Le Morte D’Arthur: Condensed and Modernized, with an Introduction by Sir Thomas Malory

Abstract

Reviewed by: Le Morte D’Arthur: Condensed and Modernized, with an Introductionby Sir Thomas Malory Lisa Robeson sir thomas malory, Le Morte D’Arthur: Condensed and Modernized, with an Introduction. Trans. and adapt. by Joseph Glaser. Indianapolis/Cambridge, MA: Hackett Publishing Company, 2015. Pp. 368. isbn: 978–1–62466–360–4. $48 (cloth); $16 (paperback). Every literary work gains and loses something in adaptation. In the case of Joseph Glaser’s translation and condensation of Malory’s Le Morte Darthur, much is gained for certain audiences, particularly for young readers or for newcomers to older literature who might be intimidated by the length, complexity, and language of Malory’s romance. Glaser’s condensed and modernized version of Caxton’s text reads very quickly. Descriptions are stripped down, and the ranks of named knights are thinned. The Battle of Bedgrayne, for example, an episode including much repetitious battle action, occupies ten pages in the Penguin paperback edition of Caxton but four pages in Glaser (Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur, ed. Janet Cowan, 2 vols., London: Penguin Books, 1969). At the same time, Glaser follows Caxton faithfully. No major episodes are eliminated, including those that might tarnish popular perceptions of Arthur and his knights: Arthur’s murder of all the kingdom’s children is included, for example, and Glaser’s chapter subheading is blunter than Caxton’s: ‘King Arthur drowns a ship of children’ (18). Transitions between chapters are clear. Caxton’s longer books are further subdivided by Glaser, creating a sense of progress in a dense narrative. Key characters and episodes are highlighted so Malory’s somewhat meandering plot is much clearer to the first-time reader than in the original. The narrative’s clear plot and quick pace are likely to hold the attention of readers unused to long literary texts. What is lost in such a condensation, of course, is the power of Malory’s prose. On one hand, Glaser has done a good job of incorporating words and phrases from the original text so that readers will get at least a taste of Malory’s prose style. For example, the Penguin’s ‘And when they were met there was no meekness, but stout [End Page 145]words on both sides’ (I.22–23) becomes ‘Stout words flew on either side’ (6). Glaser’s own writing is powerful and exact, with some pleasing results: from the source text’s ‘Then King Arthur came out of his tower, and had under his gown a jesseraunte of double mail’ (I.22) becomes ‘King Arthur came out gowned for peace, but underneath he wore a double coat of mail’ (6), an adaptation that gets at Arthur’s essential attitude towards his enemies—‘gowned for peace’ but also prepared for battle—in a phrase. At the same time some major passages lose their impact. The Pentecostal Oath, for example, becomes ‘The quests complete, King Arthur charged his Fellowship of the Round Table to avoid treason and cruelty, to give mercy to those asking it, and to comfort and protect all ladies upon pain of death. No knight should support an unjust cause, no matter how the law stood or what reward he was offered’ (39), a version with significantly less grandeur than the original. Even more affected are the great speeches of the Morte. Glaser states in his introduction that Malory prided himself on copia, ‘a flow of words that authors of his day used to lift events above the usual ambit of experience’ (ix). While his condensations may be necessary to preserve ‘Malory’s storytelling drive and ready humor’ (ix), they lose the power and passion of the original. For example, in Guenevere’s final farewell to Lancelot her statement that ‘for as well as I have loved thee, mine heart will not serve me to see thee, for through thee and me is the flower of kings and knights destroyed’ (II.523) becomes the rather pedestrian ‘This man and I caused the death of the best knights in the world’ (305). Glaser’s adaptation and condensation of Malory’s Morte Darthurwould be an excellent introduction to the romance for any audiences who might be daunted by the work...