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A review by stephilica
Le Morte d'Arthur: King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Thomas Malory
This was a lovely experience. The antiquated language and formatting, especially conventions for paragraphs and dialogue, required some adjustment, but once that was out of the way, the book was a romp. There's so much (petty) humor interspersed with frequent battles and speechifying. The thematic thread holding it all together is a great summary of the views of the time towards Courtly Love and "paramour-ism." In a subversive approach, Mallory sets up a world of knights operating on a rather selfish and lustful interpretation of chivalry, winning worldly acclaim, only to have the same be Camelot's Achilles' heel. This is best exemplified by Lancelot,
While some choices of focus felt a bit odd (tournaments lasted forever, and Tristan and Isold had quite a bit of page time for characters who), I really enjoyed this. The characters were different but nostalgic, and there are a few chillingly beautiful passages to be found.
A note on editions: I alternated between the Leatherbound Classics edition, which has lovely woodprint art, and the public domain Kindle edition. While the leatherbound is superior in reading experience and presentation, the Kindle edition has a neat glossary of older terms and their modern counterparts, which is sometimes useful for the odd word that was used way back when but meant something rather different than it does now.
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both in his failure to obtain the Grail and his (in?)direct role in Arthur's fall.While some choices of focus felt a bit odd (tournaments lasted forever, and Tristan and Isold had quite a bit of page time for characters who
Spoiler
died off screenA note on editions: I alternated between the Leatherbound Classics edition, which has lovely woodprint art, and the public domain Kindle edition. While the leatherbound is superior in reading experience and presentation, the Kindle edition has a neat glossary of older terms and their modern counterparts, which is sometimes useful for the odd word that was used way back when but meant something rather different than it does now.