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Charles T. Davis
MALORY, THOMAS (1414/18–1471)
One of the latest and most effective of the many medi-
eval writers about King Arthur and his knights of the
Round Table. In his book traditionally called Le Morte
Darthur (The Death of Arthur) Malory gathers together
the results of centuries of storytelling, mainly by medi-
eval French authors. He synthesizes the narratives into
one massive, varied book of the life, acts, and death of
Arthur and his company. The wealth of incident, rich
implications, and laconic style make his the only ver-
sion of the huge number of medieval Arthurian tales in
European languages that continues to be read directly
and simply for pleasure by the modern reader. The
main characters—King Arthur himself; Sir Lancelot,
his best knight, but also lover of his queen, Guinevere;
his sister’s son the violent Sir Gawain; his incestuously
begotten son and nephew Sir Mordred, who kills him;
Merlin the magician—are at the center of a set of tales
of wonders, bravery, love, joy, and tragedy. But Malory
tells romance as history—the history of England said to
be in the 5th century, but actually represented in terms
of the feelings, strivings, ideals, betrayals, even the
armor and the geography (e.g., Camelot is identifi ed
with Winchester) of Malory’s own troubled 15th-century
England. Malory’s achievement is the source of many
of the retellings of Arthurian story so common today in
the United States and Britain.
Life
Identifi cation of the Sir Thomas Malory who names
himself as author of Le Morte Darthur has been contro-
versial, but thanks to the work of P.J.C. Field and others
it seems once more to be probable that he was the Sir
Thomas Malory of Newbold Revel in Warwickshire. He
was the son of a country gentleman, inherited his lands
in 1433 or 1434, was knighted, and perhaps served as
a soldier in France. In 1445 he became a member of
parliament—a sign of gentry status, not of democratic
election. He also became embroiled in the factional
disturbances of the times and was on numerous oc-
casions in the next ten years accused of such violent
crimes as ambush, rape, extortion, cattle stealing, theft
of money, and prison breaking. He underwent a series
of imprisonments and despite his escapes spent much
time in jail. Some of the accusations, perhaps some
of the violence, may have been politically motivated,
for Malory supported various noblemen (including
Warwick the “Kingmaker”) who contended for power
during the Wars of the Roses, following now one king,
the Lancastrian Henry VI, and now another, the Yorkist
Edward IV.
After a period of freedom Malory spent the years
1468–70 in prison, where he wrote Le Morte Darthur.
The book is full of violent adventure and concludes
in civil war and Arthur’s death. But it is also deeply
concerned with the high ideals of chivalry, with honor,
loyalty, and goodness. It may seem that the book’s
inherent nobility contrasts strangely with the apparent
criminality of the author. But perhaps Malory saw him-
self in imagination as a modern Sir Lancelot fi ghting for
and asserting his own and his lord’s rights against other
“false recreant knights,” as he might have called them.Text
Two versions of Le Morte Darthur survive, neither
originating immediately from Malory’s hand. One is
the edition printed by Caxton in 1485, reprinted 1498,
1529, 1557, circa 1578, again (somewhat changed) in
1634, then not again till 1816, In the later 19th century
began the modern series of editions based on Caxton,
including that notoriously illustrated by Aubrey Beard-
sley (1893–94). But in 1934 a manuscript of Le Morte
Darthur now in the British Library (Add. 59678) was
discovered in Winchester College; it was fi rst edited in
1947 by Eugène Vinaver.
The Winchester manuscript contains a text slightly
different from Caxton’s, including fuller versions of
eight addresses by Malory to the reader, varying in
length from a few sentences to the paragraph at the end
of the whole book. They come at the end of substan-
tial sections and are known as explicits (explicit, “it is
fi nished”). From these explicits Vinaver deduced that,
instead of one book, Malory wrote eight entirely sepa-
rate romances. Their apparent separateness is enhanced
in his edition by such typographical devices as capitals
at the end of the sections for which there is no manu-
script justifi cation. Vinaver’s edition is thus confusinglyMALISPINI, RICORDANO