The Death of King Arthur
Dec. 29th, 2012 08:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficTitle: The Death of King Arthur
Author: Thomas Malory, retold by Peter Ackroyd
Synopsis: The classic fifteenth century work, translated and abridged.
Review: I haven't read Malory's original--this book was my acknowledgment that I probably never would. (That and it's very pretty. Look at the pretty! It has gold foil and French flaps and rough-cut edges and everything. And instead of having any copy, it just has illustrations of the stories.) So I cannot compare this to the original. But this is...not good.
I suspect that by stripping out the filigreed language, Ackroyd stripped out the only really interesting thing about Morte d'Arthur. Cause what you are left with is rather boring and nonsensical psychopaths running around endlessly.
For example: Lancelot. There is a section where some knights come upon a knight with a covered shield sleeping. They wake him, and he leaps up, charges them, and knocks them both silly. They pursue, and come upon a path of carnage he has left as he knocked about everyone he came upon. Eventually this knight shows himself at Camelot and reveals--ha ha! It was Lancelot all along! He was out fighting for the glory of Camelot. He covered his shield so that if he lost, no one would know it was him.
All this just gave me a greater appreciation than ever of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That bit where Lancelot runs around stabbing people in his idiom? Entirely accurate. In the book, Lancelot hacks to death Gareth and Gaheris, whom he loves, while they are unarmed, WITHOUT NOTICING. ("You kicked the bride in the chest!" "Sorry.")
Other things entirely accurate in Monty Python: there are signs in the wood that say certain death this direction; there are castles of grateful maidens; and there are places called Castle Perilous and the Dolorous Castle all over the place.
I know what Malory was doing was pulling together an enormous wealth of chivalric romances that grew up in different traditions to try to create one whole. But the result is kind of moosh. You have a bunch of knights who all have their own separate traditions--which means that Lancelot, Tristram, and Galahad are all THE MOST AMAZING KNIGHT EVER. You have knights that are brothers or sons or nephews that all seem to be the same age. You have lots and lots of riding around on quests within quests--if you put this book down for a minute and come back to it, you lose complete track of what they're supposed to be looking for at any given moment. You have lots of revenges and beheadings for a dizzying array of Sir Not Appearing in This Books. (Sir Bedevere appears--for the first time--on p.304 of 312 pages.)
What is interesting about it is seeing where various other works of art were taken from--oh, this is the section that was turned into Sword in the Stone, this is Tristan and Isolde, this is Holy Grail, this is Camelot.
But as a reading experience, it's rather excruciating.
Author: Thomas Malory, retold by Peter Ackroyd
Synopsis: The classic fifteenth century work, translated and abridged.
Review: I haven't read Malory's original--this book was my acknowledgment that I probably never would. (That and it's very pretty. Look at the pretty! It has gold foil and French flaps and rough-cut edges and everything. And instead of having any copy, it just has illustrations of the stories.) So I cannot compare this to the original. But this is...not good.
I suspect that by stripping out the filigreed language, Ackroyd stripped out the only really interesting thing about Morte d'Arthur. Cause what you are left with is rather boring and nonsensical psychopaths running around endlessly.
For example: Lancelot. There is a section where some knights come upon a knight with a covered shield sleeping. They wake him, and he leaps up, charges them, and knocks them both silly. They pursue, and come upon a path of carnage he has left as he knocked about everyone he came upon. Eventually this knight shows himself at Camelot and reveals--ha ha! It was Lancelot all along! He was out fighting for the glory of Camelot. He covered his shield so that if he lost, no one would know it was him.
All this just gave me a greater appreciation than ever of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. That bit where Lancelot runs around stabbing people in his idiom? Entirely accurate. In the book, Lancelot hacks to death Gareth and Gaheris, whom he loves, while they are unarmed, WITHOUT NOTICING. ("You kicked the bride in the chest!" "Sorry.")
Other things entirely accurate in Monty Python: there are signs in the wood that say certain death this direction; there are castles of grateful maidens; and there are places called Castle Perilous and the Dolorous Castle all over the place.
I know what Malory was doing was pulling together an enormous wealth of chivalric romances that grew up in different traditions to try to create one whole. But the result is kind of moosh. You have a bunch of knights who all have their own separate traditions--which means that Lancelot, Tristram, and Galahad are all THE MOST AMAZING KNIGHT EVER. You have knights that are brothers or sons or nephews that all seem to be the same age. You have lots and lots of riding around on quests within quests--if you put this book down for a minute and come back to it, you lose complete track of what they're supposed to be looking for at any given moment. You have lots of revenges and beheadings for a dizzying array of Sir Not Appearing in This Books. (Sir Bedevere appears--for the first time--on p.304 of 312 pages.)
What is interesting about it is seeing where various other works of art were taken from--oh, this is the section that was turned into Sword in the Stone, this is Tristan and Isolde, this is Holy Grail, this is Camelot.
But as a reading experience, it's rather excruciating.