Miklos@YALE.ARPA@sri-unix.UUCP (07/14/83)
From: Stephen Miklos <Miklos@YALE.ARPA>
LE MORT D'ARTHUR is indeed the primary compilation of arthurian legend, but
it is not quite ancient nor is it eighteenth century. Malory (I believe)
was an elder contemporary of Chaucer's, (fourteenth century), and le Mort
D'Arthur was the first long work to be published on an English printing press
(mid-fifteenth century). Malory is said to have written le Mort in prison,
where he fetched up presumably for having been on the wrong side in one
of the York/Lancaster flip-flops during the War of the Roses.
Yet another tremendously charming Arthurian tale written in the Middle
Ages is SIR GAWAINE AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, written by an anonymous author
known only as "the Gawaine Poet" some time before Malory. It is available
in some very readable modern prose translations, and I particularly recommend
the one published by Penguin.
Stephen "the pedant" Miklos
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