Recent Reading: Le Morte d'Arthur
Inspired by The Once and Future King, I made another attempt to read Le Morte d’Arthur, this time successful.
I have to stop short of saying I read Malory: look carefully at the cover. “A rendition in modern idiom by Keith Baines.” The Introduction comments:
Keith Baines here renders Le Morte d'Arthur in readable form, removing all of the idle rhetoric but faithfully preserving the sequence of events. This workmanlike task should earn him general gratitude, since of the numerous educated people who profess to have read Malory, few indeed could give a straightforward account of any tale except perhaps the last. The fact is that late medieval English prose style was based on amplificatio--the embroidering of a simple statement to the point where it almost ceased to make sense-and on the practice of lulling the ear with hypnotic rhythms. The story was regarded as of lesser importance.
The Introduction? By Robert Graves, writing from Deyá, Majorca. The same place Keith Baines was writing from. Apparently Baines was a friend/protégée of Graves’ - it makes me wonder how much Graves had to do with the whole project. Not a bad endorsement in any case.
Morte d’Arthur is a collection of earlier Arthurian tales. We all think we know the story, but I was in for a few surprises. I’d call the book an instructive tale intended to demonstrate correct chivalric behavior. It is full of demonstrations of how a knight should or should not behave. I found that White invented less of the tale than I thought. I found that the Holy Grail is inseparable from the tale, because it represents the ultimate achievement of grace: Launcelot, the world’s best knight, does not fully achieve the Grail because of his sin with Gwynevere; Galahad, his bastard virgin son, does. Equating sex with sin implies that any sexual experience - even for procreation - is morally degrading. The very failure of the Round Table itself results from sin and human failing.
All that is missing from The Once and Future King - White omits the Grail and discusses Launcelot’s character in terms of 20th century psychology. Camelot omits the Grail and views the failure of Round Table as a romantic tragedy.