Alliterative Morte, from Lincolnshire. These derive from the French prose La Mort
Artu and were among Malory’s sources. The Stanzaic Morte skilfully develops the
division in Lancelot’s allegiance which leads to Arthur’s death. Wounded, Lancelot
sends a message to Arthur: ‘Grete welle [greet well] my lorde I yow pray, / And tell
my lady how I fare, / And say I wille come whan I may.’
Simple messages of double meaning haunt the pages of Malory. But implication,
and love, play small parts in the Alliterative Morte, devoted to Arthur’s campaigns.
This fierce 4350-line epic has a physical force. The glamour given to chivalric combat
in the Chronicle ofJean Froissart(d.1410), best known in the translation of Lord
Berners (1523–5), is corrected by the fighting in the Alliterative Morte. Here is the
end of the fight between Gawain and Mordred:
Than Gawayne gyrde to the gome and one the groffe fallis –
Alls his grefe was graythede, his grace was no bettyre.
He shokkes owtte a schorte knyfe schethede witth silvere
And sholde have slottede hym in, but no slytte happenede:
His hand slepped and slode o slante one the mayles,
And the tother sleyly slynges hym undire.
With a trenchande knyfe the trayttoure hym hyttes
Thorowe the helme and hede, one heyghe one the brayne.
And thus Sir Gawayne es gon, the gude man of armes.
Then Gawain sprang at the man and fell face downward; so his misfortune was
arranged, he had no better luck. He pulls out a short knife sheathed with silver, and
should have cut his throat, but no cut happened: his hand slipped and slid slantwise on
the rings of mail, and the other man cunningly throws himself under. With a sharp knife
the traitor hits him through the helmet and the head upward into the brain. And thus
went that good warrior Sir Gawain.The author ofLe Morte Darthurtells us that he is Sir Thomas Malory, and is
writing in prison. He is probably the Sir Thomas Malory from Warwickshire who in
the 1440s was charged with crimes of violence, and spent most of the 1450s in jail,
escaping twice. This was in the Wars of the Roses between Lancastrian and Yorkist
claimants to the throne. In 1468 he was jailed again, on charges of plotting against
Edward IV. He tells us he finished his book in 1469; he died in 1471. In 1485 William
Caxton printed Le Morte Darthur, editing it into twenty-one books. A manuscript
with a better text was found in 1934 in the Fellows’ Library of Winchester College
(founded 1378; motto ‘Manners makyth man’). In this manuscript of the 1470s
Malory tells the story of Arthur’s life in eight self-contained but linked books.
Malory acknowledges the French (prose) books on which he draws, but not his
English verse sources. His is the first prose close enough to modern English to be
read with ease, and the Morte is the first great work of English prose fiction. He
writes with the directness and confidence of a practised storyteller. His straightfor-
ward narration creates the chivalric world and its conflicting loyalties.
As Book Seven opens, Arthur proclaims a tournament at Camelot, ‘otherwyse
callyd Wynchester’. Lancelot comes disguised, borrowing the shield of the son of his
host, Sir Barnard of Ascolot.
So thys olde barown had a doughtir that was called that tyme the Fayre Maydyn of
Ascolot, and ever she behylde Sir Lancelot wondirfully. And, as the booke sayth, she keste
such a love unto Sir Launcelot that she cowde never withdraw hir loove, wherefore she
dyed; and her name was Elayne le Blanke. So that as she cam to and fro, she was so hoteTHE FIFTEENTH CENTURY 69Le Morte Darthur, the title of
Caxton’s edition of Malory’s
work, distinguishes it from the
English poems Le Morte
Arthurand Morte Arthure. A
feminine noun, Mort(e)
requires La, but Malory often
used Lein titles, without
grammatical gender, as if it
were the English definite
article, The. This shows that
English had lost its sense of
grammatical gender. For
earlier Arthurian literature, see
p. 41.