This book was a great read.
The first volume covers the birth of Arthur and tells the tales of many of the better known Knights of the Round Table--Tristram getting perhaps the greatest amount of coverage. This first volume does not cover some of the better known events of Arthurian legend; you would have to look to the second volume for the tales of the Holy Grail as well as the...
more This book was a great read.
The first volume covers the birth of Arthur and tells the tales of many of the better known Knights of the Round Table--Tristram getting perhaps the greatest amount of coverage. This first volume does not cover some of the better known events of Arthurian legend; you would have to look to the second volume for the tales of the Holy Grail as well as the affair of Lancelot and Guenever, and, of course, the death of Arthur.
I can recommend this book for several reasons. For one, the story telling, though confusing at times due to its use of archaic/obsolete words and expressions, is well done. As the book is to be taken as a volume of collected stories, the stories do tend to jump around from one knight to another. However, such distractions are mitigated by the masterful way that a number of the tales of knights already introduced to reader are ultimately interwoven together at a tournament that ends the volume. A modern comparison would be to say that it is akin to the likes of Tarantino film, such as Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs.
I would also recommend this book for any student of the chivalric code and its inherent conflict with the notion of courtly love.
Finally, this book is just plain funny at times, whether it is intentional or not. One of the early chapters regarding a battle between Arthur and eleven kings illustrates this. The entirety of the storytelling is about how one king or knight is unhorsed and how an ally sees this and becomes angry and so unhorses an enemy so that the unhorsed may have a steed, which then results in the same happening to the newly unhorsed... to the point where all or nearly all are unhorsed but are avenged and receive someone else's horse. We also have in the story the "dry, cool wit" that is best associated with our modern action superstars: think Arnold in Predator throwing a knife so hard that it pins a man to a wall and he coldly says to his victim, "Stick around." In this book we have Arthur hacking down a giant at the knees and saying something to the effect of "Now we fight at an even height," and then immediately severing the giant's head. Finally, you also get the impression that Malory was not a fan of Cornish people (or perhaps it was a prevaling sentiment). Other than Tristram (who is actually not Cornish, per se), Cornish knights suffer great indignities at the stroke of Malory's pen. The women, too, are your quintessential adultresses (granted, many women in the story are), where 8 of 90 women are tested and shown to be faithful.
This is a fantastic book and well worth the read; however, the 500 pages and obsolete words and expressions will prove difficult for some.
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