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V. Sir Thomas Malory and Prose in the 15th Century
1. Life
Sir Thomas Malory was born
into a gentry family that had lived for centuries in the English Midlands
near the point where Warwickshire, Leicestershire, and Northamptonshire
meet. His father, John Malory, was an squire with land in all three
counties, but was primarily a Warwickshire man, being twice sheriff, five
times M.P. and for many years a justice of the peace for that county.
Of Sir Thomas Malory’s early years, almost nothing is known.
As a young man of 23, records reveal that he was a “respectable country
landowner with a growing interest in politics.” He dealt in land, witnessed
deeds for his neighbours, acted as a parliamentary elector, and by 1441 had
become a knight. Sir Thomas married Elizabeth Walsh of Wanlip in
Leicestershire, who later bore him a son, Robert. Perhaps. In 1443, Malory
was “charged with wounding and imprisoning Thomas Smith and stealing his
goods, but the charge apparently fell through”. However, in 1445, he “was
elected M.P. for Warwickshire” and served “on commissions to assess
tax-exemptions in the county”.
Up to the time of 1449 when the civil war broke out,
Marlory’s life seems to have all the markings of a traditional country
gentleman, but then his life underwent a startling change. During Henry VI’s
insanity, when the Duke of York was Lord Protector, Malory was given a royal
pardon. Once the Yorkists invaded in 1460 and had expelled the Lancastrians,
Malory was freed and pardoned. He was never tried on any of the charges
brought against him.
Malory repaid his deliverers by taking part in Edward IV and
the Earl of Warwick’s expedition against the castles of Alnwick, Bamburgh,
and Dunstanborough..., which the Lancastrians had seized. The castles were
taken, and Malory settled down to a more peaceful life.
Yet, in 1468 and again in 1470, he was named in lists of
Lancastrians who were excluded from royal pardons for any crimes. Most of
those excluded were at liberty; but the Morte Darthur shows us that
Malory was in prison, completing his work.
In October 1470, when the Lancastrians returned to power,
among their first acts was freeing those of their party who were in London
prisons. Six months later, Sir Thomas Malory died and was buried under a
marble tombstone in Greyfriars, Newgate, which was the most fashionable
church in London. On the day of Malory’s death, King Edward landed in
Yorkshire, and two months later the Yorkists were back in power.
2. Le Morte d’Arthur
 As a
kind of final summing-up of the Arthurian legend built up from the 12th to
the 15th century, Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur is the only
monumental work of prose at the time. Le Morte d’Arthur was written
in English and consists of eight tales in 507 chapters in 21 books, so
arranged by Caxton, for clarity of understanding. It is the basis of most
modern telling of the Arthurian story and was the inspiration for Tennyson’s
Idylls of the King.
The story begins with Arthur’s father, King Uther Pendragon
and his desire for Igraine-married to another; Uther's use of enchantment to
father his son with Igraine; Arthur's claim to the throne established by
pulling Excalibur from the stone; his rule of Britain, marriage to
Guinevere, refusal to give tribute to King Lucius of Rome, and the war that
followed. The romances intertwined in Malory's retelling of the tale are
those of Guinevere and Sir Launcelot, Tristram and Isolde, Sir Launcelot and
Elaine and their son, the future Sir Galahad. With Galahad's appearance at
Camelot begins the quest for the Holy Grail-relics from Christ's Last Supper
brought to the British Isles by Joseph of Arimathea. And of course, there is
the conflict between King Arthur and Sir Mordred, Arthur's natural son.
Based primarily on the French Arthurian Prose Cycle of
the thirteenth century, Malory's work combines the flashback narratives of
the original to fashion a new kind of fictional structure; the result not
simply condensation, but a disentanglement of the elements of narrative and
a recombination of them into an order, an emphasis, and a significance
entirely alien to the sources. The elegance and controlled artificiality of
his antecedents are changed by Malory into directness and moral earnestness,
which allows Le Morte d'Arthur to remain a vigorous and compelling
narrative, full of the spirit of adventurous knighthood.
Le Morte d’Arthur is an important landmark in
the development of the English prose from the late Middle English to early
modern English, and has the distinction of being written in a lucid and
simple style. Both the Arthurian legendary material it contains and its
facile prose style had their wide and lasting influence upon English
literature of the later centuries.
3. Contribution
Malory is the first important English writer to show that
prose could be used to express sensitive feelings. He did in prose what
Chaucer did in poetry: telling stories in a natural and simple but effective
style. His narrative power impressed many later writers and the book
encouraged Lord Tennyson to recreate the legend three and a half centuries
later.
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