This brisk retelling of Le Morte D'Arthur highlights the narrative drive, humor, and poignancy of Sir Thomas Malory's original while updating his fifteenth-century English and selectively pruning over-elaborate passages that can try the patience of modern readers. The result is an adaptation that readers can enjoy as a fresh approach to Malory's sprawling masterpiece. The book's most famous episodes--the sword in the stone, the cataclysmic final battle--are all here, while lesser-known key episodes stand forth with new brightness and clarity. The text is accompanied by an up-to-date bibliography, including websites and video resources, and a descriptive index keyed--like the retelling itself--to the book and chapter divisions of William Caxton's first printed edition of 1485.
Joseph Glaser is Professor Emeritus of English, Western Kentucky University.
Title: Le Morte D'Arthur
Author: Thomas Malory
ISBN: 9781624663598
Binding:
Publisher: Hackett Publishing Co, Inc
Publication Date: 2015-03-05
Number of Pages: 368
Weight: 0.5001 kg
I've just finished reading Joseph Glaser's Le Morte D'Arthur. I'm very pleased with it: the introduction is helpful without becoming an extended essay, the suggested reading seems solid and diverse, and the index is VERY useful, even for someone who has read Malory before. At last, a reader can keep all the knights and ladies straight! A fine entry point to a grand text, and when I next have an occasion to teach a course involving chivalry, I'll plan to use this very affordable edition. -- Craig Caldwell, Department of History, Appalachian State University
A highly readable, reduced, and modernized Malory. . . . The effective condensation of a seemingly uncontainable network of narratives is an impressive feat. . . . Glaser's storylines are distinct, not dense, his dialogue is concise, not digressive, and his language is unassuming, not luxuriant. While these features do not match most readers' impressions of Malory's style, his Arthurian tales of adventure, love, death, and betrayal are all here for a new readership to relish. [T]his new narrative brings the intersections of plot lines to the fore, helping readers to see the larger structural connections between seemingly disparate episodes and themes. With some of the density removed, readers can more readily see storylines that often get submerged, such as the ongoing feud between the families of King Pellinor and King Lot that starts, stops, and reignites across multiple books. Glaser even appends a detailed index of characters and important objects that includes short descriptions of their appearances in sequence throughout the text. This index is exceedingly helpful because it highlights unifying themes and character development as well as clearly demonstrates that the main character of the Morte is Lancelot, not Arthur. Whereas Arthur's index entry is approximately a page and a half long, Tristram's is two pages, and Lancelot's is close to three. The index also reveals amusing repetitions and contradictions, including two dead Colgrevaunces and five Elaines. Alex Mueller, University of Massachusetts, Boston, in The Medieval Review
Glaser's project of modernizing and condensing Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur is refreshingly successful. Both an extremely accessible introduction to the text for beginners and a handy reference tool for experts, the compact volume can easily be enjoyed by all modern readers. Rachel Levinson-Emley, University of California, Santa Barbara, in Comitatus
Preserves most of the original and provides a simplified reduction for the bewildering array of plot lines and characters who wind in, and out, and often back in again to the narrative thread. Hackett Publishing Company and Joseph Glaser have provided an aesthetically appealing, serviceable, and inexpensive addition to the Malory shelf. Katherine Haynes, Aquinas College Nashville, in Sixteenth Century Journal
