Does any1 know about 'La Morte D'arthur' by Thomas Malory and William Caxton? Pleeaase help!!?

Question

It's for a Uni assignment and I'm not getting anywhere. I need to write about Caxton's choice of vocab in comparison to Malory's. (Malory's was the original version - called the Winchester text - and Caxton based his version on Malory's one). Why does Caxton change Malory's vocab (e.g. malory writes 'sate sorrowing', caxton writes 'made...lamentations',etc)? What effect does this have on the general text? Why is C's version shorter?, etc. WHY OH WHY?! Any help would be appreciated!

Answer 1

You can get information that should help you at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Morte_D%27Arthur

Good Luck!!!

Answer 2

Money cant buy me love. Fancy not jknowing that!

Answer 3

Le Morte d'Arthur
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The Last Sleep of Arthur by Edward Burne-JonesLe Morte d'Arthur (spelled Le Morte Darthur in the first printing and also in some modern editions, Middle French for la mort d'Arthur, "the death of Arthur") is Sir Thomas Malory's compilation of some French and English Arthurian romances. The book contains some of Malory's own original material (the Gareth story) and retells the older stories in light of Malory's own views and interpretations. First published in 1485 by William Caxton, Le Morte d'Arthur is perhaps the best-known work of English-language Arthurian literature today. Many modern Arthurian writers have used Malory as their source, including T. H. White for his popular The Once and Future King.

Contents [hide]
1 About the text
1.1 The Winchester Manuscript
2 Selected bibliography and external links
2.1 The work itself
2.2 Commentary



[edit] About the text
Malory probably started work on Le Morte d'Arthur while he was in prison in the early 1450s and completed it by 1470. Originally Malory intended Le Morte Darthur to be the title of only the final book of his cycle; he calls the full work The hoole booke of kyng Arthur & of his noble knyghtes of the rounde table; Caxton may have misunderstood the author's intentions when naming the book. Many modern editions update the spelling and some of the pronouns from Malory's original Early Modern English, re-punctuate and re-paragraph, but otherwise leave the text as it was written.

The first printing of Malory's work was made by Caxton in 1485; it proved popular, and was reprinted, with some additions and changes, in 1498 and 1529 by Wynkyn de Worde who succeeded Caxton's press. Three more editions followed at intervals down to the time of the English Civil War: William Copland's (1557), Thomas East's (1585), and William Stansby's (1634), each of which manifested additional changes and errors (including the omission of an entire leaf). Thereafter the book went out of fashion until the time of the Romantic revival of interest in all things medieval; the year 1816 saw a new edition by Walker and Edwards, and another one by Wilks, both based on the 1634 Stansby edition. From Davison's 1817 edition (promoted by Robert Southey) on, Caxton's 1485 edition (or a mixture of Caxton and Stansby) was used as the basis for future editions, down to the time of the discovery of the Winchester Manuscript.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
Caxton was also responsible for separating it into 21 books comprising 507 chapters for easier reading. Originally, Malory divided his work principally into eight tales:

The birth and rise of Arthur
King Arthur's war against the Romans
The book of Launcelot
The book of Gareth (brother of Gawain)
Tristan and Isolde
The Quest of the Holy Grail
The affair between Launcelot and Guinevere
The breaking of the Knights of the Round Table and the death of Arthur
Most of the events in the book take place in Britain and France in the latter half of the 5th century. In some parts, it ventures farther afield, to Rome and Sarras (near Babylon), and recalls Biblical tales from the ancient Near East.


[edit] The Winchester Manuscript
All editions prior to 1934 were based on the edition printed by Caxton. In that year, when the library of Winchester College was being catalogued, W. F. Oakeshott discovered a previously unknown manuscript copy—one of the most important new medieval manuscripts discovered in the 20th Century. The "Winchester Manuscript" is regarded as being mostly, but not always, closer to Malory's original than is Caxton's text, although both derive separately from an earlier copy. Curiously, microscopic examination of ink smudges on the Winchester manuscript showed the marks to be offsets of newly printed pages set in Caxton's own font, indicating that same manuscript had been in Caxton's print shop. Unlike the Caxton edition, the Winchester MS is not divided into books and chapters. Indeed, in his preface, Caxton takes credit for the division.

In his edition to the Winchester Manuscript, Eugène Vinaver argued strongly that Malory had in fact not written a single book, but produced a series of independent Arthurian tales that were not necessarily intended to cohere with one another; therefore, Vinaver called his edition "The Works of Sir Thomas Malory." Vinaver's theory explained a number of discrepancies between the different sections which had bothered commentators. However, opposition critics pointed out that discrepancies still existed within what Vinaver claimed were independent and internally consistent works, and that Malory, particularly in his later tales, added links to his own versions of events in earlier sections. They argued that Malory felt that the tales should cohere, even if Malory did not get to the point of producing a revision that achieved that goal. This is especially apparent in the final two tales, which even Vinaver agreed were intended to be read together.

The question of the work's unity has never been resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Most scholars, however, agree that whatever Malory's intentions for the individual books, he did mean for them to be considered an interrelated series, if not a unified whole. This is usually how Le Morte d'Arthur is read today.


