Thomas Malory

When things are hard physically, when things are hard emotionally, you turn to books.

As a kid, I turned to Thomas Mallory.

But today, people don't want to turn to things where people are struggling.

They want to turn to happy, cozy places.

The Arthurian legend is very complex and confused, and we do not need to concern ourselves today with the development of the historiography of Arthur.

But in 1485, that crucial year that the Tudor regime began, William Caxton's fledgling printing press published Thomas Mallory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

This presented to an English audience for the very first time the story of the once and future king.

And Mallory actually identified Winchester in England as Arthur's amulet.

Here lies Arthur, king who was and king who will be.

So reads the inscription on King Arthur's gravestone in Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur.

Writing in the 15th century, Malory couldn't have known how prophetic this inscription would turn out to be.

King Arthur has risen again and again in our collective imagination, along with his retinue of knights, Guinevere, the Round Table, Camelot, and, of course, Excalibur.

Numerous adaptations in French and other languages followed from Chrétien's work.

In the course of these retellings, Caerleon became Camelot, and Caliburnus was rechristened Excalibur.

In the 15th century, Sir Thomas Malory synthesized these stories in Le Morte d'Arthur, the basis of many modern accounts of King Arthur.

In the thousand years since Arthur first appeared in a Celtic poem, his story has transformed over and over to reflect the concerns of his chroniclers and their audiences.

But in the year of his arrival at Venice, a war broke out between Genoa and the Queen of the Adriatic, in which Marco Polo was captured and cast into prison at Genoa.

There he found as a fellow prisoner one Rusticano of Pisa, a man of some learning and a sort of predecessor of Sir Thomas Mallory, since he had devoted much time to rewriting, in prose, abstracts of the many romances relating to the round table.

These he wrote not in Italian, which can scarcely be said to have existed for literary purposes in those days, but in French, the common language of chivalry throughout Western Europe.

while in prison with marco polo he took down in french the narrative of the great traveller and thus preserved it for all time marco polo was released in twelve ninety nine and returned to venice where he died some time after the ninth of january thirteen thirty four the date of his will of the travels thus detailed in marco polo's book and of their importance and significance in the history of geographical discovery it is impossible to give any adequate account in this place it will perhaps suffice if we give the summary of his claims made out by colonel sir henry ewell whose edition of his travels is one of the great monuments of english learning he was the first traveller to trace a route across the whole longitude of asia naming and describing kingdom after kingdom which he had seen with his own eyes the deserts of persia the flowering plateau and wild gorges of badakhshan the jade bearing rivers of khotan the mongolian steppes cradle of the power that had so lately threatened to swallow up christendom the new and brilliant court that had been established by the first traveller to reveal china in all its wealth and vastness its mighty rivers its huge cities its rich manufactures its swarming population the inconceivably vast fleets that quickened its seas and inland waters to tell of the nations on its borders with all their eccentricities of manners and worship of thibet with its sordid devotees of burma with its golden pagodas and their tinkling crowns of laos of siam of cochin china of japan the eastern thule with its rosy pearls and golden-roofed palaces the first to speak of that museum of beauty and wonder still so imperfectly ransacked the indian archipelago source of those aromatics then so highly prized and whose origin was so dark of java the pearl of islands of sumatra with its many kings its strange costly products and its cannibal races of the naked savages of nicobar and andaman of ceylon the island of gems with its sacred mountains and its tomb of adam of india the great not as dreamland of alexandrian fables but as a country seen and personally explored with its virtuous brahmans its obscene ascetics its diamonds and the strange tales of their acquisition its sea-beds of pearls and its powerful sun the first in medieval times to give any distinct account of the secluded christian empire of abyssinia and the semi-christian island of sokotra to speak though indeed dimly of zanzibar with its negroes and its ivory and of the vast and distant madagascar bordering on the dark ocean of the south with its ruck and other monstrosities and in a remotely opposite region of siberia and the arctic ocean of dog sledges white bears and reindeer riding tangooses marco polo's is thus one of the greatest names in the history of geography it may indeed be doubted whether any other traveller has ever added so extensively to our detailed knowledge of the earth's surface certainly up to the time of mr stanley no man had on land visited so many places previously unknown to civilized europe but the lands he discovered, though already fully populated, were soon to fall into disorder and to be closed to any civilizing influences.

I've read The Once and Future King by T.H. White.

I have not read, uh, Le Morte d'Arthur by Thomas Malory, which is, like, the sort of definitive version, but I do have the book.

It's sitting on my shelf, and I'll get to it [laughs] eventually.

But the...

The King Arthur of the 12th century Welsh texts is a brutal warlord.

But the King Arthur of the 15th century Thomas Mallory texts is a tragic chivalric king.

Completely different vibes.

The

Mm-hmm.

Le Morte d'Arthur, um, by Thomas Malory-

Mm-hmm

... and, um, Beowulf.

So people will remember from last episode that kicked off with Brutus from Troy beating the giants.

Then it went all the way up to Athelstan, and at the center of it is the story of Arthur and his reign, and this is where so many of the elements derive that are then picked up by Malory and others.

And Geoffrey's book had basically hit the, is it the shelves? I mean, I don't know what it hit.

The tables.

So Lancelot's a very modern figure in that sense, and he's modern throughout, right? So readers at the time or listeners would have, would have interpreted Lancelot as a figure much like themselves, not like Arthur, who's a figure from antiquity.

So in Britain, Gawain remains the great hero.

Gawain is seen as the ultimate knight really in, in Britain, right the way up to Malory, who, who actually loves Lancelot, as we'll see.

But in France, Lancelot is seen as, you know, he becomes the great hero of the Arthurian stories almost overnight, and I think that is because Lancelot is embodying, you know, this incredible new trend in loving and fighting.