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A review by spacestationtrustfund
Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory
4.0
Malory's Arthur my beloved <3
In French the word for death is feminine: la mort. Surprisingly, it's difficult to find a definitive answer as to why Malory used "le morte" in his title; barring some sort of resurrection of the man himself, it's unlikely that we'll ever know. The predominant belief is that Malory, being an Englishman, simply made a mistake. The book was first published in the late 15th century, when Middle French was spoken: both Old and Middle French had the word "mort" as feminine. Some early publications of Malory's work did not have the article, instead written as "Morte Darthur," which sounds like a Star Wars character; in fact the titles of many similar texts, written in French and older than Malory's own, did not include an article. I agree it's probably most likely Malory simply made a mistake... or maybe he was writing in Law French.
The grammatically proper title in Modern French would be "La mort d'Arthur."
In French the word for death is feminine: la mort. Surprisingly, it's difficult to find a definitive answer as to why Malory used "le morte" in his title; barring some sort of resurrection of the man himself, it's unlikely that we'll ever know. The predominant belief is that Malory, being an Englishman, simply made a mistake. The book was first published in the late 15th century, when Middle French was spoken: both Old and Middle French had the word "mort" as feminine. Some early publications of Malory's work did not have the article, instead written as "Morte Darthur," which sounds like a Star Wars character; in fact the titles of many similar texts, written in French and older than Malory's own, did not include an article. I agree it's probably most likely Malory simply made a mistake... or maybe he was writing in Law French.
The grammatically proper title in Modern French would be "La mort d'Arthur."