[edit] Selected bibliography and external links

[edit] The work itself
Volume I of the text of Le Morte Darthur on Project Gutenberg.
Volume II of the text of Le Morte Darthur on Project Gutenberg.
Editions based on the Winchester manuscript:
Facsimile:
Malory, Sir Thomas. The Winchester Malory: A Facsimile. Introduced by Ker, N. R. (1976). London: Early English Text Society. ISBN 0-19-722404-0.
Original spelling:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur. (A Norton Critical Edition). Ed. Shepherd, Stephen H. A. (2004). New York: W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-97464-2. (Official website with textual corrections and further commentary: Stephen H. A. Shepherd: Le Morte Darthur: On-line companion.)
_________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène. 3rd ed. Field, Rev. P. J. C. (1990). 3 vol. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-812344-2, ISBN 0-19-812345-0, ISBN 0-19-812346-9.
_________. Malory: Complete Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1977). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-281217-3. (Revision and retitling of Malory: Works of 1971).
_________. Malory: Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1971). 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-254163-3.
_________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1967). 2nd ed. 3 vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-811838-4.
_________. Malory: Works. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1954). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-254163-3. (Malory's text from Vinaver's The Works of Sir Thomas Malory (1947), in a single volume dropping most of Vinaver's notes and commentary.)
_________. The Works of Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Vinaver, Eugène (1947). 3 vol. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Modernised spelling:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte Darthur: The Winchester Manuscript. Ed. Cooper, Helen (1998). Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-282420-1. (Abridged text.)
Translation/paraphrase into contemporary English:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur: King Arthur and the Legends of the Round Table. Trans. and abridged by Baines, Keith (1983). New York: Bramhall House. ISBN 0-517-02060-2. Reissued by Signet (2001). ISBN 0-451-52816-6.
_________. Le Morte D'Arthur. (London Medieval & Renaissance Ser.) Trans. Lumiansky, Robert N. (1982). New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. ISBN 0-684-17673-4.
Editions based on Caxton's edition:
Facsimile:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur, printed by William Caxton, 1485. Ed. Needham, Paul (1976). London.
Original spelling:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Caxton's Malory. Ed. Spisak, James. W. (1983). 2 vol. boxed. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03825-8.
_________. Le Morte Darthur by Sir Thomas Malory. Ed. Sommer, H. Oskar (1889–91). 3 vol. London: David Nutt. The text of Malory from this edition without Sommer's annotation and commentary and selected texts of Malory's sources is available on the web at:
University of Michigan: Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse: Le Morte Darthur.
Celtic Twilight: Legends of Camelot: Malory's Le Morte Darthur
Modernised spelling:
Malory, Sir Thomas. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Matthews, John (2000). Illustrated by Ferguson, Anna-Marie. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-35367-1. (The introduction by John Matthews praises the Winchester text but then states this edition is based on the Pollard version of the Caxton text, with eight additions from the Winchester manuscript.)
_________. Le Morte Darthur. Introduction by Moore, Helen (1996). Herefordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. ISBN 1-85326-463-6. (Seemingly based on the Pollard text.)
_________. Le morte d'Arthur. Introduction by Bryan, Elizabeth J. (1994). New York: Modern Library. ISBN 0-679-60099-X. (Pollard text.)
_________. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Cowen, Janet (1970). Introduction by Lawlor, John. 2 vols. London: Penguin. ISBN 0-679-60099-X, ISBN 0-14-043044-X.
_________. Le Morte d'Arthur. Ed. Rhys, John (1906). (Everyman's Library 45 & 46.) London: Dent; London: J. M. Dent; New York: E. P. Dutton. Released in paperback format in 1976: ISBN 0-460-01045-X, ISBN 0-460-01046-8. (Text based on an earlier modernised Dent edition of 1897.)
_________. Le Morte Darthur: Sir Thomas Malory's Book of King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table,. Ed. Pollard, A. W. (1903). 2 vol. New York: Macmillan. (Text corrected from the bowdlerised 1868 Macmillan edition edited by Sir Edward Strachey.) Available on the web at:
Project Gutenberg: Le Morte Darthur: Volume 1 (books 1-9) and Le Morte Darthur: Volume 2 (books 10-21). (Plain text.)
Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library: Le Morte Darthur: Volume 1 (books 1-9) and Le Morte Darthur: Volume 2 (books 10-21) (HTML.)
Celtic Twilight: Legends of Camelot: Le Morte d'Arthur (HTML with illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley from the Dent edition of 1893–94.)
_________. Le Morte Darthur. Ed. Simmon, F. J. (1893–94). Illustrated by Beardsley, Aubrey. 2 vol. London: Dent.
Limerick translation: Le Morte d'Arthur, an Epic Limerick, 2006, by Jacob Wenzel, ISBN 978-1-4116-8987-9

[edit] Commentary
Glossary to Le Morte d'Arthur at Glossary to Book 1 and Glossary to Book 2 (PDF)
Lugodoc's Guide to Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur
Malory's Morte d'Arthur and Style of the Morte d'Arthur, selections by Alice D. Greenwood with bibliography from the Cambridge History of English Literature.
About the Winchester manuscript:
University of Georgia: English Dept: Jonathan Evans: Walter F. Oakeshott and the Winchester Manuscript. (Contains links to the first public announcements concerning the Winchester manuscript from The Daily Telegraph, The Times, and The Times Literary Supplement.)
UBC Dept. of English: Siân Echard: Caxton and Winchester
Department of English, Goucher College: Arnie Sanders: The Malory Manuscript