Book description
Volume two of Le Morte D'Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory's powerful and
elegaic version of the Arthurian legend, recounts the adventures of Sir
Tristram de Liones and the treachery of Sir Mordred, and follows Sir
Launcelot's quest for The Holy Grail, his fatally divided loyalties, and
his great, forbidden love for the beautiful Queen Guenever. Culminating
in an account of Arthur's final battle against the scheming, deceitful
Mordred, this is the definitive re-telling of the Arthurian myth,
weaving a story of adultery, treachery and ultimately - in its tragic
finale - death. Edited and published by William Caxton in 1485, Malory's
moving prose romance looks back to an idealised Medieval age of
chivalry, drawing on French and English verse sources to create an epic
masterpiece of passion, enchantment, war and betrayal.
No one knows for sure who the author of Le Morte D'Arthur was, but
the generally accepted theory is that of American scholar G. L.
Kitteredge, who argued it was Sir Thomas Malory, born in the first
quarter of the fifteenth century, and who spent the greatest part of
his last twenty years in prison. Another possibility is a Thomas
Malory of Studley and Hutton in Yorkshire, or an author living north
of Warwickshire. It is generally accepted that the author was a member
of the gentry and a Lancastrain.
John Lawlor was Professor of English Language and Literature at the
University of Keele. He is the author of The Tragic Sense in
Shakespeare, Piers Plowman: An Essay in Criticism and Chaucer. Janet
Cowen is a senior lecturer in English at King's College, University of London.
