Thomas Malory

«La muerte de Arturo es, como ha destacado L. D. Benson, la única obra literaria escrita en Inglaterra entre Chaucer y Shakespeare que aún es leída por un amplio público con renovado fervor y placer.

«La muerte de Arturo es, como ha destacado L. D. Benson, la única obra literaria escrita en Inglaterra entre Chaucer y Shakespeare que aún es leída por un amplio público con renovado fervor y placer.

Durante los años inciertos de la Guerra de las Dos Rosas, sir Thomas Malory (1408-1471), un caballero de vida azarosa, escribió, supuestamente desde la cárcel, la primera gran epopeya de la literatura inglesa a partir de su propia recopilacion de viejas fuentes francesas y britanicas que iba traduciendo a la vez que añadiendo ideas de su cosecha, hasta ir perfeccionando su obra a medida que avanzaba el libro, para culminar en los capitulos finales, que son los mas admirables de cualquiera de las versiones arturicas. La obra se imprimio en 1485 en el taller de William Caxton, el primer impresor de Inglaterra, que la titulo Le Morte DArthur. Caxton prologo y unifico las ocho novelas que escribio Malory en veintiun libros, dando asi coherencia tematica a la maestria narrativa de su autor. Gracias a este libro, los relatos arturicos han conocido multiples y variadas ediciones a lo largo de estos cinco siglos, siendo Malory, junto con Shakespeare y Chaucer, uno de los pocos autores ingleses de un pasado no cercano que siguen siendo leidos. Fruto tardio del medievo, Le Morte DArthur es sin embargo la version moderna del universo arturico y no ha dejado de inspirar recreaciones nuevas, desde Scott a Tennyson, Mark Twain o los pintores prerrafaelistas hasta las versiones mas recientes de T. H. White o J. Steinbeck.

Le Morte D''Arthur is Sir Thomas Malory''s richly evocative and enthralling version of the Arhurian legend. Recounting Arthur''s birth, his ascendancy to the throne after claiming the sword Excalibur, his ill-fated marriage to Buenever, the treachery of Morgan le Fay and the exploits of the Knights of the Round table, it magically weaves together adventure, battle, love and enchantment. Le Morte D''Arthur looks back to an idealized medieval world and is full of wistful, elegiac regret for a vanished age of chivalry. Edited and published by William Caxton in 1485, Malory''s prose romance drew on French and English verse sources to give an epic unity to the Arthur myth, and remains the most magnificent retelling of the story in English. The text of this edition is based on Caxton''s original printed edition, with modernized spelling and punctuation. John Lawlor''s introduction discusses the figure of Arthur, the life and career of Malory and his unique prose style. This volume also contains notes and a glossary.

We owe this our English Epic of Le Morte Darthur to Sir Thomas Malory, and to William Caxton the first English printer. Caxtons Preface shows (what indeed would have been certain from his appeal to the Knights of England at the end of The Order of Chivalry) that however strongly he, William Caxton, simple person, may have been urged to undertake the work by divers gentlemen of this realm of England, he was not less moved by his own love and reverence for the noble acts of chivalry, and his deep sense of his duty and responsibility in printing what he believed would be for the instruction and profit of his readers, of whatever estate or degree. But to Sir Thomas Malory he gives all the honour of having provided him with the copy which he printed. And ever since, for more than four hundred years, successive generations have approved the fitness of Caxtons choice. For it is Malorys book, and not the older forms of King Arthurs story which we still read for enjoyment, and for the illustration of which scholars edit those earlier books. Only a true poem, the offspring of genius, could have so held, and be still holding its ground, age after age. It may be said that it is chiefly with boys, and with men who have formed the taste by their boyish reading, that the book is so popular. But is not this so with the Iliad too? Men of mature intellect and taste read and re-read the Iliad with ever new discoveries, appreciation, and enjoyment; but it may be questioned whether there are many, or even any, of them who did not begin those studies at school, and learn to love Homer before they knew that he was worthy of their love. And they who have given most of such reading, in youth and in manhood, to Malorys Morte Darthur will be the most able and ready to recognise its claim to the character of an Epic poem.

Obra completa compuesta por dos volúmenes. Durante los años inciertos de la Guerra de las Dos Rosas, sir Thomas Malory, un caballero de vida azarosa, escribió, supuestamente desde la cárcel, la primera gran epopeya de la literatura inglesa a partir de su propia recopilacion de viejas fuentes francesas y britanicas que iba traduciendo a la vez que añadiendo ideas de su cosecha, hasta ir perfeccionando su obra a medida que avanzaba el libro, para culminar en los capitulos finales, que son los mas admirables, de cualquiera de las versiones arturicas.

The greatest English version of the stories of King Arthur, Le Morte D'Arthur was completed in 1469-70 by Sir Thomas Malory, "knight prisoner." This edition is the first designed for the general reader to be based on the "Winchester manuscript" which represents what Malory wrote more closely than the version printed by William Caxton. Extensively annotated, this edition is highly user-friendly.

About the legendary King Arthur, Guinevere, Lancelot, Merlin and the Knights of the Round Table. Le Morte dArthur was first published in 1485 by William Caxton, and is today perhaps the best-known work of Arthurian literature in English. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their principal source, including T. H. White in his popular The Once and Future King and Tennyson in The Idylls of the King.

«La muerte de Arturo es, como ha destacado L. D. Benson, la única obra literaria escrita en Inglaterra entre Chaucer y Shakespeare que aún es leída por un amplio público con renovado fervor y placer.