Le Morte D'Arthur or The Once and Future King?

[derangedhermit]

Originally Posted by HarryT

That's interesting. Amazon don't sell ePubs!

B&N and Sony didn't show up on the first 3 pages. i hear they do.

[Joykins]

If you're interested in Arthuriana, you should also read Gillian Bradshaw's magical _Hawk of May_ trilogy. It's more of a Celtic take, without Bradley's particular agenda. In some ways it hearkens back to what Vera Chapman was doing in the 1970s with her Arthurian trilogy (also worth reading btw), but Bradshaw is an historian/classicist, so her Arthurian world, magic aside, seems to have more verisimilitude, anyway (she notes, also when she's departed from known history).

[WillAdams]

FWIW, Mary Stewart's Merlin books have a lot in common w/ Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian works:

The Silver Branch
Frontier Wolf
The Lantern Bearers
Sword at Sunset

William

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by BenG

It's not my favorite book, but I didn't get that out of it.

I didn't get that either, but I did get a rather strong hatred for traditional Christianity. Considering how integrated Christianity is with the most.. traditional version of the story, I found it somewhat annoying.

--
Bill

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Hamlet53

Definitely The Once and Future King. That is unless you are required to read Le Morte D'Arthur for a class, or wish to for intellectual bragging rights. I read The Once and Future King in about the 7th grad, and once more a couple of years ago and enjoyed it both times. It is certainly the best telling of the 'Camelot' legend out there that is written at an adult level. It was also the main inspiration of the Broadway play and later Hollywood film Camelot.

I am not certain of this, but I do believe that Once and Future King was actually written in multiple parts. Certainly the latter part of the book is more adult reader in nature than is the first.

Well just a couple of thoughts.

The first is that I think a lot of the problems that people have with Mallory have to do with the rather archaic language. Mallory wrote in what is technically still Middle English and spelling wasn't standardized. A lot of the available editions try to be true to the original texts which can make it harder to read. I read it, for fun, in High School simply because I thought the stories were cool; but it also helped that I had an edition that modernized the English to a large degree.

The second is that "Le Morte" actually is a cycle of stories about Arthur. More akin to a collection of short novels than a single novel. I would say that at most, only about half of it is critical to the main storyline, and some parts, like Tristan and Iseult, are completely irrelevant to the main story (Arthur and his knights only appear occasionally in that part of the book). The stories themselves are certainly not high-brow however.

--
Bill

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by bill_mchale

I didn't get that either, but I did get a rather strong hatred for traditional Christianity. Considering how integrated Christianity is with the most.. traditional version of the story, I found it somewhat annoying.

MZB returned to the Episcopal church in the 1990s, although I got the impression that pagans continued to seek her out for religious advice.

I should probably re-read _Mists_ and see if it's really critiquing Christianity as a whole or only certain aspects of it that she presumably thought harmful.

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by Joykins

MZB returned to the Episcopal church in the 1990s, although I got the impression that pagans continued to seek her out for religious advice.

I should probably re-read _Mists_ and see if it's really critiquing Christianity as a whole or only certain aspects of it that she presumably thought harmful.

Well, its been about 10 years since I read it last, but IIRC, I got the distinct impression that she was attacking both the patriarchal nature of the Church (Which one can argue whether it is core to the faith or not), and the Church's exclusive claim to Truth. Christianity, and in my humble opinion, all the Abrahamic religions rest on claims of an exclusive truth. You might disagree about whether they represent that truth, but if you disagree that such a truth agrees, then there is really no terms by which you can engage traditional Christianity.

Also, if I remember correctly, she protrayed St. Patrick as a bad guy. Come on, I can't let that pass right around St. Patrick's Day .

--
Bill

[covingtoncat73]

Mary Stewart's Merlin books are my favorite take on things Authurian. I'd love to see a good miniseries or series of movies of them.