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Title: Malory: The Morte Darthur (York Medieval Texts) by Thomas, Sir, Malory, Derek S. Brewer ISBN: 0-8101-0031-2 Publisher: Northwestern University Press Pub. Date: June, 1968 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.37 (51 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: AUDIO ODYSSEY THRU THE WORLD OF CHIVALRY
Comment: Highbridge Classics' "Le Morte d'Arthur,"as read by legendary British thespian Derek Jacobi, is a great adaptation of Thomas Malory's quintessential Arthurian tome. Newcomers to Malory will find the audio book more accessible than the beautiful but often enigmatic source volume, while long-time Malory devotees will discover fresh nuances in Jacobi's authoritative rendition. Necessarily, some significant abridgements have been made, but at six audiocassettes this production still captures much of the Arthurian world's enormous scope. Featured storylines include Arthur's rise to the throne and his claiming of Excalibur, the epic search for the Holy Grail, the doomed love between Lancelot and Guenever, and the tragic final battle between Arthur and his ill-begotten son, Mordred. Jacobi conveys all the glory of Malory's prose style, while nonetheless cleaning up the diction a bit for modern ears. Finally, Ruth Morse's concise text introduction provides some keen observations on the big picture of the Arthurian myth. A magnificent version of Malory that no lover of Camelot should be without.
Rating: 3
Summary: Even in modern prose, this remains tedious reading.
Comment: The tales of King Arthur and of the knights of the Round Table are well-known and have been the subject of many books, poems (Tennyson), at least two musical works (Purcell's "King Arthur", and the famous Broadway musical, "Camelot"), and films ("Camelot", based on the musical, and "Excalibur"). The most famous English-language book version of these tales is this version by Sir Thomas Malory, yet this is not easily readable, even in modern prose. The modern English rendition by Keith Baines is excellent, for it allows those of us who do not have Ph.D's in English literature to get an idea of what the original was like, but the book itself is tedious in its very nature.
What you should expect with this book is a very good beginning and ending, and a "will it ever end ?" middle. Arthur himself cannot be called the central character, for he is virtually absent, except in the first tale of the book, which deals with his coming to power, and the last one, about his death. The rest of this book is concerned with jousting and tournaments, so much that in the end one gets bored with this never-ending succession of fights with knights whose names you'll only read once and which have no consequence on what is supposed to be the larger plot (such as the quest for the Holy Grail, or the famous Tristram and Iseult tale). Of course, the better-known knights of the Round Table, such as Launcelot, Tristram, and Percivale, are present, but only from time to time, and narration often shifts from one to the other for no reason.
What this book lacks most is continuity. Apart from the first and last tales, everything in between is not in chronological order, which gets confusing. In one tale one character is dead and another is well-known; in the next tale the first character is living and the second one is unknown (just take the example of King Pellinore and Sir Percivale). All tales were obviously separate ones, and the reader, at some point, will simply stop trying to understand how Malory ever came up with such an order for his tales. If Malory (or his original publishers) had any idea in mind when they chose this setup of the tales, it will appear unclear to most readers.
One of the few good points of this book is that, since it was written in the late Middle Ages, it avoids to a certain extent the over-romanticization of the Middle Ages, which is what later authors, such as Sir Walter Scott, did to such an extent that even today we cannot think of the Middle Ages without having in mind the picture-perfect version of it (which I will not delve into -- I'm sure you know what I have in mind). Even though chivalry as described in the book has some romantic elements attached to it, it is never fully exploited, and "Le Morte d'Arthur" certainly does not fit the requirements to be classified into the romantic genre (which was not fully described until the nineteenth century). This book therefore does not use romanticism as we now know it. But this good point may also be one of the book's weaknesses, because the topic is a legend, and not fact. Because this subject is not historically accurate (and some parts of the book are hilariously improbable), Malory could not use realism to replace romanticism, and I believe that if he had used more romanticism in his book it would only have made it better. In the end, Malory used neither style, and this makes his writing style very dry. His characters are mere fighting machines with no emotional depth, his narration is action, action, and action: no description, either of his own characters or of the scenery (a castle is a castle, nothing more). The scenes he depicts cannot be located, for the setting is never described. Malory, above all, was an awful storyteller. He could only describe his characters jousting and fighting, and since this had nothing to do with the larger plot, this only lengthens the book for no reason. (If you want a modern comparison, just think of a public orator who just tells personal anecdotes that are not related to his topic.)
Furthermore, anyone interested in the Middle Ages has nothing to gain from reading this book. It holds no historical interest (apart from a study of the English language, but then I would not go for this modern rendition) for the reason that its subject is not based on fact and its description of society in the early Middle Ages is simplistic. This book is certainly no "Canterbury Tales", in which a lot can be learned about what was life during the Middle Ages. So if you are mainly interested in history I'd skip "Le Morte d'Arthur" and I'd go for "The Canterbury Tales" instead.
In conclusion, "Le Morte d'Arthur" is worth reading only if you have the patience to go through it, for this book is overlong and repetitive. Keith Baines's rendition makes this task easier, and his appendix on the main characters is very helpful if you intend to skip parts (which you should not do because the whole is chronologically inaccurate).
Rating: 2
Summary: Overbrief Translation
Comment: In his preface, the translator Keith Baines asserts that he attempted to "provide a concise and lucid rendering of Le Morte d'Arthur" and to clarify "those episodes which, for the purpose in hand, seemed obscure, and condensing those which seemed prolix."
As an example of this condensation in progress, Baines version of The Tale of Sir Launcelot du Lake is 19 pages long. Steinbeck's translation of the same story (which had the goal of accurately preserving the story as told in the Winchester Ms.) runs over 100 pages. Throughout, Baines' edition is horribly abridged. He leaves most of the basic facts from the story intact (though some parts of his translation, especially concerning the obscurer genealogies, are plain wrong when compared to most other editions). However, he cuts all elements that make reading the legend enjoyable.
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Title: The Once and Future King by T. H. White ISBN: 0441627404 Publisher: Ace Books Pub. Date: July, 1987 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Idylls of the King (Penguin Classic) by Alfred Tennyson, Baron Tennyson, J.M. Gray ISBN: 0140422536 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1989 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Arthurian Romances (Penguin Classics) by Chretien De Troyes, William W. Kibler, Chretien de Troyes, Carleton W. Carroll ISBN: 0140445218 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: June, 1991 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: History of the Kings of Britain by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Lewis Thorpe, Thrope Lewis ISBN: 0140441700 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: January, 1977 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Portable Milton by John Milton, Douglas Bush ISBN: 0140150447 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: August, 1976 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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