Le Morte D' Arthur, Volume II Book

I'm reminded of the self-referential quote from William Goldman's masterpiece The Princess Bride:

"Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles."

Goldman may as well have been writing about Le Morte d'Arthur, which includes pretty much everything on this list.

I'm glad Penguin* published this book in two volumes, so that I can give four stars to the first half (which is a little generous, if anything), and five to volume two. Taken as a whole, an amazing piece of literature, and perhaps the definitive version of the Arthurian story. While there is a continuous plot to the entire saga (although not always in chronological order), it's broken up into various nearly stand-alone sections, each with its own heroes and storylines. Volume 2 has most of the better episodes, including the great character-driven stories like the Tristram saga and the story of Launcelot and Guinevere, and the eerie, metaphorical story of the Grail Quest.

My favorite story was the tale of Sir Tristram. I particularly enjoyed the rivalry of Tristram and Palomides, who is probably my favorite character in the entire book, and a welcome surprise (since I wasn't familiar with him in advance).

What I enjoyed most about Le Morte d'Arthur are its complex and realistic characters (while the heroes may have superhuman strength and endurance, they exhibit realistic personality flaws and believable motivations). I also liked the way the individual tales were linked together into a cohesive unit, with events and decisions causing repercussions that ripple along throughout the rest of the saga.

The female characters aren't always very well-written, which is perhaps not surprising given the age and theme of the work, with most of them falling into the general categories of damsel in distress, conniving temptress, mischievous sorceress, sacred virgin, or unfaithful wife. But there are some good surprises here, including stories in which the damsel rescues the knight, rather than the other way around, and there are a few female characters with some depth, such as Maledisant.

The other thing that bothered me were the spoilers and anticlimaxes--the places in which Malory gives away the ending (or an important part of it) midway through the story, or else at the end of an episode casually mentions that our hero later gets slain by so-and-so. These sorts of things would never fly today, but of course Malory was writing at a different time, for a different sort of audience (one that would likely already be familiar with these stories, having heard other versions of them).

*I didn't actually read the Penguin version, so I'm not sure where Volume 1 ends and Volume 2 begins. This review covers the text from the beginning of the Tristram story.