Thomas Malory

Background

Thomas Malory was born in Warwickshire, United Kingdom in 1405.

Career

He spent the majority of the last 20 years of his life in prison for various alleged offenses. There is no evidence, however, that the charges against him ever led to a conviction, and the view that he was a lawbreaker rests largely on the assumption that a man consistently accused of criminal behavior cannot be entirely innocent.

Eight imprisonments varying in length from a few days to two and a half years are on record, as well as two dramatic escapes: on July 27, 1451, Malory swam the moat of Coleshill prison; and in October 1454 he broke out of jail at Colchester, using with great skill a variety of deadly weapons.

He belonged to an old Warwickshire family and in 1444 or 1445 sat for his county in Parliament. In the autumn of 1462 he accompanied the Earl of Warwick and Edward IV on a military expedition to Northumberland, but it seems probable that when Warwick joined the Lancastrians Malory did so too.

In 1468 he was excluded from two general pardons granted by Edward to the Lancastrians.

Most if not all of Malory's romances were written in prison. They were placed either by him or by one of his copyists in the following order: The Tale of King Arthur, The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius (Book V), The Noble Tale of Sir Lancelot (VI), The Book of Sir Gareth (VII), The Book of Sir Tristram (VII-XII), The Tale of the Sancgreal or The Quest of the Holy Grail (XII-XVII), The Book of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere (XVIII-XIX), The Morte Arthur (XX-XXI).

Only one of these--The Tale of King Arthur and the Emperor Lucius, possibly the first to be written--is based entirely upon an English source (the 14th-century version known as the alliterative Morte Arthure).

For the rest Malory used French 13th-century Arthurian romances, including the Merlin and one of its continuations, the Tristan, and some sections of the Lancelot.

Not more than a fraction of this vast body of material, at one time so famous, is at present accessible or even known to French readers. How it came about that Malory succeeded in preserving for English readers a great medieval tradition which left virtually no trace in its country of origin is a problem which critics have attempted to solve in a variety of ways.

Of some significance is the fact that Malory's realistic treatment of chivalric adventures and his tendency to place them in a familiar English setting transformed what was originally a series of fanciful "romantic" stories into an English epic, which Caxton in his Preface was able to present to English readers as a long-overdue tribute to a great English king, the "noble Arthur": for "it is a mervayl why he is no more renomed in his owne country. "

More important is Malory's attempt to adapt medieval romance to the modern conception of narrative by condensing the labyrinthine matter of his sources and breaking it up into relatively compact narrative units, some of which anticipate the form and the character of modern fiction.

But above all it is to the quality of their language that Malory's romances owe not only their survival but also their impact on English literature. His prose combines epic eloquence with the freshness of English speech. "Gentle, yet hardy" in tone, spontaneous in structure, it is free from the deadwood of traditional rhetorical phraseology and syntax, even though it often seems to follow its models word for word. It has the same directness and the same transparent simplicity as the author's characteristic way of reshaping some of the most involved adventures and quests of Arthur's knights.

Malory's greatest romance is his last, Le Morte Darthur proper, or The Tale of the Death of King Arthur, which tells the story of the tragic feud between Lancelot and Gawain, of the downfall of Arthur's kingdom, and of the "Dolorous Death and Departing out of this World of Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere. " It is the one work of real poetic value in the whole field of Arthurian fiction, unsurpassed as narrative and dramatic prose.

Until well into the 20th century knowledge of Malory's writings depended entirely upon Caxton's black-letter edition of 1485. In 1934 a 15th-century manuscript of the text was found in the Fellows' Library of Winchester College by W. F. Oakeshott, making it at long last possible to attempt a critical edition of Malory's works.

Insofar, however, as Caxton's text helps to fill some gaps and to emend certain errors in the Winchester manuscript, H. O. Sommer's word-for-word reprint of Caxton's edition (1890 - 1891) retains some of its value. R. M. Lumiansky's edition of Le Morte Darthur (Scribner, 1982) is an excellent version for the nonspecialist reader.

Achievements

• He was an author of eight Arthurian romances forming a collection described by him as "the Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table" and published by William Caxton in 1485 under the title of Le Morte d'Arthur. Malory has been identified with a knight of Newbold Revel, Warwickshire.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)

    (Steinbeck's only work of fantasy literature—in a  deluxe ...)

  • Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table (Leather-bound Classics)

    ( Central figures in the Matter of Britain, King Arthur a...)

  • King Arthur's Last Battle (Penguin Epics) by Thomas Malory (2006-12-26)

Connections

Wife:

Elizabeth Walsh

References

• The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Malory (Arthurian Studies)
• Malory: The Knight Who Became King Arthur's Chronicler