and sin”—in short, the full scope of human emotion and action.
The legend of King Arthur had been popular throughout the Middle Ages, yet, although it is the story of a British king, by the fifteenth century Arthur’s legend had been most thoroughly chronicled in French; it is French writers who added what many think of as the most central characters and elements of Arthur’s story to legend—Sir Lancelot, and the Holy Grail, for example. But in the late fifteenth century, an Englishman by the name of Sir Thomas Malory reclaimed Arthur for England and the English (an ironic move, as the original Arthur figure was most likely a Romano-British Celt who rose to fame fighting against Anglo-Saxon invaders, the ancestors of the “English”). Drawing on a variety of source texts (most of them French) Malory rewrote the story of Arthur in English while he was serving time in prison during the 1460s; scholars estimate that he completed the work sometime in 1469 or 1470. He died in 1471, perhaps while still a prisoner.
I have titled this introduction “Many Malorys” in part because the identity of this Sir Thomas Malory was not always a surety; there are at least two other Thomas Malorys who have been identified as possible authors of this document. The work of renowned Malory scholar P.J.C. Field, however, seems to have established to a certainty that the minor nobleman Sir Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel is the author of the text we have come to call Le Morte Darthur. Even with the identity of the author established, however, the title of my introduction is still apt; this Thomas Malory seems a man of remarkable and occasionally stunning contradictions, whose own personality encompassed the range of behaviors Caxton identified as being found within the text itself.
Although a nobleman by class, Sir Thomas Malory engaged in some strikingly