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Abstract

Do we need a new edition of Malory's Morte Darthur? In addition to the three editions of Eugène Vinaver's standard scholarly text, the third revised by Peter Field himself, Amazon has pages upon pages of further versions of more or less academic probity, modernisations, ebooks, adaptations, illustrated books, and retellings for children. At first glance, too, the work would not seem to have a particularly awkward textual history. For over four centuries it was known only in the edition printed by Caxton in 1485 and in reprints of that by his successors, notably Wynkyn de Worde. The discovery of a manuscript in Winchester College in 1934 complicated matters, but compared with the situation of the Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman, each with over fifty manuscripts surviving, the business of establishing a text would seem straightforward. In the event, the study of Malory's text has become a research industry in itself. Peter Field has made it his lifetime's work, Japanese researchers have contributed large numbers of theses and articles, and American and English academics all add to the accumulating pile of material.